Secret Admirer

By Michele Jaffe

An eerie tale of murder in Elizabethan England: “Sexy . . . Full of suspense and drama . . . A wonderfully original read” (Jane Feather, New York Times–bestselling author of An Unsuitable Bride).
 
Lady Tuesday Arlington has always used her painting as a refuge from the nightmares that plague her sleep. When her husband is murdered in a setting that uncannily resembles one of Tuesday’s paintings, the young widow becomes the prime suspect.
 
Lawrence Pickering, the earl of Arden and an investigator in service of Queen Elizabeth I, begins to follow Tuesday’s every move, certain of her guilt—until Tuesday becomes a target herself. Intrigued by her knowledge of the crime scenes as well as her stunning beauty, Lawrence vows to protect her. But how can he stop a killer who appears capable of the impossible—invading Tuesday’s mind?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626811904

Michele Jaffe

Michele Jaffe is the author of Bad Kitty, Kitty Kitty, and the mangas Bad Kitty: Catnipped and Bad Kitty: Catnapped as well as several adult novels, including the thrillers Bad Girl and Loverboy. After getting her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard, she retired from academia and decided to become an FBI special agent or glamorous showgirl but somehow ended up writing. A native of Los Angeles, CA, Michele and her sparkly shoes reside in New York City.

Book preview

Part I: Sleep

Chapter 1

London: Tuesday, June 19, 1590

She lies in the field of tall grass, her arms and legs stretched out as far as they will go, breathing in the smell of summer dirt and heat and Mr. Eliot’s trimming in the garden. The dragonflies loop over her, their blue-green wings gleaming like the lids of Chinese boxes.

She thinks of that time when she was younger and she climbed the yew tree and the branch fell off and made a crack like a lightning bolt in the garden wall that cost thirty-one pounds to fix. She had lost her allowance as a result, but she can’t remember if it had been repaired. It is so pleasant here, with the sun and the dragonflies and the grass tickling and—

The ground beneath her vibrates with the angry pounding of his boots as he comes toward her, for her. He is nearly on top of her before she realizes it, bearing down, fast. She lies there, completely still, her fingers digging into the dirt, paralyzed with fear. Thinking, not again, please not again. Thinking, don’t let him see me, don’t let him find me, oh god—

"You can’t hide from me you stupid bitch! Show yourself now."

She gets up and runs for her life.

The Lion examined his reflection in the mirror scrupulously, running a hand through his hair.

Who is the most dangerous man? The brave man? The wise man? The rich man?

None of these, sir. It is the mediocre man.

Why?

Because he is invisible.

No one would remember anything special about him, the Lion decided. Nothing he didn’t want them to, anyway. Done up like this, he would look just how he was supposed to look for where he was going.

When he was not on a job, the Lion was a snappy dresser. He spent a lot of money on his clothes, but he felt it was worth it. He didn’t talk much so he let clothes show what kind of a man he was. They drew attention to him, made people remember him, hid his other identity. And he liked to look good, liked the way women eyed him, then blushed. He liked it a lot; it gave him satisfaction.

Not like this, though. Not like the satisfaction of being the Lion.

The Lion was, in his own opinion, the best killer in England.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Sunlight slants at crazy angles between the boughs of the trees, making a corridor of irregular golden beams. They dance over her arms and hands like fairies as she flees through them, running as hard as she can, biting her lip to keep from screaming.

Crunchcrunchcrunchcrunchcrunch.

I see you! he calls from behind her, not sounding winded. Heavy footsteps follow hers, filling the air with crunching and the smell of decaying leaves.

When I get my hands on you I’ll flay you alive.

She can hear him thrashing through the branches behind her. She has the advantage, being smaller, but not for long. He is gaining on her. She can feel his fingertips inching closer to her, smell his sweat now, oh god he’s—

She trips on a rock hidden beneath the leaves and falls, headlong. She scrambles to her feet, gets caught up in the hem of her gown for a moment, then keeps running. She wills herself not to look behind her.

You idiot, he says, and she can feel his fingers first graze, then grab her shoulders. He drags her, her feet leaving long brown lines in the dirt as he says, There is no escaping from me. Don’t you know that by now?

The Lion had read everything he could get his hands on about every other killer and he knew that none of them even came close to him. Only one man had ever even approached his numbers, and he’d been caught three years earlier. Besides, he wasn’t impressed. That man had only killed girls.

