Yes, if this Damien Ruthven knew something more about the great man she had loved all her life, Brice was going to get it out of him or die trying.
Karen stuck her head back in her employer’s door and said in a voice of suffering: “Well, you’ve done it now. I don’t know what you wrote to that woman, but Brice Ashton is coming to see you. This afternoon! She didn’t even give me a chance to say yes or no, just announced her imminent arrival and hung up.”
The secretary had been annoyed and intrigued that Damien had insisted on writing that particular letter himself. He usually avoided his computer, claiming the machine didn’t like him—which it undoubtedly didn’t since it broke down on him so often. But if Karen had been curious before, now that the Ashton woman had replied she was doubly so.
“Is she?” Damien leaned back in his chair. He smiled slightly. “Well, how wonderfully prompt of her. I thought she might put me off until after the holidays.”
Karen pointed a finger at him. “I’m telling you now, if there’s blood spilled, you’re cleaning it up. I may be old-fashioned enough to fetch coffee, but I don’t do windows or bloodbaths.”
“My dear Karen! How you do go on. Miss Ashton isn’t coming to spill my blood. I think you will find that she is a delightfully polite if rather inquisitive person. Besides, she wants something from me. My hide is sacrosanct at least until then.”
“You think?” Karen looked skeptical. “So you weren’t planning on going out of town suddenly and leaving me to deal with her?”
“Of course not.” Then Damien added, “However, it might be best if you considered taking the day off if you’re nervous. I can manage on my own.”
Karen snorted.
“Truly. Go home for the holidays.”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” she said frankly. “Anyway, how will I be able to blackmail you if I don’t see where you put the body? Or where she puts yours. Hiding a corpse in Manhattan in winter isn’t as easy as it used to be, but I bet you are both resourceful enough to manage.”
Damien shook his head, eyes laughing. “Go on and persevere in your lack of faith in my ability to charm scholarly spinsters. But it would perhaps be nice if you arranged for some flowers while you’re busy doubting me.”
“Flowers?”
Karen said the word like she had never heard it before. “You want flowers?”
“Yes, irises, I think. Or orchids. See what they have in rust and gold—it will go well in this room. And make reservations for this evening at Di Serrano’s. They’re elegant but not too obviously opulent. Make it for seven, please.”
“Seven people?”
“No, for two people at seven o’clock. She’ll probably prefer to eat early.”
“You’re taking the author to dinner? Alone? But you don’t like authors.” Karen stared at him like he’d grown an extra head.
Her boss was a connoisseur of all the best things in life, from exotic tea and vintage wines to the exquisite clothes that adorned his fine physique. He was not a conspicuous consumer, but a steady one who did not stint on himself. Karen had always found it amazing that he did not strive for excellence in women. His infrequent dates were stunning enough by all physical measures of beauty, but he never allowed himself romantic liaisons with anyone who stirred his interest or emotions. He remained determinedly aloof from anyone who evoked mental attraction—including his secretary. And they were never invited to his favorite haunts, like Di Serrano’s.
Until today.
“Absolutely. I want flowers, and I want to take her to dinner,” he assured Karen. “This lady deserves a fine meal after coming so far to see me.”
“Is she pretty?” Karen asked, forgetting for the moment to remain professionally distant. “I mean, insanely beautiful?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Damien answered. Then he added with a slight smile: “But wouldn’t it be brilliant if she were?”
“I’ve been with you for five years,” Karen said, feeling slightly stunned and unable to let the matter go. “Five long years. You’ve never done anything like this. Are you feeling okay? You haven’t slipped into an early midlife crisis, have you? I mean, for the cost of dinner at Di Serrano’s you could probably buy a used Ferrari.”
