An Encounter at the Museum Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  An Encounter at the Museum

  Copyright © 2013 by Claudia Dain, Michelle Marcos, Deb Marlowe, Ava Stone

  Cover Design by Lily Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A Chance Encounter – Claudia Dain

  An Unexpected Encounter – Deb Marlowe

  Encounter with an Adventurer – Ava Stone

  Bad Luck Encounter – Michelle Marcos

  To all who've been waiting for another Courtesan story, and especially those of you who've been hounding me to the ends of the earth, this one's for you! And the next one is for you as well. And the next one.

  Ava, Deb, Michelle, it's been a delight. When are we going to do this again?

  London 1804

  James Caversham was a bastard.

  He was not bad, as men go, but he was a bastard. He was not good as men are generally measured either, but, either way, he was still a bastard.

  His mother loved him in the way that mothers do; protectively, lavishly, and openly. His father, who had not married his mother, thereby securing his bastard status, loved him in the way that fathers loved their bastard children; quietly, conservatively, and discreetly. But he was loved. He knew he was loved, and what’s more, he knew that his mother and his father loved each other. All in all, Jamie had little to complain of. His mother, Zoe Auvray, was of a cheerfully philosophical temper, so typical of the French, and had encouraged him to adopt the same outlook. He was not unhappy with his lot.

  But he was a bastard.

  In England, there were only so many opportunities for a bastard son, even if his father were the Duke of Aldreth. Especially as his father was the Duke of Aldreth. Aldreth had a son and heir, the Marquis of Hawksworth, and he had a daughter, Lady Amelia, married to one of the Duke of Hyde’s sons, though not the heir.

  Jamie was not an heir. He would never be an heir. He did not mind about that. But he did want a future and there was not enough of a future for him in England. Jamie Caversham was making his way and finding his future in Canada. Or he would be, once he had accomplished one final task for his mother.

  Zoe asked very little of him; when she did ask anything of him, he made it something of a point to meet and, indeed, succeed her expectations. In this instance, he suspected that her task had more to do with keeping him in England for a bit longer than to achieve her stated purpose, but he would fulfill her request nonetheless. So it was that he found himself striding toward the British Museum with a two o’clock appointment with Mr. Semple. Zoe, the daughter of a French aristocrat who did not survive the turbulence of French government, had left her his journal. It was just the sort of collection that the British Museum was renowned for acquiring for the highly selective Reading Room.

  It was also not the sort of appointment that his mother could make. She and Aldreth had been together for more than twenty years and their alliance was hardly a secret. Yet such a relationship was also never socially acknowledged, not in proper circles, the British Museum being a very proper circle.

  Being in Canada would make life so much simpler. There, no one would know or care who his parents were. Indeed, he would never make mention of it, that was certain.

  He approached Montagu House, the home of the British Museum, on the north-east side, crossing the wide grassy field, eager to do his duty to his mother and begin his new life. He was twenty-two. He was most eager for life to truly begin, life as he intended for it to be.

  The porter admitted him, the doors opening promptly upon his approach, and closing just as promptly behind him. The British Museum, once a private home, quite a nice one of red brick with stone dressing and sporting a palatial array of long windows, still functioned much as one though it had been transformed into the British Museum fifty years past. The time was going on two, the sun was shining and the front hall was nearly empty. Jamie had not expected to be met with smiles and bows, but he had expected his appointment time to have been honored.

  “I am here to see Mr. Semple,” Jamie said to the warder.

  The warder, the buttons on his livery gleaming, said, “I’m sorry, sir. The Archbishop required his presence. If you would care to wait, the Reading Room is available to you.”

  Having never been to the Reading Room of the British Museum, available only by appointment, Jamie nodded his acceptance to this suggestion and made his way through the hall to the painted stairs leading to the massive room. Large stuffed giraffes held pride of place at the top of the landing, looking serene and quite dead. Even for a man not yet living in the wild rusticity of Canada, Jamie knew that serenity and death did not always walk hand in hand.

  The room was large, the tables plentiful, the light abundant, the number of books incalculable. All that in a glance, and in that wide-cast glance, a woman. Her hair was blond, gleaming blond; even beneath her hat, strands and coils of blond hair shone like gold shavings on pale sand. Her fingers on the book in front of her were long and slender, tapering, gentle and graceful. Her torso was slim and the blurred line of her leg was long. Yes, all that in a glance, a very proper glance that took in the room, the volumes, the sunlight, the muted quiet of the place.

  A man sees a woman, the woman, in a very remarkable way. Acutely. Instantly. Powerfully. Aldreth had told him that early on, told him that he had married his wife in obedience to his father and chosen Zoe in obedience to his heart. Instantly and powerfully. Irrevocably.

  And so Jamie knew, or perhaps more importantly, believed that he had found his woman. She had blond hair and graceful fingers and a hat with dark pink ribbons on the crown. She was his. Or she would be, once he knew who she was.

