Page 59 of Bookshop Cinderella

“And we can agree that...that it’s best if we just put what happened the other night behind us and go back to being friends?”

“Absolutely,” he said with all the conviction he could muster, even as he feared such a thing might not be possible. Relaxing his right hand’s death grip on his left wrist, he bent down to retrieve the flowers.

“Here,” he said, straightening and holding the bouquet out to her. “Please accept them,” he added as she hesitated, “for they were never meant as a step toward seduction or a marriage proposal. They were meant as an apology. See?” he added, pulling back the tissue-paper wrapping. “White orchids mean apology.”

He looked up, putting on a smile. “I hope you are now reassured that I have no nefarious thoughts about you.”

Lightning ought to strike a man dead, he thought, for a lie like that.

Still, Evie seemed willing to take him at his word, for she nodded. “And...we are friends again?”

“Absolutely.” He pointed to the bouquet. “Yellow roses for friendship.”

“Thank you, then,” she said and took the bouquet from his hand. “I will accept them.”

They both looked up, but they said nothing. Instead, they stared silently at each other, as if neither of them quite knew how to end the conversation.

“Shall I call a cab for you?” he asked at last.

“No, thank you. I still have some work to do here.”

He nodded. “Don’t work too late.”

“I won’t. Half an hour, no more.”

“Good. As I keep reminding you, you’re still on holiday. And since it’s night and you’ll be here alone, lock the door behind me.”

Bending down again, he retrieved his hat. “I will send a cab from the Savoy to fetch you in thirty minutes’ time.”

“Oh, no. It’s only two blocks.”

“A young woman shouldn’t walk alone after dark, so don’t argue.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.”

He didn’t feel the least bit kind, and he knew he’d better leave now, before he said or did anything to spoil the friendly truce they’d forged. “Good night, Evie,” he said and donned his hat, then he bowed and departed.

Everything had been resolved in the best possible way, and yet, as Max closed the door of the shop behind him, he felt dissatisfied, off-balance, and thoroughly unsettled, and he didn’t have any idea why.

Sometimes, he thought in exasperation as he started down the street, Evie really was the most unaccountable girl.

***

During the past five days, Rory had discovered that getting Evie back wasn’t going to be as easy he’d thought. The shop was still closed, Anna and Clarence, busy at the confectionery shop, had hardly seen her, and though she was still staying at the Savoy, whenever he inquired there, she always seemed to be out. He’d left a letter for her there, expressing his concern, asking if he could help, and suggesting that perhaps she might come out and have a cup of tea with him, but it was a full three days before she replied, and that reply only served to deepen his frustration, turning it to outrage.

As he read the lines penned in Evie’s neat copperplate script, apologetic lines that explained she was terribly busy just now and suggesting perhaps it would be best to postpone tea together until after the shop reopened in a month or so, he could hardly believe it.

Too busy? he thought in baffled fury.Busy with what?

But even as he asked himself that question, he knew the answer.

No doubt it was her newfound friends who were keeping her so occupied, and if he didn’t take some sort of action straightaway, she could slip from his grasp altogether, and that blonddandy would be the one selling her shop and pocketing the money. As if a toff like that even needed it.

Rory slapped down her note, donned his hat, and left his lodging house, determined to find out what was going on before the evening was out.

He decided to try talking to Anna first. Even if she didn’t know where Evie was tonight, she could at least tell him something about Evie’s new friends, for she’d been at that opera supper, too. But when he arrived at Wellington Street, his plan to pump Anna proved unnecessary, for as he passed the bookshop, he saw thatthe lights were on, and when he peeked into the inch-wide gap between the door frame and the window shade, he spied the very person he was trying to track down.

The problem was that she wasn’t alone. There was a man with her, and though this one was not the blonddandy he’d seen with her the other night, this one was similarly dressed in a top hat, white tie, and tails, and in his hand was a bouquet of flowers.

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