The Forgotten Room(51)

Her father—the man she had believed to be her father—had tried, so very hard, to win her mother’s love, to make her smile.

She missed her father. She missed her father so. He might not have been a Pratt, he might not have lived in a grand house or worn a starched cravat and a diamond stickpin, but he had been warm and loving and as reliable as a fresh loaf of bread.

“You’re right. People don’t change, do they?” Philip sank back against the banquette, his long legs brushing Lucy’s under the table. “’S no use. ’S no use pretending that anyone thinks I’m a real lawyer.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Lucy discreetly moved Philip’s glass out of reach. She didn’t think she had it in her to carry him downstairs. “You went to Harvard Law. Surely that makes you a real lawyer.”

He had the diploma on the wall to prove it, magna cum laude and all.

“Thass jus’ a degree.” Philip shoved himself back up to a sitting position, squinting for his martini. “Prunella’s right—’s not like I do real work. Old Cromwell just gave me the job as a favor to m’father. Needed someone to handle the Pratt estate.”

“But you do so much more than handle the Pratt estate!” Wasn’t the last month proof of that? They’d spent long hours in the office, longer than anyone else. Mr. Schuyler—Philip—might pretend to be a dilettante, but he’d been working like a dog. With a smile and a starched collar, yes, but still working, and working hard. Lucy wished that Prunella Pratt were in range to hear a piece of her mind. “Mr. Cromwell always speaks highly of you. I’ve heard him.”

“He was friends with my father.” Philip gestured for another martini. “They don’t take me seriously, any of them.”

Lucy absently took a sip of Philip’s old martini. The gin made her cough. “That’s nonsense,” she said crisply. At least, she tried to say it crisply. If it came out just a bit slurred, Philip was in no state to notice. “You’re a wonderful lawyer.”

“Oh, I know,” said Philip moodily. “No one deals with the clients like I do. By which they mean that I can keep the drinks coming, tell jokes in four languages, and play a good game of tennis.”

“No.” The gin was remarkably freeing. Without conscious volition, Lucy’s hand was on Mr. Schuyler’s arm, her fingers making creases in his perfectly pressed jacket. “That’s not it at all. You’re not just a good host; you’re a good lawyer. You know what Mr. Cochran’s drafts look like.”

“Well . . . Cochran,” said Philip with a shrug.

“I won’t have you selling yourself short. You’re good at it. And I know you care, even if you pretend you don’t.”

Philip’s eyes focused on her face. There was a curious, wistful expression on his face. “I do, do I?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a good woman, Lucy Young.” Philip toasted her with his new martini, baptizing the table with gin. “Where were you when I was proposing to Didi?”

Commuting from Brooklyn.

“On my yacht in the South of France,” Lucy quipped. She hadn’t minded telling John Ravenel that she’d grown up above a bakery, but she still, even with her tongue loosened by gin, found that she didn’t want Philip Schuyler to know. She liked when he spoke to her like this, like an equal, with that admiring light in his eyes, a light that would go away if he knew the truth about her.

New money, Philip had said dismissively.

She wasn’t money at all, new or old, just a working girl with sensible shoes and an attic room that cost too much of her weekly salary.

As for being a Pratt . . . Maybe she had thought, once, that that would provide some social cachet, but she was reluctant to blurt that out, not just because she didn’t want Philip to know she’d been using him, but also because they sounded like horrible people. She didn’t want him to look at her and see Prunella Pratt. She didn’t want him to talk about her the way he did Didi.

Philip Schuyler reached across the table, took her hand, and, before Lucy realized what he was doing, raised her knuckles to his lips. “I don’t know when I’ve ever been so grateful to anyone for breaking her leg. Here’s to Meg and her multiple fracture!”

“You can’t mean that,” protested Lucy, flattered and appalled—but she left her hand in his.

“Oh, I’m sorry about her leg—don’t get me wrong—but I can’t be sorry about you.” Philip’s hand tightened on hers, his thumb moving in an intimate caress against her wrist. “There you were, in the secretarial pool, all that time, and I never saw you.”

“You said hello to me once,” said Lucy, and then wished she hadn’t. It made her sound like a besotted teenager.

“Did I? If I’d known better, I wouldn’t have just said hello. I would have asked you for a drink.”

There was something mesmeric about the way he was looking at her, his face so close to her, his hand on hers, the culmination of a thousand guilty daydreams. This wasn’t happening, not really. Philip Schuyler flirted, yes, all the time, but this was more than flirting, this was . . .

Not right.

Reluctantly, Lucy drew her hand away. “And I would have said no.”

“Don’t say no, Lucy.” Philip touched a finger to her lower lip, and Lucy felt the tingle of it, stronger than the gin, so exciting and so wrong all at the same time. “These lips weren’t made for saying no.”