Whisper of Jasmine
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Date: 2013-12-20 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Historical; British Literature; Short Stories; Fiction; Adult; Historical Fiction; Mystery; Historical Romance; Novella; Romance
Description: New York Times bestselling author Deanna Raybourn transports readers to a magical New Year's Eve party in 1914, where two guests will discover the passion of a lifetime in this prequel novella…Notorious socialite Delilah Drummond won't be deterred by the war. Instead, she decides to throw the event of the year, and she's handing out invitations with an eye for wanton fun and wild abandon. There is the dashing explorer and archaeologist Gabriel Stark, a man at a crossroads in his life. Brilliant and restless, he's just committed to a secret enterprise that forces him to play a public role very
Publisher: Harlequin
Rights: Copyright © 2014 by Deanna Raybourn

New York Times bestselling author Deanna Raybourn transports readers to a magical New Year’s Eve party in 1914, where two guests will discover the passion of a lifetime in this prequel novella…

Notorious socialite Delilah Drummond won’t be deterred by the war. Instead, she decides to throw the event of the year, and she’s handing out invitations with an eye for wanton fun and wild abandon.

There is the dashing explorer and archaeologist Gabriel Stark, a man at a crossroads in his life. Brilliant and restless, he’s just committed to a secret enterprise that forces him to play a public role very different from the man he truly is.

And then there is the charming if flighty Evangeline Merriweather. Evie has dreamed her whole life of adventure. Little does she know, she’s about to get more than she bargained for. Especially after her vivacious Aunt Dove acts as fairy godmother, if a saucy one, providing a scandalous gown and a whisper of jasmine on her skin….

Evie will shake cool Gabriel to his core, but just how far are they willing to take love at first sight?

One seductive night will change Evie forever. Watch for her next adventure, in the City of Jasmine.

Whisper of Jasmine

Deanna Raybourn

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

About the Author

Chapter One

Christmas, 1914
London

Delilah stared at the printed words on the sheet of paper and knew that her life had just changed forever. It was thin, that sheet of paper, insubstantial as a ghost and twice as scary.

“So these are your orders,” she said to her husband. Her voice didn’t break, but Johnny knew her too well.

“I told you I was enlisting,” he reminded her gently.

“Yes, but I thought that was just something people say, like ‘the cheque is in the mail’ or ‘my, what a pretty baby you have.’ I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“I have to, Delilah. My brothers are going, so many of my friends. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t.”

“I know,” she said, offering him a thin smile. “You don’t have to explain it, really. If I were a man and English, I’d beat you to the front lines.”

Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She held them back, purely with the force of her will, and Johnny shook his head.

“They’d be better off with you,” he said, his voice light. “You’re a damned sight braver than I am. It takes a lot more courage to stay behind than it does to go along with the crowd. I don’t want to go, Delilah. It’s going to be bloody and brutal and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I want to stay here with you and write my book and eat your awful cooking and get a dozen babies off of you,” he told her, running his hands around her waist. “But—”

She put a finger to his lips. “I told you you didn’t need to explain it. It’s stupid and tragic, and when this war is over no one will even remember why it started. That’s how wars always go. But you have to live with yourself when it’s done. So,” she added, dropping her finger to toy with the button of his shirt. “You’ll go off to war and I’ll keep the home fires burning. It’s what the little woman is supposed to do, right?”

He dropped his head to her neck, resting his brow in the curve of her shoulder. “Delilah—”

“But we can’t talk about it,” she told him, rearing back to look him in the eye. “I can’t. I’ll put on a brave face even if I have to paint one on with powder and lipstick. I’ll smile and wave you off to war and I’ll mark off every day you’re away on a calendar. I’ll roll bandages and make myself useful and pretend everything’s quite all right, but I can’t talk about it again. Not even with you. If I talk about it, if I think about it, I’ll never be able to let you go.”

He cupped the back of her head with one large hand and kissed her, slowly, sweetly, as if he were courting her again. When he pulled away, he wasn’t surprised to find the tears that had stood unshed in her eyes were gone. He had always said Delilah Drummond was a force of nature. She had swept into his life with all the impact of a hurricane, and he had never entirely recovered from the first time she had looked up into his eyes and given him her slow, inviting smile.

“Very well. We won’t talk about it,” he said seriously. “What shall we do instead?”

She slid her fingers under a button and slipped it free. “First, we’re going to bed for the rest of the day and we’re not getting up until tomorrow. I want to make a thousand new memories of you, Johnny.” She kissed him fervently. “And then you’re going to help me throw a party, the best New Year’s Eve party anyone has ever thrown. We’re going to spend every last penny we have and invite everyone we know and we’ll ring in 1915 in style with champagne and lobster patties and dancing until dawn.”

He grinned. “You realise I’m reporting for duty on the second of January?”

“Good. Then the last memory you’ll have of me is wearing a party frock and knocking back cocktails while I kick old 1914 right in the teeth. Let’s send it off in style.”

* * *

Delilah was as good as her word. On Boxing Day morning she woke up early and began writing out the invitations, and the next morning she was up at dawn, roaring around London in her beloved Aston Martin coal scuttle. It was a discarded prototype, and Johnny still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to persuade an old beau to sell it to her. She had painted it bright yellow and the thing could drive indecently fast. She drove it like she did everything else, with a great deal of flair and a careless certainty that everything would turn out for the best. Of course, the cart horses she scared and the errand boys she nearly mowed down weren’t quite so sure, but Delilah had discovered that a wide smile and a few kisses blown on the wind went a long way towards pacifying the bystanders who had to jump out of the way. She tore through the London streets as quickly as she dared, collecting regular admonishments by the authorities and more than a few admirers. She paid boys to watch the automobile for her when she parked haphazardly in front of the wine merchant and the butcher and the florist, and by December 27 parcels began to arrive, filling their small flat with party preparations. There were crates of vintage champagne, the best she could find on such short notice and marked up so drastically it took Johnny’s breath away to read the bill. But getting Delilah to change course once she got the bit between her teeth was like trying to hold back a storm. Far easier just to go along for the ride—and far more fun. She put him to work testing canapés and mixing cocktails, a taste for which she had brought with her from Louisiana, while she dashed off again on another of her interminable errands. She shopped for a party dress and chose flowers, and—to Johnny’s amusement—hauled home a gramophone and two dozen recordings to play on it.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hire musicians,” Johnny told her, only half in jest.

Her expression was thoughtful as she surveyed the flat. “I would have, but they’d take up too much room. If everyone we’ve invited turns out, it’s going to be a terrific crush, and I want them to have room to dance. They must be able to dance.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because I’m doing some matchmaking. Poor Quentin Harkness was so gutted when I ran away with you, I thought I’d throw him a nice juicy little bone,” she told him, her eyes dancing.

“And what might the bone’s name be?”

“Evangeline Merryweather. She’s a darling girl. Granddaughter of one of those moth-eaten old earls who died without an heir so everything’s gone to some cousin or other. She’s had to go to work,” she said with a frisson.

“There are worse things in life than working for a living,” Johnny put in mildly.

“Not for a girl who hasn’t any skills, and Evie is hopeless. Darling, but hopeless. No, I need to marry her off, and now is the perfect time to find her a husband. We’ll have a pack of young men just itching for a pretty girl to make love to before they head off to war. Why not Evie?”

“It’s a fairly long way from wanting to make love to a girl to marrying her,” Johnny reminded her.

“Not for you. And if I can have you bagged and tagged in two days, I can do the same for Evie in a single evening. Just watch me.”

He burst out laughing. “So it was all just a bit of sport to you? And I was the trophy?”

“Precisely.” But she was grinning, and Johnny’s expression turned pensive.

“I think you’re out of your depth here, love. I’ll wager you can’t get Evie Merryweather paired off like one of Noah’s animals.”

“How much?”

They were alone, but Johnny was still too much of a gentleman to say the words above a whisper. “Come here and I’ll murmur into your delicate little ear.”

Chapter Two

Across London, Evangeline Merryweather was staring at the invitation and suppressing a groan. Her flatmate, an unpleasant girl named Marjorie, or Margery—Evie had never bothered to learn and cared even less—gave her a repressive look. “I say, some of us are trying to study here.”

Evie sighed and picked up her coat. “I was just leaving.”

“You will catch your death in this weather. And when you come over with a cold, don’t expect me to take care of you,” Marjorie called after her as she left.

“Of course not. You’re only studying to be a nurse,” Evie muttered as her coat caught on the door.

“What did you say?” Marjorie said, her voice sharp with suspicion.

“I said, I would never expect you to,” Evie said with an effort at brightness. She freed her coat and banged the door closed behind her. Marjorie was right. The weather was filthy, bitterly cold and sleeting heavily, but she couldn’t bear another minute cooped up inside. She had agreed to share with Marjorie on the recommendation of a mutual friend—a friend who had been firmly struck from her Christmas card list after the first fortnight of living with Marjorie. Evie had been cheerfully optimistic about her ability to live with a flatmate. She had been bounced around enough of her relatives’ homes to have honed her skills at accommodation. She had lived with adenoidal spinster aunts and religiously fanatical cousins and uncles who gambled. There had been a great-aunt who drank the cooking sherry and even a sort of second cousin who collected hair as a hobby, but nothing had prepared her for the sheer grimness of living with someone wholly lacking in humour.

“I can bear anything as long as I can have a bit of a laugh,” she told herself as she hurried down the street. She walked on, drawing in great deep breaths of the crisp, damp air. She walked all the way to Kensington Gardens and turned in to walk beside the Long Water. She hadn’t intended to go there, but whenever she needed to think, she found herself on the west side of the Serpentine in the leafy glade that sheltered the statue of Peter Pan.

