Chapter 9 #2
She’d hardly done that idea justice before more facts tumbled over themselves to demand her attention.
TD Piaget was famous for his reclusive nature, true, though she’d never heard anyone offer a good reason as to why that might be the case.
He never did book signings, never gave personal interviews, and absolutely refused to have his photograph taken.
In theory, sending a gorgeous guy off to be his stand-in for public events would have left him free to worry about keeping up with his characters and doing his best not to get ink on his moth-eaten sweaters …
It also could have been a cover story for something far more sinister, say something like keeping an old man cooped up in a house, a slave to his typewriter, while a very charming young man forced him to write bestselling mystery novels and took all the credit.
She had to concede that Miss Collins had seemed to have recognized her client easily enough, but who was to say that she hadn’t been likewise bamboozled?
“Harriet?”
“Sorry,” she said without hesitation. “Lost in thought.” And quite possibly in terrible peril, but she was very speedy when panicked. She readied herself for a possible get-away and looked at him again. “What were you saying?”
“I have a confession to make,” he said carefully.
She nodded to herself. Those kinds of revelations generally happened in the final five minutes of any given series and always involved things far beyond missing pussycats and lost gardening implements.
She forced herself to ignore both the shadow at the end of the hallway she’d just seen dart from one side of the passageway to the other and the temptation to dart away herself.
She took her courage in hand and simply waited for her doom.
“’Tis about TD Piaget …”
“I knew it,” she said leaping to her feet and pointing her finger at him.
She patted herself for something more substantial to use but only had her slippers.
They did have hard plastic soles, so they might serve in a pinch.
She took one off and pointed that at him instead.
“You did away with him, didn’t you? Or, worse, you have him captive in some ratty barn where you’re forcing him to write at all hours and live on survival rations so you can take all the glory. ”
He looked up at her, his mouth hanging open. “I beg your pardon?”
She crouched down in her best imitation of her brother the black belt who she knew for a fact practiced several of his best moves in the mirror before every meeting he had with his cadre of money men to give himself courage for battle.
She accompanied her threatening stance with a look that said she absolutely wouldn’t be intimidated by her companion’s height, his buff self, or his killer smile.
“What have you done with my favorite mystery writer,” she whispered fiercely. “Tell me now before I’m forced to render you unfit for your workshop tomorrow. His workshop, actually, but we’ll figure that out later.”
He raised his hands slowly. “I can explain—”
“Did you kill him?”
He looked genuinely shocked. “Of course not.”
Well, that was somewhat reassuring. She supposed the crouching could go, so she straightened and settled for folding her arms over her chest and delivering a fierce frown. She did keep hold of her slipper, though, on the off chance he confessed something she didn’t like.
“Then you admit you are not him.”
The man formerly known as TD Piaget only looked up at her with wide eyes and nodded carefully.
“Where is he then?” she demanded.
“Off on a family emergency.” He looked around them, then patted the spot next to him. “We have to keep this a secret.”
“That’s what a kidnapper would say.”
He nodded seriously. “Perhaps, but I’m not one of those.”
“Who are you, then?”
“A relative.”
She sat down with a thump. The man who was still not TD Piaget took off his jacket and carefully put it around her shoulders.
“You look chilled.”
“I’m unnerved,” she said faintly. “I also think there’s a ghost at the end of the hallway.”
He glanced in that direction, then put his hand on her arm as a shadow came their way. “I’ll see to it.”
She was absolutely going to let him do that, whoever he really was.
She pulled his jacket more closely around herself, then looked at the very corporeal man who came to a stop a few feet away.
Given his name badge hanging around his neck, she thought she was safe in assuming he was part of the conference. He looked at her mystery man coolly.
“Out a bit late with the rabble, are we?”
“A brief strategy session with my assistant in regard to the morning’s offerings. Top secret, what?”
“Then best not do it out in the open,” the other man agreed, “not that she’d be much of a temptation behind closed do—”
Harriet wondered if tripping was one of her erstwhile favorite writer’s perennial problems because he almost sent the conference fellow sprawling.
He managed to catch him, though, which honestly didn’t surprise her.
He’d caught her, after all, and saved her from what could have been a decent number of bruises.
