His smile invited Lucy to share the joke.
“Yes, yes, I’ll see you at Tosca. No, darling, I won’t forget. Ta-ta to you, too.” Dropping the receiver into the cradle, Philip Schuyler let out an exaggerated breath. “Hello, hello. It’s Linda, isn’t it?”
“Lucy. Lucy Young.” Lucy took a half step back. “If you’re busy, I can come back . . .”
Philip Schuyler waved her forward. “No, no, come in. I needed an excuse.” His teeth were very white and very even. Almost as white and as even as those of Didi Shippen, who smiled out from a silver frame on the corner of his desk. “Those have the unfortunate look of work about them.”
Charm. That was the word for it. Philip Schuyler had an easy charm that was nearly impossible to resist.
But Lucy was very good at resisting.
Stepping briskly forward, she dealt out the files like a hand of cards, laying them out on the cluttered surface of his desk. “The Merola draft contract . . . Mr. Samson’s letter of intent . . . and Mr. Cochran’s memo.”
Mr. Schuyler turned the files over in his hands. “Read it . . . read it . . . rubbish.” Looking conspiratorially at Lucy, he said, “Cochran means well, but what he doesn’t know about lease law would fill—well, something extremely large. Don’t tell him I said that.”
Lucy clasped her hands behind her back. “Of course not, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Other than smother my stepmother?” Mr. Schuyler kicked back in his chair, looking Lucy up and down from her sensible pumps to the hair she had knotted up at the base of her neck. She was uncomfortably aware of the curls escaping in damp wisps from her usually neat coiffure. “So you’re to be Meg’s replacement, then.”
The way his voice dropped made it sound strangely intimate.
“Yes, sir.” Lucy kept her eyes focused on the studio portrait of Didi Shippen. “I am available to assist you in any way that Meg did.”
Mr. Schuyler eyed her speculatively. “And some ways she didn’t? Don’t look so horrified! I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . .” He rested his elbows on the discarded files, looking up at her from under his blond lashes with boyish candor. “I’m in a bit of a bind. And you might be just the person to help me out.”
“I can type a hundred words per minute, take shorthand dictation, and operate a telegraph machine.” She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t resist adding, “I don’t smother.”
Philip Schuyler rolled his shoulders. “This is a . . . different sort of favor.” Another flash of those white, white teeth. “No smothering involved.”
Lucy’s heart sank a little. So he was going to be one of those? She’d dealt with them before, at Sterling Bates. Mr. Gregson, who seemed to think that the role of secretary was merely an audition for that of mistress—she’d soon seen him off, with high collars, a pair of false glasses, and an unflattering hairstyle—and Mr. Danzig, who pinched indiscriminately, and often inaccurately.
Didi Shippen’s face smiled serenely from its silver frame.
“I am delighted to assist in any way that is appropriate to my position,” said Lucy woodenly.
“Spoken like a true Portia.” Mr. Schuyler’s smile broadened into a grin. “It’s nothing like that, Miss Young. Whatever you might be thinking.”
Lucy could feel the color in her cheeks deepen. She wasn’t accustomed to being teased. “I wasn’t—”
“Oh, yes, you were. And I can’t blame you. Lawyers can be old goats, can’t they?”
“I wouldn’t say—”
“No, of course you wouldn’t.” Fran had said Mr. Schuyler could charm the bees off the trees. At the time, Lucy had thought scornfully that it was more that anything in pants could charm the blouse off Fran. But she was beginning to understand just what the other woman meant. It was very hard to maintain the suitable air of professional detachment when Mr. Schuyler was looking at one with that mixture of boyish earnestness and mischief. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t myself. It’s just a bit of . . . client development.”
“Client development?” Lucy echoed.
“Yes.” Mr. Schuyler steepled his fingers in front of him. “You know how busy we’ve all been with Merola—”
Not too busy to squire Prunella Pratt to Tosca, thought Lucy, but didn’t say it.
“Well, there’s this Mr. Ravenel, from Charleston. He has an art gallery down there, and he’s thinking of expanding his operations to New York. Mr. Cromwell is particularly concerned that he should be extended every courtesy. Now”—Mr. Schuyler heaved a long-suffering sigh—“Ravenel just wired to let us know that he arrives in town on Friday.”
Lucy tilted her head, indicating she was listening.