Downtime (19 page)

“My dear sir, you will try the braised beef, yes? A man cannot make a meal of chicken alone, I think. Not such a man as you.” She punctuated the comment with a motherly pat of my shoulder. “My Vladimir, he watched over the mills from sunrise to sunset, God keep him. Nothing but mutton and potatoes for him.”

Mrs. Petrova couldn’t have been more than about fifty and I’d have bet poor old Vlad wasn’t much older when he keeled over. I couldn’t think of a better reason to pass on the braised beef. “Thanks, I had a late lunch.”

She wagged a jeweled finger at me. “Progress is not made on an empty stomach, my dear Mr. Nash.” She dumped a generous portion from her own plate to mine—a serious breach of etiquette judging by the raised eyebrows of the woman seated across from her.

Jem sent me a deeply amused look from the other side of the table. “If progress is that dependent on fine dining, Mrs. Petrova, Paris should be the most modern city in the world.”

“Merci,” put in Mr. Leveaux, from somewhere on the other side of Charlotte. I couldn’t see him, as he was hardly any bigger than she was. Mrs. Leveaux, across the table, looked less pleased.

“Our inventiveness is not limited to cuisine, Monsieur Montague. You may thank Monsieur Michaux for the velocipedes you see everywhere in the streets.”

“Yes, one can hardly go for a walk without being run down by them,” George Blanchard retorted with a roll of his eyes.

“I quite prefer them to the train,” Charlotte piped up. “So smoky and noisy. More dreadful by the day.”

“I’m sure someday you’ll be able to fly wherever in the world you want to go in a matter of hours. Maybe even to the moon,” I suggested, giving her a wink that earned me George’s sharp attention. Everyone chuckled at the comment except Ezra. He stared at me in wary fascination, but it was too late to take back my remark. George pounced on it with an eager viciousness.

“I suppose you think you Americans will invent a whole new world, courtesy of your Mr. Edison. Just remember, if you please, that you owe a great deal to us.”

I couldn’t hold back a grin. “We’re allies, George. Let’s keep it that way, okay?”

“Allies,” Mr. Leveaux murmured. “You speak as though we’re going to war.”

I caught Ezra’s alarmed glance and hesitated. Rescue came from an unexpected source. “Ezra, your Mr. Nash must be a writer. He has the most vivid imagination.” Jem Sr. leaned back in his chair as a servant poured more wine. “Tell us, sir. Do you write novels, by any chance?”

While I tried to think of a good lie, Jem took it upon himself to tell the God’s honest truth. “Mr. Nash is employed by his government.” His smile seemed to say he understood that he should not be more specific. But he’d already said too much. The comment garnered the attention of everyone at the table.

“Oh, how splendid,” Charlotte said, lighting up with new excitement. “Did you attend the wedding? Was it simply sumptuous with flowers? Is it true the guests were given satin-covered cake boxes?” She looked over at Mrs. Leveaux, who was equally aglow. “You know, Mrs. Cleveland was just twenty-one. My age.”

“Will you have satin cake boxes? Such extravagance,” Mrs. Leveaux said without a hint of reproach.

“And what, sir, do you think of your man’s chances of returning to the position?” Jem Sr. inquired of me from the head of the table.

The last thing I wanted to do was entangle myself in a political discussion. These guys had to be more up on the facts than I was. I did have a vague memory of Cleveland losing, only to come back four years later and win. I just didn’t know if that was now—or four years from now. “I think his shot is not as good as one might hope.”

“Indeed. Would you say this tariff issue will do him in?”

Ah, damn. My high school history teacher would have laughed till she cried if she could have known how those facts I never bothered to memorize had come back to haunt me. “Tariff issue,” I repeated thoughtfully, digging like hell through mental file drawers in total disarray. “Well….” My glance connected desperately with Ezra’s and he knew. I don’t know how he knew but he did.

“I think Morgan does not care to let it be known that he agrees with his employer,” he said with an impish smile at me. “His father farmed, as did his grandfather. He no doubt finds that money is rather more useful in one’s pocket than locked away in a government vault.”

George managed to twist his mouth into an even more disdainful sneer. “Well-spoken by one who has learned from experience.”

Apparently everyone knew the story of Ezra’s return to the fold, as an uncomfortable silence descended over the table, a silence the hostess did not allow to linger. She stood and everyone else followed suit; but as she left the dining room, only the women joined her, the men returning to their seats. As plates were cleared away, I looked across at Ezra, who was staring into a glass of wine, his thoughts a million miles distant. I eased an orange loose from the fruit tower, out of Ezra’s line of sight. “Psst.”

He looked up and I tossed the orange to him. Startled, he managed to catch it one-handed and hastily hid it in his lap. He tried to glare at me, but his eyes were too bright with humor for it to have any impact.

“Looks like we scared off the girls,” I said.

