Chapter 7
Chapter
Schubert and Strauss, this place was confusing.
Halting in yet another identical corridor at the patent office, Charles attempted to get his bearings.
What had that chap in the lobby mumbled?
Was it two lefts and a right, or two rights and a left?
The frazzled fellow hadn’t enunciated, let alone slowed down, when Charles had requested clarification.
All the hallways and doors looked the same.
Navigating them felt akin to his first attempts at learning to read music.
Except he wasn’t a three-year-old clambering atop a piano bench.
He was a grown man, and as such, he ought to be able to manage the benign task of finding his way to the correct office. Theoretically.
Shaking his head, Charles turned and strode back up the corridor. There was nothing for it. He needed to locate someone capable of giving coherent directions so he could find the clerk of applications and be about his task.
After accepting the position of event coordinator, Charles had pitched the idea of transforming Westminster Hall’s lengthy expanse into a veritable timeline of the company’s fifty-year history, starting with a commemorative display near the entrance showcasing its humble beginnings.
A group photograph from Mr. Harrison’s office, taken at a patent office company picnic when he’d been a young man just entering the workforce, would be featured alongside the original application for Alvan T.
Harrison, Incorporated’s very first patent.
He’d already received Mr. Harrison’s hearty approval.
Now, Charles just had to secure the proper permissions from the elusive clerk of applications and, you know . . . pull the thing off.
An old man with pince-nez spectacles came blustering out of a room.
“Hello, there. Is this—”
The old man, stooped over, gaze cast down, walked on as though he didn’t hear him.
Charles entered the office the man had exited, intent on finding someone he might ask for aid, and came to a standstill.
For there, sitting at a desk before a typewriter, sat the most beautiful woman he’d ever beheld.
He’d read in an article that, thanks to the invention of the typewriter, many businesses had taken to hiring female secretaries, much to the chagrin of the formerly all-male clerical workforce.
Therefore, he shouldn’t be surprised at the presence of a woman in an office. But this . . . this was no mere woman.
This was the very personification of Reverie—the last piece of music he’d rehearsed prior to Father’s stroke . . . the piece he was to have debuted in London for Debussy . . . but never actually got to perform.
This woman—Reverie—was a veritable dream.
Wait, was he dreaming?
Charles blinked, but the image of beauty didn’t dissolve into mist.
After penning something into a ledger book, Reverie alighted, gliding around the desk on wings invisible.
No, not wings. Wheels. The woman perched upon a wheeled chair.
All elegance and grace. Curls of ebony, skin of ivory—wait, she was leaving.
Gliding past him and toward the door as though unaware of his existence.
Charles cleared his throat. “Excuse me, I—”
“Mr. Glidden will return momentarily.” Reverie tossed the sentence over her shoulder, sparing him not a look.
“Wait . . . miss.”
At last, Reverie stilled, rotated her chair, and met his enraptured gaze with eyes of crystalline green. Her fair brow furrowed, as though perplexed, and she glanced over her shoulder. “I beg your pardon, sir. Were you addressing me?”
Addressing . . . admiring . . . attempting to memorize. His cheeks flashed hot. Ahem. “Ap-plications?” He stumbled over the word, sputtering like a simpleton.
Reverie’s brow smoothed. “Ah yes, the building is quite hard to navigate upon one’s first visit.
Best keep to the main passages and steer clear of the labyrinth.
” Before he could inquire about the mysterious labyrinth she referenced, Reverie turned to leave, speaking as she glided out the door.
“From here, it’s the second corridor to the right and straight on till Morning.
That being the office of Mr. Morning, the clerk of applications.
” And with that, she winged away by means unknown without so much as a by-your-leave.
Charles blinked as one awakening. His slackened jaw snapped shut with a clack of teeth. Dash it all, man! Her name. Get her name. Her real name! His slick palms fumbled with the latch, but the door, once open, proved the corridor to be lamentably empty. Reverie had vanished.