Blind Trust Read Online Free PDF Page B

though he had rummaged through his experience like a suitcase and selected with great care the things that would amuse her. And he kept on talking, and the snow fell, and the cab felt snug, and by the time they passed Alva and William K. Vanderbilt’s chateau on Fifty-second, she had realized his object. He was sparing her embarrassment and the need for awkward explanations. And somehow, in the long line of gentlemen who had sat next to her at dinner or called in her parlor, all saying the correct things, she thought that he was more of a gentleman than she’d ever met.
    But that didn’t mean she could trust him, of course. When they stood finally at her front door, their eyes met for the second time. His were pale green, she saw now. They blazed at her with a keenness that made her want to ask him boldly what were the thoughts behind them.
    She held out her hand. “I am in your debt, Mr. Finn.”
    â€œYou don’t have to be. After tonight, I think that we will have never met, Mrs. Statton.”
    Startled, she withdrew her hand. His suggestion revolted against years of training. Share a secret meeting? Everything she’d been taught told her that it was wrong, that it would give him an ungentlemanlike hold on her. If they were to meet again in society, he would have knowledge in his eyes, knowledge of her that no one else was privy to: that she was afraid of her husband; that she’d tried to run away. She did not think for one moment that this man had not guessed that. His suggestion told her so.
    Darcy stood thinking, staring at her boot tops. He bent his head slightly so his lips were by her ear.
    â€œI can see I am more used to small deceptions than you, Mrs. Statton. That speaks ill of me, I know. But at least you can be secure that your partner in deceit is practiced. And is honorable, as well.” She looked up and caught a twinkle in his eyes. “In his own way.”
    This time when she looked at him, she met his gaze squarely, letting him know that she had taken his suggestion. There was no need to let him know that she was afraid of him. “Thank you again, Mr. Finn. Good night.”
    â€œGood night, Mrs. Statton.”
    She slipped inside without ringing. Closing the door against the black form on her doorstep, she ran quickly through the dark empty halls to the privacy of her room. She threw off her cloak and sat shaking on the bed. She hoped with all her heart that she would never see Tavish Finn again.
    After a moment, she began to methodically strip off her wet garments. She thought of the gleam in Tavish Finn’s green eyes, the way he had appraised her. It was strange to think that after a life spent cosseted and secure, surrounded by her own, she was forced to trust a stranger. Her world had once been so circumscribed, so safe. She had stayed married because it was what unhappy wives did, it was something she owed to her family and her tradition, her world of old New York. But that world had changed; Claude Statton had taken it over, just as he had taken over her family, and nothing was the same. It was a world in which her husband could accuse her father of crimes she knew he never could have committed, and her father would bow before him. And now it was a world that fear had entered, and danger. Shivering, Darcy rubbed cold fingers against her skin.

Three
    M ONEY . H AD THERE ever been so much of it before, and had it ever been so conspicuously displayed? Certainly not in America. Perhaps only a decadent, luxurious court of Louis XV or the indulgences of Marie Antoinette approached it. And didn’t they know it, those millionaires steadily pushing up Fifth Avenue until it was fashionable to live even as far north as Central Park. The style of the day decreed that the more elaborate, the more conspicuous, the better, and so they built bigger and bigger mansions and filled them with the best of plundered Europe. They skipped from the fourteenth to the