Ivan dropped the blanket to the floor. “I apologize. I didn’t expect that to happen.”
“You’ll be sacked,” Alecia said, frantic.
He patted her arm. “I don’t think so. The room was empty for the night. But we have overstayed our welcome. I didn’t expect us to fall asleep.”
She blushed. “We took a lot of, err, exercise.”
He grinned, losing his professional bearing. “Why, Miss Loudon, how you do go on.” He bent for a kiss.
She threw caution and stale morning breath to the wind and kissed him back enthusiastically. “The Marvins are never awake at this hour, so I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“I haven’t slept this well in weeks,” he declared, scratching his broad chest. “I’m equal to anything.”
Alecia baby-stepped toward the bearskin rug, almost defeated by the mummy wrapping Ivan had woven around her with the sheet. Much more awkwardly than the night before, she knelt down and scrambled for her tap pants, then unrolled the sheet enough to pull them on. She tossed Ivan his underclothes and reached for her bralette.
She had yet to fasten it when the door opened. “Hey, Ivan,” Swankle said.
She ducked behind Ivan as he answered. “Yes?” Ivan asked, calmly pulling his undershirt over his head.
“Mrs. Plash is missing again. I’ll keep my mouth shut about this if you help me find her.”
Ivan nodded equably, despite his assurance that his position was in no danger. “I’ll take the fourth and fifth if you take the sixth and seventh.”
“Well done. I’d better stay near to this,” Swankle said, gesturing behind him. “I’m getting overtime. You can put in for it too, I expect.”
Ivan raised his eyebrows, and Swankle’s gaze drifted to Alecia. “Oh my. Lucky bastard.” Swankle shut the door quickly.
“Can you help me with my dress?” Alecia asked, attempting to ignore her humiliation in the interest of a speedy exit. “I don’t know where my stockings are.”
“In the foyer. We wanted to be barefoot on the rug.”
“Right.” Alecia tried to react as if this sort of thing happened to her all the time. “Since you are going to search the fourth and fifth, do you want me to check the basement? That bathroom you said she likes? Miss Plash won’t calm down until her mother is found, I expect.”
“You want to help?”
She forced cheer into her voice. “Absolutely.”
“Brilliant plan, then,” Ivan said. “I expect you are right, unless she is hiding behind that fern again. You can reach the basement bathrooms down the public staircase.”
They dressed quickly. Alecia desperately wanted her hairbrush and toothbrush, but at least she could tidy up a little in the downstairs bathroom, even if Mrs. Plash wasn’t there.
“I’m sorry our night together ended so abruptly,” he said, helping her pin up her hair.
“Nothing more to be said about that.”
“Alecia.”
“I should bob my hair,” she said. “It’s so old-fashioned.”
“No, I love it.” He handed her another pin, then pulled on his shoes. “Look, I know this was your first time. It should have been more romantic.”
“It was very romantic, until just now. Don’t worry. It isn’t your fault.” She pushed her toes into her beloved new shoes and fastened them, then hefted her outerwear.
“I’ll see you downstairs tonight,” he said. “A kiss for luck?”
She smiled. “Always. But you can’t leave me yet. I rather take the service lift to the basement.”
Chapter Thirteen
“If anyone asks what you are doing on this lift, just tell them what is going on. The more people who are looking for Mrs. Plash, the faster we’ll find her,” Ivan said as he opened the gate on the fifth floor.
“I will.” Alecia moved toward the control.
He took her hand and, staring into her eyes, kissed her hand in a very continental manner. “Last night was beautiful,” he whispered tenderly. “My myshka, you were a wonder.”
She smiled, but it felt bittersweet. In the hard light of day, she realized a night like the magical one before should have been a wedding night, not a night snatched out of ordinary life. Today they didn’t start their new life together, just continued to go on like nothing had changed. Yet everything had. The truth had to be faced: She was no flapper. She wanted a husband. But she’d only known Ivan a few weeks.
