All for You (6 page)

She leaned her head back against the seat and sighed deeply. She supposed she could go on with her life as discoverer of intentions, dispenser of feng shui–ish advice, and all-around balancer of other people’s lives, though heading back to Seattle to do that might be a little more difficult than it looked at first glance. She didn’t have to dig through her backpack to find the fax that had been waiting for her that morning, the one from Roger Peabody telling her that her landlord had decided that since she hadn’t been willing to sign another lease—why would she have when she hadn’t been sure what Tess was doing?—he was going to re-rent her apartment. And that Roger had done her the favor of taking her meager belongings and storing them at
his place.

The thought of his riffling through any of her things gave her the willies. In fact, it was enough to leave her thinking that everything she really needed, she had brought in her suitcase to England. The odds of her going back to Seattle were very slim, indeed.

Which left her where she was: homeless, fairly broke, and wishing something magical would happen.

She couldn’t bring herself to hope that something might be found at David of Kenneworth’s fancy dress ball.

I
t
was four o’clock on the dot when she presented herself at the door of a surprisingly spacious semidetached house within walking distance of where she’d crashed with a friend of Tess’s. She suppressed the urge to adjust her sensible business skirt—well, Tess’s sensible business skirt, actually—and put on what she hoped was a respectable PhD’s sort of smile when the door opened.

“Ah, Dr. Alexander,” an older gentleman said, extending his hand. “So pleased you could come.”

“Dr. Trotter-Smythe,” Peaches said, almost without twitching. She had to bite her tongue to keep from saying,
I presume
. Because she was presuming. Tess had told her who was hosting, but the bulk of the guest list was peopled by academics Tess didn’t know. Fortunately.

Dr. Trotter-Smythe beamed, then welcomed her into his salon that simply reeked of old money and pipe smoke.

Peaches ungritted her teeth. This was the very
last
time she did anything this stupid. If she hadn’t felt so guilty about crashing Tess’s first month as a newlywed …

She took a deep, steadying breath. Last time. Really.

“Let me introduce you to our guest of honor,” Dr. Trotter-Smythe said, nodding in the direction of a tiny little woman who looked as if she’d been alive since the Middle Ages. “Dr. Plantagenet, and yes, the name is truly hers.”

Peaches didn’t doubt it. She approached Dame Medieval with the same enthusiasm she would have an audience with Bad King John and wondered if the woman would be surprised if she came down with a sudden attack of laryngitis.

Introductions were made, and Dr. Plantagenet looked at her assessingly.

“I’ve heard many good things about you, my dear,” she said in a voice that sounded a bit like ancient rustling parchment. It matched the paper-thin state of her skin.

“How kind,” Peaches managed. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you as well.”
And killing my sister as soon as possible afterward
.

Watery blue eyes assessed her a bit more. “Hmmm” was apparently the pithiest thing Dr. Plantagenet could manage at the moment. “Dr. Trotter-Smythe wants me to do a little presentation, but we’ll have time I’m sure for a robust discussion afterward. I’ll be interested in your thoughts on medieval mores.”

Peaches imagined she would. And she imagined she herself would be suffering from a sudden onset of something more dire than laryngitis, which would require her to remove herself from the premises as quickly as possible.

So she could, as she had contemplated earlier, kill her sister.

She supposed people would notice if she rolled up her sleeves and took notes on her arms for future reference while Granny was talking, so she simply sat in a hard-backed chair and tried not to squirm. There was an enormous grandfather clock in the hall that made her jump every time it boomed out the quarter hour. She was beginning to feel like what she imagined a prisoner of the Tower must have felt each time he heard something heavy fall. Like a footstep outside his cell door. Or an axe on the green chopping the head off another miscreant.

Only her final meeting wasn’t going to be with an axe, it was going to be with Dr. Plantagenet who would be quizzing her about her medieval opinions and finding she only had one, which was that she imagined that during medieval times the only ones going in for wheatgrass were the horses. What she wouldn’t have given for a double shot of the same to see her through the rest of the afternoon.