It had appeared overnight on May Day morning of 1912. No warning, no fanfare, just a notice in the Times.

There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the southwestern side of the tail of the Serpentine, they will find a Mayday gift by Mr. J.M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived.

Evie had hurried along to the park that May Day morning, as delighted as any child. Peter Pan was her dearest childhood friend, and watching him fly from the stage of the Duke of York’s theatre was her last truly happy memory, the only one unencumbered by the loss of her parents, the endless moving from place to place, from relation to relation as she was passed around like a hand-me-down garment that was nice enough but didn’t quite fit. Peter Pan was the last time she had fit, and whenever she felt low, her steps always carried her back to the little glade in Kensington Gardens where the boy who wouldn’t grow up waited.

He was alone now. The weather had driven everyone else away from the park, but Evie settled at his feet next to a particularly winsome rabbit. She was sheltered from the worst of the sleet, and the wind had died down a little. If anything, the brisk air invigorated her, and she pulled out Delilah’s invitation to read it over again.

It was written in a firm, dramatic hand. Delilah did everything with flair. The daughter of a divorcée, Delilah had been a glamourous debutante, the most sophisticated of their Season. Evie had been presented by an ancient aunt and had only agreed to go when the aunt had unearthed her own court presentation gown from sixty years before and promised it wouldn’t cost Evie a penny of her meagre earnings. It had kept the peace for a while, which was the only reason Evie let herself be trussed up like a Christmas turkey and thrust into the row of debutantes, plumes nodding gently overhead as they made their way down the queue. She had been placed next to Delilah and had stared openmouthed at the glorious creature with the curious accent and spectacular eyes. Everyone else looked nervous as cats, but Delilah merely glided along, a small smile on her lips as if it were all simply too amusing, and most amusing of all was the girl with the hideously unfashionable dress who made her laugh. Delilah loved nothing better than a good laugh, and by the time they were finished, she had looped her arm through Evie’s and towed her away to lunch at the Savoy. They exchanged pleasantries over the starters, but by the time the entrée was served, Evie had told Delilah her entire life story and when pudding came, she had the uncomfortable feeling she had shared too much.

“Nonsense,” Delilah told her briskly. “If there’s one complaint I have about the English, it’s their coolness. They’re remote as the moon, most of them, and it’s refreshing to find one of you who will actually talk.”

Evie had been reassured and Delilah had promised to take her to all the best parties of the Season. The plan was short-lived. Evie had twisted her ankle in her high-heeled court shoes and had to beg off the first ball, sitting at home with a cold compress on her ankle while everyone else danced the night away. That was the night Delilah met Johnny, and before anyone could blink they had eloped amid a flurry of deliciously scandalised gossip. The Season was over for its most glorious debutante before it had even begun, and Evie put aside her grand hopes and went back to work, chiding herself a little for getting caught up in Delilah’s glamour. They had exchanged letters several times since, but never managed to meet in person. Delilah had been too enthralled with her new husband to spare much time for anything else, and Evie didn’t pursue it. It was simply too lowering to sit with someone who had it all—beauty, style, a sinfully handsome husband who adored her—and have to admit what a bore life had become. For her part, Evie had a series of jobs that didn’t last, and each was more degrading than the last. She had firmly resisted taking on domestic work, but after a disastrous stint as a shopgirl working for Belgravia’s most exclusive florist—one that ended with her breaking the most expensive vase in the shop over the florist’s head—she had taken a post as a governess. She hadn’t lasted until luncheon, and she trudged home in vile weather, saving the bus fare, to find a letter in Delilah’s elegant hand, demanding her attendance at a New Year’s Eve party.

“I’ve nothing to wear,” Evie said mournfully. She knew Delilah’s people had been difficult about the elopement. They had restricted her allowance, and Johnny had little of his own, but even without much money, Delilah would look like a queen. She was one of those tiresome girls who could put on a bedsheet and make it look like—

Evie sat up straight, her mind working furiously. She had five days to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and she knew just where to go. She patted the little bronze rabbit goodbye and sped off down the path.

* * *

In his moderately comfortable flat in the worst street in the worst square in the best neighbourhood in London, Gabriel Starke smiled at the handwriting on the envelope. Delilah Drummond. Now that was a name to conjure with. He had had a single dance with her at her first debutante ball before he’d made the mistake of introducing her to Johnny. He’d only been dancing with her to kill time until he could hunt down their host and discuss his upcoming expedition to the Himalayas. Expeditions were costly, and the more patrons Gabriel found, the more comfortable his trips. He’d abandoned Delilah for the chance to land a sponsor and by the time he’d come back, she and Johnny were making a scandal of themselves by slipping into the garden for a little tête-à-tête. They’d come back with Johnny still buttoning his shirt and Delilah’s lipstick smudged under his ear, but the disgrace had been blunted when they’d eloped two days later. Gabriel found he hadn’t minded one bit; a benefactor was far more important than a girl, and he had secured all the funds he needed for his attempt to summit Masherbrum. Four months later, he was back in England, unsuccessful but more famous than when he had left, and he hadn’t yet seen the newlyweds. He wasn’t sure why Delilah had invited him, but it occurred to him he hadn’t anyplace better to go on New Year’s Eve. His family were in the country, thank God, and an evening of bachelor delights at his club sounded distinctly unappetising. Delilah would have good food and pretty girls, and enough liquor to take his mind off his troubles.

Just as he made up his mind to go, his telephone rang. He answered it, knowing before he spoke who would be on the line. “I just received an invitation to Delilah’s New Year’s Eve party. Going, old man?”

Gabriel suppressed a smile. Tarquin was almost two decades his senior. “Yes, old man. You?”

“I think so,” Tarquin said slowly. “It might be a very good idea to make an appearance.”

Gabriel cut in. “Hang on, how do you know Delilah? I thought the Marches were too ancient and exclusive a family to mix with Louisiana sugar millionaires.”

Tarquin gave a little sniff, and Gabriel smiled. He knew exactly what gesture accompanied that sniff. Tarquin would be polishing his spectacles, his dark, clever brows knit together. “I don’t. I was invited at the request of Quentin Harkness. He’s a fellow I think you should meet. Whatever your plans were for New Year’s Eve, cancel them. You’re going to Delilah’s.”

Before Gabriel could respond, Tarquin had severed the connection. He sighed and replaced the receiver before pouring himself a small glass of single malt. It was the last of the good whisky, he realised ruefully. Time to turn his hand to earning more money. And that meant going to Delilah’s party, whether he wanted to or not.

Chapter Three

“Hold still before I run you through with a pin,” Evie’s Aunt Dove said severely.

Evie held her breath. “I’m sorry. You’ve been an angel. I’m just wondering if I’ve lost my nerve.”

She darted a glance towards the ancient cheval glass, but Aunt Dove pricked her lightly with a pin.

“Ouch!” Evie sucked her finger, glowering at her aunt.

“I did tell you to hold still,” Aunt Dove countered with deceptive mildness. “And I told you earlier, no peeking until it’s finished.”

Appealing to Aunt Dove to find her a suitable evening dress had been an inspired choice, but Evie had regretted it almost instantly. Dove was the most eccentric of her relatives. She had made a name for herself as a Victorian adventuress—in both senses of the word. She had travelled the world collecting stories and artefacts, and she had made a string of notorious conquests along the way, returning to England only when she was between lovers or patrons.

“Well, we Pomeroy-Finches mightn’t have tuppence to rub together, but we do have style,” Aunt Dove remarked as she tugged Evie into a different position.

“I’m a Merryweather,” Evie reminded her.

Aunt Dove shot her a dark look. “Pomeroy-Finch blood is very strong. It will always out. One of these days you’ll start racing cars or sail a yacht around the world. I have hope for you yet.”

Evie suppressed a sigh.

“I heard that,” Aunt Dove told her. “I blame myself for you, you know. If I’d been around when you were growing up, I might have taken a hand in your education, shown you the world.” She paused to fix another pin. “Of course, most people wouldn’t approve of handing a child over to a well-travelled nymphomaniac with superb dressmaking skills, but then most people lack imagination, I always find. Stand up straight, child! You must have had ballet lessons at some point. Didn’t they teach you about posture?”

Evie stiffened her spine, darting a glance out of the tail of her eye. “I did, but it never seemed to take. I probably ought to have been corseted like you.”

“Corset? Rubbish. Never wore the beastly things. They aren’t healthful,” she said, tacking a sleeve into place. “No, the best training for good posture is a nice, heavy tiara.”

“A tiara?”

“Nothing to make you hold your spine straight like the fear of dropping a few thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds onto the floor. Now, turn around and let me take a good squint at you.”

Evie did as she was told, turning smoothly.

“When I asked you to do this, I thought you might have something pretty lying around in a trunk somewhere,” Evie said as Aunt Dove frowned at the hem. “I never expected you to cut up a Worth gown.”

“Don’t be daft, child. It’s just fabric,” she said, but distractedly. She knelt, joints creaking in protest, to pin the hem tighter.

“Aunt Dove, I won’t be able to walk in it!”

“Stop fussing. You want a fashionable skirt, don’t you? It must be properly pegged to get that lovely tulip shape,” Aunt Dove told her firmly. She thrust another pin into the emerald-green satin for good measure, and Evie tried not to think about the masterpiece Dove was carving up for her. The original gown had been ornately embellished in the overblown style of the 1870s, but Dove was working magic upon it. She had already torn off the long train and ripped out the inner petticoats so the skirt hung long and slim about Evie’s legs. The sleeves had been the next to go, snipped away with a few passes of her flashing scissors while the intricate lace had been unpicked leaving only the satin foundation behind.

