City of Secrets (11 page)

“How long have you been sitting there like that?” she demanded.

“Good evening to you too, Mrs. Malcolm.”

“Oh, don’t be so absurd. Sit down and tell me what you are doing dressed like that.” He had on a straw-colored topcoat of the sort worn by stagecoach drivers in the country, which he removed, laying it and the bowler hat on the back of the sofa. Maddie was relieved to see he had on evening clothes underneath, but he retained the spectacles, and when he sat down, he crossed his legs and prissily picked an imaginary spot of lint off his knee. Maddie was fascinated to see how these tiny differences in his dress and mannerisms altered him so completely that she had looked right at him at first without recognizing him at all.

“That’s
how you know everything I do. You follow me in disguise!”

“I would not like you to think I lacked resourcefulness in your cause, Mrs. Malcolm.”

“Well, I confess I am all admiration. But I’ll be much more observant in the future.”

“And I shall be that much more resourceful.”

She laughed at that, and he grinned, much more in his own style, then stood to offer her his arm. Leaving his “disguise” with the porter, he led her into the Savoy Court to hail a cab, and they set off in a mood that Maddie was surprised to find easy, even companionable.

The mood did not soon dissipate, and even the night seemed friendlier. Lights blazed all along the Strand from the restaurants and music halls, and music and laughter came to them from the street buskers entertaining patrons waiting to get into the Tivoli and the Adelphi and the Gaiety. The road was thick with hansom cabs, and the doorways with men-about-town in opera cloaks and white gloves.

Devin took her to a discreet little restaurant in Covent Garden, where she would not be recognized and which was both quiet and of high quality. The small round tables were well separated from one another, and the white cloths beneath the softly flattering shaded lamps were immaculate. And, Maddie thought, sniffing discreetly, whatever was being served smelled delicious.

Devin kept his spectacles and his altered hairstyle, and after thinking about it over the soup course, Maddie excused herself to go to the ladies’ cloakroom, where she darkened her eyebrows with a pencil she carried with her and tucked the curls Louise had so carefully loosened from her coiffure back up into the pins securing it. When she came out again, she walked with deliberately smaller steps and cast her eyes modestly down at the floor.

When she sat down and looked up again, a glint of mischief in her eye, Devin was applauding silently. “Well done! You’ve caught the trick of it nicely. Most people, you know, go in for false hairpieces and putty noses, but such extremes are rarely called for.”

“I may be less resourceful than you, Mr. Grant, but I am not unobservant.”

He grinned. “I should mention, however, that the demure look was less credible than the cosmetic pencil.”

She threatened to throw a roll at him, and he put up his hands in mock horror. “Next time I’ll do my imitation of Florence Wingate,” she threatened him. “That should impress you.”

“Who is Florence Wingate?”

After Maddie’s description, he remarked, “She sounds very American. Unlike you, which is why you would have less trouble disguising yourself here.”

“If that is meant as a compliment, Mr. Grant, it’s misplaced. Perhaps I’ll begin wearing a little red-white-and-blue flag on my hat to prove my nationality.”

“Our flag is also red, white, and blue,” he said.

But she only laughed, making up her mind to enjoy herself and not let him provoke her, so that by the time her
supreme de volatile au paprika
had arrived, she had forgotten the problem of how to slip him the banknotes to pay for their dinner. Presumably he would include it in his accounting for his other expenses, she told herself, dismissing the matter. She had become almost unconscious, too, of his looks and undeniable masculinity, although she wished he would comb his hair back into its usual style before she gave in to an impulse to do it herself. As long as their conversation was confined to small talk—her impressions of London, his slight knowledge of the United States—the meal passed in mutual amity.

“My father loved to travel,” she said, “but he never got outside the United States.”

“Mine wouldn’t set foot outside Britain,” he said. “No, outside England. He had no use for the Welsh or the Irish either, and tolerated the Scots only because his mother was, much to his shame, Scottish.”

“I’m sorry. He doesn’t sound like a very pleasant person to live with.”

