He wanted her to drop the towel. To hell with modesty. He wanted all of her. Instead, he found himself staring at her, doing nothing.
“What?”
His voice was hoarse when he spoke again. “I should tell you that you are not the first woman I’ve lived with.”
“No?” She put one hand at the top of her towel, knotted just above her breasts. The other was wrapped tightly around her waist.
He blinked hard. “Her name was Natalia. If she’d lived I might never have spoken to you.”
“You loved her?”
He felt like he was choking. Swallowing hard to move the lump down, he said, “Yes, but it was a hard life in Russia. She didn’t survive a long, bad winter.”
“Do you prefer a Russian woman?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “No, it was just her. Like it’s you, now.”
“But you loved Natalia.” He couldn’t see Sadie in the mirror. Steam had coated the surface.
“I mourn Natalia.” He mimicked her, crossing his arms. “I don’t want to mourn you, living or dead. Sadie, give me a future with you. Please, I know I’m no good. I’m a liar and I’m dangerous, but I love you.”
He could hardly see, but he could feel. Her arms closed around his waist. Her hair smelled sweet against his cheek. He let his tears drop onto the crown of her head as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, trying not to crush her soft form.
When he felt like he’d regained some of his strength, he picked her up, cradling her. She kissed his neck and jaw, murmuring words of love as he carried her into the master bedroom. He wanted to hear every word and paused in the doorway, staring into her eyes. “You love me? The broken, lying mess that I am?”
“I don’t see you that way. You’re battered, my hero, but you’re hardly done in.”
He smiled and carried her toward the bed. She pulled back the coverlet and the sheet just before he set her down, her towel losing its grip on her breasts.
He knelt at the side of the bed and covered the sweetly tipped mounds with his hands. She wriggled the damp towel out from beneath her and dropped it to the floor, then giggled.
“I should know better than to do that. More work for the chambermaid.”
He kicked the towel to the wall. “Don’t worry about it. No chambermaid is on duty tonight.”
Her lips parted as she stared up at him, impossibly lovely, her short hair scattered on his pillow. “Now what, Mr. Rake?”
“Drake,” he corrected. “It’s Drake, darling. When I marry you again it will be as Leslie Valentin Drake.”
“I like that better,” she said, reaching for him.
“I should say no,” he whispered as she drew him down. “I should be honorable and wait until we are married again.”
“No, you shouldn’t. You should do what I want.” She pressed her palms into his cheekbones and stared into his eyes. “I want you to make love to me. Something about you staring at me naked makes me crazy.”
He grinned. Her fingers tunneled into his hair and he was able to kiss her in earnest. “Darling, I do love you.”
“Show me,” she whispered into his ear, then licked the outer contours.
He couldn’t remove his clothes fast enough.
* * *
Sadie woke in dim winter light. Her hips and inner thighs felt sore, reminding her of the three times Les had made love to her through the night. She smiled and reached for him, thinking she could just manage to love him again. But no one was in the bed next to her.
She sat up and turned on the bedside light. A dent in his pillow proved he’d been there, but his side of the bed was frosty cold. She shivered, and realized she was naked. When she jumped out of bed, the only thing to cover herself with was the towel from her previous night’s bath, but it was still damp. She opened his closet door and pulled out a shirt and put it on. Feeling deliciously naughty, she crept into the passage and went upstairs, but Les was nowhere to be found. He’d left her again.
She heated water for tea. Though she didn’t have an alarm clock on, she knew she had plenty of time to reach the Grand Russe without being late. They’d gone to bed very early. However, she wouldn’t give notice as Les had requested. Despite the night’s passionate lovemaking, he’d left today without as much as a note. How could he still play these mysterious games?
The Grand Russe was a flurry of activity when she arrived. Peter Eyre and Olga were both in the staff lounge, firing orders to everyone that passed by.
“Sadie!” Peter called. “I need you on the first floor. Help Monica set up the meeting rooms for the government luncheon.”
