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Theo nodded, feeling rather like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Once she started nodding her head, she wasn’t sure she could stop. “I see …” she whispered.

“I kept this to myself when you showed up of course,” he carried on brutally. “I knew you would not dream of giving me a controlling interest in your family business.”

Theo swallowed. She felt such a godawful fool. All this while she had been telling everyone how well she and Clem had been dealing together and he had been deceiving her. Had he been laughing up his sleeve at her the whole time? It seemed Felix was right after all. She had been a naïve little idiot. She had been completely taken in by him. She was mortified.

“Say something, Dora,” he said, and she almost jumped at his harsh tone.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted, staring down at her hands which were twisted in her lap. She felt numb, like she had fallen down a well and was still falling. As soon as you walked out that door, I felt it … Regret. That was what he’d said, and it had all been a lie. “I thought we were partners,” she uttered painfully, “but it turns out I am one of your dupes too.”

He was silent for a few heartbeats and then he simply said, “I’ll clear out of your sight for a while. It’s the least I can do.”

Theo heard the door close behind him and let the tears roll silently down her cheeks. Just like a card sharp, Clem had concealed something up his sleeve all along.

THIRTY

Clem’s day started badly and went rapidly went downhill after that. The couch in his office was just as uncomfortable as he remembered it, but this time he felt he deserved his rotten night’s sleep. His wife loathed him, and really, who could blame her? She had trusted him implicitly and he had deceived her. Did marriages recover from such deceit?

He had been expecting this very disaster ever since Henrietta had returned to the fold. In truth, it should almost feel like a relief to have it all out in the open, especially as he had finally told her himself. It should, but somehow it did not. Now he wished he had approached his sister-in-law about keeping the whole thing under wraps. When had he ever had a problem with lying? At least that way, Dora would not have hated his guts.

It was not so much the lying, he finally realized after a couple of hours of wrestling with his conscience. No, it was the idea of going behind his wife’s back that had stuck in his craw. Having a secret between himself and Henrietta would have been a real betrayal of Dora in his book. He rubbed his brow and tried to ignore Sidney noisily sweeping his office and eyeing him askance.

Probably by noon, the whole place would know he had spent the night away from home and was in disgrace with his wife. Clem remained tight-lipped, staring down at his page of numbers. Today, he could not even get the column on the left to balance with the column on the right, a task he usually excelled at. He refused to look up and give an opening for the lecture Sidney so clearly wanted to give him.

No sooner had Sidney exited his office, with one last reproachful look over his shoulder, than Jim was back, with a list of trivial questions that could clearly wait for another time. In the end, Clem threw down his pen. “Out with it,” he said bluntly. “What is it you really want to say?”

Jim cleared his throat. “Want me to have a word with young Master Ewell?” he asked, keeping his gaze fixed on the wall behind Clem’s head.

“Barty?” Clem was startled, he had not been expecting that. “About what?” Clem asked, though he had a strong suspicion.

He had given Dora leave to carry on with her study of the wiry prizefighter for as long as Ewell would indulge her. Clem had reckoned at most that the lightweight would come to The Eagle once or twice, fast losing patience with it, but to his surprise, Barty’s visits to the concert rooms had been thick and fast for the past two weeks now.

Any tentative query Clem voiced on how it was going was met with Dora’s enthusiastic reply. She had rattled on about it to Clem one evening the week before, seemingly unaware of his inner turmoil. He had managed to hear her out without an explosion of jealous wrath, but it had tested him sorely.

According to Dora even the way Barty walked was different, “as though his physicality underlined his every move and gesture” was how she put it. When pressed to explain further, she had said the only comparison she could make was to trained dancers who had a sort of sinuous grace to them even when they were not performing.

When Clem had scowled and asked her why she did not find his every move fascinating she had laughed so heartily that he had been forced to drag her into his lap and tickle her. Later, much later, she had lain in his arms and assured him that she found him just as fascinating, but the difference in their build made it well-nigh impossible for her to replicate the way he moved his body.

She had sounded so regretful about that fact that Clem’s jealousy had melted clean away. Then she had rewarded him with a dizzying array of small gestures she had already stolen from him for her repertoire, including the way he looped part of his neckcloth when he shaved, the way he stroked his thumb down his jaw when deep in thought, and the way he lifted one lazy brow in enquiry. Clem had been entranced.

“Now show me Ewell,” he had said softly, bracing himself for another blast of resentment.

Dora had not even hesitated. Instead, she walked to the door, still clad in her nightgown, and when she had spun around again, there was a total change in the way she carried herself. She prowled into the room, all wiry grace and arrogance. There was an unconscious challenge in the way she bore herself and nothing remotely feminine about it.

It was almost shocking how she seemed to disappear before his eyes. Clem sat up to watch her, feeling startled and impressed in spite of himself. “Do it again,” he said gruffly.

She did it again, this time adding even more brash flourish, shooting imaginary cuffs and dropping him a wink at the end. That was all Ewell. Shit, had Barty been winking at Dora like that? Clem had flopped back onto the pillows feeling winded. It would not matter if he had, for Dora was no flirt. Clem knew that right enough. Still, it smarted. Cocky little bastard.

Jim shrugged. “Just wondered if he might be making a nuisance of himself, that’s all.”

Clem tensed. “Not that I’m aware.”

Jim nodded. “So long as you’re sure.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” Clem’s tone was sharper than he’d intended.

Jim’s expression was carefully blank. “Only he’s called round to see her again this afternoon. He also sent her a huge bunch of flowers last weekend so big it could barely fit through the door.”

Suddenly, it occurred to Clem that Jim thought the young boxer had played some role in stealing his wife’s affections from him. “Are you trying to imply that Dora has acted somehow improperly with Ewell?” he asked softly.