The Forgotten Room (6 page)

J
ULY 1920

Lucy

“Where have you been?”

The senior partner's secretary pounced on Lucy as Lucy slipped through the door of the office. Miss Meechum's usually tidy hair had escaped in gray wisps from the knot at the back of her neck; her crisp collar was wilted. She looked, in fact, thoroughly frazzled.

“I'm very sorry, Miss Meechum.” Lucy hastily set her bag on the floor by her chair, tugging at the fingers of her cotton gloves. She felt flushed and disheveled from the run from the El, made worse by the summer heat. But the room was hers. She had her entrée into the Pratt house. “If it's the memo for Mr. Cochran—”

Miss Meechum shook her head, her glasses slipping down to the tip of her nose. “Never mind about Mr. Cochran. It's Mr. Schuyler.”

Electricity prickled down Lucy's spine. Or perhaps it was just the damp cotton of her blouse. “Mr. Schuyler?”

After three weeks at Cromwell, Polk and Moore, Lucy could still
count her interactions with Mr. Schuyler on the fingers of one hand. He was out a great deal. Meeting with clients, Miss Meechum said piously, although Fran whispered, “Golf,” between her fingers.

Once, he had breezed past Lucy into the office, handsome in evening wear, to pick up a box of chocolates and a black leather box that his secretary had purchased at his request, passing so close by Lucy's desk in the secretarial pool that she could smell the sandalwood of his cologne.

Another time, he had stood next to her at the elevator, pausing only to smile down at her and say, “You're the new girl, aren't you?” before tipping his hat to her and standing back for her to precede him, as though she had been a debutante rather than a secretary.

His eyes were a very deep blue in his tanned face.

Not, thought Lucy sternly, that she had any designs on Mr. Philip Schuyler's person. Everyone knew he was engaged to a Philadelphia debutante whose photos appeared regularly in the papers. Lucy had seen those pictures. Didi Shippen was always impeccably turned out, whether in tennis whites or an evening frock, her perfectly waved hair framing a face whose symmetry was spoiled only by a certain hint of a pout about the lips.

All the gossip columnists agreed: A Shippen was a fitting match for a Schuyler.

Not Lucy Young, who had grown up above a bakery in Brooklyn, who had spent her first few years fist deep in bread dough. She might as well sigh for the moon as for a Schuyler.

Besides, it wasn't Mr. Schuyler she was interested in; it was his files. Specifically, the files pertaining to the Pratt estate.

So far, however, there had been little opportunity. When Lucy had offered, casually, to bring Mr. Schuyler's coffee, she had been subjected to a freezing stare from his secretary, Meg, who had informed Lucy
that she was
quite
capable, thank you very much, and hadn't Lucy any documents to type?

Meg, however, was nowhere in evidence. Her desk chair was empty, the cover over her typewriter.

Miss Meechum wrung her hands. “The worst
possible
timing—the Merola deal closes on Tuesday—they want several changes to the contract—”

“Meg is in the hospital!” chimed in Fran from the next desk.

“The hospital?” Lucy echoed, looking from one to the other.

“A taxi swerved and—smash!—there she was, just white as a sheet and all crumpled on the ground,” jumped in Fran. “Right outside!”

Miss Meechum glared at Fran. “Frances is, unfortunately, correct.”

“Oh, goodness,” said Lucy helplessly. “I hope she's all right.”

“If one can call a fractured leg and broken wrist all right,” said Miss Meechum tartly. “I suppose it might have been worse, and, for that, one must be grateful, but—”

“They say she won't be back to work for
months
,” contributed Fran. “And she might have a limp.”

“The limp,” said Miss Meechum, “is the least of our worries.” She thrust an armload of files at Lucy. “Mr. Schuyler needed these fifteen minutes ago.”

Lucy ignored the implied reproach. Breathlessly, she said, “But what about Mr. Cochran and Mr. Vaughn?”

