Kathleen Y'Barbo (5 page)

“I have done nothing of the sort,” he said as he pulled against the wind now whipping up around him.

“You have, and you will remedy the situation immediately, especially as the reason for my departure is your lack of cooperation in answering the simplest of questions.”

The tremor in her voice might have been anger, but Kyle decided it was more likely attributable to the completely unsuitable wardrobe she had chosen for her visit to the roof.

Fighting the wind was proving a bigger problem than the woman glaring at him from below. Slack in the rope allowed the flotation device to bob upward, not the direction he intended.

“You will not fly away and leave me here.” She took a step forward, and then another, all the while looking up at him with one hand on her hip and the other pointing in his direction. “Understand that there will be repercussions from this...this...oh!”

Her foot tangled in the rope, sending her plummeting. When she did not immediately rise, he called down to her. No response.

Kyle bit back on the words he longed to say as he maneuvered himself toward the building. When his feet touched the roof, he slipped off the device and set it aside to hurry to her side. “Miss?” he said as he knelt beside her.

A cursory examination told him that while she might awaken with a headache, there was no blood to indicate a serious injury. Just beyond the edge of the roof, the flotation device bobbed slowly up and down at the end of its rope.

Thanks to the building’s height and Kyle’s insistence that black silk be used in its construction, the apparatus would be virtually invisible to passersby down below. Also, given the lateness of the hour and the fact it was New Year’s Eve, few would be about and even fewer would likely think of looking up.

He lit his pocket lantern, and instantly the lamp cast a wash of golden light over thick dark lashes that brushed high cheekbones. Lips of soft pink pursed as if she might be trying to speak, but otherwise she remained still and quiet. His gaze swept the length of her.

Unless he missed his guess, her gown was made by the society ladies’ favorite, the House of Worth, and the pearls at her ears and circling her wrist were the real thing. It did not take a Pinkerton agent to determine she was a woman of quality and wealth.

A woman who did not belong on the roof of the empty Cotton Exchange building on New Year’s Eve. And yet she claimed to be a fellow scientist with a key.

What was her story? He would find that out. But first he must figure out how to get her back on her feet. He knew from experience that these society girls could be overly delicate, though this one apparently had no trouble ordering strangers around.

“Miss?” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”

There was no response, though her breathing remained deep and regular. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand and found it chilled. Slowly her eyes fluttered open and her lower lip quivered.

“All right, then. You did not dress for the roof, but I did. So, being a gentleman...”

Kyle slipped out of his coat and instantly he felt the evening’s cold.

“Time to get you downstairs.”

A soft murmur was the only response when he wrapped her in his coat and lifted her into his arms. Carrying her down four flights of stairs in this condition held little appeal, nor did leaving the flying apparatus, but he could hardly abandon her here. He shifted her in his arms, and a golden chain slid into view beneath the coat. At the end of the chain was a gold locket and what appeared to be a brass Jefferson wheel cypher.

He turned to allow the light from the street below to illuminate the
device and decided that what he’d initially thought to be brass was actually gold, possibly doubloons, unless he missed his guess. With seven rings instead of the usual twenty-four, the cypher was smaller than others he had seen. And then there was the lack of letters on the wheels, which were no bigger than dimes.

While President Jefferson created the wheel cypher to encode messages, the purpose of the device, which substituted bumps and plateaus rather than letters, was unclear. Unless there was something inside being protected, the only answer was that the piece was purely decorative.

The society scientist stirred, and eyes the color of Café Du Monde’s café au lait flecked with gold stared up at him. However, the scream that issued from those pretty pink lips a moment later was anything but delicate.

Though he stumbled, Kyle managed to hold on to her until he could release her on steady footing. His coat fell to the ground, and her foot tangled in it. Lurching forward, she aimed her fist in his direction.

“Leave...me...alone.” The words were uttered in a voice that held nothing but contempt. Or was it fear? Whatever the reason, the woman thought it just fine to continue a barrage of mostly poorly aimed punches in his direction.

“Calm down, lady,” he said as he ducked his head. “I am only trying to help.”

“You, sir, will stay back. I insist,” she said as she yanked her arm away and landed a single glancing blow on his shoulder. Though she stumbled again, she ignored his reach to help her and quickly righted herself. “Why does my head ache? And, oh, it is chilly up here.”

“Sit down and gain your bearings in case something more has been damaged.” Kyle snatched up his coat as he watched her glance around looking dazed. “Here,” he said as he held out his coat to her. “You are going to catch your death up here.”

She jumped away as if he had tried to hand her a live snake. “Stay back. Oh, my head hurts.”

“You tripped on that rope and hit your head. That is why you have a headache. You may want to be careful about moving around too much.”

She reached into her skirt to remove a tiny double-barrel pistol, which she aimed in his direction. “No,” she said slowly. “
You
might want to be careful.”

“Hey, now,” he said as he attempted a smile. “I am not here to hurt you. If this coat bothers you, I will put it on.”

“It is not the coat,” she snapped. “It’s you. Now get back and do not try to come any closer or you will regret it. That is a promise.”

The pistol never wavered as she began to walk backward.

“You may want to look out. That is how you fell,” he said gently. “There are uneven spots and—”

She upended herself again. The gun went sliding. Kyle pitched the coat at her, causing the woman to have to stop and toss it aside. They both made a grab for the gun, but Kyle came up victorious. He quickly removed two bullets from the small but dangerous pearl-handled Remington before handing it back to its owner.

