Spinning higher and higher, breathing hard, she came apart under his touch. Her eyes stayed closed as she panted.
“Look,” he said softly.
She opened her eyes. Two of his fingers were glistening, and as she watched, he sucked them into his mouth, that same mouth that had done such wonderful things to her breasts.
“Delicious,” he pronounced. “You are exquisite.”
“I can’t stay here, can I,” she said, still panting. “I’m not safe with you. I’ll want this again.”
He ran his hands along her thighs, outside of her rucked-up nightdress. “You are safe, Olga. I’m only thinking of your pleasure.”
“But you’re a man. Don’t you want more?”
He stood, and she could see the bulge even behind his generously cut trousers. “It wouldn’t be right to ask for anything. Giving you pleasure is amusement enough.” He smiled at her and walked away, his back to her.
Could she really continue to enjoy this without consequences? On one hand, Douglas did know how to keep a secret, but she didn’t want to fall any farther and not have a place to land. How could this end in a positive way if he didn’t offer marriage?
And would he? Offer marriage to a girl who so wantonly desired his touch on her body? He had already trained her so well. She shook her head. No, she couldn’t stay here. Even if she had to live with Emmeline, she’d be safer. Even more importantly, she’d have more self-respect.
But oh, she would miss Douglas’s caresses.
* * *
Glass had, of course, not gone to Bill Vall-Grandly’s funeral, but he and Quex stood in the trees as the coffin was lowered into the earth at the cemetery. It was a show of respect that perhaps only a spy could appreciate since they didn’t make themselves known to the family or other mourners.
They walked out of the cemetery together after the first shovelful of dirt was thrown into the grave.
“Peter Eyre is awfully tired of those Russians,” Quex said, tipping his fedora down. “Are we getting anything useful from all the time we’ve invested?”
“I don’t see how we can walk away, as Englishmen and gentlemen,” Douglas admitted. “They are beating women, fighting among themselves. I’m sure someone will be killed if we don’t have someone there breaking up the situation.”
“So we’re there to protect prostitutes and Russian thugs?”
“They’ve already tried to bring in human cargo once. If we aren’t at the listening post, we’ll miss the next time they try.”
Quex shook his head. “I don’t think it’s enough, Glass. I think you’re missing the forest for the trees, which is unusual for you.”
“There is also the matter of Princess Olga. Konstantin often targets her for cash, and she lives at the Grand Russe.”
Quex’s jowls drooped farther as he spoke. “That’s a bit different.”
“She’s been sleeping in my suite since Konstantin shot Vall-Grandly.”
“With you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Quex shook his head. “This can’t last like it is. I’ll overrule the move to eject the Russians for now, but next week at this time, we’ll be making plans if you haven’t come up with significant intel about either the Russians or Konstantin. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s face it, we have more trouble with the Bolshies than one rotten egg trade delegation. What’s going on in the north?”
* * *
That afternoon, Glass returned to the hotel, mindful of being there at the end of Olga’s shift so that she didn’t get passed around the hotel staff. Hugh Moth shook his head sadly as he handed Glass his key.
“What?”
“I heard Mr. Eyre grumbling about you at luncheon,” he said. “I always bring him his tray. You’ve done something to make yourself unpopular.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like my friendship with Princess Olga,” Glass said.
“Could be,” the young man admitted. “It’s obvious they have a special friendship.”
“Anything else going on?”
“Another Russian arrived today. Oh, and I have a letter for you.” He turned to the guest cubbyholes and pulled out a letter.
Douglas glanced at the letter and saw it was from his father. “What’s his story?”
“I don’t know. He had me send a bellboy up the Piano Suite with a note, and then Mr. Ovolensky came down personally to gather the chap.”
“So he’s staying there.”
“Seems so. He had a case, but he didn’t seem like he was new to England.”
“Did he speak English?”
“Yes, but a very heavy accent.”
“What does he look like?”