“I've assigned Frances to Mr. Cochran and Eleanor to Mr. Vaughn,” said Miss Meechum briskly. She gathered herself together, sounding a bit more like her old self. Looking over her spectacles warningly, she said, “This is a position of trust. Treat it accordingly.”

Lucy clasped the files to her damp chest. “Yes, Miss Meechum.”

Her heart was pounding beneath her blouse. The room at the Pratt house . . . and now Mr. Schuyler. As though it were meant.

“Sometime today, Lucy,” warned Miss Meechum.

Lucy shook herself out of her reverie. “Yes, Miss Meechum. Of course, Miss Meechum. Right away, Miss Meechum.”

From far away, she could hear Fran giggle. Lucy ignored it.

There was no such thing as fate. One made one's own luck. And she was going to make hers.

For now, that meant making sure Mr. Schuyler got the Merola contracts.

Lucy suppressed the wish that she had had time to go to the washroom, refresh her lipstick, brush her hair. That didn't matter. She wasn't here to vamp Mr. Schuyler. In fact, she was fairly sure that was part of the reason she had been chosen as Meg's replacement, even though Frannie and Eleanor were both more senior. But all of Eleanor's meager mental powers were devoted toward her own upcoming nuptials—everyone in the office had already heard of the great bridesmaid dress debacle—and as for Frannie . . . Well, Frannie was on the hunt for a husband.

Miss Meechum was very protective of her employers.

Tentatively, Lucy knocked on Mr. Schuyler's door. The brass plate read
PHILIP C.J. SCHUYLER, ESQUIRE
.

She wondered what the
C
and the
J
were for. Charles James? Cornelius Justinius?

There was no answer from within. Lucy heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back, then the sound of Mr. Schuyler's voice, distinctly irritated. “I already told you—not again.” A pause. “Yes, I know. But it's not my decision.”

“Sir?” Lucy poked her head around the door.

The wide mahogany desk in front of Philip Schuyler was littered with documents. Mr. Schuyler himself was kicked back in his chair, the telephone receiver in one hand, a grimace on his handsome face.

“Come in!” he said, and then, back into the phone, “
No
, Prunella.”

Prunella? Lucy's ears pricked up. It wasn't precisely a common
name. Prunella Pratt was the sole living scion of the once illustrious Pratt family—and Philip Schuyler's stepmother.

She had been a debutante in the 1890s, still living in the family home. If Lucy's mother had lived in that house, had stayed there, Prunella would know. And she might—Lucy clung to the frail hope—just might be the most likely person to know what had become of Harry Pratt.

Yes, and Lucy could just see herself taking the receiver from her startled employer and saying,
Pardon me, Mrs. Schuyler, you don't know me from Adam, but do you think I might be the illegitimate child of your brother? And, by the way, do you happen to know if your brother is still alive, and, if so, where he might be?

That would certainly go over well. As in being handed a pink slip and booted out into the street well.

Holding up the files, Lucy mimed moving back toward the door. “I can come back,” she mouthed.

Mr. Schuyler shook his head, gesturing her forward as he spoke into the phone. “Look, I'm sorry the people at Cartier's are giving you nasty looks, but there are three other trustees.”

Mangled by the receiver, the sounds coming through sounded like the chickens Lucy's grandmother had once kept in a coop behind the bakery.

Philip Schuyler held the phone away from his ear, grimacing expressively at Lucy.

Lucy kept her face deliberately impassive, her spine very straight. Miss Meechum didn't approve of secretarial staff fraternizing with their employers.

As the squawking died down, Mr. Schuyler put the receiver back to his ear. “Look, we'll discuss this tomorrow, all right? I've a client waiting for me.” He winked at Lucy. “Yes. Right now. A very important
client. No. It can't wait. Yes, I know it's terrible to have to work for a living.”

His smile invited Lucy to share the joke.

“Yes, yes, I'll see you at
Tosca
. No, darling, I won't forget. Ta-ta to you, too.” Dropping the receiver into the cradle, Philip Schuyler let out an exaggerated breath. “Hello, hello. It's Linda, isn't it?”

