with you,” she said, embarrassed at her own phrasing of the question. “I mean, you live in a boardinghouse, and I wonder if there’s a vacancy?”
He let out his breath and smiled with relief. “I imagine that Mrs. Mulhaney could find a room for you, yes. But the idea of a young single woman living in a boardinghouse is going to make you look like a loose woman in the eyes of the community. If anyone asks, you’re my cousin.”
“I am?”
“You are,” he said firmly. “It’s the only way I can protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting, thank you. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
Considering that she’d handled her father’s funeral alone and gotten here, halfway across the country, without mishap, that was apparent.
“I believe you,” he said. “But you’re a stranger here and totally unfamiliar with life in a big city. I’m not.”
“Aren’t we both strangers here, really?” she asked, and there was a deep sadness in her tone. “Neither of us has anybody now.”
“I have cousins in South Dakota and in Montana,” he replied.
“Whom you never visit,” she shot back. “Are you ashamed of them, Matt?”
His eyes glittered like black diamonds. “Don’t presume to invade my privacy,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll gladly do what I can to see you settled here. But my feelings are my own business.”
She grinned at him. “You still strike like a rattler when you’re poked.”
“Be careful that you don’t get bitten.”
She dropped him a curtsy. “I’ll do my best not to provoke you too much.”
“WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING to do here?” Matt asked. He’d arranged with the station agent to have her bags stored until he could settle Tess and send for them.
“I’m going to get a job.”
He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her. “A job?”
“Certainly, a job. You know I’m not rich, Matt, and besides, it’s 1903. Women are getting into all sorts of professions. I’ve read about it. Women are working as shop girls and stenographers and in sewing plants. I can turn my hand to most anything if I’m shown how. And I’m quite an experienced nurse. Until Papa died—” her voice broke and she took a few seconds to compose herself “—I was his nurse. I can get work nursing in a hospital here. I know I can.” She abruptly looked up at him. “There is a hospital here, isn’t there?”
“Yes.” He remembered making a keen shot of her with both bow and rifle. She was a quick study, and utterly fearless. Had he started her down the road to nonconformity? If he had, he knew in his bones that he was about to regret it. Nursing was not considered by many as suitable for a genteel woman. Some would raise eyebrows. Of course, it would raise eyebrows, too, if she worked in a shop, or—
“The very notion of a woman working is—well, unconventional.”
Her brows rose. “What would you call a Sioux Indian in a bowler hat pretending to be exiled Russian royalty—traditional?”
He made an irritated sound.
“You shouldn’t debate me,” she muttered. “I was first in my class in my last year in school.”
He glared at her as they started to walk again down the broad sidewalk. Exquisite carriages drawn by horses in decorated livery rolled along the wide street, whose storefronts were decorated for the holiday season.
Tess caught sight of a store window where little electric trains ran against a backdrop of mountain scenery that had actual tunnels running through. “Oh, Matt, look. Isn’t it darling?”
“Do you really want me to tell you how I feel about iron horses?”
“Never mind, spoilsport.” She fell into step beside him once more. “Christmas isn’t so very far away. Does your landlady decorate and put up a tree in the parlor?”
“Yes.”
“How lovely! I can crochet snowflakes to go on it.”
“You’re assuming that she can find room for you.”
She gnawed at her lower lip. She’d come here on impulse, and now for the first time, she was uncertain. She stopped walking and looked up. “What if she can’t?” she asked.
Even through the veil, Matt could see plainly the expression of fear on Tess’s face. He was touched in a dozen ways, none wanted. “She will,” he said firmly. “I won’t have you very far from me. There are wicked elements in this city. Until you find your feet, you need a safe harbor.”
She smiled. “I’m a lot of trouble, I guess. I’ve always been impulsive. Am I trading too much on our shared past, Matt? If I’m in your way, just tell me, and I’ll go back home.”
“Home to the persistent lieutenant? Over my dead body. Come on.”
He took her arm and guided her around a hole in the boardwalk that looked as if a rifle had made it. Matt recalled reading about a fight between a city policeman and a bank robber recently. The bank was close by.
“Mrs. Blake told me that Chicago is very civilized,” Tess said. “Is it?”
“Occasionally.”
She looked over at him. “Now that you have your own detective business, what sort of cases do you take?”
“Mostly I track down criminals,” he replied. “Once or twice I’ve done other sorts of work. I’ve taken on a couple of divorce cases, getting evidence to prove cruelty on the part of the men.” He glanced at her. “I suppose you have no qualms about divorce, being modern.”
“I have a few,” she confessed. “I think people should try to make a marriage work. But if a man is abusive or cheats or gambles, I think a woman is more than entitled to be rid of him.”
“I think she’s entitled to shoot him,” he murmured, remembering vividly a recent case, where a drunken husband had left vicious bruises on a small child and her mother. Matt had knocked the man down and taken him to the police himself.
“Good for you!” Tess peered up at him through her veil. “You’re still wickedly handsome.”
He gave her a mocking smile. “You’re my cousin,” he reminded her. “We’re relatives in Chicago. You can’t leer at me, regardless of how modern you feel.”
She made a face at him. “You’ve become absolutely staid!”
“I work in a staid profession.”
“I’ll bet you’re good at it, too.” She eyed his waistcoat. “Do you still carry that enormous bowie knife around with you?”
“Who told you about that?”
