Kitabı oku: «Perfect Timing», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

“THE STRANGLER?” Tucker asked as he ran down the stairs, breathless, behind his sister.

“I don’t know. She’s just…lying there.”

“I can’t imagine the Strangler would hit now,” Jonathan said. “Too many people. He’s never been that bold before.”

“Just hurry,” Blythe said.

They rounded the corner, moving farther away from the grand ballroom and the rear veranda and rushing down the hall toward the front door and the thick, carved oak doorway that led into the drawing room.

The doors were closed, and Tucker shot a questioning glance toward his sister. The room was usually kept open, and during their fetes, the room often saw the still-sober crowd, smoking and discussing philosophy or jazz from the comfort of the oiled-and-rubbed leather furniture.

“I didn’t want anyone wandering in,” Blythe said. “I left Anna in there with the body,” she added, referring to their housekeeper.

“Good Lord, woman,” Jonathan cried. “Have you gone mad? Anna with a dead body? The story will be all over the gossip rags by tomorrow. I imagine that wretched photographer has beaten us to the room.”

“I’ll thank you not to question my judgments in my home, Jonathan,” Blythe said, looking down her nose at him. “I trust Anna implicitly. She’s been with us for years.”

“Perhaps you would do well not to—”

“Enough,” Tucker said. “There’s no point in bickering. Open the door and we’ll see the situation for what it is, whatever it is.”

As it turned out, Blythe was right. Their motherly housekeeper hadn’t moved, and certainly hadn’t brought in any other help. Instead, she was hunched over the prone form of a young woman. She held one of the girl’s hands tight against her breast, and with her free hand, she patted the girl’s cheek.

Tucker raised his brow. “I know that the dubious bit of combat medicine I gleaned during my infantry days is no substitution for a formal medical education, Anna darling, but I sincerely doubt that a pat on the cheek will prove restorative.”

“She’s not dead, sir. Just a mite under the weather.”

Tucker took a tentative step forward and found himself looking into a very alive—albeit very unconscious—face. A beautiful face, too, with light brown hair framing angelic features.

She wore no makeup, unlike the current fashion, and Tucker tried to recall the last time he’d seen a young woman without her face painted. He’d gotten so used to seeing his sister and her friends, their eyes outlined in kohl, their lids painted blue, their cheeks and lips flush with rouge.

He’d forgotten how fresh a woman could look. Soft and new, as if she’d just woken in his arms after a night of lovemaking.

Tucker closed his eyes, frowning, and wondered where the devil such absurd thoughts had come from. Yes, the woman was attractive, but she was also quite knocked out. And he was behaving like a foolish schoolboy.

Quickly, before anyone noticed his distraction, he bent beside her, shrugging out of his jacket and laying it over her. “Yours, too, Jonathan,” he said. “If she’s in shock, we need to keep her warm.”

“Do you think that’s it?” Talia asked. “Shock? Did she meet the Strangler perhaps?” Her eyes, Tucker noticed, were wide with excitement. “And what a strange costume she’s wearing. Dungarees and that odd top. I realize this is a masquerade party, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a young woman choose such inappropriate attire. It’s both provocative and entirely unflattering.”

“Out,” said Tucker firmly.

“Pardon me?” Talia’s eyebrows rose in amazement.

Tucker nodded his head, in deference to the woman’s years. “Please. I’d like you to step out.” In truth, he agreed with Talia’s assessment. It all was very odd. And the way the black material clung to her breasts was, indeed, very alluring. “The girl hardly needs to wake up to five strangers peering at her as if she were a carnival sideshow.”

For a moment, he thought Talia would argue. But the older woman surprised him, her eyes losing their scandalous gleam and fading to a warm sympathy. “Quite so,” she said. She took Jonathan by the elbow and started to steer them both toward the door. Jonathan, however, held back.

“You, too, old man,” Tucker said.

“Very well,” Jonathan said. “But first, a word.”

Reluctantly, Tucker left the girl’s side. “What?”

“The way she’s dressed. Dark colors. Pants more suitable for a working man.” He exhaled loudly. “The woman has a pretty face, but don’t fail to consider the obvious, Tucker. Your home is filled with valuables as well as with your guests. You’d do well to ensure the security of both.”

Tucker bit back an instinctive response to slug Jonathan and defend the girl’s honor. Instead he nodded stiffly. “Of course,” he said, then motioned for the door.

“Give a shout if you need anything,” Jonathan said, casting one backward glance at them before the oak doors swung shut, leaving Tucker alone with Anna, Blythe and the unconscious woman.

“Anna, go prepare a room. I expect we’ll have an overnight guest.”

“Of course, sir. Should I send for Dr. Williams?”

Tucker looked at Blythe, who shrugged. “Yes,” he told Anna. “I think that might be a good idea.”

As Anna scurried out to take care of the various tasks, Tucker bent over the woman, her hand tight in his. Blythe knelt down beside them, her face furrowed with concern. “Whatever could be wrong with her?”

