Chapter 9
Nine
Harriet stood in the middle of a room that was even nicer than TD Piaget’s and wondered if she might ever escape it again. Considering the imposing matriarch holding onto the key, she rated her chances at slim to none.
“I won’t smother you in your sleep,” Francine said, not unkindly. “Make yourself comfortable.”
She took a deep breath and attempted a smile. “Thank you for the refuge,” she said. “This is very kind of you.”
Francine pursed her lips. “I’ve seen those women who’re after him, child, and I wouldn’t want to get in their way. You’ll be safer here with me than out there. Do not, however, put your manuscript under my pillow.”
“No, ma’am,” Harriet said, suppressing the urge to snap to attention and salute. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Francine made herself comfortable at a small writing desk and reached for what turned out to be a chin-firming wand. She pointed it at Harriet like a weapon.
“I understand you two were both missing from the museum tour this afternoon. Details, if you please.”
Harriet sank down onto the end of her cot, though she resisted the urge to slump. Standards needed to be maintained, obviously. “He needed to slip off and take care of some business. I saw someone following him—”
“One of those Texas girls?”
Harriet shook her head. “A man.”
Francine looked terribly serious in spite of her vintage bedtime get-up. “A bit foolish to follow him then, love.”
“But I had to,” she protested. “I didn’t want him to get hurt.”
“That was generously done on your part,” Francine said, smiling briefly, “but I suspect the lad is perfectly capable of seeing to himself. Let’s let him tend to his own security from now on, though you and I can do our best to keep him safe here at the inn.”
Harriet nodded. “Couldn’t agree more.”
“I’ll know if you ignore me,” Francine warned, “but I’ve done what I can. Get some sleep, little one. Tomorrow’s another full day of excitement. Perhaps the ghosts haunting this inn will take my advice and have a little rest themselves.”
Harriet imagined she could keep her thoughts on that to herself.
“Did those four terrors steal your suitcase?”
Harriet shook her head. “I accidentally left it with my ride from the airport. My parents are coming in a couple of days for their own business, though, so I’ll try to borrow something from my mother when they get here.”
“I suspected you might have had a mishap, so I’ve left you at least nightclothes in the loo,” Francine said, tapping herself under the chin. “I’m assuming you like lavender silk.”
“My favorite,” Harriet assured her.
“Then off you go, love, and make ready for a good night’s sleep. There’s much to do in the morning.”
Harriet was tempted to make Francine a curtsey, but she stopped herself just in time.
She took herself instead to the bathroom and found the promised pajama set with a matching brocade robe waiting for her.
She wasn’t quite sure how she would thank her hostess, but perhaps a proper note could wait until her mother had arrived and could be consulted for the flowery particulars.
Half an hour later, she was listening to soft snores from across the room and trying to get comfortable on the cot that felt more like what she imagined the rack might deliver.
It was a bed, though, and she was safely locked inside a luxurious hotel room where she suspected not even ghosts could enter.
She closed her eyes and prepared to drift off into peaceful slumber.
A tap sounded on the door.
She chalked the sound up to her very jetlagged imagination until it happened again, then she sat up and considered the possibilities.
That was definitely a tap and it was absolutely coming from the door.
She didn’t hear any imperious harrumphing that might have indicated a ghost having tired of the Mayflower company and settling in to haunt her, so perhaps it was just one of the conference attendees wanting to slip a manuscript under the door.
The very least she could do was run interference for her roommate.
She got out of bed, shoved her feet in her borrowed slippers, then tip-toed over to the door. She put her ear to the wood.
“Harriet, ‘tis I—erm, it’s me.”
Harriet looked behind her. The whisper hadn’t caused even the slightest change in Francine’s breathing, which was promising.
She looked at her gifted clothing and supposed others had done much worse than answer a door in an elegant dressing gown and matching lavender-plaid slippers, so she carefully opened the door to find TD Piaget standing there, looking unsettled.
“A quick natter,” he whispered. “If you would.”
Maybe he’d seen ghosts in his room and decided he wanted company. She nodded, then carefully stepped out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind her. She froze, then tried the door only to find it was safely and securely locked.
