The Infamous Miss Ilsa Read online

  She stopped at the post office on her way down the boardwalk. She waited patiently as old Miss Eastman monopolized the counter to do something complicated involving a cheque. Had Miss Eastman ever had a sweetheart? Had anyone ever taken her for a hike and then kissed her silly among the pine trees? Had she ever thrown caution to the wind and spread her legs for her lover in the warm sunshine?

  The clerk behind the counter cleared his throat loudly; it was Ilsa’s turn at last, and she had been too busy daydreaming to notice.

  “Sorry,” she said. The clerk handed over a packet of mail wordlessly.

  Ilsa flipped through the stack. Bills, inquiries for Wilson’s Bathhouse, and one addressed to I. Pedersen. She had almost forgotten sending the letter to the broker. Her heart started to hammer again as she tore the envelope open.

  Dear Mr. Pedersen:

  Thank you for your inquiry. I would be happy to assist you in procuring merchandise for your new sundries business. Unfortunately, December is my busiest month because of orders for the Christmas season. I would, however, be happy to meet with you at any time between January 7 and 10.

  I prefer to meet prospective clients in the Woodward’s cafeteria, since a great many of our goods are stocked by this fine department store and you may get a sense of how they can best be marketed and displayed. If you find my terms amenable, we will sign any contracts in my offices. Depending on the eventual terms of your lease, this will set things in motion for an early March opening date.

  I can also be of assistance in helping you locate a storefront and preparing a lease. If you are interested in that service, please do let me know, and I will have my colleague, Mr. John McPherson, join us. He is one of Vancouver’s most able commercial real estate brokers, and I do business with him regularly. We advise out-of-town clients to plan a stay of about three days.

  Please reply with an acceptable date and time at which we might meet, and I will look forward to making your acquaintance in person.

  Yours sincerely,

  Mr. Mortimer Hayley

  Ilsa took a breath. She had expected that her first meeting with Mr. Hayley would be mostly social, but it looked like business in Vancouver moved rapidly. For the first time, she could actually picture herself walking among the gleaming rows of goods at Woodward’s, visiting the food halls and the perfumery, being waited on and catered to. January was perfect, really. She needed time to put together a new dress—Mr. Hayley was going to discover that Mister Pedersen was actually a Miss, and she needed to be the most polished, businesslike Miss he’d ever seen. And she wanted to be around to help Jo with baby Sarah for at least the next few weeks. But her savings were in the bank, and her new life was waiting.

  She folded the letter back into thirds, slipped it carefully back into its envelope, and set off for Wilson’s with fresh determination in every step.

  Chapter 13

  The water samples from the uphill streams all tested negative for pathogens, as did the ones he’d gathered surreptitiously around the hotel. It was a disappointment, but he would test every pump and cistern in the whole damn town if he needed to. Still, the cause of the mystery illness would eventually reveal itself if he kept at it.

  Unless the epidemic solved itself first. No one had been sick this week, which had put Morse in a considerably better mood and caused Dr. Greyson to crow at every opportunity about how the stomach flu always resolved on its own.

  He had to be missing something. The knock at his door was a welcome distraction from the frustration of his laboratory notes.

  “Coming,” Theo called.

  Jim Porter greeted him. “Letter’s come for you, sir. Fancy stationery, so I thought I’d run it up to you directly. In case it’s important.”

  “Thanks,” he said cheerfully, tipping him double. He was a very good porter, after all, and Theo was feeling in general charity with the world.

  He recognized the tight script on the letter’s address immediately. Mrs. Olivia Elizabeth Foster-Minden Whitacre. His good mood evaporated like ether. Up here, it had been so easy to forget his mother. And that he’d have to see her for Christmas in only a few short weeks.

  He could toss the letter into a drawer and try to forget about it, but he knew it was no use. Its existence would camp out in the back of his mind, wiping out every positive thought with its poison.

