Luke was laughing. He still quaked with cold, but she’d never seen such a good-natured smile as people reached out to shake his hand and slap him on the back. He looked around for Bandit, who was getting a rubdown from Sam. Luke went to meet the dog.
It was the perfect photograph.
She raced to the juniper tree where she’d abandoned her government-issued Brownie camera. It didn’t take long to fling the lanyard around her neck and return to the bank. By now Luke had picked up Bandit, holding the shivering dog against his bare chest, still laughing.
“Can I take your photograph?” she asked.
His smile deepened in a combination of pride and happiness. It was all the permission she needed. She steadied the boxy camera against her diaphragm as she looked down through the viewfinder, slid the aperture open, and pressed the lever to take the photograph. The sun reflecting on snow made plenty of ambient light, so it only took a few seconds to capture the image.
“Thanks,” she said.
Luke bent over to set Bandit on the ground. “Thank you, Aunt Marianne.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but his brother, a tall dark-haired man who looked similar to Luke except a lot more serious, was dragging him toward a carriage.
“Let’s get you home and in front of a warm fire,” Gray said. “We’ll be lucky if you don’t catch your death of cold.”
“Always a ray of sunshine,” Luke chided, but he didn’t resist as his brother nudged him toward the carriage. Luke climbed inside, but before he closed the carriage door, he met her gaze across the frozen landscape and flashed her a wink.
The carriage rolled away, and just like that, the most amazing man she’d ever met was gone.
Luke Delacroix wrapped his hands around the mug of hot cocoa, leaning so close to the fireplace that the heat from the flames baked the side of his face. He savored the sensation, for he was still chilled to the bone. A weird sense of elation lingered as he thought of that moment on the ice, lying flat with his hand clinging to a woman who had more courage than all the bystanders on the shore put together. She was a complete stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger at all. She had dark hair and pretty blue eyes filled with trepidation, but she was out there. He’d been in her presence for only a few minutes but already admired her. Sometimes people revealed their true character very quickly.
He didn’t know who she was, but he’d have it figured out before the end of the day. It would be easy. Number one: he was a spy and good at ferreting out information. Number two: the Brownie camera she used had a government stamp on the case, meaning she probably worked for the Department of the Interior. How many female photographers named Marianne worked for the Department of the Interior?
Gray stomped into the parlor and set a bowl of steaming chowder on the table along with a wedge of cheese.
“Eat all of it,” he ordered, still annoyed over what had happened at the Boundary Channel. They had been on their way to move in to Luke’s new office when snarled traffic slowed their carriage and Luke noticed the bystanders watching a lone woman venture onto the ice to save a floundering dog. He’d ordered the carriage to stop so he could help.
Luke exchanged the mug of cocoa for the soup and began eating even though he wasn’t hungry. The chowder was hot, filling, and the doctor said he still needed to gain another ten pounds to replace the thirty he’d lost in Cuba.
“Should I send a wire to the landlord, telling him we can’t take possession of the office today?” Gray asked. “I don’t want you leaving the house if your hair is still wet. You could get pneumonia.”
Luke was thirty years old, but Gray still smothered him like a mother hen since he got back from Cuba, sick and emaciated. Luke didn’t mind. He’d put his family through a lot over the past year, and he owed them. So he tolerated Gray’s fussing, ate even when he was no longer hungry, and tried to behave himself.
Tried but didn’t always succeed. What sort of man would he be if he ignored that woman attempting to rescue a dog all on her own?
He leaned his head toward the fire, rubbing his hair to make it dry faster. “We can still move in today. I need to get the Washington bureau of the magazine up and running. The November elections might seem a long way off, but I’ve got an interview with Dickie Shuster at the end of the week. I need to be moved in before that.”
“We have to be careful,” Gray said, and this time Luke knew the warning had nothing to do with wet hair or proper nutrition. It had everything to do with the fact that Dickie Shuster was slick, underhanded, and probably the cleverest reporter in all of Washington. “Dickie is still an ally of the Magruders. He will be quietly working to undermine you in hopes of promoting Clyde and the Magruder cause.”
“Wrong,” Luke replied. “Dickie will do whatever is necessary to promote himself.”
The Delacroixs and the Magruders had been bitter rivals for generations. They’d never liked each other, but their animosity boiled over shortly after the Civil War. The Delacroix family, long one of the wealthiest merchant families in Virginia, had lost everything in the war. Their home was burned to the ground, and all four of their merchant vessels were seized by the federal government and never returned. Following the war, their ships were put up for auction. Luke’s father attended the auction to bid on The Sparrow, the smallest of the ships, in a desperate attempt to start rebuilding their fortune.
Gloating at the auction was Jedidiah Magruder, the patriarch of the Magruder clan, who drove the price higher and higher. Luke’s father couldn’t compete, and the Magruders bought The Sparrow for a fraction of its worth. The Magruders didn’t even export their goods, so they had no need for a merchant ship. They simply bought it to rub his father’s nose in the fact that they could. If there was any doubt about the Magruders’ motives, that was put to rest when Jedidiah stripped the ship of its valuables, then burned it in the harbor. “We had a great Confederate bonfire!” he had bragged to the press.
That incident elevated the bitter family feud into one of seething hatred, and it grew worse over the years. The Magruders weren’t above bribing journalists to throw mud at the Delacroixs, and they’d used Dickie Shuster in the past.
“Dickie can be flipped, and I intend to flip him,” Luke said.
It wouldn’t be easy, but Luke had plenty of connections in this city. He was also smarter than the Magruders. He didn’t mind cozying up to Dickie Shuster in order to get an upper hand in the local press. Now that his health was on the mend, it was time to resume his life as a journalist, and that meant moving into his new office.
Freezing air shocked his system the moment he stepped outside again. He ignored it and climbed into the carriage, Gray following. If all went well, they could still get him settled into his new office by the end of the day. He tried to beat back his shivers as the carriage set off toward downtown Washington.
“Have the Magruders made any progress stealing revenue from our spice business?” Luke asked, desperate to get his mind off the chill seeping into his core again.
The corners of Gray’s mouth turned down. “They’re trying. Their bottled spices went nowhere, but they’re stealing a ton of my business in vanilla extract.”
The Delacroix family had built their fortune on expensive spices and seasonings, while the Magruders became even richer by selling canned foods. The families had always been rivals, but now the gloves were off and the stakes were higher. Clyde Magruder, the leader of the family, had been elected to Congress and would surely try to wield that power to grind the Delacroixs into the dirt.