It had to be her. The strange young lady in the dark blue dress. For some unknown reason she’d been staring at him earlier and then, when caught at it, pretended to wave at someone behind him. A short time later he’d spotted her sitting atop the hotel bar leading a pack of semi-inebriants in what he assumed was some music hall ditty. And then she’d taken his pen.
What a peculiar girl.
He stirred. A sharp pain in his jaw greeted him on the threshold of consciousness and oblivion beckoned him back. Though he didn’t generally consider himself cowardly, he nonetheless decided to accept oblivion’s invitation, it being preferable to what he recalled of the last few minutes before he’d been laid a facer. Or most of the evening before that, for that matter.
That decision, unfortunately, was denied him as the girl calling his name now added a physical element to her insistence by vigorously shaking his shoulder. Lights exploded across the backs of his eyelids. His jaw throbbed.
“Someone help me with him!”
That brought him fully alert. He had already made a spectacle of himself. “No. I’m fine. Just give me a second.”
He opened his eyes and squinted at the face floating above him. A long coil of satiny brown hair had come down and was spilling over her shoulder. Other than that, he couldn’t make out much. Except that she had eyes the color of the green-gold quartz he’d once seen decorating the ceremonial breastplates of an Aztec king.
“You most certainly are not fine. Charlie laid you flat out.”
Charlie must be the young man. “He punched me. Where is he?”
“Gone. Let me help you up.”
“No. Please.” He winced. “Don’t do anything. You’ve done quite enough.”
His vision had cleared sufficiently for him to see her lips press tightly together before, ignoring his refusal, she scooted behind him and slid an arm around his shoulders. What did she expect to be able to do? The top of her head barely reached his chin and if she weighed a hundred pounds, he’d be surprised. At six two and nearly fourteen stone—
She heaved him upright with unexpected strength, the sudden movement making his head throb. “Ow!”
“Sorry. Someone get him a glass of water.”
“I don’t want a glass of water.” Holding his head, he climbed painfully to his feet.
She reached out to steady him but he scowled fiercely enough to make her snatch her hand back.
“If you would just kindly return my pen I won’t trouble you any longer.” He made no effort to hide his sarcasm.
She sighed. “You’re not still going on about that, are you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.” The pen had been a gift from Cornelia. He’d hate to think what she’d say if he lost it; he’d lost too many of her other gifts. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t actually lost the pen; his having allowed it to be stolen wasn’t going to materially change Cornelia’s reaction. Not that she would cause a flap; Cornelia never flapped. But her disappointment was worse. It was so ripe with fatalistic assumptions.
Now that it was clear he wasn’t in danger of dying or leaking blood anywhere, the crowd around them had begun to disperse. The girl, still draped in his jacket, hovered, probably due to guilt.
She had a fresh, expressive face crowned by a cloud of rich brown waves. Her clipped chin; wide, delicate lips; straight, thin nose; and bright hazel eyes were too animated and her bones too angular for beauty, but she possessed a sort of high-strung thoroughbred attractiveness. A few freckles dusted the tops of sharp cheekbones. She was quite lovely in an odd, fey sort of way.
“Listen, young man.” Young man? He was probably over a decade older than her. She looked about sixteen. “No one is paying us any attention now. You needn’t keep up this pitiful charade.”
He stiffened. That she considered him “pitiful” wounded him in a place he hadn’t even realized was vulnerable.
“So, let’s just call it a night, shall we?”
Damned if she didn’t sound sorry for him.
His pride, rarely entering into many equations—having been taught from the nursery that personal pride was vulgar—nonetheless rose to the occasion.
“No,” he said. “We shall not. I have no idea how you have come into possession of my pen but I will give you the benefit of a doubt and assume it was in an innocent albeit highly unlikely manner.
“Nonetheless, by whatever offices, it went missing. I left it on the table when I followed my companions to the doorway. When I returned, the pen was gone. Or rather, not gone, precisely. It was in your hand.”
Despite his assurance that he trusted her integrity, he could see her take umbrage with what was, if he was being honest—and he was always honest—a very nasty implication.