“I suppose he wasn’t very comfortable. But he did have strong views on his duty, and he was a particularly conscientious landlord and a just, if not always merciful, magistrate—not much liked, perhaps, but very much respected. The county people even lobbied to get him a knighthood, but the government in power at the time disliked him as much as he hated them, so he never got it.”

“What was your mother like?”

“I don’t remember her. She died when I was two.”

“Then you were an only child, too?”

He smiled. “In effect, yes. You see, if we really look for it, we can find things we have in common.”

She laughed, but over their coffee he realized again that it was impossible to forget the most important difference between them. She looked as if she would like to forget it, but with the coffee, she too remembered that their meeting had another purpose. She reached into her purse and wordlessly handed him Laurence Fox’s photograph. He studied it, using the few seconds to marshal his thoughts and control his emotions. He turned it over to read the notations on the back, then looked at her again.

“Where did you get this?”

“A young photographer I met took it. You may remember him—the young man I was with at Newmarket. Laurence didn’t know who Teddy was at the time he took the photo—as you can see, his focus was on the family in the foreground. He was kind enough to give the photograph to me.”

“You are quite sure this man by the railing is your husband, then?”

She nodded. “It’s the way he stands, leaning one hip against the rail and putting both hands in his pockets. Teddy always hated to wear gloves, even on formal occasions when they were required. In cold weather he preferred to thrust his hands in his pockets like that.”

“Did he have any other such identifiable mannerisms?”

“I don’t think so, but I must confess that I had forgotten about that one until I saw the photograph. You’re not always conscious of such things when you live with ... when you see a person every day.”

She did not meet his eyes, concentrating instead on her coffee cup, and he wondered what was in them. Sadness, perhaps? She had lately adopted the use of the past tense when speaking of her husband. Or was that unconscious, too?

“What do you suppose he was doing on the packet?”

She did look up at that, and he was irritated to see her eyes shining with incipient tears.
Damn her.

“I presume he was on his way to Paris,” he mused. “The Pinkerton report said he had gone there, but there was no information about his means of travel. Do you think he might have been going there for some other purpose? Or that this was not his only channel crossing?”

He didn’t know what he meant, or what he should say. He had no idea why Malcolm should have made regular—or even irregular—trips to the Continent. Unfortunately, he would now have to take time to pursue the question. And he would have to stop interrogating her just to sound as if he were doing his job. He hadn’t wanted this evening to be tainted with business; and up until the time she had shown him this photograph, they had been getting along better than he hoped. But now, with the introduction of the cursed husband, a constraint had fallen between them. Not knowing what to do to reestablish the earlier mood, however, he continued his cross-examination.

“Presuming the connection with the anarchists to be a fact ... he might have been a messenger of some sort, carrying news or instructions between the Paris and London groups.”

“Oh, yes!” she said, a little too eagerly, he thought. “That is the sort of thing Teddy would be good at. He never looks as if he is in any hurry or on urgent business; he would pass for a casual holiday traveler, whatever sort of possibly incriminating papers he might be carrying. Also—”

“Yes?”

“Well, I can’t see Teddy engaging in any kind of dangerous or violent or even illegal activity. Carrying messages, on the other hand, would satisfy his desire to be active while not jeopardizing his ideals about the anarchists, for I am certain he has them or he would not have become involved.”

Not only was she using the present tense again, she was mouthing the same platitudes she had plied Kropotkin with to convince him of her husband’s sterling qualities. Did she imagine Devin did not know what she and the Russian had said to each other at Newmarket? He wished she did not so underestimate his intelligence.

“Does he speak French?”

“Teddy? Yes, in a schoolboy sort of way. He’s very quick about that sort of thing, though. I’m sure he picked up a good deal in just his first week in France.”

Devin wondered uncharitably if Malcolm “picked up” his French in the classic masculine manner—by sleeping with a Frenchwoman. But even he balked at suggesting this to Maddie, however much he would have liked to shake her loose from her obsession with her husband. But his inclination to badger her with questions, never strong tonight, had worn itself out.

