by Nora Roberts
It took her very little time once she was back in her rooms to go over notes and recheck her timing. The second delivery of roses, with a foolish, lovesick poem and another plea for an intimate evening would be arriving on Madeline’s doorstep within the hour.
She’d never resist it. Adrianne lit a match to her notes and watched the paper catch flame. Her instincts were right about this, she assured herself. Philip Chamberlain’s intrusion might have been simple coincidence, but The Shadow preferred tidy calculations. She smiled to herself. At this point Philip was giving her the best possible cover. She’d be seen going to dinner with him, then coming home again. She would make certain no one saw her leave her suite at midnight.
Adrianne was in the best of moods when she dressed for dinner. The basic black she chose was very slim, interest added by an explosion of multicolored mosaic beading along one shoulder. She clipped on royal blue glass earrings trimmed in gold that would be taken for sapphires by anyone but an expert. She stole the best, the most precious of jewels, but rarely bought them for herself. Only The Sun and the Moon interested her.
Standing back, she took a long hard look at herself. This image, like the image of Rose Sparrow, was important to her. She decided she was pleased she’d gone with the impulse to have her hair crimped, but changed her mind about her lipstick and applied a darker shade. Yes, she thought, that added just a hint more power. Philip Chamberlain might be a dangerous man, but he wouldn’t find her easy prey.
When the desk clerk phoned, she was ready, even looking forward to the evening. She insisted on coming down to the lobby to meet Philip.
He wasn’t dressed so formally tonight. The gray suit was Italian casual and only shades lighter than his eyes. Rather than a shirt and tie, he wore a black turtleneck, which set off his hair well. Too well, Adrianne thought. Her smile was very cool.
“You’re prompt.”
“You’re lovely.” He offered her a single red rose.
She knew men too well to be seduced by a flower, but couldn’t prevent her smile from softening.
She had a sable over her arm. He took it. As he slid the coat slowly over her shoulders, he let his fingers linger to free her hair from the collar. It was as rich and thick as the fur.
The warmth spread unexpectedly. Determined to ignore it, Adrianne looked over her shoulder. Her face was teasingly close to his. She let her lips curve as their gazes held.
She knew how to unnerve a man with a look, with a movement, he realized. He wondered how she’d earned a reputation as unattainable with eyes like that.
“There’s an inn about forty kilometers east of London. It’s quiet, atmospheric, and the food’s delightful.”
She’d expected a slick, sophisticated restaurant in the heart of the city. Could it be they would dine in the very spot where Madeline would be waiting for her mystery lover at midnight? Philip caught the sudden humor in her eyes, and wondered at it.
“You are a romantic.” Carefully, she stepped out of his arms. “But I’d like a drive. On the way you can tell me all about Philip Chamberlain.”
With a smile he took her arm. “We’ll need more than forty kilometers for that.”
When Adrianne settled in the Rolls, she let her fur slide down her shoulders. The brisk autumn air couldn’t compete with the warmth. The moment the driver pulled away from the curb, Philip took a bottle of Dom Pérignon from an ice bucket.
It was too perfect, she thought, and battled back another smile. Red roses, champagne, the plush car, and an evening at a country inn. Poor Madeline, she thought, greatly amused as she studied Philip’s profile.
“Have you been enjoying your time in London?” The cork came out with a muffled pop. In the quiet interior she could hear the excited fizz of air and wine rise in the neck of the bottle.
“Yes, I always enjoy it here.”
“Doing?”
“Doing?” She accepted the glass he offered. “Shopping, seeing friends. Walking.” She allowed him to spoon caviar onto a cracker for her. “What do you do?”
He watched her nip into the caviar before he sipped. “About what?”
Crossing her legs, she settled comfortably in the corner. It was the image she chose to project, lush furs, silk-clad legs, glittering jewels. “Work, pleasure, whatever.”
“What appeals most at the moment.”
She found it odd he didn’t elaborate. Most of the men she knew needed only the slightest opening to expound on their businesses, their hobbies, and their egos. “You mentioned gambling.”