“I
haven’t
done anything like this before, have I? It’s probably high time I did,” Damien answered absently. He pulled Brice’s manuscript back toward him. “Listen to this! ‘The Guiccioli girl is better—and will get well with prudence—our amatory business goes on well and daily. Her doctors insist that she may be cured, if she likes. Will she like? I doubt of her liking anything for very long, except one thing, and I presume that she will soon arrive at varying even that.’ ”
He dropped the papers. “Where does this woman get her information? I must know. It’s like she was sitting in the wardrobe of the bedroom taking notes while it happened. She understands it all—the cause of the affair, and also the spiritual claustrophobia that drove him to seek solace in women’s arms.”
“Ah. The light dawns,” Karen said, coming to sit on the edge of Damien’s desk. Her eyes were a little wide. “She’s a sort of mystery to you, then—a puzzle that must be solved at any cost.”
“She’s certainly a detective. This kind of research borders on true mania! Writers with obsessions interest me.”
“And she’s ferreted out information about Byron that you didn’t know.”
“No—not exactly. But she’s ferreted out things that no other scholar has. This next bit is from one of Teresa’s own journals. She was with Byron when he wrote
Don Juan
,” he added, in case Karen didn’t know. His secretary admired Byron’s poetry, though she liked Shelley’s more—but she’d never been much interested in any of the poets’ personal lives, in spite of her employer’s obsession with the literary giants of that era.
“Listen. ‘His pen moved so rapidly over the page that one day I said to him, “One would almost believe that someone is dictating to you!” “Yes,” he replied, “a mischievous spirit who sometimes even makes me write what I am not thinking. There now, for instance—I have just been writing something about love!” “Why don’t you erase it then?” I asked. “It is written,” he replied, smiling. “The stanza would be spoiled.” And the stanza remained.’ ”
“Miss Ashton makes it all come alive, doesn’t she? By using letters and journals in the subject’s own words instead of paraphrasing,” Karen said, watching her employer’s face. His expression was rapt. She quashed the tiny tendril of jealousy that dared to reach for her heart. She was genuinely fond of Damien Ruthven, and she nobly hoped that he had finally had enough of intellectually and emotionally lopsided romance. Perhaps he was ready to try something different: an affair with someone who would be his equal, who might love him in spite of his quirks—and whom he might be able to love in return. “Usually history is bone dry,” she said at random, wondering just how old Brice Ashton was. Could she be under fifty? Karen hoped so.
“Yes.”
“And the biographies even worse. But this sounds special. Unique even. Something that could even be…popular.”
There was a slightly asthmatic wheeze from under his desk, and Damien reached down for a moment.
“Yes,” he said again, not looking up from the papers in front of him. “Except for Byron’s own memoirs, there has been nothing like it.”
“I’ll go make those reservations,” Karen said. She rose decisively. “Hopefully, the florist can scare up gold irises. They’ve been kind of heavy on the poinsettias the last few weeks.”
“No poinsettias,” her employer ordered. “They’re so common. And please cancel my reservations for this weekend. Skiing can wait until after Miss Ashton’s visit.”
“Shall I order up a Christmas tree while I’m at it?” Karen asked. She’d wanted to do one in the office for the longest time, but Damien had no interest in the holidays. “It would be a homey touch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t do homey. But order some holly if you like. Or ivy. You can put it on your desk—or wear it on your head, if you prefer.” Damien took a good-natured swipe at Karen’s devotion to the holiday.
“Don’t be nasty. What about mistletoe? I think you need some of that too. It’s traditional,” she added. “It might help you get lucky with your spinster.”
“Don’t be absurd. And go away,” he grumbled. “I’m reading, and Mace is trying to sleep.”
There came a second asthmatic wheeze from under the desk, which Karen understood to be agreement. “You males always stick together,” she muttered.
“It’s for the preservation of our gender identity in the face of feminine wiles,” Damien replied.
Karen sniffed but didn’t argue.
“I was meaning to ask if you would mind if I left a little early tonight.”
“Not at all. Shop to your heart’s content.”
“It isn’t that.” Karen hesitated, and after a moment Damien looked up. He raised a brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“Probably nothing. I think maybe I’ve acquired an admirer. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but…” She trailed off, unable to explain her uneasiness. “Anyhow, I’d like to leave before dark.”
