The Forgotten Room(61)

What had she thought, really? That Philip Schuyler was going to sweep her into his arms and declare he loved her, only her? She’d seen the pictures of him with Didi Shippen.

It wasn’t that Didi was beautiful. In themselves, Didi’s features were pleasant but pedestrian. It was what she had made of them. It was the arrangement of her hair, the set of her mouth, the pearls in her ears, all of which proclaimed her status as loudly as any number of entries in the social register.

Didi was the sort of woman a man like Philip married. Maybe, in the end, he wouldn’t like her all that much. Maybe, after a few years, he’d take to kissing his secretaries at speakeasies.

But Lucy wouldn’t be that secretary.

“What? Lucy? What did I say?”

Lucy’s head was beginning to ache. The smell of gin and Turkish cigarettes was strong in the air, clinging to her hair and clothes. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing but the truth. I’m your secretary. You are my employer. Which is why I shouldn’t be here right now.”

“No reason not to be.” Philip Schuyler was still clinging to her hand. He tapped a finger against his nose. “After business hours. No one’s going to know about it.”

Lucy yanked her hand away. “No one is going to know because this never happened.” She wanted to cry with shame, to drum her fists against the scarred wooden tabletop, but she kept her back straight and her voice level. “Meg comes back in another month. Until then—I’m your secretary. And this never happened.”

“Can you really say that?”

A crazy laugh bubbled up in Lucy’s throat. “I have to say that! Don’t you think I wish it were otherwise? Don’t you know that it’s going to make me crazy, every day, seeing you, and having to pretend this never happened? But I can’t afford to do otherwise. If I ask to be reassigned, Miss Meechum will know something happened! And who do you think she’ll blame? Not the junior partner. She’ll blame me. And I’ll be out on the pavement, looking for another job and wondering how I will pull together the money to pay my rent!”

Philip Schuyler stared at her, frozen in tableau against the banquet.

Once started, the words kept bubbling out. Lucy couldn’t stop them. “I need this job. I’m not one of your debutantes. I don’t work on a whim. I work because it’s how I keep myself alive. Do you think I enjoy typing and filing? Do you think anybody enjoys typing and filing?”

“I didn’t—” Philip Schuyler shook his head as though he were trying to clear it. “Lucy—”

“Don’t you mean Miss Young?” Lucy’s tone was as acid as the bootlegged gin. “I thought you were different. Everyone knows that Mr. Cochran pinches and Mr. Gregson isn’t to be trusted after a few drinks. But I thought you—I thought you were something special.” More fool she. “I thought you were a gentleman.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing Philip Schuyler flinch. She had done that at least. She had torn a strip off his smooth fa?ade. But it was a Pyrrhic victory. She would have done anything never to have come here, never to see what he could be, never to have known what he thought she could be. She had liked it before, when he was her preux chevalier, Saint George on the wall, unreachable and untarnished.

“Lucy.” The gold light winked off Philip Schuyler’s class ring as he reached out a hand to her. “I never . . .”

Lucy slapped his hand away. “No, you never. And I never.” Reaching into her purse, she flung a dollar on the table. “For my drink.”

It was an absurd amount of money, money she couldn’t afford to spend, but it was the only way she could think to salvage her pride, to claim some control over the situation.

She grabbed up her hat, her bag. “Have a martini on me,” she said over her shoulder, and made for the stairs before Philip could extricate himself from the banquette, his long legs tangling against the legs of the table.

The waiters had seen worse scenes; they looked the other way as she ran from the room, down the malodorous stairs, past the gatekeeper in his loud checked suit.

The air on the street was little better than it had been inside, stinking in the July heat, thick with the scent of yesterday’s garbage. It had grown dark when she was inside, the creeping dusk of the city summer. It wrapped around her like damp flannel. The dark brought no relief from the summer heat; it only pressed it in more closely around her.

Lucy clutched her bag in both hands and started walking, as quickly as she could. But not fast enough.

Philip Schuyler came trotting along behind her, face flushed, tie askew. “Let me put you in a taxi, at least.”

“Like you do all your girls?”

“You’re not just any girl.” He darted around, in front of her, forcing her to a halt before the shuttered front of a greengrocer’s establishment. “There haven’t been other—I mean, there were, before Didi, but since then—there hasn’t been anyone. Not like that—”

He was floundering; polished, glib Mr. Schuyler, who could talk the most contumacious client into good humor. He didn’t look smooth and polished now. The veneer was off, his face raw and confused. He looked, Lucy realized, lost. As lost as she felt.

“You’ve had a spat with your fiancée,” she said, as matter-of-factly as she could. “And I happened to be there. That’s all.”