And Then He Kissed Her (5 page)

No, it wasn’t. She halted at the corner of High Holborn, turned on her heel, and headed back toward Bouverie Street. She would do it. She would confront him, fling his lie in his face, tell him just what she thought of his duplicity.

The moment she imagined such a scene, Emma knew how stupid it would be. He’d sack her. Any employer would, for impertinence like that.

It wasn’t worth it. Emma stopped again, this time earning herself an indignant exclamation from a young man walking behind her. Out of breath, she stood there on the sidewalk as the young man walked around her, and she knew she couldn’t confront Marlowe. No matter how momentarily satisfying such an action might be, she couldn’t afford to sacrifice her job for it.

Thwarted by her own common sense, Emma clenched her hand into a fist and ground it into the palm of her other hand with a sound of frustration. She was angry, by heaven, and she wanted an outlet for her feelings. She wanted to scream, to cry, to throw things, but that was out of the question. She was in a public thoroughfare, surrounded by people, and a lady never gave way to her emotions in front of others.

She’d go home. Emma turned back around and retraced her steps to the corner. At home, she could throw things, cry, and scream to her heart’s content. Except, of course, that she’d throw something she loved and break it, and she’d regret that later. And her landlady would hear the noise and think some lunatic had gotten into the building. She might even send for the police. What a horrible thought.

Given no other way to vent her frustration, Emma took several deep breaths and settled for walking. She strode along High Holborn, her boot heels drumming on the pavements like the rhythm of a fast and furious engine.

She’d resign, she decided. First thing Monday, she’d walk in, announce her resignation in a
quiet, dignified fashion, give the proper fortnight’s notice, and swallow down her anger long enough to request a letter of recommendation. That was the sensible thing to do.

No, it isn’t
, an inner voice cautioned. Resigning wasn’t sensible. She earned seven pounds and six a month. Where on earth could she earn that sort of money working for someone else? Men like Marlowe, who felt a female secretary should be paid the same as her male counterpart, were rarer than unicorns. She had a snug, comfortable flat in a very respectable neighborhood, the security of a post that would be hers for a long time to come, and an ever-growing nest egg sitting in the bank earning three and one-half percent per annum, her protection against the ravages of poverty when she was too old to work.

Emma stopped again and turned to lean back against the wrought-iron railing that surrounded the Royal Music Hall. She sighed. There were times, like now, when being sensible was a terribly aggravating thing to be. She stood there for some minutes, not knowing what to do, dithering in a way that would have made her stern military father quite cross.

One shouldn’t be sensible all the time. Surely there were times when she ought to be able to give in to reckless impulse, be carried away by the spontaneity of the moment, but she could never seem to manage it. Oh, how she wished she could.

She straightened away from the railing and stepped forward to the curb, preparing to hail
the first passing omnibus. For once in her life, she was not going to be sensible. She was going to go to Mayfair and buy that peacock fan, and she wasn’t going to care how much it cost. Every woman ought to feel beautiful and exotic on her birthday.

The little bell above the door of Dobbs’s Antiques and Curiosities jangled as Emma entered the shop, but Mr. Dobbs didn’t even notice. He was hovering with anxious solicitude near a group of young ladies gathered around the counter in the center of the room.

Emma froze by the door. One of the ladies, a pretty girl with blond hair in a dress of rose-pink swiss, was holding that peacock fan. Her fan.

The girl waved it at one of her companions. “Will this suit for Wallingford’s ball, do you think?” she asked, laughing as she playfully curtsied.

Everything within Emma cried out in protest. She took a step forward, then stopped. Short of ripping the fan out of the younger woman’s hand, there was nothing she could do. She could only watch and wait.

Like beautiful butterflies, these girls, as they floated around the room in their pretty pastel morning dresses, each playing with the peacock fan in turn, while Emma hovered by the door, fingers crossed behind her back, hoping against hope they would put it down and depart. She listened as they talked gaily of their upcoming ball, their various suitors, and the fullness of their dance cards.

“So, should I buy it or not?” the blonde finally asked, raising her voice a bit to be heard above the chattering of her companions. At once it was agreed by all that peacock feathers would be the perfect thing to set off the blonde’s ball gown of turquoise silk.

With a sinking feeling of misery in her tummy, Emma watched the girl pay for her purchase. She knew her feelings were all out of proportion to the situation, and she tried to be reconciled to the loss. It was just a fan, she told herself, and that young lady surely had more reason to own it than she ever would. Even had she bought it, Emma didn’t know what she would have done with the thing. Hang it on the wall, she supposed, where it would only collect dust.