“Lucy. Lucy Young.” Lucy took a half step back. “If you're busy, I can come back . . .”

Philip Schuyler waved her forward. “No, no, come in. I needed an excuse.” His teeth were very white and very even. Almost as white and as even as those of Didi Shippen, who smiled out from a silver frame on the corner of his desk. “Those have the unfortunate look of work about them.”

Charm. That was the word for it. Philip Schuyler had an easy charm that was nearly impossible to resist.

But Lucy was very good at resisting.

Stepping briskly forward, she dealt out the files like a hand of cards, laying them out on the cluttered surface of his desk. “The Merola draft contract . . . Mr. Samson's letter of intent . . . and Mr. Cochran's memo.”

Mr. Schuyler turned the files over in his hands. “Read it . . . read it . . . rubbish.” Looking conspiratorially at Lucy, he said, “Cochran means well, but what he doesn't know about lease law would fill—well, something extremely large. Don't tell him I said that.”

Lucy clasped her hands behind her back. “Of course not, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Other than smother my stepmother?” Mr. Schuyler kicked back in his chair, looking Lucy up and down from her sensible pumps to the hair she had knotted up at the base of her neck. She was uncomfortably
aware of the curls escaping in damp wisps from her usually neat coiffure. “So you're to be Meg's replacement, then.”

The way his voice dropped made it sound strangely intimate.

“Yes, sir.” Lucy kept her eyes focused on the studio portrait of Didi Shippen. “I am available to assist you in any way that Meg did.”

Mr. Schuyler eyed her speculatively. “And some ways she didn't? Don't look so horrified! I didn't mean it like that. It's just . . .” He rested his elbows on the discarded files, looking up at her from under his blond lashes with boyish candor. “I'm in a bit of a bind. And you might be just the person to help me out.”

“I can type a hundred words per minute, take shorthand dictation, and operate a telegraph machine.” She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't resist adding, “I don't smother.”

Philip Schuyler rolled his shoulders. “This is a . . . different sort of favor.” Another flash of those white, white teeth. “No smothering involved.”

Lucy's heart sank a little. So he was going to be one of those? She'd dealt with them before, at Sterling Bates. Mr. Gregson, who seemed to think that the role of secretary was merely an audition for that of mistress—she'd soon seen him off, with high collars, a pair of false glasses, and an unflattering hairstyle—and Mr. Danzig, who pinched indiscriminately, and often inaccurately.

Didi Shippen's face smiled serenely from its silver frame.

“I am delighted to assist in any way that is appropriate to my position,” said Lucy woodenly.

“Spoken like a true Portia.” Mr. Schuyler's smile broadened into a grin. “It's nothing like
that
, Miss Young. Whatever you might be thinking.”

Lucy could feel the color in her cheeks deepen. She wasn't accustomed to being teased. “I wasn't—”

“Oh, yes, you were. And I can't blame you. Lawyers can be old goats, can't they?”

“I wouldn't say—”

“No, of course you wouldn't.” Fran had said Mr. Schuyler could charm the bees off the trees. At the time, Lucy had thought scornfully that it was more that anything in pants could charm the blouse off Fran. But she was beginning to understand just what the other woman meant. It was very hard to maintain the suitable air of professional detachment when Mr. Schuyler was looking at one with that mixture of boyish earnestness and mischief. “I wouldn't ask you to do anything I wouldn't myself. It's just a bit of . . . client development.”

“Client development?” Lucy echoed.

“Yes.” Mr. Schuyler steepled his fingers in front of him. “You know how busy we've all been with Merola—”

Not too busy to squire Prunella Pratt to
Tosca
, thought Lucy, but didn't say it.

“Well, there's this Mr. Ravenel, from Charleston. He has an art gallery down there, and he's thinking of expanding his operations to New York. Mr. Cromwell is particularly concerned that he should be extended every courtesy. Now”—Mr. Schuyler heaved a long-suffering sigh—“Ravenel just wired to let us know that he arrives in town on Friday.”