And Then He Kissed Her (12 page)

Perhaps she had judged Marlowe too harshly. Perhaps he wasn’t as insincere and dissolute as she’d always thought him to be. Still, gentlemen being what they were, she knew it was up to her to be sure that episode on the ladder was never repeated.

B
y the time of their meeting on Wednesday, Miss Dove had once again donned the aura of brisk, cool efficiency Harry was used to. That was very wise of her, no doubt, and a sensible course for both their sakes, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit let down. He wanted to see more of the other Miss Dove, the one whose smile could light up a room. The one who cursed when she thought she was alone. The one who hadn’t slapped him for caressing her hips.

Her revised work had been delivered to him
by messenger the afternoon before, and he approved all the changes she had made. The article for men she’d added at his request, however, had required some heavy editing, for it was clear Miss Dove had never needed to choose a valet, but she voiced no objections to the changes he’d made.

Though her manner today was very much that of the Miss Dove he had always known, there was something different about her these days. The woman who’d been his secretary wouldn’t have lost her temper and tossed him out of her flat. She wouldn’t have hurled criticisms at his head or bargained with him over the percentages of a business deal. Miss Dove had changed, and he didn’t know quite how the change had taken place, but he did know that she was beginning to intrigue him in a way she never had before.

Perhaps her newfound success had given her a mea sure of quiet confidence in herself he’d never seen her display. Or perhaps it was because she now demanded a level of regard from him he’d never really accorded her before. His gaze lowered to the starched pin tuck front of her shirtwaist. Or perhaps, he added wryly to himself, it was just because he kept imagining her naked.

“I shall have these ready to be typeset by tomorrow,” she promised, breaking into his speculations.

Curious, he asked, “How do you know so
much about these things? Crystal and napkin rings and what’s proper? And where do you get all these creative ideas of yours?”

“My Aunt Lydia was a governess prior to her marriage, and she was very meticulous in matters of conduct. That’s how I learned what’s proper, as you put it. I lived with her from the time I was fifteen.”

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was only eight. I barely remember her.” Miss Dove looked past his shoulder, staring thoughtfully into space. “She was always telling me not to play in the mud,” she murmured. “I remember that.”

“You weren’t allowed to play in the mud? Why not, in heaven’s name?”

“My father didn’t like it if my clothes were stained or dirty. Being a military man, he was very precise, you know.”

Harry did know. He was getting a fairly clear picture of Miss Dove’s childhood, and it was too grim for words. “So, you went to your aunt when you were fifteen. Was she married?”

“She was a widow by then and lived in London, only a few blocks from here, in fact. When my father died, I came here to live with her.”

“Your aunt did not make her home with you and your father before his death?” Harry asked in surprise.

The oddest expression stole across her face, a hard, frozen sort of look. Like a mask. Looking at her, he got an uneasy feeling he could not
explain. “No,” she answered his question after a moment. “My father did not…did not care for my aunt. She was my mother’s sister.”

The aunt didn’t care much for the father, either, Harry guessed. There was something very wrong with all this. He could sense it, and he didn’t like it. “But surely, with your mother gone, would it not have been best for you to have lived with your aunt anyway?”

“No. At least,” she added with a smile that seemed forced and brittle, “my father did not think so. As I said, they did not get on. But to answer the rest of your question about crystal and napkin rings and the like…” She paused to consider the matter, then said, “I don’t quite know where I get my ideas. They just come into my head. I read a great deal. I take long walks, observe what I see, and write about those things that interest me. I converse with many people—matrons, merchants, craftsmen. And, of course, I love to visit the shops. Today, for example, I intend to explore the area around Covent Garden Market. In fact,” she added with a look at the watch pinned to her beige jacket, “if we are finished here, I should be on my way. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.” She put her papers for final revision in her dispatch case and stood up.

Harry rose as well. “I should like to accompany you,” he found himself saying.

She paused and gave him a dubious look. “You want to go with me? You?”

He laughed. “I know it’s a shock.”

“To say the least. You loathe visiting shops.”