She drew up all of the few inches she possessed. The green in her eyes became shards of colored glass. “Now see here. This pen belongs to my friend Margery—”
“Oh! Oh, dear. No. It doesn’t.” A dapper, pleasant-looking middle-aged man edged between them, smiling sheepishly. “I was in a hurry to find something for you to write with and when I saw the pen I . . . well, I borrowed it. I had every intention of returning it, I assure you,” he quickly added. He turned to the girl. “I was trying to tell you the pen wasn’t mine when we were interrupted. Remember? I told you to take good care of it.”
Ptolemy listened with a burgeoning sense of vindication. He turned to the girl and silently raised a brow. She stared at the older man for a full ten seconds, a delicate peach hue staining her throat and cheeks and her—well, one could not help noticing a décolletage so obviously meant to be noticed. She swallowed visibly. Then, as he watched, every vestige of embarrassment evaporated as if by magic, replaced by a truly masterful, if patently false, nonchalance.
“Well,” she said, thrusting the pen toward him, “why didn’t you just say so?”
He gaped, amazed. Not only was she odd, but audacious. Spectacularly so. “I—” He stopped himself. Anything he said to this peculiar creature was bound to be a waste of breath. He took the proffered pen. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she replied and then, before he could utter another word, disappeared into the crowd.
“I am sure your grandfather understands that for the next few weeks you must devote yourself entirely to preparing for your interview with Lord Blidderphenk,” Cornelia Litchfield said as her father’s chauffeur threaded the car through London’s late-afternoon traffic toward Pimlico where Ptolemy’s grandfather lived. “But in case he does not, you must remind him so that whatever this request of his is, it does not interfere with what may well be the most important weeks of your life.”
Though Ptolemy wasn’t sure he would go quite that far, he figured it would be rude to say as much. Two months ago Cornelia’s father, vice-chancellor of St. Phillip’s College, had nominated Ptolemy for the Blidderphenk professorship, which came tandem with being named head of the newly minted anthropology department with which Lord Blidderphenk—and his millions of pounds—was endowing St. Phillip’s. For a man of Ptolemy’s age to even be considered for such a post was a coup and now he was one of only three nominees to have made it through to the final interview with Lord Blidderphenk himself. Truly exciting stuff. He supposed.
“Just think, everything we’ve worked for is within your grasp,” Cornelia said, her fine eyes gleaming with fervor. But not too much fervor; Cornelia was not the sort to gloat.
Ptolemy didn’t begrudge her the use of the first person plural. She had been indispensible in the research and compilation phases of his publications as well as organizing, well, almost everything in his life, thus freeing him to concentrate on his passion: cultural anthropology. They’d met four years earlier at St. Phillip’s annual reception for its incoming staff. Her father had left them standing together to greet a late arrival. For want of anything else to say, he’d mentioned how hard it was to find decent apartments. She’d immediately offered her assistance. And she had continued to offer her aid, in all sorts of useful wa
ys, ever since.
“You only need to stay focused, Ptolemy,” she was saying now, as she rifled through a thin portfolio of papers on her lap, “and not allow yourself to be distracted.”
She had a point but then she always did. He did tend to run off on tangents when his interest had been piqued. He relied on her to keep him on the straight and narrow even if the straight and narrow sometimes felt a little claustrophobic.
“Especially by anything someone of your grandfather’s nature might propose.” Cornelia did not approve of his grandfather, whom she considered irresponsible.
“I’m sure whatever my grandfather wants can be dealt with expeditiously.” Actually he wasn’t at all sure of this. His grandfather rarely asked him for favors, let alone to perform a service, so this was uncharted territory of a sort.
“Hm.” She did not sound convinced. “Well, just keep in mind how important the next few weeks are.”
Having delivered this judicious bit of advice—or maybe it was more of a judicious directive, it was so often hard to tell the difference—she turned to him and, seeing the bruise on his chin, tch’d her tongue lightly.
