The Forgotten Room(23)

“What word is that?”

“Just that you felt it, too, even if it was only an instant. Tell me I wasn’t alone up there, Olive. God knows I’m sick to death of being alone in a crowded room.”

She picked up her basket and turned away, back up the path toward the gap in the wall on Fifth Avenue. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

She started walking. “Because you won’t leave it at that, will you? You’ll want me to come up and pose for you again, and you won’t stop until I do, and it will ruin me.”

He tried to take the basket back, but she wouldn’t let him, and they walked in silence out of the park and up Fifth Avenue. When they reached Sixty-ninth Street, she said, “You’ll have to go on without me. We can’t be seen together.”

“But you’ll come upstairs tonight. You must.”

She didn’t reply.

“I won’t touch you, I swear. I won’t say a single word until you see the finished painting, and you can see for yourself what I mean. You’ll see that you can believe in me.”

She turned and stood on the corner, waiting for a delivery wagon to pass by. The horse’s hooves thudded in the road; the wheels creaked. A gust of wind caught the edge of her hat, swirling with the first snowflakes of winter, and as she grabbed the crown with her hand and started across Fifth Avenue, she heard Harry’s voice floating behind her.

“Excellent! I’ll see you tonight!”





Nine




JULY 1920


Lucy


“Shouldn’t you be putting on your glad rags?”

“My—?” Lucy was elbows deep in a pile of documents, looking for the latest rider to the Merola contract.

“Your sparkling raiment.” Philip Schuyler rested a hand against the edge of the desk, his gold signet ring tapping against the dark wood. “Or, at the very least, your dinner dress.”

Lucy looked at him blankly. “I don’t have a dinner dress.”

That wasn’t a problem for Philip Schuyler. Her employer was elegant in evening dress, his white tie impeccably tied, discreet mother-of-pearl and ebony studs marching the way up his lean chest. The stark black and white set off his light tan, his blond good looks.

“Then you’d best find one, hadn’t you?” he said, and, for a mad moment, Lucy’s mouth went dry and the color rushed to her cheeks as bedtime upon bedtime of fairy tales came flooding back to her.

But it was only in fairy tales that Cinderella was invited to the ball.

Mr. Schuyler said jovially, “Have you forgotten? You’re wining and dining that art dealer fellow, Ravenel—or dining, at least.” He pulled a long face. “I regret to report that Delmonico’s sold off their wine cellar last year thanks to those Philistines in Congress.”

Delmonico’s. Ravenel. Lucy drew in a deep breath, thankful for the pile of documents that ostensibly demanded her attention, thankful for the heat of the day that explained away the flush in her cheeks.

Thank goodness Mr. Schuyler had no inkling of what she had been thinking! What a fool she would look, daydreaming of being plucked from her papers by the prince, like Cinderella from the ashes.

Lucy concentrated on shuffling the documents on the desk into a neat pile. “But, surely, with everything that needs to be done—”

“Merola can wait a day.” Mr. Schuyler plucked the pile out of her hands and held the papers just out of her reach. “You did forget, didn’t you? Don’t try to lie to me. Your cheeks tell all.”

“I—” Lucy made a grab for the papers, but he dropped them onto the blotter with a decisive thunk. “We’ve had so much to do.”

And it was true. They’d both been working every hour God gave them, at the office before Miss Meechum, there long after the janitor made the rounds of the hall, his mop bumping gently against the woodwork. Mr. Schuyler might play at being a dilettante, but when the situation demanded—and it had demanded—he had buckled down with the sort of fierce concentration that Lucy had once imagined that he would accord only a tennis match or an act at the opera.

And it was the opera tonight, wasn’t it? In the scrum of work, of papers to be typed and retyped, every clause a crisis, every comma crucial, Lucy had forgotten about Mr. Schuyler’s engagement to see Tosca with his stepmother.

And her own with Mr. John Ravenel, the art dealer from South Carolina.

Or was it North Carolina? Lucy couldn’t remember. She’d never been as far south as Jersey.

Mr. Schuyler grinned at her. With mock seriousness, he said, “Don’t deny me my moment of triumph.” His eyes meeting hers, he added softly, “It’s a relief to know that you aren’t entirely perfect.”

“Far from it,” said Lucy repressively, putting the lid on the treacherous flutters his words made her feel. Mr. Schuyler flirted as easily as he breathed. It was a habit with him. And she’d be a fool to assume otherwise. “I’m just as fallible as anyone else.”

A secretary didn’t fall for her employer. Her engaged employer, Lucy reminded herself.

Mr. Schuyler didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. “The reservation is for eight, which means you have plenty of time to don your gay apparel.” Reaching into one of the desk drawers, he dropped a pile of bills on the desk. “That should cover your cab fare.”