And Then He Kissed Her (2 page)

Emma heartily wished the temperamental dancer would go do her suffering somewhere else.

Miss Bordeaux sank back down in the chair. She once again began to sob. “He has abandoned me,” she moaned. “I am unloved. I am alone. Like you.”

Resentment flared inside Emma, not toward the dancer, but instead toward Marlowe, for it was he who had put her in this impossible position. A secretary, even a female one, did not
have to bear the tantrums of her employer’s mistresses, surely.

Emma reminded herself that the viscount paid her a very generous salary, just as much as he would have paid a man. It was far more than she could have expected, as a mere woman, to receive from any other employer. She ought to be grateful, but she did not feel grateful. She felt decidedly cross.

What was the matter with her today? Resenting Marlowe for having horrid mistresses and rejecting four of her books, resenting the world because she could not afford emeralds, resenting the fact that all the chocolates in the world could not increase the size of her bosom, resenting fate because she was no longer young and had never been beautiful. Absurd, all of it.

Thirty is not old.

For a woman of her situation in life, she was very fortunate. An unmarried woman of staunch morals with no family had few options. Unlike the poor girls who slaved away in match factories or shops, her duties were both challenging and interesting, often enabling her to exercise her intelligence and her ingenuity. Most important of all, she wanted to be a published writer, and her employer was a publisher, making him her best hope to someday see her books in print.

As her own literary creation, Mrs. Bartleby, would have said, a woman of true gentility endures what she must, and does it gracefully.

With a resigned sigh, Emma handed Miss Bordeaux another handkerchief.

Harry was late. This was a rare occurrence nowadays, but not because Harry had ever been a punctual sort of person. In fact, he was known to be the most absentminded man alive about times and dates and other such things, but he was also fortunate enough to possess the most efficient secretary in London. Usually Miss Dove kept Harry’s schedule running with the precision of the British rails, but today was an exception.

Not that Miss Dove could be blamed in any way. Harry had encountered the Earl of Barringer outside Lloyd’s this afternoon and had taken that opportunity to once again bring up the topic of purchasing Barringer’s
Social Gazette
. Harry knew the earl was in Queer Street at present, his financial situation perilous. Despite that, Barringer was reluctant to sell because he considered his own publication far superior to any of Harry’s less high-minded ones and considered himself far superior to Harry. He had also opposed Harry’s divorce proceeding in the House of Lords, orating at tiresome length about the sanctity of marriage.

Despite their mutual animosity, the two men had managed to be civil long enough to spend the afternoon discussing a possible sale. In the end, however, they had been unable to come to terms.

Harry loved making deals and making money.
Business was child’s play to him, exhilarating, fun, and far more profitable than his title and estate, neither of which could earn a peer a shilling nowadays. The challenge of trying to persuade Barringer to sell him the
Gazette
for less than the exorbitant hundred thousand pounds he was demanding had put all other matters out of Harry’s mind. If the earl hadn’t ended their meeting by announcing his intent to attend the opera that evening, Harry might have forgotten all about Phoebe’s twenty-first birthday, and the fat would have been in the fire.

He was out of the hansom cab before it had even rolled to a complete stop outside the offices of Marlowe Publishing, Limited. “Wait here,” he instructed the driver over his shoulder as he headed for the entrance door of the darkened building. He reached in his pocket to retrieve his key, then unlocked the door and went inside. He ran for the nearest set of stairs, familiarity guiding his way in the dark, and he took the steps two at a time.

As he approached the top, Harry could see that the gaslights were on in his suite of offices, and he could hear the rapid, staccato rhythm of a typewriting machine.

Miss Dove was still here, a fact which Harry did not find remarkable in the least. He had come to understand long ago that outside the walls of this building, Miss Dove had no life.

She stopped her work and looked up as he entered the room. Anyone else in his employ would have been surprised to see him here at
this hour, but nothing ever seemed to surprise his placid secretary. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “My lord,” she greeted and stood up.

“Miss Dove,” he answered as he strode into the room. “Did those contracts for the purchase of Halliday Paper arrive?”

“No, sir.”

Having expected an affirmative answer, Harry paused beside her desk. “Why not?”