  He stretched out on the bed and flipped the letter over in his hands, looking for clues as to her mood. The downstrokes were heavy: a bad sign. He imagined the angry flourish her gloved hands would have made as they wrote the final address. Doctor Theodore Henry Albert Whitacre II. The fact that she used his full name was another bad sign.

  He carefully opened the envelope and began to read.

  My Dearest Teddy,

  I am so very much looking forward to your visit at Christmas. I have been planning the dinner menu with Cook for weeks, and it promises to be simply divine. We will be enjoying both a goose and a suckling pig this year, and, of course, all the merry trimmings (including a trifle and an almond blancmange for dessert). I have invited several fine couples to share our table. You will be delighted to hear that Emily Morrison and her family have agreed to attend. I have spoken to you about Emily Morrison before. She inherited a fine independence from her great aunt—Mrs. Dowling, on her father’s side—and has the charitable heart required to overlook your limitations.

  My dearest, I hope you appreciate how much Dr. Greyson looks out for you. He is such a dear man and thinks only of your happiness and what is best for you. That is why he has brought it to my attention that you have been seen in company unseemly for a man of your breeding and position.

  Theodore, it strikes at my heart to know that even though you were raised to have a strong moral character, you continue to fraternize with women of the lower orders. I can only imagine that, with your sensitive nature, you feel some misplaced sense of pity for a woman who was formerly in the employ of our family. But I must insist that you remember that this person chose to forfeit any right to your charity through her own depraved and indecent behaviour. The passage of time can only have magnified her failings, and I trust that you will not allow yourself to be preyed upon a second time.

  Mrs. Richard Deighton recently effused to me about how well you cared for her when she was laid low. How her feelings would have been outraged had she known that the hands who had ministered to her had been first been polluted by the touch of a “masseuse.” How could she ever trust you, or your place of employment, again?

  I expect that your contact with that woman will cease, and that there will be no need to continue this discussion when you return home. You will give Miss Morrison your utmost care and attention, and I will ensure that word of your indiscretion does not reach the Morrison family. Dr. Greyson has assured me of his confidence.

  With all love,

  Your Dearest Mama

  Theo read the letter again. Secrets clearly didn’t exist in small towns. And he somehow wasn’t surprised that his mother had remembered Ilsa’s name. Nobody held a grudge like Olivia Whitacre.

  How much could Greyson know? No one had seen him with Ilsa, to his knowledge. Had he told Mr. Morse? No, the wily old fraud likely wanted a bargaining chip to hold over his head in case Theo challenged his authority again. One word to Morse, and Theo would be dismissed for moral turpitude or some such trumped-up nonsense.

  He balled up the letter and threw it in the wastepaper basket. Then he retrieved it and ripped it into tiny pieces. How dare Greyson and his mother intrude on his personal life. How dare she force him up here and then try to bully away the one bit of happiness he’d been able to eke out of this backwater. How dare they treat Ilsa like a shameful secret, when she was worth a million Emily Morrisons.

  He respected Ilsa. He had loved her. He was beginning to suspect that he still loved her all these years later. And yet . . . he couldn’t imagine Ilsa sitting in his mother’s parlour, taking polite tea with the ladies she used to wait on. Would she have the
patience to put up with the ridiculous expectations placed on women in that world, where every word and gesture was rigorously scheduled and rehearsed? Probably not, but then, he had never been happy in that world either. Maybe he was thinking too narrowly. She was clever and far better at navigating the unwritten rules of socializing than he would ever be.

  She had never thrown his “limitations” in his face, and she hadn’t belittled his ambitions to study in Paris. Why should he even want to drag her back into the airless parlours of Vancouver in the first place? If they moved to Europe together, no one would ever have to know her background. It could work. They could make it work.

  If his mother thought that she could snap her fingers and watch him fall into line, she was sorely mistaken. She might prefer it if he moved back home forever and let people wait on him hand and foot, but that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going back to being poor Little Teddy, not for anyone.

