If I Had You (13 page)

“Let's not talk about anything unhappy,” Alecia urged. “We're just getting to know each other.”

“He cannot be such a recent acquaintance if you are introducing us,” her grandfather said. “I thought I'd be meeting your employers.”

A
lecia was caught off guard by her grandfather's intent to meet her employers. In her mind, actors and vicars did not inhabit the same space. “They are in meetings, sir. Mr. Marvin is blocking scenes for the play he is doing here, and Mrs. Marvin is meeting with the wardrobe mistress for a new play she's been cast in.”

“So they are both working? I am happy to hear that. I was concerned they might not have the money to pay you.” Her grandfather angled the menu away from him so he could read it.

Alecia went stiff at the mention of money. She didn't want to tithe her wages to her grandfather's church. Her wardrobe was a disgrace and she had no savings since she had used her first week's pay for Christmas gifts. Her second week's pay had gone to replenishing toiletries and other small necessary items. She should receive last week's wage sometime today.

“I think the Marvins are secure for now,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “They always had the command performance, and now Mrs. Marvin has a solid new part and Mr. Marvin has opportunities as well.”

“I didn't quite understand what you were saying with all the theater jargon, but have they decided where to hold the command performance?” Ivan asked.

“Yes, on the first floor. Some of the conference rooms can be opened into one larger room, I understand. They don't need anything as large as the ballroom since it is a dignitaries-only audience.”

“Are they going to build a stage?”

“One of the conference rooms has a higher floor than the other for exactly this reason.”

Ivan nodded as their waiter appeared, to take their order. “I didn't know that. Fascinating how they plan these things.”

“I remember when this hotel was first opened,” her grandfather said. “Under the old name, of course, before the scandals. I was quite young then.”

“The nineties, wasn't it?” Alecia asked.

“Yes. A rather famous family was involved. Aristocrats and wealthy merchants.”

“I have wondered who Peter Eyre is, Grandfather,” Alecia said. “He's the hotel manager and much too young for the job, plus he has such an air of mystery. Just the sort of person you'd twig for a secret earl or millionaire.”

“And here he is,” Ivan said with a faint air of distaste.

For the first time in her life, Alecia had that thrilling feeling of being caught between two suitors, as Mr. Eyre approached the table. It was hard not to contrast the two men. Ivan with his bold, foreign, dark good looks and shabby clothes; Eyre, the consummate Englishman with the fashionable clothes, golden hair, and narrow face that sounded the bell “aristocrat” to her.

Even their sexual styles were different. Eyre had a mistress but seemed to always have an eye on the next conquest. Ivan boldly propositioned a mere secretary but, for now, left the game in her hands.

“You look very cozy today, Miss Loudon,” Eyre said, smiling genially at her.

“This is my grandfather,” she said. “And you know Mr. Salter, of course.”

“Mister Dean,” Eyre said, taking her grandfather's hand.

Alecia, startled by the fact that Mr. Eyre knew how to address her grandfather properly, exchanged a glance with Ivan. How did Mr. Eyre know her grandfather was the most senior priest in his diocese?

The hotel manager exchanged a few inconsequential remarks with her grandfather and winked at Ivan before drifting to another table. She hadn't realized he policed the Coffee Room even in the daytime. He was like a ghost attached to one part of the hotel.

“You must know all the stories about this hotel, Grandfather, since you remember it from when it opened. I haven't had time to look into it much.”

“I wish there was a scrapbook,” Ivan said. “A history of the hotel? But if there is, it's not available to the employees. People ask me questions I don't know how to answer.”

“That may be for the best, young man,” her grandfather said. “This hotel gave Sodom and Gomorrah a run for its money just after the war. They say when you stayed here, you didn't even need to go to the Chinese for drugs. They'd be delivered right to your door.”

Two waiters arrived, one with a tray of teapots, and the other with tiered silver trays holding finger sandwiches, scones, lemon tarts, and some kind of chocolate treat. Alecia was glad she'd skipped luncheon.