“Where did you wear this?” Evie asked, stroking the cool satin.

“Hmm? Oh, Turkey. I had a rather tempestuous encounter with the French ambassador to the sultan’s court in Constantinople. He had the most divine moustaches. Very tickly on the thighs they were,” she added absently. Before Evie could respond, Aunt Dove went on. “That should do for now. Let’s get you out of it and we’ll make a pile of hot buttered toast and exchange savage gossip.”

“You realise your memories are more interesting than my actual life, don’t you?” Evie said, holding up her arms for her aunt to ease her out of the dress.

Aunt Dove stepped behind her and looked at her reflection in the cheval glass. “You haven’t been to India, pet, but in the Nilgiri Hills, there’s a flower called a kurinji flower. It doesn’t bloom often. In fact, you can go a dozen years or more without seeing a single blossom. But then, just when you’ve given up hope of ever seeing one, they burst into flower, whole mountainsides at the same time, carpeted in the most astonishing shades of purple. It’s as if God himself shook out a rug of petals and spread it at your feet. It’s unexpected and magnificent, and very much worth the wait.”

Evie rolled her eyes. “Are you honestly comparing me to a rare flower that happens to be a late bloomer?”

Aunt Dove grinned. “No. I was simply reminding you the world is full of miraculous things the likes of which you have yet to see. If I were going to compare you to a flower, I would have chosen a carrion flower from Sumatra. Six feet tall, smells like death, and blooms long after you’ve given up hope of it ever doing anything interesting.”

“I do not smell like death!”

Aunt Dove gave her a pitying look. “No, you don’t smell of anything, actually. Except soap. It’s high time I introduced you to Guerlain, child. Come along. You’ve much to learn.”

* * *

“Taste this and tell me what you think,” Delilah ordered. She ladled out a cupful of punch and handed it to her husband.

Johnny gave it an experimental sniff, admiring the pale ruby colour. “Looks harmless enough,” he told her with a grin. He took a deep swallow and gasped, thrusting the cup back at her as he struggled for air. “Good God, what the devil is that?”

“Planter’s punch. Our family recipe,” she told him promptly. “Don’t you like it?”

“How much liquor did you put in there?” Johnny fished in his pocket for a handkerchief for his streaming eyes.

Delilah began ticking off items on her fingers. “There’s whisky, cognac, two types of rum and a few other things that are a secret to the L’Hommedieus. I’ll have you know my Granny Miette is famous for that punch.”

“Really? How many people has she killed with it?” He licked his lips experimentally. “I don’t think I can feel my tongue.”

“Don’t be feeble. It’s divine,” Delilah told him darkly. To prove her point, she downed the rest of the glass and smacked her lips. “Delicious! I could dance all night on a glass of this stuff.”

“Now that you mention it—” Johnny reached for the ladle and refilled the glass. He sipped again and this time he gave her a slow nod. “I think I’m coming around. What else is in here?”

Delilah narrowed her eyes. “Oh, no you don’t. You might be my husband, but I don’t know you well enough to tell you all the family secrets,” she teased. “Do you really like it?”

Johnny took a third sip, this time savouring the sweetness of the punch followed by the warm trill of the mingled liquors on his tongue. “It’s growing on me. But you might want to be careful to whom you serve it. That stuff is a bowlful of rather bad decisions waiting to happen.”

Delilah gave him a dazzling smile. “That’s what I’m betting on.”

“What do you have up your sleeve, Delilah?”

She grinned. “Just a little playing at Cupid is all. Not only do I plan to introduce Evie to Quentin, I’ve got just the girl for Gabriel Starke. I haven’t told him a thing about her yet because I want her to be a surprise, but she’s utterly perfect—a blonde from Scandinavia with a shocking reputation. She’s an artist’s model and tall, like something out of a Norse storybook for very naughty boys.”

Johnny shook his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing, meddling with other people’s love lives like this.”

“You know my Granny Miette isn’t above doing a little conjuring over the sugar cauldron,” she reminded him. “I know how to fix people together. A little May Water in the punch bowl is just the thing to make some sparks fly.”

“May Water? Should I bother to ask what that is?”

“You can ask, but it won’t do you any good. I don’t even know. It’s Granny Miette’s secret recipe. Don’t worry—it won’t bring anyone together with someone they shouldn’t be with. But everybody needs a little shove once in a while.”

He slid his arms around her. “Is that how you fixed us together? Magic potions in my evening whisky?”

She put her hands into his hair, twisting her fingers and tugging ever so slightly. “I didn’t have to fix us. We came that way.”

* * *

At that moment, Aunt Dove was wrestling Evie into the finished dress with dire threats if she peeked into the looking glass before the finishing touches. The shimmering emerald satin gown went on first, and Evie was startled at how many changes Aunt Dove had made in just a few short days. The neckline had been cut daringly low, but not as low as the back where it had been slashed nearly to her waist., Evie moaned a little as she felt the cool air pass over her skin.

“I’ll look like a prostitute,” she muttered as Aunt Dove circled her, twitching the skirt into place.

“What was that, dear?” “Nothing,” Evie said with a feeble smile. Aunt Dove tried her patience on a regular basis, but never more than when she was trying to help. She clearly wanted to play godmother to Evie’s Cinderella, and with her tiny income, cutting up an old gown was the best she could do. Evie looked at her face, wrinkled and mapped with memories and glowing with pleasure at her efforts, and she decided then that she’d rather go out stark naked than hurt her feelings by complaining.

“It’s lovely,” she said gamely.

Aunt Dove shot her a repressive look. “Don’t patronise me, child. You’re indecent as a Roman concubine. It’s only half-finished.”

With a flourish she produced an armful of fabric and gave it a crisp shake. The fabric fluttered out like a banner, and Evie gasped. The material was black and sheer, embroidered heavily here and there with silken butterflies of deep jewel hues. They shimmered against the black, and Evie gave a little wriggle of pleasure at the whisper of it against her skin. Aunt Dove had created a sort of overgown with sheer sleeves to the elbow ending in a row of plain black silk fringe. It covered her back, hinting at the bare skin underneath, and flowed over the green satin skirt, both ending at her ankles.

“Now, let’s see if you can walk in it,” Aunt Dove ordered.

Evie took a few experimental steps and the butterfly robe fluttered open, turning back on itself to reveal the green satin. When she stood still it composed itself like folded wings, and Evie gaped at the effect.

“It’s absolute magic. How on earth did you think of it?”

Aunt Dove shrugged. “I knew it needed something special, and when I was climbing out of the bath yesterday and putting on my dressing gown, I realised that was it.”

Evie blinked. “This is your dressing gown?”

Aunt Dove’s expression turned mulish. “It’s a very nice dressing gown. It was a gift from a judge in Kowloon.”

“I am going to a New Year’s Eve party thrown by the most glamourous woman I know wearing a dressing gown.”

“It was either that or dress you in a bedsheet and tell everyone you’re bringing back the fashions of classical Greece,” Aunt Dove said waspishly. “Now, hold still and stop grumbling. I have to do something about your hair before someone discovers we are related. It’s a disgrace.”

With a little careful application of pomade, Aunt Dove coaxed Evie’s cropped waves into dark curls, sweeping them off of her brow and away from her face. She tipped up Evie’s face and gave her a critical glance.

“We need to do something about your face, as well.”

“My face is quite nice!”

“Your face is lovely,” Aunt Dove assured her. “But you might as well make the most of what you have. Now, your skin is a delight—I’d sell my soul to one of the lesser demons for skin like that again. Actually, now that I think of it, mine was better.”

“Was it?”

“There’s a white rose in Argentina named for me. What do you think?” She leant forwards and dusted a swansdown puff over Evie’s face. She touched her cheeks with a bit of rosy rouge, and did something clever with a slender stick of kohl. When she’d finished, Evie looked like herself, but more herself than she had ever been. The last touch was a bit of carmine to her lips, reddening them until they looked just bitten.

“Delicious,” Aunt Dove pronounced. “Not a man there will be able to stop himself from kissing you.”

She passed a hand mirror to Evie and stood back. Evie surveyed herself and shook her head. “You really are a witch, do you know that? But a very good one. I would kiss you but I don’t want to mar this mouth. I look glorious.”

Aunt Dove beamed at her. “Rather an improvement on that sad little creature that crept in here a few days ago wanting help, don’t you think?” Without waiting for a reply, she picked up a golden glass atomiser from her dressing table and misted Evie.

A cloud of delectable scent hovered in the air, landing lightly on her hair, her silk-clad shoulders, her hands. Evie sniffed appreciatively. “Oh, that’s heaven! What is it?”

Dove smiled in satisfaction. “Something I picked up in the south of France. It’s the purest jasmine from Grasse, which makes it very special indeed.”

“Why?” Evie sniffed again. The scent was rich and sensual, curling against her like a cat and warming itself on her skin.

“Child, jasmine is one of the most seductive scents imaginable, and the stuff from Grasse is the finest in the world. In the little village where I collected that, the farmers won’t even let their nubile daughters walk through the fields when the flowers are ripe for fear they won’t be able to control themselves.”

“I can see why,” Evie murmured. The heavy fragrance was intoxicating, and she felt like someone entirely new.

Dove handed over a pair of high-heeled black satin shoes just a tiny bit too tight and very slightly shredded at the toes. Evie had only her own plain black coat to wear, but Aunt Dove assured her it wouldn’t matter.

“It will make the reveal all the more dramatic. You will come in looking like a nun, and then when the coat comes off—dazzling! Now, one last thing.” She turned away and rummaged in a jewellery box, emerging with an enormous green stone in an ostentatious setting. She threaded it onto a black satin ribbon and tied it around Evie’s neck. “You need a bit of glitter, and that will bring out the green in your eyes.”

Evie touched the lump of green. “I couldn’t. It’s your favourite and far too valuable,” she began, struggling for a tactful way to get out of wearing it. But Aunt Dove would not be dissuaded.

“That bit of rubbish? Bah. It’s only glass, child. Besides, a hint of vulgarity is just the thing. It makes people wonder what you’ve been up to.”

She bundled Evie into her coat and handed her fare for a cab, refusing to take no for an answer. “Those shoes are too tight for you to walk, and it might rain.”

“There isn’t a cloud in the sky,” Evie said, dropping a kiss to her papery cheek. “But thank you.”

Aunt Dove gave her a wink. “Just enjoy yourself, pet. And if you see a likely lad, make sure you dance with him, something nice and slow.”

“I’m not looking for romance, you know.” “Who said anything about romance?” Aunt Dove widened her eyes. “But if you dance slowly with a fellow, you can usually tell if he knows what he’s about in the bedroom. And make sure you feel his bottom. You want one that’s nice and pert. It means he’s a good thruster.”

Evie fled before Aunt Dove could offer any further advice, hurrying down the stairs and hurling herself into the first cab she saw. Already her feet were throbbing and she could feel the evening chill cutting through her coat and the sheer silk over her shoulders. But Aunt Dove was waving gaily from her window, and Evie leant out of the cab to blow her a fond kiss. Aunt Dove might be a lot to take, but she meant well. And thanks to her, Evie was perfectly prepared for a very good evening indeed.

Chapter Four

“You’re not holding a grudge because I married another beau, are you?” Delilah asked archly. She waggled her eyebrows at Gabriel and he laughed.

“How could I be? I climb mountains and dig up mouldy relics. I couldn’t possibly hope to hold the interest of a dazzling creature like you.”

She raised herself on tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, leaving an imprint of her scarlet lipstick behind.

“If you’re going to run away with one of my friends, darling, don’t make it Gabriel. He might be handsome enough to turn your head, but he hasn’t a bean to his name,” Johnny cut in. He nodded to a corner where Tarquin March and Quentin Harkness were apparently introducing themselves. “You’d be far better going back to Quentin. He’s got more money than Croesus and he’s older. You might make a young, rich widow,” he finished, slipping an arm about her waist. He bent his head to nuzzle her neck and she shrieked.

Gabriel smiled indulgently. “I’m no threat to you, old man. Delilah may be beautiful as any Grecian goddess, but you know what happened to all those fellows in myths who ran away with pretty wives.”

“Buggered in the end?” Johnny supplied helpfully.

“Got it in one.”

They grinned at each other and Delilah poured out a cup of punch for Gabriel. “Drink this down and get in there and start mingling,” she ordered, nodding towards the seething mass of people she had managed to pack into their small flat. “But mind you don’t go too far. I’ve got just the girl for you. As glamorous as I am, but without the burdensome husband.”

Gabriel lifted his glass as he edged away. Johnny was bending to Delilah’s neck again and she let out another shriek, spilling a full glass of punch and laughing uproariously at the dripping carpet. They were in high spirits, no doubt because of all the punch they had already drunk, but Gabriel sensed there was more. There was a hectic quality to Delilah’s mood, a defiance that he guessed she’d summoned as a sort of bravado to cover her terror at Johnny leaving for war. She was too proud to show her true feelings, but they were easy to see if you looked hard enough. There were lines under her eyes, and where her fingers gripped her punch cup, the knuckles were white. She was hanging onto her sangfroid, but only just, and Gabriel quietly saluted her courage. Johnny would go off to war with only Delilah’s smile and not her tears, and it was an act of breathtaking bravery on her part. He felt a momentary stab of envy and smothered it. He didn’t envy Johnny his wife. He’d figured out only too quickly Delilah wasn’t his type. But damnation, he envied Johnny the fact that someone would miss him when he’d gone.

As Gabriel turned, he bumped into a girl, narrowly missing her punch cup.

“Terribly sorry, although you might have thanked me if I had spilled it. That stuff is lethal—” he began, but he stopped dead in his tracks. Delilah was wrong to call her glamorous. The girl in front of him was something entirely different. Taken one by one, nothing about her should have caught his attention. Her height was middling, she was neither thin nor fat. Her hair was dark and her eyes indeterminate, hazel perhaps? But the whole was absolutely arresting, most of all for the expression of absolute amazement she was directing his way. Her lips were parted and her eyes were shining, just like a child on Christmas, and Gabriel realised with a surge of pure, savage joy that it was because of him.

He recalled himself with a shake. “I do apologise. I nearly ran you over. I was trying to escape from our host and hostess,” he added with a jerk of his head to where Johnny had now picked Delilah up and was spinning her around.

“Happily married people are such a bore, aren’t they?” the vision said. Her voice was lovely, low and soft, and he bent his head closer to hear her. And as he did, he caught a whisper of the most delectable scent.

Just then, the ribbon around her neck came undone and the emerald pendant at her neck fell into his punch cup.

“Hell and damnation,” she muttered, but loudly enough for him to hear.

He grinned. “Good. I’m glad you swear. I can’t bear prissy girls. Don’t worry—I’ll get it for you.”

He whipped out a handkerchief of soft white linen, excellent quality if a little frayed around the edges, and fished in the cup for the stone. He lifted it out, triumphant, and placed it carefully on the handkerchief.

“Oh, you shouldn’t! It will ruin your handkerchief,” she told him.

“Too late.” He held it out to her. “I guess you’ll just have to keep it to remember me by.”

Evie, who had never flirted with a man in her life, said the first thing that came into her head. “Does that mean a memory is all I’ll have?”

The halfsmile on his face widened, and she saw there were two deep dimples to match the cleft in his chin. It was as if a creator, not content with giving him strong, even features and the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen, had been unable to resist signing the handiwork with a flourish. He was, quite simply, the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen.

“Stay here. I mean it—if you move, I will hunt you down, and I can do it,” he instructed.

She gave him a halfshrug and he turned away, refilling both of their punch cups while she tucked the soaked ribbon and sticky pendant into her small bag.

He returned, nodding towards her bare neck. “I hope the pendant wasn’t valuable. It looked awfully costly.”

She shook her head. “It’s just something my aunt wanted me to wear. A bit of tat she thought would make me look particularly fetching.”

“Why? Is tonight a special occasion?”

She shrugged again. “Not particularly. But Delilah is determined to play matchmaker and set me up with some old beau of hers.”

He leant closer and she caught a spicy whiff of shaving lotion. “Actually, it’s me.”

Evie blinked. “You?”

He smiled again. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

She gave him a serious look. “I don’t know yet. You might have disappointing habits like biting your toenails or playing Gregorian chants on the recorder in the nude.”

His expression was amused. “I promise you I cut my toenails like any other gentleman and my musical tastes are firmly fixed in the seventeenth century. It’s Palestrina and Purcell for me, and I usually play them clothed, although I can’t make you any promises.”

“Well, then, we’re definitely not compatible.” She nodded to the gramophone. “I happen to love jazz.”

“Jazz? What the devil is that? Are you talking about that fiendish noise playing now? I’d rather slice my ears off than listen to a moment more of it.”

Evie opened her mouth to reply, but she realised those magnificent eyes were twinkling at her. He was having her on, and enjoying himself immensely in the process.

He hesitated a moment, as if deciding something, and she saw his eyes flicker to the pair of men standing in the corner. They were watching Gabriel with decided interest, but before she could wonder why, Gabriel reached down and took her hand.

“Come on. Let’s get out of this press.”

* * *

Watching Evie and Gabriel slip through the crowd, Quentin Harkness and Tarquin March sipped at their punch and made polite conversation. A tall Nordic-looking blonde standing nearby heard them exchanging views on the current situation in Ireland and hurried in the other direction to avoid being drawn in to what must have been the dullest party conversation she had ever heard.

Aware they were outside of earshot of anyone else, Quentin kept his expression pleasantly bored, but his voice was emphatic. “I am worried about that one. Do you think he is up for this?”

Tarquin picked up a statue of Cupid from the bookshelf behind him and seemed to be studying a mark on the bottom. He pointed at nothing and Quentin leant near as if to examine it. “Have a little faith, man. I chose him myself. He won’t do anything stupid.”

* * *

Gabriel had never visited Johnny and Delilah’s flat before, but he was not an explorer for nothing. He had already figured out that the hallway staircase must lead up to the top storey, and he reasoned there would be access to the roof from there. He had hoped for a staircase, but there was only a ladder. He turned to Evie doubtfully, but she merely smiled and drained her cup of punch.

“Oh, my!” she exclaimed, coughing slightly. “It’s just like cold fire, isn’t it?”

“Was that your first cup?”

“My fourth.”

“My God, it’s a wonder you can still stand,” he told her.

She considered that. “Standing isn’t a problem. It’s minding what I say that seems to be the trouble. For instance, ever since I first saw you, I’ve wanted to tell you how utterly beautiful your eyes are and ask you what they remind me of because I know I’ve seen that colour, but I can’t think where. And I knew I was going to just blurt that out—oh!”

She stopped because he kissed her, quickly and hard, on the cheek. “Forget-me-nots,” he told her.

“Yes! That’s it. And your shaving lotion is quite nice, although I probably oughtn’t tell you that either.”

She reached out and took his punch cup and drained it.

“Slow down, child. You’ll be legless in ten minutes if you keep that up.”

She widened her eyes and he took the cups, putting them down on the floor. “Come on, pet. You need some fresh air, and I want to get you alone.”

“Oh, why? Are you going to try something caddish? I should so enjoy that,” she murmured.

“Well, I wasn’t, but if you insist.”

“I don’t insist. I mean, if you don’t want to be a cad with me,” she started. She trailed off as he stripped off his coat and laid it across her shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“It’s going to be cold out there. You’ll catch your death in that dress, however delectable you look in it.”

“I don’t think any man has ever said I look delectable before.”

“Then they’re fools.” He nodded towards the ladder.

“You go up first so I can enjoy watching your bottom.” She widened her eyes at the words that had slipped out. He smiled.

“I want you to go first so I can catch you if you slip.”

“Oh, you are a gentleman.”

“Every inch of me.”

She turned and gripped the ladder carefully, placing her feet slowly upon the bottom rung. She hadn’t had four cups of punch before she’d seen Gabriel. The one she’d drunk in front of him had been her first. But she needed an excuse for the things she wanted to say to him, the things she wanted to do to him. Nice girls, properly brought up girls, polite girls didn’t tell men they’d just met that they’d like to feel their bottoms or kiss them senseless, no matter what Aunt Dove said. But those were only a few of the thoughts swimming around in Evie’s head, and she thought it best to give him at least half an excuse for what she might blurt out.

She ascended cautiously, but Gabriel was right behind her, large and reassuring. She wouldn’t fall, and even if she did, there was simply no way Gabriel would let any harm come to her. She emerged at last into the brisk night air, and she gasped as she stepped onto the roof. Above them, a thousand stars shimmered against the night sky. A low, pearly moon rose above the rooftops, and somewhere not far away, from another party came the sound of music, an orchestra this time, with rich, throbbing strings.

He slipped his arm around her waist and gathered her close to his body.

“What are you doing?”

“Dancing with you,” he told her, easing her into a slow waltz. “Don’t you hear the music from the neighbours’ party?”

She couldn’t hear anything above the blood beating in her ears for a moment, but then it came, faint and haunting and lovely. “What is it?”

“It’s ‘Salut d’amour.’ Elgar. Pretty piece.”

“It’s sublime,” she murmured, relaxing in his arms. “The most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

He moved her about the small rooftop, guiding her around chimney pots and wires and stacks of bricks, holding her carefully out of danger as if she were the most precious thing he had ever seen.

Evie tipped her head back. “I’ve never seen so many stars in the city,” Evie breathed.

Gabriel came to stand behind her. “Must be our lucky night.”

“‘A night of nights,’” she agreed.

“What did you just say?”

She turned to face him, flapping a hand. “Oh, nothing. It’s embarrassing, really. It’s a quote from Peter Pan. You must have seen it as a child.”

“About a thousand times,” he said slowly. “It was my favourite play. I took Peter and Wendy with me on my last Himalayan expedition.”

“You went to the Himalayas? With Peter Pan?”

“And Wendy and Hook and all of the Lost Boys.”

“What on earth were you doing in the Himalayas?”

“Trying to climb an excessively elusive mountain.”

“You’re a mountaineer!” Her eyes were brilliant with excitement.

“For my sins. I’m also an archaeologist and explorer. I’m seldom in England, which is why I think Delilah decided to take pity on me and find me a lovely girl to coax me to stay home.”

“You’d be better off with a lovely girl who’d want to go with you,” she blurted out, clapping a hand over her mouth.

He reached out gently and took her hand. He brushed his lips over the love line running across her palm. “And now I have one.”

She swallowed hard. “I should tell you that you’re mad, you know. We’ve only just met.”

“You haven’t just met me,” he said, his voice low and mesmerising. “You’ve known me all of your life, haven’t you?”

“Have I? I think I must have. Otherwise, how could I be dreaming you now?”

“You think you’re dreaming?”

“I am. I’m going to wake up in my own little bed in that horrid flat any minute now and hear Marjorie snoring and smell her liquorice pastilles.”

“Liquorice pastilles?”

“She sucks them to keep from biting her nails,” Evie explained.

“And Marjorie is?”

“My flatmate and the bane of my existence. She steals my shoes and pretends she doesn’t, but I can tell because she stretches them out with her bunions.”

“See? That’s good enough reason to come with me. I seldom snore, and I never suck on liquorice pastilles, and I have very handsome feet.”

“I told you, you’re just a dream. A gorgeous, wonderful dream.”

He pointed behind them to where their shadows stretched along the rooftop, dark whispers against the silvery moonlight.

“Can a dream cast a shadow? I’ve got one, the same as you.”

“Maybe you’re not a dream. Maybe you’re Peter Pan and some unfortunate girl stuck that shadow on for you with a bit of soap.”

He shook his head. “Not on, pet. Remember? The soap didn’t work. Wendy had to sew it. That’s how she got involved with Peter in the first place. She let him into the window and after they talked she went away with him.”

“She had been warned never to speak to him. He was dangerous,” Evie reminded him.

“But Wendy had the adventure of a lifetime,” he countered.

Evie shook her head. “You’re just a dream. A figment,” she said stubbornly.

He thought a moment. “Have you ever been properly kissed? I mean really, thoroughly, knee-shatteringly kissed?”

“No. Never.”

“Then how on earth could you dream this?” Before she could reply he bent his head and touched his lips to hers. He left them there, warming them against her softness before he slid his arms completely around her and pulled her body fully against his. She made a soft sound, like the wind murmuring in the trees before a storm, and before she knew what she was doing, she was kissing him back, her hands tangled in his hair, her thigh trapped between his.

At last he pulled back and Evie stared at him with eyes that would never look at anything the same way again. She reached up and traced the line of his cheek. Then, without warning, she pinched hard, twisting until he clapped his hand over hers.

“Jesus, love, if you don’t want to be kissed you could just tell a fellow,” he said, his tone surprisingly light for a man who’d just been modestly assaulted. He rubbed ruefully at the spot. “I’ll wager that’s going to leave a mark.”

She reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry. I just had to know. You do seem rather like a dream, and I had to be entirely certain—ow!” She rubbed at her bottom, swatting his hand away. “What on earth was that for?”

“It’s the dreamer who gets pinched,” he supplied helpfully. “Not the figment. Now, do you feel properly awake, or shall I try again?”

She dodged his eager hands. “That’s quite enough of that! No, I suppose you are real enough. I just can’t quite believe it. It seems enchanted up here, doesn’t it?”

Together they looked out over the city that stretched before them as far as they could see. A few low clouds had rolled in, roundbellied and threatening snow, but the stars still shone. The bell tower of the church across the square rose into the night sky, the clock face silver in the moonlight, and beyond was a landscape of rooftops and chimneypots, light blazing from every window as the minutes counted down to midnight.

“Oh, bless them,” Evie breathed.

“Bless whom?”

“All of them,” she said, throwing her arms wide as if to embrace the whole city. “They don’t care there’s a war on. They mean to welcome 1915 and show the kaiser they won’t be beat. I love them for it.” She turned to him, her eyes anxious. “What about you? Will you go?”

“Not yet,” he told her, edging as close to the truth as he dared. “I am hoping to head an expedition to China soon. I’m attempting the Karakorum range again.”

“But surely—” she stopped, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.

“Surely I mean to enlist as there’s a war on?” he asked. He quirked his brow as he put the question to her and Evie felt a little thrust of admiration.

“Oh, how do you do that? I’ve always wanted to cock one brow like that. I used to practise in the mirror until one of my aunts caught me at it and asked if I was mentally feeble.”

“Rather unkind,” Gabriel said. He didn’t like the notion of anyone not appreciating every particle of her charming originality. She was his; she had all but agreed to it, and he felt a keen proprietorial interest in everything about her.

“She didn’t mean to be unkind. She simply wasn’t accustomed to young people. Poor lamb—it was rather a shock when I turned up to live with her. But she did take it well enough in the end. She clothed and fed me and made certain I learnt maths and prepositions. Do I mean prepositions? Maybe it was adverbs I learnt from her.”

Gabriel followed the willow-the-wisp darting of her conversation as if he were chasing a butterfly. He was grateful to her for leaving off the subject of the war. It pierced him to know there were things he could not tell her, could never tell her. If there was a moment, could ever have been a moment, it passed swiftly before the stream of words. With a rush of tenderness, he realised she was nervous. He put a hand over hers, calming and stilling the flood of words.

“It’s going to be all right, Evie.”

Her eyes were wide. “Do you think so?”

“I promise. I will do everything in my power to make you happy. I can make you happy. If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t be up here with you, saying these things I can’t seem to stop myself from saying.”

“I’m not worried about being happy,” she told him. “Because you’re talking nonsense and I know you are. None of this is real. I’m only worried about fairies.”

Her expression was so serious; he smothered the urge to laugh. “Fairies?”

“Not real fairies, of course. I mean, they might flit about in Peter Pan’s adventures, but I have grown up a little more than that,” she said, her voice ever so slightly indignant that he might think her a trifle young for her nineteen years. “Do you know what the word fey means?”

He shrugged. “It’s a Scots word, isn’t it? Something to do with fairies?”

“It means a sort of grand happiness, a joy so indescribable that it must be followed by a terrible calamity.”

He began to understand, and he enfolded her in his arms. “I see, pet. You’re worried it’s all too wonderful, is that it? That we should have found each other like this, on this night?”

She tipped back her head to look from his silvered face to the moon. “It’s like something in a romantic novel. There’s a war on and it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m wearing my first Worth gown in the moonlight. And there’s you. I shouldn’t tell you because it isn’t modest or proper, but I think you’re marvelous. You’re handsome and debonair and you’ve the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen on a man. Actually, you’ve the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen anywhere. And for you to...” she hesitated then plunged on, “for you to want me, too, it’s just too unbelievable. It’s all too perfect. You’re too perfect.”

