The Dickens with Love (6 page)
exhausting evening, I’d had too much to drink, and had been attacked by wild beasts…
I was vaguely aware that Sedgwick was muttering as he fussed with the bedclothes. I wished he’d
knock it off and go to sleep. I’d be out of his hair the minute the sun came up.
The duvet slid out from under me and I was tumbled with considerate efficiency between the sheets.
A long, lithe body landed next to me. I opened bleary eyes as a friendly hand shoved a pillow beneath my head. The covers floated down over us, warm and downy soft.
“Pleasant dreams,” Sedgwick whispered and gave my forehead a peppermint-scented kiss.
30
Chapter Five
I dreamed that an ocelot was chewing on a first edition of
A Christmas Carol
. When I tried to snatch the book away, it sank its fangs into my hand.
Head throbbing, I opened my eyes to watery green daylight. I was in a hotel room. A very
comfortable hotel room that smelled of orange furniture polish and sex. The fluffy duvet and long draperies were in matching old-fashioned pink and gray cabbage rose print. Rain trickled down the windowpanes of a pair of French doors and sent sperm-shaped shadows twitching and jerking across the sage green walls.
My head hurt. That was because I’d had too much to drink. My hand hurt. That was because a strange
man was lying on it.
I wriggled my hand out from under my naked companion and studied him. Sedgwick Crisparkle
looked less angelic and more rakishly debauched that morning. He had quite a heavy beard and the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a guy. He did not snore, but he made a gentle puffing sound. He looked deeply asleep and unreasonably content.
I flexed my fingers a couple of times, then sat up carefully, wincing, and looked around for my
clothes. They were on the floor near the door where I’d apparently dropped them. I inched over, trying not to wake my host, and got slowly, cautiously out of bed.
I had to stop halfway to the door to give my spinning head a rest. How the hell much had I had to
drink the night before? Not that much really, but I hadn’t eaten. Those shooting stars, or whatever they were called, packed an unexpected wallop. I tried to make out the numbers on my watch. They seemed very tiny. I peered harder.
Six thirty. Plenty of time. I didn’t need to be at work until four. I could go home, sleep more, shower, and…call Mr. S.
“Not feeling well?”
I jumped, whimpered and clutched my head. “Must you shout?”
“Sorry.” Part of what he said was lost in a gigantic yawn. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
I heard the rustle of bedclothes being thrown back and the pad of bare feet on carpet. The drapes were jerked shut and the room returned to a soothing darkness. I heard him pad past me on his way back to bed, so when a warm hand was laid on my naked shoulder I did another of those starts and yelps.
“You have a very nervous disposition,” Sedgwick said disapprovingly. “You ought to consider
supplementing your diet with bee pollen.”
Josh Lanyon
I gazed up at him, opened my mouth. Closed it. Closed my eyes. Why not? I was clearly still
dreaming.
Bee pollen
?
“I think you should come back to bed.” I opened my eyes at that particular note in his voice.
Sedgwick was smiling a funny sort of shy half-smile. “I think you’d feel much better in bed.”
He put his arm around me and I permitted myself to be led back to bed.
When I woke the next time the sun was shining and a busboy was carefully lowering a large tray with
covered dishes to the table in front of the fireplace.
“Lovely,” Sedgwick was saying as he signed the busboy’s chit.
I raised my head, peering owlishly over the edge of the duvet, and the busboy grinned at me before
taking his bill book and departing.
When the door had safely closed, I climbed out of bed, pulled on my jeans—to Sedgwick’s evident
disappointment—and investigated the breakfast tray. A white teapot, two gold-rimmed china cups, a jar of honey, a small basket of muffins and nut breads, a bowl of fresh berries. One plate offered eggs Benedict with shaved honey ham and what appeared to be an herbed Hollandaise sauce. Another plate had thick
round Belgian waffles, richly, sweetly scented of vanilla, cinnamon and topped with whipped cream, fresh strawberries and pecans.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” Sedgwick said at whatever he read in my expression. “We can share
or I can order you something completely different.” He was wearing the kind of gorgeous silk dressing gown people only wear in old movies and the horn-rimmed glasses, but even behind those severe glasses
his face looked much younger and softer that morning.
