The Wrong Girl(34)

"Or not," said Jack. "Send the account to Claridges. We leave in the morning."

We left, but the feeling that Mr. Gladstone was unsettled never left me. Whatever the reason, he mustn't have shared it with the doctor. I should have questioned him, but a very big part of me didn't want to know. I had the horrible feeling it was related to the trauma Dr. Werner mentioned. I didn't want to dwell upon that at all. For now, I was of the opinion that what I didn't know couldn't harm me.

Perhaps if I kept telling myself that, I might even have believed it.

"Are you all right?" Sylvia asked when we were in the carriage.

Jack lounged back on the seat and rubbed his hands down his face, over his jaw.

"Go ahead," I said. "I know it's killing you not to ask."

He huffed out a breath. "Did they...did anything...? Oh bloody hell. I should have stayed with you in there."

"Calm down. Nothing untoward happened. You heard Dr. Werner say that his reputation is of the utmost importance to him."

"So what did they do?" Sylvia asked. "What did it feel like?"

I shrugged. "Like I couldn't keep my eyes open. Mr. Gladstone's voice was simply..." I shook my head, unable to describe its rich, modular tones, the way it hummed through my mind.

"I know," Sylvia muttered. "His voice was as handsome as his face."

"I'm not quite sure that's how I'd explain it."

"So you just fell asleep?" Jack asked. "Then what?"

"Then I woke up. How long was I in the room?"

"Only ten minutes," he said. "You didn't experience anything while you were in a hypnotic state?"

"Not a thing. No dreams, no consciousness of what was happening in the real world. Nothing."

"Remarkable," Sylvia said, shaking her head in wonder. "What skill that Mr. Gladstone has. And to think, he's only an apprentice."

"August will be disappointed it came to nothing," Jack said.

"It was your idea," Sylvia pointed out.

"Doesn't mean it was a good one." He turned to look out the window and she winked at me. She did enjoy vexing her cousin, but he didn't seem in the mood to toss it back as he usually did.

***

Fortunately my mind was kept from wandering back to Dr. Werner's rooms and the hypnosis by an afternoon of shopping. An entire afternoon. By four o'clock, Jack declared he'd had enough and insisted we return to the hotel. "You've been into every milliner, dressmaker and perfumer on Oxford Street and beyond, some of them twice," he said. "There's only so much a man can stand. Besides, Violet's feet are sore."

"Don't stop on my account," I said.

"You're limping."

So he'd noticed that. My feet ached like the devil, and if I had to suffer through one more shop assistant uttering false sympathies about my hair color or bust size, I'd scream. I knew pink didn't suit me, but did they need to hold a swathe of silk in that color up to my face at every turn then tsk tsk over the effect? It was as if they delighted in revealing how unfashionable I was. Perhaps that was the whole point. An uncommon number of them seemed to be trying to catch Jack's attention, and once they learned I was a friend and not a relation like Sylvia, the claws came out. It made me long for the attic and solitude. Well, perhaps it wasn't quite that bad, but I'd stopped enjoying myself hours earlier.

"Just one more shop," said Sylvia. "I'm yet to find a hat in just the right shade of gray."

Jack looked heavenward and sighed.

"You could wait in the carriage," I said. Olson had followed us along Oxford Street, our purchases in the storage compartment at the back of the carriage. We had, however, decided to walk so that Sylvia could have a closer look through the windows and see which shops she wanted to enter. It turned out that she wanted to enter every single one.

"I'll come with you," Jack said. "Here's a milliner's you haven't been to yet. Let's get it over with."

He held the door open and we entered. Several heads swiveled toward us, some belonging to the shop assistants, and others to the shoppers. It seemed we were quite the objects of curiosity wherever we went, and this time was no exception. Their gazes quickly took in both Sylvia and I before settling upon Jack. Then the flirting began. Some simply stared at him, but the more outgoing girls sidled close, pretending to be interested in something nearby. One or two even spoke to him outright, which I thought incredibly forward since they hadn't been introduced.

"Jack does appear to be popular here in London," I said to Sylvia as we inspected the hats on display.

"Of course," she said with a laugh. "He's young, single, handsome and clearly a gentleman of means. Most of these women have been watching us all afternoon, some even following us."