“Very cruel, dark eyes. Narrow-like. And a bayonet of a nose. Gray whiskers, like he had forgotten to shave today.”
“Age?” Hugh Moth had a nice eye for detail.
“Mid-fifties?” Moth guessed. “Couldn’t see his hair under his hat.”
Glass sucked on his inner cheek as he considered the news. They didn’t know much about Mikhail Lashevich, the famed assassin known as the “Hand of Death,” but the general description matched. Was it coincidence or a terrible new problem?
Either way, he only had a week to sort things out here at the Grand Russe. Quex was losing patience with his operation. He’d already had to move Tim Swankle and now this. But his instincts told him to stay in the hotel. It felt like the kind of place where things happened, went wrong.
“Thanks, Mr. Moth.” He tossed the desk clerk a coin and walked toward the basement staircase.
* * *
Olga caught sight of Douglas as soon as he appeared in the staff lounge. She rose from the elderly upholstered chair where she’d been reviewing staff assignments. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to collect you for the rest of the day,” he said, pulling off his hat, shaking it off, and replacing it. He seemed tense, even more solemn than usual.
“What is going on?” she asked. “I can go to Maystone’s or sit at one of the secretary’s desks for as long as I need to.”
He smiled, though it looked forced. “No need for that. I’m sorry. I attended Bill’s burial today, and I’m low.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” A couple of chambermaids came in, chattering. Their appearance stopped her from patting his arm like she might have otherwise.
“Yes, well.” He grimaced. “Can you gather your evening gown from your room? I’d like to take you to dinner at the Savoy Grill tonight.”
“Why? Will it cheer you?”
He made a choking sound. “My father is available, and we’d discussed him meeting you.”
Olga couldn’t help the expression of pleasure that crossed her face. What a good sign. Her fears from the night before were assuaged completely. He wouldn’t take a woman he was trying to turn into his mistress to dinner with the earl.
“My Vionnet is clean,” she said. “I can be ready in half an hour.”
“Let’s go up and fetch it down to my suite. I need to put on evening dress myself.”
She felt herself beaming the entire time they were gathering her clothes and taking them to the seventh floor. An evening out. They’d eat French food and drink wine. And all that after a long day training dizzy young chambermaids. Life was a strange journey.
* * *
Lord St. Martin’s was already seated at a central table at the Savoy Grill when they arrived. He rose and nodded at Olga as Douglas introduced them. While he had his son’s height, she suspected his hair had never been as full or dark as his son’s and had thinned to a sliver of gray brown around his ears and the back of his head. His eyes pierced her, though. She didn’t feel disliked, but she sensed he knew exactly how old her clothing was.
“A very good evening to you, my lord,” she said as a waiter seated her.
“I’m glad to meet the young lady who has so entranced my son, Your Serene Highness,” he said, picking up his glass of red wine. “Not one for the
ladies is Walling.”
Olga had spent enough time in intimate clinches with him by this point that she knew very well that a total lack of interest was not Douglas’s problem. “He is obsessed by his work, I think, my lord.”
“Very true, very true. And not inappropriate in a young sprig of the aristocracy.”
“Yes, but I suppose you’d like grandchildren,” she said with an impish desire to shock the old man.
He chuckled loudly. “And what about you, Serene Highness? Want children of your own?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve lost my close family. My parents are gone; my sister vanished into China after the war.”
“No brothers.”
“I think there was a baby boy, but he died almost immediately.” She shook her head. “I don’t really remember.”
“What took your parents?”
“The revolution,” she said simply. She’d been in England by the time her father had been murdered. Her mother had died not long after, probably of complications of influenza brought on by deprivation.
“Bloody awful,” the earl pronounced. “Do pardon my bluntness.”
“Oh, I agree,” she assured him as waiters set menus in front of them. She was delighted by all the French dishes and knew she’d go to bed extremely content that night.
