He laughed, a soft, harsh sound. He held her tight as he pushed his tongue between her teeth.

Her tongue touched his for a fraction of a second. Then, as if realizing her own feelings were getting out of control, she wrenched her head away. "You mustn't do this! If your mother should find out-"

"She won't. We'll be done before she's home."

"I swear to you, I'm a virgin-"

"We'll remedy that."

He slid his hand down the front of her apron and pressed, feeling the curve of her belly. He moved his hand lower, his head all at once throbbing from the whiskey. The gaslit room seemed isolated, cut off from the real world. And the pressure between his legs had grown unbearable- When he tried to thrust her back onto the bed, she broke away again, slipping around him toward the door. She'd nearly reached it when he called out, "Kathleen!"

Slowly, she looked back. Her blue eyes widened at the harshness of his face.

"What-what is it?"

"Do you want to be arrested for thievery?"

Her mouth shaped into a horrified O. She could barely repeat the word. "Thievery!"

He gestured to a bureau, where he kept loose change. "I'll say I found you rummaging through my belongings-searching for money-unless you do exactly as I say."

"Oh, God, Master Louis, you wouldn't-"

"I would unless you undress and lie down on the bed, Kathleen."

Her eyes grew hateful then, so hateful that he was terrified, tempted to let her go and be done with it.

But she hid the hatred, begging, "I need this position. I'm the only one of the McCreerys old enough to work-"

"Very well. If you value your six dollars a week, do what I say."

"You-you imagine you have a right to demand-"

"I do have the right." He wiped his perspiring upper lip. "What's it to be, Kathleen? The six dollars-or a charge of thievery? It'll follow you wherever else you try to work-"

She started crying, the tears dampening her freckled cheeks as she glanced helplessly from one side of the room to the other. Seeing how she weakened so easily, he laughed aloud.

"You"-her voice was ragged-"you're only a child. Not even fifteen-"

Flushing, he said, "I have a man's cock, if that's your worry."

"But not a man's heart. Not a speck of Christian kindness-"

"I want to love you, Kathleen."

"-anything you want, you think you can take!"

"I can." He took a step toward her.

"Don't touch me!" Then, less stridently: "Not-not till I'm ready."

He stepped to the door and slid the bolt. "Just pull your skirt up and bare yourself. That'll be satisfactory-"

He heard the bed creak as she lowered herself onto it. He heard garments rustling, then her voice again: "Will-will you be good enough to turn the gas down?"

"I don't think so. I want to see you-"

Unfastening his trousers, he faced her, his heart hammering in his chest as he moved his gaze slowly, slowly upward along her freckled white legs.

iv

She lay still beneath him, her eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. Louis slid between her thighs and probed, hurt at first by the roughness of her flesh.

Finally, her body changed in reaction to his presence. He jerked back and forth. Within a few seconds, his loins quivered and exploded. He felt a deep sense of disappointment- Kathleen maneuvered her hips so their bodies were no longer joined. He rolled onto his side, stretching a hand toward her wrist as she stood up and started to lower her skirt.

The moment his fingers closed, she glared at him, miserable and angry at the same time. "I've given you what you wanted, haven't I?"

"Once." He nodded, feeling distinctly sober and angry himself. The experience had been much less fulfilling than he'd imagined: a quick abrasion of flesh on flesh, then an abrupt end-nothing worth boasting about-"Lie down again."

Disbelieving, she shook her head. "You can't again so soon-"

"But in a little while-Kathleen, damn you, lie down!"

"I must go-"

"No, we"-he yawned-"we've plenty of time." It seemed that way; it seemed as if only a minute or so had elasped since he'd entered the room. "Besides, no one ever disturbs me after I've shut my door for the night."

She bowed her head, knelt on the bed and stretched out, weeping softly again. He was caught in a storm of conflicting feelings.

Satisfaction because he'd had his way.

Fear that he shouldn't have done it; he tried not to dwell on the hate he'd glimpsed in her eyes.

And a peculiar sadness that came over him because the act so long anticipated had been so curiously coarse and unrewarding.

The second time would be different. He'd enjoy it and so would she- She lay with her back toward him. He pulled her over and forced her fingers to curl around him. She didn't want to touch him that way-her palm was cold; she cried harder-but he held his hand over hers and forced her, staring at the ceiling as she had done earlier, awaiting the first tingle of a response from his own flesh.

Chapter VI.

Of Stocks and Sin

i

AMANDA LET HERSELF INTO the dim front hall. She drew off her hat and cast the snow-dampened muff aside, then paused to study her face in a pier glass.

