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‘Thanks so much!’ Breathing a sigh of relief, he dropped into the chair. ‘I need a spot of sanity among all those females.’
Pulling open his case, he removed multitudes of documents. Without wasting a moment, he started scribbling, his eyes hectically flitting from left to right.
Leaning forward, I glanced over with professional
interest. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but that should be 21, not 12.’ I pointed at the offending line.
‘Oh dear! Thank you! Thank you so much. I don’t know what Mr Wallace would have said if I’d gotten that wrong.’
‘My pleasure. You’re doing balance sheets?’
The young man’s eyes lit up with the recognition of one tortured soul in hell spotting another sinner. ‘Yes! Are you a bank clerk, too?’
‘No.’ I grinned. ‘Worse. Private secretary.’
‘Keeping a calendar is torture, isn’t it?’
‘You have to do that, too?’
‘Yes. But Mr Wallace calls me clerk instead of private secretary so he can pay me less.’
‘I have a feeling our employers would get along well with each other.’ I extended my hand. ‘Linton. Victor Linton.’
He took it and shook it. ‘Edgar Phelps.’ His little chicken chest puffed out with pride. ‘I work for Mr Wallace at the Bank of England. And you?’
‘Oh, no one that special,’ I said, wiping a stray dust moat from my tail coat. ‘You may have heard of Rikkard Ambrose?’
He nearly dropped off his chair. I’d had no idea that name-dropping could have such literal effects.
‘The Rikkard Ambrose?’
‘Yes,’ I said, glancing down at my fingernails with humility that was about as genuine as an antique statue sold in the East End for two shillings and thruppence.
‘My goodness! Working for him must be so interesting.’
A series of scenes flashed before my inner eye—Mr Ambrose Ambrose pulling me against him in his office and kissing the breath out of me, Mr Ambrose and I bare-skinned under a Brazilian waterfall, Mr Ambrose gazing into my eyes and asking me to be his forever….
I felt a little tug at my heart.
‘You have no idea.’
He sighed. ‘I wish I had seen what you have seen. I wish I had experienced what you have experienced.’
I choked, the mental images in my head suddenly not quite so pleasant and a lot stranger than before. ‘No, you don’t. Trust me, you really, really don’t.’
‘I don’t know about that. I bet you can learn so much from a man like Mr Rikkard Ambrose.’
‘Definitely. Among other things, how to do sums in your head because he doesn’t want to waste paper.’ I pointed at a row in his calculations. ‘That should be two hundred seventeen, not sixteen.’
‘Oh. Blast! Thank you, Mr Linton.’
‘Don’t mention it. So you’re on your way to Dover. Will you be going to Paris, too?’
‘Yes.’ He beamed, seeming pleased by the idea. ‘Mr Wallace had some confidential papers he needed delivered to our branch in the city, so I immediately volunteered.’ His eyes took on a dreamy hue. ‘It is the city of love, after all.’
I blinked. ‘It is?’
‘Oh yes. They say even the most hard-hearted of men will behave like a romantic fool in Paris.’
