The Forgotten Room(97)

“You have enjoyed your stay in New York?” Matron was frowning over John’s shoulder, at the crowd by the billiards table.

“Far more than I ever imagined.” The words were for Matron, but John looked at Lucy as he said them. “This visit has been . . . a revelation.”

Lucy nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak. Who knew it was possible to feel this strongly, on such scant acquaintance? She felt as though nerves she had never known she possessed had been awakened; every look, every word, awakened a delightful agony of anticipation.

“Since you are leaving so soon . . .” Beneath the thick spectacles, Matron’s blue eyes twinkled. “It is a slight breach of the rules, but for a gentleman involved in the arts . . . Miss Young, would you be so kind as to take Mr. Ravenel up to the seventh floor?”

“There’s a seventh floor?” Lucy’s voice came out rather more breathless than she would have liked. “That is, I always assumed the attic rooms were at the very top.”

Matron looked pleased. “They are usually, but not in Stornaway House. The seventh floor is a well-kept secret.”

“A secret?” Lucy felt John’s attention being diverted from her. “That sounds intriguing.”

“It’s nothing so exciting as that, just a rather unusual little room . . . Miss Brennan! If you’ll pardon me, Mr. Ravenel, I really must have a word with Miss Brennan’s young man.” Her voice brisk, Matron said, “The main staircase doesn’t reach all the way up, but you’ll find the service stairs at the end of the fifth-floor corridor. Be sure to shut the door again when you’re done.”

Matron didn’t mean . . . well. But Lucy felt the color rising in her cheeks all the same. Before, she and John had always been in public, in Delmonico’s, in Central Park, in Mrs. Whitney’s studio, snatching their moments of privacy in the midst of dozens of uninterested people. But on the seventh floor, they would be well and truly alone.

There were, thought Lucy, feeling a silly giggle rising in her throat, rules about gentlemen in one’s room, but this wasn’t her room, was it? It was the secret room on the seventh floor. So that was all right, then.

“Thank you,” said John Ravenel, snatching Lucy’s arm and speaking, for him, quite rapidly. “I surely am grateful for this opportunity.”

“You must let me know what you think of our little treasure,” said Matron serenely, before turning, and saying in quite another voice altogether, “Miss Brennan!”

John whisked Lucy to the stairs at a gait just short of a run.

“Eager to see what’s on the seventh floor?” said Lucy breathlessly, as they rounded the curve of the stair on the fourth floor.

“Eager to see you,” said John, pausing so abruptly that Lucy nearly ran into him. “Ever since I received your message, I’ve been hoping—” One of the bedroom doors opened, and John broke off. “Oh, for the love of— Let’s get upstairs. We’ll have some privacy there.”

“Do you think . . . ,” said Lucy, feeling suddenly shy. “Do you think that’s what Matron had in mind?”

“An honorable woman like Mrs. Johnston?” said John, his drawl thickening. His voice turned serious as he looked at Lucy. “She just wants to make sure a hidden artistic treasure gets proper appreciation.”

“Or improper appreciation?” said Lucy daringly.

“That, too.” His dark eyes rested on her lips, moved lower. “Er—where do we go from here?”

The transition was so abrupt that Lucy laughed. “Like Matron said, the main stairs stop on the fifth floor. We’ll have to take the servants’ stairs. If you don’t feel too cheapened by that.”

“Nothing to do with you could ever be cheap,” said John.

“Then you don’t know the cost of this skirt,” retorted Lucy, but her hand trembled on the banister. The force of his regard made her feel weak, shaky, as if she were no longer entirely in possession of herself.

From the time she was very small, she had known she had to be strong. Her mother was so withdrawn, her father someone to be protected as much as a protector. With no siblings, her cousins largely estranged, Lucy had kept mostly to herself, a quiet, self-contained child, an anomaly in her father’s large, boisterous German family.

For the first time, she contemplated what it would be to let herself go, to relax that stern control. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, the idea of relinquishing her own strength, allowing her to lean on someone else.

There was something so sturdy about John, so reliable.

It didn’t take them much time to find the stair to the seventh floor, in an alcove Lucy had always assumed to be a broom closet. The stair itself was narrow and unassuming, the walls painted with the same graying whitewash as the servants’ floor, the stairs uncarpeted.

At the top, John paused. “Before we go in— I just wanted you to know that I would be here even if no Pratt had ever set foot in this house. I came for you. Not for them. When they gave me your message—”

Lucy touched a finger to his lips. “Hush,” she said firmly.

John hushed.

“Yesterday—I knew as soon as I’d left you that I overreacted. It was just . . .” Lucy struggled for the right words. Her family had never been one for sharing their emotions; this was an uncharted vocabulary. She felt like a toddler, just learning to use language. “I was scared.”