“Luncheon?”
“Yes.” Eyre’s hair drifted over his forehead in disarray. “We didn’t know they were dining at the hotel today. You and Monica need to convert Meeting Room C into a dining room for sixteen. Arrange the tables into a square, commandeer dishes from the Restaurant, set the tables, lay out glasses. It’s going to be a three-course meal.”
“Won’t the dishes come up with the food?”
Eyre’s gaze moved in first one direction, then the other. “Talk to them. Find out about the menu. Get decorations. You’re in charge.”
“Where is Monica?” Sadie asked.
Olga stomped by. “She’s on the fourth floor, doing your job. Get upstairs, girl.”
“No, she needs to work on the dining arrangements,” Eyre said.
“By myself?” Sadie asked.
Olga threw up her hands. “I’d better go help Monica.”
Sadie finished pinning on her chambermaid cap. “Is anyone in the Restaurant at this time of day?”
“Of course,” the manager said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Go speak to them, but make decisions quickly. There is no time. They want luncheon rather early, at exactly noon.”
The next two hours passed in a whirl of action, but Sadie was pleased to see she had the room reorganized and ready for luncheon well before ten in the morning. She’d done so well that she could start with her duties on the fourth floor, so she went to look for Olga, who she’d last seen hovering in the passage outside of the government meeting room, waiting to go in to clear the tables of ashtrays and tea cups.
No one was in the passage so she cracked the door of the meeting room. She saw fifteen or so men in expensive suits, layering the air with cigarette and cigar smoke, but no uniformed maids hovering about. Where had Olga gone? Back to the fourth floor? Down to the basement? She didn’t want to leave this floor without permission with all of the important people around. There were a couple more meeting rooms on the floor so she decided to check them for her supervisor.
When she opened the first door on the opposite side of the passage the room was completely empty. Next, she tried the door to the room just past the occupied meeting room. At first, she thought that was empty, but then she heard a rustling sound.
She pushed the door open wide and went in. A man was kneeling on the floor, the upper fourth of his body inside a built-in cabinet on the outer wall nearest to the wall adjoining the next meeting room.
He didn’t wear the red uniform trousers of the Grand Russe Hotel employees, but dark tailored ones. Her palms itched as she considered how to react. She couldn’t help but remember the bomb story from the command performance the month before.
Screw up your courage, Sadie. “Hello?” she called out. No response. “Are you supposed to be in here?”
Slowly, the man came out from the cabinet. He turned, exposing long canine teeth. She recognized the dark hair and even darker eyes. His name was Verenich, and he was one of the Russians.
Heart pounding, she backed up into the open doorway. “You need to leave,” she told him. “I’ll call security.”
He sneered at her, then turned back to whatever he was doing. She knew she couldn’t overpower him. She needed Les. No one was around except the waiters serving at the meeting and she couldn’t disrupt it.
Running down the hall, she took the steps to the ground floor two a
t a time, then walked as quickly as she dared to the reception desk. Hugh Moth was on duty and thankfully wasn’t helping guests. “Send someone to get my husband to the first floor,” she cried. “There’s a Russian doing something next to the government meeting room.”
“What?” he asked.
She wanted to shake him. “Send someone to fetch Les! He’ll know what to do.”
Peter Eyre appeared behind the counter. “What is the problem, Sadie?”
“That Russian Verenich is in the room next to where the meeting is going on. What if he’s setting up a bomb?”
Eyre stared at her for half a second, then picked up the telephone and demanded to be connected to Detective Inspector Dent at Special Branch. Hugh Moth snapped his fingers at a bellboy and sent him to the seventh floor. Sadie waved over the hall porter.
“Is anyone from hotel staff on the first floor?” Eyre asked her after he set down the telephone.
“I was only looking for Olga. I didn’t find her. There are a couple of waiters in the meeting room.”
Eyre shook his head from side to side. “I wish I had a gun.”
“I thought you had to be nice to the Russians.”
