Lady Be Good

by Heather Hiestand

  The wall thumped again.

  “I doubt they’d let a cleaner in,” he said. “I’m going to have to stop this myself.”

  “You won’t get past the guard.”

  “Yes, I will.” He narrowed his eyes. “Give me the skeleton key that opens their door.”

  She pulled a keyring from her apron pocket and unhooked a key. “What are you going to do?”

  “Stay here. Lock the door. The floor butler is due to check on me in about ten minutes.” He checked the recording. It didn’t have much time left. He switched the disks quickly and closed the painting.

  “Douglas,” she protested.

  He shook his head. “Don’t open the door to anyone else.”

  Moving fast, he went out the door of his suite, shut it securely behind him, and was at the Piano Suite before the Russian, standing on the opposite side, realized what he was doing.

  Glass had prepared. The key, correctly aligned, slid right into the keyhole. He kicked the door open with his foot. It slammed against the wall, the key still in it. The air moved as the Russian guard came at him from behind. He bent his knees and felt for the man’s arm; then he used the man’s forward motion to flip the Russian over his back. The man fell into the entryway of the suite, Glass somersaulting in behind him.

  He ripped the key out of the lock, put it between his fingers to use as a weapon, and quickly took stock of the room. Ovolensky stood, rubbing his knuckles. One of the girls cowered on her knees, her hands in prayer position. Another wiped blood from her mouth. He didn’t know where the third was, in one of the three bedrooms that opened off the sitting room probably, servicing a Russian.

  “I’m tired of whores, Georgy,” Glass growled at the so-called diplomat. “It’s not yet eleven in the bloody morning, and you are interrupting my sleep with this banging and shrieking.”

  Ovolensky had recently shaved off his thick mustache, revealing an extremely thin upper lip that did not match the obscenely shaped lower lip. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. He said nothing in response to Glass’s outburst, merely pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his forehead. He had no coat on, just a waistcoat and shirt. Glass thought he saw blood on the fine wool.

  “I do apologize, Lord Walling,” Ovolensky said smoothly. “This one had been paid to be faithful to me while she was here, but once a whore, always a whore.”

  “Or you aren’t paying her enough,” Glass growled, breathing harder than he’d like. “Rates are a bit higher here than in Petrograd.”

  “Don’t take me for a country mouse, Lord Walling. I do not take insults lightly.”

  “I don’t care,” Glass responded. “Keep the noise down.” He glared at the girls and pointed toward the door. The two in the room rose shakily to their feet and scampered to the door, still open, and raced to the left, toward the lift. He had no idea how to get the third girl out there.

  The guard he had thrown lifted his head. He must have been knocked out.

  “What martial art do you practice?” Ovolensky asked, looking Glass over.

  “Judo,” he said. “Where is the other girl? Don’t want to hear her screaming next.”

  “She’s busy,” Ovolensky said, looking down his nose. “She belongs to my colleague and is presently entertaining him.”

  “You keep beating up girls, and the police will be called,” Glass said. “Peter Eyre is a friend of mine, and I don’t want to see his hotel’s good name dragged through the mud.”

  The Russian chuckled. “We’re men of the world, Peter and me. Girls are a way to pass the time.”

  “Then visit a brothel,” Glass said. “Go down to Villiers Street off the Strand. Any perversion you Russians prefer can be found there.”

  “I have no trouble finding what I like,” the Russian said.

  “No more of it here,” Glass said. “Or I’ll have you thrown out of the hotel.” He turned around to stomp out. The guard began to move, still on the floor. Glass kicked at the man’s knee as he walked by. The man grabbed his leg and howled in pain. Glass hoped he’d incapacitated the man and wished he could do the same to every one of the Russians.

  The adrenalin left him as soon as he closed the suite door behind him. He went down the hall to tell the floor butler to get the male cleaning team into the Piano Suite, hopefully dislodging the third prostitute, and went back to his own rooms to explain himself to the princess.