Again he suppressed the urge to laugh. “My darling girl, I wouldn’t tread on your feelings for all the world, but someday, when we’re both more than forty, I’m going to remind you of this night when we found each other for the first time and you thought I must be perfect.”

“Aren’t you?” she demanded.

“Not a bit. In fact, I’ll tell you everything that’s wrong with me. To begin with, I’m poor. Not so you’d notice if you met me at my club, but as our acquaintance will be far more intimate, you will come to know precisely how badly fixed I am. I live by my wits. I can be lazy, and when I get stuck into a good book, I’ve been known to anger many a society hostess by crying off an engagement and ruining the numbers.”

“That’s hardly a character flaw,” Evie put in.

“It is when you’re a hostess with seven women and six men and I’ve just telephoned with the news that I simply cannot be bothered to put on trousers and come round for dinner.”

“What else?” Evie prodded.

“I gamble a little, I swear too much. I have occasionally known the company of light women.”

“You aren’t supposed to tell me that!” she protested. “A gentleman never speaks of such things.”

“Then I’m not a very good gentleman. Add that to the list of my sins,” he told her. “I do not like to talk first thing in the morning. I am too fond of a hot bath and not fond enough of my family. In fact, I loathe them.”

“If this weren’t a dream and you were serious about marrying me, would your family like me?”

“Absolutely not. Everything I do comes under criticism, and marrying you will only confirm to them that I am a feckless black sheep unworthy of the Starke name.”

“What if they refused to come to the wedding?” she asked in mock horror.

“We shouldn’t give them a chance to refuse. I would carry you off to be eloped with.”

“An elopement!” Her eyes shone in the moonlight. “How romantic.”

“And practical,” he added. “No awkward conversations with disapproving relations on your side who want to ask difficult questions about my means.”

“There would be no one to ask. All of the relations are gone except Aunt Dove, and she would be utterly thrilled. She’s always after me to do something interesting. I suppose eloping with you would fall neatly into that category.”

“Aunt Dove? I like her already.”

“Men always do,” Evie said darkly. She reached up to stroke his jaw. “Such a nice, firm jaw. I’m glad I dreamt this jaw. I could never love a man with a weak chin.”

“Well, then, lucky for me I had the good sense to be born with a strong one,” he told her. He bent his head and kissed her more, and after a long while, she shivered deliciously in his arms.

“That was…I’m sorry. I don’t have words for that. I ought to read poetry and find some.”

“I can give you poetry enough for both of us,” he murmured into her ear. “A little Donne, I think.” He matched his caresses to the words, licensing his hands to go a-roving, and Evie repaid him with little cries and a thoroughly uninhibited response. When he’d finished, she stared at him with glazed eyes, her lids heavy and her lips parted as she composed herself.

Gabriel himself was looking slightly dazed as he adjusted her stockings. He had been right to call her delectable. There wasn’t a square inch of her that wasn’t lovely and willing and utterly intoxicating.

“God, you smell intoxicating.”

“It’s jasmine,” she said dreamily.

“It reminds me of Damascus,” he told her, brushing the tip of his nose against her skin as he inhaled her. “Oh, I definitely think an elopement is in order,” he muttered. “The sooner I get you all to myself, the better.”

She gazed up at him adoringly. “If we eloped, would we be doing many more things like that?”

“Many, many more,” he promised, and she sighed in response.

He finished making her presentable and made a few adjustments to his own attire—Evie had managed to wrench his necktie free from its neat bow with surprising vigour—and took her by the hand.

“Come on, pet. It’s time we left.”

“Oh, no, wait!” she cried, pointing to the church clock tower. “It’s almost midnight. Let’s stay until then. I want to start 1915 with you. Then I can say I knew you last year.”

He smiled and noticed that the neighbours’ orchestra had struck up “Salut d’amour” again. He pulled her into another dance.

“I don’t even know your name,” he murmured into her hair.

“Evangeline. Evangeline Merryweather.”

“Evangeline Starke has a nicer ring to it, don’t you think?”

She laughed, but he pulled back and looked her squarely in the eye. “I’m dead serious, you know. I imagine I’ll make a rotten husband, but I know I’d be better with you than with anyone else.”

She laughed again. “How can you possibly know a thing like that?”

“Because I want to. Believe me, it’s a shock to me, as well. I’ve never considered being anyone’s husband before.”

She gave him a suspicious glance. “You haven’t had too much of Delilah’s punch have you? Rumour has it she has voodoo spells and love potions from New Orleans. I wouldn’t put it past her to have tipped something into the punch.”

“I took one sip and poured the rest into a plant. I’m sober as the pope. And I meant every word. I want to marry you.”

Evie didn’t answer directly. “You still haven’t told me your name. I heard Starke, but what else?”

“Gabriel. Gabriel Wilberforce Starke.”

“Now I know you come from a good family. No one but a gentleman’s parents would saddle him with a name like Wilberforce.”

“Could you marry a Wilberforce?”

She opened her mouth to laugh again, but something in his expression stopped her. She went very still in his arms.

“Oh, my heavens. You’re serious. This isn’t just some New Year’s fancy of yours, is it? You really want to marry me.”

She stopped dancing and they were simply standing, very close, wrapped in one another against the chill of the starry night.

“I am serious, Evie. Serious in a way I’ve never been in the whole of my life about anything.”

“How did you know to call me Evie? I never told you.”

“I’ve always known you. It just took me awhile to find you.”

She put her lips against his. She didn’t need to say the word yes. Yes was in every caress, every sigh, every whisper of her skin against his.

He began to move again, leading her into a dance until the clock began to strike.

“This is it,” she said, tightening her hold on him. Together they counted off the twelve chimes of the clock bell. Across the city, the bells began to ring out, one brilliant burst of joyful sound to herald in the new year. And on the rooftop, Gabriel Starke and Evangeline Merryweather danced on as the first snow of the year 1915 began to fall.

Chapter Five

Downstairs, Delilah handed a fresh glass of punch to Quentin Harkness.

“Don’t be too sad, dear boy. I can’t imagine where Evie has taken herself off to, but I know you’ll love her. She’s adorable! Very pretty, just like me, but much nicer. And she might seem like a sweet little homebody, but mark my words—she’s got a taste for adventure.”

Quentin sipped at his punch. “This is poisonous stuff, Delilah.”

She laughed merrily by way of reply and topped off his glass.

“How can you tell this Evie is adventuresome anyway?”

Delilah shrugged. “I can smell it on her. The same way I can smell it on you.”

Quentin’s handsome brows lifted in mock astonishment. “Whatever do you mean? I am a solicitor. I assure you, there’s no less adventuresome occupation on the planet.”

Delilah laughed again. “Protest all you want to, Quentin, but I know better. For those of us who dream about living large, it doesn’t matter what you do to us. You can stick us in dry little careers like law or business or make us wives and mothers, but we will always find each other. Like calls to like, my boy, no matter how much you try to fight it. There’s a rougarou in you.”

“What’s that when it’s at home?” he asked mildly. Talking to Delilah was always like trying to capture lightning in a bottle.

“A rougarou is a wolf-man. He’s the dark thing Louisiana parents terrify their children with to make them behave. He comes for all the bad little boys and girls and gobbles them up, but if you’re really bad,” she leant closer, pitching her voice low, “really, really bad, the rougarou turns you into one of his own.”

“And you think I’m bad? Really, Delilah, you are too much.” Quentin looked genuinely offended and Delilah laughed again, leaving one of her trademark crimson lipstick prints on his cheek.

“No, not really. But I do think you’re keeping secrets. You’re up to something, Quentin. I can smell it on you just like I can smell wildness on Evie Merryweather. That girl’s going to kick over the traces one of these days and do something so breathtakingly audacious it will be the making of her.”

“In that case, perhaps it’s best if we don’t meet,” Quentin put in smoothly. “In spite of your fancies, I promise you I am the very picture of staid respectability.”

“You keep saying it, doll. Maybe one of these days you’ll persuade yourself but you’ll never convince me.” She nodded towards the corner where Tarquin stood polishing his spectacles as he paged slowly through a book on fossils. “Although if you spend much more time with that fellow Tarquin, I might be forced to change my mind. I know he’s your friend, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a duller man in my life.”

“Oh, Tarquin’s all right,” Quentin protested.

“He’s a blancmange in human form,” she said waspishly. “Now, go entertain him before he brings down any of my guests. Give him some punch, for heaven’s sake, or introduce him to Jack,” she added with a nod towards a devastatingly handsome young man who was attempting to juggle fire in the sitting room. “Jack could have gotten Victoria herself to crack a smile.”

* * *

Quentin collected a fresh cup of punch and made his way to Tarquin.

“What did our delightful hostess want?” Tarquin asked softly.

“She wanted to know why you are such a miserable sort,” Quentin told him, his eyes dancing with amusement. “She called you a blancmange in human form.”

Tarquin didn’t smile, but there was an unmistakable air of satisfaction about him. “She’s no idea how hard it has been to cultivate dullness. My family are notorious for eccentricity. Pretending to care about fossils has nearly ossified my brain.”

Quentin passed over the punch cup. “She was hoping a bit of New Year’s cheer might brighten your mood. And she thinks you ought to make the acquaintance of young Jack over there,” he added with a significant flick of his eyes towards the fire juggler.

Tarquin rolled his eyes. “If she only knew. I spend half my time avoiding Jack.”

“How many times has he asked you for a job tonight?”

