Free Lady Be Bad by Elaine Raco Chase

gave him a wide smile. "Could have been. Daddy's
like a cat on a hot tin roof, himself. Won't tell me anything.
Although I did see a letter from Architec tural
Digest. What a coup for you both!"
    "Yeah. I suppose." His fingers fanned
through the dark hair at his temples. "Maybe I'll just go back
upstairs and take a look-see."
    "But. . . but I thought we were going for a
swim." Gwen quickly shrugged off her flowered cover-up. "I'm
wearing my new bikini." Her lashes fluttered suggestively.
    "Nice." Noah gave her well-rounded figure a
cursory inspection, then patted her head. "You go and see if those
little scraps of fabric can handle water." He limped a wide circle
around her scantily clad body. "I'll be back in a while, unless of
course it is the Digest. At any rate," his finger pressed
the elevator button, "I'll see you at the cocktail party on the
back patio before dinner."
    When he finally reached the entrance hall,
Noah found it empty. He hobbled into the nearest lounge but found
that that, too, was unoccupied. The prospect of checking over one
hundred rooms and ten acres made him decide to ring for the head of
the household staff. The house manager promptly responded.
"Perkins, could you tell me what happened to the dark-haired,
attractive woman who arrived about…" Noah checked his watch, "Ummm
. . .twenty minutes ago with Mr. Kingman?"
    "I wasn't in attendance at that time, sir."
The regal, impeccably dressed Englishman was thoughtful for a
moment "Let me do a bit of checking. Will you wait in here?"
    "Yes." He collapsed into an antique
Shepherd's Crook open armchair and laid his cane across the top of
his thighs.
    Perkins looked concerned. "May I get you
something, sir? Perhaps a drink?"
    "Yes. No. I…uh, may need a double later
thought."
    "Very good, sir."
    In less than three minutes, Perkins
returned. "A Miss O'Brian was the new arrival, sir. She's retired
to the Queen Anne suite in the west wing."
    Miss O'Brian. Noah exhaled a
pent-up breath.
    "And where is Mr. Kingman?"
    "On the phone in the library."
    "Thank you, Perkins. Fine job as usual."
    The butler nodded, then halted. "Will you be
needing that double now, sir?"
    "Not just yet, Perkins, and depending on how
things go, I may need a triple."
     
    ***
     
    Marlayna stared up at the elaborately ruched
and swaged pink taffeta bed canopy and decided that the Queen Anne
suite was well named — it did make one feel regal. Pastel elegance
was everywhere. From the delicate pink tones that softened the blue
pattern in the antique French wallpaper panels to the tiles that
framed the fireplace hearth, the softly blended shades in the
Persian carpet and the pale roses inlaid in the Louis XV rococo
furnishings.
    The nicest thing about the room, Marlayna
decided, was that it was quiet and cool and devoid of a king. Her
eyes rolled in mute appeal. Arthur Kingman hadn't been easy to
dislodge. For a while, she really had expected the man to escort
her through every room in the castle and then aid her in
unpacking.
    She had dutifully listened to the history
behind this tapestry and the cost of that antique, the number of
craftsmen that had been hired to duplicate the hand-carved woodwork
and of artisans that had painstakingly blown the crystal for the
chandeliers, and all the rest of it until she could have
screamed.
    "But, of course, you didn't." Marlayna spoke
her congratulatory words aloud. "You nodded and smiled and ohhed
and ahhed in all the right spots and at the proper time. Arthur was
so impressed." She twisted her nose and mouth in an exaggerated
manner.
    Her savior had been the telephone and a call
from an editor for Architectural Digest. "I shall buy a
subscription as a thank-you," Marlayna vowed. The phone
conversation promised to be lengthy, and she used that well-timed
distraction to escape from Arthur and retire to her room. Here,
lying quietly on the bed, Marlayna thought about the man she had
seen in the elevator.
    He was her Noah Drake, all right.