He called the waiter for the bill, deciding on the spot to assert himself in at least a small way by not billing her for the meal as she doubtless expected him to. Or would she even notice? Oliver Drummond, who paid him, probably never showed her the itemization. Well, he would know he did it.

“Shall we go?”

He laid her cloak regretfully over her beautiful creamy shoulders, trying not to touch them as he did so, then preceded her outside to hail a cab. He had to touch her arm to hand her up into it, and he was aware that every time he did so was that much more disturbing than the last. Inside, he sat as far away from her on the seat as possible, but even then, he was subjected to the play of the streetlights on her exposed bosom, where they made provocative shadows, then erased them, only to bring them up again when they rounded the next lighted comer.

She was very quiet. He coughed, hoping to prompt her into speaking, or at least into moving so that the light did not hit her just that way, but when she did, she was face-to-face with him so that all he could see now was her ripe mouth. He leaned forward suddenly, putting his hands on her satin shoulders and lowering his mouth to that tempting redness.

She made no move to resist him. In fact, for a moment she responded, letting him enter the softness of that warm, welcoming mouth. But suddenly he pulled himself back and turned his head away from her.
Damn.
He couldn’t do it, not until he discovered precisely what her relationship to her husband had been. Even if it was not what he feared, even if her loyalty to him stemmed from guilt rather than love, Devin was still selfish enough about her to want all of her or nothing.

He leaned back against the upholstery again, not looking at her until they reached the Savoy, where he escorted her silently inside, and she, businesslike once again, shook his hand and thanked him for a pleasant evening.

She may even have meant it.

Somewhere between sleep and waking, Maddie thought she heard a voice calling to her. “Teddy, is that you?” she murmured. There was no answer, so she knew she was dreaming. But perhaps he heard her anyway. She tried again. “Teddy, do you forgive me?”

A whisper of wind seemed to blow over her, like a summer evening’s breeze off the Mississippi. She had thrown off the bedclothes, as she had that night on the river, because it was too hot to sleep under them. And because the film all over her body from perspiration left by lovemaking made their slight weight intolerable. The breeze cooled her gently.

She could sense the weight of Teddy’s body in the bed beside her, but she did not turn to look at him. Had it been all right that time? Had he been pleased with her? She almost thought she had enjoyed it, too. Perhaps it did only take time, time to learn to read his moods, to make the connections between the anticipation and the act itself.  She thought of how he had kissed her that night after dinner, and the flesh on her arms tingled in remembrance; she could feel the tips of her breasts tense imagining his hands gently cupping them, his tongue teasing the smooth, taut flesh.

As if he sensed her thoughts, he turned back to her. In the dim light his tanned skin seemed even darker, and the muscles of his shoulders stood out in graceful relief as he moved slowly from her breast to her neck, his mustache leaving feathery caresses along her throat. Then he lifted his head to look at her, and his gray eyes gleamed with a light she had never seen in them before....

Oh, God!

Maddie sat up abruptly and for a moment could not think where she was. The river? No, the room was still. But the moon was reflecting off water somewhere.... Oh, yes,
it was the Thames. She had drawn back the curtains after she turned the lights off, to look at the view.

What time was it? She snatched up the bedside clock—six o’clock. Not the moonlight, then; it was dawn. She moaned and pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head down on them. She knew now what she had dreamed.

Damn Devin Grant.

#

An hour later, she had made up her mind. Let Oliver deal with Devin Grant. Let him explain why she had gone personally to police headquarters in Bow Street to file a missing persons report for Teddy—surely a sensible action on her part. Grant had not done it for her, after all.  Perhaps Devin was only annoyed that she was checking up on
him
.

Whatever made her think she could get the better of a man like Devin Grant, anyway? He was right; he didn’t need her help and barely accepted Ollie’s.  He’d been trained to get what he wanted out of people. “Painless extractions,” like the dentist’s advertisement in the window next to the Elm Street Residency. That was Grant, all right.