Chapter 5 #2
She could hardly believe it, but it certainly explained a few things.
Perhaps hiding behind leaves had been for a more personal purpose than simply catching his breath.
After all, when his agent had pulled him out of his hiding place, she’d gotten after him about that hiding and reminded him that he’d promised to remain out in the open, hadn’t she?
Harriet couldn’t deny that there was a part of her that was tempted to exercise a little chivalry and march out to his aid, but she found herself hesitating.
She was in a room full of women—and a few men—who looked as if they might do damage to anyone who got between them and their prize.
Staying off the field definitely made the most sense.
She picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulders, but that was just in case she needed to make a hasty escape.
It didn’t mean that she had to march out into the fray and rescue anyone.
Of all people, TD Piaget didn’t need her help.
She took a deep breath, then mentally made a quick list of why that was.
In the first place, he was several inches taller than she was, which meant he could see to himself without her help.
In the second place, she was a tender little snowdrop who functioned best in the shadows of mighty forests, not out on the Serengeti where the sun would likely burn her to a crisp before she could begin to execute any sort of rescue at all.
She studiously ignored her promise to herself that she would step out from under the familial woods and take up a place in her own patch of sunshine.
There would be plenty of time to do that at some point down the road when the stakes weren’t so high.
She brushed aside the wisp of a feather that appeared suddenly in her field of vision, then realized she was flapping her hand at nothing.
“Boo, mistress,” a crisp voice said from behind her. “Boo.”
Harriet whipped around and backed away so quickly she almost took out the ficus tree. She caught herself thanks to a handful of foliage, steadied both herself and her leafy screen, then surveyed her erstwhile spot of safety.
She was certain she’d heard that boo come from directly behind her, but there was nothing there.
She turned around and realized that what was even more alarming than hearing things was realizing she was out in the open, vulnerable and visible on the tundra that was full of mystery writers who could no doubt devise a dozen different ways to do her in without leaving evidence behind—and all before the buffet officially opened.
Then again, TD Piaget was in the middle of that same field, still looking as uncomfortable as a declawed and muzzled lion in a pack of determined hyenas, still sending her looks that were very clearly calls for aid.
She would have happily ignored the echo of her father’s, point me to the dragons, fair lady, and I shall slay them!
that rang in her head with all the subtlety of Big Ben, but she found that she couldn’t.
Perhaps she’d read too many of TD Piaget’s books and the thought of executing a timely and audacious rescue had taken up residence in some available part of her brain.
Perhaps she was her father’s daughter and chivalry was hard-wired into her DNA.
Or in the end, maybe she simply couldn’t allow a lovely guy like that to send a call for help her way and turn her back on him. On potential ghosts, absolutely, but not on him.
She took a deep breath, grasped her nonexistent sword, and marched into the fray to execute a rescue.
If she paused in her marching to spend approximately five seconds trying to arrange her hair into something that didn’t resemble a recently sheared fleece, who could blame her?
She gathered her courage, ignored her coif, and walked across the ten-foot chasm that separated her from a man who was turning out to be not at all what she’d expected.
He shot her a quick smile that brought from the crowd murmurs of approval as well as a few gasps of outrage, but she continued on her way undaunted.
Fairly alarmed, true, but unwilling to be turned away from her purpose.
It was with hardly any unease at all that she came to stop next to a man who likely needed no rescuing, a spot that opened up only because he managed to use his smile to inspire people to move out of her way.
She realized almost immediately that he made a rather handy thing to hide behind when one of that terrifying quartet of utterly stunning women glared at her.
“And who are you?” she demanded.
“I didn’t want to say anything,” TD Piaget said modestly, “but she is …”
Harriet cleared her throat. “I am—”
“Researching a conundrum for me,” TD Piaget finished firmly. “One that rose to the fore from an excessive number of lists, but the play’s the thing, what?”
He looked at her and smiled. Harriet returned his look and almost smiled.