“I don’t know,” Tucker said. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this helpless in his life. Not even during the nine months he spent fighting in the war, with artillery bursting all around him. At least then he’d had a sidearm, had a fair chance of staying alive. And he’d understood the situation.

“Where do you think she came from? Did she come for the party? Does she know one of the guests? Perhaps she’s come to work. We hired dozens and dozens of waiters. Could she be wearing some odd new uniform?”

“Blythe,” Tucker said, without looking at his sister, “do be quiet.”

Blythe made a hurt little noise, but she complied, and for that, Tucker was grateful. He needed to think, and he couldn’t get his head around the situation, not with her blathering on and on. He knew the answer to none of her questions, and that one simple fact preyed on him. This beautiful woman had collapsed in his drawing room, and he had no idea as to her identity or purpose. No idea about anything at all, for that matter.

Except for one thing.

Something about the woman fascinated him. He brushed his fingers across her cheek in a soft caress, wishing he knew what had brought her to him. Although he couldn’t explain it, the scent of danger filled the air, and just looking at her made him want to ball his hands into fists, leap to his feet and play the savior.

Only, what, he wondered, would he be saving her from?

He didn’t know. All he knew for sure was that a compulsion was growing within him. A deeply felt need to watch over this woman. To protect her.

And right then, with her hand held tight in his own, he silently promised to do just that.

SYLVIA OPENED HER eyes, managed to process the bizarre realization that she was flat on her back with a strange man’s eyes peering down at her, and screamed.

She sat bolt upright, still screaming, the sound coming clearer and stronger as she changed position and pulled more air into her lungs. The sound—or possibly the movement—drove the man backward, and she told herself that was a good thing, even as a small part of her mind mourned the fact that he was no longer stroking her hand.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” a woman’s soft voice murmured beside her, and Sylvia turned, her head swimming with the motion, and her stomach threatening to lose its tenuous hold on whatever she’d eaten recently. What had she eaten recently? She couldn’t remember. She frowned, concentrating as she tried to force her mind to feel like something other than warm Jell-O.

Right. Yes. Of course. Pancakes at DuPars at the Farmers Market. Then she and Tina had tooled down Sunset in Tina’s convertible, and stopped at the Greene mansion for the sex exhibit.

The frown deepened, and she turned her head, taking in the familiar—and yet oddly different—room. “Where are the exhibit cases?” she asked. She saw the Robin Hood poster, framed and on the wall instead of propped on an easel. But nothing else seemed familiar. “For that matter, where’s Tina? Or that guard?”

The woman and man looked at each other, shaking their heads in very obvious confusion.

Sylvia fought off a warm rush of panic and forced herself to speak very slowly. “What happened to me?”

The woman beside her shot a frown toward the man. “We’re not sure what happened,” she said softly. “We think you fainted.”

“Oh.” Sylvia considered that. As far as she knew, she’d never fainted in her life. Considering all the boxlugging, furniture-moving and shelf-hanging she’d done over the past few days, perhaps she would have been smart to have worried less about calories and eaten more than half a pancake at breakfast. “Okay then,” she said, looking into the woman’s eyes. “Then who are you?”

“I’m Blythe,” the woman said. “And this is Tucker,” she added, pointing toward the man. “Who are you?”

“I’m Sylvia,” she said automatically, her eyes never leaving Tucker’s face. It was an interesting face, to go with an interesting name. And how curious that Louisa had just mentioned her grandfather, also named Tucker.

This Tucker was darkly handsome, with tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, as if he knew how to laugh and practiced often. And those eyes! They watched her with an intensity that should have made her uncomfortable but instead made her feel inexplicably warm and safe. As if his only purpose in the world was to watch over her.

“When I opened my eyes,” she said, “I saw your eyes. I thought you were an angel.”

His grin shot down to her toes. “So naturally you screamed your head off.”

Her cheeks warmed with the blush. “The angel thing only lasted a second,” she said. “Then I realized I was lying on the ground and I’d never seen you before in my life.”

“I was looking out for you,” he said. “We thought you were injured. I was trying to help you.”

“I believe you,” she said, hoping he understood that she was telling the truth. For some reason, she didn’t want this man to think she was afraid of him.

She started to climb to her feet, and Blythe moved in and took her arm for support. Her head started swimming about halfway up, though, and she sank back down to the ground. “Maybe it’s a little too soon for that,” she said.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Tucker said, settling himself comfortably on the floor beside her.

“I’m not sure I can,” she said. “I remember looking at the exhibit, and talking with Louisa about the portraits and the history of the house. Stuff like that. And then I went back into the exhibit to find my friend Tina. She went off to find some food, and I ended up chatting with the guard. And then he dropped a coin, and I volunteered to pick it up for him. But then I felt a shove, and….” She trailed off with a shrug, not willing to confess the very odd sensation of falling through a picture. “I guess I passed out.”

Tucker and Blythe were looking at each other more than her, and though she tried, Sylvia couldn’t interpret the signals that seemed to be passing between them.

She watched them, then decided she might as well ask what had put that look of concerned confusion in their eyes. But when she opened her mouth to ask, a completely different question came out. “So, um, are you two married?”

