A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

The perfect smile never faltered, but his eyes flicked behind me,and the eyes weren't smiling. The eyes were worried. His gaze kept flicking to Doyle, and it seemed an effort not to look behind him at Rhys. Jeffery Maison was very unhappy about the two guards being in the room. It wasn't just the feeling that most men got around my guards, the feeling that if it came to a fight, they'd lose badly. No, Mr. Maison talked about privacy; after all I was a private detective, not a public one. He'd been so unhappy that it was tempting to have Kitto bounce out from the beneath the desk and yell "Boo." I didn't do it. It wouldn't have been professional. But I amused myself with the thought while I tried to get Jeffery Maison to stop harping on the guards and actually mention something that might be job related.

Only when Doyle had said in his deep rolling voice that it was an interview with either all of us or none of us had Maison gone quiet. Too quiet, he'd sat and smiled but told me nothing.

Oh, he'd talked. "I've never seen anyone whose true hair color was Sidhe Scarlet. It's like your hair is made of rubies."

I'd smiled, nodded, tried to get down to business. "Thank you, Mr. Maison, but what brings you to the Grey Detective Agency?"

He opened that perfectly detailed mouth and tried one last time. "I was instructed to speak with you in private, Ms. NicEssus."

"I prefer Ms. Gentry. NicEssus means daughter of Essus. It's more a title than a name."

The smile was nervous, and the eyes looked self-deprecating, golly shucks ma'am. It had the feel of a look he practiced in the mirror. "Sorry, I'm not accustomed to dealing with faerie princesses." He flashed me the full smile, the one that filled his eyes with good, clean humor, and a deeper flash of something else, something I could pursue or ignore. That one look was enough. I was pretty sure how Jeffery was paying for the designer suits.

"Princesses are rather rare these days," I said, smiling, trying to be pleasant. But truth was, I hadn't gotten much sleep and I was tired. If we could just get Jeffery to go away, maybe we could have a coffee break.

"The green of your jacket brings out the green and gold in your eyes. I've never seen anyone with tricolored irises before," he said, and the smile warmed.

Rhys laughed from his corner, not even bothering to try to turn it into a cough. Rhys was as versed in surviving at court as I was. "I've got a tricolored iris, but you haven't told me how pretty I am." Rhys was right; it was time to stop being polite.

"I didn't know I was supposed to." He looked confused, a genuine, unpracticed look at last.