Sex and the Single Earl (4 page)

He broke off, eyes narrowing as he studied her. He loomed over her, obviously intent on intimidation. For a moment, she allowed herself to be distracted by the seductive closeness of his muscular physique.

“Don’t even think about it, Sophie,” he growled. “If I ever find that you go down to Avon Street by yourself…”

She opened her mouth, but he held up a hand to silence her. “…or with only a servant to accompany you, I’ll make certain you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”

“Simon!” Sophie glared at him, stung to the quick, furious he would treat her as a child. He
always
treated her as a child.

On the other side of the room, Lady Eleanor gave a surprised snort of laughter at her nephew’s threat. Sophie could feel the heat rise in her cheeks, and she pushed herself up from the chair to make for the door.

Simon expelled a frustrated breath and took her arm, silently urging her back into her seat. He dropped into the matching walnut chair opposite hers and took one of her hands between both of his own.

“Forgive me, Sophie. That was inexcusable. I’m a complete brute, and I give you leave to pinch me as hard as you can.” A rueful expression lurked in his eyes, dispelling some of her anger. His eyes turned thoughtful as he studied her face.

“But don’t forget I know you as well as you know yourself. Once you get an idea in your head you can’t help acting on it. Since neither your mother nor Robert is in Bath, it’s my responsibility to keep watch over you. You must promise me you won’t go haring off into the rookeries by yourself.”

She bit her lip, hating that she might have to lie to him again, but more determined than ever to find the boy.
And
her bracelet.

Simon’s hard mouth twitched with a reluctant smile. “And you must promise me that you won’t go down there even if you take a servant with you. It’s simply too dangerous.”

She blew out an exasperated huff of air. “Oh, all right. If you’re going to be so stuffy about it, I promise I won’t go down there by myself. Or,” she said with a little growl, irrationally annoyed by his suspicion, “with only a servant to accompany me.”

His smile curled into a grin that made her insides glow with a gentle heat.

“That’s my good girl.” He gave her hand a quick pat and stood, removing his watch from his waistcoat pocket to check the time.

“Aunt Eleanor,” he said. “I have a meeting I must attend with my bankers. Is Aunt Jane receiving this morning? I’d like to see her before I take my leave.”

“Of course. Sophia, please ring the bell for Yates.”

Sophie rose and crossed slowly to the bellpull in the corner of the drawing room. Another idea popped into her mind.

“Simon?”

“Yes, Puck?” He had stowed his watch and extracted a Peacock’s pocket repository from his coat, making notations in it with a small pencil. “What is it?” he asked without looking up.

“Do you think you could at least check the pawnshops for my reticule? It’s a very nice one, and a broker might find it worth more than a few shillings.”

She held her breath, hoping he would take the bait. If her reticule was found in one of Bath’s pawnshops, she might be able to question the broker and acquire some information on the boy.

Simon’s head came up from his notations. He stared at her, a slight frown creasing his forehead. After a moment he nodded, then closed his book and slipped it back inside his coat.

“All right, Sophie. It’s likely a waste of time, but I suppose there’s no harm done to look.”

She gritted her teeth at his careless tone of dismissal, but held back the retort that sprang to her lips.

“But I have your promise that you will not go down to the slums,” he added. “Is that clearly understood?”

He managed to look both arrogant and paternal as he inspected her. Sophie wondered if he ever looked at his paramours that way, but she suspected he saved that particular scowl just for her.

She leveled her sweetest smile at him, doing her best to look innocent. “I promise, Simon.”

His eyes, alight with suspicion, followed her as she hurried over to the bellpull.

He was right to be suspicious, because she had no intention of keeping her promise. Not in such a dire situation. She had to find the boy, and she
had
to find her bracelet before anyone knew it was missing. Simon wouldn’t help her, so she needed to find someone who would. Someone she could trust, and who would know where to look. Finding that person might prove to be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. She just needed time to think about it, after any visitors that called today had departed.

Especially Simon. She always found it difficult to think rationally when he was about.

And think hard she must. After all, how exactly did one go about looking for a thief?

Simon impatiently shuffled through the papers scattered before him, his mind refusing to focus on the business at hand.

The little minx will surely drive me insane.

Yesterday’s call on Sophie had been another fiasco. He had fully intended to initiate the courtship of his future wife, and had lost his temper instead.

As she had lost her temper with him. Not that he could blame her for that. After all, he had threatened to put her over his knee and spank her. Aunt Eleanor’s poorly timed amusement, along with her knowing jests about his rakish reputation, hadn’t helped. He loved the old termagant, but she so often reminded him of his grandfather—loud, imperious, and unfortunately blunt.

Obviously, neither Sophie nor his aunt would make this courtship a tidy affair he could wrap up in a few days.

“I beg your pardon, my lord. Did you say something?”

Soames asked.

“No. Please continue.” Simon waved a hand at his business agent, who frowned at him from across the gateleg table crowded with documents and architectural drawings. Any thoughts about Sophie, or his erratic courtship, would have to wait for another time.

“As you wish, my lord.” Soames resumed his detailed explanation of the resources needed to establish the new mills in Leeds.

Simon listened, all his instincts focused on the challenge. The timing was perfect. The bubble of 1814 had brought many investors to their knees, but not him. Steadily and quietly, he had been buying one mill after another. If he could establish a partnership with Russell, he would exercise control over the trade of wool throughout much of England and the Continent. And control—both in life and in business—was everything.

Of course, it was necessary to conceal the magnitude of his commercial dealings from all but a few of his friends and family. Most of them wouldn’t understand his passion for making money, or his need to do something more than lead a life of noble indolence. His Aunt Eleanor, for one, would recoil in disgust at his crass talent for creating wealth, as would have his long-dead grandfather. Money was vulgar, and a St. James was never vulgar. That philosophy had been drummed into Simon’s head by the old earl and by most every other member of the family from the moment he had been old enough to talk. The ancient ways were best, they said, a life tied to the land, and to the traditions that had stood fast for generations.

It set his teeth on edge just thinking about it—about the sheer, mind-numbing sameness of that aristocratic way of life. No. He needed the challenge of manipulating the numbers and playing the game. Feeling the thrill when one of his ships returned from the Orient or the Americas, loaded down with riches that would allow him to best his competitors. Without that stimulation he would go mad with boredom.

And the old ways were dying. He was certain of that. Any man with a brain realized that England’s future lay not with the land, but with the wheels and engines of commerce.

Soames shoved a pile of ledgers to the end of the table, unrolling the architectural drawings for the mills.

“My lord, I’d like to draw your attention to a potential flaw in Mr. Russell’s plans. I wonder if his architect miscalculated the amount of space required for the looms.”

Simon squinted at the drawings. Light barely seeped through the rain-spattered windows of his rented lodgings in Milsom Street.

“What’s the time, Soames?”

“Going on four o’clock, sir.”

“Shouldn’t Russell be here by now?”

“Any moment, my lord. He was riding in from Bristol this afternoon.”

Simon retrieved a branch of candles from the polished mahogany sideboard and placed it in the center of the table. The tapers cast a soft nimbus of light over the architect’s drawings, but the rest of the handsomely appointed room faded into shadows.

He immediately saw the problem.

“There’s barely enough space for one man to pass between the machines—let alone thirty, moving from loom to loom.” He tapped the drawing as he calculated the costs of the mistake. “Does the architect have the slightest idea what he’s doing? These aren’t plans for a pleasure garden or a lady’s boudoir. There must be enough room for the weavers to move about, and for the bolts to be carried to the wagons.”

“Perhaps Mr. Russell plans to use children to operate the looms.”

Simon gave a low curse. “Then we’ll have to disabuse him of that notion. These jobs must go to the men who need them, not children. Children have no place in a mill.” He reached for a pencil and rule.

Soames let out a long-suffering sigh. “It is not necessary for you to correct the drawings, my lord. I will discuss the matter with Mr. Russell, and write to the architect this evening.”

Simon ignored him, sliding the rule across the crackling parchment, visualizing the space as he methodically built an image of the factory in his mind. The discipline of the calculations took him to that familiar and welcome place where boredom and distracting emotion slipped away—replaced by stark, beautiful numbers whose clarity and precision never disappointed him. The ticking of the mantel clock, the swish of carriage wheels on the rain-washed cobblestones, even the other man’s presence all but disappeared.

“My lord.” Soames’s voice held a barely repressed note of irritation.

Simon reluctantly tore himself away from the computations he had scratched on the parchment. He couldn’t help grinning at the sour expression on his business agent’s normally impassive face.

“Yes, Soames?”

“Please forgive my impertinence, your lordship, but may I remind you what happened the last time you became so closely involved with the architect’s work?”

“That bloody bastard Anson quit, that’s what happened, and a good thing it was. