Bewitching: His Secret Agenda

by Carla Neggers

  She went back and reread a blurred, yellowed paragraph toward the end of the article.

  In a long-winded way, it said that the Marsh had challenged the Harling to open up “the Harling Collection” to public inspection.

  The Harling Collection?

  Hannah’s researcher’s heart jumped in excitement. Now this was news. Something worth checking out. She read further.

  Apparently Anne Harling, deceased in 1892, had gathered the family papers from the past three centuries, since the Harlings’ arrival in Boston in 1630, into a collection.

  What Hannah wouldn’t give to get her hands on it!

  She carefully copied the information into her notebook and sat looking out at the rain-soaked tulips and budding trees of the Public Garden, wondering what her life had come to that locating a bunch of old documents excited her.

  * * *

  “MR. HARLING?”

  Win looked up from his computer and sighed. His young administrative assistant, fresh out of college, was clearly determined to shape him into her idea of a suitable executive. He wasn’t sure just what his failings were. “You can call me Win, Paula,” he said, not for the first time. “What’s up?”

  “It’s the impostor again.”

  “Where?”

  “The Museum of Fine Arts.”

  “Uncle Jonathan called?”

  “While you were in a meeting,” Paula confirmed, all business. Win wondered if it had been a good idea to tell her about the unknown Harling who was supposedly attending the New England Athenaeum’s fund-raising dinner. She had been convinced right from the start that they were dealing with an impostor. “He said to ask you if you had signed up for the lecture series on seventeenth-century American painting that is being offered by the museum. A friend of his knows the instructor and—”

  “Yes, I understand. Uncle Jonathan knows everyone.” Win tilted back in his chair. “He doesn’t think it’s a practical joke?”

  “No.” From her look, neither did Paula. She was tawny-haired and twenty-two and very good at what she did. “It’s a woman, Mr. Harling. Trust me.”

  “Why would a woman pose as a Harling?”

  Paula made a face that said what she wanted to do was groan, but groaning didn’t fit her code of conduct. “May I speak freely?”

  “What is this, a pirate ship? Of course you may.”

  She took a step closer to his desk, a black modern thing his decorator had picked out. “Mr. Harling, if you don’t mind my saying so, I’ve been with you almost a year now, and it seems to me you don’t have much of a clue as to how people around here view your family.”

  “The Harlings, you mean,” he said.

  “That’s right.” She was very serious. “Lots of people, given the chance, would like to take advantage of your wealth and reputation, your position in the financial community. You have breeding—”

  “Breeding? Paula, I’m not a horse.”

  She was too sincere to be embarrassed. “As I said, you don’t have a clue.”

  “Okay, suppose you’re right. Suppose someone is trying to take advantage of me. First, why me and not my uncle? Second, why a woman?”

  “In answer to your first question,” she said, obviously disgusted by his ignorance, “because you are thirty-three and single and your uncle is eighty. Ditto that for the answer to your second question.”

  “Why can’t there be a third Harling in Boston?”

  “There isn’t.”

  Win glanced at his computer; his work was beckoning. “So, a supposed Harling signed up for a class at the MFA and plans to attend a fund-raising dinner. That doesn’t make a conspiracy.”

  “You wait,” Paula said confidently, heading for the door. “There’ll be another.”

  * * *

  WIN ARRIVED a few minutes late for his weekly lunch with Jonathan Harling at his elderly uncle’s private club on Beacon Street, just below the State House. It was a musty, snooty old place with cream-colored walls, Persian carpets, antique furnishings and an aging, largely male clientele. Win would bet he was the youngest one in the place by forty years. The food, however, was passable, if traditional New England fare, and he always enjoyed his uncle’s company.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, approaching Uncle Jonathan’s table overlooking a stately courtyard. “It’s been one of those days. No, don’t get up.”

