Chapter 31 #2
I took Ingrid’s hand and gently pushed her into the changing room. I instructed the store’s female assistant to help find Ingrid the appropriate shoes, giving her instructions to charge the items to my room and provide anything else Ingrid may need.
Ingrid stepped out of the changing room.
Quickly, I closed my mouth.
She was striking in the small black halter dress. She twirled, seemingly unsure whether this was such a good idea. Whereas the clothes Ingrid had previously worn had hidden her curves, she now stood before me the very essence of a woman.
Ingrid suspected I had ulterior motives.
“Ingrid, I’m the consummate gentleman,” I said.
“In other words, you’re quite safe. You’re not planning on having your wicked way with me?”
“Well . . .” I glanced at the shop assistant, surprised by Ingrid’s statement.
Ingrid looked me up and down.
She had studied my tailored suit and dashing looks and wondered if it was too good to be true.
“But you did choose Versace,” the shop girl pointed out. “That’s a female trap right there.”
“Now a man can’t have good taste?” I said, amused by her forwardness.
“Good point,” said Ingrid. “Let’s go eat!”
I requested that Ingrid’s clothes be sent up to my room for safekeeping. We headed back to the restaurant and after one of the staff recognized me, we were provided with the service that would ensure Ingrid a pleasant evening. Such was the benefit of having inherited a title.
Everyone treated you like Royality.
To dull her senses, I ordered champagne. It worked perfectly, quickly lulling her thoughts which raced along at a frightening pace. Even so, at times I had trouble keeping up with both her external and internal dialogue.
“So tell me about your career choice.”
“I’m a policewoman.” She watched my reaction.
I had already sensed as much and did my best to feign innocence, having avoided the law for all the obvious reasons. Although I never considered myself a criminal, being a nightwalker could easily be considered such.
Bugger it. I was going to enjoy myself.
“Do you enjoy your work?” I asked.
“I love it. Couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
“Are you married?” I asked, already aware of the answer.
“I hope not. Here I am having dinner with a dashing . . .” Ingrid blushed.
“Go on. Dashing . . .”
Ingrid beamed. “Charming young man. Are you married?”
I smiled as Ingrid hung on my answer. “I hope not. Here I am having dinner with . . . an exquisite woman.”
She blushed which surprised me for someone with such extraordinary confidence.
Her scent was alluring.
“You know, Jadeon, there’s something about you that is really old-school.”
“I get that a lot.” I smiled.
“Are you wearing contacts?”
I knew silence was the best answer.
“They’re just an unusual brown, that’s all. Your irises are luminous.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“This is such a perfect restaurant. Do you eat here often?”
“No, I . . .”
“You don’t eat much do you?” Ingrid said. “Funny how you ordered desert, and yet . . .”
“You have a keen eye, Ingrid.”
“Comes with the territory.”
“How long have you been a policewoman?”
“Since I was eighteen.” Ingrid laughed. “Are you doing the math on my age?”
“I am.”
“And you’re an art collector. What a delightful time you must have spending your days in art galleries and auction houses.”
I felt my expression warm.
“Tell me what it is about your work you love the most,” Ingrid said.
“I adore how an artist portrays daylight, the way a master captures an aurora, or the perfect sunset. And you?”
“I love it when I catch the perpetrator. I never give up and I never let go. I’m like a bulldog.”
“More champagne,” I offered.
With dinner over, I escorted Ingrid to the hotel’s elevators. I turned her to face me when I realized that my mirrored reflection was absent.
Ingrid studied my worried expression.
“I don’t like heights,” I lied.
Trying to distract her with conversation.
“Before it became the iconic Savoy Hotel, the site on the Strand was home to the grand Savoy Palace.” I was rambling. “Later the Savoy Hospital. And even once a military prison.”
“You really do love history.”
“The consummate historian,” I joked.
On entering the hotel room, I guided Ingrid to the large sofa. Kneeling at her feet, I removed her shoes.
Although surprised, she went with it. There was no way to avoid the truth that merely my presence would lull her a little.
I removed my jacket before joining her on the couch.
