From This Moment (3 page)

“You certainly
did
mean it!” Greta called out, her voice full of artillery fire. She advanced toward them with measured steps. Laura and her husband both politely stepped a few feet away, but everyone on the patio had noticed. Everyone was listening. More than a dozen pairs of eyes watched as Greta marched toward him, and she did not bother to lower her voice as she flung the barbs at him. “I think you are so terrified of genuine emotion that you flee any woman who gets too close,” she said. “You’d rather set yourself up as king of your precious magazine because it lets you hide behind your subscription lists and sycophants begging to be profiled. That magazine is nothing but a stack of papers! And you sacrifice your entire life to it.”

He tried again. “Greta, I said I was—”

“Sorry? Yes, you are! Don’t worry, Romulus, I won’t impinge on your time or the sanctity of your precious magazine. I know how much those pages stoke your over-inflated vanity. I hope that someday a woman trounces your heart so hard you’ll have a little taste of what you’ve been dishing out all these years. I hope she rips away every artifice and illusion you hide behind, because underneath it all, I don’t think she’ll find very much.”

Greta whirled away before he could speak another word. The door to the ballroom slammed so hard it made everyone on the patio startle. Excruciating silence hung in the night air. Well, he supposed he deserved that kick in the teeth. He’d been honest with Greta from the outset, but she’d simply ignored all his warnings.

After a few moments, the clusters of people who’d stopped
to stare in drop-jawed amazement turned back to resume stilted conversations, but he sensed their surreptitious attention.

He looked at Evelyn, who did not have much sympathy in her eyes. Which was ironic. She’d survived a miserable marriage, so why should she nudge him toward the same matrimonial inferno?

Romulus asked, “So when can I expect you to come up with an appropriate salary offer for Stella West?”

“Romulus! Aren’t we going to discuss what just happened?”

“I think Greta was quite thorough in her assessment.” Not too far off base, either. He moved closer and lowered his voice so no one could overhear. “I’m not going to rush to the altar just because Greta Fitch has a nesting urge. The only woman I’m interested in courting right now is Stella West. Frankly, I hope she has the face of a barnyard door and the personality of a python, because I don’t need any more trouble with overly emotional females.”

It really didn’t matter what Stella looked like. He’d been dazzled by her from the instant he’d seen her artwork, and he would move mountains to get her onboard at
Scientific World
.

2

U
ntil four months ago, Stella West had enjoyed a charmed life.

As an infant she had been delivered by her own father, a physician who adored his wife and showered his two daughters with an endless supply of love and opportunities. Stella was also blessed with beauty, artistic talent, and a quick mind. Her parents provided her with a childhood anchored in sunshine, butterfly hunts, piano lessons, a world of good books, and most importantly, the blessing of a happy family she loved with all her heart.

Stella’s parents were forward-thinking people who had sent both their daughters to college. She and her sister, Gwendolyn, had shared the same dormitory room at Cornell University, flirted with the same set of young men, and laughed in the same sun-dappled meadows. Stella had inherited her father’s love of science, just as she’d inherited his Scandinavian blond hair, blue eyes, and soaring Viking confidence to go forth and conquer the world.

It was at Cornell that Stella had mastered the art of lithography,
a complicated process that required artistic talent, an eye for detail, and an aptitude for technology. The full-color lithographic prints she made had been sent to competitions all over the world. Her real last name, Westergaard, was hard to spell, so she’d signed her lithographs simply
West
. The name Stella West had flare and was easy to remember, so she’d adopted it for all her professional work. Soon she had an international reputation and contracts with famous publishing houses.

Those things made her life interesting, but not truly charmed. What made her life extraordinary was the string of events that capitalized on her love of art and science, sending her to London and the pinnacle of artistic success. How many American-born girls could claim to have been toasted by the Prince of Wales? Had seen their artwork on display at the Louvre? Been courted by the world’s most prestigious publishers to license her illustrations in the pages of their books and magazines?

