Читать книгу The Seduction Of Ellen - Nan Ryan, Nan Ryan - Страница 9

As soon as the sun rose the next morning, an impatient, robe-clad Alexandra Landseer knocked on Ellen’s bedroom door.

“Wake up, Ellen,” Alexandra called loudly. “Get out of bed now! I want you at that West End address in time to catch Mister Corey before he leaves. Get up, Ellen. Get up.”

Ellen grimaced, gritted her teeth, but dutifully rose and began to dress. When, moments later, she entered the suite’s spacious drawing room, Alexandra looked up from the sumptuous breakfast she was hungrily devouring.

Chewing and swallowing quickly, Alexandra explained, “I didn’t order anything for you. There’s not enough time. You can have breakfast when you return.” She patted her mouth with a large linen napkin and added, “The carriage is waiting downstairs. Go now and find out all you can from this Mister Corey.”

“Good morning, Aunt Alexandra,” Ellen said flatly.

“Yes, yes, good morning,” Alexandra muttered distractedly. “You tell Mister Corey he is to come to the hotel and meet privately with me at eight sharp this evening. Don’t take no for an answer. I must speak with him.”

Ellen gave no reply. Alexandra was still firing off commands when Ellen left the suite.

The journey across London wasn’t as nerve-racking in the daytime, but when she reached her destination, Ellen found the building and its unkempt surroundings even more depressing than she’d remembered. It was glaringly obvious that anyone who lived in this run-down tenement was impoverished.

One would assume that the person who held the secret to eternal youth would be incredibly wealthy. Ellen rolled her eyes heavenward, silently damning Alexandra and her latest exercise in idiocy.

When Ellen stood before the door to #203, she took a deep breath and knocked. This time her knock was promptly answered. Answered by a tall, spare man with lustrous coal-black hair and eyes to match.

The carnival barker from last night’s street fair!

Ellen’s eyes widened in surprise and alarm. Again she felt the racing of her heart, a weakness in her knees. Struck speechless, she started to turn away without stating the purpose of her call.

But the man who’d opened the door took her arm and drew her inside.

“I’m Mister Corey,” he said in a low, flat voice with a hint of a drawling Southern accent. “And you are?”

“I…ah…Ellen Cornelius,” she managed, her voice slightly shrill.

“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” asked the unsmiling Mister Corey, releasing Ellen’s arm.

Nervous, rushing her words, she explained, “My aunt, Miss Alexandra Landseer, saw your advertisement in the newspaper and she…ah…she asked that I come here to learn more about this…this…water you claim is magic.”

Mister Corey nodded. “Come with me,” he said and directed her into a sparsely furnished sitting room where a small, bald, coppery-skinned man awaited.

Mister Corey made the introductions and offered Ellen a chair. He remained standing. Ellen sat down and listened politely as Padjan told her that he was an Anasazi Indian whose home was far away in America’s great Southwest. He spoke eloquently and excitedly of Magic Waters in the Lost City of the Anasazi, a city hidden high in the rugged canyonlands of Utah.

“The location of the Lost City,” he said with great authority, tapping his chest with a forefinger, “is known to me alone.” Ellen could hardly hide her skepticism, but she said nothing. Padjan continued, his dark eyes aglow, “In that secret place are Magic Waters from which a person can drink and stay forever young.” He paused, as if waiting for her to speak.

Not knowing how to respond, she said, the cynicism evident in her tone, “That I would like to see.”

“And you can,” said Padjan. “I will take you there if you so desire.” He smiled at Ellen then, his teeth very white in an incredibly smooth, youthful-looking face. “Drink of the waters,” he told her, “and the passing of time stops.”

At that, Ellen said resolutely, “I’ve no desire to make time stand still.” She glanced nervously at Mister Corey who was quietly watching her, arms folded, lifeless dark eyes fixed on her. “Nor is there any part of my youth I would wish to reclaim,” she continued, returning her attention to Padjan. “As I told you, my aunt sent me here. She’s the one who wants to live forever, not me.” Ellen abruptly rose to her feet. She looked from Padjan to Mister Corey and said, “My aunt has instructed me to bid you to visit her this evening. Can you do that? Both of you?”

“We can and we will,” said the smiling Padjan, rising to face her.

“Very good,” she said, turning away, then pausing and turning back. “Be at the Connaught Hotel at eight this evening.” She looked at Mister Corey. “The Connaught is in Mayfair by the—”

“I know where the Connaught is,” he said, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“Oh. Well, good. I just supposed that…”

“…someone like me had never been in the better part of London?” he finished for her.