“I telephoned Mr. Halliday’s solicitors, Ledbetter & Ghent, to inquire. Apparently there was a bit of a muddle.”

“Muddle?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Was this muddle your doing, Miss Dove? Wonder of wonders.”

She looked a bit affronted. “No, sir.”

He should have known better than to even ask. Miss Dove was never muddled. “Of course not. Forgive me. What happened?”

“Mr. Ledbetter would not say, but I was assured the contracts will be delivered here one week from tomorrow. I can read them for errors over that weekend to be sure all is in order, and you will be able to sign them Monday following. You and your family are attending the Earl of Rathbourne’s water party on that day, but it will be a simple matter for you to come here first. Shall I pencil that into your appointment book, my lord?”

She held out her hand. Harry pulled out the small leather volume and handed it to her. After writing the reminder in his book, she handed it back. “Once you’ve signed the contracts,” she
went on, “a boy from Ledbetter & Ghent can pick them up, and you will arrive at Adelphi Pier in plenty of time to board Lord Rathbourne’s yacht.” She picked up a handful of papers. “Here are your other messages.”

“You are the soul of efficiency, Miss Dove,” he murmured as he accepted the offered slips of paper.

“Thank you, sir.” She took a deep breath and gestured to a stack of paper beside her typewriting machine. “I have written a new manuscript. If you have just a moment—”

“I don’t, I’m afraid,” he was relieved to inform her. He started toward his office, skimming through his messages as he went. “I’m supposed to be at the opera to night, you know, and I’m already late. Grandmama will cheerfully shoot me with a pistol if I make them miss the opening act, especially on Phoebe’s birthday. What is this?”

He stopped at the doorway into his office, staring at the note that was now on top of the stack in his hand. “Juliette was here? What ever for?”

His secretary, having written the details of Juliette’s visit on the paper at which he was now staring, made no answer to that, correctly assuming his question was rhetorical.

“Hmm,” he murmured as he read. “Displeased with her gift, was she?”

“I am truly sorry, sir. I thought a topaz necklace with diamonds would be suitable, but it seems she did not agree.”

“I don’t have time for the details, and I don’t
give a damn if she liked the blasted thing or not.” He crumpled the message in his fist and tossed it to the floor. Juliette could wrap her greedy little hands around some other man’s jewels—and his gemstones, too—from now on. The only females whose opinions he cared about were in his own family.

“Ring up my house, Miss Dove, and tell my mother I won’t have time to fetch them from Hanover Square. Have them take the carriage and meet me at Covent Garden.”

“I already telephoned, my lord.” She circled her desk, picked up the message he had tossed aside and put it tidily into her wastepaper basket, then sat back down. “I inquired if you had arrived home, for you had not returned here to pick up Lady Phoebe’s gift, and I thought you might have been delayed. I was informed by your butler that your mother, grandmother, and sisters had already departed for Covent Garden without you.”

“Gave me up for lost, did they?”

Ever tactful, Miss Dove did not answer that. She resumed her typing, and Harry went into his private office, a once sparse affair Miss Dove had redecorated a couple of years ago, and though he approved her taste, he wasn’t ever in his office long enough to appreciate her efforts. As Harry well knew, money wasn’t made sitting behind a desk, even if that desk was made of exquisitely carved mahogany.

He tossed his remaining messages onto his chair, then walked through a connecting door
into his dressing room. Because his London residence was across town, his valet and his secretary saw that this room always contained several suits and plenty of fresh shirts. He poured water from the pitcher on the washstand into the basin and soaped a shaving brush.

Within fifteen minutes, he had shaved, exchanged his striped wool suit for a black evening one, and fastened his cuffs with heavy silver cufflinks. After turning up his shirt collar, he looped a black silk Napoleon around his neck, tucked his watch into the pocket of his waistcoat, slipped on a pair of white gloves, picked up a black top hat, and headed out the door.

Miss Dove stopped typing and looked up as he paused beside her desk. “Phoebe’s present?” he asked her.

“In your pocket, sir.”