Until four months ago, Stella had all that and more.

Perhaps it was only fitting that those who flew so close to the sun were most in danger of getting scorched, but she’d never realized how badly it would hurt until it happened.

Her world had collapsed on a cold December morning when a telegram arrived at her London apartment. The only thing Stella could now be certain of was that life would never be quite as golden as it had been before that telegram arrived.

Stella pushed away the memories as she trudged down the steps of Boston’s City Hall. Her neck ached from leaning over a stenotype machine all day, her eyes were bleary from transcribing text, and she felt frumpy in this plain dress. It was important to blend in with all the other clerks at City Hall, so immediately after arriving in Boston, she’d bought simple dresses in shades of brown, beige, and bland.

She strode the half mile to her rooming house, sighing in relief
as circulation returned to her cramped limbs. Her appearance and the tedium of her new job were irrelevant. She’d come to Boston for a single purpose, and the only way she could accomplish it was to blend in. She wore dowdy clothes and averted her gaze from anyone who tried to make conversation with her. She had become quite good at pretending introverted modesty.

But through it all, she never stopped listening, watching, and observing. The entire scope of her world had narrowed to a single task, and she fixated on it with all pistons firing. Each morning, she awoke with a sense of urgency propelling her as she silently gathered information on a steadfast quest to discover who had killed her sister.

There was no longer room in her world for art, flirtation, or fashion. The tree-lined streets of Boston were lovely, and the city was vibrant and engaging, but she allowed none of it to penetrate the hard shell she’d built around herself.

Stella trudged up the steps to her boardinghouse on tired legs. She’d been fortunate to find a respectable room so close to City Hall, even though it meant climbing to the fourth floor each day. The rooms were leased mostly by single men, but Mr. Zhekova had allowed her to board because she was willing to pay three months of rent in advance.

She walked to the row of brass mail compartments at the end of the dimly lit hall on the first floor. She checked her mailbox daily, always eager for news from home. Her mother’s fragile mental stability was deteriorating again, and if it got any worse, Stella would feel compelled to return home despite her father’s pleas to stay away. Both her parents were floundering, and she couldn’t be certain letting them handle this on their own was the right thing to do.

She inserted the tiny key into the lock and opened her box to see a single letter propped inside. She reached for it.

“Ouch!” she shrieked, jerking her hand back and dropping the letter on the tile floor. A low buzz came from the mailbox, and to her horror, a bee careened out of the opening. A second dart of pain pierced her thumb. Bees crawled all over her hand! More poured from the mailbox before she could fling the door shut. She shook her hand, running down the hall in panic.

A cluster of bees still followed her, and another sting pierced her wrist. She snatched a newspaper from the dining table and tried to swat them away.

A slew of foreign words sounded from behind her, and Mr. Zhekova came stomping into the room, surprise on his round, bearded face. She twisted and shrieked as a pair of bees buzzed about her. Mr. Zhekova grabbed another section of newspaper and batted at the bees, as well.

She doubled over in relief as her landlord beat another bee into immobility, then crushed it beneath his boot.

“Thank you,” she gasped out. Four stings made her entire hand ache and throb. “They were in my mailbox,” she said as soon as she could catch her breath.

“Why did you put bees in your mailbox?” Mr. Zhekova demanded.

If she wasn’t so upset, she would have laughed. “I didn’t put them there. I don’t know where they came from, but we’d better check the other boxes. Where there’s one, there’s usually more.”

She followed her landlord down the hallway. Mr. Zhekova was a mountain of a man, at least six feet tall, and he ate very well, so he waddled from side to side as he headed to the row of brass mail compartments. Her letter lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, and a single bee still circled the room. Mr. Zhekova used the newspaper to swat the single remaining bee to the ground, then stomped on it. He headed around to the narrow room behind the mailboxes to examine them from the other side.

“Ha!” he shouted. “There is a bee’s nest in your box. Not in the others.”

