Beatrix made a muffled sound that might have been a groan she caught in time. “You’re going to make me stand up in front of two hundred thousand people?”
Lydia’s apologetic look deepened. “More likely two hundred and fifty thousand.”
He glanced at Beatrix, raising his eyebrows. This was her call. Not that he particularly wanted to do it, either.
She heaved a sigh. “A short speech.Veryshort, OK? A glorified introduction for you.”
Her sister shifted, glancing at Rosemarie. “Well …”
“We were thinking Lydia would introduce the two of you,” Rosemarie said. “Seeing as you’re the famous ones.”
Beatrix stared at the women in obvious horror, struck silent.
He had no trouble speaking for them both. “Absolutelynot.”
“It doesn’t have to be long,” Rosemarie said. “Lydia would still give the main speech.”
Lydia clasped her hands. “I’ll help you write it—please say you’ll do it? Please?”
It was a foregone conclusion, of course. When had either of them refused her?
As they slogged all over Washington the following day on the errands she’d assigned them, he imagined going off-script during his speech to tell the crowd a few things. “I advise you to run like the wind if Lydia Harper says she has a favor to ask you,” perhaps. Or: “Fair warning: This is how Rosemarie Dane punishes you if you screw up.”
By the time they escaped the final vendor, he had no energy left to walk ten blocks to the train. He put out an arm to hail a cab.
One zipped past, carrying passengers. The next stopped half a block shy of them to disgorge one, and he grabbed Beatrix’s hand to run for it before it got away. That gave them an unobstructed view of the man getting out.
Frederick Draden.
Peter stopped dead, heart lurching in surprise and alarm. Draden stared back, similarly still. He looked healthier, perhaps recovered from whatever had ailed him before.
“Omnimancer.” The vice president’s son said his title quietly, almost somberly. He inclined his head at Beatrix, as if they were on a social call. Into the charged silence, he added, “My—” And in the second of hesitation that followed,for no other reason than the set of Draden’s jaw, Peter had the irrational impression that the wizard might say “apologies.”
“My regards,” Draden muttered instead, which was almost as ridiculous.
Then he strode off, Peter watching him go in open-mouthed shock.
“Where to?” the taxi driver called.
Peter pulled himself together. “Union Station,” he said, giving Beatrix a hand in. She was trembling. Putting an arm around her, he whispered, “Are you all right?”
“Why, as I live and breathe!” The driver, looking at them through the rearview mirror, broke into a grin. “Romeo and Juliet?”
Peter covered up his sigh with a smile. “That’s us.” If they hadn’t become the star-crossed headline grabbers, no one would have rescued them from those disastrous hospital bills, so he wasn’t going to be ill-natured about it now.
“Boy, oh boy,” the driver said. “Soft, what light through mine clunker breaks?”
Beatrix’s lips turned up in what appeared to be a genuine smile. Peter slipped his hand into hers.
“It is the east, and Beatrix is the sun,” he said, answering the driver’s mock Shakespeare with some of his own.
“Hah! Joe at your service—glad to meet you.” The man lifted his cap in an exaggerated gesture. “I just might win the pool this month.”
“Pool?”
“A friendly bet among some cabbies—how many famous people can you pick up. You know, senators, generals, cabinet members …”
“Vice-presidential offspring,” Beatrix put in with a sardonic edge.