“You know, in my line of work we advise women never to do this.”
“Sit in a luxury hotel and soak in the ambience?”
“You know what I mean.”
I raised my hands up in the air. “You asked me to dinner, remember.”
“True.”
“Then perhaps I’m the one who should be wary.”
“You couldn’t be safer.”
“I believe that, Ingrid.”
Like me, she didn’t mind the silence—the quiet moments that passed between us, as if the distance separating us wasn’t so great, and our profound differences could be set aside, if only for now.
Who are you?
Her question carried silently in her mind, as though trying to find answers to eternal questions.
I ran my fingers through her hair, desperately wanting to linger but knowing that I should not. Her eyelids closed as she responded to my touch.
She was right, though—this was reckless. For her, for me, for everything we understood and everything we couldn’t begin to fathom.
“Tell me about you,” I said, needing to know everything about her.
“I grew up in Devon. We used to spend our holidays in Cornwall when I was a child, until something happened to my mother there. I never learned exactly what it was. After that, we moved to Clovelly—a place you may not know, remote and cut off from the rest of the world.”
As though her mom was hiding from something . . . or someone. Had Orpheus pursued her family back then? If so, why?
“Brothers or sisters?”
“Only child.” Ingrid brightened.
“Maybe that was why I joined the police. I wanted to be close to people, to push back against the isolation that had shaped me. Only now, the work keeps me alone more often than not, and it feels like the whole thing has backfired.”
Was that her way of saying she was lonely?
I wanted to reach for her, to offer comfort, to tell her she embodied everything that was still right with the world. Even as I hardly knew her.
“What about you, Jadeon?”
We stood at opposite ends of the moral compass, as far apart as right and wrong could be.
I let my silence do the talking, wearing mystery like a mask, because the truth in would have doomed any possibility of friendship.
“I’m pretty boring, actually.”
She looked at me with affection. “I don’t believe that.”
Our eyes met, and in that fragile spark I felt two lost souls recognizing each other in the dark, aching to be seen at last.
Wanting to kiss her, to take her, to taste her in every conceivable way.
“Impossible.” I’d said it out loud.
“What is?” she asked softly.
“It’s late, Ingrid. Why don’t you stay?”
“But where?”
“I have to see a . . . gentleman about a painting,” I said.
“You art dealers keep strange hours.”
“You have no idea.”
Ingrid scanned the room. “You have a suite?”
“Bed’s in there.” I pointed to the adjoining door.
“Very nice.”
I opened the door for her and she entered.
I liked the feeling of being close to a female again. In fact, Ingrid rather reminded me of Catherine. Perhaps that is why I allowed myself this little indulgence.
“I don’t usually do this kind of thing . . .”
I stopped her, resting a fingertip on her full lips. Her mouth opening a little, as though offering a kiss.
“You’ll be safe here.”
I withdrew.
At first, she stood quiet still, stunned by my vanishing.
Waiting just outside the suite door, I sensed her movement within.
Unable to walk away.
She made me feel—such a simple thing, and yet an extraordinary feat, as though she had awakened something long buried beneath centuries of loneliness.
Desire stirred in me, dark and potent, sensations I had long believed extinguished.
She was human, yes, achingly mortal, and yet there was something in the way she moved, in the curve of her form, more worldly than any creature I had ever encountered.
Instinctively, Ingrid tiptoed around the room and explored, searching for any evidence that might reveal more about me.
She would find nothing. Had it not been for the champagne dulling her senses, she might have found that suspicious.
Walking into the bathroom, her gaze fell upon the huge bathtub. Ingrid locked the bathroom door.
Without hesitating she removed all her clothes, carefully placing her new dress on a coat hanger on the door.
Pouring the thick liquid soap into the bathtub, she watched it froth under the running water, breathing in its opulent foaming scent.
Climbing in, she enjoyed the warmth, surrendering to the feeling of relaxation.
The following morning, I arranged for room service to deliver a delicious selection of pancakes, fresh fruit, orange juice, and Earl Grey tea. Although it was a decadent move, I thought it a nice gesture to provide Ingrid with her favorite breakfast.