The Lion killed men. Lots of men. And no one ever caught him. He was sure he’d done more kills than anyone else he could think of, maybe even more than anyone in Europe. And nobody knew who he was.

The people who saw him every day—men like Joey Blacktooth and Can Can Kyle the barman who kept the tankards full at the Dancing Fawn—didn’t think much of him. They’d call him the Loin or sometimes even the Groin after the way he looked at the ladies, but only behind his back. Truth was, they were a little scared of him. The man—more like a boy really—was strange. He came in at night and sat alone at the table in the back, pulling scraps of paper out of his doublet and studying them. They elbowed each other in the ribs and laughed at him and pointed him out to strangers as a curiosity, but only when he wasn’t looking. If they had been more forward or if a single one of them could read, they would have died. As it was, they were no threat to him and the Lion was content to let them stare.

It’s not what you are, it’s what you seem to be that matters.

Right now, the Lion seemed just like anyone else. But soon. Soon would be different.

When goddamit? I have waited—

What is the true knight’s most important ally? Is it his master?

No.

Is it his weapon?

No.

What is it? Answer me!

It is patience.

I am so tired of being patient.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! he cries when the heel of her boot lands in his groin.

His fingers lose their grip on her as he reaches between his thighs, moaning, staggering sideways.

She throws herself forward, away from him. The woods thin and she is in a garden, in view of the house. If she could only get there, only get in, she thinks, she could be safe. Late blooming roses flash by her in blurs of red and yellow as she runs across the paths, weaving drunkenly as her feet touch the uneven stones. Gravel sprays up behind her as she runs like loud rain, pat pat pat pat patpatpatpatpat, and over this she hears the sound of his moans.

Then she hears his footsteps.

You’ll never get away, you two-faced whore, he calls. Calls, not yells. Calm. Not running, walking. Too calm.

Why?

Ha ha ha he laughs. Then he says, No way you’ll get over the wall, is there? And I’ve locked the gate. May as well stop and get ready for what’s coming. You’ll need all your strength to pray for mercy, you heartless bitch.

The Lion came up with that name for himself late one night when he was lying in a noisy room with one of the beauties from Fleet Street. She’d traced the scar on the inside of his forearm with her finger and said, Where’d you get this, love?

Nowhere, he’d replied gruffly, pushing her hand away. There was one thing whores were good for, and it wasn’t talking. Plus, he didn’t want to think about his past that night. It was his future that was preoccupying him. He’d been working in the same way for a while now, and he saw that it was time to change, move on. He needed something bigger, more taxing. There had to be better challenges for a man of his talents.

Looks like a sun, the whore had said then, stupid bitch, not getting that he didn’t want to discuss it with her. Or like a lion’s head.

The fact that it was a whore who gave him the idea for his name made him a little queasy, so he never told anyone. And because he didn’t like to owe anyone anything, he saw to it that she couldn’t ever tell either. He could have hurt her, but as a favor, sort of a thank you present, he made it painless.

Still, he didn’t like thinking about it, thinking about her. Especially—well, especially now.

It’s just a coincidence, he told himself.

There is no such thing as coincidence.

The Lion swatted the memory away and turned to the table behind him. There were a variety of weapons on it, mostly knives. He had found that a knife worked best for almost every job. They were more elegant, more gentlemanly than any other weapon. And he was, of course, a gentleman.

Plus, he liked to see his victims’ blood close up, liked to sample their last breaths. Liked to savor the taste of death from their lips. There was nothing else like it.

She is a caged animal she thinks, she is doomed, she is going to die at his hands, and then she sees that he lied. The gate is not locked, the gate is open, the gate is her escape and she runs through it.

She does not stop to think how he could have made such a mistake but turns to the left, toward the kitchen yard, hoping he will think she went into the stables in front of her. She can barely smell the roses anymore—where is everyone?—her legs are burning, her chest aches, her mouth stings with dryness.

Stop where you are, you stupid bitch! he orders, not far behind her, not fooled.

She is not running now, she is stumbling, swerving crazily, slipping on the mud of the yard. She plunges toward the door, blinded by the dimness inside.

With unsteady hands she gropes along the wall until she finds—

"Where the hell are you?"

—a door. It opens, she falls through it, stumbling over boxes, falls to her knees, to the floor.

She can’t run anymore.

What is the loudest sound?

A whisper

What is the most powerful weapon?

Cunning

What is the path to control?