  When he arrived in the dim, echoing basement spa on Wednesday night, Ilsa was sitting on the bench at the attendants’ counter, waiting for him. He smiled to himself—he had fond memories of that particular bench.

  “Did you know they don’t even lock that door?” she asked. “Anyone could wander in and get up to no good.” He strode over to her, cradled her face in his hands, and kissed her. She was startled but leaned into him, deepening the kiss. He threaded his fingers through her hair. God, he loved how she smelled, how her loose, pale curls brushed against his fingers. His mother was right. He didn’t care a whit about Emily Morrison, or any other woman on earth. If that was a character flaw, he could live with it.

  Finally, she pulled away, smiling. “What’s all this about?” she asked.

  He kissed her again, mostly to reassure himself. “It seems that Dr. Greyson has discovered that we’ve been . . . ah, been together.”

  Ilsa froze, and her eyes widened. “What? What did he say, exactly?” She struggled to keep her voice at a whisper.

  “I don’t think he knows any of the details, thank God. Only that we’ve been meeting each other.”

  “But how did he find out?”

  “No idea. People keep telling me it’s impossible to keep a secret in this town. I guess I need to start believing them. At any rate, Greyson knows I’ve been meeting you, and he wrote to my mother. And now my mother has written to me. ”

  Ilsa closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “What does she want?”

  “What she always wants. I am to stop being happy at once or she will drag me back to Vancouver by the scruff of my neck.” She stood and wandered over to the little fountain where the bronze lady poured water endlessly from her uplifted jug.

  “Why does Dr. Greyson even care?” she asked. “Would he fire you?”

  “Possibly. Possibly not. Either way, the shame of it all will cause my mother to have hysterics and take to her bedroom for a month.”

  Ilsa huffed and sat down hard on the fountain’s marble edge. “I don’t see how it’s any of her business what you do. You’re a grown man.”

  He eased down to sit beside her and squeezed her hand. “You’re right. It’s not her business, and that’s probably driving her insane right now. She couldn’t stop me from leaving to go to school, so she needs to find some other way to keep me on the leash.”

  “You can’t let her, Theo. You don’t deserve that.”

  “I’m sure she thinks she’s simply taking care of me. Doing me a favour. Making sure I come back home and stand around at cotillions until I find a girl exactly like her to be miserable with forever. God, I hate those dances.”

  She laughed. “So it’s not Fraser Springs. You hate all dancing, everywhere.”

  Music began to drift down the stairs; for the first time since Theo had arrived, someone was actually playing the grand piano in the lobby. He didn’t recognize the cheerful, ragtime number.

  Ilsa clapped her hands with delight. “Oh, that’s too perfect!” She stood up and held out her hands to him, palms down. “Dance with me.”

  “I don’t know how. I’ve never learned any steps.” She pulled him to his feet anyway.

  “I worked in a dance hall, remember? I know all the steps to just about everything. I’ll teach you.” She gave a little twirl, flaring her skirts out around her ankles like a dervish. “Besides, it will give your dear mama a conniption when she finds out.”

  It was an appealing thought, but he still hung back. “I’ll tread all over your feet.”

  “Ha! I’ve danced with much clumsier men than you.”

  “I honestly doubt it.”

  She ignored him and took his hands again, settling one on her waist. “Are you sober right now?”

  “What? Of course.”

  “Then you’re already ahead of the pack.” She was grinning at him, clearly thrilled, and he couldn’t help smiling back. He’d willingly court disaster as long as she enjoyed herself.

  “Fine. But something simple, please?”

  “How does the one-step sound?”

  “Just one step in the one-step, I assume?” She nodded and moved closer. “I don’t suppose they make them any simpler than that.” Ilsa put her left hand on his shoulder, and he lifted her right hand in his. He’d at least seen this before, so he could get this far on his own. “Now what?”

