Now, that surprised her. “No?”
“It was … I had forgotten what it felt like to be in a body.”
Alex considered. She shouldn’t deepen the bond. But if he could look inside her head
when he entered her, maybe his thoughts would be open to her too. She’d gotten little sense of him in the panic of the fight. “You can come back in if you like.”
He hesitated. Why? Because there was intimacy in the act? Or because he had
something to hide?
Dawes bustled through the door, a tray heaped with dishes in her hands. She set it down
on the map cabinet. “I kept it simple. Mashed potatoes. Macaroni and cheese. Tomato soup. Green salad.”
As soon as the smell hit, Alex’s stomach began to rumble and saliva filled her mouth.
“Bless you, Dawes. Can I get out of this thing?”
Dawes glanced at the tub. “It looks clear.”
“If you’re going to eat, I’ll stay,” said North. His voice was steady, but he looked eager
in the mirror of the water.
Dawes handed Alex a towel and helped her climb awkwardly from the tub.
“Can I be alone for a minute?”
Dawes’s eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. Just eat. But if you … If you hear anything, don’t worry about knocking. Just
come on in.”
“I’ll be downstairs,” Dawes said warily. She closed the door behind her.
Alex leaned over the crucible. North was waiting in the reflection.
“Want in?” she asked.
“Submerge your hand,” he muttered, as if asking her to disrobe. But, of course, she’d
already disrobed.
She dunked her hand beneath the surface.
“I’m not a murderer,” said North, reaching for her.
She smiled and let her fingers clasp his. “Of course not,” she said. “Neither am I.”
She was looking through a window. She felt excited, a sense of pride and comfort she’d never known. The world was hers. This factory, more modern than Brewster’s or
Hooker’s. The city before her. The woman beside her.
Daisy. She was exquisite, her face precise and lovely, her hair in curls that brushed the collar of her high-necked dress, her soft white hands buried in a fox-fur muff. She was the
most beautiful woman in New Haven, maybe Connecticut, and she was his. Hers. Mine.
Daisy turned to him, her dark eyes mischievous. Her intelligence sometimes unnerved
him. It was not quite feminine, and yet he knew it was what elevated her over all of the
belles of the Elm City. Perhaps she was not really the most beautiful. Her nose was too sharp, her lips too thin—but oh the words that spilled from them, laughing and quick and
occasionally naughty. And there was absolutely nothing to fault in her figure or her clever
smile. She was simply more alive than anyone he’d ever met.
These calculations were made in a moment. He could not stop making them, because
always they tallied to a sense of triumph and contentment.
“What is it you’re thinking, Bertie?” she asked in her playful voice, sidling closer. Only
she used that name with him. Her maid had come with them, as was proper, but Gladys
had hung back in the hallway and now he saw her through the window drifting toward the
green, the strings of her bonnet trailing from her hand as she plucked a sprig of dogwood
from the trees. He hadn’t had much cause to speak to Gladys, but he would make more of
an effort. Servants heard everything, and it would pay to have the ear of the woman closest
to the woman who would be his wife.
He turned away from the window to Daisy glowing like a piece of milky glass against
the polished wood of his new office. His desk, along with the new safe, had been built especially for the space. He’d already spent several late nights here working in comfort. “I
was thinking of you, of course.”
She tapped him on the arm, drawing closer still. Her body had a sway to it that might
have been unseemly in another woman, but not in Daisy.
“You needn’t flirt with me anymore.” She held up her hand, fluttered her fingers, the emerald glinting on them. “I’ve already said yes.”