You could always marry Monk and live happily ever after in wedded bliss yourself, her treacherous inner Melissande slyly suggested.
The thought made her blush, then slap the office ledger closed.
“He has to ask me first,” she pointed out to the cat, putting the cap back on her fountain pen. “And Monk’s been a bit preoccupied lately.”
“Not to mention slow off the mark,” said an almost familiar voice from the open office window. “Ducky, you do know what they say about women who sit about in empty rooms talking to themselves, don’t you?”
Reg. Sort of. Melissande snatched up the pen cloth and wiped a smudge of ink from her fingers. “I wasn’t talking to myself, thank you. I was talking to Boris.”
With a hoot, Reg flapped from the windowsill to the ram skull on the battered filing cabinet. “If you think that makes it better, madam, you’d best think again.”
Drat the bird. Some things really were exactly the same.
“Where have you been, anyway?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you come home last night?”
Reg’s sharp brown gaze shifted, evasive. “I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
“None of your beeswax,” said Reg, and rattled her tail feathers. “Do I ask how you pass your evenings? No, I don’t. Though I might, if you ever did anything but sit in here fretting over the agency and talking to that moth-eaten excuse for a feline.”
“Fretting over the agency is part of the job description,” she retorted. “And anyway, I do plenty of other things with my evenings, which you’d know if you’d been here for longer than five minutes!”
Ghastly silence.
Melissande watched her fingers clench. Damn. “Oh, Reg. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean-”
But before she could stumble her way through the rest of her difficult, apologetic explanation, somebody rapped sharply on the office’s outer door.
“Oh, yes,” said Reg, feathers fluffing, sounding distant. “That’s what I came in to tell you. Your manky Sir Alec’s here. And he’s brought a friend.”
She leapt up. “Sir Alec? Here? Now? Why? It’s practically the crack of dawn!”
Another rap on the door.
“Reg, there’s something going on, isn’t there? Something to do with Gerald.”
“No,” said Reg, after a moment.
A rush of cold apprehension. In more ways than not, this was still Reg. “That’s a fib. Reg, tell me the truth right now or I’ll-”
“Miss Cadwallader? Miss Cadwallader! Kindly open the door. It’s important that we speak.”
Sir Alec, sounding briskly impatient. Nothing new there. On principle, she ignored him. Give the Sir Alecs of the world an inch and the next thing you knew, they were merrily galloping over the horizon.
“Reg, please. I know something’s going on. Gerald’s been so awfully secretive ever since… well, you know. And there’s a look in his eye that-frankly, it frightens me. Please, you have to-”
Rattle rattle went Reg’s long tail. “I don’t have to anything, ducky. Now just you give that boy some breathing room. I know you mean well, but he doesn’t need you or anyone else poking-”
“I say, Melly, do stop faffing about,” another voice called through the locked office door. “Because if you really must know, I need to use the conveniences.”
Melissande turned so fast she nearly fell over. “Rupert?”
But before she could open the door to her only living brother and the agency’s dubious, double-edged government benefactor, it swung wide of its own accord.
“Excuse me!” she snapped at Sir Alec, who led the way inside. “That was incredibly rude!”
Sir Alec considered her as he put in his pocket the key he wasn’t meant to possess. “Whereas leaving visitors to bellow on the doorstep is the height of good manners?”
“Not when they’re invited, no,” she retorted, tugging her shabby flannel dressing gown a little tighter to her ribs. “But since I didn’t invite you-” She held out a hand. “- or give you that key, don’t expect me to repine over my dearth of social polish.”
“I say, Melly, steady on,” said Rupert. “No need to bite off poor Sir Alec’s nose.”
“Trust me, sunshine, it’s better than biting off other bits,” said Reg, from her ram skull. “Which I’m more than happy to do.” She jerked her beak sideways. “Lavatory’s through there, incidentally.”
“Ah,” said Rupert, with a pained smile. “Yes. Actually, I only said that so Melly would open the door.”
Though she was worried and cross, Melissande laughed. Then she threw her arms around him. “Oh, Rupes. It’s lovely to see you. But why are you smothered in that ridiculous cloak and hat?”
“I’m in disguise,” said Rupert, hugging back. “We don’t want anyone to know I’m here, which is why we’re bothering you so early.”
Leaning away from her brother, she stared into his lean, much-missed face. “Yes, and why are you here? Zazoor hasn’t decided to invade, has he?”
“No, of course not,” said Rupert, removing the hat. “You’d go a long way to find a more reasonable man than Kallarap’s mighty sultan. Besides, I paid the final installment of our in-arrears tariffs last month.”
“Oh,” she said, and looked past Rupert to Gerald’s aggravating superior. “So that means this is your doing, Sir Alec. I might’ve known. What’s gone wrong now?”
Probably no other subordinate, or dependent, or whatever she was, dared speak to Sir Alec Oldman in that particular tone of voice-which was why she made a point of doing it. Men like Sir Alec grew so used to ordering people about, risking their lives and their sanity, that they very quickly became unbearable if they weren’t put firmly in their place every so often.
He might even come to thank me for it, one of these days.
But not today, apparently. “Do sit down, Miss Cadwallader,” he said, with a sharp, dangerous courtesy. “And allow me to explain.”
“No, why don’t you sit down, Sir Alec? I’m going to get dressed. And by all means feel free to leave that key on my desk while you’re waiting.”
Sir Alec, in his habitually sober grey three-piece suit, neatly shaved with every short mousey brown hair in place, favoured her with one of his most acidic smiles.
“I’m afraid I can’t oblige you there, Miss Cadwallader. The key is mine, you see. Just as the building is mine. In a manner of speaking. Though perhaps it’s more accurate to call me its custodian.”
She blinked. “Are you telling me the government has bought this entire building?”
“Yes,” said Sir Alec, irritatingly calm.
Good lord. Her heart was thumping, not calm at all. “When?”
“Recently.”
“How recently?”
“Very,” said Sir Alec, with a careless little shrug. “I believe the ink has just dried on the deeds of transfer.”
“Does Gerald know? What does he think?”
Sir Alec raised an eyebrow in that aggravatingly supercilious way of his. “Are you suggesting I base my decisions upon the opinion of a junior subordinate?”
“I’m suggesting it might’ve been nice if you’d warned us!” she said, fuming. “A change of landlord has an impact on a business, you know.”
Another acidic smile. “Don’t worry, Miss Cadwallader. I wasn’t intending to raise the rent. Yet.”
She narrowed her eyes. Was he joking or serious? As usual, it was impossible to tell. “How generous.”
“Not at all,” he said smoothly. “Now, please, Miss Cadwallader, do go and get dressed. My business is somewhat urgent.”
Yes, well, wasn’t it always? Biting her tongue, Melissande flicked Rupert a warning look then withdrew to her tiny bedsit in the office’s second room, where she hauled on the first clean and ironed day dress that came to hand, found stockings with no holes, or at least none that would show in the respectable gap between hem and ankle, buttoned on her shoes then hastily brushed, plaited and pinned up her hair. Sometimes she flirted with the idea of getting the rusty red mass of it chopped off in a daring crop. Except her long, thick hair was almost her only genuinely glorious attribute. It seemed silly to discard it.