It’s the springtime of that girl’s life
, Emma reminded herself. A time when a peacock fan was of some use to a young lady, a time of parties and dancing and romance, a time of hopes and dreams and plans for the future—a future that was exciting and fun and full of possibilities.

Her own springtime had passed by years ago, if it had ever existed at all.

Emma’s mind flashed back over the past dozen years. She thought of herself at eighteen, nineteen, twenty—of being desperately in love and hoping Mr. Parker felt the same, waiting for a declaration of love and a proposal of marriage that had never come, watching him marry someone else.

Then dear Aunt Lydia had gotten sick. Emma thought of the five years she’d spent caring for
her, waiting and hoping so desperately that the old woman would get better, and then watching the casket as it was lowered into the ground.

And now there was Lord Marlowe, who had no intention of publishing any of her books, who hadn’t even read them. Five years of hope and hard work, slaving over a typewriting machine every night, had come to naught.

Such was the pattern of her life. She had spent her entire youth waiting and hoping for things that never happened. Now she was thirty.

The young ladies were coming toward the door. Emma stepped aside and turned, watching that absurd, extravagant peacock fan go out the door with its new owner, and something cracked inside of her.

Too late
, she realized. She’d spent so many years putting off what she wanted until it was too late.

With that thought, all the emotions she’d been holding back since leaving the publishing house surged up within her like floodwaters rising. She pressed her gloved fist over her mouth, trying to maintain her composure, but it was a futile attempt. Like water breaking a dam, all her outrage and all her despair came flooding out. Much to her mortification and horror, Emma started to cry.

I
n regard to his family, Harry considered himself a tolerant man, but by God, there were limits. Four days of his sisters lauding the talents and charms of their house guests at every opportunity, and Harry’s tolerance was gone. Melanie’s woeful hero worship, Nan’s mediocre singing, Felicity’s marriage-minded eyes, and Florence’s inane conversation were threatening to destroy not only his good humor, but his sanity as well.

By Monday morning, when he was informed their house guests would be accompanying them aboard Rathbourne’s yacht, where he would be
trapped in their company for an entire day and evening with no place to hide, Harry knew something had to be done. But he didn’t know what.

He couldn’t send the silly girls packing back to Dillmouth. His mother would cry, a dreadful prospect. His sisters would simply set about finding a fresh lot of potential marriage partners for him, which was even worse. Their social standing would dip yet another notch, for Dillmouth would do Harry some sort of injury for the slight to his daughters and nieces. In short, the whole thing would become a sorry mess, and Harry tried to avoid those whenever possible.

Unfortunately, sorry messes did not always avoid Harry. When he stopped by his offices to sign those Halliday contracts before departing for Rathbourne’s water party, his plans went awry, his day went to hell, and Harry found himself in a very sorry mess indeed.

It all started with Mr. Tremayne. In charge of the newspaper side of things, Tremayne was a rubicund, cheery soul, able to handle almost any crisis with ease. Not today. He was at the front doors of the building when Harry came in, and the look on his face indicated something was very wrong.

“God, Tremayne, what’s happened? You look the picture of misery.”

“I don’t have Miss Dove’s operations schedule for today.”

“She didn’t send it down yet?” Harry asked in some surprise as he crossed the foyer, passed
the newsrooms where clerks were busily typing away, and started up the stairs.

The other man followed him. “Miss Dove is not here.”

“What?” Harry paused with one foot on the stair and pulled out his watch. “That’s impossible. It’s half-past ten. Miss Dove’s about somewhere. She has to be.”

“Mr. Marsden—he sits at the front desk, sir, you know…” Tremayne paused to indicate Marsden’s desk at the other end of the foyer by the front doors. “He says Miss Dove has not arrived yet today.”

“He probably missed her coming in, that’s all.” Unworried, Harry tucked his watch back into his waistcoat pocket and resumed walking up the stairs.

“Yes, sir,” Tremayne replied, as he followed Harry up to the third floor. “I thought so as well. I sent my clerk to investigate, but when Carter went upstairs, he observed that Miss Dove’s bonnet and umbrella were not on the coat-tree by your office doors. We conducted a search, and she is nowhere within the building. Perhaps she is ill.”

“Miss Dove is never ill. That’s a scientific fact, Tremayne, much like gravity and sunrises.”

“She’s never late, either, sir. Yet she is not here, and I do not have a schedule.”

The two men entered Harry’s office suite and paused beside Miss Dove’s desk. Harry observed that the desktop was devoid of anything save
the inkstand and blotter which sat precisely in the center of the polished oak surface. Her typewriting machine was still cloaked in its leather cover. The hat rack was empty.

“You see, my lord?” Tremayne spread his arms wide. “It doesn’t look as if she’s been here at all.”