“Ptolemy. However did you manage to walk into a door?” she wondered aloud for the fourth time. Ptolemy had decided earlier that it wasn’t worth the effort to explain the truth of how’d he come by that bruise and so had made up a rather lame story about walking into a door swinging out unexpectedly.
“You . . . you didn’t overimbibe after Lionel and I left, did you?” A trace of horror touched her voice.
“No!”
“I should hope not. You know that the main requisites Lord Blidderphenk has for anyone being named the Blidderphenk professor is that the candidate be temperate, sober, and in possession of an impeccably moral character.”
“I would think he might want his professor to know a bit about anthropology, too,” Ptolemy said drily.
Cornelia peered at him uncertainly. “Well, yes. That, too.”
Cornelia’s one fatal flaw was her complete lack of humor. He supposed it was too much to ask. Being the daughter of one of St. Phillip’s vice-chancellors came with certain expectations of dignity and serious-mindedness—qualities Ptolemy, whose parents had always driven home the importance of dignity, respected but suspected maybe he ought to have appreciated more. As a boy, he’d often been accused of having a little too much humor. He recalled more than a few instances when his glibness had won him a session with the headmaster’s switch.
And really, what purpose did humor serve except as a distraction from serious thought?
Why, he bet the girl from the Savoy last night hadn’t spent five minutes this morning in serious thought . . . Where had that come from? He frowned, dismissing the girl from his mind.
“So what were you thinking?” Cornelia prodded. “No. Don’t answer. Clearly, you were daydreaming.
“I do hope,” she went on when he didn’t reply, “that when you sit down with Lord Blidderphenk you do not allow yourself to drift while he is speaking.”
He made a noncommittal sound before broaching a less dangerous subject because he did have a tendency to drift when people rambled on. “Do you suppose if I were to be named the Blidderphenk professor it would be, er, seemly for me to organize and lead my own expedition using his lordship’s endowment? Wouldn’t it be grand, if I should? Why I might even return to the Pearl Islands.”
“Excuse me?”
Cornelia was frowning. He had no idea why . . . Perhaps she was distressed by the intimation that he would leave her behind? It seemed unlikely but perhaps . . .
“My pardon. Would you . . .” All at once, his heart started racing and his throat tightened. He stared at her. He had meant to propose to her last night but what with one thing and another . . . or rather one person or another . . . No that wasn’t true, either. There hadn’t been another person, just the one. That girl. That hazel-eyed . . . pip—at any rate, he hadn’t gotten around to it. But now, here was a likely opportunity to achieve what he and everyone else he knew assumed to be a foregone conclusion. He might as well jump in feetfirst . . . mightn’t he? Yes. Yes.
“Would I what?” Cornelia asked impatiently. “What is wrong with you, Ptolemy? You look most peculiar. Are you sick?”
He took a deep breath and forced the words past the unnatural constriction in his throat, “Would you like to come, too?”
“What? Oh, Ptolemy.” She gave an exasperated little sigh. “Do you realize how ingenuous you sound? It simply won’t do. Lord Blidderphenk must think of you as his equal in maturity and gravitas, not as some young person filled with juvenile enthusiasms. You must remember your dignity at all times, Ptolemy. People won’t take you seriously if you don’t.
“And, no, I wouldn’t like to come, too. Don’t be offended. I would, of course, do whatever was necessary to aid in the writing of your monograph, but tramping about the world isn’t required. Let other, less gifted men potter about the world collecting data. It is up to brilliant scholars like you to find the meaning in the data provided by others, as did Sir Fraser when writing his seminal work, The Golden Bough.”
“But I like pottering about collecting data.”
“It is not the sort of work that will be expected of the Blidderphenk professor.”
“No, I suppose not. But I shall miss field research,” he said a little wistfully.
“Only those who are willing to sacrifice the bourgeois pleasures of the ordinary man can hope to achieve true greatness.”
He supposed she was right. She almost always was, but he wondered if perhaps Cornelia wasn’t giving bourgeois pleasures short shrift . . .