“Did I?”
He was watching her, in the steady, disconcerting way he had before. It was as if he knew the Rolls was a stage and they were only playing parts. “Yes. What sort do you prefer?”
He smiled. It was the same smile she’d seen through the louvers in the Fumes’ closet door. “Long shots. More caviar?”
“Thank you.” They were playing a game, Adrianne thought. She wasn’t sure what the rules were, or what form the prize at the end would take, but a game was on. She took the caviar, beluga, the best, as was the wine and the car that was driving smoothly out of London. She trailed a finger along the swatch of upholstery that separated them. “Your long shots must pay off.”
“Usually.” With her he was counting on it. “What do you do when you’re not walking in London?”
“I walk someplace else, shop someplace else. When one city becomes tedious, there’s always another.”
He might have believed it if he hadn’t seen those flickers of passion in her eyes. This was no bored former debutante with too much money and too much time. “Are you going back to New York when you’re done with London?”
“I haven’t decided.” How dreary life would be, she thought, if she lived as she pretended. “I thought I might try somewhere hot for the holidays.”
There was a joke here, he thought. It was just behind her eyes, just edging the tone of her voice. Philip wondered if he’d find it amusing when he heard the punch line.
“Jaquir is hot.”
It wasn’t a joke he saw in her eyes now, but the passion, swift, vital, and quickly concealed. “Yes.” Her voice was flat and disinterested. “But I prefer the tropics to the desert.”
He knew he could prod, and had decided to when the phone interrupted him. “Sorry,” he said, then lifted the receiver. “Chamberlain.” There was only the briefest sigh. “Hello, Mum.”
Adrianne lifted a brow. If it hadn’t been for the slightly sheepish expression in the word, she wouldn’t have believed he had a mother, much less one who would call him on his car phone. Amused, she topped off his glass, then her own.
“No, I haven’t forgotten. It’s on for tomorrow. Anything at all, I’m sure you’ll look wonderful. Of course I’m not annoyed. On my way to dinner.” He glanced at Adrianne. “Yes, I do. No, you haven’t. Mum …” The sigh came again. “I really don’t think it’s—yes, of course.” He lowered the receiver to his knee. “My mother. She’d like to say hello to you.”
“Oh.” Nonplussed, Adrianne stared at the phone.
“She’s harmless.”
Feeling foolish, she took the receiver. “Hello.”
“Hello, dearie. That’s a lovely car, isn’t it?”
The voice had none of Philip’s smoothness, and the accent veered toward cockney. Adrianne automatically glanced around the Rolls and smiled. “Yes, it is.”
“Always makes me feel like a queen. What’s your name, dear?”
“Adrianne, Adrianne Spring.” She didn’t notice that she’d dropped her title and used her mother’s maiden name as she did with those she felt comfortable with. But Philip did.
“Pretty name. You have a lovely time now. He’s a good boy, my Phil. Handsome, too, isn’t he?”
Eyes bright with humor, Adrianne grinned at Philip. It was the first time the full warmth of her was offered to him. “Yes, he is. Very.”
“Don’t let him charm you too quick, dearie. He can be a rogue.”
“Re
ally?” Adrianne eyed Philip over the rim of her glass. “I’ll remember that. It was nice talking to you, Mrs. Chamberlain.”
“You just call me Mary. Everyone does. Have Phil bring you by anytime. We’ll have some tea and a nice chat.”
“Thank you. Good night.” Still grinning, she handed the phone back to Philip.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mum. No, she’s not pretty. Her eyes are crossed, she has a harelip, and warts. Go watch the telly. I love you too.” He hung up, then took a long sip of wine. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” The phone call had changed her feelings for him. It would be difficult for her to be cool to a man who had both love and affection for his mother. “She sounds delightful.”
“She is. She’s the love of my life.”
She paused a moment, studying. “I believe you mean it.”
“I do.”
“And your father? Is he as delightful?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
If she understood anything, it was the need to draw a shade over private family business. “Why did you tell her my eyes were crossed?”