His current rescue hadn’t fared quite as well given that he’d found himself slammed up against the far side of the hallway wall.
“New shoes,” TD Piaget’s relative said, straightening the front of the man’s sweater and patting it for good measure. “So terribly sorry about that, and quelle horreur, I’ve crumpled your name badge as well. My apologies. You can find a new one, I assume?”
The murderous look the conference guy sent him would have had her turning tail and sprinting the other way, but perhaps Mr. Fancy Pants had seen worse.
He simply stood there, his arms folded over his chest, and watched the rather winded conference guy turn and stalk away.
He waited until the hallway was empty before walked back over and sat down next to her.
“Where were we?”
She had no idea, though she suspected she’d just had her honor defended. She wasn’t quite sure how to thank him for that, so she settled for frowning so he wouldn’t think his smile was going to get him anywhere with her.
“You were confessing your nefarious doings to me.”
“I think we were past that, actually.”
“Then are you going to tell me that TD Piaget is your grandfather who’s every day of eighty and that you’ve bundled him off to some possibly austere but hopefully comfortable castle where he’s molding as he tries to keep up with his publishing schedule and you still take all the credit for it?”
He smiled. “You should write mysteries.”
“It’s my terror speaking. It’s a very creative voice. Now, what have you done with my favorite writer?”
He looked around himself again, then moved a bit closer to her and lowered his voice. “He truly did have a family emergency and couldn’t make the festivities last night. I was pressed into service in his stead.”
She kept herself from rolling her eyes through sheer willpower alone. If the man would just cease with his sounding as if he’d just walked off the set of some BBC period piece about medieval knights, she would have had an easier time keeping track of what he was actually saying.
“A relation,” she said, dragging herself back to the explanation at hand. “What kind?”
He took a deep breath. “We’re brothers.”
“Brothers?” She felt her mouth fall open. “Really?”
He nodded. “’Tis worse than that, actually.”
“Don’t say it.”
“We’re twins.”
“You said it,” she said grimly. “Identical?”
“So we’ve been told, though I vow he’s much uglier than I am.” He smiled for good measure and his dimple made an appearance in a supporting role.
She was beginning to seriously regret not having stayed in Omaha and signed up for that art class her mother had suggested.
She could have learned to paint. She could have been painting majestic coastal views in any number of safe, unremarkable West Coast locales.
If absolutely necessary, she could have taken up her paintbrush on the edge of an equal number of sweeping English vistas where the only other souls she might have encountered would have been sheep.
She was fairly certain they didn’t wander the fields, contemplating ways to up-end the lives of innocent artists just trying to paint their best sides.
She came back to herself to find TD Piaget’s mirror image holding out his hand.
“I’m Sam,” he said, “unless my mother’s annoyed with me or one of my relatives is shouting at me, then it’s Samuel. But generally it’s just Sam.”
She put her hand in his. It was a very nice hand, she had to admit. Large, warm, not stained from hours spent slaving away with quill and ink.
“Do you have a last name, Just Sam?” she managed.
He smiled more easily that time. “De Piaget,” he said. “And who are you, again? I seem to remember hearing the name Titania.”
She tried to cling to her stern look, but couldn’t manage it for more than a second or two. “My father does call me his Wee Snowdrop,” she admitted, “which is both fairy-like and ridiculous.”
“I thought you were a fairy the first time I saw you, so he’s not wrong.”
She pursed her lips. “Now you’re being ridiculous, and you won’t be distracting me from what I want to know this time.”
“Tell me your whole name first, then we’ll trade other secrets.”
“Harriet Delphinium Brewster,” she said shaking his hand, then pulling hers away and tucking both her hands into the opposite sleeves of his sweatshirt. She was cold, that was all, not unbalanced. “What does TD stand for?”
“Theophilus,” he said. “Theophilus de Piaget. I call him Theo along with a few other things you don’t need to hear.
” He took a deep breath and let it out with what sounded like a great bit of relief.
“Now that we’ve that behind us, I can throw myself at your feet and apologize for the subterfuge.
Theo should have been back this morning, though I’m sure he was just held up somehow. He’ll be here tomorrow.”