Mostly.
Every now and then, though, I’d find myself staring into those pale eyes, heat washing over me as I remembered the feel of his mouth on mine. In those moments—moments like this—we were in danger of letting ourselves be swept away. Thomas’s color was up, and his gaze had taken on that glassy quality that made my heart beat faster. His fingertips drifted along the soft skin between my knuckles, gliding up the back of my hand in a slow caress. My breath grew shallow, and my bottom lip slid between my teeth.
A tiny crease appeared between Thomas’s dark eyebrows. He looked down. “What’s this?” His touch grew firmer, more clinical.
I followed his gaze to the tiny bumps dotting my arm. “Oh, that.” I sighed. “That would be fleas.”
CHAPTER 2
HOME SWEET HOME—PUTTING DOWN ROOTS—HARD LUCK
Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t help smiling as I stepped out of the brougham in front of 123 Washington Place. I don’t know if every new homeowner feels such pride, but for me, the sight of my tidy little redbrick house never failed to make my soul feel lighter. Number 123 was a handsome example of the Federal style, a narrow two and a half stories with arched windows, crisp white dormers jutting out from a sloping roof, and fluted Roman detail around the entrance. Built in the 1830s, it was designed for a middle-class family, which meant that for my household of three, it was positively a mansion, especially compared to the tiny flat I grew up in.
Something was different today, I noticed. It took me a moment to place it—and then I realized that Mam had hung window boxes on the second floor, full of delicate blue pansies that stood out cheerfully against the white trim. My smile grew even wider, and not just because I loved flowers. After nearly two months, Mam was finally settling into her new home.
“Good morning,” I called as I walked through the door.
“Fiora!” Pietro came rushing out of the kitchen, looking equal parts relieved and annoyed. Unlike Mam, he knew the truth about what I did for a living—well, some of it, anyway—and he would have known Thomas’s message about a party had been pure flimflam. “Where have you—”
“Rose, dear, is that you?”
Pietro fell silent, and we shared a meaningful look. His questions would have to wait.
“Yes, Mam, it’s me. I’m coming just now.” Hanging my overcoat on the rack, I followed Pietro into the kitchen, where I was met by a heady smell of garlic. Something bubbled on the stove, and little piles of chopped herbs and vegetables covered one side of the table. On the other side stood my mother, chicken in one hand and cleaver in the other, a soiled apron tied around her tiny waist.
For a second I just stood there, too thunderstruck to speak.
“Mam, are you … cooking?”
Pietro arranged himself at the other end of the table and resumed chopping, casual as you please, as though the sight of my mother preparing a meal were nothing special.
“Well, what does it look like, you silly thing?” Mam waved her cleaver in an offhanded way.
It looked like my often-confused mother had a very large knife in her hand, but it wouldn’t do to say so. “I’m just … a bit surprised, is all.”
“You act as if you’ve never seen me cook before.”
I glanced at Pietro, but he was no help; he just winked at me and kept chopping. “Well, it has been a while, Mam.” By a while, I meant years, ever since her dementia had made the task too dangerous to contemplate. The main reason I’d found her a boarder three years ago was to take care of the cooking while I was away at work. Fortunately for Mam, Pietro had proved to be more than competent in the kitchen, and had even managed to coax her into trying something other than the bland cabbage-and-potatoes fare she’d grown up with. These days, Mam enjoyed garlic and tomatoes nearly as much as our boarder. “What are you making?”
“Pollo alla cacciatora,” Pietro replied. “I like to make this sauce with rabbit, but I couldn’t find it nowhere.”
“Couldn’t find it anywhere, Peter.” As a former schoolteacher, Mam never tired of correcting his grammar. It had been the same with me when I was a child, except Pietro handled it with a lot more grace than I ever had.
“Sorry, Mama,” he said affably. “One day I will learn.”
“Are these fresh tomatoes?” I picked up a juicy-looking specimen. “Where did you find hothouse tomatoes around here?” Plenty of posh grocers uptown carried them, but I couldn’t think of any place between Washington Square and … “Ah,” I said, spying a link of salami hanging from the ceiling. “I see you made a trip to Augusto’s.”
There must have been something in my tone, because Pietro looked up. “Sì, I wanted to buy some seeds for the garden. Actually…” Setting his knife down, he gestured at the door leading out to the courtyard. “Come, Fiora, I show you.”
He led me out into the small yard behind the house, where he’d already started removing some of the paving stones to plant a garden. The shade-loving plants would go here, he’d informed me, while he planned to try growing tomatoes and such on the roof. “I bought a few different kinds to try, and they also had these.” He pointed to some baby plants wrapped in burlap. “I will put them in a bucket for now.”
“What are they?”
“Melanzana. I’m not sure how you call them in English.” He made a shape with his hands. “Like a squash, but purple?”
“Aubergines. At least, that’s what we call them. Americans call them eggplant.” Folding my arms, I added, “And you can find them a lot closer than Augusto’s.”
He folded his arms right back at me. “Va bene. You tell me where you were last night, and I tell you why I went to Augusto’s.”
“I was…” Peering around his lanky frame, I checked that the door to the kitchen was firmly shut. “I had a spot of trouble, and…” Oh, just spit it out. “I spent the night in the Tombs.”
Pietro’s eyebrows flew up, and for a moment I thought he was going to scold me. Instead, he burst out laughing. “The Tombs! Non ci posso credere. Beautiful!” Leaning forward, he sniffed at me. “You don’t smell too bad for all that.”
“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry. His dark eyes danced, and he didn’t even try to hide his smile. “But it is a little ironic, no? A detective spending the night in jail? I don’t remember things like this happening when you were a maid.”
“I don’t remember a lot of things happening when I was a maid. Being able to afford my own home, for example.”
“Careful. You don’t want Mama to hear.”
There was a hint of disapproval in his voice, and I knew why. Pietro didn’t like keeping secrets from my mother. I wasn’t very happy about it either, but I didn’t see much choice. Mam’s health was improving, but she certainly wasn’t back to her old self, and I doubted she ever would be. Part of her condition was down to the amount of time she’d spent communing with the ghost of her dead mother—a practice Thomas had thankfully convinced her to curb—but another part was what the doctors referred to as dementia, and it left her confused and forgetful. As it was, Pietro and I had to remind her regularly that she lived here now, instead of in the tiny flat on Mott Street where I’d grown up. Just last week, I’d come home to find her sobbing in Pietro’s arms. She’d woken up from her nap with no idea where she was or how she got there. What Mam needed right now was familiarity and routine, and that did not include finding out her daughter was a Pinkerton.