“I seem to be missing a trunk.”
The hotel desk clerk turned to face him. “Monsieur?”
“I had three—two large and one small,” Patrick explained. “Your porters only delivered two.”
“Désolé, monsieur. It must have been sent to the wrong room.”
“I’m very keen on getting it back. You see, it has my evening clothes in it and without them, I cannot go to dinner.”
“Oui, monsieur. I’m certain it will turn up as soon as the recipients realize a mistake has been made.”
“It’s a brown Vuitton. Quite large. Monogrammed with the initials P. W.”
“P.W.,” the clerk repeated. “Oui.”
“Usually I would have my man look after this sort of thing,” Patrick said. “But I didn’t see much use for a valet in Africa.”
The man nodded in sympathy.
“So, you understand my predicament. If you could help me find my missing trunk, I would be grateful,” Patrick said. “Perhaps you could send your porters to look in the other rooms, or—”
Just over the hotel clerk’s shoulder, Patrick watched a young woman walk through the foyer. He assumed she was a woman because she wore her tangled brown hair tied back with a ribbon. But she was small enough to be an Eton schoolboy and, in fact, it seemed she was wearing one’s breeches.
“Ah,” the clerk said, noticing Patrick’s fascination with her. “We have asked the mademoiselle not to walk through the hotel dressed like that. But she has been here so long and always pays her bill on time, it is hard to press the issue.”
“Who is she?”
“I do not know her name, but her father is Bedford Talbot-Martin.”
“The explorer?” he asked.
“Oui.”
Patrick studied her more closely. Miss Talbot-Martin was quite thin, with remarkably long, slender arms. Despite her small stature, she carried herself well—cool, detached, and confident, but without the arrogance of many women he knew in London.
In fact, if Patrick had not seen her wearing those ridiculous jodhpurs, he would have sworn she was a ballerina in some traveling company.
Instead, she looked like a stablehand from a second-rate American circus.
Patrick had certainly never seen a grown woman prancing about in gentlemen’s riding breeches before. Although, he doubted whether anyone in his limited circle of acquaintance would ever dare to be so bold.
Miss Talbot-Martin was bold. There was no doubt about that.
She was also very tanned—more so than from a few hours on a boat deck or an afternoon on the beach. Clearly, the young woman spent a great deal of time in the elements. It made sense that her father would be an explorer, and that she would go and do as she pleased. That she would wear jodhpurs in public without caring what other people thought of her.
And it made sense that she would walk right past Patrick without even noticing him. Because a girl like that did not have to notice anyone. They were all too busy noticing her.
Even if she weren’t dressed so dramatically, there was just something about her. Some wild, honey-eyed recklessness. Like a horse he instinctively knew would bolt the moment he reached out to touch it. But one he would touch anyway, because it was worth the risk. Because he admired its spirit.
He admired Miss Talbot-Martin’s spirit. He knew that without even meeting her.
As Patrick watched her disappear up the stairs, he hardly even noticed the small Arab boy pulling on his sleeve.
And he hardly heard the hotel clerk speaking. “Monsieur,” the man said.
Patrick turned toward him. “What?”
“Your trunk,” the clerk repeated. “It has been found and brought up to your room.”
They both looked at Patrick expectantly. As if finding his trunk was the most amazing thing that could have happened to him. Perhaps it would have been, if they had found it a moment earlier. But now Patrick realized he no longer cared.
CHAPTER THREE
After seeing Schoville and the crates off to London, Linley took breakfast in the hotel garden. She sat in a wicker basket chair, eating croissants with fresh jam and drinking orange juice. French breakfasts were better than their heavy English counterparts, and she always looked forward to spending time in a French colony.
It suddenly crossed her mind as odd that, as an English girl, she’d been around the world, been to almost all of the British colonies, but not to England itself. Never been to London. Never seen the British Museum, even though her livelihood depended on it.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Archie said, strolling across the lawn and taking the chair across from her.
“I was thinking that I’ve never been to London.”
“And you’re all the better for it.” He poured himself a glass of orange juice before continuing, “Besides, you have no business there.”
“But Schoville goes, and Reginald goes. Even you and Papa go,” Linley said. “I want to see the British Museum.”
“You practically have seen the British Museum—one piece at a time.”