Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [70]
Sam looked thoughtful. ‘Practically every man that comes into Heaney’s would like a chance to meet you. But none of them are good enough for you either.’
‘Why should you decide that?’ she snapped. ‘I bet whoever you were with last night isn’t right for you either, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.’
‘It’s different for men.’
‘Well, I don’t see why it should be,’ she said indignantly. ‘If I can perform in one of the busiest saloons in New York, I don’t see why I can’t mix with anyone I choose to.’
Sam just looked at her for a moment. ‘Get up and get dressed, we’ll go out,’ he said at length. ‘I don’t like to see you looking sad.’
On Monday evening when Beth went to Heaney’s, she found Jack had been in earlier and left a note for her.
She had never seen his writing before, and the childlike print and terrible spelling were confirmation of the gulf between their upbringings. Yet however uneducated Jack was, his deep feelings for her shone through. He said he would still like to be her friend and he wouldn’t expect anything else of her.
Beth was sorry she’d hurt him, and her instinct was to write back immediately and say there would always be room in her life for him. But she knew if she did they’d just slip back into the old routine, and before long it would erupt again. Perhaps it would be best to do nothing for a while.
On Tuesday at Ira’s they had a big clear-out of summer clothes. Items that were too shabby or unfashionable would be collected by a man with a stall in Mulberry Bend, down in Five Points. The good things were packed away in boxes to be stored until next spring.
It was nice to be busy, and Beth realized at five o’clock, when she put on her coat and hat to leave, that she hadn’t thought about Jack once all day.
She had only just stepped out of the shop and closed the door behind her when she saw the man from the ship leaning nonchalantly against the lamp-post and grinning at her. ‘Hello, Miss Discretion!’ he said.
Beth was dumbfounded to see him. But she instinctively knew it wasn’t by chance.
‘How about coming and having a cup of coffee with me?’ he said. ‘Unless of course you’ve got something better to do?’
‘But I don’t even know your name,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s easy enough to fix.’ He grinned. ‘It’s Theodore Cadogan. Known to my friends as Theo.’
‘Well, Mr Cadogan,’ she said, suppressing the desire to laugh that he’d had the cheek to ask around to find out where she was. ‘What makes you think I’m in the habit of going off with men I barely know?’
‘Then how can you get to know anyone? I did only suggest coffee, not selling you to the white slave trade.’
‘Who told you where I was?’
‘Your brother, and I promised him as a gentleman that my intentions were strictly honourable.’
Beth doubted his honourable intentions, but Sam must have liked and approved of him or he wouldn’t have told him where to find her. Besides, he was so handsome and he made her feel bubbly inside. ‘Just a cup of coffee then,’ she agreed.
An hour later they were still in the coffee shop. Beth was calling him Theo and he was calling her Beth. She had told him of the events which led up to her coming to America, and he had told her that his father was a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire, but as the younger son he wouldn’t inherit the estate.
‘Father wanted me to study law, but that bored me,’ he said with a theatrical yawn. ‘Mother thought I should go into the Church, but I certainly had no calling for that. I toyed with the idea of the army too.’
‘So what made you come here?’ Beth asked.
He rolled his eyes in a manner that said he didn’t want to admit to the real reason.
‘It was Clarissa, wasn’t it?’ she laughed.
He sighed. ‘Not entirely. But let’s just say I was duped into believing her marriage was an unhappy one. I booked to come on the same ship as them, imagining foolishly that it would all work out and he’d just