  Jonathan Harling sank gratefully into his antique Windsor chair. Always a model of integrity and responsibility for his nephew, he was a tall, thin man with eyes as clear at eighty as they had been thirty years ago when he had been an acclaimed professor of legal history at Harvard. Win knew it had almost killed his uncle when he’d opted for Princeton.

  “Name me one day in the past six months that hasn’t been ‘one of those days,’” the old man grumbled.

  Win decided to sidetrack. “It’s a busy time of the year. Is the chowder good today?”

  Uncle Jonathan already had a bowl in front of him. “It’s never good.”

  “Then why do you keep ordering it?”

  “Tradition,” he said in a tone that indicated he damned well knew his nephew had no patience with such things.

  Win deftly changed the subject. “Any news on our Harling friend?”

  “The impostor, you mean. Nothing yet. He’s taking his time, making sure he doesn’t make a mistake.”

  “My assistant is convinced it’s a she.”

  Uncle Jonathan mulled that one over. “Good point. I’ve alerted a number of my friends to keep on the lookout. We don’t want him—or her—to start charging diamonds and fast cars to our name. You might be able to afford such things, but I can’t.”

  Win let that comment pass. “Have you talked to Preston Fowler at the Athenaeum?”

  “Not yet. I just heard about the Museum of Fine Arts incident today. I don’t want to start ruffling feathers and end up looking like a fool if it’s all just a coincidence.”

  “But you don’t think it is,” Win said.

  Uncle Jonathan shook his head, serious. “No, I don’t.”

  The waiter came, and Win ordered the roast turkey, his uncle the scrod. Out of the corner of his eye, Win spotted the maître d’ leading a lone diner to the table directly behind him.

  It was all he could do to remember to tell the waiter to bring coffee.

  The lone diner was young and female, so that automatically made her stand out. But in addition she had hair that was long and straight and as pale and fine as corn silk, hair that would make her stand out anywhere. She was slender and not very tall, and she wore a crisp gray suit.

  Uncle Jonathan had also noticed her. “Where did she come from?”

  “I don’t know,” Win replied. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “I don’t think she’s a member. Must be related to a member, though. I wonder who?”

  Win shrugged and eased off the subject, having seen the sparkle in his uncle’s eye. There was nothing he’d like better than to have his nephew attracted to a woman whose family belonged to the same prestigious private club the Harlings had been members of for all the one hundred fifty years of its existence. Lunch arrived, and Win brought up the Red Sox.

  It didn’t work.

  “Look,” Uncle Jonathan said, “she ordered the lobster salad.”

  The lobster salad was the most expensive item on the limited menu. Win couldn’t resist turning in his seat. Her back was to him, maybe three feet away, but he could see her breaking open a steaming popover. Her fingers were long, feminine but not delicate, the nails short and neatly buffed. There was something strangely familiar about her, yet he knew he had never seen her before. He would have remembered.

  Their meals arrived, and he turned back to his uncle. “The Red Sox,” he said stubbornly, �
��had a terrible road trip. They’re at home this weekend with the Yankees. Are you planning to go?”

  “She must not eat lobster very often. She wouldn’t stay that thin.”

  Win sighed. “Of course, the impostor could try to take over our box seats....”

  That brought Uncle Jonathan around. “No, I doubt it. He’s only left tracks at the Athenaeum and the Museum of Fine Arts. Probably not a baseball fan.”

  “I don’t know, it’s possible. I suppose there’s not much we can do at this point, except remain on alert. As you say, it’s too soon to act.” Win tried his turkey; it wasn’t very good. “But if there is an impostor running around Boston, capitalizing on our name...well, I’d like to get my hands on him. Or her.”

  Uncle Jonathan concurred.

  By the time the waiter cleared their plates and brought fresh coffee, their conversation was back to the blonde. “Why don’t you turn around and introduce yourself? It’s not as if you’re shy. Invite her over for coffee. Let’s find out who she is.”

  “Uncle Jonathan...”

  But he pushed his chair back and grabbed his cane, half getting up. “Miss, excuse me. Our saltshaker’s stopped up, and I hate to bother the waiter. Mind if we borrow yours?”

