With a little sigh of compliance, May began leafing through the book to find her favorite passage.
Irene, feeling neglected, arose from her royal seat and sauntered over to join Lewis. He ignored her, and so she turned her attentions to Harper. Quentin heard the murmur of their conversation, during which Irene strove in vain to attract Harper’s interest. He responded with neutral courtesy, which offended Irene’s sense of self-importance. She whirled about and set her sights on more familiar prey.
“I hear you have a new lover, Johanna.”
Johanna blinked at the sudden attack. “I beg your pardon?”
“That handsome new doctor in town, Bolkonsky.” Irene’s smile was poisonous. “I don’t know why you ever thought he would have an interest in you.”
May dropped her book on the carpet and stared at Irene. Quentin touched her shoulder. She was trembling.
“Why don’t we go for a walk, May,” he suggested. “You can show me where you found the nest.”
The girl refused to budge. Johanna rose to take Irene’s arm and steer her away from the others. Despite the low pitch of her voice, Quentin heard every word she spoke.
“How do you know about Dr. Bolkonsky, Irene?”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you? Just because I’ve been forced to live out here in this rural backwater with a house full of loonies and old maids—” She shook off Johanna’s hand with a sneer. “Well, I do know about Feodor Bolkonsky. I know a lot more than you would ever guess. I still have admirers who have no intention of leaving me here to rot, and I—” She caught her painted lower lip between her teeth. “You might as well give up, Johanna.” She pointed her chin toward Quentin. “Take him if you want. I don’t.”
She flounced back to the sofa, leaving Johanna to stare after her. Quentin wasn’t in the least surprised that Irene DuBois had her own devious ways of tapping into the local gossip, even if the town considered her one of the “loonies” herself. She certainly wouldn’t balk at prying into Johanna’s personal and professional affairs.
She might even have already done what Quentin planned to do tonight. He hoped that Johanna didn’t draw the same conclusion.
“Trust a woman like Irene to know the names of every eligible male within a hundred-mile radius,” he joked when Johanna rejoined him. “I believe that I should pity the man.”
“I do not.” She sat down again, her expression shut to him. There’d be no further chance for conversation tonight.
Quentin did as he was asked and read May’s passage from The Story of Avis. The others made a pretense of listening, but he doubted they truly heard. When the gathering broke up an hour later, Harper made as if to speak to Quentin, only to fall silent. Quentin didn’t encourage him. All his attention was centered on Johanna and May, the doctor and the innocent. They needed him, and, come the end of the world, he wasn’t about to let them down.
Just after the stroke of midnight, when everyone was tucked safely in his or her bed, Quentin slipped into Johanna’s office. He knew exactly what he was looking for, and where to find it.
If he felt like a thief in the night, that was exactly what he was. Johanna kept her notes in the desk drawer, unlocked. She obviously hadn’t expected any of her patients to go rifling through them. Not Irene, who might have already done so. Certainly not Quentin.
The recent entries about her meetings with Bolkonsky, and the visit with May, were tucked into the front of her notebook. Quentin sat down at her desk and read by the sliver of moonlight that shone through the office window. He sifted the lines of careful handwriting until he found the pertinent section.
The earlier notations rang with the confident satisfaction she’d shown after the first encounter with Bolkonsky. What she said of the man bordered on infatuation. Quentin’s hair bristled, and he had to force his mouth to close over his teeth, which had a tendency to bare at every mention of Bolkonsky’s name.
Fool, he told himself. Concentrate.
Concentration paid off. Yes, she thought very highly of the doctor at first. Enough to be flattered by his attention, to write glowingly of his knowledge of hypnosis and his study of her father’s work. She even wrote of her hopes that Bolkonsky might become Quentin’s new doctor.