Page 8 of The Wallflower Manifesto
For a moment, Abe was certain he hadn’t heard correctly.
There was a stretch of silence in the room while Freddy chewed on his own discontent and then his head snapped up, eyes boring into the other man with impatient expectation, and he exclaimed, “Well?!”
“Oh,” Abe replied, genuinely startled. “I didn’t think you were serious. No. I’m not going to do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I think the more pertinent question would be why the hell would I?” Abe pointed out with a raise of his brows. “It’s a mad suggestion. I don’t want to stalk your mother, Bentley. Besides, I’m busy.”
“You’re an investigator,” Freddy persisted, annoyance in his tone. “Investigate! Consider me a client.”
Abe scratched his jaw, considering this. “Clients pay me,” he said. “Are you paying?”
“Yes, fine,” Freddy conceded, though he was clearly not happy about it, his blue eyes narrowed into resentful slits. “Consider yourself hired. Find out what she’s up to and I’ll pay your fee with what little I have.”
It took a moment of consideration. Abe wanted to decline outright, just on principle, but he had been sitting here, wishing for a shiny new client, after all, and furthermore, he was prone to choices that some might think of as trifling. Antagonizing Freddy was too tempting to pass up.
“Good,” he said with a grin. “You can start by dashing out and replacing those biscuits you just ate. D’you know where she’s staying? Where to start?”
Freddy flexed his jaw, closing his eyes for a moment and taking a cleansing breath as though he were clearing his body of the desire to retort in the usual bickering way he often did when Abe riled him. When he opened them again, he gave an alarmingly pleasant smile and said, “I do, in fact.”
“Oh, well, wonderful! Where am I off to?”
Freddy leaned back and laced his fingers behind his blond head, a smug little smile playing about his lips. “Somewhere you’ll hate,” he said pleasantly. “You’ll need to borrow my tails. You, my dear man, are going to the opera.”
CHAPTER 3
He didn’t hate it, actually.
When he’d sat down an hour ago, Abe hadn’t known what the hell a seraglio was or why you’d want to abduct someone from one, but now, as the bell chimed for intermission and the lanterns were turned up on the end of the first act, he found himself keenly disappointed that the story was being paused.
A seraglio, as it turned out, was some sort of holding cell for beautiful women. He thought this was a very good vocabulary word to add to any repertoire. If one were going to stage an abduction (which Abe did not endorse in any fashion, of course), it seemed the best possible place to undertake such an inadvisable activity.
Alas, an intermission had arrived, and he forced himself to stand and stretch. When the show stopped, that meant it was time for him to get back to work.
Sadly, his job title was notPasha, another delightful new word this opera had taught him.Thatjob seemed to consist of wearingquite a lot of silk and gold and enjoying the charms of the seraglio.
“Pasha” was a damn sight more appealing than “Private Investigator” at this particular moment, he decided, scanning the mezzanine for the dowager’s box and catching a flash of purple silk and blonde hair as the lady fled her seat into the embrace of the lobby and the fine society gathered in it during the intermission. There were other people in that box with her, he noted, but they were slower to rise and apparently not necessary company for wherever the lady was heading in this moment.
He would have to hoof it to the stairs to catch her before she could vanish into the crowd. His shoes were scuffed and the wrong shade of black for Freddy’s fine tails, but they fit him properly and allowed him to move at speed, and so he was glad he had insisted on wearing them, much to his flatmate’s chagrin.
He jostled his way through the affronted folk on the orchestra level, batting off a harmonizing array of exclamations at his behavior and pointy elbows. Generally, he’d revel a little in thesirsandbeg pardons, but he found he was terribly focused on finding his quarry before she could vanish into the crowd.
Perhaps, he thought with a twist of his lips as he took the twisting stairs to the mezzanine two at a time, Lady Bentley herself would turn out to be the jewel thief, and he could launch himself into this Season’s investigative hiring potential with a true bang.
Of course, she wasn’t in London to have done the thefts from last Season, but these were particulars to be worked out later.
As it happened, his haste was unnecessary. Patricia Hightower, the esteemed dowager and seemingly merry widow, was practically the centerpiece of the mezzanine foyer, her diamond hairpiece twinkling brightly in the candlelight as she fanned herself slowly and deliberately while speaking to a gaggle of curious socialites.
It was still too early in the year to require fanning, of course, still too cool outside. Abe pulled a face before he could stop himself. It was some sort of code, the fanning.
His sisters would know what was being said in the flapping of lace and silk. The younger one, Rosalind, in particular, had hounded him about such nonsense when she’d learned of his professional pursuits, and he had brushed her off.
He sighed, watching the dowager drop the fan into her left hand, close it, and tap it against the opposing cheek as a new group stepped up to make their introductions, her smile soft and coy and her blue eyes shining.
Yes, he admitted to himself. Rosalind had been right. Again.
He would have to commit the pantomime to memory, as there was no convenient place to whip out his inkwell and commit it to writing. He stepped against one of the burnished wooden columns and watched her twirling the damn thing as she had animated conversation with the endless parade of interchangeable toffs apparently eager to make her acquaintance.