  Miss Elizabeth Ardenzy came to the Reading Room as often as she could arrange it. She did not attend because she was in love with the written word. Oh, books had their place in life, she did not dispute it, but a few pages a day was quite enough for any normal person. No, she came to the Reading Room of the British Museum to get away from the dynamics of her home life. To be blunt, her family was quite a trial to her. She suspected that they might well say that she was quite a trial to them, but she discounted that nearly entirely. She was a perfectly nice person, and she based that entirely on her experience, not on her reading choices. Based on her reading choices she was most certainly the most wonderful, most guileless person in all the world; people in poetry and dramas engaged in the most remarkably dire and dangerous behaviors. She did not imagine that it would be possible to live through anything close to what they did, and in fact, they often did not. Hence the drama and poetry of the thing.

  In any event, Elizabeth Ardenzy did not give much thought to what she was doing to put her family in a frenzy. She was too busy giving thought to what they were doing to her. They wanted her to marry. Of course, they wanted her to marry, and to marry well. There was nothing particularly dramatic about that. It was only that, as her father had done quite well in the City he duly expected his daughters to make good on that effort and marry into the peerage, money being the lure to get a peer to marry a Cit. It was not possible that any peer would want to marry Elizabeth for herself. No, that was too ridiculous.

  It was more than a little irritating. Elizabeth knew that she was a nice-looking girl. She put quite a lot of effort into being a nice-looking girl. She did n
ot eat more than one sweet a day, and she brushed her hair one hundred times a day, and she cleaned her teeth twice a day. True, she had got her perfectly lovely hair from her German great-grandmother, and her blue eyes from her father, but she worked to keep it all in top form and she did think she should get some credit for that.

  Her father did not agree with her. He rarely did.

  Her twin sister, Elena, did. Elena was so logical, so reasonable. Of course, Elena was so logical and reasonable that she agreed with Papa that marrying into the peerage was a very good idea and was willing to do whatever Papa wanted her to do in that regard.

  What Papa expected them to do was not much, not really. They were simply to accept the first offer from a man of property and title. How old the man was or how many children he already had (or how many teeth) was inconsequential. It may have been inconsequential to Papa, and even to Elena, but it was not inconsequential to Elizabeth.

  The whole trouble was, she could think of nothing to do about it. For all her dramatic reading, she had no dramatic ideas of her own. Elena, actually, had the more dramatic turn of both mind and temperament, but she was not turning that ability to escaping an arranged marriage of the sort that Shakespeare made such use of.

  Elizabeth was but a day or two from being formally engaged to Lord Redding. Lord Redding was not terribly old and not terribly horrid looking and not terribly terrible. He bored Elizabeth, but was that any reason to refuse a man?

  Not according to Papa.

  Why Lord Redding had not asked Elena to marry him she could not fathom. Elena and she were identical twins, and Lord Redding had not spoken to either one of them enough to know the difference between them, and yet he had definitely paid more kind attention to her than to Elena. Elizabeth might have suspected Elena did something to put Horatio, Lord Redding off the scent if not for knowing that Elena was too reasonable to do any such thing.

  So, if she could not find something dramatic to do very quickly, she was going to be married to Lord Redding. She tried to be reasonable about it. But she couldn’t, quite. She read and read, and still found herself just as trapped as she had been that morning. It was all completely disheartening. She should try to be more logical about it all, like Elena. Yes, she should do that very thing.

  It was upon that very mature, very dutiful thought that a man sat down across the table from her, a very worn leather book in his hands. He was the most darkly dangerous, most delightfully handsome man she had ever seen. His hair was black and short about his face, his eyes were crystalline blue, his features finely drawn and aristocratically cast.

  It was very difficult to hold to dutiful thoughts when dark and dangerous sat down at one’s table. That’s what she would tell Elena, if it came to that.

  Elizabeth kept her eyes upon the page, refusing to look at him beyond that first assessing glance. She was a properly reared young woman, in fact, much more than properly. She had been quite diligently brought up so that she would be able to slip into life among the aristocracy with nary a ripple.

  Of course, Papa was quite wrong about that, she was certain. One did not slip into the aristocracy like cream into a pastry; if that were so everyone would be slipping into it. She had been provided with endless lessons in deportment, art, music, dancing, and French. She had been allowed to dabble in Greek literature, mildly amusing at best, and botanical studies, tedious at best. She did think that there must be more to the aristocracy than a proficiency in French and the ability to dance the latest steps. She excelled at both, better than Elena anyway, but she did not think that her French was the reason Lord Redding had become tangled in her corset ties, Elena’s expression. Elena, when not under Papa’s direct gaze, could manage quite a coarse turn of phrase.

  She turned a page. She had not read a word, but she turned the page. Dark and dangerous must believe that she was not distracted by him and that she had not even noticed him. She knew that is precisely what well-brought up women who were destined for the aristocracy did.

  “A tantalizing read?” he asked.

