“He’s extorting money from her, from you both.” He lathered his face without looking then stepped to the basin in the washroom. She heard him strop a straight razor. “The packet obviously has something she wants to keep hidden.”

  “Yet here you are, Jack, asking about the contents.”

  “Photos?” He scrapped away whiskers, cleaned the blade on a towel, scrapped again, falling into a rhythm while she watched him shave his cheeks, around his mouth, his chin and along his jaw. He stared into the mirror, only looking at her when he cleaned the blade. “Is it photos? What they call art photos? From several years ago, I’d guess.”

  He had guessed the most damning and guessed correctly. “Photos and a few letters.”

  “So Daphne was indiscreet.” He wiped the blade then ran his hand over his face, feeling for whiskers.

  “The photos are from the first of the war, when she came to London. She ran short of money. Everyone does.” Filly remembered her own first months in London, the money short and the respectable jobs in short supply. Demobbed soldiers had flooded the streets, seeking employment. She lost her secretarial work. By luck she’d found a position where no man could replace her, as mannequin at a couturier’s. She thanked the fates that Cecelia Tarrant had let a room to her at a reduced rate. Cecilia hadn’t needed the money once she married Gawen.

  Water gushed from the faucet. He cleaned his face then the blade, rinsed the cup, and wiped both with the towel before re-folding it and wiping his face dry. The sink drained.

  “Jack, why do you call them art photos?”

  “They’re nudes. Every soldier’s dream, sorted through in the trenches to remind him of home.” He stepped out of sight. She heard more bumping around.

  Filly abandoned the chair and ventured to the washroom to defend her friend. “I don’t know if they are nudes. I just thought they were revealing. Daphne did call them art photos.” She caught a flash of movement in the mirror. “We’ve shared a flat for two years and more. Daphne’s not fast, Jack, not like so many others. She’s not. She made a couple of mistakes that never would have surfaced if that Boggs monster hadn’t decided to profit from them after her engagement to Ronald was announced.”

  “I will agree Boggs is a monster.” He stepped in view from behind the door. He now wore a white shirt front and a scrap of white cloth over his shoulder. “Most percenters are, but I doubt he stumbled across her photos and letters and held them until he found a use at a later point.” He tucked the shirt tail into his pants and buttoned them while Filly watched the mysteries of men’s clothing. He grabbed the tie from his shoulder and placed it around his neck. He lifted his chin and stared in the mirror, but his fingers fumbled with the knot. “I hate these things.”

  He’d worn a knotted scarf earlier. “Let me.” She crowded into the little washroom and replaced his hands. “I used to do this for Father, after he let his man go.”

  “Your parents economizing?”

  “After the war. Their funds rebounded before I came to London. Chin up,” she ordered. His scent surrounded her, manly and crisp with the verist hint of bay, not at all like her father’s heavy sandalwood. She had to concentrate so her hands didn’t shake. It wouldn’t do to volunteer then ruin his tie.

  Their kiss remained a powerful memory.

  “I’d like to know how Boggs acquired those photos and letters. I suppose the letters are just indiscreet, not salacious?”

  “There.” Filly tugged the starched ends then patted his chest before she stepped against the basin.

  He didn’t check her work in the mirror. He leaned forward, bracing a hand on the porcelain basin behind her. “Does your friend know how Boggs acquired them?”

  Filly breathed more rapidly. Dear Lord, I sound like Grandmother’s pug. “If she does, Daphne didn’t share that with me. Do you think someone sold them to Monster Boggs?”

  “Maybe someone who was in debt to Boggs and saw a way to wiggle out of debt.”

  “But that means someone held onto the photos and letters for years. Well, the photos. The letters are recent. Wait. I think I see, Jack. Maybe the photographer was in debt. She did say she used a man she knew for her engagement photo. Maybe he dug the old photos out and approached Monster Boggs.”

  “And the letters? You said they were recent.”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t even know why Daphne would even put that on paper. She knows better.”

  “Why are you helping her?”