Tarquin sighed. “Three. He’s beginning to lose his touch. At Christmas it was seven. Of course that was a family house party and he rather had me cornered. I promised his mother I would do everything I could to put him off, but honestly, I don’t see how I can refuse him much longer. He’s got all we’ve been looking for.”

“Just like young Starke,” Quentin said.

“Precisely.”

The clock on the mantelpiece began to chime, and the party guests shrieked and toasted and kissed. Jack had just managed to set the sitting room curtains alight to raucous laughter.

Quentin raised his glass. “To 1915, old man. I hope to God we know what we’re doing.”

Tarquin watched Jack stamp out the flames and take a bow to the applause of his hostess and a toast from his host.

He raised his glass to Quentin’s and clinked it. “Quite right, dear boy. Quite right.”

* * *

As the clock struck a quarter past twelve, the party was in full swing again. The gramophone had been wound up and guests were drinking or kissing or attempting to dance to Delilah’s beloved jazz. Young Jack had finally been persuaded to extinguish his torches and was demonstrating sleight of hand to a glamourous young Amazon from Scandinavia with ice blue eyes and platinum blond hair.

“I am an artist’s model,” she told him. “I pose entirely nude.”

Jack grinned. “We should go someplace quiet where you can tell me all about it.”

He put an arm to her back, guiding her through the throng and out into the corridor.

“How do you like that?” Delilah asked Johnny, mildly put out. “I invited Simona to meet Gabriel Starke, and she goes off with Jack instead. And I haven’t seen Evie for the better part of two hours, and I so wanted her to meet Quentin.”

Johnny shrugged. “Perhaps you’re not as good a matchmaker as you are a hostess.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Perhaps not. But I still say they’d have made excellent matches. Evie needs someone rock solid to depend upon, a man with a sterling character who can appreciate her. And Gabriel needs someone alluring enough to distract him from mountains and mudhills or whatever it is he plays around with.”

“Well, if there’s anyone who knows about distraction,” Johnny murmured. He slipped an arm around her waist. “It’s about time to close up shop, don’t you think? Let’s send them all home while they’re still sober enough to remember where they live. Otherwise we’ll wake up with half of London nursing hangovers in our sitting room.”

She put a hand to his cheek. “Or, we could run away and leave them all.”

“Run away? What did you have in mind?”

“The best suite at the Savoy Hotel—already paid for with the last of grandfather’s allowance this quarter.”

“Delilah, that money is supposed to pay for your upkeep while I’m gone,” he protested.

She shrugged. “I’ll figure something out. I always do. In the meantime, we’re going to finish off this party in style, just you and me and a do-not-disturb sign. After all, we never got a proper honeymoon in a nice hotel. So let’s do it now.”

He grinned. “Fine. Abduct me. But how do we get out of here?”

“Easy,” she said. “Follow me.”

She had packed their overnight cases and stashed them in the boot of the Aston Martin. They had just opened the door, laughing wildly at the thought of leaving their own party when they heard the engine roar to life.

“What the—” Johnny broke off the sentence as he realised the Aston Martin was edging away.

“Come back here!” Johnny shouted.

Delilah started after it, her heel snagging in a grate. Johnny caught her before she fell and the two of them turned to see a pair of familiar faces smiling back at them over the boot of the Aston Martin as it headed down the street.

“Gabriel Starke! You’re stealing my car!” she shouted. Gabriel merely grinned and gunned the engine, and to Delilah’s astonishment, Evie Merryweather merely shrugged and sent her a wide smile as she snuggled against Gabriel’s side.

Against her will, Delilah started to grin.

“Shall we ring the police?” Johnny asked.

Delilah blinked. “Whyever would I? Because a friend borrowed my car?”

“You just accused him of stealing it in front of the entire neighbourhood,” Johnny pointed out. The neighbours and partygoers, hearing the commotion, had poured into the street and were hanging from windows.

Delilah shrugged. “That’s before I knew he was using it to abduct one of my friends.”

“All the more reason—”

Delilah put a finger to his lips. “You’re the last one who should interfere in another man’s elopement, Johnny. If I remember, you stole your brother’s car for our escape. Gabriel’s just paying us back in kind.”

“You really think they’re eloping?”

“Have you ever seen Gabriel Starke with a smile that big?”

Johnny shook his head. “Now that you mention it…well, our own quiet escape seems to have been scuppered. What now?”

She grinned. “We will go in and make scrambled eggs and toast and cocoa and tell everyone they can sleep over if they can find room.”

She took Johnny’s hand and they made their way back inside. On the steps, they passed Quentin and Tarquin, staring after the Aston Martin as it vanished around the corner.

“I thought you said he wouldn’t do anything stupid,” Quentin said acidly.

Tarquin’s eyes glittered coldly behind his spectacles. He turned, not entirely surprised to find Jack at his elbow. The boy’s black hair was rumpled and one long, shimmering blond hair trailed over his shoulder, but his expression was serious.

“Congratulations, Jack. We suddenly find ourselves with an opening. Report to my office on Monday.”

Jack smothered a grin and gave Tarquin a serious look. “Yes, Tarq—er, sir. I won’t let you down.”

“That’s the trouble, lad,” Tarquin said softly. “All of you do. Eventually.”

* * *

Nestled against Gabriel’s side, Evie felt the solid warmth of her soon-to-be husband and sighed.

“This is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever done, you know,” she told him.

“Me, too.”

She gaped at him. “How can you say that? You’ve climbed in the Himalayas.”

“Yes, but I’ve never stolen a car before.”

“Borrowed,” she corrected. “And if Delilah didn’t want it borrowed, she really ought to have kept it in a garage.”

Gabriel gave her an admiring look. “I’m beginning to think you might be something of a pirate. Perhaps you aren’t Wendy after all. Perhaps I’m marrying Captain Hook.”

She shrugged. “I can think of worse professions than piracy. I might make a rather good pirate. I’d like to see the world, sail the seven seas. I’ve always thought it the most romantic phrase in the world, haven’t you? The seven seas…”

“Hmm,” Gabriel said absently. He was listening, but not entirely. He had seen only too clearly the look of chilly disapproval on Tarquin’s face as he dashed away with his bride. And worse, he had seen the flicker of something absolutely gutting—Tarquin had not been surprised. He had expected Gabriel to muck it up, and he wondered just how badly things were going to be now that he had run away with Evie.

He looked down at the dark head resting on his shoulder and felt a surge of protectiveness. It didn’t matter, he told himself fiercely. Evie was the only thing that mattered now. He would keep her and he would find a way to make Tarquin happy, as well. He could have everything he wanted. Never mind that other men couldn’t seem to do it. He would make it happen by the sheer force of his own will. He had to. Now that he had found her, giving her up would be too much to ask of any man.

Chapter Six

Dear Aunt Dove,

I can’t thank you enough for your sweet note—you are such a dear! I was afraid the news of our elopement would come as a shock to you, but I ought to have known better. (Speaking of shocks, your remarks about the Danish ambassador were most unexpected. One always thinks of the French as being the most passionate of races, but I did initiate the experience you suggested and I can only say it is equally effective upon Englishmen. Gabriel was terribly appreciative and afterwards asked me to convey his kind regards to you. At least I think that’s what he said. He was very sleepy and couldn’t manage more than a mumble.) In any event, I ought to have known you would be delighted for us.

The wedding itself was quiet—as all elopements are—but utterly perfect. The weather in Scotland was cold and clear and the snow on the ground whitened everything like the most beautiful storybook imaginable. I bought a creamy white frock to match the snow, utterly impractical but it was so lovely and Gabriel insisted I have something new to wear. While I was busy kitting myself out for married life, he found a jeweller and handed over a slender little band he always wore with his signet ring. He had it engraved with a Latin phrase that translates to “Now and forever” and put it on my finger during the short ceremony, so I even have a proper wedding ring! There’s a photograph, as well, or there will be when it arrives in the post. There was a funny little tourist who happened to be snapping pictures when we came out into the street, and Gabriel paid him a tragic amount of money to take ours as he swooped me up into his arms. I was laughing, so I will no doubt have my mouth open and look something like a monkey, but I simply can’t help it—Gabriel makes me laugh more than anyone I’ve ever known. I suppose that’s why I love him. There’s just something magical about him that makes my whole life until now seem so very small, as if I’ve been waiting all along for this. I keep thinking of the scene in Peter Pan when the children take Peter’s hand and fly out the window, leaving for Neverland the first time. Until then they’ve only known the safety and security of the nursery, never dreaming of what wondrous things lie just out of reach. But as soon as he touches them, they can fly. It’s like that.

Of course, marriage, as I have already discovered is not all smooth sailing—or flying? The money Gabriel gave the tourist for the photograph was almost all of what he had on hand, so we’ve been putting up in the nastiest little lodgings on our way south. I never imagined there could be such foul hotels anywhere in England, but there are, and I am becoming quite the expert on them. Perhaps I should write a guide? Loathsome Lodgings? Or what about Horrible Hostelries? And there seems to be some trouble with Gabriel’s next expedition. He intended to return to China to attempt something in the Karakorams, but he’s had a wire from London that seems to have scuppered that. He burnt the wire as soon as it came, but he hurried off to send a flurry of replies, and I’m sure he will have it all sorted soon. There’s no one more determined than Gabriel when he puts his mind to something, and I know how desperately he wants this to work. He even dreams about it. He doesn’t snore, thank heaven, but he does occasionally talk in his sleep. He was muttering last night about China, so I know it weighs on his mind, but then he talked about wasps, too, so there’s no knowing what all is stewing in that brain of his! I simply cannot wait for you to meet him. He is too marvelous for words, darling—so much that sometimes I wonder if I’ve dreamt it all! Silly, I know. I’ve read too many fairy stories of the wee folk getting their revenge on humans who dare to be too happy. We’ll show them! I mean to go on being just as happy as we are now.

