Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(86)

It was silly to be hesitant about getting in a car with the old man. He’d helped them, after all, and they’d attracted Ju’s thugs into his quiet shop. She glanced down and saw he was still wearing his quaint Chinese embroidered slippers. The least she could do was listen to whatever news he had. He gave her a kind smile.

She slid in the backseat, bumping into a man who was already sitting inside. “Excuse me,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

She looked up. The man held a rag in his hand that smelled of noxious herbs. A dark scab marred his cheek, just below his eye.

All at once, she noticed the driver’s nose was taped up; his hat nearly covered up his cauliflower ear.

The door shut behind her as Doctor Yip spoke from her side. “Now, my little spirit medium—are you going to play nice, or shall I have one of my new worker bees make you go to sleep?”

TWENTY-EIGHT

AN HOUR AFTER AIDA LEFT, WINTER FELT THE AFTERSHOCKS OF their fight lessening. Two hours, and his heart was heavy with regret. By the time eleven o’clock rolled around, he was pacing the floors, working himself into a state that seesawed between impatience and desperation.

“Should I fetch her from the club?” Jonte asked.

Her show would be ending now. It usually took her a half hour to sign a couple of autographs, get out of her stage clothes. “I’ll go with you,” Winter decided, grabbing his hat and coat. A couple of minutes later, they were pulling out of the driveway.

In the dark of the car, Winter watched his sleeping neighborhood sail by the window. It was selfish to have withheld the news of Emmett Lane’s check from her—he understood that now. Stupid, stubborn pride. She was obviously worried about a safety net if she was talking about marriage.

Marriage.

He still couldn’t believe she brought that up. She knew how he felt about the subject. Never again, not after what he went through with Paulina. Maybe she was trying to wrestle some kind of sacrifice out of him, because she saw leaving her club career as a compromise. Because what else could it be if she wasn’t after his money—and of course she wasn’t, so ridiculous of him to even entertain that idea for a second—and she wasn’t in love with him.

Was she?

She wouldn’t say the words. And that upset him more than he cared to admit.

Maybe she would come to love him. If it took her more time to get to that place, better it be here than somewhere across the country, days away by train. Christ, when it came down to it, he’d rather she hate his guts and open her business here, where he could protect her and watch her and keep her safe.

“You should let her drive the Packard.”

Startled, Winter glanced at Jonte in the rearview mirror. “What’s that?”

“If you marry her, you should let her drive the Packard. She’s been taking it out with Astrid all week. Whether or not Astrid learns to drive is one thing, but a girl that young in a family this notorious should not be driving alone. One of your rivals could harm her. Miss Palmer is older—she’s not naive like Astrid. Miss Palmer should drive the Packard.”

Winter sat in silence, unable to believe what Jonte was saying. The old man never butted into his business. Granted, everyone else in the household did—God knew Greta couldn’t go two hours without giving her opinion—but Jonte was an island, silent and stoic.

And second, his driver had just made the assumption that Winter might marry Aida. Where did that come from? Surely half the staff heard them arguing, and five minutes couldn’t have passed before they told the other half what they’d heard. Was Jonte so far removed from the gossip that he didn’t know what had happened?

“Not my business,” the old man said. “But she would make a fine wife. Help you forget about the first one, which, by the way, I told your pappa many times was a bad match. Your mother was only trying to look out for you, but she made a mistake.”

“Maybe some people aren’t meant to marry. I might be one of them. My job is dangerous and disreputable.”

“It’s the same job your pappa had, and he was married and raising a family.”

“Mamma hated it.”

“She was afraid one of you would get killed or end up in jail. She was not ashamed of the work. She was proud of your pappa. Proud of you, too.”

Winter glanced out the window in silence.

“And if you don’t mind me being frank, Miss Palmer is made of sterner stuff than your mamma ever was.”

“I had no idea you had an opinion about such matters,” Winter admitted.

“You don’t pay me for advice. That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions.”

“I’ll be damned. Maybe all that running you did when you were chasing down Astrid and Aida knocked some of those opinions loose, eh?”

“Maybe so,” Jonte said with a quirk of his lips, then returned to his usual silent self.

Winter lifted his hat and swiped his hand over his hair.

How had life gotten so complicated?

All he could wrap his head around was that he’d made a terrible mistake in sending Aida out of the house like he did. She probably thought he was a monster, the way he yelled at her. He didn’t want to be that person anymore. Especially when it came to her. All of this bullshit with hauntings and the fire and the goddamn Hive or Beekeeper—whatever the hell the enemy was calling himself—all of it was making him agitated, bringing out the worst in him.