London Lace #1

by Catou Martine

  “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.

  A GENTLEMAN CALLER

  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.

  She slipped down under the bath water fully immersing her shoulder-length locks. She rubbed at her nipples,
trying to calm them back to their relaxed state, but she only made matters worse because she now felt a tingle in her groin.

  She moved her hands to her hair, swirling it thoroughly, but decided not to wash it. She scooted up from her prone position and lathered herself up with her favorite jasmine scented soap from Paris. She cleaned herself properly, but did not give any extra attention to the body parts calling out for more. She was done with Todd Montgomery. She had even drunk-dialed him. Maybe she didn’t have as much dignity as she thought.

  She drained the bath, toweled off, combed her hair and slipped into the turquoise silk robe she had found on sale in China Town last year. It felt delicious against her skin. By the time she brushed her teeth she had forgiven her nipples and was realizing that the tingle between her legs was a personal invitation to a pleasure she hadn’t given herself for a few weeks. After all, she could fantasize about an imaginary, polite, passionate version of Todd Montgomery (but she wouldn’t, she promised herself, go so far as to imagine Tatum instead—she always felt so guilty when she did that).

  As she opened the door to the bathroom, a cloud of steam escaped with her. She padded across the second-hand Persian carpet to get her sketch book. She’d only glanced at one page when she heard banging from the street. A powerful knocking. She looked at the clock. It was one AM. The alleys of Soho used to get rowdy at this time most nights, but this particular street in Piccadilly, with its high-end boutiques and daytime coffee shops, was tame by comparison. She tiptoed to the window to assess the commotion, picking up the phone on the way in case someone was trying to break into the shop. The noise sounded that close.

  Just below, someone was banging on a door. Eliza’s door. Not the one to the shop, but the one leading to the stairs to her apartment.

  “Miss Keating! I know you’re in there.” The man wore a tweed blazer. He looked up now, his dark hair falling over one eyes. He saw her looking down from the window.

  “Please let me in,” he said a little more quietly. Eliza was just about to shake her head to say no—what kind of nutcase would come over in the middle of the night?—but then, for the first time, he smiled. And to say her knees buckled under her would be close to accurate. She staggered back, catching herself on her reupholstered Queen Anne chair, the only thing from her mother that held any remote value. She considered dropping into that chair to recover, but he was banging loudly again. He’d wake up the whole neighborhood. Or rather, the handful of people like her who kept apartments over their shops.

  She was stunned and needed the support of the railing to make her way down the stairs as much as she had needed it to make her way up just a little over an hour ago.

  The light was unflattering, her hair was wet and stringy and making a wet patch down her back, but she ignored all of this as she made her way to the outer door trying to figure out what to say to this handsome, rude intruder. It didn’t help that Stella’s words from earlier in the evening came flooding back to her. “Those ones tend to have a lot of pent up passion once you get them between the sheets….”

  He was on the other side of the glass looking back towards the street. Perhaps he sensed her movement because he turned all of a sudden. He was still smiling. It was a cross between a smirk and a genuine smile, but it was close enough to a smirk for Eliza to get her bearings (mostly) and remember who this was and why she had hung up on him forty-five minutes ago. But when his eyes locked on hers she forgot whatever she thought she remembered just a moment before. The tingle between her legs ignited into a small flame.

  “What are you doing here?” she said after unlocking the door.

  He held up a metal cylinder that looked like a small take-out cup, but a little different. She’d seen something like that before, in a Paris sex shop. It was a device designed for men and meant to capture their come when they jerked off as they went about their day, because, as the product stated, “why not do what men are designed to do in a cup designed just for you?” She had been curious and fascinated while in the store (fascinated that people would design, sell, and buy just about anything these days) but at the moment she was completely appalled.

  “I brought this too,” he said, pulling something out from behind his back. It was the riding cap she’d left at the coffee shop.

  She had a sudden flash of the fiasco with Taylor Attford. Had Tori told him about it? Was Todd Montgomery here to humiliate her? Was he going to empty his man-cup into her riding hat to get back at her for waking him up in the middle of the night?

  “How dare you!” She grabbed at the hat before he could ruin it.

  He frowned. “Most people would say thank you. You left it at the coffee shop when you stormed out in a huff, right after threatening to accuse me with assault.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Actually, you did leave the hat on the table and you did storm out in huff. Perhaps the bit about assault was an embellishment on my part.”

  He winked.