She ought to be relieved that none of the other people living here would be confronted with such a rude shock, but Mr. Zhekova was angry as he returned to the front room.

“What did you put in your box to attract bees?” he demanded in his thickly accented Bulgarian voice. “Have you been storing food in there?”

“Of course not!” Who stored food in a mailbox? But her landlord was not finished.

“You are a woman,” he grumbled. “You wear perfume?”

“Sometimes.” Actually, she wore perfume every day. Before leaving London, she’d stocked up on three bottles of her favorite orange blossom perfume, imported from Paris and sold for shocking prices. Indulging in the appallingly overpriced fragrance was one of the few luxuries she still allowed herself.

“Well then, your perfume caused the bees,” Mr. Zhekova concluded.

It was the most ridiculous statement she’d ever heard. She visited the mailbox once per day, with her hand inside it for no more than a second or two. It was hardly enough time to infect the mailbox with a flowery scent destined to attract bees from outside the building, down the hallway, and directly into her mailbox.

But this wasn’t the first time something odd had happened to her. Two nights ago, a baseball had been hurled through her window. It was ten o’clock at night, and surely no children were still playing in the street. She lived on the fourth floor, so it would have taken a strong arm to get to her window, and thus it was hard to believe the baseball was a random accident.

She’d told Mr. Zhekova about the baseball the next morning, and by the time she’d returned from work that day, the
glass had been replaced. He’d been quite decent about fixing her window, but now he looked at her with clear disapproval.

“Well, stop wearing perfume and maybe we’ll stop having bees in the building.”

“Fine,” she mumbled. Her hand hurt too much to argue, and her legs were unsteady as she reached down to pick up her letter. She had done nothing to cause the bees—or the baseball, either. Perhaps someone in this boardinghouse did not like a woman rooming amid all the men? She hoped so, for the only other explanation was too frightening to contemplate. She was walking a dangerous tightrope in Boston, and the longer she could go about her business without attracting attention, the safer she would be.

A glance at the letter showed that it was not from her parents, so it wasn’t urgent. She tucked it inside her bag and trudged up the stairs to her room.

It was a plain room, with only a bed and a wardrobe in which to store her dresses. The single window overlooked an alley and had a depressing view of a brick building directly across the street.

But she hadn’t come to Boston for a view. She’d come to salvage what was left of her family, but with each passing day, those golden, halcyon memories seemed farther away.

The mattress creaked as she sat down. It was hard to open the letter with only one hand, but the blistering stings on her right hand hurt too badly to flex. Anchoring the envelope to her lap with her elbow, she tore the flap with her clumsy left hand and extracted the note inside, her brow lowering as she recognized the signature.

How had Romulus White learned she was in Boston? This wasn’t good. She’d never even met the man, but he’d been pursuing her for years, and he was relentless.

Once again he was offering to hire her at
Scientific World
. There had been a time when she’d been amused by his impassioned letters to her, so full of enthusiasm it had been hard to turn him down. She admired people who had a passion for their work, and his letters sparkled with intelligence and the sheer love of sharing the wonders of science and technology with the wider world.

His letters were untethered by reason or restraint, and she always found them amusing. Their correspondence brimmed with delightful barbs and a professional rivalry that sizzled despite the three thousand miles separating them. She enjoyed his letters but was never tempted to move, for the great publishing houses of London beckoned. She dared not tempt fate by leaving her idyllic life in England to work for a man whose unbridled passion rivaled her own. They would either get along smashingly well or be tempted to kill each other on sight.

All that was over now. She no longer had a career in art; she was merely a clerk at City Hall. Even doodling in the margins of her papers made Stella feel guilty. It would be best to not even respond to this latest missive from Romulus, for it would only confirm that she had relocated to Boston, and the fewer people who knew she was here, the better.

Her heart sank a little deeper as she folded his note and returned it to the envelope. Romulus White and his dazzling offers belonged to her past, and there was no room for him in her new, darker world.

She dropped his note into the trashcan. She would not think of him again.