I dropped down on the fat comfortable chair cattycorner to the table. “No. This is…amazing. Any of
this is fine.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a breakfast like this.
He looked smug. “We’ll split everything down the middle.”
“We will if we eat all this.”
He laughed. “I admit I don’t usually eat like this, although I do like my breakfasts. I’m on holiday,
though, so…when in Rome.”
“I’m very glad you’re not in Rome this morning.” I heard myself say that and cringed. Talk about
sappy. I added quickly, “I’d be eating a bowl of Cheerios right now.”
“I’m glad I’m not in Rome too.” He smiled right into my eyes.
After that I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I devoted myself to eating that fantastic breakfast.
As vocal as Sedgwick had been in bed, he was not terribly chatty over breakfast. It seemed to be a
replete and satisfied silence, though. He appeared content, and each time our eyes met, he offered that disarming smile.
32
The Dickens with Love
In fact, it felt so natural and comfortable between us, I was encouraged to ask, “Will you let me have another look at
The Christmas Cake
?”
Sedgwick’s gaze dropped to the egg-topped muffin he was neatly cutting through. “No.”
“
No
?” I felt bewildered, not least by the brusqueness of this. “Why?”
He sighed. “After last night I’d hoped you’d let this go.”
What the hell did last night have to do with it? “I was hired to appraise the book. I’m being paid to do that. If I ‘let this go’ I also have to let go of that commission. Which I need.”
He said quietly, “James, I think we’re both realists.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“If you don’t stop now, you’re liable to spoil this, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. Spoil this? How is asking to see the book spoiling anything?” And now I was
starting to get annoyed.
Behind the severe glasses, Sedgwick raised his green-gold eyes, gave me a long, direct stare.
“I don’t know what that look is supposed to mean.”
“It means we’re having a very nice time together. Let’s not ruin it by bringing up…unpleasant
memories.”
It took me a beat or two to work out what he was referring to. The rush of anger and hurt left me
feeling winded. Lack of oxygen made my voice come out flat and compressed. “I thought you didn’t
believe the rumors about me.”
He said with all the dispassionate exactitude one could ask of a science teacher, “What I said was, no one accused you of being directly involved in murder or forgery. That is
all
I said.”
I’m sure my disbelief showed on my face. Hopefully nothing else showed. The laugh that escaped me
took us both by surprise. “You’re right. My mistake.”
I got up, my knee knocking the edge of my plate and tipping it over. The waffle landed in a sticky
plop face down on the plush carpet. I didn’t give a fuck about that. I didn’t give a fuck about anything at that point. It was all very clear, diamond-edged and razor-bright. He didn’t trust me. He thought I had possibly been involved in murder and forgery, but he liked having sex with me—or possibly with anyone
and I happened to be willing—and he didn’t want me to spoil that by bringing up something as awkward as business.
Sedgwick rose too. “James.”
I ignored him, finding my shirt and buttoning it up quickly. I got one of the buttonholes misaligned, so it hung crookedly—appropriately, it seemed—but I didn’t care. Was not going to stay in that room one
instant longer than I had to.
“James—?”
I was hunting with fierce attention for my other shoe. I found it under his side of the bed.
33
Josh Lanyon
“Apparently I’ve offended you. I…didn’t intend to.”
Now that was almost funny. I slipped the shoe on. I was missing my socks, but that really seemed a
small price to pay for getting out of there without committing murder for real.
“I’m not sure what I—oft times I put things more bluntly than I intend,” Sedgwick was saying. He
sounded a fraction impatient. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
I found my jacket and headed for the door. He was right behind me.
“James, I really don’t
see
—” He put a hand on my shoulder, and I spun around and shoved him back.
The arm of the sofa caught him behind his thighs, and he half fell back over it, glasses crooked, blinking up in astonishment at me.
