These Shallow Graves (15 page)

“Bram
knows.
”

Jo's breath caught. She dropped the teaspoon she was holding. It clattered to the floor.

“He … he does?” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Of course he does,” Addie Aldrich said, picking up the teaspoon.

“But how? Who told him?” Jo asked, panic-stricken.

“No one, silly. It's written all over your face. Bram
knows
how upset you are at having to miss the Young Patrons' Ball. We all do. Just look at you. You look so unhappy.”

Jo laughed, weak with relief. “Oh, Addie, you know me too well. I can't hide anything from you,” she said.

For a few heart-stopping seconds, she had been terrified that Addie meant Bram knew about Eddie. All she'd thought about for four days straight was Eddie and the kisses they'd shared at the waterfront. She remembered the thrilling feeling of his arms around her and the taste of his lips—and the terror she felt right afterward.

“I … I shouldn't have done that,” she'd said, breaking away from him. “I'm sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Yes! Aren't you?”

“No.”

“Well, you
should
be, Mr. Gallagher.”

“It's Eddie, remember? And why should I be?”

“Because I … Because you … Because—”

Eddie had pulled her back to him and kissed her again. Slowly and deeply.

“Still sorry?” he'd asked, his voice husky.

“Yes,” Jo had said.

He had kissed her cheek, and then all along the delicate line of her jaw.

“Still?”

“Yes.”

He'd kissed her neck and the soft hollow just below it.

“Oh, Eddie,
no.
Not a bit.”

She hadn't wanted to find a cab. She hadn't wanted to be parted from him. So they had walked to Gramercy Square hand in hand. They hadn't said a word until they'd reached the square and then Jo had spoken first.

“Eddie, I have—”

“Bram Aldrich. I know. Will Livingston and Henry Jay are sweet on you, too. I read the social pages.”

“And I can't—”

“I'm not asking you to.”

“Then what—”

“I don't know, Jo. I don't know.”

He'd taken her face in his hands then and kissed her again, and his body was so warm, and his lips so sweet, and the beat of his heart under her hand so strong, that the questions hadn't mattered. He'd let her go and then waited outside in the street until she'd snuck into her house and up to her room, and had lit a candle and held it in the window so he'd know she was safely inside.

As she'd undressed for bed, she'd glimpsed herself in her mirror and seen a girl both familiar and unfamiliar staring back. This girl looked rumpled and flushed from her adventures. Inquisitive. Determined. Jo had known she wasn't that girl, not yet, but she wanted to be. And Eddie had showed her that she could be. She was so different when she was with him. Bolder. Better. Alive.

She had lain in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, for more than an hour, trying to name what she was feeling. Bram had never made her feel the way Eddie did—desperate for his touch, his kisses. Was this how Trudy's apple boy had made
her
feel? No, it couldn't be, because she'd discarded him faster than last season's hat when Gilbert proposed.

And then, right before she fell asleep, Jo had realized what the feeling was. “I think I'm falling in love with him,” she'd whispered to the darkness.

It was Sunday afternoon now, and Jo and her mother were receiving some close friends and family members. Jo was sitting with her cousin Caroline and a few other girls. More visitors were standing by the mantel or milling about the room. Most everyone was chatting about the ball, which was to be held two weeks from yesterday.

Jo smiled and tried her best to be a good hostess, but she didn't want to be there. She wanted to be with Eddie, walking the streets of the city, meeting Bill Hawkins and Fay and Tumbler, hiding out in a broom closet. She felt like a fairy-tale princess woken by a kiss to a new world, new people, new emotions.
Leave your sleep,
this new world said. But how? Heads would turn if she so much as left the room.

“It's these mourning ensembles that make you look so miserable, Jo,” Caroline said now. “Black makes any girl look like a sour old maid.”

Jo was dressed as etiquette dictated—in a black day dress, simple and dull. Katie had styled her hair in a plain knot. A jet brooch was fastened at her throat.

“Elizabeth Adams ordered a gown from Paris especially for the ball. Edie Waring saw it and says it's spectacular,” Jennie Rhinelander gushed.

Jo had been looking forward to the Young Patrons' Ball before she'd lost her father—and found Eddie. Now she wanted no part of it.

“I don't care what Elizabeth's doing. I think any girl who doesn't put her Paris dresses away for at least a year is vulgar,” Addie sniffed.

“You know she's wearing it for one reason only—to turn Bram's head,” Jennie said. “She's after him. She wants him to escort her to the ball. Anyone with eyes can see it.”

“Jennie, dear, you have a talent for saying the most inappropriate things,” Caroline scolded.

“It's not inappropriate, it's true!” Jennie protested.

“You are
such
a child. The truth is usually inappropriate,” Caroline said. “That's why we avoid speaking of it.”

“Elizabeth's wasting her time. Bram's sweet on someone else,” Addie said, squeezing Jo's hand. “And do you really think Grandmama would allow her grandson to take up with an Adams? Elizabeth's father made his money from
shoe polish,
for goodness' sake. She's only invited to the ball because the organizers had no choice—her father donated ten thousand dollars to the museum.”

“It's such a shame you can't go, Jo,” said Jennie. “Isn't there some way?”

“Aunt Anna would never allow it,” Caroline said. “Not so soon after Uncle Charles's death.”

“Oh, we'll see about that,” Addie retorted smugly.

“What do you mean?” asked Caroline.

“Anna Montfort follows the rules, but Grandmama makes them. And when it suits her, she breaks them,” Addie said. “She's here and she means to have a word with Mrs. Montfort about the ball.”

With a sense of dread, Jo remembered the conversation between Grandmama and Mrs. Aldrich that she and Trudy had eavesdropped on. Grandmama, it appeared, meant what she'd said.

No!
Jo thought, alarmed.
She mustn't speak with Mama. I don't want to encourage Bram.

Jo looked for her mother, trying not to show the sense of urgency she felt. If she could sit down next to her before Grandmama did, perhaps she could thwart any talk of balls. Finally, Jo spotted her. She was sitting with Phillip and Madeleine in a corner of the room Jo called the jungle because it was dominated by four giant palm trees in pots. There was an empty chair next to her.

“Oh, dear. Uncle Phillip hasn't been offered any lemon wafers and he's so partial to them. Where
is
that maid? I'll have to bring him some myself. Do excuse me,” Jo said to her friends.

She hurried to the sideboard, where the refreshments had been set out. As she did, she spotted Grandmama by the piano—only a few feet away from her mother. Jo would have to move fast. She quickly arranged some cookies on a plate and was just about to take them to her uncle when Bram stopped her.

“Are these Mrs. Nelson's lemon wafers? I have to have one before Grandmama feeds them all to Lolly,” he said. He took a cookie off the plate and swallowed it in one bite.

“Greedy thing. At least Lolly
sits
for a cookie,” Jo scolded, smiling and polite even when she was desperate.

Bram winked and moved off. As he did, guilt—heavy and nauseating—descended on her.
He has expectations,
she thought, staring after him.
He shouldn't. Not anymore. I have to tell him.

Tell him what?
a voice inside her asked.
Tell him you've fallen for a penniless reporter whom you barely know? That's a brilliant idea, Jo. As soon as you've told Bram, you can tell your mother. I'm sure she'll be delighted.

Jo watched Bram bend down to speak with ancient Mrs. DePeyster, who had terrible arthritis in her legs and was sitting by the fire to warm them. He took her thin, wrinkled hand and said something that made her laugh. Her eyes sparkled and color came to her cheeks. She patted his hand fondly.

The exchange made Jo's heart ache. Bram was so
good.
He was a solid, honorable man who would always take care of her and make certain she lacked nothing, but she also knew that were she to become his wife, he would never allow her to write stories for newspapers. Or let her go the morgue. Or kiss her the way Eddie did, with everything inside him—and she knew she would never kiss him back with everything inside her.

What am I going to do? What on earth am I going to do?
she wondered.

I don't know, Jo. I don't know,
Eddie had said. Neither did she, and it frightened her. She
did
know that she had to avoid the Young Patrons' Ball, though. At all costs.

She started toward the empty seat by her mother, when she saw, to her horror, that it had been taken by Grandmama.
Blast!
she thought. She couldn't join her mother's group now. There was no place for her to sit, and to hover would be rude.

The withdrawing room was actually two rooms, each with its own doorway and a fretwork arch between them. Jo ducked out of one door, hoping no one noticed, trotted down the narrow hallway that ran alongside the rooms, then reentered through the second doorway. She was behind her mother's group now, shielded by the palm trees. She couldn't see much from this vantage point but she could hear everything.

“… a flighty girl, Anna, and restless. A girl full of passions,” Grandmama was saying.

She's talking about me,
Jo realized, her trepidation growing.

“It's best to nip that sort of thing quick, before she takes up painting, or smoking, or, God forbid, writing. Addie tells me she already dabbles in her school's newspaper.”

“She doesn't
dabble,
” Phillip said, leaping to Jo's defense. “She's a good writer. Which is not a sign of flightiness, by the way. It's a sign of intelligence.”

Jo felt a rush of gratitude toward her uncle. He was always in her corner.

“I suppose a facility with words can serve a girl well,” Grandmama allowed. “After all, one must communicate with tradesmen to save one's husband the task, but that should be the end of it. That queer Edith Jones was overfond of books,” she added darkly. “But Teddy Wharton cured her of it. The Whartons are sporting people, you know. They don't go in much for books. Edith was lucky to snare him. She was lucky to snare
anyone.
She was twenty-three when she married. Twenty-three! No children yet, and it's been five years. If you ask me, the best way to settle a girl is to marry her off young and make her a mother before there's time for any odd ideas to take hold. I see it in my bitches. The longer bad habits are indulged, the harder they are to break.”

“Grandmama,
do
come and say hello to Mrs. DePeyster. She's asking for you.” That was Bram's mother. She'd just walked over to the group.

“Why can't Theodora come here?” Grandmama asked petulantly.

“Because her knees are paining her.”

Jo heard Grandmama get to her feet. “Bad breeding,” she said smugly. “Theodora was a Montgomery. They
all
have weak bones.”

“She's intolerable!” Jo's mother hissed, after Grandmama had left. “How dare she compare my daughter to a spaniel!”

“Perhaps you should have Mrs. Nelson put out marrow bones for the young ladies present instead of lemon wafers,” said her uncle mischievously.

Jo bit back a laugh.

“Do
not
make jokes, Phillip. Can you believe that she wants Jo to go to the Young Patrons' Ball? It's completely out of the question.”

Jo felt relief wash over her. She was out of the woods.

“She's worse than usual, I agree, but there's a reason for it: Peter had a terrible spell last week. He recovered, but only barely. The doctor says he won't survive another such attack. She's desperate to see Bram married,” her uncle said solemnly.

Oh, no,
Jo thought, upset by the news of Mr. Aldrich's bad turn—and by what it might mean for her.

“I'm very sorry to hear it, but Jo can't accept a proposal now,” her mother insisted. “The Aldriches must wait until her mourning has ended.”

Phillip was silent for a moment; then he said, “And if they do not? You know as well as I do that Bram's the most suitable match for Jo. The Aldriches will attend the ball, as they always do. Bram wishes to escort Jo. If he cannot, he may take another young lady.”