Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties #2)(7)

“Yes, sir.”

“Hot tea for me, please,” she added. If they were doing this, she might as well have what she wanted.

“Yes, ma’am. Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back,” the porter said, allowing them entry as he flicked the sign on the door to read OCCUPIED.

Hadley silenced her tongue and followed Mr. Magnusson inside the cramped stateroom. A small door led to a private toilet and shower on the right, and the parlor lay to the left: two cushioned seats faced each other in front of a wide picture window, capped by two pulldown sleeping berths above.

Mr. Magnusson pulled off his satchel and, along with his coat, hung his things on a hook. Then he ducked beneath the berth to plop down on one of the seats. His long body took up too much room. His shins brushed the edge of the facing seat.

“First class,” he murmured on a sigh. “I think the public berths on the 127 were stuffed with hay.”

Why on earth anyone with a bootlegging brother was riding coach was beyond her, but Hadley didn’t care to find out. As she unwound the handbag chain looped over her wrist, she addressed her bigger gripe. “First you’re on the health committee of the League, and now you’re a heroic brother to a pregnant hussy—”

“Not a hussy. I said you were married.”

“Is this what you do? Lie your way out of every situation you encounter?”

“I prefer to think of it as inventing a character. Acting.”

“Acting,” she repeated, hanging her handbag on the hook next to his satchel. She started to remove her coat, but remembered the rip in her dress. She wasn’t the only one; a slow smile crept over Magnusson’s face. She tightened the coat and perched on the facing seat. “Why wasn’t the truth good enough?”

“You mean, I should’ve told him that I’m an archaeologist who found a piece of a mythical artifact purported to open a door to the land of the dead—and two hired thugs were shooting at us to get it, so we jumped the train like hobos?”

She crossed her legs. “You, sir, aren’t an archaeologist. You’re an entrepreneur.”

“I have a degree.”

“And I have two.”

He casually kicked up his feet on the seat next to her, one ankle crossing its mate. “But no fieldwork.”

“Not for lack of wanting, but kudos for making me feel small.”

His face pinched as if she’d slapped him. But only for a moment before blankness settled over his features. He stretched his neck, loosening muscles. “You said you wanted honesty.” With his head lolling on the seat back, he rested his hands on his chest and closed his eyes. “If you’d like me to tiptoe around your feminine feelings, I’m happy to do so.”

“I want to be treated like a man.”

He glanced at her from under squinting eyelids, one brow cocked.

“I mean to say, I want to be given the same directness you’d offer a trusted colleague. I am your equal. Speak frankly to me, or not at all.” A quick anger flared inside her chest. She stared out the window, looking past her own tense reflection to the rolling black landscape.

One, two, three . . .

“All right, then,” he said after a few moments. “If you were a man, and we were colleagues, the first thing I’d do is drop the formal address.”

She hesitated. “Thank you . . . Lowe.”

“You’re welcome, Hadley.” He smiled before closing his eyes.

They sat in silence. Perhaps she’d misjudged him. Now that she had time to think about the evening’s events, she supposed some of his actions might have been well intentioned. He’d pushed her out of the first gunman’s path and defended them with the knife. He’d also shielded her from the broken glass in the first train car, not knowing she’d been the cause of it. And now that they were settled, she could admit that she’d rather be here than taking her chances back at the station.

“You know, now that I’m thinking about it,” he said with his eyes still closed, “if we were trusted male colleagues on a first-name basis with each other, I’d probably be bragging about how I just got a peek at a bea-u-tiful ass and nice pair of legs, and what a shame it was that the strange woman who curates mummified corpses in the antiquities wing of the de Young Museum dresses like an old maid.”

The nerve.

“And I’d tell you that she dresses that way so that the men she works with treat her with respect, not as the privileged daughter of Archibald Bacall.”

His voice softened. “Then I’d tell her that she shouldn’t change herself to please anyone, and her coworkers are probably overeducated Stanford graduates with no real-world field experience, so who the hell cares what they think, anyway?”

“I’m a Stanford graduate.”

A knock at the door halted whatever smart retort he was planning on releasing into the wild. The porter entered with a tray. Mr. Magnusson had the decency to remove his feet from her cushion so that a folding table could be erected between them. After piling the table with silver pots of steaming coffee and tea, a covered plate of sandwiches, and two table settings, the porter gave her a pity-filled look and left them alone.

“You’re eating for two,” Lowe said lightly, tugging a pair of thin, brown leather gloves off. When he laid them down, she noticed a strange alteration on the left glove. “So I’ll leave you all the ones with . . . What is this? Olive spread? I think there might be chopped walnuts in here. No-o-o, thank you.”