“And so you shall. But I’m sending you home in the car.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Of course it is,” Damien answered, returning his attention to his manuscript.
It is all very well to keep food for another day, but pleasure should be taken as it comes.
—Ninon de Lenclos
But Words are things,
And a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought,
Produces that which makes thousands,
Perhaps millions, think.
—Byron,
Don Juan,
canto III
You should have a softer pillow than my heart.
—Byron’s supposed words to his wife on their wedding night
Brice Ashton climbed out of the cab, taking her small suitcase with her. The snow felt like soft laughter and made her smile in spite of her annoyance at being late for her appointment—if appointment it could be called. She had simply announced her pending arrival to Damien Ruthven’s secretary and then hung up the airport pay phone.
And she was very tardy, possibly unforgivably so, but she stood for a moment, in spite of the hour and the snow covering her in a damp mantilla, to look at the New York building where Damien Ruthven lived. Ruthven Tower was not the tallest skyscraper in the area—not by a long shot—but it had certainly captured the neo-Gothic feel of several of its larger brothers, which was to say that it was very gray and vertical and loaded with fanciful man-reptiles that leered down at passing pedestrians with their forked tongues and hooked ears. It also had what looked like an unrailed stair circling the middle floors in a dizzying spiral that would have tempted the choreographer, Busby Berkeley—had he been able to get insurance for such a dance number, which seemed unlikely.
Somehow, that seemed fitting. The current owner of this building was a literary showman who spent a lot of time sneering down at the authors whose books he reviewed, any number of whom had probably passed beneath him on these very streets.
There were three stories at the base of the building and thirteen stories above, though Brice knew from a quick bit of online research that the top three stories were actually all one open area where Damien Ruthven lived. Not that the real estate stopped there. His great-uncle had also cleverly manipulated the zoning law so that he and his heirs owned the airspace above the building and the airspace above the two buildings on either side. The next block might grow upward, but there would be no nearby skyscrapers obstructing the view.
She wasn’t sure if she thought this foresight was admirable or grasping. Maybe it was both.
Jostled by a harassed Christmas shopper with her many packages, a cell phone and a cooling latte, wisely fleeing the snow that weathermen were predicting would worsen, Brice took up her suitcase and headed for the tower lobby.
The interior was about what she expected: lots of dark marble that made it look a bit like a tomb, though it was almost certainly supposed to be patterned after Napoleon’s impressive palace at Compiègne. It probably did an equally effective job of intimidating anyone who didn’t have a good and sufficient purpose to be visiting.
A security guard looked hard at her snow-covered suitcase as she approached, making Brice wish that she had taken the time to check in at her hotel, or at least to have invested in some less frivolous luggage. Hot pink and purple herringbone seemed to displease a lot of people. The guard’s snooty stare set her teeth on edge, but she kept both her voice and expression polite as she asked after Damien Ruthven. The guard blinked. After a moment, he had her sign a logbook, then handed her a magnetic card which he got out of an envelope that had her name on it, written in an elegant hand with which she was now familiar. He directed her to a pair of elevators, where he told her to take the one on the right.
The directory beside the brass doors told her that the building was also the business home for a number of accountants, lawyers, computer software firms and one e-publisher. None of this information made her feel welcome, or happy about getting into the elevator. The airplane here had been packed, and she had had enough of confined spaces.
Fortunately, the elevator was roomy enough to not provoke her claustrophobia when the door slid shut. The private elevator to Damien Ruthven’s penthouse was quick, and silent in its arrival.
There was no formal foyer on the penthouse floor. The elevator doors opened directly onto a gigantic space that now functioned as an office and reception area. The only screens that blocked the elevator were twin banks of lush houseplants that had been allowed to turn feral.
She stepped carefully around them. There was no sign of thorns on any of the plants, but she was in enemy territory now. It behooved her to be cautious.
