13. David

13

David

A week after the fitting at the lingerie shop, David’s erection had finally gone down.

It wasn’t the presence of the corset shop itself. He could control himself. It wasn’t like he was an 11-year-old boy giggling at the windowfront, or, worse, a grizzled old codger peering in through the glass hoping to see the totty on show.

His issue was limited to the presence of one particular blonde-haired, blue-eyed temptress who was proving to be his downfall. Not that Sian had helped. If anything, she was actively pushing him towards the edge.

He had to admit that taking Caroline to a burlesque show before the lingerie appointment made her markedly more confident in the type of underwear she’d chosen, but why did he have to be there to see it?

On multiple occasions, David had found himself wondering what items she had on that day, his gaze straying to her daringly short skirts—until, of course, his dignity caught up with him and dragged his eyes away like a pair of misbehaving hounds.

His nights were the worst of it. Dreams filled with Caroline wearing the skimpiest lingerie imaginable. She was always out of reach, luring him in closer to find she had disappeared—only to reappear around a corner, leading him in an endless chase.

David only ever reached the finish line upon awakening, and it was only ever his own hand wrapped around his heavy cock.

But did he truly want it to be hers?

“We’re here,” he told her, ducking his head down to peer through the car window at the foundry before them. David paid the fare, but by the time he turned round, Caroline was enthralled by a pretty yellow home to the side of them.

“Is that where we’re going?” Caroline asked, her blonde curls catching the late afternoon light.

Workmen swarmed the house like flies. Its doors and windows were thrown open, revealing the bareness of the interior. “No. I believe that’s being converted into a museum. I think it might have been owned by one of the men who founded the country. Or something.”

“Huh.” Caroline gave it a cursory glance before her attention returned to him. “So if we’re not here for that, where are we going?”

“This office block up here.” He put his hand on the small of her back, guiding her over to the left of the pavement and putting himself closest to the road. A foundryman covered in soot neared them, presumably going home after a long day at work. With a polite smile, David moved over to let him by, noticing that lines of sweat had streaked through the soot on the man’s face, giving him an almost zebra-esque appearance.

And summer was just beginning. He dreaded to think of just how sweltering the foundry would be at the height of summer.

Instead of going directly into the foundry, David took them through the busy office block next to it. It had been some time since he’d last been here, but it looked unchanged. Behind the reception desk sat neatly organised pigeonholes, with runners continuously collecting and depositing mail.

If Caroline was confused as to why he was ushering her into an office block in the middle of Harlem, she didn’t show it .

They joined the queue for the reception desk, a line of men pointed into different directions by the receptionists. He didn’t know how many different businesses rented an office in this building, but by the foot traffic alone it felt like hundreds.

The clock above the receptionist’s desk told him it was almost six o’clock. If they were any later, they’d have had to enter through the restaurant-turned-jazz club on the other side of the street.

“How may I help?”

David smiled at the harried receptionist. “We have an appointment with Ms Sally Bia?kowski.”

The receptionist spun her chair over to the rack of pigeon holes, sliding a folder out of the one labelled Bia?kowski . “What’s your name?”

“Lord Menai.”

She waved her hand, her pink-tipped nails catching his eye. “Room 6, along the blue corridor to your right.”

He knew all of this already, but he also knew if he went straight down the blue corridor he wouldn’t be admitted. “Thank you.”

Their next step to get in came in the form of a handsome woman David guessed was in her sixties, who sat at a desk in Room 6. He knocked against the open door, and the woman looked up.

She’d been here last time too, but he went through the pleasantries with her—until the important question came up. “So who referred you?” Sally asked politely, as though that wasn’t the reason for this entire dance.

“I believe it was Sian de Luca.” Almost absent-mindedly, the hand he held against Caroline’s waist began to draw comforting little figures of eight against the fabric of her dress.

Sally nodded and pulled out a folder, going through the same routine as the receptionist at the front desk. A few seconds later, she came to the same conclusion as the receptionist, snipping it shut. “Very well. Give me a second to get my file from the next room and we can begin.”

As soon as Sally shut the door behind her, Caroline turned to him with a bewildered frown. “What are we doing here again?”

“Come,” he said, pulling her over to the bookshelf behind Sally’s desk. He reached up to the top of it, blindly feeling his way for the section of the wood under which a spring lurked. With one push, it would spring up to reveal a sliding lock. “We have to be quick.”

“David!” Caroline’s shocked voice was a strangled whisper. “What are you doing ? You can’t just go groping around her bookcase.”

There. He unbolted the lock. That action freed the bookcase from its confinement, turning it into what it really was—a concealed door. Gently, he opened it. The first time Sian had brought him here, she’d warned him of how easy it was to dislodge the books on the shelves.

Behind it lay a narrow elevator.

Nervous understanding dawned on Caroline’s face. “Is that…is that what I think it is?”

