«You wouldn't dare,» he said, smiling his most charming smile, which she ignored. Tried to ignore.
Now she whispered. «Just tell me you feel guilty. Just a little bit guilty. And tell me you didn't realize that you could have been killed, damn it. Did it ever occur to you that you can lose at something? That you could have been the one who ended up on a slab at the morgue?»
«Ah, the truth. At last. You worry for me, don't you, my dear. How very gratifying.»
«Bite me,» Maggie said, then turned to face Bernie and Tabby once more. «Okay, okay, we trash the book. I know when I'm beaten.»
«There's a reasonable puss,» Alex said, and this time his smile told her that he knew how very close to the edge he was treading with that typically Regency Era lack of sensibility to the equality of the sexes. «Although I imagine Sterling would rather you kept some of it.»
«Me?» Sterling piped up from the window, where he'd been looking out at the rain. «Did I, I mean, did Sterling get to do something wonderful? And what does that mean— to contemplate one's navel?»
Maggie glared at Alex, then finally relaxed. She'd fought her battle, won what she could, and nobody was going to say she wasn't gracious in defeat. «Later, Sterling. I take it you're impressed with the view?»
«No,» Sterling said, pressing his forehead against the glass and turning his head so that he could, in his mind, at any rate, look at the outside of the building. «Can't really see anything, with it coming on to dark and still raining. The scaffolding's out here, Saint Just. Just like it's outside your room and mine. It must extend completely around this wing. I think if this window opens, I could walk outside on the thing all the way from one end of the wing to the other.»
«Fascinating, I'm sure, only I would ask that you don't embark on that particular experiment in the dark and wet,» Alex said, then bowed to the ladies. «I'm told that dinner will be served within the hour, so I'll leave you all to your toilettes while Sterling and I conference once more with Arnaud. We begin coaching exercises first thing tomorrow.»
«Yeah. Right. Go away,» Maggie said, collapsing into the chair again, to be closer to the fire. She looked at her friends. «Don't ask. Trust me, just don't ask. Now, tell me about your trip. I didn't know you were traveling together.»
The three women talked of New York for a while, of taking off their shoes to get through Security. Tabby had brought slippers in her carry-on bag, and had held up the line while she put them on, as she had no plan of walking barefoot on those dirty floors with all their germs.
Then Maggie asked, «Did you meet anybody from the production before Sterling brought you up here?»
«Just the regulation corporate bitch,» Bernie said, sitting down in the facing chair while Tabby stood in front of the cheval glass, fussing with her scarf and hair. «Joanne Something-or-other. What a horrible dye job. I wouldn't be caught dead in that shade of red. We had to slit our wrists and make a blood oath we wouldn't charge the production company for anything. Oh, and Sir Rudy. What a charmer. He pinched me. Tabby? He pinch you?»
Tabby continued to finger-comb her hair. «Who? Oh, Sir Rudy. No, he didn't. But I did have a few words with Dennis Lloyd. I recognized him immediately from something I saw on PBS a few years ago. What a handsome man. Very dignified and yet… approachable.»
«Revenge sex,» Bernie told Maggie, winking. «Our little blondie is planning revenge sex. This should be fun to watch.»
«Bernie, it's no such thing! You can be so crude.»
«And so right,» Bernie said, getting to her feet. «Well, it's been fun, but I'm going to go unpack before dinner. We're in the completely other wing. You coming, Tabby?»
Maggie followed them into the hallway. «Marylou, the gofer, told me this wing is still pretty much the way it's been for the last sixty years or so. What are your rooms like, and why didn't I get one in the other wing? I got here first.»
«Life's a bitch, isn't it, Mags,» Bernie said, and Maggie really couldn't do much more than nod her agreement.
«I'm only the writer,» she said as they stopped at the head of the curving staircase that was only a little less elaborate than the one that led to the first floor. «It slipped my mind for a minute. Sorry. Now excuse me. I've got to go find Alex and kill him.»
«New York, England. Some things never change.» Bernie kissed Maggie's cheek. «One of these days, sweetheart, you're going to open your eyes and see what everyone else sees.»
«There's nothing to see.»
«It's like that television show. You know. Will and Grace . Except that Alex isn't gay.» Tabby frowned. «Well, I thought he was in the beginning. But he's not. You two were made for each other. And you said so yourself, he's a very distant cousin.»
«Done now?» Maggie asked, willing her cheeks not to go red.
«Am I done now?» Tabby asked Bernie, who was busily inspecting the large tapestry hanging on the wall behind them. «What else did we talk about on the plane?»
«Oh, I don't know, Tabby. About being discreet about the thing, maybe?» Bernie grabbed the agent's arm at the elbow and pulled her toward the East Wing. «Sorry, Maggie. It's a new act. I usually work alone. But we'll get better at it.»
«Please don't. I don't know which was worse over Thanksgiving: listening to my mother tell me I'm getting fat or listening to her tell me that I'm not getting any younger and need to tackle some guy when he isn't looking and get married. I don't need you two playing matchmaker.»
«We'd never tell you you're getting fat,» Tabby said, then bit her lips between her teeth as she looked at Maggie's figure.
«It's eight pounds. Eight lousy pounds. It was ten, now it's eight. I'll get rid of them.»
«I've lost ten pounds since I gave up the booze,» Bernie said, putting her hands on her hips and turning in a full circle. «Of course, I've taken up smoking again. But we won't mention smoking as a diet aid, will we?»
«Not when I'm within earshot, no,» Maggie said, then she sucked in her gut and headed downstairs, just in time to see Alex entering the main saloon.
He was wearing a dark blue frock coat, skintight tan pantaloons, high-topped black Hessians (his own, she knew), and pristine white linen, complete with white waistcoat and a perfectly tied neck cloth. She saw his quizzing glass hanging around his neck, the glass itself tucked into a pocket, and he carried his new cane. He moved with grace, his posture perfect, his black hair brushed into the Windswept style she knew so well from illustrations in her research books. Beau Brummell would have wept, the man was so perfect.
«Oh, God,» she groaned, leaning on the stone banister for support as her knees went weak. «There goes the libido. And he knows it, too. Everybody knows it. Damn the man…»
Three hours later, after suffering through Alex's total command of the dinner-table conversation, complete with feminine fawning over him, male sparring with him, and Joanne Pertuccelli's complete indifference—Maggie could like the woman if Joanne wasn't such a boring, one-track-mind person—Maggie was wondering how she could kill Sam Undercuffler without anybody noticing he was gone.
Except that nobody noticed the writers, so maybe she could get away with it.
«One more time, Sam,» she said as they sat in the main saloon, «zippers weren't invented during the Regency Era.»
«But there are zippers on the costumes. I checked.»
«We're not talking about costumes here, Sam. We're talking about zippers. And there weren't any in the Regency. Saint Just does not turn his back to the lady in the bed, make it obvious he's zipping his zipper. He buttons his buttons.»
«Yes, but if he turns his back and buttons his buttons, anyone looking at him from the back won't know what he's doing. It'll look like he's maybe playing with himself or something. He's got to turn, zip up, turn back. It's as close to sex as we can get with this movie, since it's network, not cable.»