London Lace #1 (2 page)

Eliza turned away and took a table a short distance away. She sat in the chair opposite so that she could see him across the room. After ordering a latte with extra foam, she plopped the riding cap on her table and waited.

She almost started laughing when he frowned again. She was willing to meet him halfway, but not
all
the way. At this point he would have to come to her. He sipped his tea and took surreptitious glances in her direction. She pulled a paperback from her purse and pretended to read it, smiling as if the story were pleasantly humorous. She glanced at him once or twice, a benign smile on her face, a small twinkle in her eye. Just what was he waiting for?

Her coffee was served. She dropped two sugars into it and stirred carefully so as not to drown the foam on top. Lifting the warm drink to her lips, she closed her eyes to fully savor the first sip. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed that Sir Todd Montgomery was no longer at his table. She caught a blur of tweed out of the corner of her eye and looked up.

“Miss Keating, I presume?” He was standing right next to her. He held out a tiny cocktail napkin. She looked at it, confused. And then she realized she had a moustache of foam on her top lip. Her cheeks flushed. She took the napkin and dabbed lightly. Her benign smile was irretrievable.

“May I join you?” He sat across from her before she could answer. “Nice hat,” he added. “But, of course, that’s your specialty, isn’t it?”

She had barely recovered from her initial embarrassment when she was bombarded by his rudeness.

“You followed me over here?” he pressed.

Eliza blinked several times. She didn’t know what to say. The only things coming to her were countering rude barbs. She took a deep breath, thought of Tori, remembered this was a favor, and that she did have a shred of dignity.

Time to start over. She reached out a hand.

“Eliza Keating, pleased to meet you.”

He looked at her hand, plunked his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers under his chin.

“You’re a peach for doing this, really, but if it’s all the same to you, perhaps you could report back to my nosy cousin-in-law that we met, suffered through coffee—tea in my case—and due to lack of chemistry went our separate ways.”

Eliza’s cheeks were inflamed now from anger rather than embarrassment. She placed her hand back in her lap.

“I believe the proper response would have been to introduce yourself.”

He rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure Victoria informed you that ‘proper’ is not my forté.”

“How about civil?”

He raised one eyebrow. Eliza leaned forward.

“Yes, Victoria mentioned you weren’t very ‘proper’, but she failed to mention rude, insulting, argumentative, unfriendly, arrogant, and intolerable.”

She dropped some coins on the table, stood up, and took a step toward the door.

He grabbed her wrist. “Wait.” His grip was a little too firm.

“Shall I add violent to the list?”

Instantly, he let her wrist go, and the black sheep finally looked a little sheepish, but Eliza wasn’t going to wait around for the wolf hidden in sheep’s clothing to return. She cut back across the street and slipped back to her own shop.

Carmen looked up as Eliza passed through on the way to the back room.

“Any tea left?” said Eliza. “I think I need a stiff cup after that horrendous coffee.”

Eliza picked up the phone as soon as the hot tea began to settle her nerves.

“That is the
last
time, Tori!
Ever
! He is the rudest Englishman I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something.”

“Oh no,” said Tori. “I’m
so
sorry.”

“At least he didn’t blow his wad in one of my hats.”

The mention of hats reminded Eliza of something.
The riding hat.
She’d left it at the coffee shop.

Tori was saying, “What about blowing?”

“Oh, never mind. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”

Eliza strode back across the street. Her table had been cleared. So had his. She went up to the counter.

“Did you find a hat a few minutes ago? I accidentally left it on my table over there.” Because
he 
had gotten her so ruffled.

“No, ma’am. Sorry. Nothing’s been turned into lost and found. But we can’t be responsible for—”

“—Yes, yes, I know. Forget it.”

She turned back toward the door and then noticed a folded up piece of newspaper on the chair where
Sir 
Todd had been sitting. She picked it up and took it with her.

By the time she got back to her shop her tea was tepid and she was angry all over again.

Later that evening, Tori and Eliza met at the King’s Cross for a drink. Stella joined them. They perched on stools around a circular cocktail table and drank Mojave martinis, their first choice stress-buster. Mixed with Midori, Patron Tequila, lemon lime mix, and a splash of champagne, a couple of these each and all wrongs were made right in the worlds of these women.

