A Most Extraordinary Pursuit by Juliana Gray Page B

by the window. Her skirts spread out against the cushion and spilled over the edges. “He will attempt to seduce you, simply for the challenge.”
    â€œHe will not succeed.”
    â€œI have seen the two of you.” She was waggling a finger now, aplump and unwrinkled foremast that bore a large sapphire ring. “He has drawn you into banter, and his conduct in defending you on the road to Athens won your sympathy. You slept against his shoulder afterward.”
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œI saw you.”
    I pressed my lips together. I knew I had fallen asleep, soon after the incident with the goats, and that I had woken as the motor lurched to a stop outside the hotel.
Rise and shine, Truelove
, Silverton had said cheerfully, nudging my arm, and though I remembered reacting to his greeting with confusion and embarrassment, I knew with absolute certainty that I hadn’t been lying against him.
    But
had
I, at some point in my slumber? Lain against him? One cannot, after all, control the movements of one’s body while unconscious. Had he only moved me away prior to waking me, in order to spare me further humiliation?
    And if he had done this thing while I was still asleep, how would this mere vision of the late Queen—a product, after all, of my own imagination—how would it
know
that I had lain against him at all?
    Her Majesty sensed my hesitation and pressed on, in her haughty old-fashioned voice that seemed to grow—this was the image that persisted in my head—from a bubble at the base of her throat. “What is worse, you have your mother’s looks.”
    I closed the wardrobe door and turned to her. “If you wish to be useful to me, perhaps you can use your extraordinary powers of perception to tell me where I might find His Grace, the new Duke of Olympia. Then my association with Lord Silverton will necessarily end, and you need not dread the weakness of my resolve any longer.”
    The blue eyes, if possible, bulged further from her round face,so that I feared for their security. Just as quickly, the lids narrowed into an expression of utmost suspicion. “I am not privileged to know his whereabouts,” she said, and then I must have blinked my own eyelids, for in the next instant she had disappeared, and not the slightest sign remained that she had existed at all.

    I would have preferred to remain out of sight in my room at the Hotel Grand Bretagne until our meeting with Mr. Livas at the Ministry of Antiquities, but Lord Silverton insisted we first visit Max Haywood’s flat, in that warren of streets directly below the Acropolis. I will cast aside pride and concede that he was right.
    â€œAs I feared,” said Lord Silverton, as he stepped out from behind me to view the interior, “it seems we’re not the first ones here.”
    â€œPerhaps he’s only disorganized.”
    â€œNot Max.”
    He reached inside his waistcoat pocket. I was expecting him to produce his pipe, but instead he drew out a small pair of wire-framed spectacles and unfolded the arms, one by one.
    â€œI didn’t know you wore spectacles,” I cried.
    â€œI try to avoid the practice, wherever possible.”
    â€œBut why?” I felt unreasonably affronted, as if he’d been keeping back a vital secret from me.
    â€œVanity, I suppose. You won’t tell a soul, will you?”
    He settled the specs on the bridge of his nose, and before I could catch a glimpse of the general effect, he moved forward to pick his way around the scattered books and papers. I released a put-upon sigh and bent down to begin gathering them up, but before my fingers could find the first notebook, his lordship commanded me to stop.
    â€œStop? Why?”
    â€œI find it’s more useful to leave things undisturbed, in such cases, until we’ve got some idea what we’re looking at.”
    â€œSuch cases? Do you encounter this sort of thing often?”
    He made