Eyre gritted his teeth. “I want to be done with those bastards.” He lifted the hinged part of the desk so he could step out, and crossed to the other side. “Come with me, Sadie. Show me.”
“Oh, sir, you shouldn’t,” Hugh Moth protested.
“My hotel might be in danger, along with all the souls in it,” Eyre said. “I have to.”
He strode briskly away. Sadie hesitated for a moment, her body trembling like a railway platform just as the train comes in. She followed Eyre, unable to stop herself, wishing Les would appear. He’d know what to do.
Eyre took the steps two at a time. She’d never realized he had an athletic side. He’d seemed the sort to always have a cigarette and a glass of champagne in his hand, but he wasn’t breathing hard when he crested the top of the stairs. She followed him down the passage. He put a finger to his mouth when he saw the two waiters lounging there.
“Has anyone gone by since Sadie left?” he asked them.
The two men shook their heads. That meant the Russian was still in there.
“Past the room the ministers are in,” she said. “He was in the cabinet just to the right of the window.”
Eyre stopped just outside of the door. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Stay back.”
She clenched her fists to stop the shaking, then picked up a serving tray that was covered in used glasses and gently dumped them on the floor. She could use it as a weapon or a shield. Eyre would forgive her for staining the carpet under the circumstances. Staying two steps behind the hotel manager, she attempted to peer around his broad shoulders.
“You there,” Eyre said, stepping briskly toward the room. “Get out of that cabinet.”
She could finally see. Verenich was still half-buried in the open cabinet. Eyre grunted his displeasure and went directly up to the man.
Sadie gasped as Eyre reached into the cabinet and wrapped his arm around the Russian’s neck, so that his elbow must have gone in front of the man’s windpipe. She rushed to his side, holding the silver tray high, ready to bash the man’s head in if necessary.
Eyre wrenched the man out of the cabinet. Verenich jerked back. He hit his head on the ceiling of the cabinet, then fell to the carpet. Eyre reached over him and ripped out a microphone on a wire. He threw it across the room, then pulled out a small gramophone. Sadie recognized the setup as something similar to that of Les’s on the seventh floor.
“There’s probably a hole in the wall,” she said.
Verenich lifted his head and moved his arms. He was obviously about to stand. She slammed her tray into the back of his skull and he collapsed onto the carpet again.
Eyre chuckled as he leaned over the prone body and peered into the cabinet. “You are correct.”
Running footsteps sounded in the passage. Sadie turned and saw Detective Inspector Dent, who she’d seen before meeting with Eyre in his office, and two men in dark suits and gray overcoats, who had the look of the police.
“What’s happened?” Dent asked, gasping.
“He was recording the government session,” Sadie said. “I knocked him out.”
Eyre patted Sadie on the shoulder. “We have a new Boudica at the Grand Russe.”
Sadie knew Les had instructed her to give notice, but at that moment, she wanted to pledge herself to the hotel’s service forever. Peter Eyre’s bravery made him a man she’d want to follow anywhere. And where was her husband?
* * *
“This must be the ship,” Robert McCall said, pointing up at the enormous vessel that they had watched dock earlier in the morning. “It’s the only one that’s come in during the past twenty-four hours.”
So far, no one had departed and they’d had a miserable morning watching from under the dripping eaves of a warehouse across from the dock. Finally, they saw a man coming their way, dressed in a heavy coat, a cap pulled down low. Something about his bulk seemed familiar, though. And his shoes were Russian.
Les swore and swiped at his neck. “Recognize that man?”
McCall followed the movement of Les’s chin. “I don’t know his name.”
“Neither do I, but I’ve seen him on the seventh. I wonder who he is meeting.”
“Would you recognize Mikhail Lashevich?”
“If he looks anything like his daughter,” Les said. “She’s a rare kind of beauty. Like a Venus fly trap.”
“We’ll see who comes down from the ship, then arrest and interrogate them all,” McCall said. “You’ll want to leave before we start that phase of the operation.”