“And you adore it. Which is precisely why I always fobbed off the buying of presents on you. You’re far better at choosing gifts than I am. You have a talent for finding just the right thing for each person.”

“Why, thank you, my lord. There’s a great deal of pleasure in knowing you’ve chosen a gift the recipient will appreciate.”

“If it’s so much fun, why don’t you take up that task on my behalf again?”

“Absolutely not,” she said at once.

He sighed. “You have become so heartless. Think of my poor sisters.”

That didn’t seem to impress her.

“I’m no good at choosing gifts, Miss Dove,” he said as he walked her to the door. “You have no idea how frustrating it is when it’s two days until Christmas, and you can’t think what to buy.”

“Serves you right for waiting until two days beforehand.”

“Perhaps, but I’m still dreading Christmas-time without you.”

“There’s no need. You just need to pay closer attention to what people say. And you’ll have to go shopping, of course.”

He groaned.

That made her laugh. “Think of our outing as a perfect way to practice.”

“Oh, very well. I shall endeavor to hone my shopping skills by watching you.”

With that, he and Miss Dove departed for Covent Garden Market, and during the next two hours, he came a bit closer to understanding her.
He discovered she was a good listener, and that gave her a natural ability to interview people and draw information out of them. A butcher’s wife told her where she might purchase the finest mustards. The costermonger taught her how to make the best Cornish pasty. The policeman at the corner of Maiden Lane and Bedford Street informed her which side streets were safe and which were not. She was willing to be schooled by anyone on any subject, paying careful attention to what people told her and penciling notes about what she learned into a little notebook. No wonder she knew where to find the best boots and how to make paper animals. She took advantage of a basic truth about human nature. People loved to feel important by sharing what they knew.

He kept himself in the background, and there were times when she seemed to become so absorbed in her conversations with others that she forgot he was there. He enjoyed this opportunity to study her unobserved, but there was no possible way he was going to get another tantalizing peek at her silhouette in the sun. Not today anyway.

She was clad from head to foot in a beige linen walking suit, buttoned up tight to show only the high collar of her white shirtwaist and the narrow green ribbon tie around her neck. The enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves and peplum of her jacket exaggerated the width of her shoulders and hips all out of proportion to her slender shape, and a straw bonnet with heaps of
green ribbons and cream-colored feathers prevented him from appreciating the red lights in her hair. Unless he ducked his head to look her full in the face, the wide brim of her hat concealed her eyes from his view.

Nonetheless, as they walked amid the fruits and vegetables of Covent Garden Market, he consoled himself with what he could see: the soft, pale skin of her ear and cheek, the delicate slope of her nose, and those pretty, golden freckles. He wondered how many freckles she possessed that he couldn’t see. He wondered how long it would take to kiss them all.

Whenever he started thinking such things, Harry tried to steer his thoughts in a more impersonal direction, but just as he’d suspected the other day, it wasn’t proving an easy thing to do. He kept remembering the sight of her on that ladder, the curve of her breast and the slender lines of her torso. He kept thinking of long, slim legs and imagining soft, hot kisses. Pandora’s gifts, in other words, just weren’t going back in the box.

He decided a bit of conversation was in order.

“Miss Dove, I am beginning to appreciate how you have learned so many things,” he told her as they strolled on opposite sides of a long wooden stand laden with bushel baskets of the first summer fruits. “You are a good listener, and people respond to that.”

He was rewarded with a smile. “Thank you. Of course, it would be easier if I could tell people I am Mrs. Bartleby. People would be much
more assiduous. But since we are keeping her identity a secret, I must be content to remain merely her secretary.”

“Yes, as you were interviewing people, I noticed you introduced yourself in that capacity. I take it Mrs. Bartleby doesn’t need to butter people up but her secretary does.”

She made a face at him. “I do not butter people up.”

“Oh, yes you do. You butter up everyone you meet. Well,” he added wryly, “everyone but me.”

To his surprise, she stopped walking, bringing him to a halt as well. “I am so sorry about what I said that day, truly,” she said, turning to look at him over the top of the fruit stand. “I don’t know what came over me to speak with such a lack of tact.”

