She had decided on the location some months before and had been quite excited about the planning and preparations. It was also a location where her guests from beyond London might stay afterward before returning home.
I had stayed over as her seamstress had arrived first thing with the costume she had been working on for my aunt. Everyone who attended the party was to be in full costume. She had decided to attend as Marie Antoinette and had modeled the costume for me.
“I had Madame copy the gown from a painting, and I will have make-up to complete the costume. What do you think?”
I was not particularly acquainted with the French queen, undoubtedly due to the fact that she had been dead for almost one hundred years, and the fact that I was not the art aficionado in the family. That appreciation belonged to my sister.
However, I had complimented her and Madame. The gown was exquisite. Then there were the plans for the forthcoming party that she wanted to discuss with me.
The food would be prepared at the hotel. And then there were the decorations that had been in the planning for weeks, a magician and actors who were to perform throughout the evening, and she had persuaded my friend Templeton to give readings as well as call spirits forth with the Ouija board.
The previous evening I had explained to Brodie that I needed to assist with the holiday preparations my aunt was making. He had seemed most amenable at the time, considering the recent change in our relationship.
Admittedly, I wasn’t at all certain what to call our relationship— partners, associates most certainly in the inquiry cases that we had undertaken since that first one when I acquired his services in the matter of my sister’s disappearance.
Now, there was the other aspect of our relationship. Of an intimate nature, one might call it, that my sister had pointed out.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Mikaela. I don’t know what you’re dithering about. It’s quite obvious.”
When I had demanded to know what she was talking about, she had been uncharacteristically blunt.
“I believe it has to do with ‘toe-curling’ as our aunt would call it, something quite descriptive don’t you think, and something I had never experienced prior to Mr. Warren…” she added, then quickly went on. “And otherthings,” she said with a casual wave of her hand.
“Most certainly, Mr. Brodie is quite a stirring man. And as your protagonist in your novels, Emma Fortescue would say, he undoubtedly ‘tastes most deliciously.’ I believe that is what you wrote in your last book.”
I wasn’t aware that she had been reading my books as she had once declared them to be somewhat risqué and not the usual literary sort. However, she obviously had read at least one with that particular reference.
“I don’t care to discuss it,” I had informed her.
The problem was if I were to discussit, I would choose to discuss it with my best friend, someone I trusted. And that was precisely the problem. In the time we had known each other, I could say most definitely that Brodie was my very good friend and that I trusted him, with my life as it turned out on more than one occasion.
And as to thething, it would have to be regarding his proposal of marriage. It had come in one of the rare moments apart from the business of murder, blackmail, and extortion.
It was simply done, just the two of us, not what someone else might have expected, and I was quite undone by it all. And that was the problem, I am not in the habit of being undone.
I have endeavored to be in control of every aspect of my life. I had most certainly not come undone with excitement at a previous proposal of marriage that I had quickly escaped.
In the handful of years since, I had my travels, the success of my novels and the inquiry cases I shared with Brodie. I was fine with that and quite pleased with my life. I didn’t need anyone...
Then, there was Brodie.
He could be quite obstinate and at times difficult to deal with. However as my aunt had told me when she recommended him to me— he was the most honorable person she had ever met, and he could be trusted with the most difficult of situations. Most certainly my sister’s situation at the time had been very difficult.
There was that other thing, of course, that my sister had most recently described— he made my toes curl. It was a simple as that.
Realistically, it might also be that edge of danger that always seemed to surround him that intrigued me. Or it might be as simple as the soft-spoken way he called me lass.
Ridiculous as that was, I was far from being a lass any longer, as had been pointed out in the dailies more than once about my status asspinster novelist, by more than one pundit.
It might have been the way he looked at me with that dark gaze as if he saw me, really saw me with all my faults and at my worst moments, and then with just the touch of his hand…
His proposal was unexpected along with the simple token he had given me, a medallion that had once belonged to his mother.
However, it was what he told me next that no one, not even the man I had once been betrothed to had ever understood, or thought or said— “I will give ye time…”
And that was the part that I suppose was terrifying. He knew me, along with my fears and anger, along with the stubbornness and my independent nature, as no one ever had or cared to.
We had parted the previous evening after leaving Marylebone and our meeting with Sir John and Lady Mainwaring.