  “She’s my friend. She asked for help.”

  He glared at her. “And you committed before you knew the whole story?”

  “I know. I’m a fool.”

  “Not a fool.” He tweaked her chin. “Trying to be a good friend. Would you have helped if you’d known the whole of it, indiscreet letters and art photos?”

  “Yes. I want her to be happy, Jack. She says Ronald makes her happy. He indulges her. She had so little when she was growing up.”

  His thumb smoothed the creases between her brows. Then he straightened and propelled her out of the tiny washroom. “Her happiness is not something you can control. All we can control is finding Daphne and returning to Boggs before his deadline.” He shook out the tuxedo jacket then held it out to her. “Want to be a valet again?”

  “I know you’re right.” She slid the fitted jacket onto his shoulders then smoothed the cloth. “But what if Monster Boggs has another packet to threaten Daphne?”

  Jack turned and loomed over her. “How many mistakes has she made, Filly? You shouldn’t have tried to help tonight.”

  “If I hadn’t,” she said with inescapable logic, “we wouldn’t have re-met.”

  III

  Dammit, how did Filly manage to overset him with a few words? He touched a finger to her sharp chin, tilting her face up to him. He wished to kiss her again. He doubted she would stand for it. “Our meeting tonight, that matters to you?” God, he hoped so.

  And brave Filly, holding his gaze even though her color was high. “We wouldn’t have met, not for a long while.”

  Their ways didn’t pass, except at one point. “You never attend your cousins’ parties?”

  She paled. She started to speak, then she shook her head. “Where is this magical automobile that will save us hours?”

  He dropped his hand. “It’s garaged nearby. Do you need to change?”

  “This dress can work, but I’ll replace the jacket and find an ornament for my hair and change shoes, of course. I’ll take much less time than you!”

  When he backed the automobile out of the garage, Filly was duly impressed by its sleek lines. She had the door open and was slipped onto the seat before he shifted into park.

  “We’re going in style!” She ran her hand along the door. “How do you afford this? It’s beautiful.”

  Jack chuckled at her reverent tone. “I don’t. It’s on loan from my employer. He called it a failed production model.”

  “Failed? What could possibly be wrong with it?”

  “Too expensive to produce. He wants to knock down the price so more people can purchase.”

  “Like Mr. Ford’s Model T in the United States.” She craned her neck to eye the nonexistent back seat. “I would buy this, if I had the money.”

  “You make his point.”

  She laughed again then gave directions to her flat.

  The engine growled when he slowed for turns, sounding like one of the great cats. As buildings flashed past, he mulled over her loss of color at his question about her cousins’ parties. The Malvaise sisters each ruled over a small sphere of high society, combining forces to host larger parties that London’s Bright Young Things attended. Yet he hadn’t seen Filly at the parties. He knew that she’d rarely attended them after her first months in London.

  In his early employment, he worked days and nights to impress his former captain. They worked to perfect the engine for this auto. Heady days, those, driving tests around the old manufacturing warehouse, replacing parts that broke under stress, and tinkering with the pushrod overhead valves for the engine. They’d learned to drive just the frame, to spare the expense of crumpled side panels. Intense work-filled days that caused him to miss Filly’s first exciting months in London.

  When he surfaced from that hectic time, she no longer came to her cousins’ parties on any regular basis, and he no longer received invitations to family gatherings at Emberley.

  He wondered with the sisters still invited their cousin Filly to parties. She never quite fit with them, just as her mother never quite fit with the Malvaise family.

  “How did you meet Daphne?” he asked as they neared the flat.

  “Work. She’s a mannequin like me. She wanted to be an actress, but she only received bit parts as the Yorkshire maid. I helped her ‘talk posh,’ she said, and she taught me how to style my hair and present myself as a mannequin.”

  “Isn’t that just walking and posing?”