  Then he smiled.

  Eliza went wobbly again and put a hand on the railing behind her.

  “You’re teasing me,” she said narrowing her eyes. She noted now that his eyes were indeed blue and perfectly matched the faded blue jeans he was wearing. Under his open tweed jacket he wore a simple white T-shirt.

  When she looked back at his face, she was chagrined to see he was still smiling. His features, while still handsome, looked harsher when he frowned, but when he smiled, revealing perfectly straight, white, not-typically-British teeth, his eyes seemed clearer, bluer, and more intense. His lips looked full and soft and in need of kissing.

  “Thank you for bringing my hat.” She swallowed and looked warily at the metal container. “What’s in there?”

  He glanced at it, assessed it, as if he had forgotten what he was carrying.

  “It’s hot, creamy…”

  Eliza closed her eyes.

  “…coffee. That and some serious conversation is the only antidote to a martini-drunk-dialing hangover.”

  “Serious conversation?”

  “Yes.” He stopped smiling but didn’t exactly frown. He looked somewhat expectant, and this look was so similar to that one brief moment when they’d made eye contact in the coffee shop, that Eliza relented, and decided, more physically than consciously, because of the blue jeans, T-shirt, smile and coffee, to give him just one more chance.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I was a complete wanker this afternoon and I’d like to apologize.”

  “Fine. Apology accepted.”

  “Miss Keating. Don’t let a man off that easy.”

  “I’m not.” She took the thermos of coffee from him. “But there’s no reason for you to come inside to say that.”

  “I wasn’t planning to. Proper apologies should be made on the thresholds of doorways.” He took a step back, laid his right hand across his heart.

  “Miss Eliza Keating. I humbly offer my most sincere apologies for my rudeness and arrogance and perceived violence toward your person. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for being ‘insulting, argumentative, unfriendly, arrogant, and intolerable’ and…oh yes ‘infuriating’?”

  “Are you teasing me again?”

  “No.” He looked genuinely hurt. “Do you want me to do it again?”

  “No. That was adequate groveling.”

  He offered a smirking smile and a low chuckle.

  “Thank you for the coffee.” She was about to close the door.

  “Actually, it’s enough for two,” he said taking a step forward. “I was hoping I could share it with you. I owe you a civil sharing of cups after today.”

  “It’s after one in the morning.”

  “Don’t you find me better company at this hour?”

  “I suppose I do.” She smiled.

  For a brief moment, he had the same look as that first un-frowning expression at the coffee shop. Was that the effect of her smile on him?

  “How did you know where I live?”<
br />
  “Tori mentioned you had a live-work atelier when she first told me about you. Plus the doors are painted the same shiny crimson, with the same style of numbers indicating the address of shop and apartment, and I’ve noticed all the other shops on this street have a unique color and number typesetting, as if you all got together to create this neighborhood style.”

  “How observant. In fact we did.”

  “Are you convinced I’m not a stalker?”

  “Mostly. You really are related to Tatum Montgomery?”

  “Distantly, yes.”

  “You look quite alike.”

  “That Montgomery gene is a bully. Anything else, Miss Keating?”

  “Why did you presume I take milk in my coffee?”

  He smiled again and Eliza had to straighten her knees to keep them from turning to jelly.

  “You were practically swooning into your latte foam this afternoon. It was an educated guess.”

  It was the word swooning that decided it for her. She opened the door wider.

  “Do come in.”

  Eliza was still feeling a little unstable, what with the martinis, the soak in the tub, and the unexpectedly-dashing-when-smiling Sir Todd Montgomery following her up the steps to her apartment this very minute. It wasn’t any wonder she lost her balance and missed a step. Immediately, she felt his hand on her, warm and firm through the silk of her robe. The tingle between her legs flared. She didn’t even have on any panties to soak up the moistness triggered by his touch.

  “Steady now, Miss Keating. Are you all right?” He chuckled again, almost too low for Eliza to hear.

  She cleared her throat to cover her embarrassment. “Actually, I’m very familiar with these steps, but less so when I’m followed up by a man in the middle of the night.”

  “That is quite the confession,” said Todd. “So not very many men have followed you up these stairs in the middle of the night?”

  There was no proper way to answer that question, and thankfully, she had reached the landing. She turned to him, one step below her, and noticed his eyes were focused on the dipping V of her silk robe, tied loosely at her waist and offering an ample view of the inner curves of her breasts.