Brice stepped into the open and took a deep breath. She found the interior of Damien’s home rather more inviting than the arctic foyer below, though no less grand. The floor was of a lovely rose marble, softened further by Persian rugs roughly the size of your average Middle Eastern country and probably made when Persia still
was
Persia, though she couldn’t swear to it since they showed no signs of wear. There was also a lot of glass on the wall in front of her, though it was mostly covered in sheers woven with golden thread and opera-house drapes of deep red velvet.
The only exception to the curtained look was the window directly behind an ancient desk where a woman—presumably the secretary Brice had spoken with so briefly—sat looking out the naked glass at the tumbling snow beyond.
The desk the woman was barricaded behind was a piece of furniture large and elegant enough to be called an historic artifact. Someone, or maybe several someones, of vast importance had undoubtedly used it while deciding the fate of nations. It was, Brice was certain, designed to deter interlopers like herself—not that it would work! No desk would keep her from Byron’s memoirs.
Since she was unobserved, Brice took her time looking around. There were also some lovely and—naturally—large paintings on the walls. She was no expert, but she was certain that at least one was a Matisse. It sat above an enormous fireplace, which was unlit but laid with kindling and logs.
Brice put her suitcase down with a decided clunk, and, not caring if it made her seem crazy or rude, she did a silent 360-degree inspection of the room. It was all much the same—tasteful, expensive, large—except for a narrow iron staircase in one corner that spiraled dizzily up toward a frosted-glass ceiling. It looked a bit like a dinosaur’s skeleton and would be as difficult to climb as a giant’s ribcage. There were two other corkscrew staircases that rose up from other rooms, metal cyclones that reached for the distant ceiling.
The flights of curved steps ended in a catwalk affair that ran around the room, its decorative iron rail broken up by a series of torchère lamps that were probably a lot larger than they looked from where she was standing. She wasn’t an expert, but something about them screamed
Tiffany
.
There was a second ring of balconies, also lined with books and reached by even narrower stairs. Beyond that was a glass dome, either made of white glass or else frosted over by the snow. The effect was rather like standing inside a giant wedding cake—a very expensive wedding cake.
If Brice had harbored any fears about Damien Ruthven being a starving working man just doing a nasty job to get by, they were now laid to rest.
“Ostentatious, but I could learn to call it home,” she muttered, then flinched when the room picked up her words and amplified them.
“It does take some getting used to,” a pleasant voice answered from behind the grand desk. “But after a while it actually feels rather homey.”
Brice turned and looked again at the secretary. The woman was turned her way now. She was young and blonde—though not adolescent, Brice was relieved to see. She also seemed friendly, though there was a definite measuring quality in her gaze that mirrored the looks Brice had received in the lobby. Brice wasn’t used to inciting so much curiosity. Perhaps she was the first writer to ever brave the dragon’s lair.
“You must be Karen Andersen,” Brice said, and then ruined the coolly polite greeting by sneezing violently. “Darn it!”
“Yes, and you are Brice Ashton,” the blonde said warmly. “May I take that case for you? Or do you have more manuscripts for Mr. Ruthven?”
Brice stared at her in confusion, then started laughing. She fished a tissue out of her pocket.
“Please, take the case. There is nothing in it for Mr. Ruthven. My flight was delayed by the weather, and since I was so late, I came here directly instead of stopping at the hotel.” While she explained, Brice slipped off her coat. She quickly stuffed her tissue in a pocket.
“Well, let me put these over by the desk and take you in to Mr. Ruthven. He was just about to have tea. However, he delayed to take a call from an associate, so you have made it in time for tea after all.”
Brice gave up trying to be formal and dignified and smiled. “Thank you. That would be lovely. I asked for tea on the plane, but it was a lost cause. I finally used the teabags as eye compresses and gave the water back so they could finish washing the dishes in first class. They served some sort of fish up there, and the odor would
not
go away. I fear there will be stories of food poisoning on the news tonight.”
