Chapter Six #2
Her smile turned smug. “I thought there might be.” She rose to her feet, and crossed to a rolltop desk tucked into one corner; there were a number of novels with somewhat lurid titles stacked atop it in haphazard piles.
She rummaged in a drawer, and returned a moment later with a piece of heavy stationery, embossed with the words FROM THE DESK OF VESPER HOLLOWAY, complete with a fanciful illustration of a golden bumblebee. “Write it here.”
He accepted the paper and the fountain pen she handed him, and then, after considering for several seconds, scrawled a single sentence.
He felt her eyes on him as he wrote, but he didn’t look at her, instead looking at the words he’d just written, which stared up at him in stark black ink.
He hesitated for another long moment, and then handed the paper to her, his heart pounding heavily in his chest.
She met his eyes, and held them for a second. And then, without glancing down at the piece of paper she held, she folded it in half, slid the document into an envelope decorated with another embossed golden bumblebee, and sealed it. “I’ll be keeping this, of course.”
“Of course,” he agreed, watching as she tucked the envelope carefully inside the rolltop desk and locked it again.
She turned back to him, leaning one hip against the desk. “I must have lost my mind, to trust you—”
“I’m feeling exactly the same,” he replied. “Since we both seem to have temporarily gone mad, we might as well agree to trust each other, and get on with it.”
She clinked her glass gently against his in some sort of unspoken sealing of their contract, took a sip, then sat down next to him once more, her manner suddenly businesslike.
“I was thinking we’d start with Mauve’s,” she said, and he frowned, searching his mind for any knowledge of that particular club. He drew a blank.
“Which one is that?”
“It’s on—” She broke off, suddenly looking a bit canny. “You’ll see.”
This did not instill great confidence in him. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re a bloody Flea.”
“All right,” he said, because he suspected that his lack of a reaction would irk her, and he was rewarded with a flash of disappointment in her gaze. “When shall we go? Tonight?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m meant to be at Holloway’s in a couple of hours, and—well, I don’t want to take an evening away from the club at present.”
“Surely someone else in your family can keep an eye on things,” he said.
“Oh, they certainly could,” she agreed, “but I’d rather be there myself. Perhaps we might go on Sunday evening instead?”
He frowned. “Is it open on Sundays?”
“Yes. Private members’ clubs are exempt from your ludicrous licensing rules.
” This was true; while Britain had not followed the lead of America in making alcohol entirely illegal, there were still strict licensing laws that limited the hours during which alcohol could be sold.
These laws, however, did not apply to private clubs that held licenses; they were instead allowed to operate according to their own bylaws.
As Max understood it, however, they had some sort of agreement with the illicit nightclubs that sold spirits late at night, out of licensing hours—the magical clubs closed up shop earlier than the nightclubs, so that their patrons would move on elsewhere to consume their out-of-hours alcohol, having imbibed their fill of magical cocktails first.
“Don’t suppose anyone minds about the Sunday hours anyway—I can’t imagine you’re much of a churchgoing set.”
She let out a hoot of laughter.
“It’s nice to know that you are so concerned about our immortal souls, but no. However, you’ll be pleased to learn that I did protect your virtue in one regard.”
“How’s that?”
“My mother suggested I go to bed with you,” she said serenely. “But you needn’t worry I’m about to start flinging myself at you—I told her no.”
Max choked on his drink.
“There’s no need to be so virginal about it, Ashbridge.”
Sheep, meanwhile—offended by the amount of coughing-and-spluttering-and-general-movement from the man who had been so conveniently serving as her seat—hopped off his lap and settled onto the sofa next to Vesper instead.
“Dare I ask why your mother thought we should go to bed together?” he asked, recovering somewhat.
“I confessed our plan to her—”
“Brilliant. Just what we need. More Holloways involved.”
“—and she thought that if we were romantically intertwined, it might add a frisson of realism to our covert activities. However, I convinced her that merely the appearance of us bopping about together will likely send people’s minds in that direction anyway, and we needn’t get our genitals involved. ”
She smiled at him, reclining against the back of the couch and draping one arm lazily along its top.
Next to her, Sheep rolled over once again, her fluffy fur brushing against Vesper’s leg where the skirts of her dress had ridden up.
It was a simple garment with a drop waist and pleated skirts that hit just below her knees, but now there was quite a lot of thigh on display.
He kept his gaze fixed carefully northward. No thighs. Nothing below the… waist? No, chest? No, chin. Safest to keep things above the chin.
Above the mouth, actually. She was merely a pair of green eyes and a nose that was currently being wrinkled at him in a skeptical sort of way.
He reached for his voice and tried not to think about the word “genitals” being uttered in that matter-of-fact-way. “This is the plan, then? We’re to go to Mauve’s tomorrow evening and start our investigation, no genitals will be involved, and people are free to assume whatever they like.”
“Correct on all fronts,” she said, looking a bit downcast, as though he’d spoiled her fun.
“Brilliant,” he said, downing the rest of his drink. “Now, how about that dinner?”
With that, the business portion of the evening concluded, and several minutes later he found himself seated at Vesper’s kitchen table, eating a delicious beef stew under Sheep’s watchful eye.
(“She’s hoping for crumbs,” Vesper said, with a jaundiced look at her cat, who gave an innocent-sounding chirp by way of reply.)
The stew was warm, and the kitchen was cozy, and Vesper spent several minutes relaying the (frankly ridiculous) plot of the novel she was currently reading, as if she and Max were old friends, and Max realized, to his astonishment, that it all felt vaguely…
companionable. This was not an emotion he’d ever expected to feel around a member of the Holloway family again.
And one that would prove to be remarkably short-lived, because, not fifteen seconds after this thought crossed his mind, there was the sound of a door opening, and a still-familiar voice hollering, “Vesper!”
Five seconds later, Freddie Holloway poked his head into the kitchen.
His gaze immediately landed on Max. Narrowed.
And then, without preamble, he said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”