“Here we are,” she said as the chauffeur pulled to the curb in front of his grandfather’s townhouse.
Ptolemy opened the door and climbed out, dipping down to look at her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to accompany me?”
“Very sure, thank you,” she said, leaving him to close the door with a vast sense of relief.
“His lordship will be down shortly, sir. Would you care for some refreshment while you wait?”
“No, thank you,” Ptolemy said, moving past the butler into his grandfather’s library.
“Very well, sir.” The butler backed out of the room, shutting the doors as he retreated.
Ptolemy had always loved this room, with its wall of windows spilling the southern light across a patchwork of Persian and Oriental rugs, the scarred and blistered bookshelves, and the desk and tabletops stained by decades’ worth of idly placed teacups and water glasses. A haphazard conglomeration of books, maps, and magazines lay propped against lamps and stacked randomly on the floor. It was dusty, grubby, cluttered, and uncatalogued. In other words, an unexplored Aladdin’s cave of wonders for an adolescent boy.
He supposed his love of ferreting things out had been born here. It certainly hadn’t been in his parents’ well-ordered home. He spied his favorite paperweight on his grandfather’s desk and, with a grin, picked it up and held it up to the window, squinting into its bright interior.
A little shepherdess had abandoned her charges for a swing strung from the boughs of an apple tree in full blossom. Her head was thrown back, her feet pointed skyward, her porcelain petticoats billowing around her knees. The artist had painted eyes pressed closed in the ecstasy of movement as a single plait of hair streamed out behind her in her flight. On the miniature mountainside behind her, her wooly charges turned from the far side of a fence to watch their inattentive guardian in befuddled fascination. He shook the globe and hundreds of tiny glittering pink shards swirled around in a faux shower of apple blossoms.
It had always instilled a curious conflict in him. On the one hand, he was jealous the girl could so easily forget her responsibilities and enjoy that swing; on the other, he worried about those damn sheep. What if they got lost or some wolf found them or they plunged off a cliff?
He shook it again, watching the petals swirl on the facsimile of a gentle breeze, catching on the shepherdess
’s carved skirts. He bet if she opened her eyes they’d be hazel . . .
“What’s that you’re whistling?”
He turned to see his grandfather being wheeled in by a robust-looking footman. His gout had flared up last week, making it excruciating for him to put any weight on his foot. “Was I whistling?”
“Yes. And it wasn’t Handel, either.”
At seventy-three, his grandfather still posed an arresting figure: tall and straight-backed—when he was standing—with an aristocratic nose, a thick, unkempt head of silvery curls, and the same cleft chin he’d bequeathed Ptolemy. His character was even more distinctive. His ungoverned wit and blunt observations had made him a glaring exception in a family noted for their serious-mindedness.
Not that he’d always been impolitic and outspoken. He wouldn’t have successfully won the hand of Ptolemy’s formal, perpetually unsmiling grandmother otherwise.
“In fact, that tune sounded suspiciously like popular music,” he said.
“Really?” Puzzling. Ptolemy hadn’t thought he knew any popular music. Not that he had anything against popular music; he just never had occasion to hear it, his work leaving little opportunity for that sort of thing.
Perhaps if Cornelia had shown an interest . . . but Cornelia considered theatre frivolous and believed popular music caused brain decay. But it really was a catchy tune.
“Good heavens, my boy! And where did you get that black eye? Did you walk into a door?” his grandfather asked in increasingly amazed tones as he nodded a dismissal to the footman.
Heat rose in Ptolemy’s face.
“You . . . you haven’t been in a brawl?” His grandfather’s dark eyes gleamed with approval. Not surprising: his grandfather had always enjoyed being the black sheep of the family, a role Ptolemy’s grandmother had claimed he’d come to rather late in life.
Apparently the dignity that once had been the hallmark of his lordship’s character had eroded with time, eventually making him nearly unrecognizable as the somber, respectable young man to whom she’d been betrothed. At the time of her death last year, Ptolemy’s grandparents had not shared the same address in over two decades.
The Songbird's Seduction Page 5