Ivan shut the gate. She’d watched closely enough before to know how to operate the lift herself and made it down to the basement with no trouble beyond a rather rough, jerking stop. Once she exited into the dank, dim corridor, she had to think hard to remember where the bathroom was. She could really do with a cup of tea and a bun.
After a couple of wrong turns, she found the corridor where the four bathrooms were and opened the doors, one after another. They all seemed to be empty, but then, as she hesitated in the last one, she heard breathing. She darted deeper into the room, wondering if there were hidden recesses. It was only then that she saw Mrs. Plash, huddled down in the deep bathtub, still in her dressing gown.
“Oh, goodness,” she cried, bending down. “Mrs. Plash.”
“They were yelling,” the old woman whispered. “I do hate yelling. Emmeline has such a temper.”
“You can’t stay here, Mrs. Plash.” She reached out her arm. “Come, I’ll bring you back upstairs. Your daughter is beside herself.”
“Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” Mrs. Plash said, the deep grooves around her mouth deepening into shadow.
“Be that as it may, you need each other,” Alecia said briskly. “Give me both of your hands as you climb out.”
The woman complied somewhat shakily. She overbalanced as she lifted her second foot out of the tub, but Alecia kept her steady.
“We both need some breakfast,” Alecia said when they were safe. “Perhaps we’ll call for two trays when we are upstairs.”
“Very kind of you. I would love a visitor. You’re such a nice young girl.”
“Thank you.” Alecia patted the age-spotted hand, then guided her back to the service lift.
“We aren’t supposed to be here.”
“No,” Alecia agreed. “But I don’t think you are a stranger to it.”
Mrs. Plash’s face took on an expression of girlish defiance. “I came here as a young matron, you know, with my husband. We loved to explore the place. Mr. Plash was very friendly with Mr. Eyre’s father. We went to his house a number of times for dinner parties.”
Alecia half listened to the woman ramble as she closed the door and started the lift. So, Mr. Eyre didn’t spring directly from Zeus’s head. And it did sound like the senior Mr. Eyre was involved with the hotel. Maybe the rumor was true and Mr. Eyre was not just the manager, but the owner.
The lift didn’t jerk quite as hard when she stopped it this time. She escorted Mrs. Plash out. The older woman fished her key out of her dressing gown pocket, but they didn’t need it. Her door was already open. Olga, the chambermaid, was inside, packing dresses into tissue paper and putting them into a trunk.
Mrs. Plash faltered at the door and stopped moving. Alecia had to peer over her shoulder.
“Olga?” she asked.
The beautiful Russian woman whipped around. “Oh, Mrs. Plash!”
Mrs. Plash’s lips trembled. “What is going on?”
“I—” Olga started then stopped. “I’ll step down to Mr. Eyre’s office and let him know you have returned, yes?”
“Could you arrange for food to be brought as well?” Alecia asked. “Mrs. Plash is hungry.”
“Oh, miss, there is already a car waiting outside. I’m only just finishing the packing.”
“It hasn’t been half an hour since I went to search for her,” Alecia said.
“I had help at first,” Olga said. “But she had to start cleaning the rooms on this floor.”
Alecia felt a hand on her shoulder. Ivan looked down at her, the dark s
tubble on his face only emphasizing his beautifully cut jawline. “What is the news? Oh, you found her. Excellent!”
“You can’t let them send her away,” Alecia said. “She’ll be even more confused in an unfamiliar place. We’ve had church families go through similar experiences.”
Ivan drew her aside as Mrs. Plash wrung her hands. “Mr. Eyre won’t have her in the hotel any longer, because Miss Plash attacked him.”
“What?”
“Physically attacked him,” Ivan confirmed. “You heard her upstairs. She’s a lunatic.”
“I don’t think they should go. What does Mr. Eyre think, treating a woman like that? He’s flirted with me in front of Miss Plash. He’s not a nice man.”
“He’s my employer,” Ivan said. “Please don’t speak about him like that, especially here.”
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Instead of a quiet morning, you know what I had. Embarrassment, no privacy, and another ramble through the basement. I want a cup of tea and for Mr. Eyre to behave himself.” And a husband.
“I’ll go down to the Coffee Room and get tea and toast for you both while Olga finishes the packing.”
Olga spoke up. “I was going to go downstairs myself.” Then she muttered something in Russian.
Ivan rolled his eyes. “I’ll do it. Finish your task.”
* * *
Ivan took the steps from the fifth floor to the ground floor. He needed time to gather his thoughts. While he was grateful Mrs. Plash had been found, his entire existence felt muddled. Alecia wasn’t the only person to have been denied her morning cup of tea. When he touched his chin he could feel the stubble. He didn’t like to present himself in this unwashed fashion. Not only was it against the employee handbook, it just didn’t look right in such an upscale establishment.
He went directly to Mr. Eyre’s office.
“What?” the manager barked.
“Miss Loudon found Mrs. Plash. Olga is almost finished with the packing.”
“And Miss Plash?”
“Half an hour ago she was still hysterical.” Ivan shrugged.
Eyre glanced up. “The Grand Russe may be at sixes and sevens this morning, but I do recall you are a night watchman, not day staff. Why are you here, Salter?”
“I spent the night with Miss Loudon in the Piano Suite,” he admitted.
“You cad,” Eyre exclaimed. “Did they walk in on you?”
“Yes, sir.” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling.
“Have her confidence now, do you?” Eyre mused.
“I’m not sure how important that is, sir. This situation has come very close to home.”
“What do you mean?”
Ivan stared at the battered old ashtray on Eyre’s desk. “I saw my, err, someone from my neighborhood with Mr. Marvin.”
Eyre frowned. “Mr. Marvin? I can’t imagine he wants Ovolensky dead. Have they ever met?”
He straightened. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Any legitimate reason for Marvin to speak to this person?”
“The person is a Russian caterer.”
Eyre shook his head. “No, that won’t do. Marvin isn’t in charge of catering for the command performance.”
“There is a banquet scene in Macbeth.”
Eyre’s eyebrows relaxed. He reached into his coat for his cigarette case. “Maybe he is staging the play Russian-style. Find out from Miss Loudon.”
“Very good, sir.” He was glad Eyre didn’t seem to mind about the suite. Just as he’d expected from such a worldly sort.
“We’re moving the Plashes to the boardinghouse where Olga lives. Do you know it?”
“Yes, sir.” Where everyone lived had come up in conversation when all the employees started work.
“Help with the transport, will you? You can add all this to your time card. Except the time with Miss Loudon. Although, now that you’ve become intimate, I wonder if you can ask her more direct questions. Have her find out more about the play, for instance.”
“I’m sure she knows about it already.”
“Find out for us, then. Where is she now?” Eyre asked with an air of impatience.
“With Mrs. Plash.”
“Excellent. You can answer the banquet question right away. I’d hate to think Mr. Marvin is involved in a conspiracy, but if he is, we might be able to stop it right here and now.”
Ivan nodded. He walked out, despairing. One night of singular beauty and now it had turned into an act of spy craft or commerce. And Alecia was cross with him. He knew her well enough to tell.
The day continued in the same fashion. Alecia had scarcely spoken to him during the transporting of the bags and the Plash women to the boardinghouse. Ivan didn’t blame her, because he and Alecia had had absolutely no privacy and both women were completely distraught, Miss Plash by her failure to secure her man, and Mrs. Plash by contrition. The confused elderly woman was convinced she was to blame for the removal and apologized repeatedly. Alecia could calm her down for a minute or two, then the speech would begin again, as if Mrs. Plash had not said it two minutes before. No wonder Miss Plash had thrown herself into a frenzied lifestyle. The strain of dealing with her mother’s condition must be acute.
Alecia didn’t seem to mind, however. She was patience itself. If only she looked at him with the soft eyes of love, instead of daggered expressions that made it clear she had not forgiven him for the way their night had ended, and his complicity in removing the women from the Grand Russe.
