The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(36)

“You could have just said so.”

With a shake of his head and a smile, August took off toward the elevator.

I wondered where he was going.

“Don’t tell me you’re unfamiliar with the concept of the polite no,” I said to Holmes as she opened the door to our room.

“I’m not. I simply expect more from my friends. Honesty is far more efficient than lying.”

“Milo is just telling him that information to see what he’s going to do with it.”

“Of course. But I trust him. He chose to erase himself rather than turn me in. I doubt he’s gone and changed his mind now.” She thought about it for a moment. “And anyway, even if he is off trying to tell on us, he’s overdue for a little selfishness.”

“You’re feeling that cavalier about it?”

Her smile was all teeth. “I said he could try. I’m fairly sure Milo still has a target on August’s back. Hadrian can try getting information from a smoking pile of ash, but I don’t think he’ll succeed.”

It was such an awful image that I had to laugh. “You’re chipper this morning.”

“I am,” she said. “Gird your loins. I need to run through our strategy for our lunch with Phillipa.”

“THE RAW BAR IS EXCELLENT,” PHILLIPA WAS SAYING. SHE lifted a subtle finger, and like a bit of magic, a white-clad waiter appeared at her elbow. “Could I please have a split of champagne. Whatever your house champagne is, nothing fancy.”

“Isn’t champagne by definition fancy?” I asked.

“It’s barely midday,” Holmes said without looking up from her menu.

“Children.” Phillipa smiled thinly. “Don’t tell me you’ve never rinsed your oyster shell with champagne. What are they teaching you at that wretched school?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “How to frame children like us for murder.”

This whole business was absurd. Phillipa had insisted on choosing the restaurant; Milo had been sent an address ten minutes before we left. He’d raised an eyebrow when he saw. “That restaurant opened in 1853,” he’d said, loading us into a car, “and since 1853, it’s been overpriced. Enjoy the Italian marble. I’ll send some discreet security to sit nearby.”

But we walked in to find that Phillipa Moriarty had booked the entire restaurant. She waited at a table in the back, under a glittering mosaic of a dragon. “Hello, all,” she’d said pleasantly. “I hope this suits you?”

“Absolutely not. Unacceptable,” Holmes said. “I want my brother’s men to see us through the windows. Up. Let’s go.” And she led us to a table by the window, like we were children she was taking to the principal’s office.

That set the tone for the next wretched hour.

“Do you prefer New England oysters?” Phillipa was saying, toying with her tiny fork. “I do, but it’s so hard to ship them across the ocean, and what’s the point, really, when we have such lovely Italian shellfish close at hand?”

“Where is Leander?” I asked, in the tone someone takes with a small child. “I know you know.”

“Fine,” Phillipa said, ignoring her, “I’ll choose them myself,” and raised her finger again. She rattled off an order that might as well have been in Italian, for all I understood it.

“Where,” I said, “is Leander.”

Grimacing, Phillipa adjusted her scarf. “They really could turn up the heat in this place, couldn’t they? Brrr.”

“Where is. Leander.”

This had been our plan, insomuch as we had one: I would hammer away at Phillipa with the question she wouldn’t answer until she laid out her reasons for meeting us. If she’s going through the trouble of arranging a lunch, Holmes said, she’ll want to pretend at civility. That gives us time to maneuver. Hammer away at her. It’ll give me time to learn her tells.

“Where is Leander,” I said. Then I ordered a soda from the waiter. Holmes was still pretending to study her menu, but I was sure she’d found a way to study Phillipa’s face. The older woman wouldn’t stop fidgeting. It was subtle—she’d smooth a piece of hair, or tug at a sleeve—but her hands were in constant motion.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Phillipa seemed to be waiting for something. I would’ve worried that our meeting was a diversion, but for what? It wasn’t like Greystone HQ would be made vulnerable by our absence.

The oysters arrived on a shallow platter, on a bed of ice. Holmes’s eyes narrowed, for a moment, in pleasure. She’d had them for the first time at my father’s house in Connecticut when Abbie, my stepmom, had brought home a sack from the fish market, and Holmes had eaten nearly a whole tray. I knew her well enough to know she liked the ritual of it, the strange, beautiful meat, the tiny tools used to prize it out.

Almost reverently, Holmes lifted an oyster and studied it. “How are your orchids?” she asked Phillipa in a polite voice.

And just like that, Phillipa’s mask slid off her like oil.

“I’ll give you one chance to bargain with us,” Phillipa said, placing her hands on the table. “It’s more than you deserve, and you know it. Tell me where August is, and I’ll negotiate on your behalf with Lucien. Hadrian isn’t interested in treating with you, but I am. Surely that’s why you called me here to this farce of a lunch.”