A Novel Seduction

by Gwyn Cready

  She had done the lines in a Scottish accent filtered through a Teutonic tongue, and Ellery had to bite her cheek to keep from smiling. “I get your point, and I don’t disagree, but what does one do when the other person doesn’t even seem to recognize he’s made a mistake?”

  “Stones stop a farmer, not a builder.”

  “Jemmie said that?”

  “No, my husband. And he vuz one of Scotland’s finest architects.” Dr. Albrecht smiled, remembering.

  “How long were you married?”

  “Ten years. We met right after he retired in ’ninety-eight. I vuz visiting Scotland to do some research. Married six veeks later.”

  “Quite the vintage year. Wasn’t that the year Kiltlander came out as well?”

  “No, Kiltlander vuz a year earlier.”

  A sparkle came into Dr. Albrecht’s eyes, and Ellery’s mind raced. “Wait a second,” she said, filled with the thrill of detection. “Your husband has red hair.”

  Dr. Albrecht didn’t respond, but the sparkle shone brighter.

  Ellery narrowed her eyes. “Where exactly were you doing your research?”

  “At the Highland Games in Stirling.”

  Ellery’s jaw dropped. “You came to Scotland to find yourself a Jemmie!”

  “I vouldn’t say that exactly.”

  “Was he wearing a kilt the day you met?”

  Dr. Albrecht’s face burst into a shining grin. “Och, he was handsome in that Grant red!”

  “You evil genius!”

  “I vuz studying the Scots warrior archetype,” she said primly. “Vun of the first things you learn in sociology is that the only conclusions you can draw must be based on observable, measurable data. I vuz simply adhering to the scientific method.”

  “Uh-huh. Tell me, did Mr. Grant have any idea he was participating in a study?”

  “Such studies must be done blind, of course, but I did learn the familiar Scots warrior fantasy in romance is based on very solid evidence.”

  They laughed.

  Ellery leaned back on her hands. “I’m almost afraid to ask if your research also included such topics as the Western cowboy, the big-city fireman and the English nobleman.”

  “A lady never tells. Let me just say I found there vuz no need to conduct any further research into hero archetypes after Archie.”

  “It sounds like your marriage was every romance reader’s fantasy.”

  “Vell, perhaps. Now let us see what vee can do about finding you some fantasy. Do you have a dress for tonight?”

  Ellery pushed the bathroom door closed with her toe, revealing the low-cut halter dress hanging on the back. The five-inch spike heels in black patent leather were sitting on the floor.

  Dr. Albrecht laid a hand over her heart. “Gott im Himmel.”

  Scared the Scottish right out of her, Ellery noted. “Yeah, it’s a little, um…”

  “Hurenhaft?”

  “If that means what I think it means, then, yes. Frankly, it wasn’t my choice, but then again, I’m not the one who packed my suitcase.”

  “Axel?”

  Ellery made a short, ironic guffaw. “No. Not a bad guess, come to think of it. But he would have picked a shorter skirt.”

  “I think,” Dr. Albrecht said, “I may have something to help.”

  She scurried out of the room, and after a moment or two of distant door creaking and hanger squeaking she reappeared with a white angora sweater with three-quarter sleeves whose placket was embroidered with pearls resembling tiny flowers on vines. It had gorgeous loop-de-loop frog clasps. It looked like it had just stepped out of a fifties prom.

  “Oh my God, it’s beautiful,” Ellery said, feeling the silky smooth yarn.

  “It vuz my mother’s. Try it on. She was about your size.”

  “With the dress?”

  “Yes.”

  Ellery slipped into the bathroom and emerged a moment later. When she stepped back to view herself in the room’s mirror, she saw she’d been transformed from a hurenhaft strumpet to a Grace Kelly debutante.

  “It’s lovely!”

  “Vee need a bit more, yes?” Dr. Albrecht disappeared a second time, returning with a box, a pair of scissors and an ancient tulle slip. “My vedding petticoat,” she said, holding up the last item.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ellery said after she’d pulled it on, “and I’m honored you’d lend it, but it reaches almost to the floor.”