“And those famous murders?” Ivan asked.

“Theatrical people,” her grandfather said. “When do they ever come to a good end?”

“I wonder that you allowed Miss Loudon to take this position with the Marvins, especially here at the hotel.”

“You misunderstand, young man. She didn't ask my permission. That's the sort of modern girl she is. She and her sister both. They don't listen to their elders.”

Her grandfather said this in a measured tone, but she saw a twinkle in his eye. Somewhere, beneath the starch, he enjoyed his granddaughters' independent ways. To a degree, at any rate.

The conversation moved on to Russian politics and a discussion of a British-Russian trade conference in London in the spring, which Ivan didn't know much about. Alecia wasn't sure politics were better than talking about the war, but she couldn't expect her grandfather to engage in a conversation about dancing or dresses. Ivan spoke lyrically about his childhood though, extolling the virtues of Russia's natural beauty. How he'd ended up in a large city she'd never know. He made himself sound like a country boy. Maybe it was his somewhat mysterious sister who insisted on city life.

Finally, both her grandfather and Ivan revealed they had dinner arrangements, and she realized this was Ivan's day off, and once again, she'd made him spend part of it at his workplace.

“Thank you both so much for coming. Will I see you tomorrow?” she asked, as they left the Coffee Room.

“I'll see you during my rounds,” Ivan said.

“I will call for you at midday and take you for luncheon, if that is acceptable to your employers,” her grandfather said.

“I'll meet you in the Grand Hall tomorrow. I will telephone your hotel if I learn otherwise,” she promised.

When she went upstairs, she didn't go straight to her room. The early evening was peaceful and the suite's parlor had much better furnishings than her small room. She found a copy of the O'Neill play Sybil had been cast in and began to read.

Richard came in at eight, when she was just finishing reading it. He noticed and came over to her. “Not your sort of life, eh?”

“I wanted to understand the part in case Sybil needs any assistance,” Alecia told him, closing the script. “Did the blocking go well?”

“I should have had you there to make notes. We'll forget half of it.”

“I'll retrieve my notepad now and you can tell me everything you remember so it won't be forgotten.” She stood up, discovering too late that this made her bump up against him. He'd been standing over her and she hadn't realized how close his feet were to hers.

The next thing she knew, he had his arm around her and they were back on the sofa. She stared up at The Chinese on the wall, stunned. Scooting to the edge of the sofa, she said, “How clumsy of me. I'll just gather my things.”

He slid his arm around her more, trapping her. “Where is my wife?”

“At her meeting still, I suppose. No one has delivered a message from her.”

“I wonder if she'll come back tonight. Slipping through the net, she is.”

“I imagine it is a great deal of work, starring in a play,” she ventured, trying to separate herself, inch by inch.

“You have no idea. A great deal of responsibility. And here you are, to make our lives easier.”

“Yes, and I want to do that by helping you to remember your blocking. Next time I'll know to come with you.”

“Do you know, that's quite a naughty thing you said.” He nuzzled her hair.

She could smell lemon and alcohol on his breath. He'd stopped his blocking for cocktails at some point, and would have been drinking without eating much, either, since he was reducing as well. She knew dieting and drinking together meant he was likely to behave irrationally. “I do not know what you mean by that remark, sir, but I think you should go to your bed.”

“Why don't you come with me? I could show you a few things.”

“Nothing I'd like to know, with all due respect.”

He tilted his head back. “Why, a kitten with claws.”

“I think you are not at your best, Mr. Marvin, and may regret this in the morning, so I will go to my room.” She debated the wisdom of passing through his room to get to hers, or going out into the hallway. That seemed the wiser course.

“When did I stop being Richard?” he asked, his tone going soft.

“When it became unacceptably intimate to call you that,” she snapped.

“Come now, I was just having a little fun. Order me a steak and chips and we'll get to work.”