“You should be sorry,” he told her with mock severity. “It was a most unflattering assessment. You are a difficult person to impress, Miss Dove.”

“Am I?” She plucked a plum out of the basket in front of her. “Why do you care? You said it doesn’t matter what others think of us,” she reminded as she put the plum back and selected another, “so why should you care about impressing me?”

Startled by the question, he stared at her over the top of the fruit stand, and no quick, witty answer came to his lips.

“It’s not so simple, is it, my lord?” she murmured, and a tiny smile curved her mouth as
she lifted another plum out of the basket for inspection. “Sometimes, what others think of us does matter, even if it shouldn’t. Which is why young ladies eat chicken wings and why I pay attention to the opinion of my landlady. Knowing proper conduct is important. That’s why people read Mrs. Bartleby.”

“How wicked you are to use my own words about impressing you against me.”

She met his gaze over the plums. “The point is, we all care, to some degree, what others think of us.”

“I don’t,” he told her. “Not about most people anyway. But you and I are…friends.” A lie, that. He didn’t want to be her friend. He wanted to kiss her, and that was the reason her good opinion mattered. It gave him better odds.

“So we are friends now, are we?” she asked, sounding amused.

“Except for the fact that you don’t like me,” he amended and watched her smile. “I am choosing to ignore that fact.”

She laughed. “For the sake of our friendship?”

“Just so.”

She put the plum back in the basket, picked up another, gave a vexed exclamation, and put it back. “These plums are dreadful, and at such a price, too!”

He glanced at the placard. “A dozen for sixpence seems reasonable to me.”

“It’s outrageous. In season, plums should be three for a penny.”

“You are a miser, Miss Dove.”

She didn’t seem to like that description. She frowned at him. “I am frugal,” she corrected.

“What ever you say.”

“And I don’t much care for plums anyway. The skins have a rather sour taste. Oh, I do wish it were August! Then the peaches would be in. I adore peaches, don’t you?” She lifted her face, closed her eyes, and licked her lips. “Ripe, sweet, juicy ones.”

Erotic images flashed through his mind, images of peaches and a very naked Miss Dove. Lust flooded through his body, and before he could stop it, he was fully aroused.

“My lord, are you all right?”

“What?” Harry shook his head, striving to regain his equilibrium, as the object of these sensual imaginings looked at him with concern.

“You have such an odd look on your face. Are you ill?”

“Ill?” That was one way of putting it. “On the contrary,” he lied. “I am well. I am perfectly well.”

She nodded in acceptance of that statement and returned her attention to the fruit displayed before her. He jerked at his collar, exasperated with himself. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t a lad of thirteen, for God’s sake, unable to control his own arousal. And he certainly wasn’t the sort of man who allowed a woman’s opinion to bother him or erotic imaginings of her to interfere with matters of business, and he didn’t like virtuous women any way. This sudden attraction
to Miss Dove was inexplicable. And most inconvenient.

Though their situation had changed somewhat, she still worked for him. The circumstances that had always acted as a wall between them were still in place. He had to keep them there. He was a gentleman, and a gentleman did not take advantage of women in his employ, especially innocent virgin spinsters. He must stop thinking erotic things about Miss Dove. He simply must.

As she moved along the fruit stand, he lingered behind, striving to eliminate from his mind any fantasies of feeding fruit to her while both of them were naked. Once he felt his baser desires were firmly under control and he was again master of himself, he caught up to her where she was waiting for him at the end of the stand. “Are you finished here?”

She shook her head and held up a small wooden basket. “I thought to purchase some of these early strawberries.”

Harry made a smothered sound and gave up the fight. After all, he reasoned, there was no harm in
thinking
luscious things about her. He just had to remember not to act on them.

Marlowe was behaving very strangely. Emma contemplated this fact as they sat across from each other on the grass in the Victoria Embankment Gardens and consumed an impromptu luncheon of cold tongue, bread and butter, and strawberries.

He’d remarked she was difficult to impress,
yet she had never known him to have any desire to impress her.