  “Indeed not. There’s an art to it. The way you hold her head and move your arms and hands. The way you carry yourself, which is different with different clothes, a day suit or an evening gown or a party frock. Even walking is different for each of those. One girl is tops at trousers, but she can’t perfect the glide necessary for the gowns. Daphne even showed me that cosmetics are different for day and evening. I was amazed. Take this right then park as soon as you see a space, Jack. My neighbors take the spaces in front of the house.”

  He pulled to the curb on the shabby genteel street and shifted into park, letting the engine idle.

  “Are you not coming up?”

  He didn’t dare. He had needed all his willpower not to grab her when she knotted his tie. “I’ll wait. As you said, we’re in a hurry.”

  She nodded and slipped from the auto.

  Jack watched her dash along the pavement, past several late Victorian row houses before she ran up steps to a lighted door and inserted her key.

  He watched the windows. Muted glows lit the curtains of the first and second story windows. The third and fourth windows were dark. A light flashed on in the fourth story. Those windows weren’t curtained.

  The opposite side of the street had given over to businesses, not the manufacturing district where he lived. From last century, these buildings were slightly newer than his district, which meant no rats running the gutters.

  He considered killing the motor. As he reached for the ignition, the light in the fourth floor flat went out. He watched the doorway, and Filly soon appeared.

  She’d tossed a vivid shawl around her slender figure. She had exchanged the cloche for something he couldn’t decipher, something sparkly that caught the street lights. The sensible buckled shoes were now strappy high heels that did wonders for her fine legs—and evoked a growl in his chest.

  He leaned over and pushed open the passenger door as she drew even with the long gleaming bonnet, its hood ornament as glittery as the contraption in her hair.

  He eyed the glittery hair ornament as she slipped onto the leather seat. “I’m not certain what that is on your head.”

  “It’s called a fascinator. Is it fascinating you?”

  “It looks like a feather, but it’s not.”

  “Shouldn’t we drive?”

  “We should. If I knew where we were going.”

  “Daphne said Ronald would take her to three parties tonight. Bumpy Calverton in Chelsea, then Simone Perillard. That’s near Bumpy’s. Then Les Beaton’s.”

  “Relative of Cecil Beaton?”

  “You know him?”

  “Of him. I escorted your cousin Tori to his New Year’s party.”

  “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “You know Tori. She spent the evening sniping at Beaton then left with a Scot named Arbuthnott.”

  “With whom did you leave? Yes, turn here.”

  He maneuvered the bonnet down a narrow lane then turned into a broader thoroughfare and accelerated. “I went home alone. Where did you spend the New Year?”

  “With Mother and Father. He was ill over Christmas.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I like your father.”

  “He’s better now.”

  Her voice was clipped, as sharp as a lead glass goblet, cutting off any questions in that direction.

  He changed gears and sped up, the London side streets not crowded with traffic on this mid-week evening. Once they turned onto the main streets, the evening traffic would command his attention.

  “I haven’t met this Bumpy person, or the French woman.”

  “You’ll like Bumpy, Everyone likes Bumpy. Since everyone likes him, they always bring everyone to meet him.”

  “I can expect a crowd, then.”

  “Barely able to wiggle through everyone,” she said cheerfully, “but everyone will be dancing. The evening’s still early, so we may avoid the worst of the crush. What Bumpy calls a success.”

  “If your friend goes there first.”

  “They shall. Bumpy’s always first. Simone is second for a pre-midnight supper. Then it’s off to Les to finish the night.”

  “Finish the night,” he murmured, remembering the sole party he’d attended at Beaton’s. He arrived with Tori well after midnight, when the sane world had tucked into their own beds. Buzzing from the first party, he’d opened champagne, exulting in life and high living and easy loving.

  Or so he’d thought at the time.

  Then Tori found a Scot in a kilt, her particular weakness. Beaton had fallen out with his current beau, a crimson-lipped maneater who suggested Jack join her for a late breakfast, and Jack decided he’d rather sleep off his fading buzz, alone in his own bed.

  “Do you attend many of this Bumpy’s parties? Or Beaton’s?”

