Now the waiting was over. By day’s end he’d have the truth, if he had to beat it out of Perry’s blue-blooded hide.
The brougham came to a stop beside the wrought-iron gates of the Gresham mansion. Like Hopkins’s monstrosity at the crown of Nob Hill, it had been built with wealth earned in the past thirty years by a man who’d started from virtual obscurity. Edward Gresham had earned his money in the gold fields of the ’50s by providing the miners with necessities, and then built on those riches with canny investments and stubborn persistence.
Gresham was gone, but his daughter remained behind those grandiose Italianate walls. Caroline, the girl for whose sake Gresham had demanded from Liam a solemn deathbed oath: to protect her all her days, to see that none of life’s harshness ever touched her delicately shod feet or the hem of her Paris gowns.
To Liam had been granted Caroline’s legal guardianship—Liam O’Shea, former street urchin, who’d worked his way west on the building of the railroad and made his own fortune on the Comstock. “Lucky Liam,” who’d once saved Edward Gresham’s life and had known his daughter since her childhood.
At almost eighteen Caroline was no longer a child. In almost every respect she was the lady Gresham had wanted her to be. The lady Liam expected her to be.
But she was flawed with the weakness of her female nature, vulnerable enough to respond to the underhanded charms of the son of an English viscount, a man with little money but a very impressive pedigree. Liam was the only one who could save her. And, infatuated or not, Caroline must be spared the sordid details of Perry’s betrayal.
Liam jumped out of the carriage, ordered the driver to wait, and strode through the gates. His sharp knock on the vast mahogany double doors was answered by the Gresham butler, a stiff-rumped Englishman who’d been lured away from some New York nabob. A very useful stiff-rumped Englishman, and one who had a definite taste for silver.
The butler looked somewhat startled to see Liam, which was understandable enough. Liam had sent word only to Chen that he was home, and he’d never turned up at the Gresham door directly from an expedition.
But there were exceptions to every rule. If Biggs’s surprise had a more malign explanation, Liam would know soon enough.
“Ah, Mr. O’Shea,” the butler said belatedly. “What a pleasure to see you returned.”
Liam pushed through the door. “Didn’t expect me, Biggs?”
The butler looked uncomfortable. “When Mr. Sinclair arrived before you, we were told your return might be somewhat delayed.”
Somewhat delayed. Liam smiled grimly enough to send Biggs gliding back a step. “Perry is here now,” he said.
“He is, sir.” Biggs took Liam’s hat, staying well out of his way. “I kept your man Chen informed, but I fear I was unable to do anything to prevent—”
The sound of a lilting piano melody drifted along the hall. Caroline; there was no mistaking that finesse. “Sounds as if they’re having a nice little party. I think I’ll join them. No need to announce me, Biggs—it’s a surprise.”
He paused long enough to drop a sizable bribe into the hat Biggs held and started down the hall. He could have found his way to the music room blind. And when he entered it, he was invisible just long enough to take in the cozy little picture of romantic felicity.
Caroline sat at the grand piano, her skirts draped with perfect elegance, her golden hair gathered in curls and ringlets. Her sweet, unaffected voice accompanied the ballad she played. Her performance was all for the man who leaned attentively over the instrument.
Peregrine Wallace Sinclair, youngest son of the Viscount Holdridge. Dark-haired and handsome, flawlessly aristocratic in his fine suit and polished shoes, the ideal scion of England’s peerage. That he had no wealth of his own didn’t make him any less welcome in San Francisco’s highest social circles. Or any less interesting to Caroline’s naive and unsophisticated imagination.
Liam plunged his hand into his coat pocket and gripped Perry’s watch in a stranglehold. Until now his rage had been reined in by necessity and some small hope that he might be wrong.