“Well, have Marsden ring her up and find out why she isn’t in.”

“I don’t believe Miss Dove has a telephone,” the other man said doubtfully. “If she does, Marsden wouldn’t know what number to give the exchange.” He paused, then gave a cough. “Sir, what shall we do? I have to have that schedule.”

Before Harry could address the problem, the door opened and Mr. Finch, in charge of the book division, entered the room. “My lord, Mr. Tremayne,” he greeted the other two men, then glanced at the desk behind them. “Miss Dove on an errand?”

“My secretary is not here yet this morning, Mr. Finch,” Harry told him.

The other man looked surprised, a feeling Harry understood quite well at this moment. “My lord, Miss Dove is always here first thing.”

“Not today, it seems. I suppose you need something as well?”

“Yes, sir. I’m in need of the book schedule for next year. Miss Dove brings it up to date every month. She’s so good at making certain the authors meet their deadlines, you know.”

“Do you really need—”

The door opened, interrupting Harry’s question, and Mr. Marsden came in. “There is a clerk from Ledbetter & Ghent downstairs, my lord. He says he is here to pick up some signed contracts?”

“Hell!” Harry cast another look at his secretary’s desk, but there were no papers lying about. Miss Dove was supposed to have read those contracts over the weekend and have them ready for his signature this morning. “Wait here,” he told the other men and went into his office. Sure enough, the contracts were there, sitting in a neat pile in the center of his desk. An envelope, addressed to him in Miss Dove’s handwriting, lay atop them.

Relieved to find those crucial contracts, Harry shoved the envelope aside and flipped through the pages of the legal documents to those lines requiring his signature. He signed them, then went back to the outer office. Dropping one copy on Miss Dove’s desk for her to docket it, he handed the other to Marsden. “Give that to Ledbetter’s clerk,” he ordered and returned his attention to the other two men.

Tremayne spoke first. “My lord, I have to get the five evening editions assembled and ready to print by three o’clock. I can’t do it without that schedule.”

Harry rubbed a hand over his face, trying to think of a solution. “It might be in her desk somewhere. Go through the drawers and see if you can find it.”

“What about my book list?” Finch asked. “If any author is going to be late completing a book, which they always
are
, you know, I need to know about it.”

“Yes, yes, but do you really need to know today? Can’t this wait?”

Finch began a long, involved explanation as to why waiting was not possible. In the midst of it, the door opened again, and in came Diana. “Harry, we have been waiting in the carriage forever. What on earth is taking you so long?”

“It’s not here,” Tremayne said, shutting the bottom drawer of Miss Dove’s desk. “I’ve looked in every drawer and pigeonhole.”

“My lord,” Finch said, “I am supposed to meet with the book publishing staff in a quarter of an hour.”

“Harry,” Diana said, “Edmund’s yacht is to set sail at eleven o’clock. If you don’t hurry, we’re going to miss the party.”

“Sir, I need Miss Dove’s schedule.” Tremayne rose from the desk. “Without it, I can’t—”

“Enough,” he interrupted the flood of voices and turned his attention first to Tremayne. “There was a time when we managed to get our newspapers out in a timely manner without Miss Dove. I’m sure we can do so without her daily schedule. Go back down to the newsrooms and find a way to get those evening editions out on time, and I don’t care how you do it.” He turned his attention to the other man. “Mr. Finch, you don’t have to have the updated book
schedule today, so go back down and postpone your meeting. And one of you find someone to locate Miss Dove.”

As the two men departed, his sister spoke. “Miss Dove is missing?”

“So it would seem.”

“How very odd. It’s so unlike her, isn’t it? I hope nothing untoward has happened. She left no word she would not be working today?”

“No. At least—” Harry broke off, remembering the letter on his desk. “Perhaps she did.”

He returned to his office. Leaning over his desk, he picked up the envelope and broke the wax seal, then scanned the lines of the note Miss Dove had left for him. Its message was clear, concise, and completely unbelievable.

“What on earth?” Harry read the missive again, but there was no misunderstanding the message contained in the five lines typed on the sheet. Her neat signature was penned in ink at the bottom.

“What is it?”

He looked up to find Diana standing in the doorway. “She resigned,” he said, unable to believe it even as he said it. “Miss Dove resigned.”

“She did? Let me see.” Diana crossed the room, took the letter, and read it. Then she looked at him, and to Harry’s irritation, she was smiling. “You seem shocked, dear brother.”

“Of course I’m shocked. Should I not be?”

“Well, Harry, not to be critical, but I wouldn’t want to work for you.”

“Miss Dove never complained.”

“Yet she was unhappy enough to resign.”