“I definitely don’t want Ovolensky’s man to see me here,” Les agreed.
They waited two hours more before men came from the ship. There were four youths. Les didn’t recognize any of them. They were all too young to be Lashevich, which only gave him more ammunition with which to persuade Glass to send him north again, to discover what was going on with the Russian assassin.
Les slinked back into the warehouse shadows as McCall’s men swung into action, then left for Special Branch, ready to be involved in the interrogations. It would be a very long day, but at least the men hadn’t entered London undetected. The operation in the Grand Russe Hotel had been a success in this instance.
* * *
Sadie’s wrist ached from her determined swinging of her serving tray weapon that morning. She sat in an elderly armchair in the staff room, next to Olga.
“What are you going to do now?” her supervisor asked, closing the cover of a tattered magazine.
“Go back to the flat and pack.” Sadie sniffed. “Les missed everything that happened today. What if it had been a bomb again? I could have died and he still wouldn’t know about it.”
“His company must have called him into an all-day meeting,” Olga said. “He’s in management now, right? All they do is attend meetings.”
“He should have left a message. Or he could have called the hotel and relayed his whereabouts to me. I’m tired of this disappearing act,” Sadie said. “I’m done with it.”
“You’re tired and overreacting,” Olga said. “It’s been a terribly frightening day. I still can’t believe you followed Peter into that room.”
“Someone had to help him. He should sack Hugh Moth for cowardice. Where were you?” Sadie asked. “I looked for you before I ever went downstairs.”
Olga stared at the wall then shook her head. “I went to the fourth floor. One of the guests had spilled the contents of their suitcase across the floor just in front of the elevator. Some very personal items, including a glass jar of lotion. It was a mess.”
“Ah,” Sadie said. “Not nearly as exciting as a Russian bugging a British government meeting.”
“The life of a chambermaid isn’t glamorous,” Olga said. Her laugh sounded forced.
“It is sometimes.” Sadie flexed he
r wrist and groaned. “I’m going to soak my arm in a hot bubble bath before I pack, though.”
“Are you going to move in with me?”
“Probably. Are you going straight to Montagu Square?”
“I was supposed to measure the Coffee Room,” Olga said, pulling a measuring tape from her apron pocket. “I’m curating an exhibit for the space.”
“I hadn’t heard about that.”
“Russian art,” Olga said, tucking the measuring tape away again. “Although I don’t know if Peter will want to do it now.”
“He can’t abandon the Russian theme,” Sadie said. “It’s imbedded into the hotel. I doubt he’ll cancel it.”
Olga yawned, hiding her mouth with her hand. “Don’t come to the boarding house until evening, then. Take your time and enjoy your privacy. I’ll still be here for a while.”
Sadie nodded. “I’ll take my time at Primrose Hill. Since Les is missing anyway, he won’t know that I’m enjoying his bathtub again.”
“Why are you so insistent on being hurt, Sadie?” Olga asked. “This man of yours is not perfect, but you have a nice roof over your head from all reports, and his company obviously values him. If he’s willing to marry you again, legally this time, what’s the point in making yourself miserable?”
“It’s because I love him that I need to stand my ground,” she said. “It’s too easy to let him do whatever he likes. If I just go along with him because I love him, I’ll lose myself. He wants me to give notice here.”
Olga raised her fine, pale eyebrows. “That’s an enormous change.”
“I know,” Sadie said. “I’d be so isolated. We might leave London.”
“Oh,” Olga said. “That really is a change. Is he being transferred?”
“Maybe.”
“That could be why he’s been gone all day. He’s making preparations.”
Sadie nodded. “You’re right. I don’t want to leave London and my position, and my sister, unless I’m sure everything is honest and aboveboard. I need to know I can trust my husband.”
Olga sighed. “It’s a rare woman who gets to make that decision twice. Usually we marry once and are stuck with the consequences.”
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