Whatever his faults, whatever his quirks, whatever the craziness was that made up his particular world, none of it changed the fact that he was still the most adorably gorgeous man she’d ever seen and he’d just given her a look that took that fifteen minutes behind a tree and turned it into an unspoken comrade-in-arm’s pact.
She lifted her eyebrows briefly, had another quick smile in return, then turned her attentions to solving the current situation.
She reached for her best imitation of her mother shutting down questions about a topic she’d already covered ad nauseam and turned to the woman who looked as if she might have a few candlesticks tucked in her bag and knew what to do with them.
“I’m his research assistant,” she said briskly. “But only when he’s doing these social things he loves so much.”
“Do you know anything about medieval mores?” someone else asked.
“Of course,” Harriet said without hesitation. Of course, what she knew and what she was willing to admit to knowing based on her parents’ clandestine activities were two very different things, but perhaps that didn’t need to be said.
“Well, this has been very interesting so far,” TD Piaget’s agent announced crisply, “but the man needs food. Let’s let him breathe and have some, shall we?”
Harriet watched the crowd reluctantly disperse and found herself finally standing alone next to the focus of all that attention.
He blew out his breath, dragged his hand through his glorious locks that couldn’t possibly have been highlighted by anything but the loving caress of the sun, then looked at her.
“Thank you.”
She wanted to ask him why he’d suddenly forgotten everything he’d known about writing, but it occurred to her immediately that if she asked him, he might ask her the same and then she would be admitting to things she didn’t want to.
“Stage fright?” she managed.
“Something like that.” He nodded toward the buffet. “Let’s find something before it’s all gone.”
“Should we start with the chocolate fountain?”
“We can’t in good conscience do otherwise,” he said, shooting her an approving smile. “I’ll forge the path for us, aye? Follow along and don’t get lost.”
She suspected she might have already set foot to that path, which was ridiculous. He was famous mystery writer; she was still trying to figure out plots that didn’t contain anything to be found on her missing list of perils.
But that man there had a lovely smile and very nice manners when he wasn’t trying to run over her, so she followed him to what she hoped someone with an iron-clad stomach had sampled for safety ahead of time.
It was a mystery conference, after all.
Three hours later, Harriet had to concede that in spite of a decent amount of chocolate consumption, the evening had worn on like a steam train that had run out of fuel several miles earlier and was limping into the station thanks to weary passengers resorting to tossing anything not nailed down into the boiler.
It occurred to her at about that same time that if she didn’t catch the night manager at the front desk before he succumbed to a serious nap, she would be sleeping on the floor somewhere after all.
There were only a few people left in the ballroom anyway, so she abandoned TD Piaget to his agent’s clutches, then slipped out of the door and hurried down the hallway to get her key.
“Last bed in the place,” the concierge said with a disinterested tone better suited to an executioner at the Tower of London than a welcoming member of a hotel staff. “Best of luck with it.”
Harriet refused to be alarmed mostly because she was simply too tired to care.
She took her key, made certain she was actually holding it, then managed to yawn her way up a flight of stairs, stumble along a pair of different hallways, and finally come to an ungainly halt in front of a doorway where the number on the door matched the number on the tag attached to the key she was holding.
It was hard to ask for more than that.
She started to put the key into the lock only to have the door pulled open so quickly, she almost fell inside.
She caught herself on the doorway, but the only thing that did was allow her to take in the full vision of what awaited her inside a hotel room that definitely should have been on some list of things to avoid in rural England.
There were five beds in that room: four decent ones and a tiny little cot fit for a six-year-old that huddled all by itself in the middle of the room, unprotected and lacking creature comforts like sheets and a pillow.
That little rollaway bed was also doing its best to bear up under the strain of supporting every piece of luggage in the place.
Harriet considered the state of the field. She might have been able to move the bags and find some bedding, true, but that didn’t address the true perils standing at attention in front of her.