“What does her happiness have to do with anything? I don’t pay her to be happy.” He snatched the letter back. “She came here originally to apply for a post as a typist. In giving Miss Dove the position as my secretary, I did her a great favor. I hired a woman, and a woman with no experience in secretarial duties, at that. I pay her a salary far greater than she could ever expect to receive anywhere else. She can be happy on her own time.”

“You only hired her to prove a point in the House,” Diana reminded him. “Remember? You were suggesting how society might solve the problem of surplus women by promoting that radical idea of yours that my sex be allowed to earn our way in the world so men don’t have to marry us and take care of us. So absurd.”

“It is not absurd. It’s a sound idea, with—”

“And why?” she went on, ignoring him. “All because you are cynical about the institution of marriage.”

“I am not cynical!” he shot back before remembering there was just no arguing with Diana about this topic. He returned to the matter at hand. “The point is that I gave Miss Dove an opportunity no one else would have given her. I picked her at random out of a host of applicants. And after five satisfactory years, she up and resigns. With no reason, no warning, no notice.” Harry began to feel quite nettled. “How could she do this to me after all I’ve done for her? Where is her loyalty?”

“I don’t see why this is such a problem for you. Get another secretary. You should easily be able to find one. Ring up an agency or something.”

“I have no intention of finding another secretary. I am quite satisfied with the one I have.”

“Had,” his sister corrected. “She resigned.”

“I refuse to accept her resignation, and when I find her, I’m going to tell her so. She’s not allowed to leave me.”

“Bullying her? Oh, yes, that’s sure to bring her back straightaway.”

Harry glared at his sister’s smiling face. “Do you have a better suggestion?”

“Since I can’t imagine any woman with sense working for you in the first place, I’ve little advice to offer. But you might start by determining why she resigned. There must be a reason to make her do so without giving notice.”

“A reason?” That took Harry aback. He paused, considering the matter. “I did reject her new manuscript.”

“You’ve done that before, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but this time she seemed to take it particularly hard. I’ll wait a day or two, then I’ll go see her. That should give her enough time to get over her hurt feelings.”

“If that’s her reason for resigning.”

Harry paid no attention. He was following out his own train of thought. “She’s a sensible sort of person,” he reasoned, tapping the letter against his palm as he spoke. “Not at all prone to irrational, spur-of-the-moment decisions such
as this. Two days should give her enough time to realize she made a mistake. She’ll probably be relieved I’ve come to offer her back her post. She’ll be grateful for the chance to rectify her mistake.”

“Grateful?”

“I’ll tell her there’s no hard feelings, offer her a raise, and that should settle things.”

Diana burst into merry laughter. Turning away, she started for the door.

“What is so amusing?” he demanded.

“Let me know how well your plan succeeds, will you?” She reached for the door handle. “I take it you’re not coming to Edmund’s water party?” Without waiting for an answer, Diana departed, closing the door behind her.

Emma told herself not to be nervous. She kept her hands folded firmly on top of the stack of Mrs. Bartleby manuscripts in her lap, tried not to fidget in her chair, and refused to think about the fact that her entire future could hang on what happened today.

This was not the safe thing to do. It was not the sensible thing to do. But she was over being safe and sensible.

Two days ago in that little shop on Regent Street, she had fallen apart. After spending the night of her thirtieth birthday hugging her pillow and crying on Mr. Pigeon’s furry shoulder, she had put herself back together. By Sunday morning, she’d known just what she had to do. After church ser vices and some serious
prayers for divine assistance, she had gone to the publishing house, typed her letter of resignation, and put it on Marlowe’s desk.

It was wrong, she knew, not to have given the proper fortnight’s notice, but fourteen days would have given her too much time to think things over, too much time to talk herself out of her decision and let Marlowe talk her into staying. Now it was Monday, he had the letter, and there was no going back.

This was the dawn of a new day, and a new Emma Dove. Never again was she going to sit by while life went on around her. Never again was she going to wait for fate to hand her what she wanted. From now on, she was going to reach out and grab her dreams and not let go.

She had never been more scared in her life.

“Miss Dove?”

She looked up. The clerk she had spoken with upon her arrival was standing by the stairs, waiting for her. “Follow me.”

Emma rose to her feet, trying to quell the jittery quivers in her tummy. One arm wrapped around her manuscripts, she followed the clerk up the stairs and into a reception room, where another man, clearly a secretary, was seated behind a desk. The clerk departed, and the secretary stood up. He gestured to an open doorway behind his desk. “You may go in, miss.”

She stared at the doorway for a moment, then took a deep breath and stepped past the secretary into a large office every bit as expensively furnished as Marlowe’s, though perhaps it was a
bit too overcrowded to be a truly efficient place to work.