* * *
“She’s a happy girl,” the earl said to Douglas an hour later, as the waiter cleared their table. “Good bloodlines, if you appreciate Russians. Going to marry her?”
Only centuries of aristocratic breeding prevented Olga’s mouth from dropping open. The British didn’t look down on White Russians as much as some societies did, like the Chinese, and her title being real helped matters, but still. The earl must have wanted Douglas to marry very soon to accept such a bad bargain as herself.
Douglas reacted by laughing. He shook his finger at his father. “You won’t be happy until you’re dandling a baby on your knee. Why don’t you remarry, sir?”
“Oh, that is for the young,” the earl said. “No, I insist. I’ll go to the bank and pull out the Crewe diamonds for you. Must be something you can make into a modern ring fit for a princess.”
Olga’s gaze went to Douglas, then to his father, and back again as she tried not to laugh, or squeal.
Douglas cleared his throat. “I have a busy schedule, sir, but there is no harm in inventorying the diamonds. I know Mother didn’t like them, so no one has probably worn them since your mother died in the 1870s.”
“Yes, very out of date,” the earl said, turning his head to Olga. “But good stones. Been in the family about one hundred fifty years before that. They probably need to be recut.”
“I love old styles,” Olga said. “Not that I expect any declarations from your son, of course. That is up to him.”
“Do you love him?” the earl asked in the tones of a blunt sportsman.
Chapter 13
No one had ever asked Olga if she loved a man. Such a sharp and intimate question. Did she answer the earl with the truth? For a moment, she stared at the snowy white napkin on her lap as if the folds would give her the answer. “I could not regard any man I have known for just two and half weeks any more highly than I regard Lord Walling,” she said solemnly, without exactly giving the earl what he wanted to hear.
“Well said,” the earl declared, tapping his knife on his plate. “Keep an eye on him. If you don’t make him take you out, have a bit of fun now, he’ll stick to his ways, and you’ll be a lonely wife indeed. Not how my wife and I were. She was a gay sort.”
They sat for another hour, lingering over coffee and French tarts while the earl reminisced about his long-dead wife. When he reached stories about how much she loved the theater, he suggested they attend No, No, Nanette with him at the Palace Theatre the next night.
“I’ve heard of that show,” Olga exclaimed. One of their former guests at the hotel had worked on the musical for a time.
“The premiere was tonight,” the earl said. “But I never go to the theater on Wednesdays. What do you say, Walling? I have my usual box.”
“Certainly, if I am free. The princess needs a treat.”
“I can’t take her alone,” the earl warned. “Tongues will wag.”
“If I am free,” Douglas repeated.
For the first time, Olga saw lines of exhaustion in his face. His work might not tire him, but his father did. Interesting.
When they finally entered the taxicab to go home, Douglas let out a long sigh.
“Was it hard to hear so much about your family?” Olga asked.
Douglas patted her hand on the seat between them. “No, I was delighted to see my father in such an excellent mood. I’m afraid I cannot offer a large family circle to any woman. The war, you understand.”
“How I know it,” she said, enjoying the warmth of his glove over hers. She wondered if he had decided what, exactly, he was going to offer to her. “We all have had to start over, those of us who survived.”
Butterflies moved the abundance of good food around in her stomach as the taxicab pulled up in front of the hotel. Johnnie Miles, who must be on a double shift, opened the cab door for them and nodded at her.
She felt like a proper guest as she and Douglas walked across the marble floor of the Grand Hall. With her in her fur-and-silk cape and the handsome man next to her in full evening kit, they fit into the jaunty crowd. As they waited for the lift, she heard two women in diamonds and silk enthusiastically discussing her Russian art exhibit in the Coffee Room, and her heart beat with fierce pride. But once she and Douglas were upstairs, the mood between them returned immediately to business.
He helped her remove her cape and draped it over his arm. “I have to tell you, Princess, that we’ve had a new arrival next door. Managed to get a sketch out of Hugh Moth downstairs. The lad can draw.”
