The Shop of Shades and Secrets (Modern Gothic Romance 1) (35 page)

Hmm. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have her ego stroked like this all evening. She could probably suffer through some excellent food and wine on the elbow of the next State Senator if he was going to talk to her like that. After all, a woman needed her confidence shored up every once in awhile.

“I have my car below. Are you ready?” He offered his arm, crooking his elbow, and Fiona reluctantly slipped her hand through it.

Now that she was closer to him, she realized how overpowering his cologne was. His campaign manager should let him know to ease off on it, or he’d be making the babies he was kissing sneeze.

That quirky thought made her smile, and lightened her thoughts as she settled into the sleek Jaguar. It purred like its namesake and the ride from Manayunk to the Art Museum was smooth but filled with Barnaby’s chatter about his latest public appearances.

He dropped the car with a valet at the entrance to the museum, and they climbed the steps that Rocky made famous, up and into the looming, columned building.

~*~

Gideon froze when he caught sight of the elegant couple entering the marbled lobby of the Museum. He stared from across the room as his fingers tightened around a rock glass.

It
was
Fiona.

With Barnaby Forth.

Leslie shifted beside him, bumping into his arm, and he barely noticed when she turned to look up at him. “Gideon? Whatever is the matter?”

Without waiting for him to respond, she looked over. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Who’s that?” he asked with nonchalance. Lord, he was getting good at faking that.

“It
is
her. She’s striking—especially in that unusual gown with those long legs and all that hair.”

Those long legs and all that hair had been wrapped around him many times. Gideon swallowed a drink of club soda and suddenly wished for something stronger.

“I can see why you were attracted to her.”

The amazing thing was that Leslie didn’t sound jealous or concerned or put out by the fact that he couldn’t turn his attention away from Fiona. Maybe she was just as good at faking nonchalance as he was.

He looked down at her. “Yes, she’s very beautiful. But it’s over between us—you don’t have anything to worry about.” As he spoke, he realized he was saying it for his own benefit more than for hers.

“I’m not worried whatsoever, Gideon. This was—”

Whatever she was about to say was interrupted by the arrival of Gideon Senior and Iva, accompanied by some of his grandfather’s cronies from law school.

They exchanged pleasantries with Ben Laslow and Gordon Yonke and their wives, and Gideon trained his attention on the conversation at hand and away from the distraction across the room.

His reprieve was short-lived, however, when Gordon Yonke suddenly said, “Don’t I know that woman?”

The group’s attention turned as one, fixating on the cinnamon and bronze column of woman standing next to Barnaby Forth, only yards away. Gideon’s heart surged, choking him, and he suddenly recalled how Yonke knew Fiona. He should be glad she wasn’t with him—these conservative folk would remember her as the odd, gypsy-like woman who told their futures.

“Yes, Gordon, she was doing those palm-readings at that fundraiser a few months ago,” his wife told him. “You talked about her for weeks after.” She turned and called, “Yoo hoo! Over here!” and waved to get Fiona’s attention.

Gideon’s feet were nailed to the floor. If he could have, he’d have bolted out of the room. All he could do, however, was stand there with a fixed half-smile on his face as his pieces of his world merged and distorted like the insides of a kaleidoscope.

Fiona saw the group, and allowed herself and Barnaby to be called over. “They must recognize you,” she started to say to her escort as they approached…and then her voice trailed off when she saw Gideon with his grandparents and the still-slender Leslie.

“Great,” Barnaby murmured. “Let’s charm some votes out of these blue bloods.” Then as they walked up, he extended his hand with a hearty greeting and shook hands all around the little group. “Nath. Pleasure to see you again. Always seem to be running into you at these things, eh?”

“I remember you, dear,” said one of the ladies whom Fiona faintly remembered. “You were reading our palms at the Bryn Mawr Country Club.”

“Oh, yes,” Fiona replied, darting a glance at Gideon. He stood just outside of the little group, his mouth anchored to one side in some sort of expression that could have been a smile. Despite the frozen look on his face, he looked so good it made her stomach flutter and her mouth water. He’d recently had his hair cut, and although that stern look still graced his face, she could see the warmth and emotion he hid so well.

She remembered how carefree he was when he smiled, and how heated his expression could be when he was trying to argue a point—nothing like that molded, clay face with no emotion.

“Good evening,” she said, turning to greet Gideon Senior. She shook his hand, remembering with a pang how much she’d enjoyed the blustery man and his wife, who was looking at her as though trying to see into the depths of her mind. “Hello Iva. I haven’t seen you around the shop since we found those letters of Valente’s.”

Now why had she said that? The last thing she wanted to do was make Iva feel uncomfortable for not visiting her. Of course she couldn’t visit her any more. Fiona had dumped her grandson—who was going to marry someone else.

“And it’s Leslie, isn’t it?” Fiona put sincere warmth in her voice and made sure she made good, solid eye contact with the elegant brunette who was standing hip to shoulder with the man she loved. “Congratulations to both of you.”

