Chapter 3

NORA

The headache started on the drive to Hale Tower, a dull throb behind my eyes that sharpened with every block.

I dug through my bag for the prenatal vitamins the clinic had given me and swallowed one dry.

Theo was waiting at the elevator. "Morning, Nora. Mr. Hale wants the shipping reports by noon."

"I will have them ready."

My desk phone rang before I sat down. An unknown number.

"Nora Wynne."

"It is your mother."

My hand tightened on the receiver. Hazel rarely called me at work.

"Mom. Is it Dad?"

"Your father is the same. I am calling about something else." Her voice was brisk. "Mrs. Hale phoned me herself. She says there is still no baby. She is sending a woman to the house with an herbal tonic for you. You will drink it every morning."

Of course Rosalind had told her.

"I do not need a tonic."

"You need to try harder, Nora. Three years is a long time." Her voice dropped. "You remember what happened the last time you were careless."

She meant that night. The night everyone believed I had drugged him.

"That was not..."

"Just drink it. And Camilla Voss is back from Vienna. Mrs. Hale told me that, too."

The room spun.

"What?"

"First chair at the city philharmonic. Very prestigious. She landed last night. I am sure Gideon already knows."

Last night. When Gideon took that call and left the house at midnight.

"I will talk to you later." I hung up before she could say more.

I sat there staring at the wall. Camilla Voss. The violinist. Beautiful, brilliant, everything the world had ever wanted in a woman.

Gideon had loved her since they were teenagers. Everyone knew it. She had left for Vienna three years ago, a week before the fire. Then came the contract, and the gossip, and a wife he never wanted.

He had gone to her last night. The soft voice on the phone. The smile I had never seen him wear for me. All of it had been hers.

Ten years of loving him. Three years of marriage. And I had never stood a chance.

My hand slid to my stomach. The child he did not want. The one she could have given him, if things were different.

I took out my compact and fixed my face. The tears had not fallen yet. I would not let them.

That evening Gideon stopped at my desk. "Get ready. We are going to the Anchor Club tonight. Dinner with the Whitlock side of the merger."

My stomach tightened. "The Whitlocks?"

"They are important. Wear something appropriate."

I chose a navy dress, simple and forgettable. I wanted to disappear into the walls.

Gideon wore a charcoal suit that made his gray eyes look colder. He did not look at me in the car. His phone buzzed twice on the seat between us, and both times his expression eased as he read the screen.

Her. It had to be her.

The Anchor Club took up the top floor of a harbor tower, all dark wood and brass and old sea charts, the kind of room where shipping families had decided the fate of the city for a hundred years. Gideon's hand settled on my lower back as we walked in. Not affection. Appearances.

"Hale." A man in his fifties stepped forward. "Good to see you."

"Mr. Garner. Thank you for arranging this."

They talked. I stood beside him, silent and decorative, and waited.

Then I heard a voice that made my blood go cold.

"Well. Look who is here."

Dane Whitlock walked toward us with a whiskey in his hand. Tall, sandy haired, with the same sharp jaw as his sister Lydia. The heir to Whitlock Marine.

Lydia had been my best friend once. We had grown up in each other's kitchens, the cook's daughter and the shipping heiress, until the night of the fire. Dane's older brother had been working late in that warehouse. He never walked out.

Now Dane looked at me with a hatred I could feel on my skin.

"Hale," he said. "You brought the arsonist's daughter to a merger dinner?"

The words landed like a slap. My spine locked.

That was my title now. I was the daughter of the man who burned the warehouse.

Gideon's hand pressed harder against my back. "Dane."

"I am just surprised." Dane's eyes never left my face. "Most people have standards about who they bring to these rooms."

"She is here because I need her to take notes," Gideon said. His tone was flat, detached. He did not look at me.

"Ah." Dane's smile widened. "How charitable."

Every head turned. The whispers started, soft and eager, spreading like smoke.

"You might want to remind your assistant," Dane said, and he raised his voice so the room could hear, "that her father left my brother to die in a burning building. He locked the guard room and slept through the alarm. We buried a coffin with nothing in it, and she wears silk in our hall."

My father did not lock any door. He never slept on a shift in his life.

"Is no one going to address this?" Dane stepped closer to me. "Because I remember when the Wynnes served respectable families. When they knew their place. Before one of them decided to climb into a bed that was not hers."

My nails dug into my palms. I stared at the floor and told myself, Do not cry. Do not give him that.

I turned my head and looked at Gideon.

He was staring past Dane, at something across the room. His jaw was tight, and his face was blank. He did not say one word.

Dane waited. The silence stretched, and everyone in the room waited with him.

Gideon lifted his glass and took a slow sip.

"Dane," he said at last, his voice quiet and bored. "Sit down."