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But now she’d just up and left?
This was very displeasing. And Finnegan had helped her to leave.
“I can’t believe you helped her to go before I could even have a conversation with her, Finnegan,” I said disgustedly. “How in the hell will I get her back here to do the work now?”
He turned slowly and regarded me, his light blue eyes narrowing. “I believe her words to me were, ‘I just have to get away from here and Mr. Everley won’t ever have to see me again.’”
“What?”
“Yes indeed, she was quite desperate to leave the place, and I feared she would have set off on the road by foot if I’d not helped her. I couldn’t have allowed that in her condition,” he said firmly, his chin lifting at me in challenge.
“Her condition, Finnegan?” I felt the flicker of unease at my neck. What the bloody fuck did he mean by her condition?
“She was distraught, in tears, very upset, and I fear, feverish as well, possibly from being trapped in the wet for so long last night.”
Tears? Distraught? Feverish?
“You can’t be serious, man,” I told him, half hoping I’d heard wrong.
He leveled me the same hairy eyeball that had scared me when I was a boy, and let me have it. “I am deadly serious. When a woman comes to me for help as Miss Hargreave did, then I am at her service, my Lord.”
Fuckin’ hell.
Finnegan has just used the “my Lord” label on me. I was on his shit list for certain if he was throwing out the dreaded baronial address. The man barely tolerated me as it was and now he’d basically told me to fuck off.
And I feared I’d made a grievous error in how I’d handled the mysterious Miss Hargreave.
I texted her mobile number.
WHY did you just go off? I’d still like for you to do my archival work. Let’s discuss. –I Everley
Nothing.
I tried again. Can we talk about it, please? –I Everley
And then: I’ll fly you back to Belfast and collect you myself. No surprises this time. –I Everley
No response.
Then I got Langley on the line.
“I can’t help you, Ivan. I don’t know what in the hell happened up there in Ireland between you two, but she won’t help you now for any amount of payment. I believe her words were something along the lines of ‘I don’t care if he has a basement of lost Vermeers and Van Goghs in crates next to a pile of hidden Nazi gold.’”
“Did she now? I suppose hidden Nazi gold isn’t a total impossibility since my grandmother was Russian. Maybe she managed to nick some and stash it. In fact, I’m fairly sure there’s a Vermeer in there somewhere, but how in the fuck would she know? She didn’t even stay long enough to take a look at anything!” I shook my head in disbelief. “She spoke to you already?”
“She did. She called me from the airport and was not her usual confident self, either. In fact, I’ve never heard Gabrielle so…upset in the four years I’ve known her. She told me you didn’t want her at your place, that you were very angry when she arrived.”
“Yes, well…”
“Were you angry? And if so, why on earth—you practically begged me to send somebody out there.”
Yeah, I’d read Gabrielle Hargreave all sorts of wrong. I don’t think I could have read her any more wrong. I was so certain though…
“Ivan?” Langley wasn’t going to let go of this.
“Um, yeah. We’d met before you see, and it was…awkward. I suppose I could have handled the situation better. There was a storm and she got lost—all a big misunderstanding.”
Langley snorted at me. “Understatement of the year.”