She contemplated him. Were the cocktails wearing off? “I think your wife would say we were done for the evening. Good night.” She left the suite, remembering just in time to reach for her keys, and ran for her room, wanting to make sure she was inside and the connecting door was locked before his alcohol-slowed impulses allowed him to attempt to reach her bedroom.

* * *

In the back room of Boris's pawnshop, Ivan leaned over his plate of sausages and sauerkraut to reach the bowl of lentils in a sour cream dill sauce. “I do love coming here to eat. You're a better cook than Vera.”

“What does your sister do all day?” Boris asked, cutting a piece of dark rye bread from the loaf on the table.

Ivan wondered if his friend had made the bread too. He could have been a professional cook, but instead, food had become his passion while he traded in used goods. “She intrigues, I suppose.”

“I don't think catering should be her profession if I am a better cook,” Boris said.

“You are the best cook. There is no comparison,” Ivan said with a smile. “She does well enough, and cooking for parties is less sophisticated than cooking for friends.”

Boris's chest puffed. “Is there enough work for her around here?”

“No, and that's why we purchased the gramophone, so she'd have something else to offer. Even people without a lot of money are going to want to dance after dinner. For a few shillings she can rent out our gramophone and seventy-eights.”

“Not a bad plan.” Boris forked up an overlarge piece of sausage and chewed reflectively for a moment. “Is that Sergei ever going to marry her?”

Ivan wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin, then dug in again. “How could they afford to live? I'm not going to share a one-bedroom flat with a married couple, and pay the majority of the bills besides. As it is, I feel like I'm feeding half of the Whites in London.”

Boris winced theatrically. “Surely not half. You don't have the dispossessed aristos at your table.”

“No, only the people who have nothing to gain under any regime,” Ivan said, picking up his wineglass and draining it.

Boris smiled. “You'll never be one of them, my boy.”

Ivan tipped the wine bottle over his glass. “I never wanted to be. I won't be involved in this bomb mess.”

“Bomb?” Boris's shadowed eyes opened in alarm. He set his fork down and repeated the word. “Bomb?”

Ivan nodded. “They had an idiotic notion that I would be willing to carry a bomb into the Grand Russe and plant it for them, in the room where
Macbeth
is to be performed for Ovolensky.”

Boris ground his teeth and swore in Hebrew. “So you were to die for a cause you don't believe in, while they huddle next to their samovar miles away?”

That image reflected exactly what Ivan believed, for some of them at least, and they would feel no shame in not carrying out their bombing themselves. “It's not a cause for Vera, it's revenge for our parents' deaths. Which I don't mind. Making Ovolensky pay, somehow. However, I am not going to ruin the hotel that puts bread on our table, and I would never risk Miss Loudon's life.”

Boris's eyes took on a speculative gleam. “So you'll allow your sister to risk her life, but not Miss Loudon's?”

Ivan made a flicking gesture with one hand. “My sister is a fool. I can't even tie her to a chair until she sees reason, because I am not home enough hours. She has all these fellow fools who could rescue her. But Miss Loudon is completely innocent. She took a position with those actors so she could come to London. A vicar's granddaughter, and the old gent is very nice.”

Boris took up his fork again and expelled a long sigh. “You might want to spend more time thinking about how to protect your sister from her so-called friends, and less about how to protect Miss Loudon.” Boris paused. “Unless, of course, you are in love with her.”

“Love?” Ivan said it again, softly, under his breath. “Love. What do I know about that?”

“You may be in the uncomfortable process of discovering exactly what you know,” Boris observed.

Ivan considered that, then shied back into practical matters. “I know I can't have any part in the attempt on Georgy's life, not if it risks Miss Loudon or any other innocent party. I don't want to help this plot along at all.”

Boris swirled sour cream through his lentils. “I think it is time for a man-to-man talk with Sergei. Insist they marry and pay for their own bread. You can stay with me while it all shakes out. I imagine you'll let your sister keep your furnishings.”

Ivan pounded his chest where it felt like an entire sausage link had lodged. “They are too busy trying to kill Georgy to marry.”