  He sat directly across from her. The room was quite well populated, the warders near to hand, yet she felt a shiver of danger at the sound of his voice. He had a lovely voice, beautifully modulated, a warmly resonant baritone. She excelled at music; how could she fail to notice such a thing?

  She did not answer. Well brought up young women did not respond to strange men. Especially not dangerously handsome strange men.

  “Which play are you reading?” he asked. “One of the tragedies? Your expression is too severe for a comedy.”

  At which point, she looked up at him, met his gaze, and realized instantly that well-brought up young women were woefully ill-prepared to stare into the pale blue gaze of handsome, virile strangers.

  Yes, virile. She was quite well-read. She knew very well what it meant to be virile and what virile was presumed to look like. It looked exactly like this man.

  “My expression may be severe. It is not the fault of my reading,” she said, sounding quite nicely prim, if she did say so.

  “The fault lies with me? I hope you will confess otherwise.”

  “I will confess nothing. I do not know you, sir. This conversation is entirely inappropriate.”

  She turned another page she had not read. She was certain that he knew she had not read it since it was obvious that one could not talk and read at the same time.

  “Then allow me to introduce myself---”

  “That is hardly a solution,” she interrupted him. She should shut the book with a minor bang and draw the attention of one of the warders. That would stop all this quite completely. She did not shut, bang, or draw. She whispered and kept pretending to read.

  “Do you have another, better solution?”

  He also whispered and kept his gaze on the books stacked along the walls behind her.

  “I am not adept at clandestine meetings, sir, if that is what you are implying.”

  She was reading Romeo and Juliet; clandestine meetings were at the forefront of her thoughts, courtesy of Mr. Shakespeare.

  “I will imply whatever you wish me to imply. I am completely accommodating, Lady . . .?”

  “I am a simple Miss. Or simply a Miss.”

  “Nothing about you is simple, Miss.” His blue eyes scored her face; she could feel it. It was quite unlike anything she had ever before experienced.

  “You are quite incorrect,” she said, looking at him briefly, looking back down at the page, a jumble of letters in black. She turned the page, glanced down again, and read something about hands touching, lips touching, palms and pilgrims. “I am ordinary in the extreme.”

  “Is it possible to be both extreme and ordinary? I should say not,” he said.

  “We must disagree then.”

  “Our first disagreement,” he said. “How swiftly this acquaintance progresses. Soon we shall be finding our own compromise, and then laughing about it with our friends.”

  “You are too bold, sir,” she said. Juliet said something very similar to Romeo on the page beneath her fingertips. It was far from comforting.

  “If I am bold it is because you inspire me to be, and require me to be. I would be whatever you want and whatever you need. If you would only give me your name?”

  She smiled. She could not help herself.

  “‘Tis a small thing. I suppose you may have it. Elizabeth.”

  She would not give him her last name; that was too personal by half. He could not find her, if he was of a mind to, without her full name.

  “Elizabeth,” he said, smiling. “‘Tis no small thing, Miss Elizabeth. A name is never a small thing. My name is James. I, too, am merely a mister.”

  He was not merely anything. The proof was sitting before her.

  “Mr. James, then. How very nice to meet you.”

  “My mother calls me Jamie.”

  “How nice for you and your mother. My mother calls me Elizabeth.”

  “I shall call you Capulet. Romeo and J
uliet, isn’t it?” he said, indicating the book in front of her. “Will you call me Montague? Appropriate given the setting, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They came to a very bad end.”

  “Tragic, certainly, but they loved each other passionately, consuming all in their path, until their ending.”

  “An ending that came too soon.”

  “Cannot that always be said?”

  “Not to those who live to old age, surrounded by generations of family.”

  “I disagree. I think that death always comes too soon, catching one by the heels, no matter the age as measured on the calendar. Love is either hard or soft, enduring or ephemeral, passionate or pleasant. Hard, enduring and passionate are to be preferred, wouldn’t you agree?”

  She most certainly would not, though his words had started an unpleasant heat to swirl in her center, building, uncomfortable. This is what came of dallying with strangers.

  “This is not a topic for casual discussion, particularly between strangers.”

  “We are no longer strangers, Miss Elizabeth, and we merely discuss the dramas of William Shakespeare. What is more civilized than a literary discussion? Now, do you not agree? Hard and enduring over soft and pleasant?”

  “I would not presume to judge. I have no experience of . . . love.” She did not think they were discussing love in the way she had been taught to think of love, namely as duty, marriage, and children. Love was a word to mean loyalty to one’s family line, the creation of a legacy and the building of wealth, from generation unto generation.

  “We all have experience of love, even in the dreaming of it,” he said. He was such a hard looking man, all finely cut lines and sharp features, his coloring so dramatic, yet he spoke so romantically of love. She could not fathom it.

  “Parental love,” she said, “most certainly.”

  She should not engage him, should not encourage this topic, yet she was engaged and she did encourage. She blamed Juliet Capulet. Certainly she would never have behaved in such a shameless and reckless manner if not for the example of the reckless Juliet.