Page 16

“T his is how we get in, then?” Ollie’s voice was hushed as they finished crossing Trafalgar Square.

He angled his head back to study the building as the London fog coiled around him.

Both he and Evelyn had worn clothing to conceal their identities as best they could.

Ollie wore a gray frock coat with a turned-up collar, and a black top hat tilted just a bit forward to shadow his face from lamplight.

Evelyn wore a hat borrowed from Mrs. Chapman, and a dark, wine-colored silk dress from the dresses Lady Vivian had lent her.

Ollie had had difficulty deciding how they should dress.

As he was someone who dressed both as working class and upper class, Evelyn had let him choose.

His argument was if they blended in with the working class, they would be less likely to have problems with hecklers or muggers.

But if they dressed upper class, they were less likely to be bothered by the police.

Ollie had decided that being unbothered by the police was the more pressing option.

They were now at one of the museum’s back entrances for employees. It was inset in a tall, stone wall with pillars atop rising like mountains to the roof.

“This is it,” Evelyn replied, but her voice rang rather unsure. For she had realized something rather important: She did not have a key. She pulled the door handle, hoping someone had forgotten to lock it. However, it didn’t budge.

“Is it not opening?” Ollie asked, moving closer to the door to observe for himself.

Evelyn stepped aside to give him room. “No, it’s—”

But Ollie used all his might to pull the handle. Then he rammed hard into it with his shoulder in case it opened inward. He grimaced in pain and rubbed his shoulder. “It’s stuck.”

“Ollie, it’s locked.”

“Oh. Right.” He paused. “And you…don’t have a key?”

Evelyn resisted the urge to smile at Ollie’s charm.

“Unfortunately, it did not occur to me that I would have to have one. When I go to and leave work, the doors are open, so it’s never been a thought.

” Evelyn took a few steps back to study their surroundings.

There was a line of windows that went both right and left, but they were too high and out of reach thanks to the partial stone wall.

“If I can somehow get atop this wall, I can see if the windows are unlocked,” Evelyn thought out loud.

“Let me try.” Ollie studied the wall for himself, no doubt calculating how to climb up. There was a wrought-iron handrail bolted in the wall along the stairs that led to the door. He tried putting his foot up on the rail, but the angle was too sharp and he couldn’t get a good footing.

“Why don’t you give me a boost?” Evelyn suggested. “If someone catches us, it would be far better if I were the one caught sneaking about and not you. I could easily explain it away as me forgetting something important inside.”

“Yes, but that wall is at least ten feet high. That’s not safe.”

“I’ll be fine.”

But instead of helping her as requested, he stood in place, his lips pursed and eyebrows pulled together.

Charmed again as she realized the issue, she then said, “I give you permission to touch me.”

The tension in his face fell away. “All right. Here, then, put one foot in my hands.” Ollie crouched down to one knee and knit his open palms together. Evelyn did as asked and placed her hands on his shoulders for balance. His shoulders were large and hard and caused a funny feeling inside of her.

“Ready?” Ollie asked, looking up at her, and she nodded back. “One, two, three!”

Ollie lifted her as if she were as light as a feather, causing her to yelp with surprise. But between his height and hers, she was able to easily pull herself atop the stone wall. Strangely flustered, Evelyn crawled over to the window. But it was locked, too.

“Blast!” she cried out. She looked over the wall edge down to Ollie. “What time is it?”

Ollie pulled out his pocket watch. “Ten minutes to ten.”

Now quite anxious, Evelyn rubbed her face with her hands. Her fingertips bumped into the edge of Mrs. Chapman’s hat. The housekeeper had been aghast at the thought of Evelyn parading around London hatless.

But at the feel of the hat, a funny thought crossed her mind. “Ollie, I’m coming back down!” She looked over the edge and realized how high up she was. “Oh, dear, how do I do that?”

“Slide,” Ollie said. “Don’t jump. I’ll grab you.”

“All right.” Evelyn resisted the urge to whimper with fright. She lay flat on her front and began to creep backward. “You’re sure about this?”

“Of course. Keep sliding.”

Evelyn shuffled back until she was able to hang over the edge a bit. Ollie clasped his hands at her waist as she moved down further and lifted her gently.