“Really? I had no idea.” She looked at her cape. “I find it is best to store that as flat as possible. Is there room in a drawer or in the closet?”
“Yes, there is an unused shelf.”
“Thank you. I’ll place it there while you take off your coat, and then you can show me Hugh’s artwork.”
Thirty seconds later, he followed her into the bedroom. “It’s less about his artistic ability and more about the man he drew.”
“Of course. I misspoke.”
When she came out of the closet, he went inside and came out with a sheet of white drawing paper. She took it from Douglas’s hand and stared at it. The instant she recognized the face, she forgot any plan to take off her shoes, relax, or ready herself for sleep, much less think about a possible marriage proposal.
“Your hand is shaking,” he exclaimed, pulling the paper away. “Who is it?”
Blood, across a snowy white shirt, dripping from his neck. His eyes gone glassy, then emptied forever. Those long, thin, talented fingers clutching, then slackening as he crumbled. The gun, moving toward her as she screamed. The man watching as she ran down the Nevsky Prospect, not killing her, no flash of heat and pain in her back, her breath catching in her throat as she pulled open the rear door of Maxim’s automobile and begged the chauffeur to drive her home.
“He murdered my Maxim,” she whispered. The tears came instantly, and her hands wouldn’t stay still as she lifted them to her face.
Douglas dropped the paper and wrapped one hand around her head and the other around her waist. He pulled her down on the bed with her on his lap, in her much-too-chilly Vionnet.
“I bought this dress for him,” she sobbed. “Maxim never saw it. It came all the way from Paris, and then it just went into a trunk when my parents sent me away. The first time I wore it was in England.”
“I’m sure he’d have loved it,” Douglas said soothingly, stroking her back.
“I’ll never forget.” She wiped her streaming eyes. “How can I? And now that man is next door. Why has he come?”
“Is he Mikhail Lashevich?” Douglas asked.
“He is the Hand of Death,” Olga s
aid. “That is all I know.”
“One and the same,” Douglas said. “Sodding hell.”
“Is he here for me?” Her voice trembled, sounding weak. She forced herself to stiffen her spine, to stop crying. It didn’t help Maxim then, and it wouldn’t help her now. She thought the profanity Douglas had used, “sodding hell,” and felt better.
“I don’t know why he is here,” Douglas said. “But his daughter lives in Hull with her husband, who is a trade activist. We’ve been monitoring him. I’m not surprised that Lashevich has made it into Great Britain, but I want to know why.”
She pressed her fingers into her dress, careful not to use her nails and damage the silk. “I am not important.”
“You saw his face,” Douglas said. “I am so sorry, but that might be enough of a threat for him. All I knew before now is that the man matched Lashevich’s general description.”
Her legs felt cold under the silk. “I can never forget him. That will make me a threat to him as long as I live.”
“I can never forget the face of the man who killed my brother Byron,” Douglas said. “He was my second brother. He was running dispatches between commanders, and we ended up in the same trench during an attack. The Germans swarmed us, close-in fighting. Dreadful business.”
“Did you see what happened to Byron’s killer?” she asked.
“Found him in the mud a couple of hours later,” he related, his voice expressionless. “Facedown. I kept his glasses for a time, stomped them to bits on November eleventh, when the war ended. I still thought I had one brother left, but he’d died in October. Buried in Masnières.”
“Sodding hell,” she whispered aloud. “Then it was just you and your father.”
“War is cruel. I never thought I’d be the survivor, but I’ve never stopped fighting for my country.”
“War is cruel, and revolution, and violence,” she agreed. “Did it come back to you, those memories, when you watched your man die?”
“It made me want to see your cousin’s mouth full of mud,” Douglas said in that same eerie voice, “his eyelashes encrusted with dirt.”
“If Konstantin is in business with my Maxim’s killer, I will kill him myself. I know how to use a knife, and I will carry one with me from now on.”
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