Page 119 of Two Wars and a Wedding

The shadow of the leaves made strange patterns on the ground. Holt traced them with the tip of his cane. “That’s not surprising.”

Betsy narrowed her eyes at him. “Isn’t it? I don’t usually have heads of state soliciting my opinion.” Well, except for the Greek royal family, but that was different.

“You’ve been in the press.” Holt poked at a fissure in the paving. “And then there’s the Concho. You’ve heard about the Concho.”

“Oh, yes.” The papers were full of the Concho, which had limped into New York Harbor to a universal outcry. Like the Seneca, it had been a transport sent with wounded from Siboney, unprepared, unprovisioned.

Holt lifted his head, looking her squarely in the eye. She hadn’t remembered his eyes being quite so blue, but they were; they were alarmingly, distractingly blue, like the sky over the Aegean; one could sail off in them and not come back. “They didn’t fare as well as we did. Five men died. They might have brushed aside what happened on the Seneca, but now the Concho’s come into port . . . well, it’s clear there’s a problem. And that problem wasn’t Dr. Baird.”

“Poor Dr. Baird,” said Betsy, trying to put her scrambled thoughts back together. “I hope this helps clear his name. The ship might have been a horror, but he got everyone through alive.”

“You got everyone through alive,” said Holt quietly. “Do you wonder why the president wants to talk to you?”

“I don’t wonder, I know. Holt, I know you arranged it.” Betsy was consumed by an almost unbearable mix of fondness and exasperation. She didn’t know whether to embrace him or shake him or both. “For heaven’s sake, Holt. How did you ever survive out West? You have the worst poker face of anyone I’ve ever known.”

“Only with you,” he said ruefully. “How did you know?”

“Well, the president’s aide telling me to make sure to convey his regards to Mr. Rutherford was something of a clue.”

Holt winced. “He wasn’t supposed to say that.”

In other words, she was never meant to know that Holt had been working behind the scenes to clear her name. He was just going to perform his bit of knight errantry and ride quietly off into the sunset—or to Harvard Law, which was pretty much the same thing, only with more books involved.

“I assume the Mr. Rutherford to whom he referred was your father, not you.”

“You assume correctly.” Betsy stood there, pointedly waiting, until Holt added, reluctantly, “They know each other through political and legal circles. My father gave . . . generously to the president’s campaign.”

“You hate your father.”

“Yes.”

Betsy could feel the droplets of sweat dripping down her back beneath her tightly fitted new summer walking suit. “Then why?”

“Because you were right,” Holt said quietly. “Would I rather crawl naked over ground glass than ask my father for anything? Certainly. But some things are worth it.”

Their eyes met.

Her new walking suit was too tight. Betsy couldn’t quite breathe in it.

Holt dropped his head, poking his cane at a crack in the paving. “What happened on the Seneca was unpardonable. If you hadn’t been there—half that ship would have been buried at sea and everyone would have shaken their heads and called it the wages of war, and it would have been left at that. But you didn’t leave it. And neither could I.”

“So this is about justice.” The breath she had been holding all came out in one deflated whoosh.

“Isn’t that what you told me to do? To go off and fight for justice and be a voice for the voiceless? Not that you’re voiceless,” Holt amended hastily. “You have more voice than an entire men’s chorus. But I couldn’t let them slander you. Not after everything you’d done.”

Because she was the Angel of the Seneca.

There were drawbacks to being an angel. The wings, for one. The distance it placed between them.

Betsy had sent him away. She knew that.

She just hadn’t meant it to be forever.

Or maybe she had. She wasn’t quite sure.

Oh, honey, Kit had said, when she’d come back to the room. How can you expect him to read your mind when you don’t know it yourself?

It was better this way, she’d told Kit. Better for Holt, better for her, better for everyone. A few days off the claustrophobic confines of the Seneca and he’d quickly realize he was better off without her.