  The older woman grinned, held up the scissors, then dropped to a knee and reached for the excess.

  “No!” Ellery cried. “Not your wedding skirt.”

  “Bah. First vedding.”

  In a moment the emerald skirt was aloft, floating on several inches of bouncy tulle.

  “Omigod, look at what it does when I turn,” Ellery said. She felt like a princess. “I have a pair of pearl studs. I’m going to pull my hair into a knot. It will be perfect.”

  “Vun more thing.”

  Dr. Albrecht pulled back the top of the box, revealing a breathtaking pair of silk flats in navy and green plaid with a rosette atop each toe.

  Ellery gasped. They were perfect. They brought everything in the outfit together, and they had the added benefits of being both comfortable and beautiful. Then her spirits fell. “Oh, but I’ll never fit into them.” Dr. Albrecht had to be six inches shorter than Ellery. Surely her feet had to be smaller too.

  “Vee are lucky,” the sociologist said, slipping her feet out from under her pant legs. “My father always called them my little battleships.”

  She placed the shoes on the floor, and Ellery slipped her feet in. The fit was damned near perfect.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Ellery said, giving the woman a hug. “I would have hated to be…”

  “Hurenhaft.”

  “Hurenhaft, exactly.”

  “Vell, I think a little of die Hurenhaftigkeit is always recommended.”

  Ellery laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

  “And vhat, then, are vee going to do about the article?”

  That was code for Axel. Ellery’s shoulders sagged. She looked beautiful, but what was the point? Axel and she would never see eye to eye.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ll keep working on it.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Ellery checked the clock. “Ooh, we’re getting close. Can I give you a hand with party prep?”

  “Do you mean instead of vurking on the article?”

  “Yes,” Ellery said, chagrinned. “I suppose that’s what I do mean.”

  “I do not need you for another half an hour or so.”

  You tenacious Teutonic matchmaker, you. No wonder the Germans were able to roll through Paris.

  “I may just nap.”

  “Vhatever suits, dear. I’m sure the article is fine as it is.”

  Grrrr.

  “Actually, there is something you could do for me,” Dr. Albrecht said, stopping at the door. “There’s a large powder room at the bottom of the stairs. It’s the public one, as it vur. Everything should be in order there, but if you could make sure the soaps are out, the hand towels are neatly folded, that sort of thing…”

  “Sure. Anything at all.” Anything that meant not working on the “article.” As for the actual article, she hoped Black liked it, because she had already sent him the draft.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Upper East Side, Manhattan

  Black stood on the balcony of his co-op apartment, shivering. He had snuck away from work, thinking Margey would be at her tennis lesson, only to discover Margey had a migraine and was lying on their bed with an ice pack, a sleeping mask and a serving-bowl-sized glass of pinot grigio at her side, which of course meant he had to feign a gallbladder attack to explain his appearance in the middle of the day. So now, instead of relaxing in his custom-made lambskin Eames lounger with his trousers around his knees, enjoying a nice long, relaxed phone call with Bettina, he was looking over the tops of the denuded Central Park trees, praying his
neighbor’s damned Yorkshire terrier wouldn’t catch him standing outside and go off like an upper-register fire alarm.

  He pulled his BlackBerry out of his pocket, willing Bettina to call. No missed calls. No new texts. Goddammit, he was going to freeze his considerable ass off if she didn’t call soon. With all the friggin’ apps out there, they couldn’t invent one that made the phone into a hand warmer?

  He had brought his glasses in case she sent a picture. She was known to do that—horribly filthy ones that made his heart leap into his throat and his creaky prostrate ring with the vigor of St. Patrick’s bells, and the last thing he wanted if that happened was to wake Margey while digging for reading glasses in the table next to the bed.

  He checked his e-mail in case Bettina had contacted him to cancel. She used the name Lloyd Pribbenow and subject lines that depended on the message she wished to convey. There was “Issues with the Franzen piece” (Are you free to talk?), “Did you see this in Publishers Weekly?” (Just checked into the hotel), and “PR Follow Up” (I’m naked on Skype).