She'd be forty-nine before the year was out. She felt every one of those years this evening. The glass showed wrinkles around her eyes, and more gray in her hair. How much of that gray had been put there by her preoccupation with Stovall?

Feeling incredibly weary, she drew a deep breath and walked to the library doors. She opened them and gasped at the heat.

Busy cleaning himself on the telegraph table, Mr. Mayor paused with a paw athwart his nose. He recognized her and went back to bathing. Michael rose from the chair beside the hearth.

"Hallo, Mrs. A," he said with his mouth full.

She was always amused by Michael's passion for food and warmth. He never seemed to sweat, or put on an ounce of fat. She understood the reason for both cravings and seldom said anything about either-although withstanding Michael's temperature preferences required a good deal of forbearance.

"Bad weather out there," he went on as she came toward him. "I was growing a mite concerned. How was the lecture?"

"Douglass is an eloquent speaker. It's hard not to be moved by what he says. His chief target was the fugitive slave law."

Michael's pleasant expression vanished. Amanda knew his feelings about those who championed the cause of slaves. The young Irishman would have preferred to see the same amount of time and energy spent improving the lot of his own people, who had come to the United States to escape the privation and the legal tyranny they'd endured for generations. Instead, the Irish had found tyranny of a different sort-the kind produced by hatred of foreigners. As a result, they'd found privation too.

"I told Douglass I'd send him another draft soon. Will you take care of it? A hundred in my name, and two thousand anonymously."

At the desk, Michael jotted a note without saying anything.

"Stovall was at the theater."

He spun around. "What the devil was he doing at an abolitionist meeting?"

"He wanted to disrupt Douglass' speech. He didn't succeed."

"Did he have a crowd of cronies with him?"

"No, just one companion."

"My Lord, Mrs. A, that takes brass."

"Stovall's been accused of a good many things, but I don't believe cowardice is one of them."

"Did you speak to him?"

She sank down in the chair opposite Michael's. Her eyes moved to the piles of manuscript. But her mind was elsewhere. "It was unavoidable. Rose introduced us afterward. My tactics have gotten me in trouble, I'm afraid. Stovall knows my story about diversifying was a sham. He knows I've bought no other properties-"

Rapidly, she described the encounter at the Bowery Theatre. Some six months earlier, when she'd decided she could trust Michael Boyle, she'd revealed her plans concerning her adversary-and her reasons for them. He had to know if he was to function as her confidential assistant. She suspected he didn't wholly approve of her effort to regain control of Kent and Son. But he kept his personal views to himself, and always executed her orders without question.

She concluded, "It's possible Stovall will look more closely into my background-"

"Why should he?"

"Apparently I reacted very visibly when he made a derogatory remark about the Kents. I didn't mean to-it simply happened."

"Um."

"I think I'd better instruct Rothman's to move faster."

Michael gestured to the telegraph equipment. "You can take care of that yet tonight. Mr. Rothman's operator has queried you three times since five p.m. I told him to try again at ten thirty."

"Is there a problem?"

"I gather so. Something to do with an emergency meeting of the Blackstone board. If you were in Boston, communication would be less of a problem. Of course I realize Stovall is here-"

She looked up at the broad-shouldered young man. "You think I should drop the campaign to take back the firm, don't you? You-and Rose."

"It uses up a hell of a lot of your time. And your strength, I should imagine. Still, it's not for me to say whether you should or shouldn't. I am after all just your employee."

"Nonsense, Michael. You know you're closer to me in some ways than my own son. Where is he, by the way?"

"Popped off to sleep, I think."

"Rather early."

"He seemed-oh, nervous. Quite nervous, as a matter of fact."

"Did he say there was anything wrong?"

"No, he didn't say-"

Thinking about Louis, she didn't catch the significance of the emphasized word. She mused aloud, "I'll have to talk with him in the morning-"

She smiled then, reminded of something her friend had said. "Would you like to hear a bit of gossip Rose passed along? It seems some of the finer folk of New York have come to the conclusion you and I are lovers."

Michael burst out laughing. Amanda loved the sight of his smile. That such a handsome young man should be marred for life by the ugly scar on his forehead was a kind of blasphemy.

Still shaking with mirth, he turned to warm his hands at the hearth. "Didn't mean to bray like that. It just tickles me that the filthy sods would come up with such notions. They've missed the truth entirely-" He faced her. "I am fond of you. But not for the reasons they imagine. No one's ever treated me more decently than you. I'd never dare say this to anyone else for fear of being hooted at-but you're as kind as I imagine my own mother would have been, had she lived."