Sweet Revenge

roar. Mullioned windows held out the blast of autumn wind that came from the sea. Huge Victorian furniture, the sideboards groaning with silver and crystal, seemed cozy in the enormous room.
    They dined on the house specialty of beef Wellington while candles in heavy pewter holders flickered around them and music came from an old man and his gleaming violin.
    She’d never expected to be relaxed with Philip. Not like this, not so she could laugh and listen and linger over brandy. He knew old movies, which were still her passion, though for now he skirted around her mother and her tragedy. They skipped back another generation to Hepburn, Bacall, Cable, and Tracy.
    It disarmed her that he could remember dialogue, and could mimic it amazingly well. Both her English and her talent for accents had come from the screen, small and large. Since her love of fantasy had come naturally enough through Phoebe, she couldn’t help feeling kindred with him.
    She discovered he had an interest in gardening, whichhe indulged both at his country home and in the greenhouse attached to his home in London.
    “It’s difficult to imagine you puttering around and scouting out weeds. But it explains the calluses.”
    “Calluses?”
    “On your hands,” she said, and immediately regretted her slip. What should have been a casual observation seemed too personal, too intimate with candlelight and violins. “They don’t suit the rest of you.”
    “Better than you think,” he murmured. “We all have our images and illusions, don’t we?”
    She thought she felt the sting of a double entendre and neatly sidestepped with a comment about the gardens of Buckingham Palace.
    They’d traveled to many of the same places. Over brandy they learned they both had stayed at the Excelsior in Rome during the same week five years before. What wasn’t mentioned was that Adrianne had been there to relieve a contessa of a suite of diamonds and rubies. Philip had been on one of his last jobs, acquiring a pouch of unset gems from a movie mogul. Both of them smiled reminiscently at their separate memories.
    “I had a particularly lovely time in Rome that summer,” Adrianne remembered as they started back out to the car. A lovely time that had amounted to roughly three hundred and fifty million lire.
    “And I.” Philip’s take had been nearly half again that amount when he’d bartered the stones in Zurich. “It’s a pity we didn’t run into each other.”
    Adrianne slid across the plush seat. “Yes.” She would have enjoyed drinking heavy red wine and walking down the steamy streets of Rome with him. But she was glad she hadn’t met him then. He would have distracted her as, unfortunately, he was distracting her now. His leg brushed casually against hers as the car began to roll. It was a good thing her work at Madeline’s would be so straightforward.
    “There’s a café there with the most incredible ice cream.”
    “San Filippo,” Adrianne said with a laugh. “I gain five pounds whenever I sit down at that cafe.”
    “Perhaps one day we’ll find ourselves there together.”
    His finger grazed her cheek, just enough to remind herof the game to be played, and it wouldn’t pay to enjoy it too much. With some regret she drew back. “Perhaps.”
    She’d moved only slightly, but he’d felt the distance grow. A strange woman, he mused. The exotic looks, that come-hither mouth, the quick flashes of passion he saw from time to time in her eyes. All real enough, but deceiving. She wasn’t the kind of woman to settle comfortably, pliably, in a man’s arms, but one who would freeze that man with a word or a look. He’d always preferred a woman who enjoyed an open physicality, an easy sexual relationship. And yet he found himself not only intrigued but drawn to the contrasts in Adrianne.
    Philip knew as well as she the value of timing. He waited until they drove into London.
    “What were you doing in the Fumes’ bedroom last night?”
    She nearly jumped, nearly swore. The evening, the company, the warmth of brandy, had relaxed her enough to take her off guard. It was only the years of self-training that enabled her to look at him with vague curiosity. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I asked what you were doing in the Fumes’ bedroom during the party.” Idly, he curled the tips of her hair around his finger. A man could get lost in hair like that, he thought. Drown in it.
    “What makes you think I was?”
    “Not think, know. Your scent’s