  Unfortunately, there was nothing from Lloyd or Bettina in his in-box, but there was an e-mail from Ellery Sharpe with the draft of the romance article, which he was glad to see. He’d been pissed with Mackenzie for not answering his e-mails, but from Ellery’s cover note, it looked like he’d gotten a damn-near-finished piece. Perhaps Mackenzie had more power of persuasion than Black had been willing to give him credit for.

  He was just opening the document when his phone buzzed with a blocked call.

  “Hello?” he said, carefully neutral.

  “God, Buhl, you’re so cautious. Just once I’d like you to answer with ‘I’ve got my dick in my hand thinking about you.’ ”

  “Which, of course, would be the time the head of Human Resources would be calling.” Though Black considered he might have to put his dick in his hand soon if it got any colder. “How are you, my love?”

  “Bored. The conference was a complete snore. Plus, there were the usual barbs about Vamp.”

  And while Bettina whined about being both lauded and decried in the industry for her success—a situation she had related to Black several dozen times at least—he surreptitiously withdrew the phone from his ear to open the attachment in Ellery’s e-mail.

  “The Postmodern Reader: Feminism and the Transformational World of Romance”? “What the fuck?”

  “‘What the fuck’?” came a confused squawk through the speaker. “What the fuck—what?”

  Black frantically slung the phone back to his ear. “Nothing. I mean, I can’t believe they would treat you like that.” That title better pay off with a story so glowingly passionate about romance novels that Teamsters will cry. He moved the phone in front of him again.

  For the next sixty seconds he heard absolutely nothing Bettina said, only the radiator-clanging of his blood as fury hissed through his veins.

  Then she said the word “Sharpe.”

  “What?” he demanded, nearly fumbling the phone. “What did you say?”

  “I said Barry Steinberg told me Ellery Sharpe is in line to run the new rag at Lark & Ives.”

  “She’s what?” he roared. This was the last straw. “Lark & fucking Ives?”

  He heard a clunk one balcony over as Misty, the “Terror from Yorkshire,” threw herself into the glass of the patio door, leaping six feet in the air and unleashing a barrage of barking shrill enough to curdle brain jelly.

  Margey would be up in an instant. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “What?” Bettina said, “I can’t hear you.”

  “I said,” he repeated louder, “I’ve gotta go.”

  “What? What’s that noise?”

  “It’s the goddamned dog!”

  Misty was flying back and forth between the kitchen window and the French door to the patio, emitting a drumroll of earsplitting barks whenever she appeared.

  “Goddammit,” Black said. “Shut the fuck up!”

  “I beg your pardon!” Bettina said.

  Margey appeared in the living room, sleep mask on her forehead, glaring at him through the patio doors.

  “I have to go!” Black cried.

  “Don’t you hang up on me!” Bettina said.

  Misty leapt against the screen, until it finally opened and she landed on the patio, where she swung in a full circle on the Carrara marble before finding her footing and charging directly at him, stopping only when the width of her head kept her from flying through the rails into his neck. He hung up in the middle of a stream of vulgarity from Bettina, just as Margey opened the door and glowered at him.

  “Jesus Christ, Buhl, you are the rudest person I know.”

  She slammed the door.

  Black considered his lover, his wife and the employee who had woefully shortchanged him on an assignment and was now trying to steal away to Lark & Ives.

  “Bitches,” he said.

  Misty bared her teeth and growled.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Thistle Bed & Breakfast, Bathgate, Scotland

  Axel examined the kilt in the dry-cleaning bag and the accompanying parcel of accessories without really seeing any of it. Ellery’s “compromise” position on the article was ridiculous. She was a far better journalist than that. He hated the way the magazine world worked. And he was still the sole possessor of Jill’s secret, a possessor who would soon have to break his confidante’s trust by telling it to the one person he never wanted to talk to again.