  “A mannequin needs her beauty sleep.”

  Which Jack took for a “no” and was heartily glad that Filly didn’t run with the Bright Young Things, flaring out their brief lives in a burst of flame.

  “Who is this Simone?”

  “Simone Perillard. Very French. Very vogue. Very exclusive. Invitation only. Excellent pre-midnight suppers.”

  “We have to meet Boggs at midnight.”

  “People gather at her flat a good hour before. The conversation is often as good as the food. She has a French chef.”

  Filly said “French chef” like she was starving. He decided to ignore it. “We should reach Chelsea in a half-hour. We’ll find this Daphne, hustle her back to the pub long before Boggs’ deadline.”

  “We must extricate her from Ronald without his discovery of our purpose.”

  He shifted gears. “Tricky, that.”

  “Ye-es.” She plucked at the fringe of the shawl. In the flashes of street light, the indecipherable pattern looked wild, black and red, purple and green, orange and yellow. She still wore the flared skirt of her somber-hued suit, but the shawl removed all sobriety from her dress.

  Jack still couldn’t decide what the fascinator was.

  He turned off the main artery of London and slowed for the traffic.

  “I think,” Filly offered once he’d negotiated a double-decker bus, “that we should split up at Bumpy’s to search for Daphne. We can find her more quickly. Should you locate her before I do, just tell her that my mission was partly successful. That will clue her in without Ronald becoming suspicious. Once we meet up, I can explain what Monster Boggs wants, and we can leave. She can rejoin Ronald at Les’.”

  “One problem. Actually, two problems. How do we find each other once we’re parted? Especially since Bumpy’s is always a crush.”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Here’s the greater problem. I don’t know this Daphne,” he lied. “How am I supposed to find a complete stranger?”

  She stared fixedly through the windshield. The road prevented the gleaming bonnet from edging around a trundling lorry.

  “We must stay together, Filly.” He preferred that. A side street offered a quicker route to Chelsea. “I’ll plow through the crowd. You come in my wake.”

  “Like a juggernaut? An unstoppable force flinging bodies to the left and right? While I come meekly behind.”

  “Not meekly,” he protected her self-deprecation.

  “Not meekly,” she agreed. “That’s impossible at a Bumpy party.”

  “And if your Daphne and Ronald aren’t at this Bumpy party?”

  “On to gate-crash Simone’s supper. I may never receive another invitation from her.”

  “They come so often?”

  “Every month or so. I’m a prized guest, you see. I’ll converse with the most awkward guest, and I never mind where she seats me at table.”

  “Because the food is excellent. That French chef.”

  “Exactly! The salary of a mannequin does not stretch to tender cuts of beef and delicate sauces and ingenuous desserts.”

  Nor did the salary of a test driver. “What does the salary of a mannequin stretch to?”

  “Fish and chips. Bubble and squeak. Mostly beans on toast although Mrs. Kittner in the flat below us often sells us meat pasties. Simone’s dinners make up for Mrs. Hampstead in the dressing room and hours pretending to float on air while pins are sticking from seams and my shoes are pinching my toes.” She cast him a pleased smile when he laughed.

  “Which is the reason you’ve had difficulty scraping up the money for Boggs, you and Daphne.”

  “She cannot ask Ronald for the money, not even as a loan. She pawned the bracelet he gave her, then the next day he asked why she didn’t wear it, so she had to retrieve it.”

  “Filly.”

  She turned slightly. Passing street lamps flashed on her face before dropping her back into shadow. Her large eyes begged him not to—what?

  “The photos may seem indecent, but they were years ago, before your friend met this Ronald. That’s what you told me. Surely her fiancé can forgive her if he loves her?”

  “Daphne won’t risk it. Besides, Monster Boggs has the letters.”

  He turned left, right, then left again, then put his foot down to gain back the time lost with those turns. “What’s in those letters? You called them indiscreet.”

  “I don’t know. Daphne said they were worse than the photos because they’re recent. I told you that.”

 

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