Fear.

Very good. I think you are ready.

I think so, too, master, the Lion said to his reflection in the mirror. He pronounced the last word with amusement. It was part of the game he played, the mask he wore. But just as he had no peer, he had no master. He was his own man. He patted down his hair one last time and smiled at himself. He liked what he saw.

He was the best.

Not long now, everyone would know it.

Where are you bitch?

She knows not to answer, not to say where she is. If she is quiet he won’t find her.

Come here right now, Tuesday! He is standing just outside the door; she can hear his boots crackle under his weight. The wall shudders when he pounds his fist on it. I know you are here, he calls, almost coaxing now. If you come out I won’t hurt you.

He is lying, Tuesday knows.

Get out here you stupid whore bitch and show yourself.

A door opens somewhere, diverting his attention, and she hears his footsteps disappearing down the hall.

Now! She moves on tiptoe to the door and pushes it open. Her arms are trembling. The corridor is empty and not empty. His anger fills the air still. From behind other doors voices whisper. Tuesday thinks someone is watching her, a dozen someones, eyes pressed to the cracks beneath the hinges, but she doesn’t care.

Now.

She slides into the corridor. Everything is eerily precise, her vision extraordinary. She sees a crack in the wall, a place where the iron nail was not set flush with the wood, the dark red lines on the petals of the roses that he crushed under his boots, dark red like trails of blood. She notices everything, yet she is running, fast, running hard down the corridor, watched by the unseen eyes. She looks behind her to make sure he is not there. She cannot hear his footsteps anymore, she can only hear her breathing, short gasps that sound almost like laughter, ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha she breathes hard, running, turning corners, left, then right. But the corridor never seems to change; it just goes on, more doors, more crushed roses that look like they are bleeding. Ha ha ha. Run, she tells herself. Keep running. You can escape. You can—

I told you I would get you, whore, he says, thundering up behind her.

It had been a trap. Tuesday pushes desperately against the nearest door and then another, but they won’t budge, the weight of too many eyes holding them up. Ha ha ha laugh the people with the eyes. Now we’ll get a good show.

Tuesday keeps running but he is behind her now, bearing down, she can smell him on the air moving toward her. She can’t turn around, won’t turn around to see him, but she can see his shadow looming up against her. She is stuck. The corridor ends. His shadow crawls up the wall, bent by the corner, leisurely now.

Ha ha ha. Her breathing. His laughter.

The shadow grows an arm, the arm a hand, the hand a knife.

"You are mine now, Tuesday. Mine. I warned you. You just keep your whore mouth shut or I’ll do the same to you as I did to him. Do you understand, bitch? Answer me!"

Tuesday woke up gasping for air. She was curled in the bottom corner of her mattress, trembling. Her night dress, soaked through with sweat, was clinging to her skin but she had goosebumps on her arms. The room was dark, it was nothing like the dream, and she was alone. Outside, at the level of her two windows, the street was empty. In the distance she could hear the shout of the night watchman saying that it was three in the morning.

She unfolded herself, put on the old silk dressing gown lying on the floor next to her bed, and moved toward her easel. She knew what she had to do, that there was only one way she would ever get back to sleep that night. She used the blank side of the preparatory sketch of the countess of Launton—mouth 22, nose 34, forehead 12, eyes, uneven, 33—and began to paint. She did not bother with undersketches, but divided the thick paper in half, drawing a line down the center to represent the corner across which the shadow had spread. Bold strokes of dirty gold for the oak-paneled walls of the hallway, fast lines barely suggesting the doors, a huge knot in the wood at the end that looked like a death’s head.

This painting was different from her by-the-numbers portraits, ironic since they were similarly born of desperation, but she liked it. There was something more interesting in its bold lines than in the staid renderings of highly preserved aristocrats with failing marriages and mercenary young lovers, which paid her. The greatest challenge she faced in those portraits was to avoid painting the weariness that suffused even the set of her subject’s shoulders, the weight of the lies they told themselves to keep going.

The watchman, closer now, was calling half five when she began to clean up. She could still get three more hours of sleep before she had to take her father his breakfast. Maybe today she should tell him. It had been weeks and weeks, more than two months. Of course, since it had already been that long, maybe it could wait until tomorrow.