“They like to retire to the drawing room for tea. But I think we may have set them to it a bit quicker tonight.”

The servant reappeared at my elbow, offering port and cigars, and I declined both. Talk turned to other things and I behaved myself the rest of the evening, even after we’d joined the ladies in the drawing room, and Charlotte cornered me for the express purpose of prying out more details on my background and, I suspected, any contact I might have made with the rich and famous. It was nearly eleven by the time Ezra snagged me for a farewell to our host and then out into the wet, chilly night to find a cab. As we left, Jem came outside and shook our hands.

“You do know how to liven up a dinner, Mr. Nash. Ezra, you must talk him into staying in London. I know I would like to see him again.”

The curve of his lips told me just how he’d like to see me. Jem obviously had no qualms about playing the field, even in front of other potential lovers. What had passed between us was not lost on Ezra. He bid Jem a quiet good night and left me to follow when I was ready. Not one to burn bridges, at least not until I was more than halfway across, I flashed Jem my usual noncommittal grin and told him I was sure we’d run into each other again. I didn’t have any particular desire to pursue him. I was feeling a stronger pull in another direction, one that would come with a few more complications than a one- or two-nighter with Jem Montague.

Still, I couldn’t deny the pull as I climbed into the cab and dropped onto the seat beside Ezra. He stayed quiet as we headed down the dark street, and I wondered if Jem’s flirting had pissed him off.

“Not exactly fitting in, am I?”

“Not at all,” he said absently.

“Is that a ‘no, you’re not fitting in’ or a ‘no, not at all, you’re fitting in fine’?”

The question was just irritating enough to stir him out of his thoughts. “Morgan?”

“Yeah?”

“What you told us during dinner, about flying. Was it true?”

So that’s where his mind was. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“The war too?”

Damn. “The war too.”

A spasm of pain crossed his face. “England and America….”

“On the same side. The winning one.” I put my hand over his and squeezed. I could feel the relief going through him at those words. The hand under mine was warm; I realized I’d forgotten to put my gloves back on and, in his distraction, so had he. My fingers moved all on their own, gliding my thumb along his wrist and under his hand to explore an even warmer palm. He sat very still and I knew the contact was doing to him the same thing it was doing to me. I could hear him, breath soft with awe at the discovery that anything in this world could feel so good.

We already sat shoulder to shoulder and it would have been easy to lean in and prove to us both that a kiss could feel even better. I was a natural-born pouncer, and God knew I’d pounced with even less attraction going than this. But this was a different world, and even though I was usually more interested in playing by my own rules, the respect I had for his made me pull back and give him enough space to figure out what he wanted.

“Still planning to get married?” I asked, keeping it light.

He let out an unsteady breath. “It will be formally announced Friday night, at the ball Mr. Blanchard is holding for us.”

“That must be what Charlotte invited me to.”

“Of course she did.” Ezra slumped back in resignation. Hefting the orange in one hand, he eyed it ruefully. “Do you think they shall reinstitute burning at the stake just for me?”

“They strung up witches once in a while, didn’t they?”

“You do know how to cheer a fellow.”

“I’d give you one of my cyanide capsules, but I left them in my other coat. Look, don’t worry. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” Maybe there was one other thing he needed to know. “Just in case you’ve been wondering, I’m not going to rat you out to Charlotte. Your secret’s safe, at least in my hands. I’m not even going to remind you that what you’re doing to her, you shouldn’t.”

“The thought crossed my mind that you could tell her, but I never believed you would. My concern is that
you
will be found out, you know. You were hardly being what I would call careful, at dinner.”

“No one thought I was foretelling the future. It was a joke to them.”

“It isn’t a joke for us. I’m responsible for your presence here. How am I to explain you and evade the likelihood of both of us being packed off to Northampton?”

“Northampton?”

“St. Andrews. An asylum.”

Now
that
history I remembered—the stories of what asylums were like. Not very different from the prisons, as I recalled. And judging from Ezra’s terse reply, the history books were right. “I’m sorry about this evening.” I laid a hand on his sleeve this time. “Being here feels more like a waking nightmare than reality to me. I’m not going to get us in trouble, all right?”

He put his hand over mine, a gesture with nothing more behind it than gratitude. “I think we will be safe if you keep to general topics of conversation and refrain from throwing fruit.”

“That was a good catch, by the way.” I grinned. “And thanks for rescuing me in there. I guess I’m not as up on history as I ought to be.”

“The wedding, yes. Hardly ancient history for us, remember. Talk of it went on for ages. President Cleveland and—I believe her name is Frances. Not necessarily details I would have remembered, myself, if they had occurred a hundred years ago.”

I suspected he was just trying to make me feel better. “I do remember Baby Ruth.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Their daughter. Had a candy bar named after her.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You remember that and you don’t recall the tariff issue?”