He walked around the officer taking notes and headed toward the house. The blanket-covered corpse was being carried out on a stretcher, and Patrick instinctively paused to cross himself. He hated what he’d done tonight, but if he hadn’t been here, Liam would be dead.

“Do you have someone on the force who can stand guard at the hospital?” he asked Sergeant Dittmer. “Whoever ordered this attack on Liam might try again.”

Sergeant Dittmer scoffed. “We don’t have spare men to serve as a private police force.”

That wasn’t a surprise, but Liam was still in danger. If he survived tonight’s attack, he would be frail and defenseless for weeks.

Patrick scanned the bystanders loitering in the street. He recognized some of them as people who’d come to New York for the hearing. They were strong men from the steel mills and factories. They would be his private police force.

He stepped forward. “I could use some people to help stand guard at the hospital.”

Five minutes later he had his volunteers, and now his job was no longer solving the mystery of Liam’s birth, but simply to keep him alive.

20

Gwen had become increasingly confident that she wanted Patrick O’Neill to become a part of her life. He was strong and kind and funny. Thoroughly good. He had gone all the way to Pittsburgh just to help her solve the mystery of Liam Malone. The last, lingering vestiges of her resentment over his representation of Mick Malone evaporated in the face of Patrick’s unstinting generosity. What other man would so selflessly give of himself?

She didn’t give a fig about their class differences, but some of her relatives might look down their noses at him. She couldn’t bear it if they treated Patrick shabbily, and that meant she needed to recruit Uncle Oscar’s wife, the Blackstones’ reigning social maven, to her side. Poppy was the most virulent snob in the family, but Gwen would try to soften her.

Poppy had invited a number of the Blackstone ladies to admire her newly decorated nursery. It would be the perfect opportunity for Gwen to announce that after two years of lonely widowhood, she was ready to begin a formal courtship.

Poppy and Oscar lived in a marble monstrosity on Fifth Avenue. Oscar’s daughter from his first marriage lived there as well, but Gwen didn’t expect Natalia to join the party. The animosity between Poppy and Natalia was palpable, but Gwen had always liked Natalia, even though they couldn’t be more different. While Gwen chose a bohemian life among artists and intellectuals, Natalia was a buttoned-down woman who inherited her father’s skills as a business analyst.

A pair of her aunts arrived at the same time as Gwen, and they exchanged greetings outside the house. Gwen reached out to embrace her favorite aunt. Technically, Martha was her great-aunt, the youngest of her grandfather’s five sisters.