With the last phrase, Fiona finally looked at Gideon, head-on, and when their eyes met she was stunned at the blankness—bleakness—there. His eyes contained emptiness, only emptiness, and she couldn’t suppress her own wave of grief.

She shook Leslie’s hand, but Fiona couldn’t make herself touch Gideon, especially on his hands. Before he even had the chance to offer, she turned to the other couples, who she barely knew and who would be a wonderful camouflage, and reintroduced herself to them.

The ladies babbled about her palm-reading and even the men—for all the stiff-necked properness of their old money and power—acted fascinated by her talent.

“You’ve never read my palm, Fiona,” Barnaby said with an inflection of intimacy that made her cringe. She’d never even allowed him to kiss her, let alone given him cause to use that tone. “I’d like to know if I’m going to win the election. Can you tell me that?”

Fiona laughed brightly, studious in keeping her gaze from checking Gideon’s reaction to Barnaby’s comment. “I can’t tell you if you’ll win this election in particular…but I should be able to tell you whether you’ll find success.” Glad for the distraction, despite how it had come about, she took Barnaby’s hand and turned it palm-up.

And then she almost dropped it.

Fiona had never had such an immediate reaction to looking at someone’s palm before. Intense discomfort and unease washed over her like an awful surprise, and she had to take a deep breath to calm her sudden jumping nerves.

What was wrong with her?

Fiona swallowed and focused back on Barnaby’s hand. She tried to follow the lines of his palm, but anything she might have read into them was engulfed by her strange feelings of aversion. She concentrated, traced some of the lines on his hand with her index finger, and babbled something—she would never remember what—about him being a success and having a happy life with two children and a wife and several other comments that sounded palm-reader-like.

Then, as soon as she could—after the comments died down—Fiona excused herself from the little group, glad to notice that at some point Gideon and Leslie had stepped away. Barnaby wanted to accompany her, but with a playful little laugh, she told him, “I’m just going to step into the powder room for a minute. Why don’t you stay here and campaign for a bit?”

The chuckles from the group followed her as she stepped away, and it wasn’t until she’d made her way across the room that she felt able to breathe again. Between seeing Gideon and his fiancée unexpectedly and then the strange reaction she’d had to Barnaby, Fiona desired only to have a few minutes to herself.

Her knowledge of the layout of the Art Museum aided her in her quest for privacy, and Fiona had no trouble finding a small alcove where she could stand and pretend to admire a Vermeer while trying to get her composure under control.

She felt a presence behind her almost immediately, and, half-expecting to see Gideon standing there, she turned.

Her heart plummeted.

“Iva. I’m so glad to see you again…and I want to apologize for my comment about you not coming by. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot—it was very rude, and I feel terrible about it.” She heard herself babbling, but she couldn’t stop. She was afraid what would happen when her emotions caught up with her.

“Fiona, dear,” was all Iva said before pulling her into her sweet-smelling embrace. The shorter woman hugged her tightly, and for a minute, she didn’t want to let go. “I wasn’t offended at all. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me, at least, not for awhile. I should be the one apologizing for not coming by. I wasn’t certain…what had happened between the two of you. And, well…you know Gideon. He wouldn’t say anything about it.”

Tears knitted into the corners of her eyes and she felt a huge lump forming in her throat. How could this woman that she barely knew evoke such an honest response in her when her own mother couldn’t?

Finally, Fiona pulled away, only slightly embarrassed by her emotional reaction. It had felt good to let someone hold her—to let herself grieve for a minute.

“You love him,” said the older woman.

Fiona swallowed over the heaviness in her throat, considered lying, but then nodded. “Yes.” She sniffled in a manner so contrary to the elegance of her gown that she choked on a small laugh and began to dig around in her handbag.

“Here.” Iva pulled a tissue from her bag and offered it to Fiona, who had not been able to find one in her tiny pocketbook. “I know you’re not used to such a small purse.”

Fiona smiled again and blew her nose. “Thank you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me…actually, I sort of do.” Not only did she want to change the subject, but she needed to tell someone about Barnaby. “When I picked up Barnaby’s hand to read his palm, something strange happened.”

“You weren’t hit with a bolt of lightning and fell in love with him, did you?” Iva demanded, half-joking, but, from the look in her eyes, half-serious.

“No…in fact, it was quite the opposite. Exactly the opposite. I felt this surge of dislike rush through me—I almost dropped him. It made it really hard to focus on what I was reading, and I just made some stuff up. I wonder what caused me to react that way.”

“Does he frighten you? Perhaps you shouldn’t be alone with him, Fiona.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t necessarily that he frightened me—after all, I’ve been alone with the guy many times and he’s never raised the hair on the back of my neck like tonight. He’s never given me cause to feel uncomfortable around him before. I think it must have just been a fluke of a moment…maybe he’s just another dishonest politician, and it came out in his palm.” She shrugged off the older woman’s concern. She’d already decided that after tonight she wasn’t going to see him any more anyway.

“Well, he is Valente’s grandnephew,” Iva said with a gentle smile, looking at her with a gleam in her blue eyes. “We’ll get to the other stuff in a minute—but first, I found out some things about your benefactor that might explain your ghost.”