All my love,
Mrs. Gabriel Starke
(Evie)

P.S. I enclose the copy you sent of Practical Applications in Lovemaking for the Newly Married. It was a kind thought but not needed. At all.

P.P.S. I also enclose the green pendant you loaned me for the party. I fear the ribbon is a little the worse for wear, but the stone itself is perfectly fine. I scrubbed it with a toothbrush and the shine came up nicely.

* * *

Dear Marjorie (Margery?),

Enclosed please find the three shillings still owing from last week’s rent. I am married now and will not be returning to the flat. My Aunt Dove will be collecting my things, so please make certain my green jumper is amongst them.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Gabriel Starke
(Evangeline)

P.S. You snore.

Dear Delilah,

Sorry about the motor, but I’m sure you understand. You’ll be happy to know it is in perfect condition, just as I found it, although there was a bit of a misunderstanding with a sheep and I’m afraid the front grille is not entirely square anymore. Also, I never did manage to get the cover up, and the upholstery is a bit soggy from a downpour in the Lakes, but I’m sure it will dry out right as rain.

We should be back next week and Evie means to invite you to dine with us. I don’t know if she can cook, but she seems to think so. You might want to eat a little something before you come, just in case.

I happened to hear from a friend in the forces that Johnny arrived safely in France. He wasn’t allowed to tell me where, but I thought you’d like to know.

Warmest regards,
G.

P.S. Since you were responsible for matchmaking us, we’ve decided to name our first child Delilah. Shame if it’s a boy; he won’t much like that.

P.P.S. I can’t imagine it matters, but no, I didn’t drink any of your punch that night. I feel our friendship is stout enough to withstand the truth—your punch is poisonous stuff. Evie liked it well enough. She wants me to ask you for the recipe, but if you’re any friend of mine, you won’t give it to her.

* * *

Wretched Gabriel,

What do you mean the grille isn’t entirely square anymore? And precisely how soggy is my upholstery? Never mind. I’d rather not know. Just dry it off and send it back when you’re finished. Without the sheep!

All my love to you both (in spite of your misbehaving),
Delilah

P.S. Of course Evie can’t cook. Didn’t you ask her that before you married her?

P.P.S. The punch recipe is included.

Delilah nearly added another postscript—this one explaining that she had never made the match between them. She had intended Gabriel for her Nordic blonde friend who modelled nude and Evie had been intended for Quentin Harkness. But Quentin had gone off to drown his sorrows with that dull, grey fellow, Tarquin, and the statuesque Norse model had left on Jack’s arm—Granny Miette’s May Water had failed to work its magic this time. Evie and Gabriel had found each other entirely by chance. Some random alchemy had brought them together. A bit of fairy dust or enchanted moonlight had done the trick, and she couldn’t take credit for it. But Granny Miette had always warned her that magic could be funny like that. Sometimes the merest whisper on the wind was enough to change your fate, and sometimes the thing you wanted so badly your heart burnt cold was simply not to be.

She left the letter as it was and sealed it with a kiss for the newlyweds. She had another letter to write. She wrote every week to Johnny. She never asked him about where he was or what he did. Instead, she gave him London. She walked the streets he loved, gathering up the bits and pieces of his favourite city for him to assemble far away in the muddy fields of France. She wrote to him about fishmongers and cloistered abbeys and barristers with woolly wigs. She wrote about Buckingham Palace and glasses of stout and steak-and-kidney pies, all the things he missed so terribly she gave him in every letter. She walked the places he walked, and she used his words to describe them. Just that morning she had walked to Kensington Gardens and sat under the statue of Peter Pan. She had never seen it before, but like any London child, Johnny had awakened to magic when he had first seen the play, convinced Peter and the children were flying, convinced fairies were real and crocodiles could hold grudges. So she walked to the statue and held hands with the child he had once been. She sketched the little rabbit and a nanny with a pram who walked sedately down the path by the Serpentine. As she sat by the statue, she saw a tiny glimmer of green at the base—a bit of clover, pushing its way to the sun. It shouldn’t have been there, not in the cold and gloom of January. But there it was, green and bright and trying.

She plucked it and put it into her pocket. The news from France was not good. The newspapers were full of things she would not let herself read. But she had done some good, whether accidentally or not. She was responsible for Gabriel and Evie’s happiness, and that must count for something. She turned for home, for a warm cup of tea and hot buttered toast, and the hope that in the post a letter from Johnny would be waiting.

* * *

In his office in London, Tarquin March studied the wire in his hand. It was the fifth Gabriel had sent since his elopement, each more forceful than the last. He wasn’t going without a fight, and Tarquin respected that. Quentin had pushed for putting Gabriel out of things altogether. Insubordination must be punished, he’d insisted.

But Tarquin knew how useful initiative and instinct could be. He dropped the wire and picked up a photograph. It had been taken hastily, by one of his own fellows posing as a tourist. He had sent a copy to Gabriel, but the other had come directly to Tarquin, along with a few others—all of Gabriel and the girl. There was a file on her, as well, now. Evangeline Merryweather. A girl with scarcely any past, and perhaps not much of a future if she meant to spend it with Gabriel Starke. Tarquin studied the faces, feeling a thousand years old. His work had aged him, but he could not remember ever being quite that young. Or ever that happy. In the photograph Gabriel had scooped up his bride and she was laughing up into his face, her expression adoring. Gabriel was smiling down, but even in that moment, there was a new hardness to his jaw, a tension at the corner of his mouth that told Tarquin he was struggling with his decision.

Tarquin dropped the photograph. The file holding all of Gabriel’s information and his previous four wires was still sitting upon his desk. At his elbow sat two rubber stamps. Active and Inactive.

He took off his spectacles, polishing them thoughtfully, then pushed a button, ringing a bell outside his office. Within seconds, his secretary slipped in, as discreet and silent as a shadow.

“You rang?”

“How is Jack doing? Will he be suitable?”

The shadowy secretary shrugged. “Possibly. He’s undisciplined, of course. They all are. But they all have potential.”

Tarquin replaced his spectacles and considered the stack of files on his desk. Each was tabbed with a name, and he flicked through them, skimming swiftly. “Jack, Sebastian, Stephen,” he murmured. There were others, and he flicked through these, as well. Gabriel’s file landed on the top.

He looked up at his secretary. “Quentin thinks I should let him go over this elopement business.”

The secretary shrugged. “Quentin Harkness lacks imagination. Of course, in my experience, most men do.”

A small smile touched Tarquin’s lips. “Hence the charade that you’re merely my secretary.”

The secretary shrugged again. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, Tarquin. This office is an ivory tower. Whoever sits in that chair is removed from what really goes on in this place. If I am out there, amongst the typists and the delivery boys, I can keep my finger on the pulse of everything that happens.”

“I know. It’s just bloody awkward.”

“Not for me. The other secretaries think you’re simply too mean to employ a man and hired your sister to avoid spending a penny more than you had to on a secretary.”

Tarquin smiled, and anyone who knew him from the office would have been astonished at the change it made. Gone was the solemn grey bureaucrat and in his place was a serious man with handsome features and green eyes bright with mischief. It was a side to him no one saw anymore—save for his sister.

She crossed the room and put a hand to the file on the top of the stack. “We’re going to give him another chance, Tarq. It’s the right thing to do. He’s impetuous and rash, just like Jack, but we’ve got some good steady souls in there to help them along. They’ll find their way.”

He reached out his hand for the file and gave it to her. She rolled the rubber stamp onto a pad of red ink and pressed it to the file. Active.

“This one’s on you if it goes wrong,” he warned her.

She smiled the cool, confident smile of a woman entirely in control. “The Vespiary is my responsibility now. I know what I’m doing, Tarquin.”

“I certainly hope so, Perdita.”

She handed back the file with a steady hand, determined not to show Tarquin her doubts. Everything he said was true. Gabriel was rash and impetuous, and marrying in haste only demonstrated that he still had much to learn. But the Vespiary was the best place for him to learn. And time would be the best teacher of all.

She gave her brother a small smile. “Don’t fret, Tarq. I won’t let him back in without paying a price for this. He’s broken the rules and he must do penance for it. He’ll have to earn his way back, and he will start at the bottom.”

Tarquin nodded slowly. “Yes. It wouldn’t be good for his character if we just let him walk through the door. What did you have in mind?”

Perdita cocked her head, thinking. She went to the map pinned to the wall, tracing a thoughtful finger across the sea until she came to China. She took up a pin and thrust it directly into the heart of Shanghai.

“I know exactly where to send him. And once he’s there, he’ll have to make a choice. It’s us or her.”

Tarquin picked up the photograph again and shook his head. “Shame, really. Looks as if they really believed in happily ever after.”

Perdita’s eyes were pitying. “There’s a war on, Tarquin. There’s no such thing as happily ever after.” She smoothed her skirts. “I’ll type up the orders, shall I?”

Tarquin nodded. “I’ll sign them when you’ve finished.”

Perdita left as silently as she had come, and Tarquin slipped the photograph into Gabriel’s file.

“The choice is yours now, Starke,” he murmured. “I hope to God you make the right one.”

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Deanna Raybourn graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a double major in English and history and an emphasis on Shakespearean studies. She taught high school English for three years in San Antonio before leaving education to pursue a career as a novelist. Deanna makes her home in Virginia, where she lives with her husband and daughter and is hard at work on her next novel.

ISBN-13: 9781460329764

WHISPER OF JASMINE

Copyright © 2014 by Deanna Raybourn

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