  He let himself into his suite with her skeleton key and found her pacing through the sitting room.

  “Are the girls safe?” she asked, coming toward him.

  “Two of them. I’m hoping the floor butler can rescue the third. I didn’t like my chances, fighting my way through all the Russians.” He brushed at his sleeves.

  “Where had the other gone?”

  “Into one of the bedrooms.” He saw how upset she was. “Listen, the girl who was being hurt got out of there. Maybe the other girl isn’t being inj ured.”

  “Just used,” the princess said bleakly. “I should stop feeling any sort of pity for myself. I have honest work. I’m being paid for my art.”

  “I have never seen you have a self-pitying moment,” Glass declared.

  Her smile was tentative. “Thank you. I need to get on with my work.”

  “Wait a few minutes until the situation next door is resolved.” He coughed. The brief fight had winded him. Not as athletic as he once was.

  She shook her head. “I’ll go the opposite direction. The Russians won’t even see me.”

  “If you must, I will be your bodyguard.” He went to the window and picked up her bucket. “Shall we?”

  “Oh, you couldn’t, Douglas.”

  “Of course I can. I’m a man of leisure, right?” He winked at her.

  “You don’t want the Russians to get an idea about you and me,” she said much more seriously. “They might do something to me to punish you for breaking up your fun.”

  “Are you incapable of worrying about yourself for your own sake?” he asked. “You want me to cower in here while you wander the corridors at will? I won’t have it.”

  “You can’t do my job with me all the time.”

  “I assure you, Princess, that this is your last day working on the seventh floor. I’m going to tell Peter he can’t allow any more female staff here until the Russians have gone.”

  “You can’t,” she gasped. “I am management!”

  “You are too precious, Princess Olga. I want you safe.”

  “I can.” Her eyes bored into his, and her sweet, stubborn little chin had hardened.

  “You can what? Do you know hand-to-hand combat techniques? When that Russian barbarian rushed me from behind, I knew how to flip him off me.” He gestured with his hand.

  Her hands went to her mouth. He saw her cheeks work as she bit her palm. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “These men are animals. I’m taking you on your rounds for today, and that is the end to them until the Russians are gone.”

  * * *

  Olga felt like she’d spent most of Friday pacing. She hadn’t, of course, but those minutes in Douglas’s hotel suite had felt endless. She couldn’t monitor the action next door while he’d been gone.

  Now, after a long day, and an evening of furious painting on the commission for Harold, her hands ached, and she knew she was done for the night. She glanced at her canvas. After roughing out her design with graphite, she’d opened the windows of her room and squished a few colors onto a clean palette. Tired, she’d focused on simple things: the table, the window panes. She’d save the fine details of the curtains, the portrait of the grand duchess, and the scenery, for Sunday, when she had an entire day free.

  If Harold hadn’t left an envelope for her at the front desk, she probably wouldn’t have painted at all, but he’d already paid her ten pounds toward the commission. And she wouldn’t have to give half to the gallery owner! For now, she’d hidden the money in the inner pocket of her dressing gown. She simply had to rem
ember not to launder it.

  Staring at her feet, she saw they were moving, pacing again. The wind blew into her room, and she felt a wet spray of droplets. She ran across her space, pushed behind her bed to pull down the windows, locked them closed, and brushed the rain from her smock. The paint smell had gone, and she didn’t want her bed to be soaked.

  Now, the room needed to warm up. She turned the radiator on. When she pivoted she caught sight of her sketchbook. Idly she flipped through the pages. The caricature of a man on horseback in armor capped by Douglas’s head caught her eye. He had surely been a knight in shining armor to those prostitutes he had rescued. Her heart melted at the thought of his gallantry. He’d taken a risk with his safety for the right reason. Before she thought too deeply about it, she pocketed her keys and left her room. One staircase led down on the opposite end of the floor from the Russians’ suite. She could reach Douglas’s rooms from the other side. The only way she’d get into trouble was if they had a guard posted in the hallway again.

