Scarlet Imperial Read Online Free

Mrs. Hildebrand or their asthmatic spaniel. The Hildebrands were always at home at night except for their once a week voyage to the opera in season, and to the Boston Symphony during its New York engagement.
    She wasn’t afraid but she hesitated a moment, the newspaper-covered package under her arm, before turning the key. She swung the door into the darkness, switched the light quickly in the apartment foyer. Reason returned. No one could be in her apartment. No one knew she lived here except Bryan Brewer. And Towner Clay.
    She closed the door and went through the rooms steadily, lighting the living room; the dining room, turned into a game room by Aunt Hortensia who considered dining rooms waste space; the electric kitchen. The bolt on the kitchen door was tight as she’d left it this morning.
    She went through to the bedroom corridor, lighted the two bedrooms and baths. The apartment was safe, serene and never more beautiful. Always on returning to it in the evening after an office day of being diminished to a piece of furniture by Bryan Brewer’s sterile efficiency, the apartment had the curative effect of a new, silly, but intensely becoming hat. There was nothing like modern white, chrome and glass, to give you the illusion of being a rare flower in an exquisite bowl. Eliza was grateful that she’d missed Aunt Hortensia’s Islands period; it might have brought bad dreams. There’d been an English county period, abandoned by Towner’s aunt because “shabby comfort becomes apologetic if you haven’t the right accent.” The Early Colonial had likewise been long abandoned, quoting Aunt Hortensia: “The functional always seems indelicate to me.” The French chateau period had gone its way because Hortensia couldn’t endure dripping maribou on the rugs. Aunt Hortensia had tinkled the history of her apartment on the brief day of her arrival in London. She’d been delighted to loan it to Eliza Williams, Towner’s young friend. She had no idea that Towner had cabled nostalgia to his aunt for the Continent merely to have use of her apartment. Even Eliza didn’t know why he wanted her to be housed here. She appreciated it none the less. Tonight as never before she appreciated its safety and Aunt Hortensia. You couldn’t shy at shadows in an apartment where there were no shadows, only clean shining surfaces.
    Eliza left the lights on as she returned to the foyer, hung her coat in the closet. She was hungry, she’d get comfortable then fix something to eat. She discarded the damp newspapers in the foyer basket, picked up the box, stood for a moment holding it. No one could enter here unbidden but she carried the box to her bedroom, the front bedroom, all gray and silver gaudied by splashes of cerise. She set it on the dressing table. While she undressed, it was there, square and white and carefully wrapped, tied with white string ribbon. It was there, an unopened question mark, while she put on her pale pink nightgown, the frothy bright pink hostess gown, the pink ballet slippers. Towner paid well; at least she could be exquisite in private. It wasn’t a very good substitute for being across a small table from attentive eyes but it kept you from entirely forgetting you were human. She sat down at the dressing table behind the white box, unloosed her dusky hair, brushed it to her shoulders. She looked at the same face that a boy with wings—it seemed so long ago—had called beautiful. She brushed savagely. He was dead. But the wrong could be righted, would be righted. She and Towner would right it. She had the box.
    She put down the hairbrush, laid one finger on that whiteness. She wasn’t Pandora. She knew what was inside. Yet she was loathe to open it, almost fearful, as if it were an evil something. It was evil, it had brought death. She lifted her head quickly. The sound had been her front door buzzer. It was repeated. She stood there motionless for a moment and then she relaxed. It could only be Franz with a