The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,6
gave me my marching orders when I said I wasn’t on business. This place is a pit.”
“How shocking! Goodness me.”
She looked thrilled, which was fair enough. Half the fun of this sort of evening was seeing people behaving badly, at either end of the social scale. “Apart from that, how’s your evening?”
“Wonderful. I’ve had five compliments on my dress, three requests for the name of the designer, and two indecent proposals.”
“What?”
“Don’t get on your high horse. Except if a fish-faced twerp in a blue blazer comes over here, you can get on your high horse with him any time. How about you?”
“I served with one of the waiters. He was an officer of my battalion.”
“Goodness! Really?”
“Lieutenant. I used to call him sir, and now he’s serving the champagne and I’m drinking it. It’s pretty odd. I’ve arranged to have dinner with him. He couldn’t stop and talk.”
“Well, no, not while he’s working,” Maisie said. “We don’t all have customers who like us to be rude. Shall we have another dance?”
They had several. Will was thirsty when they returned to their table at last, and tired of the cloying champagne. He ordered a beer, and a gin and tonic for Maisie. These arrived shortly, and so did a woman—middle aged, with brass-blonde hair, many strings of clashing beads, elbow-length satin gloves, and a frock made of layers of satin and net. She sat down uninvited, announcing, “Hello, I’m Theresa Skyrme,” and smiled, red-lipped, at Maisie.
“Mrs. Skyrme?” Will said. “The owner here, yes?”
“That’s right. So nice to meet you, Mr. Darling. And this is Miss...?”
“Jones.”
“Miss Jones,” Mrs. Skyrme said, giving a strong impression of amusement at a lazily chosen alias. “I don’t think we’ve seen you here before, Mr. Darling?”
“First time.”
“How charming of you to honour us with your custom.”
She was still smiling, but Will would have put money the words were sarcastic. He could see Maisie’s brows drawing together. “You’re welcome,” he said, and wondered what the hell sort of place they were in.
“Mr. Fuller tells me you were on the upper balcony,” the lady continued. “Some people prefer the view from up there. Was there anything you wanted to see?”
“I like watching people. You’ve got an interesting sort of clientele here.”
Her lips curved, but her eyes sharpened. “Oh, we have some wonderful visitors from all walks of life. Were you hoping to meet Brilliant Chang? Wally Bunker, perhaps? You never know: you might even bump into Tommy Telford some time.”
Will met Maisie’s eyes. She gave a tiny, baffled shrug. “Sorry, I don’t know any of those people.”
“What is it you do, Mr. Darling?”
“I run a bookshop.”
“A bookshop,” she repeated. “How lovely. And you like watching people. Do you have the chance to do much of that in your bookshop?”
“You’d be surprised.” She was giving him the same grating feeling he’d had from Fuller, a sensation of hostile cross-examination. Maybe they had to be careful about their clientele; he didn’t care. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Skyrme, but we won’t take up any more of your time. Goodbye.”
Mrs. Skyrme took that heavy hint and left with more protestations of how delightful it was to meet them both, and a last pat on Will’s arm, assuring him, “I hope you’ll tell your friends all about us.”
Maisie took a long swallow of her gin and tonic. “What a dreadful woman.”
“Rotten,” Will agreed. “I don’t like this place, Maise. The band’s good, but I don’t care for the management one bit.”
“Let’s not come here again. Are you sorry I picked it?”
“Course not. As long as you’ve had a good time, that’s what matters.”
She smiled at him. “It’s been marvellous.”
Chapter Two
Will met Beaumont for dinner a few days later. He looked worse under the brighter lights of the Lyons Corner House: the youthful good looks Will remembered from Flanders had been defeated by time and the ravages of late nights and cigarette smoke. Still, he wore a genuine smile as he approached the table, and they shook hands like old friends.
The conversation started off in the usual manner: listing of the dead and the scattered living, with suitable noises of commiseration.
“Do you recall Bill Taylor, Captain Taylor?”
“Poor old chap. Didn’t he go to some shell-shock recovery place?”
“It didn’t do much good. His family got him a couple of posts when he was out of hospital but he couldn’t hold anything down. Blew his brains out at the end of last year.”
“God.”
“Not the land of milk and honey we were promised, is it?” Beaumont