And she didn’t even know about the assassination plot.
He walked to the service corridor at nearly midnight, his feet dragging a bit. Very little rest and a great deal of mental strain over the previous day had taken their toll. He felt a little like he had during those days in Helsinki when he’d been mourning his dead family and trying to keep food in Vera’s mouth. Now Vera was the one causing him pain by her refusal to let go of the past.
He saw Alecia sitting on the sofa in the corner where the nightclub back door was. Normally, she leaned against the wall to hear the music better. When he reached her, he realized she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed and her lips were slightly pursed, as if she were ready for a kiss.
Should he carry her up to her room? As he puzzled this out, he seated himself next to her, and realized his feet ached. Surely at twenty-six he was too young to feel like this. His body felt as weighed down as his heart. But looking at this beautiful woman lightened him. He remembered tracing the line of that cheek with his tongue. Now he knew that slim, youthful body under her clothing, how her hips jutted out softly, how her belly gently rounded, how her nipples pointed up slightly. Those sounds she made when he licked her there. Heaven help him. He closed his eyes as his erection grew. All those girls from Russian summers had faded into ghosts, but he didn’t believe he could ever forget making love to Alecia Loudon. He’d been her first.
He tucked his chin into his hand and stared at her. How often did he have a chance to memorize a woman’s face? The close-ups of cinema stars were one thing, but they only lasted a moment. Alecia Loudon in repose was a treasure just for him.
Odd that he’d found peace here, while on the other side of the wall a trumpet blared and he could hear dozens of careless idlers at the nightclub, drinking their champagne, dancing the soles off their shoes, intriguing for their next romantic partner.
Alecia’s head listed to the right and she jerked. Her eyelids fluttered. She placed her hands on the sofa cushions as if she felt she was losing balance, then her eyelids popped open. She stared right at him, but it only made her blink. Then she half smiled and looked as if she might fall back to sleep. An instant later, an expression of confusion crossed her lovely face. She stared down. Her hands moved over her gray skirt. Then her head turned and she perused the length of his body.
Ivan was grateful for the long coat that covered the evidence of his desire, inappropriate given that she hadn’t known he was watching her.
“Where are we?” She yawned.
“Behind the nightclub.”
“I fell asleep?” Her expression was one of fascination rather than upset.
“Yes.” She had sleep sand in the corner of one eye. He found it shockingly intimate.
“I never do that. I must be exhausted. What a terrible day.”
“It was hard to see the Plashes go,” he agreed. “Poor women.”
“Sometimes frivolity hides a great deal of pain,” Alecia said. “I expect Miss Plash is that way. I knew girls in the village who behaved like her. They’d lost their sweethearts, fiancés, in the war. They’d get into the most shocking scrapes, girls who’d been so respectable before.”
“They talk about shell shock for soldiers,” Ivan said. “But I think there is a different kind for the civilians. We have our own kind of shock.”
“And our own kind of loss. I can never forget how my parents died. It haunts me. Why? They could have died in a train accident, or of influenza. Would it haunt me then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think any doctors do.”
“No. The human mind is a strange place.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “I’m sorry we argued,” he said.
“As am I.” She wiped her eyes.
“Mr. Eyre has the right to run the hotel the way he sees fit. I didn’t mean my defense of him to be an attack on you.”
“I still think he behaved shoddily,” she said stoutly.
“Mrs. Plash cost the hotel a lot of time. He has to pay overtime to me and to Swankle, and others weren’t able to continue their regularly assigned duties. If you look at the situation from his perspective, his actions were logical.”
“It was his fault. He brought them here. He knew.”
“I don’t know that he did.” Ivan leaned forward and took her hand. “Besides that, I’m sorry our lovely evening ended so poorly. You deserved better.”
“Most of the night was better than most girls ever get to experience.” She bowed her head. “I’d better go upstairs. I have a long day of rehearsal tomorrow, and if I can sleep tonight I had best take advantage of it.”
If I Had You Page 18