The Other Side - J. D. Robb [78]
She pulled herself together. “Ordinarily I’d ride my bicycle, but since this is formal, Lucien will send his buggy for me. But I don’t think we should go together, do you? We don’t want to look like a team.”
“No, indeed. Although we are.”
If he’d reached out just then, she’d have taken his hand. That’s how lost to discretion she was. “Good, it’s settled,” she said briskly and got up. “Seven o’clock, Saturday evening.”
He stood, too. “But perhaps we should meet before then. Lunch tomorrow?”
“Oh—do you think we should?”
“For planning purposes.”
“Ye-es, I suppose. We want to be on—”
“The same page,” they finished together. “Shall we say noon at Grogan’s again?” Henry asked.
Walking back to Mrs. Mortimer’s, the thought crossed Angie’s mind that having lunch in public twice in three days might send a message that they were a team even more than sharing a ride to Lucien’s would. But, oh well; business was business; first things first. The important thing was, she’d be seeing him again tomorrow instead of the next day. For planning purposes.
Eight
The home of Lucien and Edwardia Darlington was big, pretentious, and hot. So hot, the Darlingtons and their guests were having their before-dinner sherries outside in the “folly.” The perfect name, thought Henry, for this domed, concrete thing supported by Doric columns and overlooking a nondescript field—pasture, really—on the outskirts of Paulton. He was sweating under his stiff white collar and necktie. He grabbed another glass of seltzer water from the tray of a passing maid and thought wistfully of the “oscillating fan” in the living room at Willow House. Angie had built it with a sewing machine motor and a wooden paddle. A little noisy, but otherwise quite a miraculous creation. She should patent it.
He liked watching her as she leaned against a column and chatted with her friends the Hershes, Walker and Norah. Fresh as a crocus she looked in a white linen dress—a subtle tribute to the dancing ghost? He could imagine that tickling her sense of humor. She laughed at something Walker said, and Henry smiled in sympathy, wishing he were with them, over there instead of over here. With Mrs. Grimmett.
“So exciting to think we have our very own haunted house right here in Paulton,” she was saying in her flutey bray, her face animated but not always visible because of the shifting angle of an ostrich plume attached to the bosom of her gown. She had iron-gray hair coiled in loops around her ears, like small animal appendages. “My own house has a cold spot, a definite cold spot, Mr. Cleland, right under the bay window in the library, and of course Chester says it’s a draft, but I remind him that the builder is dead, isn’t he, a Mr. Clyde Stottlewort of Boston, and I don’t see why it’s not possible that he’s come back to one of his creations, if not to haunt it, then perhaps merely for a visit. Have you ever heard of such a phenomenon?”
That called for an actual answer, not a “Well said!” or “Very astute,” with which he’d been deflecting Mrs. Grimmett for the last few minutes. What a dismal insight: that he knew her type so well, he could respond to most of what she said in his sleep.
“Indeed I have,” he said, leaning in confidentially. “Most people don’t notice, but these aural areas,” a term he invented on the spot, “are more common than you might imagine. And yet, only the very, very sensitive can discern them.”
“So true,” she simpered, “so very true. I know you’ll want to come to my house and experience the phenomenon yourself.”
He was saved from a commitment to visit Mrs. Grimmett’s cold spot by the arrival of the Darlington children, Lucien Jr. and Little Eddie, come to say good night. Angie had told him she would “rather die” than be their nursemaid or nanny or governess or anything else whatsoever—all posts she’d been offered by Cousin Lucien after her grandparents passed away. A tepidly handsome offer, he’d thought, depending on how you looked at it. Angie looked at it with horror. “Wait until you meet them,” she’d said.
Well, no one could claim they were attractive