Olive glanced down the stairwell and saw a faint triangle of light on the floor below.
She bolted without thinking, right past the entry to the sixth floor and up the last narrow flight to the seventh floor. A storeroom, wasn’t it? She’d never been there. But she couldn’t go to her room; the intruder would hear her opening the vestibule door, would hear her creeping down the corridor to her cramped little chamber.
But no one would be going as high as the seventh-floor stairs.
She waited in the shadows of the landing. There was no door here; the stairs opened right out to a short hallway. A small round window let in a hint of moonlight, illuminating a narrow portal at the end of the hall, six or seven feet away.
A voice called out in a low, rumbling whisper.
“Is someone there?”
Olive took a single step back, toward the door.
“Hello?” the voice whispered again. Not a threatening whisper at all; only curious. Curious and quite male, she thought. There was no doubt of that. The whisper had resonance; it had timbre; it matched, somehow, the expansive, backslapping voices she’d overheard a few hours ago, when the boys had arrived home together in a cab from the station.
He’s sneaking out, she thought. Sneaking out to see a shopgirl, perhaps, or to meet his friends for God knew what mischief.
Olive stood quietly, hardly breathing, while her heart smacked and smacked against the wall of her chest.
Then footsteps, careful and quiet and heavy. Making their way not down toward the first floor, Olive realized in horror, as the tread became louder, but up. Up toward the seventh floor, and Olive’s helpless and guilty body on the landing.
She took another silent step back, and another. The door was at her shoulders now.
A shadow lifted itself up the final steps and came to rest on the landing. Olive could see a large hand on the newel post, a large frame blocking the moonlight from the small round window.
“Hello there,” said the voice, surprisingly gentle. “Who the devil are you?”
“I’m Olive,” she whispered. “The new housemaid. I—I couldn’t sleep.”
“Ah, of course. I couldn’t sleep, either.”
Olive fingered her dressing gown.
A hand extended toward her. “I’m Harry Pratt. The younger son, by about twelve minutes.”
Olive, not knowing what else to do, reached out and took the offered hand and gave it a too-brisk shake. His palm was warm and dry and quite large, swallowing hers in a single gulp, and he smelled very faintly of tobacco. She whispered, without thinking, “Are you the wild one or the artistic one?”
The outline of his face adjusted, as if he were smiling. “Both, I expect.”
“Well. It’s—It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pratt.”
“Just Harry. Have you been having a look in there?” He nodded to the door behind her.
She hesitated. What else could she say? “Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“Of what?”
“Of my paintings, of course.”
“I—I don’t know. I couldn’t see much.” She turned the last word upward, like a question.
“You didn’t switch the light on?”
“No.”
The young man took a single step forward, and good Lord, just like that, the moonlight from the window poured in around them, and Olive lost her breath.
Harry Pratt was the handsomest man she had ever seen.
She thrust her hand behind her back and braced it against the door.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Y—you’re not?” She was stammering like a schoolgirl, utterly unnerved by the angle of his cheekbones, drenched in moonlight. It was unfair, she thought, the effect of unexpected beauty on a sensible mind. (Olive had always prided herself on her sensible mind.) He was Henry Pratt’s son; he was probably a reprobate, a complete ass, undeserving in every way, no doubt just chock-full of those base male appetites that had to be locked up every night by Mrs. Keane. And yet Olive stammered for him. That was biology for you.
Harry Pratt was tilting his head as he stared at her. “No,” he said, a little absent, and Olive had to think back and remember what question he was answering. He tilted his head the other way, and then he moved to her side and peered, eyes narrowed, muttering to himself, as if she were a specimen brought up for his inspection.
“What’s wrong?” Olive whispered.
“I need you,” said Harry Pratt, and he snatched her hand, threw open the narrow door, and pulled her inside.
Three
JULY 1920
Lucy
“There’ll be no gentleman callers in the rooms.” Matron looked at Lucy sternly over the rims of her spectacles, spectacles that appeared to be there for no purpose other than overlooking potentially problematic young female persons. “A gentleman in one of the rooms is a cause for immediate expulsion.”
Did they throw the errant sinner on the street with all her goods and chattels?