He set down his hat and patted the pockets of his suit jacket. Feeling a bump in one of them, he pulled out an absurdly tiny box wrapped in pale yellow tissue paper and tied with a bow of thin lavender silk. A cream-colored card no bigger than the box dangled from one end of the ribbon. “What did I get her, in heaven’s name? A petit four?”

“A Limoges box. Your sister collects them, I understand. This one dates from about 1740. It has angels on it, rather fitting, if I might be so bold as to venture an opinion. Angelface is your pet name for your youngest sister, is it not?”

The things Miss Dove knew never ceased to amaze him.

“Inside the box is a sapphire ring,” she added.

He frowned with a vague sense of uneasiness. “Don’t I usually get her a pearl or something?”

“She completed her add-a-pearl necklace last year. In any case, Lady Phoebe is now twenty-one, old enough for other jewels. I felt a half-carat sapphire ring set in platinum was just right.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

Miss Dove picked up a quill, dipped it in her inkwell, and handed it to him. “Might I suggest you sign the card, sir?”

He eyed the cream-colored square of paper with doubt. “Good thing my name is only five letters long.” He pulled off one glove and scrawled his name as best he could in the small space.

He handed Miss Dove her quill, remembered to blow on the ink to dry it, then tucked the box back in his pocket. He put his glove back on, picked up his hat, and started to turn away, but her voice stopped him.

“My lord, your tie.”

“Hell!” Once again dropping his hat, he lifted his hands to his neck and formed his Napoleon into a bow. “How’s that?”

She shook her head. “Crooked, I’m afraid.”

With an impatient sigh, he tugged at the ends and began again.

“Sir, about my new manuscript,” she said as his gloved fingers fumbled with his necktie. “I was hoping you would consent to read it and—”

“Confound this thing!” Harry gave up and gestured his secretary to her feet. “Miss Dove, if you please.”

She rose and circled her desk. “About my new manuscript,” she said again as she began to repair the mangled mess he’d made of his tie, “it’s different from the others.”

Harry felt a smothering need to get away. Even the opera was preferable to Miss Dove’s etiquette books. Unfortunately, she still had hold of his tie. “Different in what way?” he asked, manfully forcing himself to remain where he was.

“It is still a book of correct conduct, but it speaks directly to women such as myself. That is, to girl-bachelors.”

Oh, God. Not only etiquette, but also girl-bachelors. Harry suppressed a groan.

“Yes,” she went on, working to free the knot in his tie. “It is a…a sort of…girl-bachelor’s guide to life, along the same lines as your
Bachelor’s Guide
, you understand, but for women. How to find a respectable flat at a reasonable rent. How to eat well on four guineas a month. That sort of thing.”

Harry glanced between the upraised arms of the woman in front of him, eying her slender frame with doubt. In his opinion, Miss Dove needed to increase her bud get for food by a guinea or two. Perhaps he should raise her salary and order her to spend the increase on pastries.

As for her manuscript, well, Harry would rather go to the dentist and have teeth drawn
than read a guide to life for plain spinsters in shirtwaists who lived in respectable flats. He had no doubt other people felt the same. And that was the problem.

He published books and newspapers to make money, not to teach people how to behave. “Miss Dove, we have discussed this before,” he reminded her. “Etiquette books are not profitable enough to be worth the bother. There are so many nowadays, it’s difficult for any particular one to stand out.”

She nodded. “That is why I took quite a modern approach with this manuscript. Given the success of
The Bachelor’s Guide
, and taking into consideration your views that women ought to be allowed to work in any profession for which they are qualified, I hope you will see the appeal of my idea. Girl-bachelors are a growing segment of our British population. The statistics…”

Harry felt a headache coming on as she trotted out the number of girl-bachelors currently living in London. He didn’t care about statistics. He cared about his instincts, and his instincts told him that no matter what approach Miss Dove took with her manuscripts, she would never be able to write anything that would stand out, for she was so innocuous in reality. A bit like her name, really. With her brown hair, hazel eyes, and dulcet voice, Miss Dove was soft agreement personified.

He had originally hired her on a whim, tickled by the chance to prove his theory that
women were fully capable of earning their keep, just as most men were forced to do. She had gone beyond all his expectations. She was exemplary at her job, far superior to any male secretary he’d ever had. She was never late, never sick, and always efficient.