“Depends what you think it is.” He quickly bundled the two of them into the elevator, pulling the bookcase back in on them, pushing the spring closed, and locking the door in place. The move extinguished almost all light except for a dull, yellowish bulb in the corner of the elevator.

In the gloom, he pulled the elevator’s scissor gate across to lock them in before pushing the button that would take them down to their destination—albeit at a snail’s pace, but then it had been installed in the 1870s.

Sian had timed it once, this journey. From what he recalled, it had been more than two minutes. The original function of their subterranean destination was unclear; Sian said it was part of a tunnel originally used by the post office to cart mail beneath the city, but he’d heard another patron saying it was an underground cattle pen—

“Caroline?”

Her breaths were coming thick and fast, a hint of a whimper edging in with every draw. She’d wrapped her arms around herself, but it did nothing to steady her trembling frame.

Shit .

He hadn’t thought to ask if she was afraid of confined spaces.

How long had they been in here already? Perhaps 30 seconds. They had, at minimum, another minute-and-a-half to go. There was no way to accelerate the journey, nor a button to go back the way they came.

David wedged himself into the corner to give her as much room as possible. “Close your eyes,” he told her, pulling her to the centre of the elevator. He needed to give her something to focus on, something to distract her from her panicking. “Don’t open them again until I tell you.”

All he had to distract her was himself.

“Tell me what part of you I’m touching,” he murmured, touching her ear with a featherlight finger.

“My…” Caroline swallowed. “My earlobe.”

“And now?”

“My shoulder.”

David hummed out a noise of approval. The palm of her hand was next. Her thumb. The top of her head. Her elbow. Her nose. Her neck. Her eyebrow. He was rapidly running out of appropriate locations to touch. Surely they would reach the bottom soon.

Her breathing stabilised with every location, but it hitched when he touched her collarbone. “David,” she sighed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” He ran two fingers over her forearm.

“My wrist,” she answered, leaving him with a rapidly dwindling pile of ideas of what to touch next. “That night on the boat…”

All at once, the air vanished from the elevator, freezing him in place. “What night?”

As though he didn’t know full well precisely what night on the ship she referred to.

“The night I walked in on you…with your hand on your manhood and a picture of me in front of you.”

Embarrassment was a gargantuan lump in his throat. “I can only apologis—”

Her eyes flew open unexpectedly. “I don’t want you to apologise.” Her words came in a great rush, as though she used all of her bravery to expel them. “I—I liked it.”

Indecision raged a war inside him, even as his eyes dropped to her lips. “Starling,” he groaned, his shoulders brimming with the tension of holding back. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

She came ever closer, tilting her head up towards his. “Why not?”

His palm found her wondrously soft cheek. He shouldn’t be doing this, and yet somehow his reasoning for not doing this was getting weaker by the hour. “Because they make me want to stop being such a fucking gentleman.”

Hope bloomed in the blue of her eyes. “Then stop.”

As if it was that easy.

“Do you think I don’t want to?” The admission tore from him in a raspy exhale. The secret he’d failed to keep to himself. “Do you think it doesn’t madden me that you sleep mere feet away from me every night? The woman I…I care for with every fibre of my being? I didn’t know it was possible to want someone this much, Starling.”

She clasped the hand he was holding to her cheek, her lips tipping up in a smile. “I want you too.”

Her profession speared into his heart like a blade, dooming him to suffer for all eternity.

Now not only did he have to live with the knowledge that he was in love with his son’s wife.

He had to live with the knowledge that she wanted him too.

Light flung across their feet. The sudden brightness made him squint, growing ever brighter as the elevator descended farther. Loud, boisterous jazz filled their ears, ricocheting around the metal box.

As his vision adjusted to the brightness, he caught Caroline’s astonished expression as she realised where they were. “Is this a bar ?”

A clang of metal signalled that they’d reached the bottom. “Technically...” David’s voice was quiet, the gravity of her confession weighing heavy on his heart. “It’s a speakeasy.”

A suited bouncer standing next to the bar opened the scissor gate with a burly arm, giving them an unimpeded view of the space. “Welcome to the Crypt.”

The first time Sian had brought him here, David had been surprised at just how large the space was. If anything, it reminded him of the tube stations back home—the long, curved ceilings, the cool air, the exposed brickwork, the vast tunnel that seemed to go on for miles.

But the Crypt’s owner had somehow managed to turn it into somewhere that felt cozy rather than confining. Dark wood, scarlet furnishings, and a haze of cigar smoke filled the space. Jazz music heralded them from a gramophone in the corner, accompanied by the laughter of patrons and the tinkle of glasses.

Caroline’s attention, however, remained on the elevator they had just exited. “Please tell me I don’t have to go back up in that thing.”

He huffed out a laugh. “No. There’s another exit at the end of the tunnel—although it’s quite a few steps.” And in those heels…

But Caroline waved away his worry. “I can manage steps.”