Unfortunately, all she had to buoy up her courage was a plate of ladyfingers and some artificially sweetened lemonade. Her hands were shaking so badly, she was afraid she would spill her snack all over the faded but obviously expensive Aubusson carpet. She looked up to find Dr. Plantagenet starting across the room toward her, her eyes zeroing in on what Peaches could only hope was her sandwiches and not her, and knew there was nowhere to run. Tess’s reputation was going to be ruined, she
herself was probably going to be drawn and quartered, and then her opportunity to find her fairy tale at the Duke of Kenneworth’s glittering ballroom was going to be ruin—

“Oh, I say, Trotter-Smythe,” said a deep voice from behind her, “sorry to miss the notes. Ah, Tess, darling, I supposed you would … be …”

Peaches turned around in time to the winding down of the speech behind her until she was facing the speaker.

He was tall, dark-haired, and … she sighed. She could be nothing but honest. The man standing in front of her was absolutely gorgeous. Not only was he tall, as she had been forced to admit before, he was very finely built and had a killer smile she had fortunately never had used on her. He was currently looking at her from a pair of the most amazing gray eyes she had ever seen, eyes that widened so briefly she probably would have thought she’d imagined it if she hadn’t known what was going through the possessor of those beautiful eyes’ mind.

She wasn’t Tess.

And Stephen de Piaget knew it.

Stephen made her a low bow, then straightened and smiled smoothly. “Dr. Alexander, I should say. Or perhaps Lady Sedgwick. So many titles and so well-deserved, wouldn’t you say, Dr. Trotter-Smythe?”

“Oh, indeed,” Dr. Trotter-Smythe agreed. “Very. So many accomplishments for one so young.”

Peaches would have elbowed Dr. Trotter-Smythe to distract him before he launched into a discussion of Tess’s accomplishments that
she
would have to elaborate on, but she was saved by the man becoming distracted by Stephen de Piaget’s unwholesomely dazzling smile. Or it might have been the remains of a bruise on his nose. She could hardly believe it, but he looked as though he had recently been in a brawl.

She forced her eyes to remain open and not narrow as they so wanted to do, because despite the fact that Stephen was her archenemy, she was pretending to be her sister, and Tess was rather fond of him.

Peaches couldn’t understand why. She’d heard from reliable sources that Stephen had helped Tess enormously during her academic career at Cambridge without hitting on her once. Peaches could only assume that was because the illustrious Viscount
Haulton had already been busy with the harem of very rich, very beautiful socialites and celebrities he dated between bouts of insulting innocent life coaches from Seattle and teaching about pointy things he no doubt wouldn’t have touched if his life had depended on it.

Not that there was anything wrong with being a college professor, especially of that ultra-sexy subject of medieval knights and their relentless chivalry. She just imagined the sharpest things Stephen came in contact with were either a harshly worded review or the business edge of his butter knife at dinner. If someone tried to mug her, he would probably give her a shove toward the mugger so he could dash off daintily and spare his fancy cashmere scarves a brush with grubby fingers.

Stephen removed her plate from her hand. She managed to smile politely instead of baring her teeth, but that took some doing.

“Let’s find you a seat, shall we?” he asked politely. “You look a little flushed.”

“It’s the stockings,” she muttered under her breath.

He only looked at her gravely, which made her want to squirm. Before she could protest, he had put her in a comfortable spot, deposited her drink and plate on the table at her elbow, and had sat down next to her—a very proper and discreet distance away—to no doubt monopolize any and all conversation that came her way.

She supposed that was something of a bonus. All she had to do was sit there and smile, but since that was probably how he liked his women, she was fitting right into his plans.

She felt an unwholesome tingle in her knees that she quickly identified as stress she immediately blamed on Tess. It had nothing to do with sitting next to a man whose face should have been outlawed, whose lovely posh consonants would have made her smile if they hadn’t been coming out of
his
mouth, who seemed to draw people to him like flies.

He probably had a flyswatter hiding behind his back so he could whack them when least expected. He’d done it to her.