With a laugh he took her hand and brought it to his lips. “For your own good, Adrianne.” His lips lingered there while his gaze held hers. “She’s desperate for a daughter-in-law.”
“I see.”
“And grandchildren.”
“I see,” she repeated, and drew her hand away.
The inn was all he had promised. But then, she’d chosen it for Madeline because it was quiet, out of the way, and unabashedly romantic. The manager she’d met just that afternoon greeted her with a bow and not a flicker of recognition.
There was a huge, ox-roasting fireplace where logs as thick as a man’s trunk blazed behind a gilt-edged screen. They kept up a hot, humming roar. Mullioned windows held out the blast of autumn wind that came from the sea. Huge Victorian furniture, the sideboards groaning with silver and crystal, seemed cozy in the enormous room.
They dined on the house specialty of beef Wellington while candles in heavy pewter holders flickered around them and music came from an old man and his gleaming violin.
She’d never expected to be relaxed with Philip. Not like this, not so she could laugh and listen and linger over brandy. He knew old movies, which were still her passion, though for now he skirted around her mother and her tragedy. They skipped back another generation to Hepburn, Bacall, Cable, and Tracy.
It disarmed her that he could remember dialogue, and could mimic it amazingly well. Both her English and her talent for accents had come from the screen, small and large. Since her love of fantasy had come naturally enough through Phoebe, she couldn’t help feeling kindred with him.
She discovered he had an interest in gardening, which he indulged both at his country home and in the greenhouse attached to his home in London.
“It’s difficult to imagine you puttering around and scouting out weeds. But it explains the calluses.”
“Calluses?”
“On your hands,” she said, and immediately regretted her slip. What should have been a casual observation seemed too personal, too intimate with candlelight and violins. “They don’t suit the rest of you.”
“Better than you think,” he murmured. “We all have our images and illusions, don’t we?”
She thought she felt the sting of a double entendre and neatly sidestepped with a comment about the gardens of Buckingham Palace.
They’d traveled to many of the same places. Over brandy they learned they both had stayed at the Excelsior in Rome during the same week five years before. What wasn’t mentioned was that Adrianne had been there to relieve a contessa of a suite of diamonds and rubies. Philip had been on one of his last jobs, acquiring a pouch of unset gems from a movie mogul. Both of them smiled reminiscently at their separate memories.
“I had a particularly lovely time in Rome that summer,” Adrianne remembered as they started back out to the car. A lovely time that had amounted to roughly three hundred and fifty million lire.
“And I.” Philip’s take had been nearly half again that amount when he’d bartered the stones in Zurich. “It’s a pity we didn’t run into each other.”
Adrianne slid across the plush seat. “Yes.” She would have enjoyed drinking heavy red wine and walking down the steamy streets of Rome with him. But she was glad she hadn’t met him then. He would have distracted her as, unfortunately, he was distracting her now. His leg brushed casually against hers as the car began to roll. It was a good thing her work at Madeline’s would be so straightforward.
“There’s a café there with the most incredible ice cream.”
“San Filippo,” Adrianne said with a laugh. “I gain five pounds whenever I sit down at that cafe.”
“Perhaps one day we’ll find ourselves there together.”
His finger grazed her cheek, just enough to remind her of the game to be played, and it wouldn’t pay to enjoy it too much. With some regret she drew back. “Perhaps.”
She’d moved only slightly, but he’d felt the distance grow. A strange woman, he mused. The exotic looks, that come-hither mouth, the quick flashes of passion he saw from time to time in her eyes. All real enough, but deceiving. She wasn’t the kind of woman to settle comfortably, pliably, in a man’s arms, but one who would freeze that man with a word or a look. He’d always preferred a woman who enjoyed an open physicality, an easy sexual relationship. And yet he found himself not only intrigued but drawn to the contrasts in Adrianne.
Philip knew as well as she the value of timing. He waited until they drove into London.
“What were you doing in the Fumes’ bedroom last night?”