“No, I…That isn’t what I meant.”

“That’s exactly what you meant,” he coolly accused and she flushed hotly because it was true.

Eager to get away from him, Ellen tensed when Mister Corey followed her to the door. He reached around her to open it. For a split second she stood directly before him, trapped between his tall, lean frame and the closed door. Instantly plagued with a bad case of the jitters, Ellen was terrified she would start trembling and that he would notice her nervousness.

Her anxious eyes fixed on the hand gripping the brass doorknob, she felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of her lungs.

Mister Corey languidly opened the door.

Ellen bolted into the dimly lit hallway and, without looking back, rushed down the stairs as if fleeing the devil himself.

Mister Corey stood in the open doorway looking after her, mildly amused by her obvious aversion to him. A slight smile briefly touched his lips.

But it never reached his eyes.

Alexandra Landseer, wearing her finest, was ready and eager to receive her invited guests. Her steel-gray hair had been dressed elaborately atop her head and she wore an expensive creation of silver-gray silk that would have been stunning on a younger, slimmer woman. Her wrinkled face had been liberally dusted with powder and her cheeks sported twin spots of rouge. Sparkling jewels graced the crepey folds of her neck and dangled from her fleshy earlobes.

On joining her aunt in the suite’s drawing room, Ellen had commented that it might not be wise to wear so many valuables for this particular occasion.

“After all, Aunt Alexandra,” Ellen reminded her, “I told you when I returned this morning that this Mister Corey is nothing more than a common carnival barker. I saw the man last night hawking his magic potion at a street fair.”

The gussied-up old woman made a sour face. “You had no intention of telling me about stopping at the fair, did you?”

“But I did tell you,” Ellen defended herself.

Alexandra replied, “Not last night you didn’t.”

“Last night. This morning. What difference does it make?”

Alexandra toyed with a priceless rope of pearls-and-diamonds dangling from her throat and pursed her lips. “Tell the truth, if you hadn’t recognized Mister Corey this morning, you would never have told me about going to the fair last night.”

Ellen crossed her arms over her chest. “And shame on me. I hadn’t realized that doing something as daring as going to a street fair on my own should be immediately reported.”

“Don’t you get smart with me, Ellen,” Alexandra warned, pointing a finger at her niece as the younger woman turned and left the room.

Alexandra ignored her niece’s surprising show of audacity. The heiress was in too good a humor to be bothered by Ellen’s reaction. Alexandra was as excited as a child waiting for Santa on Christmas morning. She was zealously looking forward to this evening’s meeting. It was to be, perhaps, the most important meeting of her entire life.

“Ellen,” Alexandra shouted loudly, “our visitors should be here soon. Where are you?”

Ellen, attired modestly in a simple white piqué dress she’d worn for several summers, returned to the drawing room.

“Right here,” she said, managing a smile.

While Ellen dreaded seeing the intimidating Mister Corey again, she wanted to be present for this little conference so she would know exactly what ensued. Alexandra, who successfully dealt daily with titans of rail, steel and telegraphy, seemed to lack all common sense when it came to the issue of staying young.

Ellen was afraid that the two scheming strangers would easily convince Alexandra that they held the secret to eternal youth. And, therefore persuade her aunt to pay an astronomical sum of money to take her to their so-called Magic Waters.

“They’re here!” Alexandra announced excitedly at the knock on the door. She waved a bejeweled hand at Ellen, “Go let them in, please. No, wait just a minute.”

Alexandra always insisted on staying seated when greeting guests. She preferred to play the role of a monarch on a throne, expecting her lowly subjects to come forward to bow and beam and fawn over her.

“Ready?” Ellen asked, barely concealing her annoyance as Alexandra fussed with the shimmering silk skirts that swirled around her feet.

“Yes, you may admit them,” said the queenly Alexandra and Ellen went into the foyer to open the door.

The smiling Padjan entered the marble-floored vestibule. In his arms was a large green paper bag that he held as gingerly as if he were carrying a piece of fragile crystal. He was followed by Mister Corey who was clean shaven and surprisingly immaculate in a white linen shirt and neatly pressed dark trousers. Ellen felt her stomach contract.

“Good evening, Padjan, Mister Corey,” Ellen calmly acknowledged. “Won’t you come inside and meet my aunt?”

Padjan, the crown of his bald head gleaming in the light of the wall sconce, nodded eagerly. But first, he turned and carefully placed the bag on the table beside the door. Then he and Mister Corey followed Ellen into the suite’s large drawing room.