Blast, she murmured as her wrist cramped and the brush she had been drying skidded out of her hand. It slipped across her palette and stopped at her easel, leaving a rust-colored splatter down one side of the painting. Fixing the mess would take another hour. She felt tears prick the back of her eyes, not because of the ruined painting—no one was ever going to see it, so it hardly mattered—but at this further proof of what she already knew: she always ruined everything. It had been like that from the day she was born—on a Monday, instead of on a Tuesday like every other woman in her mother’s family since the time of William the Conqueror—and continued on with no appearance of abatement.

They had given her the maternal family name, Tuesday, despite her lapse of breeding, and she bore the paternal surname, Worthington, but she wore them, like ill-affixed labels. She did not fit in with her family, did not look like any of them, could not sing or play the lute or do embroidery like them. Six generations of Worthingtons had been ladies in waiting to the queens of England by merit of their extraordinary skills as needle-women. But everything Tuesday touched just unraveled.

Like her marriage to Curtis. It was her fault, she knew, that Curtis was not happy. She had been lucky to have Curtis, beyond lucky, and she had not tried hard enough to meet his needs. Even as her heart broke, she could not blame him for leaving. She could not give him what he wanted. What he deserved.

With him gone, she could add wife to the list of Ws she had failed at being: Worthington, woman, wonderful, wanted—

Taking up his position to watch her as she put away the last of her brushes and slid back into the bed, the Lion would have disagreed completely. He wanted her. He needed her. And he knew everything about her.

He knew that it was her aunt’s dressing gown she wore, he knew the old trunk in the corner of the studio was her mother’s, he knew that all her garters were light purple, that her father was an invalid living on the second floor, that there were only three servants left in the house, knew where they slept, how deeply, and how long. He knew how to get in and out through the loose door in the cellar without anyone being the wiser, knew when Tuesday was most likely to be alone, what she looked like close up while she was sleeping, and when she was awake. And although Tuesday would speak of it to no one but her maid, CeCe, he knew all about the dream. And about her late night painting. Oh yes, he knew all about that.

Reluctantly, the Lion made ready to leave. But he would be back. Back to watch, and wait, and dream his own dreams. Dream of the day when he would be who he deserved to be. Have what he deserved to have.

He gave the woman and the painting one last glance.

A day very soon.

Chapter 2

Grub Collins kept his fingers hooked over the cracked leather belt slung around his hips in order to keep them from fidgeting. Over the years he’d learned how to control his face and his voice and his walk to keep from showing excitement, but his damn fingers seemed to have a mind of their own.

It was a perfect summer day and the inhabitants of Ram Alley were taking advantage of the fine weather to do all their washing. Laundry hung on lines from almost every window, creating a canopy of lacy petticoats and well-worn trousers. It looked just like any other morning, perhaps a bit quieter than usual. Even if someone had noticed the strange feeling of expectation that fluttered on the breeze with the petticoats, they would not have been able to put their finger on it.

Grub peeled himself off the wall he’d been leaning against for the last hour and lounged slowly down the street, squinting at the laundry. An ancient tavern keeper in high leather boots stopped his sweeping long enough to try to coax him in for a drink, but Grub pressed on. He dropped a coin in the outstretched hand of a one-legged beggar, then continued slowly down the street toward a drunk stretched out next to the street door of the Little Eden.

Roused by the shadow being cast over him, the drunk opened one eye, slowly, then the other.

Nothing doing, Grub started to say, but stopped as the drunk’s gaze moved behind him. He turned and saw the beggar, now in possession of both legs, running hard down the center of the street.

Men and women filed from the doorways of about half the buildings to watch as the beggar spoke urgently to the drunk man, and calm turned to acute expectation. This was not the voyeuristic interest of gossipy neighbors, because these were not the normal inhabitants of Ram Alley. Every chamber maid, shopkeeper, and butcher’s boy was a highly trained operative, part of an elaborate surveillance operation designed to catch one of England’s biggest enemies. The laundry was not merely hung out to dry, but actually spelled out a report. Grub Collins was not a loafer but a messenger, and the surly drunk was no less than Lawrence Pickering, the earl of Arden—the man Queen Elizabeth herself called Our greatest hero, now the head of Her Majesty’s operation against smuggling.

It’s off, Lawrence announced, getting quickly to his feet, and everyone began talking at once. He silenced them with a look. I am going with Tom— he gestured to the agent who had been dressed as a beggar, and whose face had gone sickly pale, —but I want the rest of you to stay at your posts until I return. Halfway down Ram Alley he stopped and retraced his steps to the old tavern keeper. Christopher, send word to the Special Commissioner that someone got to the Lark before we did, he barked, then turned and continued down the street.