TD Piaget touched her arm. “I’ll get you back inside,” he whispered. “Let’s let sleeping agents lie, shall we? I brought something to keep you warm.”
She looked at the sweatshirt he was holding out toward her, then up at him. He smiled faintly.
“You’ll swim in it, but I thought you might want a change of clothes.”
“Thank you,” she said, a bit surprised by his generosity.
He nodded down the hallway. “Ten minutes?”
She pulled his sweatshirt down over her head and tried not to feel ridiculously flattered that he would have thought of her comfort. The man was, as she would tell Mac the moment she could, not at all what they had expected him to be. He looked over his shoulder and smiled again.
“Coming?”
She nodded and started off with him down the hallway.
He seemed to know where he was going, which was simultaneously reassuring and alarming.
What she was sure of was that the end of the hallway was free of hotel-room doorways but boasting a vintage velvet sofa and, somewhat unsurprisingly, a small ficus tree.
At least their hiding places were consistent.
TD Piaget looked behind the sofa and the tree, checked the nearest window, then invited her to sit. She did, then he sat down a discreet distance away. She waited, but he didn’t speak.
“Did you see more ghosts?” she ventured.
He shook his head, though he looked as if he’d seen something far more sobering.
She watched him for a moment or two, but he simply remained where he was, looking extremely uncomfortable.
She was accustomed to her brothers who were never shy about announcing their plans and her father who liked a good grouse about how much better life had been in the good old days of the 1750s.
Trying to decide what the man sitting next to her was thinking was beyond her.
Not only was he English, he was a very reclusive English writer who had ghosts in his kitchen—
She felt her thoughts grind to a halt as a possible answer presented itself.
Perhaps having her see him in his research togs, never mind allowing her into his private home, had been more intrusive than he’d wanted to admit.
He’d been a perfect gentleman, true, but maybe he was suffering from invitation remorse.
Well, there was no time like the present to set things right, so she jumped in with both feet.
“It was nice of you to offer me refuge, but not to worry,” she said with her most reassuring smile. “I won’t tell anyone.”
He blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Your apartment,” she clarified. “I won’t tell anyone that I’ve seen it or where it is. And I won’t say anything about your powder blue fancy pants.”
“Trousers,” he said faintly. He continued to look at her as if he were having trouble understanding her. “Pants go under them.”
“Of course they do,” she agreed, “but you don’t have to worry about that, either. I’ll keep your secrets.”
“Secrets?” he echoed in a slightly strangled voice. “You think I have secrets?”
Of course you have secrets, was almost out of her mouth before she hit the verbal brakes.
She’d just promised to keep his location and his costumes under wraps, yet he didn’t look at all reassured.
Perhaps his unease stemmed from something else.
She cast her mind back to the cocktail party that felt more like a year ago than a day, then attempted a quick factoring in of other things.
Her first encounter with him, not including not being run over by him, consisted of fifteen minutes of hiding behind a ficus tree with him as he apparently gathered his courage to face the attendees of a cocktail party.
He had been quite charming once he’d stepped on stage, though it was equally true that when the questions had started arriving like so many arrows from a company of Welsh longbowmen, he’d been eyeing the exits.
She’d assumed shyness was the reason for that, but shyness didn’t explain such an unfamiliarity with his own work—
“Whoa, Nelly,” she said, before her imagination saddled itself up and completely ran away with her.
“Nelly?” TD Piaget said, looking at her as if she were the one off in the wilds of bucolic England, looking to stir up trouble. “Who’s Nelly?”
Harriet looked at him with new eyes and wondered if perhaps she’d been too hasty in dismissing the idea of an eighty-year-old curmudgeon manning his Selectric.
And now other things occurred to her, things that were not quite so benign.
What if that exceptionally adorably gorgeous man sitting next to her—and he had a dimple, damn him anyway—was perhaps a stand-in for TD Piaget?
He might have been, say, TD Piaget’s grandson who had just come to make an appearance while his grandfather dealt with an episode of gout.