Once she was back on her feet, she turned around to face him. He had only held on to her for five seconds at the most, but she could still feel the way his fingertips and palms had pressed into her.

Evelyn cleared her throat, realizing how close they stood to each other.

He stared down at her in his top hat, the shadow over his eyes and his lifted collar making the moment feel even more private.

Her heart raced. “Thank you, Ollie,” she said.

But she felt funny—lightheaded—and the words came out quiet.

The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, and his green eyes shamelessly caressed her face and down to her mouth. “You are very welcome.” His deep velvet voice seemed to curl around her like smoke.

Evelyn swallowed and moved quickly toward the door but tripped over Ollie’s foot. She let out another yelp of surprise, but Ollie’s arm shot out to grab her. However, Evelyn was so embarrassed by what she had done that at the same time he reached out, she rapidly overcorrected herself.

At first, she didn’t realize what had happened and squeezed her eyes tightly in case she was about to hit the ground.

But she wasn’t falling. And her hands, lifted to brace against the fall, were pressed against something hard and warm.

Not cold ground. And her nose detected a scent.

Not of concrete or stone, but something quite masculine. Woodsy. Like cedar.

Evelyn opened her eyes and was startled to discover Ollie was now so close that if she leaned just slightly forward, her nose would touch his, and in the chilled, November night, their breaths swirled together in curling steam.

Somehow, she wasn’t laid out on the ground like a squashed bug but was pressed up against him, his arm solidly wrapped around her with protectiveness.

Evelyn had always thought Ollie was quite handsome, but until now never realized how much he resembled Eugène Delacroix.

Eugène Delacroix had been a French romantic painter from earlier this century and younger portraits of him showed a dark-haired, broody, square-jawed man.

The first time she had seen Thales Fielding’s 1825 portrait of Delacroix, she was at one of the Impressionists’ flats, though now she forgot whose.

But she remembered how awed she was that a man could be so handsome.

Cordelia had teased her relentlessly that night and for years had called him Evelyn’s Painted Beau .

But now Evelyn saw that same dark, mysterious broodiness in Ollie as he held her close.

Desire, thick as honey, poured over her and once again, she found her blasted heart racing.

The slight grin Ollie had had a moment ago was now gone. Those hypnotic, green eyes had darkened, and his brow furrowed. A muscle in his jaw hitched. Did he know what she was thinking in the moment?

“Please let go of me,” she said, breathless and disconcerted by her inner musings.

Though she was far more affected by his nearness than she ever would have expected—she decided to blame it on the top hat—it was quite clear Ollie was not happy to be holding her in such an intimate way.

He had become so tense, so rigid, she worried he might injure himself. She must put space between them.

Evelyn jerked away from his grasp, and he released her while muttering an apology. She shivered off the sensation of Ollie’s touch and tried to ignore how he now refused to look in her direction.

“How much time do we have now?” she asked.

A funny idea had crossed her mind while she’d been atop the wall, though she wasn’t sure it would work.

What she needed was a thin, slender object, but she wasn’t sure where to acquire one.

Quickly, she looked around before realizing she had something on her person.

She reached up to her hat, pulled out a hatpin, and crouched to be eye level with the lock.

“Five minutes,” Ollie replied from somewhere behind her.

Evelyn set to work at the lock. The sharp end up the pin slid into the mechanical parts easily. “I don’t know how well this will work,” she muttered. She poked and prodded every direction she could, but alas, it did not work.

“May I?” Ollie asked.

Frustrated by her failure, and while time continued to tick by, Evelyn stood back up and handed the hatpin over to Ollie with a huff.

Ollie grinned wide. “You can’t be good at everything, Evelyn.”

She could feel her face redden and didn’t know how to reply to that.

Fortunately, Ollie had far better luck. The second he crouched down and pushed the pin in, he made a funny circular movement, and the door made a clicking noise.

Evelyn gasped. It had taken him mere seconds to do that. “You did it! Brilliant, Ollie!”

Ollie stood back up and handed the pin over to her. “I’ll teach you how to do that someday, perhaps. It’s a little trick Victor taught me when I was very small.”

Evelyn shoved the pin back in place. “Good thing, too. But we must get upstairs, post-haste.”