“Well, I can promise you a wonderful pot of Darjeeling—and scones too. And not a single fish.” Smiling, the secretary ushered Brice toward a set of French doors carved of dark rosewood. She didn’t attempt to knock—all those angels lounging on fruit would destroy her knuckles—but simply opened a door and said: “Your guest is here.”
And there he was: the literary critic, the creature many suspected of having a soul of clay, if not being a golem himself.
Brice studied him warily.
He looked wrong for the part, she decided immediately. After hearing so much about the fire-breathing Damien Ruthven and listening to his secretary and the security guard refer to him as
“Mr. Ruthven”
in tones of utmost respect and even awe, Brice expected to meet a man of advanced years and impressive demeanor. But though imposing enough—
and those eyes! Good God! They were as black as anything she had ever seen
—he appeared to be no more than forty years of age. He also wore his hair long and had an earring.
Not certain if she found this lack of stereotypical fashion to be reassuring, she advanced slowly.
“Damien Ruthven?” she asked, wanting to be sure that she had the right man.
“In the flesh,” he answered in a cultured voice, which held the hint of a British accent. He rose from behind his desk—it was an artifact too—and walked toward her. His eyes looked her over carefully. It was too much to say he sounded surprised, but Brice sensed that she had somehow astonished him. Perhaps he had also been expecting someone older. “And you are Miss Ashton.”
“Yes.” Brice couldn’t help but continue to stare as he offered his hand. It was complete foolishness, a wild fancy brought on by jet lag and dim light, but he looked a great deal like the later portraits of Lord Byron, when pain and war had toughened his features into something nearly piratical.
Their fingers met and then their palms. A slight tingling passed through her skin, almost as though she were receiving a series of slight shocks. Brice was also aware of the heat rolling off of him. She wondered if she was especially chilled or if he had an abnormally high body temperature, or perhaps was ill.
Damien’s eyes widened, as though he, too, could feel the shock of the flesh, and he continued to stare at her. His expression was partly delighted and partly puzzled.
“Have we met?” Brice asked, and then wished she hadn’t. Where were her verbal filters today? She could feel herself blushing under the mobile brow that elevated at her question.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice, since she was already flushed with cold.
“No, I’m certain not,” Damien answered, finally releasing her hand. He added graciously, “But I understand why you ask. I, too, had a moment when I was sure that I had seen you before. But perhaps it was an author photo.”
“No, I’ve never had one done,” she answered.
She did not protest when he laid a light hand on her arm and guided her toward the desk, where there was an enormous vase of gold irises and very little else. No phone, no computer—no thumbscrews or iron maidens either. Other than a small desk lamp, there was no sign that the twenty-first century had penetrated his domain.
There was also no tingling when he touched her—not with the fabric between them—but she felt his warmth through the wool of her sweater.
“I have not had one done either,” he confessed. He gestured to a chair near the fire. The fireplace in his library-cum-office was smaller than the one in the reception hall, but it was also hung with equally expensive art. This one looked to be a Goya. She stared at the portrait with disfavor. It was one of Goya’s crueler paintings, done when the lead poisoning had eaten away at his brain.
“We are both somewhat shy, it seems,” he added.
His column always appeared without a photo. Brice’s writer friends had speculated that it was because Damien Ruthven hadn’t been able to find a way to hide his horns and forked tail. That was ridiculous, of course, but there was definitely something about him that made her think of black magic.
She nodded to herself and tried to organize her face back into polite, professional lines while she studied another painting. It was a portrait of a pair of terriers and a monkey dressed as a Moorish slave. Byron was rumored to have had such a painting done while in Greece. It was fascinating to think about this possibility, but slightly less intriguing than her host, so she saved her questions for later.
“Perhaps we are merely private,” she suggested when the silence strung out and she reluctantly admitted that it was her turn to say something. “We may not care to have strangers feeling a high degree of intimacy with us when we don’t want intimacy with them.”