“Aunt Alexandra, this is Padjan,” Ellen indicated the smaller man. “Padjan, may I present my aunt, Miss Alexandra Landseer.”

Grinning from ear to ear, Padjan stepped forward, bowed from the waist and, taking the hand Alexandra offered, said with sincere enthusiasm, “It is a true pleasure to meet such a great lady, Miss Landseer.”

Charmed, she said, “Forget the formalities, call me Alexandra.”

Nodding, Padjan released her hand and moved aside.

“And this,” said Ellen, glancing up at him, “is Mister Corey. Mister Corey, my aunt, Alexandra Landseer.”

Mister Corey was not impolite, but he did not grin or bow to the seated heiress or take her outstretched hand as Padjan had done. “Miss Landseer,” he said and almost imperceptibly nodded.

Within minutes Alexandra and Padjan had their heads together, talking like two old friends. Padjan knew exactly what Alexandra wanted to hear and he wasted no time telling her about his Lost City and its Magic Waters.

Mister Corey said little.

Ellen said even less.

The two of them sat at opposite ends of a long brocade sofa. Ellen, paying close attention to the conversation taking place between Padjan and her aunt, was nevertheless vitally aware of Mister Corey’s strong masculine presence.

Occasionally casting covert glances at him, she wondered what he was thinking. He looked bored. Disinterested. And he looked as if he was bored and disinterested much of the time. He was, she surmised, a man who was experienced and world-weary. She got the impression that he had been everywhere and done everything and that he expected life to hold no further surprises or joys for him.

How, she wondered, had he ended up living in an old tenement building far from his native America? Hawking magic elixirs at street carnivals?

“Just you wait right here!” Padjan was saying as he nimbly rose to his feet and hurried out into the foyer.

In seconds he was back with the green paper bag. Gingerly placing the bag on the footstool before Alexandra, he looked up at her and said, “Here is proof that I am who I say, a member of the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones who the world believes have disappeared.” Dark eyes flashing, he opened the bag, swept it aside and withdrew a beautiful pottery artifact. He placed the artifact on the stool before Alexandra. “This came from the mystical Lost City,” he proudly declared. “You will see nothing like it anywhere else in the world.”

Alexandra sat up straighter in her chair and reached out to touch the exquisite urn. An avid collector of pre-Columbian art, she immediately recognized that the piece predated many within her own collection, that it was authentic and not some modern reproduction.

Her bejeweled hands running admiringly over the precious artifact, she said, “Ellen, perhaps you’d like to retire to your room now. The gentlemen and I have some business to conduct.”

“If you don’t mind, Aunt Alexandra,” Ellen tried to sound casual, “I’m finding this so fascinating that I’d prefer to stay and—”

Alexandra looked up from the relic she was admiring. “I do mind,” she cut Ellen off.

Ellen, mortified, felt Mister Corey’s dark, disapproving gaze touch her. Without meeting his eyes, she was certain they held an expression of mild disdain. He was, she felt sure, silently rebuking her for meekly allowing her aunt to dismiss her as if she were a child.

Well, she didn’t care what he thought. He knew nothing about her relationship with Alexandra or why she allowed the older woman to order her about. She was not surprised that her aunt had insisted she leave. She had expected it.

She was always banished from the room anytime finances were to be discussed.

Alexandra patiently waited until the door was shut and her niece was out of earshot, then said, “Gentlemen, let’s get down to business. I want to hire the two of you to take me to the Magic Waters and—”

Interrupting, Padjan shook his head. “Miss Landseer, there are four in our party. If one goes, we all go.”

Alexandra frowned. “Four? We’ve no need of four people. Can’t you just leave the other two here?”

A deep shade of red appeared beneath Padjan’s smooth copper skin. “Never,” he said and he was no longer smiling. “If you are ever to see the Magic Waters, you will take all four of us.”

“Oh, all right,” said Alexandra. “You will take me to your Magic Waters.”

“I will,” said Padjan, nodding solemnly.

“Then give it to me straight, please. Tell me, how much?” Alexandra asked. “How much is this entire operation going to set me back?”

The terms were promptly laid out. The deal was quickly made. Alexandra told the pair she would, come morning, have her niece book passage to America for them all within the week.

“Tie up any loose ends you have here in London and be ready to sail to America when I send word,” she instructed Padjan and Mister Corey.

“We’ll be ready,” said Padjan. “The sooner, the better.”

“I agree. I can hardly wait,” enthused Alexandra as she showed them out.

She closed the door behind them and clapped her hands with glee.