  There was nothing Win could do but indulge the old goat. He turned around, and the blonde was there facing him, her eyes huge and green and luminous. She looked a little startled. Who wouldn’t? Win took in the high cheekbones and straight nose, the strong chin. Combined, her features made an angular, curiously elegant face. Her skin was pale and clear. Her arresting eyes and hair, however, dominated.

  She looked intelligent enough to notice that their table had been cleared. Their waiter was approaching with the coffeepot and Uncle Jonathan’s ritual dish of warm Indian pudding, which always looked to Win as if it had come from a cat box.

  “Of course,” the woman said, and handed over her saltshaker. Win took it.

  She turned away.

  So much for that.

  Win shoved the saltshaker at his uncle. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Don’t you think she looks familiar?”

  “Yes,” Win said, interested, “I do.”

  “I can’t figure out why. Anyway, she’s pretty. Invite her to dinner.”

  “Uncle...”

  “You might never see her again. What if she’s the one? You’ll have missed your chance.”

  “If she’s ‘the one,’” Win said, speaking in a much lower voice than his uncle, who apparently didn’t give a damn who heard him, “then there’ll be another chance. I believe in fate taking a hand in matters of the heart.”

  Jonathan snorted. “Romantic nonsense.” He waved his spoon. “There, she’s leaving. Catch her.”

  “She’s not a trout.”

  “If she were a tempting stock option you’d never let her get away. Can’t you get excited about something that doesn’t involve dollar signs?”

  Win could. He most definitely could. He was right now. Watching the blonde’s hair bounce as she left, the movement of her shapely legs, was not something that lacked consequences. Physical consequences, even. But he didn’t share his reaction with his uncle. Instead he said sanely, “I won’t come on to a perfect stranger. That could be construed as harassment.”

  “Only after she tells you to chew dust and you persist. The first time it’s just an invitation to dinner.”

  “On what grounds do I invite her to dinner?”

  “Who needs grounds?”

  Win groaned. “If she had wanted to meet someone, she wouldn’t have come here. This club’s known for its elderly membership.”

  “It’s no secret you and I have lunch here on Wednesdays, you know,” Uncle Jonathan said thoughtfully. “Maybe she wanted to meet you. That ever occur to you?”

  “If she’d wanted to meet me, don’t you think she would have said something when you bellowed at her about the salt?”

  His uncle was undeterred. “Maybe she would have if you’d said something first.”

  Win gave up. His uncle was the one indulging in romantic nonsense. The woman had given no indication she was interested in, had recognized or indeed cared if she ever saw either Harling again.

  But those eyes. They were unforgettable. And her hair.

  What was it about her that was so damned familiar?

  Their waiter slipped Win the bill, which he would quietly sign and have put on his account. It was an arrangement they had, in order to keep his uncle from insisting on paying his half, which was just for show. Win knew Uncle Jonathan wouldn’t part with a dime if he could get someone else to pay first.

  Financially secure though he was, Win found the tab a bit staggering. “Wait just a minute! You’ve put an extra meal on my bill.”

  “Well, yes, your...Ms. Harling indicated...”

  Win jumped to his feet. “Who?”

  “The woman.” The waiter nodded to the table just vacated by the silken-haired blonde. “If there’s been a mistake...”

  Uncle Jonathan was reaching for his cane. He was an intelligent man. He plainly knew what was going on. “She’s our impostor!”

  “Yes,” Win said through gritted teeth. He looked at his uncle. “You all right?”

  Uncle Jonathan waved him on with his cane. “Go, go. Track down the larcenous little wench.”

  Win didn’t bother arguing with his uncle’s choice of words, but simply signed the bill for the entire amount and went.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HANNAH WAS BREATHING hard and hoping she was sane again by the time she reached the modern building in the heart of Boston’s Financial District. Her name was Marsh, she repeated under her breath. Hannah Marsh, Hannah Marsh, Hannah Marsh. She wasn’t a Harling.

