Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (books for 20 year olds TXT) 📗

Stephen bowed again, added a long-empty wineglass to the col ection of dishes in his hand and went out.

8

Cam fidgeted on the hard bench. She’d been marched to the waiting room by Mertons, who was now describing the process patrons must fol ow to secure a place on Lely’s schedule. She was waiting for a pause into which she could reasonably insert a request to use the privy, cover for another try at the models’ room, when the door behind the secretary’s desk opened. It wasn’t Lely, but the man in the smock who had reported on Miss Quinn’s disposition earlier. The man looked at her and nearly fumbled the stack of dishware he was carrying.

“Mary, Mother of God,” he uttered. “Stephen, any word on Peter?” the reedy man said, breaking off midsentence. “I even checked the place you suggested. No sign.”

Stephen pointed wordlessly at the doorway behind him, though his gaze never left her face. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Actual y he looked as if he’d seen a ghost standing between Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa, holding the lead to a unicorn.

Stephen’s col eague rushed toward Lely’s door, clapped the list under Stephen’s arm as he passed and disappeared into the office.

“I think,” Stephen said firmly to Cam, “you must leave.”

9

“But I haven’t seen Mr. Lely yet, ” Peter heard a voice in the waiting room declare.

Despite the explosion of Mertons into his office like a misfired mortar, he smiled. The woman had an odd, eager lilt to her words that reminded him of his countrymen when they first grew conversant in English. He knew only too wel what it was like to be a stranger in a new place. He wondered if perhaps she was Dutch or had a Dutch parent.

“Where have you been?” Mertons’s gaze went straight to the now closed storage room door.

Peter kept his eyes from fol owing Mertons’s. “I do apologize. I was napping.”

“What is your name?” Poor Stephen was checking the woman against the list, and Peter found himself listening for the reply, partly because he thought it might give him a further clue to her origin, and partly because he had always favored contraltos.

“It’s there,” she said. “On the list.”

“Peter?”

“Pardon?” Mertons had said something, though Peter had not the faintest idea what.

“I said I checked your room. You were not napping there.

I checked everywhere.”

“On this list?” Stephen said, surprised. “I made most of it myself. Where is your name?”

“I was in the wardrobe,” Peter replied impatiently. He wished Mertons would stop talking so he could hear.

“The wardrobe?”

“Oh, dear,” the woman said. “I can barely read your writing.”

“Lady Humphries,” Stephen began, evidently reading off the patrons on the list, and with a spark of delight, Peter realized she was shopping for a name. “Miss Mary Tallyrand, daughter of Lord Tallyrand. Henrietta, wife of Mr. George Palmer. A widow, Mrs. Eu-jeanne Eu-jen Eugenie Post—”

“Mrs. Eugenie Kay Post. That,” she said firmly, “is I.”

“The wardrobe, Peter? Real y?”

Peter stood, unable to stifle his curiosity. “It is dark, it is cool, and at least until now,” he said, drifting toward the door, “no one has thought to look for me there.” He thought if he took a spot three-quarters of the way across the room and tilted his head just far enough …

Mertons blew out a long exhale. “I-I know you don’t enjoy being here, Peter, but we’ve talked about this. You must realize your absence could have been disastrous. If the writer had arrived while you—”

“Bugger the writer, Mertons. Mrs. Eugenie Kay Post has arrived, and I intend to enjoy this little performance—”

Then Peter saw her, and a searing pain cut his heart.

Sorrow, betrayal, fear and, above al , a burning anger flared like a gunpowder charge, sucking the air from his lungs.

She was beautiful, with ringlets of sun-polished copper, eyes as crystal blue as the Zuider Zee, the proud shoulders of a sultan and a fine, high bosom. And beautiful she should be, for she was almost the dead spit of Ursula. He knew she must have been picked by Stephen like an apple in Eden to tempt him.

Wel , damn Stephen and his detestable machinations.

Damn his handsome widows. He wondered if she were a widow at al . He wouldn’t put it past his meddling friend to have hired an agreeable