She dabbed, lifting her tears onto the linen. “I thought we were leaving.”

“Leaving with a bang requires work.”

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked sullenly.

“I can’t let Isaac Bell get in my way this time.”

“Why don’t I kill him?”

O’Shay nodded thoughtfully. Katherine was lethal, a finely tuned machine unencumbered by remorse or regret. But every machine had its physical limits. “You would only get hurt. Bell is too much like me, a man not easily killed. No, I won’t have you risk trying to kill him. But I do want him distracted.”

“Do you want me to seduce him?” asked Katherine. She flinched from the sudden fury distorting O’Shay’s face.

“Have I ever asked you to do such a thing?”

“No.”

“Would I ever ask you?”

“No.”

“It destroys me that you could say such a thing.”

“I am sorry, Brian. I didn’t think.” She reached for his hand. He pulled away, his normally bland face red, his lips compressed in a hard line, his eyes wintery.

“Brian, I am not exactly a schoolgirl.”

“Whatever seductions you allow yourself are your business,” he said coldly. “I have ensured that you possess the means and manner to indulge yourself as only privileged women can. Society will never tell you what you can do and not do. But I want it clearly understood that I would never use you that way.”

“What way? As a seductress? Or an indulgence?”

“Young lady, you are beginning to annoy me.”

Katherine Dee ignored the very dangerous tone in his voice because she knew he was too careful to break up the furniture in the Palm Court. “Stop calling me that. You’re only ten years older than I am.”

“Twelve. And mine are old years, while I have moved heaven and earth to make yours young years.”

Waiters bustled up. Ward and guardian sat in stony silence until the cakes were spread and tea poured.

“How do you want me to distract him?” When he started talking that way there was nothing to do but go along.

“The fiancée is the key.”

“She is suspicious of me.”

“How do you mean?” O’Shay asked sharply.

“At the Michigan launching, when I tried to get close, she pulled back. She senses something in me that frightens her.”

“Perhaps she is psychical,” said O’Shay, “and reads your mind.” An expression as desolate as it was wise transformed Katherine Dee’s pretty face into a lifeless mask of ancient marble. “She reads my heart.”

Chapter 46

46

YOUR FIANCEÉE IS CALLING ON THE TELEPHONE, MR. BELL.”

The tall Van Dorn detective was standing over his desk in the Knickerbocker, impatiently sifting reports for some decent news on the whereabouts of Eyes O’Shay or the stolen torpedoes before he hit the streets hunting Billy Collins again.

“This is a nice surprise.”

“I’m across the street at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre,” said Marion Morgan.