  This little visit would straighten everything out. She would go up to Jonathan Winthrop Harling’s office, introduce herself, confess if she had to and explain if she could. She had put herself down for the New England Athenaeum’s fund-raising dinner to keep Preston Fowler happy, had signed up for the lecture series at the Museum of Fine Arts on the spur of the moment, and realized only after she’d committed herself that she’d better be consistent and go as a Harling.

  She didn’t know how she’d explain lunch.

  The Beacon Street club was one of Jonathan Winthrop Harling’s hangouts, and she’d gone there hoping to meet him. Hoping to explain. Hoping to ask him about the Harling Collection. But she didn’t even know if he’d been there because she’d frozen up, plain and simple.

  That black-eyed rogue behind her had done it. Something about his looks had rattled her. Two hundred years ago he would have run guns for George Washington. Three hundred years ago Cotton Harling would have had him hanged. He had looked, she thought, decidedly unpuritanical. How could she think, much less confess, with him around?

  So she hadn’t. And then the waiter had asked if she wanted to put her lunch on the Harling account—she’d had to pretend to be one, of course, to get into the place—and not wanting to blow her cover, she’d said yes.

  Now she was a criminal. If the Harlings were all as miserable as Cousin Thackeray had said they were, she could be in big trouble with Jonathan Winthrop.

  Then she’d never get a look at the Harling Collection.

  The time had come, she told herself as she went through the revolving doors, to come clean, plead for mercy and hope that an eighty-year-old man, even if a Harling, would understand that she was a legitimate, professional biographer. She would make him understand.

  She glanced around the elegant wood and marble lobby, then bit her lip when she spotted the armed guards. There were four of them. One behind a half-moon-shaped desk, two mingling with the well-dressed businesspeople flowing in and out of the elevators and revolving doors, another on the mezzanine. He had a ma
chine gun.

  An easygoing place, Jonathan Winthrop Harling’s office. Hannah had expected a nice old brownstone on Beacon Hill. But probably the old buzzard liked being surrounded by men with guns.

  She approached the guard behind the half-moon desk. He was a big, red-faced man, tremendously fit-looking, with curly auburn hair and a disarming spray of freckles across his nose. He didn’t look as if he would shoot a woman for pretending to be a Harling, but this was Boston and Hannah just didn’t know.

  He listened without expression while she explained that she had an appointment with Jonathan Winthrop Harling, but had forgotten which floor he was on.

  “Your name?” he asked.

  She gulped.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Hannah,” she said. “Jonathan’s expecting me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  She’d made a mistake. “Jonathan Winthrop Harling. I’m—I’m Hannah Harling. From Cincinnati. The Midwest Harlings. We...”

  She hated lying to men with guns.

  The guard picked up the phone. “I’ll call Mr. Harling.”

  “No!”

  The old buzzard would swallow his teeth if the guard said one of the Midwest Harlings was here to see him. There were no Midwest Harlings.

  “I just need his floor number,” Hannah added quickly. “Really.”

  “And I need to call,” the guard said coolly. “Really.”

  Good, Hannah. Get yourself shot.

  She backed away from the desk. “Never mind,” she told the guard, manufacturing a smile. “I’ll come by another time. Don’t bother telling Mr. Harling I was here. I—I’ll call him later.”

  No one followed her through the revolving doors. Her heart was pounding when she reached the plaza in front of the building, but when she looked over her shoulder she didn’t see any armed men coming after her.

  But she didn’t relax.

  She wondered what had become of play-by-the-rules Hannah Priscilla Marsh. Cousin Thackeray had warned her about Boston. Maybe she should have listened.

  Not wanting to look totally guilty, in case the guard was watching, she lingered at the fountain. It was a warm, beautiful day. Yellow tulips waved in the breeze and twinkled in the sunlight all along the fountain, which sprayed thin arcs of water every few seconds. The effect was calming, mesmerizing.