As they approached the long wooden bar, David could think of nothing but what had happened in the elevator. I want you too. The words would be carved into his heart forevermore. He laid a hand on the bar, his knee bumping into the intricate geometric panelling carved into its front.

The bartender, a thin man with a thick red beard, paused in the act of washing up a cocktail glass and chatting to a tall, broad gentleman with his hat drawn low over his face. “What’ll it be?”

“I’ll have a Ward Eight.” He turned to Caroline. “What about you?”

“Um…” Caroline bit her lip. “What drink was Sian talking about the other night? The pink one?”

He knew just the cocktail. “A Mary Pickford.”

“Gotcha.” The bartender nodded. “Coming right up.”

With their drinks in hand, David led her down the busy tunnel comprising the Crypt. He swerved around a gaggle of laughing women, almost having his eye poked out by a lit cigarette in a long blue holder. Just beyond them, a large, boisterous group of men swarmed around a pool table, with one short, disgruntled man handing over money to another—presumably the winner. A variety of seating was on offer, everything from bar stools to luxurious armchairs, almost all filled with high-spirited patrons.

Wanting to be away from the hustle and bustle of the crowd, David took Caroline over to a blood red chesterfield sofa in the corner. A heavy privacy curtain hung near it, but he didn’t draw it around them.

“I’m told by Sian,” he began, sipping on his drink, “that this is the most popular speakeasy in Manhattan. I thought if I was to bring you to any of them, it should be here.”

Caroline let out what David interpreted as a sigh of relief—presumably relief at having survived the elevator journey. “Does Roscoe know this is here?” Caroline asked, pulling her long hair over her shoulder as she looked around. She took a small sip of her cocktail and let out a repulsed shudder.

Apparently she wasn’t a fan.

He laughed. “No.”

“So I shouldn’t mention this to him?”

David shook his head, finding himself unable to tear his gaze away from hers. Roscoe was more focused on finding distributors selling tainted liquor, but either way… “Best not.”

“I do wonder,” she said, her voice laced with uncertainty, “how they manage things between the two of them. Sian is so obviously anti-prohibition, whereas Roscoe literally works for the Bureau of Prohibition.”

It was something he’d often wondered too, but his shrug was simple. “Their love for each other bridges any ideological gap between them.”

“So what you’re saying is love conquers all,” Caroline murmured sadly, seating her glass on the table in front of them.

David threw back a large sip of his cocktail, hoping that the richness of the whiskey would quench the sudden dryness in his throat.

Approaching footsteps stole their attention, and he turned to see the bartender holding a bright yellow cocktail. He handed it to Caroline. “From a gentleman by the pool table. It’s a Bee’s Knees, made with gin, lemon, and honey.”

Caroline’s shocked splutter was adorable. “Oh—thank you.” She turned towards the crowded pool table, her cheeks a delicate shade of pink. Taking a sip, she hummed in approval. “That one is much more my taste, but don’t tell Sian I didn’t like her suggestion.”

“I’ll take it to my grave,” David vowed.

“That’s very kind of the gentleman, though. Does that happen often?”

“For a woman like you, I imagine so.” Her cheeks turned even pinker, and suddenly he knew they were both thinking of the revelations of their elevator journey. “Caroline, what I said in th—”

She cut him off in a breathy swipe. “Harry doesn’t care what I do.”

The mention of his wayward son was a stab to his heart. “You can’t know that.” He doubted Harry knew his own mind half the time.

“I do though—I called him before we left for New York. I was angry at him. I threatened to humiliate him, to…” Caroline looked around, quieting her voice. “I bluffed. I threatened to sleep with other men. He said I was free to do what I pleased—just like he was free to do as he pleased. He said…he said he didn’t marry me because he wanted me.” She exhaled a despondent little sigh.

The idea of Caroline sleeping with a host of other men sent a wave of savage madness through him, even if she was bluffing. “Regardless of my feelings…of our feelings, I can’t betray him, Starling. He’s my son .”

Her shoulders slumped as she put her cocktail down. The hope they’d ignited in the elevator had been reduced to dust, leaving her crumpled in its wake.

“No matter how much I want to,” David admitted—against his better judgement.

Her head snapped up; her eyes full of tears. “So…that’s it? This is all we can have?”

“This is all we can have.” David hated the truth he was forced to voice. “Just friendship.”

Twin tears dashed down her cheeks as a sob ripped from her throat.

David reached for her. He couldn’t change their circumstances, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t offer her comfort. Reaching across to the heavy scarlet curtain, he swept it down the pole to offer them some privacy before locking his arms around her.

Caroline leant against him, her weeping shaking her frame. The dampness of her tears slid across his neck; they were a trickle at first, but quickly became a deluge.

“I’m sorry, Starling,” he whispered into her hair. He just wished things could be different.