She clapped her hand over her mouth, completely mortified. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I must be dizzier than I thought. That is so not my business.”

She wanted to look at Blythe while she spoke, but her eyes kept drifting to Tucker who, she was relieved to see, looked amused rather than upset.

“She’s my sister,” he said, with a tender smile that made her heart do little backflips. “Who is Louisa?”

“The lady who lives here,” Sylvia said. “At least, she lives in the part of the house without the exhibits.” She looked around the room again. “Where on earth did the exhibit cases go?”

“The room’s the same as it’s always been,” Blythe said. “As for Louisa, maybe you ended up at the wrong house? Tucker and I live here. Our parents, too, when they aren’t in London.”

“Oh.” Sylvia reached up to rub her temples, trying to process that information. “Is Tina here, then? Did I have some sort of walking blackout?” Maybe she and Tina had moved on to the next event in Tina’s packed schedule for the day? Since Sylvia had never fainted before, she wasn’t entirely sure how she would react. Maybe losing hours and hours was perfectly normal.

Automatically, she stretched out her arm, pulling her sleeve back to reveal her pink Swatch. The damn thing was stopped, the second hand stuck firmly on the twelve, and the time at eleven forty-five, just about the time Tina had headed off for a snack.

So much for the lost-time theory. That was okay, she supposed. Because as disconcerting as the odd memory lapses were, they weren’t nearly as frustrating as this damn headache. She could barely even focus, the pain was so intense.

Experimentally, she concentrated on the wall, squinting until one of the portraits came into focus. A man, in a dinner jacket, a monocle in one eye. She’d seen it before. Near the portrait of Louisa’s grandmother.

“This is the house,” Sylvia said. “I remember that portrait.” She frowned. “But the one of Louisa’s grandmother isn’t here.”

She frowned, wondering what was going on, when she once again saw Blythe and Tucker exchange looks filled with confusion and concern.

“Okay,” Sylvia said. “Enough. Why do you keep looking at each other like that? Am I talking crazy? You’re acting like I should be in the nuthouse or something.”

“This Louisa,” Tucker said. “What was her last name? Do you know?”

“Of course,” Sylvia said. “Louisa Greene. I told you. She owns the house.”

“She doesn’t,” Tucker said, looking at Blythe rather than at her. “There is no Louisa Greene. This house is owned by Irene and Carson Greene. Our parents.”

She blinked at that, trying hard to get a grip on reality. “Greene,” she repeated. “Your last name is Greene?”

“Yes.” He frowned at her, his brow creased with worry. “Miss, are you okay?”

She realized she’d put a hand to her head, and she could tell without a mirror that she was pale. “I…I guess I must just be a bit confused.” That was certainly an understatement.

“I imagine so,” he said. “As you can see, there aren’t any exhibit cases here,” he said. “They’re as mysterious as Louisa.”

“Right.” She licked her lips.

“I think you need a doctor,” he said. He looked up at his sister. “Can you go see if Anna’s managed to locate Dr. Williams?”

“Of course.” She bent down and gave Sylvia’s hand a squeeze. “Everything’s going to be fine, darling.” And then she floated out of the room, her short, beaded gown shimmering in the soft lighting.

“Flapper,” she whispered, her mind registering the clothes even before she’d realized. “Like in the exhibit room.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, as her heart started to pound in her chest. Her skin went cold, and she felt her insides start to tremble with a sensation that felt remarkably like an anxiety attack. Hell, maybe it was an anxiety attack. If the ridiculous theory trying to squeeze into her mind was correct, she had every reason to be anxious. “Oh, my God,” she whispered again.

“Are you all right?” His eyes were filled with so much concern that her heart nearly melted, and she was overcome with the urge to touch him. No, not just touch, but to kiss him. The urge was overwhelming for that matter, as if she might be sucked out of this world and into oblivion if she couldn’t find her footing in this man’s arms.

Prodded by some force she couldn’t control, she leaned forward, pressed her palms against his cheeks, and pressed her lips against his. Soft yet firm, his mouth moved beneath hers, first in surprise, and then in response. They kissed deeply, their tongues meeting and mating. Liquid lust pooled in her belly and between her thighs, her breasts tingling with desire, and her body weak with longing.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he said when they pulled apart, all too soon from Sylvia’s point of view. “But what was that for?”

“I needed to feel alive,” she said, only realizing as she spoke the words that they were exactly true. And that it had worked. The kiss had worked a magic on her, sending electric currents through every part of her body. Making her feel safe and alive and grounded.

She drew in a breath, still unsteady from the rush of desire. “Tucker, what day is it?”

“September tenth,” he said. “What day is the last you recall?”

“What year?” she asked, ignoring the second part of his question and tightening her hands into fists as she steeled herself for his answer.

“Nineteen twenty-three,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

But once again, she didn’t answer. Because even though she’d told herself that had to be the explanation—even though she’d expected to hear from his lips that she’d somehow traveled back in time—now that he’d said the date aloud she knew that she couldn’t open her mouth. Not right then. Not yet.

Because if she did, she’d surely scream again.