  Without inquiring too deeply about why she needed to see him, she moved quickly down the three flights of stairs.

  Not five minutes later she knocked on his door. It might have been wiser just to enter, but she didn’t want him to attack her. Now that she knew he was skilled in combat she wouldn’t risk it. Thankfully, the corridor was empty. The Russians must not be making trouble.

  His door opened. Douglas peered at her and frowned. He reached for her arm to pull her in. “I thought I told you to stay off the floor.”

  She was so close to him she could smell the wine on his breath. He’d probably dined in his room, alone, monitoring his listening post. The aroma of meat in burgundy sauce hung in the air.

  “I don’t think I ate dinner,” she said.

  “I didn’t eat all of mine. Do you want it?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t realize until I’d smelled it. I was painting and thinking.”

  “About what?”

  She stared at his face, the long, taut jaw and stubborn chin, that froth of black hair rising from a widow’s peak at the center of his grooved forehead. Her fingers went to his half-moon lower lip. “This.”

  His eyes narrowed in confusion. She stood on her tiptoes and set her lips against his. Desperate to explore, she touched the tip of her tongue to his lip and tasted salt. He parted for her, but she didn’t know what to do. Maxim had kept her so innocent all those years ago.

  Douglas muttered something and took control. He pushed her up against the wall and tortured her, gently, with his mouth and tongue, teaching her angles, tastes, sounds. She curved her fingers into his hair, learning the shape of his head, and surrendered to him completely.

  The sounds she made shocked her back into consciousness some minutes later. She pulled her head back, bumping it against the edge of a painting, and saw how swollen and damp his mouth was. She’d done that. Her fingers went back to where they had started, feeling him. She leaned forward again, another kiss, but he pulled back.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re not the sort of woman who comes to a man’s rooms late at night.”

  She stiffened as his words hit her. What was she doing? All she’d thought of was wanting to be with him, but she had no right to be here. He’d think her loose when all she’d wanted was to be around him.

  She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s been a most trying day.”

  She wrenched open his door and ran down the corridor back to the staircase. She went inside and climbed all the steps, panting by the end; unlocked the door to the tenth floor; and stepped into the corridor. When she’d closed and relocked the door, she leaned against it, bending at the waist trying to catch her breath.

  Had she survived Maxim’s death and the flight from Russia, fear and poverty only to lose her mind over a handsome viscount spy?

  * * *

  Glass sat at his table in Cosway Street on Saturday afternoon. He finished his last gulp of malty Assam and set down his cup. His team members had just left with their new assignments. A telegram had come during the meeting. He’d been told more operatives would be assigned to him on Monday, a necessity for the Konstantin hunt.

  He had a hard time focusing on the bomber when Olga Novikov was taking up so much brain power. What had the princess been thinking last night, to come to the seventh, expressly when he’d ordered her to stay away for her own safety, and enter a man’s rooms, late at night, and offer him her sensual mouth?

  He’d pegged her as a most aristocratic virgin. Yes, there had been moments when he’d wondered about her relationship with her late fiancé, Prince Maxim, wondered about the things that older man had taught her. But he’d been dead seven years, and his impression was that she’d been touched by no man since.

  He’d thought her looking for marriage, not a lover. Never, ever would he have mentioned her to his father if he’d thought any different.

  What was she trying to say about herself with that kiss? He let his head fall into his hands. If he assumed his impression of her was right, why would a princess, looking for marriage, brave the seventh floor to kiss him?

  Tilting his head to the ceiling, he forced himself to consider. She’d hoped for a romantic proposal because she’d risked everything for love? That seemed more the act of a very young girl than someone who’d reached twenty-five. But she’d been engaged at seventeen and wrapped in imperial cotton wool since until she’d gone to work as a chambermaid. Maybe she was closer to that young girl than he thought.

  Her manners seemed older, but she was a princess, schooled in proper behavior. Still, he really couldn’t see the situation any other way. The kiss had been a major gesture. She would be hoping for one in return.