She nearly jumped, nearly swore. The evening, the company, the warmth of brandy, had relaxed her enough to take her off guard. It was only the years of self-training that enabled her to look at him with vague curiosity. “I beg your pardon?”
“I asked what you were doing in the Fumes’ bedroom during the party.” Idly, he curled the tips of her hair around his finger. A man could get lost in hair like that, he thought. Drown in it.
“What makes you think I was?”
“Not think, know. Your scent’s very individual, Adrianne. Unmistakable. I smelled you the moment I opened the door.”
“Really?” She shifted the sable back on her shoulders while her mind scrambled for the right answer. “One might ask what you were doing poking about.”
“One might.”
As the silence grew, she decided it would only make it more of a mystery if she did not answer. “As it happens, I’d gone up to fix a loose hem. Should I be flattered that I impressed you enough that you recognized my perfume?”
“You should be flattered that I don’t call you a liar,” he said lightly. “But then, beautiful women are apt to lie about most anything.”
He touched her face, not teasingly, not flirtatiously as he had before, but possessively. His palm curved over her chin, his fingers spread over her cheek so that between them and his thumb her mouth was framed. Incredibly soft, incredibly desirable was his first thought. Then he saw what surprised him. It wasn’t anger in her eyes, nor was it humor or aloofness. It was fear, just a flicker, just an instant, but very clear.
“I choose my lies more discriminatory, Philip.” God, a touch shouldn’t make her feel this way, shaky, unsure, needy. Her back went rigid against the seat. She couldn’t control that. She barely managed to force her lips to curve into a cool smile. “It seems we’ve arrived.”
“Why should you be afraid for me to kiss you, Adrianne?”
Why should he see so clearly what she’d managed to hide from dozens of others? “You’re mistaken,” she said evenly. “I simply don’t want you to.”
“Now I will call you a liar.”
She let out her breath very slowly, very carefully. No one knew better than she how destructive her temper could be. “As you like. It was a lovely evening, Philip. Good night.”
“I’ll see you to your suite.”
&nb
sp; “Don’t bother.”
The driver was already holding her door open. Without glancing back, she slid out, then hurried into the hotel, the fur swirling around her.
Adrianne waited until the stroke of midnight before she sneaked out of the service entrance of the hotel. She was still dressed in black, but now it was a wool turtleneck and snug leggings under a leather jacket. The stocking cap was pulled low, with her hair tucked beneath it. On her feet were soft-soled leather boots, and slung over her arm was an oversize shoulder bag.
A half mile from the hotel she hailed a cab. She took three of them, by winding routes, to within a mile of Madeline’s flat. She was grateful for the fog, knee-high now. It was like wading through a shallow river so that even as the mist parted and swirled at her steps, it dampened her boots. Her steps were silent on the pavement. As she approached the building, she could see the streetlights beam down, then disappear as the fog swallowed them.
The street was silent; the houses dark.
With one quick look Adrianne scaled the low wall at the back of the building and crossed the postage-stamp lawn to the side feeing west. There was ivy here, dark and smelling of damp. Melting against it, she scanned right, then left.
She could be seen if a neighbor with insomnia happened to glance her way, but she’d be hidden from any cars passing on the street. Competently, even mechanically, she uncoiled her rope.
It took only a few minutes to scale the wall to the second level, and Madeline’s bedroom window. There was a low light burning on the dresser, allowing Adrianne to see the room clearly. From the mess, it appeared that Madeline had had trouble deciding on the proper dress for the evening.
Poor Lucille, she thought as she took out her glass cutter. There was little doubt that the maid would bear the brunt of her mistress’s temper in the morning.
She needed only a small hole. Her hand was narrow. She used the adhesive to draw the circle of glass out. With her gloves as protection, she reached inside to trip the lock. Eight minutes after her arrival, Adrianne was crawling through the window.
She waited, listening. Around her the building settled, murmuring and creaking as old buildings do in the night. Her feet were silent over the antique Persian carpet at the foot of the bed.
