Page 3 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
That pronouncement soured him and he turned toward the view inside. He leaned backward upon the railing. As if pre-ordained, the crowd parted to reveal a picture of Felicity, her palm on Carterham’s spiffy white cravat, laughing up into his eyes.
Miss Schubert followed his gaze. “You know him?”
“A little.”
“Is he…? Is he trustworthy?”
“With what?” he said far too promptly.
She exhaled. “Well. That tells me much.”
Nate frowned at her. He’d spoken on impulse. “Forgive me. Don’t take that as proof.”
She pushed away from the railing. “No? Why not? Yours was the most honest reaction I’ve heard since I stepped foot on English soil.”
“That’s my fiancée you see there with him. They are old friends. I responded quickly.”
“As well you should,” she said with a nod. “And so will I.”
She marched away, her shoulders squared, her hands fisted, her flowing peach silk swaying around her legs. Skirting the crowd, she disappeared from Nate’s sight.
He did not see her again that night nor any other. Nor did he expect to.
But five days after the Edington’s ball, he read inLloyd’s Listof her departure from England on Cunard’s most recent steamship out of Southampton, headed for New York.
That same day he called off his engagement to Felicity Northcote.
CHAPTER1
May 1916
London
Nate strode out the door of The Criterion restaurant and paused on the darkened thoroughfare of Piccadilly, fisting one hand. Frustration was not an emotion he conquered easily. He liked order and peace. His dinner partner had given him heartburn, despite the excellent cuisine from the kitchen. Thank God he could walk straight home and work off some of his anger.
He secured his cap to his head and looped his trenchcoat over his left arm. The night breezes blew mildly through his hair but they’d have to blow like a tornado to cool him off. How in hell did he put up with the excuses of Whitehall? Especially when he knew that they did it to cover their poor diplomatic skills to get what he needed.
He cursed. “Men die for the lack.”
He turned left for home—or what served for that these days. He spent more and more weeks here in London instead of south in Kent at his estate, caring for his son and his tenants. He inhaled and chased away the loneliness. Perhaps his cousin Dylan Hanniford had arrived at the house by now after his own supper engagement and Nate’d have the camaraderie of a friendly conversation.
He picked up his pace. In two and half years of war, the once lovely avenue that sported the famous Ritz Hotel, Wellington’s fair Georgian mansion and shops for the rich and titled, had gone grey. The street lamps burned low. The Macadam was cracked. Horses, what few were left in London not shipped off to die in the black quagmire of France, stumbled in the rough terrain. Taxis—faring no better for lack of better wheels or body repairs—rumbled along, their elderly drivers taking pains to circumvent the potholes. Worse, dazed pedestrians failed to concentrate on the path before them. Dressed in the black of those in interminable mourning or the oppressive brown of the British Army, the people of London walked like victims of old Bram Stoker’s vampire. They were wide-eyed, weary of war, death, disease. And he was weary of fighting onward.
He had to keep going though. Just as everyone else.
At the intersection, he paused to note the flow of traffic. Even though it was ten o’clock, autos and taxis were sparse. One horse-drawn lorry rounded the far corner.
He stepped out into the street and quickly crossed to the far side. A few more blocks and he’d be home. The sweet promise of a haven drew him on.
Lamps on this side of the street burned lower than on the other. Imperfect gas gauges with no one to fix them properly, he thought at once. Dangerous, came his next conclusion.
The horse-drawn lorry approached on his side of the street. So did another, coming the opposite direction.
A dark figure rounded a corner. And in the fog and poor lighting, he could detect the form of a woman. Alone. Alone at this hour of the night? How foolish could she be to think she’d be safe in the dank cover of a London evening.
Her shoes clicked on the sidewalk. Her pace lively and even.
On the other side of the street, two taller darker forms emerged from beneath a shop awning and dodged one lorry to gain Nate’s side of the street. Their gestures to each other subtle and their pointed fingers at the lady were a warning for Nate. She did not see them.