  He grabbed the collar of his shirt, pulled it over his head and tossed it. Women.

  Bending, he pulled the Dopp kit out of his duffel bag and unzipped it. Then he looked at the contents and scratched his head. With the time change, late lunch and uncertain dinner, he had to figure out if he needed to take any insulin. He pricked his finger and tested it. Two twenty-seven. Yikes. He tore open a syringe and lifted the small glass vial from its special holder. He cleaned the top of the bottle with an alcohol wipe and pinched a piece of stomach between his thumb and forefinger, wiping the flesh too. Tapping the vial, he lifted it into the air and drew out the appropriate amount of insulin. Then he inserted the needle into his flesh and, when the syringe was empty, withdrew it and put everything away.

  He turned his attention once more to the kilt. He had worn one more times than he’d care to remember, every April sixth, the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, when his dad would drag them out to the backyard for a picture, his sisters and mother free to wear whatever spring dresses they had at hand, while he and his father would trot out the Mackenzie tartan, complete with brogues, knee-high socks, dirk and sporran. His father would set the self-timer on the camera and hurry to insert himself behind the family. Once the picture had been captured, he would read out the entire Declaration, followed in due course by a broad sampling of Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott and, if he’d dipped into the Canadian Club early enough, Robert Burns.

  Axel smiled. He missed his father.

  Still, the old man would not have approved of a Black Watch tartan, which was the standard of the abhorred Clan Campbell, but Axel did not hold to the old battle lines. He kicked off his hiking boots, removed his belt and slipped out of his jeans and boxers. Then he wrapped the heavy wool around him, rethreading the belt at his waist. Digging through the bag once more, he pulled out the sporran and fastened it around his hips. The fit was good, though he’d never been a fan of the horsehair. He looked inside, hoping he didn’t discover condoms or a phone number or something. Finding nothing, he debated what he should carry and decided on his cell phone and a ten-pound note so that he could buy a couple of beers. Then he dropped the wallet in the duffel and followed that with his discarded clothes.

  He sat on the toilet to pull on the thick socks, folding them over the flashes that had been pinned to them. There were no brogues. He hoped his boots would do and laced them up. There was also no shirt. He stuck his head outside the door and was lucky to catch Dr. Albrecht scurrying by.

  “Oh, you lo
ok grand,” she said.

  He made a courtly bow, which made her giggle, and asked, “Is there a shirt for this, or do I wear my own?” Not, of course, that his duffel bag held anything more than T-shirts, a couple button-down collar shirts and a sweater.

  She held up a finger. “Let me check. I think there is.”

  She darted away, and Axel looked in the mirror at the two-day growth of beard. He probably should shave for the party. Then his vanity chimed in to remind him Ellery had always preferred him looking, as she’d said, “a little Colin Farrell.”

  “No one asked your opinion,” he replied pointedly to his vanity.

  He reached for his shaver, standing firm on the notion he should not attend to Ellery’s desires, but then changed his mind.

  Oh, the hell with it.

  Perhaps he’d take his own “compromise” position, trimming the whiskers into a nice Wilford Brimley or something.

  He heard a light tap and the door opened. It was Ellery, and she jumped a foot.

  * * *

  She felt her heart go off in her chest like a cartoon alarm clock, and if there’d been a wooden beam above her, she would have bonked her head on it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  She hoped he wouldn’t, since she could barely form a sentence. He looked amazing. He was bare to the waist, his chest covered with its usual light pelt of auburn curls, and the musculature of his stomach rippled and bent as he moved. But it wasn’t the nakedness that stunned her: It was the heavy, dark tartan of black, blue and green fanned over his legs, revealing lovely, round knees and outstandingcalves.

  How had she not noticed those calves before? Here she’d been mooning for years over his forearms, and his calves made his forearms look like some anemic appetizer on an erogenous man-part smorgasbord.

  “I… I…” She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The effect was overwhelming. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to clean up in here.” With effort, she backed out, mortified. Then she stopped and opened the door wider. “Wait a second. Why aren’t you changing in your room?”