  If he wanted to keep her under consideration as a possible bride, he needed to do something. If he wanted to keep in her good graces so that she told him about Konstantin’s moves if she learned anything, he needed to do something.

  “Blast it,” he muttered. Tim Swankle had made the transition to journalist over the week and was no longer involved with the hotel, but he had Bill Vall-Grandly in his suite for the day, so he didn’t have to return immediately.

  He took his tea things to the sink, rinsed them out, set them on the sideboard, and set out for Grafton Street to take advice from Margery regarding possible gifts for an artist princess.

  Margery wasn’t in, but her sales manager suggested a set of horsehair brushes for his artist friend. After a quick look through the gallery to see what the princess’s paintings had been replaced with, he went to the shop the sales manager had recommended and picked out a handsome wood case and filled it with the most expensive oil painting brushes in the shop.

  He returned to the hotel in the early evening, after a soothing visit to his home. His man kept the place feeling lived in, with frequent airings and dustings. Quite relaxed after a couple of hours of going through his personal mail settled in his favorite armchair in front of the fire, and with a case full of unread magazines under his arm, he went to the Reception Desk.

  “Do you ever have a day off?” he asked Hugh Moth, the ever-present desk clerk. Behind him, the business office waited silently for Monday, but the Grand Hall echoed with the water-spattered footsteps of Restaurant guests and those waiting for the opening of Maystone’s in the Coffee Room.

  “As little as possible,” he said. “I have a widowed mother, a widowed sister, and her two little ones to support.”

  Glass stared at the young man, who couldn’t be a day over twenty-one. “I’m glad you can work the hours then.”

  “It’s an easy duty,” Moth said. “I even have a stool I can sit on when no one is at the desk.”

  Behind Glass a man passed by with a hideously pungent cigar. The tobacco must have become wet and been dried again. “Tell me, can you have something sent up to the tenth floor, or would that service be just for guests?”

  “To Ivan?”

>   “Olga.”

  “Oh, certainly, my lord.” Moth banged on a bell, and a lad zipped from the bellboy waiting area in between a couple of large potted ferns. “Can you take my lord’s package up to room 1004?”

  “Yes, sir,” the bellboy said smartly, pushing his slightly too large red cap off his forehead. Glass handed him the package and a coin and the lad ran off whistling.

  “Cleaning supplies?” Moth asked.

  “Excuse me?” Glass said.

  “Some of the seventh floor guests have very particular tastes. Mrs. Arrathorne will not allow anything lavender-scented in her suite.”

  “I see.” He didn’t want to say anything one way or another. Who knew what crazy idea he might have to come up with to keep his intelligence operation going? He’d already had to make unusual requests like frequent security and floor butler demands. “Well, the princess is in charge of housekeeping.”

  “Yes, sir,” Moth said.

  Glass, remembering Moth’s family, flipped the clerk a large coin and turned away before he could see how the young man reacted. He heard the coin hit the desk and Moth’s exclamation as he fumbled to catch it before it hit the door. Obviously he hadn’t been hired for dexterity, unlike the bellboys.

  This morning, he’d seen one catch a guest’s cat in midair when it squirmed out from under her arm. That had been a praiseworthy feat. He wondered if the bellboy had been a pickpocket in a previous career, or possibly a circus performer. It took a great deal of skill to catch an agitated cat and not get scratched.

  “I say,” he said, turning back to the reception desk, “do you know which bellboy caught the cat? Must have been about eleven this morning.”

  Moth quickly tucked his new guinea away and pulled off his glasses. “Jeremy, I believe. I was helping Teddy Fortress with correspondence and didn’t see the entire adventure.”

  “Is he still on duty?”

  “No, sir. The younger lads only work ten-hour shifts, and we have two shifts a day.”

  “Send him up to my room when he’s on duty next,” Glass said. “I might have an assignment for him.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Moth looked over his shoulder, and Glass stepped aside for two men who held luggage in their gloved hands. New guests for the hotel on a rainy March night.