“There is no need for shooting,” he said as he dropped the bullets into his vest pocket. “How about you take my coat too? You must be cold.”

“You are the scientist,” she said as she shook her head. “I am sorry. I did not think...that is, everything went black and I thought you might have been trying to hurt me.”

“Hurt you?” He held out his arms and put on his most innocent expression. “Do I look like a man who might hurt a woman?”

“I don’t suppose so...”

“Exactly.”

“But my head throbs right here.” She rested her palm on the side of her head. “And the last thing I remember is I was quite insistent on finding my way out the door.”

“Because you were unhappy with me. I was not keen on answering your questions, and you were not keen on ceasing to ask them.”

She thought a moment and then nodded. A small groan followed. “Yes, you are right. I do remember being perturbed at your infuriating attitude. Arrogant is perhaps a better word.”

“I prefer otherwise occupied.”

“That would be two words,” she said with a smile.

“You have me there.” He once again held out his coat. “Here, please take this. Call it a peace offering, if you must.”

Shivering must have trumped pride, for she took it and slipped it on. “Thank you.”

“I am a gentleman,” he replied with a shrug. “Even when I am otherwise occupied.”

“Arrogant,” she countered, though her expression told him she might be teasing.

“Losing his patience,” Kyle said, though he was careful to lift a brow in mock irritation lest she think he was serious. “And yes, I know that is three words.”

He walked back to where he had tethered the rope before she spoke.

“I remember it clearly now. You were over there.” She gestured to the roof’s edge. “Floating. Or hanging from that device. Or...oh, I do not know. You were certainly up here doing something secretive or else you would have answered my questions, and you certainly would not have hidden a crate up here in anticipation of this event. Am I wrong?”

“Not exactly,” he said, though he preferred not to tell her any more than he had to about the experiment she had interrupted.

“Well, whatever the situation, I just want to leave now.”

He tried to ignore an unexpectedly chill breeze. “As do I.”

“Well, as you are the expert in machinery and such, could you open the door? Apparently it is locked.”

“I did not lock it.”

“Nor did I.” She glanced over at the door and then back at him. “You were the last one to use it.”

“The building is new. Perhaps it’s stuck.”

She seemed to think about that as she replaced her pistol in the pocket of her gown.

“Correct me if I am wrong, miss, but Monsieur Worth does not design pockets into his dresses, does he?”

The pretty lady almost smiled. “It is a custom feature, one I am happy I requested.”

“I can see how you would need the weapon, especially if you frequent dark roofs regularly.”

“I will ignore that comment and plead a headache.” The woman went to the door and once again yanked on the knob. “Stay right where you
are,” she said when he moved to assist. “You may be a fellow scientist, but you are also a stranger to me. You have my bullets, but you have no idea whether that was my only gun.”

He took her bluff. “It is.”

Kyle had to give her credit. She maintained a haughty expression even as indecision crept across her eyes.

“I might have a knife,” she blustered as she tugged again.

“You might, but I assure you I’m harmless.” He was not, but he held out his hands in the hopes she would believe that. “How about I promise not to give you any reason to use it?”

“You already have. What harmless man manages to jump off of a building and then float back onto the roof while refusing to answer questions about the experiment?”

“You have me there,” he said as he fought to keep a straight face.

“And locks the door.”

“No, I did not do that.”

She jerked on the knob once more and it came off in her hand. Her expression gave away her shock. “Now what?”

“Would you like me to see if I can repair your damage?”

“My damage?”

He gestured to the knob. “You were the one who broke it.”

She opened her mouth to say something and then apparently thought better of it. Rather than respond, she merely nodded toward the door before moving out of the way.

He took the knob from her outstretched hand. After several attempts, he turned to find her watching intently. “Sorry. You have done an excellent job of breaking it,” he said as he tossed it aside.

Brown eyes widened. “But that is impossible! It cannot be broken.” She hurried to the door and began to hit it. “Someone surely can come and rescue us.”

“On New Year’s Eve?” He pulled out his pocket watch. “With less than fifteen minutes until midnight? Not likely.”

She huffed and leaned against the door. “I suppose someone will come eventually.”

“Eventually, yes.” Kyle met her eyes. “But the building does not officially open until January second. My guess is you have a forty-eight hour wait, and that is not taking into account how long it would be before anyone decided to visit the roof.”

She groaned. “What awful timing. I would choose the one night of the year when the building is completely empty.” She gave him a look. “Well, almost empty.”

“Oh? I suspect you came up here for exactly that purpose. I know I did.”

She glanced over at the flotation device. “So you could play with your balloon without interruption?”

“That was the idea, though it is not—”

“A balloon,” she interrupted. “Yes, so you said, and yet it bobs about like a child’s toy. An oversized toy, but a balloon all the same. Unless you would prefer I refer to it as a dirigible, though that would not be an accurate description, would it?”

“If you insist,” he muttered. “Although, no. Technically it would not.”

“No matter how it may appear, I did not expect to find myself in this predicament. Eventually I will be missed. And then what will happen?”

A rhetorical question, he assumed. Yet he could not imagine that a woman as pretty as she was not already being missed by someone, and not just an overprotective father.

The society scientist laughed as she found the answer to her own question. “Well, there is another way down.”

“Oh?” He gave her a hopeful look. And then he guessed her intention. “Oh, no. Never.”

Three