“I can’t believe it went so terribly,” said Tori. She had not stopped apologizing for her cousin-in-law all evening. “He said he was really looking forward to meeting you.”

“Then I must have met his doppelganger because it seemed like he’d rather dig a latrine than meet with me. He called me a peach, for crying out loud. You said you had a family dinner with him, right? Did he happen to throw his food on the floor?”

“No! He was on his
best 
behavior. Charming, if a little rough around the edges. Did you even notice how handsome he is?”

Had she? She thought back. Yes, that moment when their eyes met and he stopped frowning for just a second. Something had struck her then. She’d all but forgotten that moment because every other moment she'd felt like she was in the presence of a porcupine poised for attack (and Eliza had really faced an angry porcupine once and it was a lot more fearsome than most people can imagine).

“No amount of handsome can account for an ugly personality.”

Tori shook her head. “I just don’t get it.”

“You can set
me 
up,” drawled Stella downing the rest of her drink and waving for another. “It’s been ages since I’ve been rutted.”

She grinned. The drinks were working their magic.

“Maybe that’s it,” said Tori. “Maybe Todd’s been spending too much time with animals lately.”

“If that’s your theory, you’d better call PETA,” said Eliza. She pulled out the liquor-soaked green grape from the bottom of her glass and sucked on it.

“No offense, Stella,” said Tori. “But I think Eliza is more Todd’s type. You need someone burlier.”

Stella nodded seriously. “That’s possible. But I don’t mind rude. Those ones tend to have a lot of pent up passion once you get them between the sheets.”

“Are you sure you won’t give him another chance, Eliza? Even Tatum thought it would be a good match.”

Eliza shook her head. “Send him to etiquette school first and then maybe I’ll consider it.”

“Tatum’s going to tear a strip off him when he hears about this.”

“Oh, don’t bother telling him. Just forget it.”

But after few sips of her second martini, the idea of someone beating on that arrogant, smug, and far-from-valiant knight Sir Todd gave Eliza a sense of satisfaction. “Tell Tatum whatever you want.”

“What did this fellow get his knighthood for anyway,” said Stella.

“Something to do with animal husbandry, I think,” said Tori.

“Why am I not surprised it has something to do with being screwed,” said Eliza.

Three hours later, Stella, Tori, and Eliza floated out of the King’s Cross feeling happy, relaxed, and at one with the world at large. A car was waiting to take Tori home, and Eliza and Stella shared a cab back to Piccadilly. Eliza was dropped off first. She gave Stella a hug and they decided to meet the next day and go look at silk in Hoxton. Stella had some new dresses to design and Eliza was going to come up with some matching hats based on the fabrics Stella chose.

“Toodle-oo-oo,” called Stella through the window as Eliza fished for her key outside Candied Locks. Eliza waved goodbye to Stella and nearly lost her balance. She reached out to steady herself on the wall, dropped her key, and had to search for it on the pavement after the cab had pulled away. She found it, slipped it into the door to the left of the shop front and made her way, with help from the railing, to her cozy and well-appointed flat one flight up.

A spiral staircase in the back room of the hat shop also led to the flat, but unless Eliza was working late to a deadline, she liked the feeling of leaving work and then going home, closing one door of her life and entering another. Her life and work overlapped all the time, so it was nothing more than a silly ritual, but it helped her to have two doors, at least symbolically. She did that with the past and the present, too. Only she didn’t open the door to the past anymore.

She turned on a few lights, drank a glass of water, and ran a bath for herself. She sat down and emptied her purse while the water ran. A folded-up piece of newspaper slid out along with her wallet, make-up case, cell phone, and the small sketch book she kept with her at all times for design ideas. She made a point of perusing this at the end of each workday because she found it stimulated her dream imagination and gave her new ideas each morning.

But it was the paper she picked up rather than the sketch book. Where did it come from? She wandered through her martini-soaked memory and then, remembering, she frowned. Unfolding the pages she saw that it was a copy of the Racing Post. Horse racing? That was Todd’s arena wasn’t it? The details were hazy at the moment.