She didn’t want to think about that particular moment of unpleasantness, but since he was there and she was trying to keep herself awake, she decided that perhaps it was best to get it all out of her system right then.

She’d met him in the midst of panic over losing Pippa somewhere back in time. He had been an absolute rock, taking all pressure off Tess, being the perfect knight in trousers and tweed. She had to admit that even though she’d known he was way out of her league, she had … she sighed. The truth was, she’d developed an immediate crush on him and spent the majority of her time in England alternately gaping at him and allowing him to figure prominently in her daydreams.

If he’d noticed, he hadn’t said anything. He had treated her politely, but it had been a stiff sort of politeness, as if centuries of breeding hadn’t allowed him to raise her hopes unnecessarily.

And then had come The Comment.

She’d been talking to a potential client at a Regency-style house party about her degree when Stephen had attempted a polite laugh and said, exactly,
Oh, I say, I thought organic was in reference to the manure you put in your garden
.

She’d been mortified. He hadn’t even had the grace to look embarrassed as those around them had laughed heartily, then moved on to less smelly subjects. Stephen’s face had shuttered. He had, when the crowd had dispersed, attempted a stiff apology, then been coldly polite to her ever since. She had been happy, on those unhappy occasions when she’d seen him since, to give him a wide berth.

Only now she was stuck.

She leaned back against the couch and let herself relax just the slightest bit only because she knew if she didn’t, she would have a crushing headache. Unfortunately, that gave her nothing better to do than watch Stephen work the crowd.

How he managed to be so charming and such a jerk at the same time was a mystery. Granny was blushing. Other scholars were hanging on his every word. Peaches would have told him he was hogging the limelight, but then she realized he was somehow doing all the talking but giving credit to Tess for the research.

Peaches suppressed a frown. There was obviously something fishy going on.

He only looked at her once. He gave her a quick little smile that would have left her fanning herself if it hadn’t come from him. Fortunately she was a woman with a steel spine and vast amounts of resistance to tweed-covered academics who thought
nothing of tap-dancing in stompy boots over the hearts of innocent feng-shuiers.

It was a very uncomfortable three hours.

She was thrilled when Stephen announced that Dr. Alexander had another engagement to get to. Peaches accepted compliments with her best smile and didn’t argue when Stephen managed to get them both out the front door without any catastrophes.

Peaches pulled her collar up to her ears and started out toward the sidewalk. “Thanks, Dr. de Piaget, for the rescue. See you around.”

Stephen had very long legs and apparently knew how to use them. Peaches would have trotted down the street but she was in heels not her sensible Docs, so she had to walk carefully so she didn’t fall on her face and ruin Tess’s reputation.

“Miss Alexander—”

“I’m fine, thank you,” she said politely. All right, so it had come out a bit crisply. He had made fun of her on that fateful night the month before, spent the rest of that particular evening flirting with three of his girlfriends, and now he expected her to be nice to him? “I’ll tell Tess how you saved her this afternoon.”

“Where are you staying?”

“None of your business.”

“Holly’s,” he said with a sigh, taking her by the arm. “Come, I’ll ferry you there.”

Peaches ripped her arm away from his fingers so forcefully, she almost went sprawling. She regained her balance. “I think I’ve managed all twenty-eight years of my life without your help, thanks just the same.”

He clasped his hands behind his back and just looked at her, silent and grave.

Peaches knew she was making a colossal idiot of herself, but honestly, she just couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t going to be a notch on his chivalry belt just so he could tell his group of nobility pals he’d been nice to some poor Yank.

She walked away, ignoring how slippery it was on the sidewalk and how cold her feet were getting in shoes that should have been limited to summer events.

She had stalked almost to Holly’s before she realized someone was following her. A car, actually. A very expensive-looking,
silver gray Mercedes that probably cost more than she would ever make in her lifetime.

Typical.

It waited until she was standing on the porch and had the door open before it drove off. Peaches decided that was probably for the best. She would go into Holly’s, have a lukewarm shower, then put herself to bed and forget about a man who had saved her during a tea that could have been an absolute disaster, then followed her home to make sure she got there safely.