I said, “Enjoy the rest of your stay in L.A., arsehole.”
I managed not to slam the door on my way out.
~ * ~
I ran into Darcy on the way up to my apartment. She was dragging—literally dragging—plastic bags
of groceries up the stairs. She’d already lost a can of condensed milk and a packet of lime Jell-O on the lower steps. The frozen turkey was perched precariously about midway up the staircase. I picked it up, tucked it under my arm, adding to my collection, and overtook Darcy near the top level.
The amount of groceries, clearly destined for Christmas day, made me feel queasy. Why did she have
to go to so much trouble? Why did she have to make such a big deal of it? Why had I ever agreed to spend the day with her? The last thing I wanted to do was have to try to pretend holiday civility for hours on end.
She greeted me, flushed and panting. “They’re saying we may have snow for Christmas!”
“They’re lying. As usual.”
“James.” She sounded as wounded as though I had control of the weather and was deliberately
withholding snowfall.
I got control. “Snow in Los Angeles? Come on, Dar. Besides, the sun is shining.” Way too brightly.
“It might,” she said stubbornly. “It could be a freak storm.”
“Well, that would be right for L.A.” While she fished for her keys, I deposited the bags and turkey
outside her door and moved on to my own.
I let myself in to my dark apartment, closed the blinds tight so it would be even darker, and pulled
down the wall bed. I stripped off my clothes and threw myself on the cool, rumpled sheets.
Sedgwick Crisparkle could go fuck himself.
Granted, he shouldn’t have any trouble finding help with that, given his single-mindedness.
I lay there brooding, and eventually my mind wandered back to the Christmas book. What was the
connection with Miss Anjaley Coutts, though? Why was that name familiar to me?
34
The Dickens with Love
Suddenly restless, I rose and went over to the bookshelves. My books were about all I’d managed to
salvage from the financial ruins of my previous life. Corey and I had lived well and inevitably a percentage of that living had been on extended credit. It hadn’t been a problem because I earned good money, but
finding myself abruptly unemployed—and homeless—had wreaked financial havoc. They say the average
American family is four paychecks from the street. In my case it was four credit card cash advances. I’d paid the cards off—including the horrific interest—but I was literally living paycheck to paycheck.
Needless to say I earned a lot less these days.
But I still had my books. Most of them. So far.
I stroked the green cloth cover of Chesterton’s
Charles Dickens
, opened the book, flipping through.
It was as I scanned a section on Dickens’ involvement with Urania Cottage, a home for fallen women,
that I remembered. One of the wealthiest women of her day, Angela Burdett-Coutts shared with her friend Charles Dickens, “a fellow campaigner and reformer”, a passion for practical do-gooding. Urania Cottage had been their second joint venture.
Although he had initially resisted involvement in the asylum for fallen women, Dickens had
eventually become active in every aspect of the home, even debating with Burdett-Coutts what uniforms
the fallen ladies should wear. (Dickens had pleaded for color but been overruled.)
Anjaley Coutts and Angela Burdett-Coutts. Too close to be a coincidence.
Martin Chuzzlewit
was dedicated to Burdett-Coutts in 1844, and so apparently had the missing Christmas novella written in 1847, the year Urania Cottage was established.
This was absolutely…fascinating. At least to someone like me—and certainly anyone who collected
Dickens.
I read a bit more about Urania Cottage and Dickens’ involvement, but nothing shed insight into
The
Christmas Cake
. At last my adventures of the night overtook me and I put the book aside, returned to bed and closed my eyes.
I was drifting off into exhausted sleep as the strains of America filtered softly through the wall.
“I’m disappointed, James,” Mr. Stephanopoulos said when I called him later that afternoon. “You
usually show more initiative.”
I closed my eyes against the throb behind them—a throb that had been there ever since I left the Hotel Del Monte that morning. “The book looks genuine to me, but I need to examine it more closely to be sure.”
“When do you think you’ll have the opportunity? We’re running out of time.”