Eliza jumped up, having forgotten about the bath water. The paper fell off her lap to the floor. After she turned off the tub, she returned to the sitting room to tidy up the mess of her purse. She noticed a card on the floor. It must have slipped from the paper. She picked it up.
Sir Todd Montgomery
.

A calling card? How old fashioned. Had he meant to give this to her upon meeting? Such an act would have been too proper, too polite. Maybe that had been his original intention, to treat her like a respectable human being, but then his real personality got the better of him.

What a prick he turned out to be! She had half a mind to tell him what she thought of him. Her means lay within her grasp. There was his phone number right there. And there was her phone. Right there. She looked at the clock. Who cared if it was midnight? She had been nothing but polite today, except when she stood up to leave perhaps, but how could a woman sit through any more of that man’s demeanor. She picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hullo…” A sleepy voice. He sounded gentler this way.

“Well, hello.” Eliza grinned and swayed on her feet. Martinis made her bold but they also made her body feel like seaweed swaying in a warm tide.

“Who’s this?” He was probably looking at the clock right now.

“Your presuming is not at all up to snuff, I see. This is Eliza Keating.”

“From the hat shop?”

“The coffee shop actually. You never did set foot in the hat shop. Perhaps you thought it beneath you.”

“No. I wouldn’t think that. I was just –”

“–Rude, angry for no reason, disrespectful, unkind, and generally just a tweedy prick,
Sir
. And no amount of cute makes up for that.”

“You thought I was cute?”

Oh god, did she really say that? What word rhymed with cute?

“I said
mute
. Maybe if you refrained from opening your pompous full-lipped mouth you would have –”  

“You noticed my lips?”

Did she just hear a low chuckle?

“I noticed how perfectly my knuckles would fit against them if I punched you. Which I refrained from doing, by the way.”

“Are you drunk, Eliza?”

“Of course not,” she said, hotly. “No one gets drunk on just a couple of martinis.” Or had it been three?

“No one but drunk people call after midnight.”

“People with emergencies do!”

“Do you have an emergency to report?” He chuckled again.

“You are infuriating!” She slammed down the phone.

After that, she tore up the business card, crumpled up the newspaper and kicked it in the direction of the kitchen. Then she went to calm down in the bath.

Warm bubbly water swirled around her. Her small pink nipples grazed the surface of the water. Eliza loved the feel of her breasts in the water. So round and light and floaty. Gravity was hard on them, always pulling and tugging downward. In water, everything perked up.

She never should have picked up the phone. She'd regret that in the morning. If she remembered. Had she said something about punching him in the mouth? How very unladylike. She’d given up that kind of behavior years ago. Maybe she was drunk after all. What had provoked her to say that? Oh, it was that reference to his lips. He had been teasing her for noticing his lips, and for using the word cute. Yes, he did have nice lips…

Alone in her bath she was willing to admit that Tori was right. Cousin Todd was handsome. He had thick, dark hair trimmed short at the sides and back but wavy enough at the top that she could imagine fingers running through it—not
hers
, of course. He had green eyes, she thought. Green or blue, she wasn’t entirely sure now. Either way, light eyes with dark hair was her favorite combination. Her own hair was chestnut brown and her eyes a similar shade but she had always wished for blue eyes; she would have been prettier with blue eyes. And with a smaller forehead. Hers was a tad too high, which is probably why she had an early interest in hats; they could cover up some of that breadth. Her bangs helped a bit with that now. (Though at the moment they were wet, sticky ropes stuck to her face.)

So her latest, and last, blind date set up by Lady Victoria Manning had turned out to be cute, with nice hair and eyes, and immensely kissable lips. It was a darn shame he was such an asshole. That had colored her full assessment of him. Though his legs were the same length—she had noticed that when he stood beside her at the coffee shop. She now recalled they looked strong and muscular, too, even through his slacks, which had been perfectly tailored. Her first view had been crotch level after all, and she had a seamstress’s eye. (He definitely hung to the right.) Oh god, what was she thinking? Her nipples were betraying her now. Their little pink tips had poked up above the water line.