  “The important thing is to keep your feet moving. Start with your left foot and walk in place.” He did as he was told, stiffly, feeling a bit like a wind-up toy soldier. “Now, rock side to side with each step. No, from the waist.” They began to sway like trees in a brisk wind. “Yes, perfect. And now we simply walk around the room in a circle. You start off forwards, and I’ll follow you.”

  They made it two steps before, as he’d feared, he tripped over her feet and nearly pushed them both sprawling onto the floor. But she simply leaned into him and laughed. “Don’t stomp like an elephant. Shift your weight onto the balls of your feet, and walk that way.” He tried it, and the next few steps felt much more natural. Ilsa really was an extraordinary dancer; he knew he should be leading, but she gently nudged him along when he hesitated, adjusted their course with a quick skip or a light-footed little pivot when he short-footed them or drew a step out too long.

  Why had he avoided this for so long? The music’s syncopation disguised his limp, and spinning around the room with Ilsa was intoxicating. Too soon, the anonymous piano player went silent, and they slowly drifted to a stop. She sighed happily and leaned into him, her cheek pressed against his shoulder. He rested his chin on top of her head and held her. For that moment, in the dark basement of a hotel in the middle of nowhere, Theo Whitacre felt like the most contented man in North America.

  • • •

  Ilsa swayed in Theo’s arms, even though the music had stopped. She’d suggested the dancing as a distraction, a game to lighten the mood after a difficult conversation. She didn’t like the hurt, the self-loathing she’d seen in his eyes as he’d talked about his mother and the bleak, lonely future that had been mapped out for him.

  The thought of Theo—sweet, sentimental Theo—alone and untouched for all this time pulled at her heart. She released his hand and slipped her fingers through his dark hair, tipping his head back just enough to kiss his throat. Then his chin. And then his lips. He hummed with pleasure, and she deepened the kiss slowly, deliberately. Like the dancing, he should have taken the lead, pulling her along in his wake. But instead they found their own equilibrium, a rhythm of give and take that was only for them.

  Eventually, he pulled away from the kiss, leaning his forehead gently against hers.

  “Ilsa,” he sighed. “Why the hell are you so sweet to me? I didn’t do very well by you, all those years ago.”

  He traced the curve of her lip with his thumb, his palm cupping her cheek. The touch made her shiver with pleasure. Why did his tenderness fluster her so much more than his rudeness or his self-importance? This sweetness, this vulnerability, was all so lovely, and it was even lovelier because she knew it could nev
er last.

  “I suppose you’re simply an easy person to forgive,” she hedged.

  “I’m not, though. I’m awkward and blunt and arrogant.” He paused. “And inexperienced.”

  This was more familiar territory, and she caught at it without hesitation. She and Theo might not have a future, but they did have tonight. She could at least show him what intimacy should really be like. “There’s a cure for that, you know. Don’t you have a room here?”

  He blinked. “I . . . yes. I do.”

  “I didn’t get a good look at it the last time I was here. Would you like to show me again?” She curled her hands around his shoulders. He had gone very still. If she was pushing too hard, or too far, a word from him—a look—and she would play the whole thing off as a joke.

  Instead, he pulled her against him, hard. “Are you sure?” he rasped.

  “Very sure. I’ve done this before.” She waited a moment for that to sink in. “Is that going to be an issue?”

  “Honestly? I’m glad at least one of us knows what they’re doing.”

  “I thought you’d read all about it in your books.” She teased him to cover her relief—he wasn’t going to lash out at her or try to make her feel ashamed of her past.

  “You were always better at the practical things,” he reminded her with a little smile. And then there was nothing but the press of his body against hers, long and hard and lean, and the heat of his kiss. She let herself dissolve into the warmth of his lips and the satin tangle of their tongues. They kissed until she was aching for air, aching for . . .

  “Not here,” she gasped. “I want a room with a big bed and a lock on the door.”

  “I want that too,” he agreed. His voice shook just a little. “I want you.”