Lawrence Pickering knew this area intimately. It was here that he had built, with his own hands, the empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Two years earlier he had owned almost every one of the newly refurbished buildings he and Tom were now passing, and had funded most of the now thriving businesses. It was also here that he had grown up—sometimes in the buildings he would later own, more often taking whatever shelter he could in the bleak and filthy alleyways between them. From these, he watched the men and women of Alsatia, and watching them he learned the two most important things he knew: that there was a huge difference between living and living well; and that it had nothing to do with money. He knew that for certain.

After volunteering to fight against the Spanish and doing everything he could to get himself killed, from sail a burning ship into the middle of the Spanish fleet to lead a jailbreak of 200 prisoners—

(I just wasn’t lucky, he’d said with a beguiling smile and a shrug when he returned to England.

You don’t believe in luck, Lawrence, his best friend, Crispin had reminded him. But I do, and I am glad you are back.

So am I, said Lawrence, sounding like he meant it.)

—he had returned to London a hero. His attendance became the most crucial ingredient for a successful dinner or ball, his title the most valued accessory a marriageable young woman could hope to wear, and his presence the most sought-after accouterment for every boudoir.

(Last year it was diamond shoe buckles, this year it is me, he had joked with one of the women who invited him to her bed.

My diamond shoe buckles broke, she commented, looking him over with a sweep of long lashes. There does not appear to be anything broken about you.

Lawrence had chuckled, acting like he meant it.)

But even his most ardent and attentive admirers would have been hard pressed to recognize the earl of Arden in the filthy but determined figure who now accompanied Tom away from the tavern, which was, of course, the point. His men had only been undercover and in position for the past three hours; Lawrence himself had been there all night, checking and double checking. He had enough enemies that he knew better than to go to an anonymously called meeting without real precautions.

He would not normally have responded to an anonymous summons, but at this point he would do anything to shut down the smuggling operations that had been damaging Her Majesty’s coffers and war efforts for the past five years. In the three months that Lawrence had been in charge of the anti-smuggling operation, illegal trafficking had gone from a torrent to a trickle, but that was not good enough for him. They even thought they knew who was responsible for it, but they could not prove it, and even if they could, just grabbing him would only upset, not end, the selling. What they needed was someone who could explain the organization, someone who could name names. Someone like the man they code named the Lark because in his letter to Lawrence he requested a meeting at the crack of dawn. He offered them all the information they might desire about the smuggling in exchange for immunity and a hideout in the countryside. For that information, Lawrence would gladly have risked his life. Twice. Unfortunately, it was the Lark’s life that went instead. And with it whatever he knew.

With his jaw clenched, Lawrence followed Tom around a corner and into a narrow alley. They had to skirt a group of mangy looking dogs fighting over a piece of meat, and then duck under a short arch before reaching the door of the abandoned house where the Lark had been found dead.

It was dark inside but the circle of light given off by the lantern Tom held illuminated a figure slumped half against the wall and half on the floor. Lawrence bent down toward the motionless form and wrinkled his nose. Of the three things Lawrence disliked most in the world, one of them was lilacs, and the dead man must have drenched himself in lilac water before going out. Close inspection revealed no wound on the man’s back, so Lawrence reached out and carefully turned the corpse over. And froze.

Behind him, Tom inhaled sharply, then retched and dropped the lantern. The light flickered madly back and forth as it fell and crashed on the ground, spluttering out. With their eyes unused to the dim interior, they were instantly plunged into impenetrable darkness. But even in the darkness the corpse seemed to hover before them.

Lawrence felt as if the image had been seared into his mind, joining so many others and trumping them. There was the agonized expression on the man’s face. The long, red gash that crossed his pale throat above his ruff like a bloody smile. And then, below it, the gaping cavity in his chest where his heart should have been.

Tom, Lawrence turned to call behind him into the darkness. His voice sounded hoarse and strange to his own ears. Tom, are you all right?

Yes, was the unsteady reply.

Good. Do you think you could do me a favor?

Yes. A little more steady.

Please go outside and stop those dogs from eating—whatever they are eating.

There was a gag, a pause, a scratching noise, and then the sound of footsteps clumsily receding.

When he was sure the young man was gone, Lawrence steeled himself and relit the lantern. Until that moment he believed he had seen all that man could offer in the way of death and destruction, both on the streets of London and on the field of battle. And until that moment he had not understood the security that such a belief offered.

Those other killings, while pointless, at least were motivated by something: patriotism, greed, love, loss, rage. But even if that had been the case here, the violence of the killing moved it beyond that, beyond the space of motive. There was something chillingly malevolent, hauntingly calculated, about the way this man’s life had been taken. Something that went beyond mere murder.

As he looked at the heartless body in front of him, Lawrence perversely remembered one of the axioms he used to drill into his men: It is not what you take away that matters, it is what you leave behind. He had always considered it as a way to control his enemies, send them the message he wanted them to see.

What message was the killer sending through this violated body?

Lawrence knew with overwhelming certainty that he did not want to find the answer to that question, did not want to again find himself wading into a dark pool of violence and death and betrayal. He knew that finding it would cause him to suffer in ways he could not even imagine.

Just as he knew, with equal certainty, that he had no choice.

He was right on both counts.

Chapter 3

Tuesday bit the inside of her cheek and glared at the half-finished portrait on her easel ferociously. She would have given anything to be able to concentrate on it. But her eyes kept looking past it, toward the door.

When she had first set up her studio in Worthington Hall’s unused laundry rooms, she had angled her easel so that she painted facing the large windows that opened onto the street. But after only three days she had turned it around. Her neighbors, who enjoyed peering in and trying to guess the identity of whomever she was painting, thought she changed it for their benefit. She let them think it, because she hated the real reason.

She did it so she could watch the door. So she would know the very instant Curtis came home.

If he came home.

She wanted to kick herself for still waiting, for still looking up anxiously every time there were footsteps in the hallway, wondering if this time, this day, was the day-week-hour when Curtis would come back to her. A dozen times she had consciously turned the easel back toward the windows, and a dozen times, without realizing it, she had found herself staring again at the damn door.

She dragged her eyes from it and forced them back onto the portrait.

Living in this constant state of vigilance was taking its toll on her. It was not just the dreams, although those were part of it. She had begun to feel like someone was watching her all the time. She found herself eyeing shadows in the street and jumping at loud noises. Just that morning she had been convinced that someone had rearranged her linens. She hated feeling afraid all the time, as if she were under siege, as if right this moment—

Good morning, fair princess.

Tuesday gave a start at the sound of the familiar voice, saying the familiar phrase, behind her. She turned as George Lyle was in the act of climbing through the open window.

Sorry to scare you, he said, scowling at a fleck of dirt on his meticulous breeches. No one answered the door.

Annoyed at herself for being so edgy, Tuesday waved away his apology. It’s nothing. I think CeCe has Morse helping her put up some new experiment. He must not have heard you knock. She mustered a smile. How are you this morning, George?

Better now that I have laid eyes on you.

Tuesday looked at him closely. George had been one of her closest friends for a long time. He was just past forty, and grew only more handsome with each passing year, each encroachment of gray around his temples. His square jaw, deep green eyes, and flirtatious smile managed to hold allure for even the most chaste aristocratic wives, and had made having a George Lyle Original Portrait one of the requirements for stature in the fashionable world. But recently, at least to Tuesday, George had begun to look different. Something—the tightness of his smile, the newly metallic edge of his laugh—had changed. Today she noticed that there were bags under his eyes where there weren’t usually, as though he had not been sleeping.

Pretending not to notice her scrutiny, George bent to eye the painting she was working on, then stood up abruptly. His face was a mask of exaggerated horror. Ugh. Dowager Castenough. She is terrible. I absolutely refuse to do this in front of her.

Tuesday nodded as if she understood. Perhaps today we ought to let it go. Just skip it.

George looked injured. You don’t mean that. He took a deep breath and looked soulfully into her eyes. Tuesday, will you run away—

No thank you, George.

You didn’t even let me finish.

I knew what you were going to say. You say the same thing every morning.

That does not mean you can just interrupt. I never interrupt when you say ‘let’s just skip it,’ which you do almost every morning. Besides, it is quite rude to interrupt when a man is proposing to you.

Not if you are married and he does not mean it. Can—

Lady Tuesday Worthington Arlington, will you run away with me and be my love?

No thank you, George. Do you have any—

No thank you? That is all? George frowned. You usually at least say ‘that is very kind of you but I shall have to decline.’

"I was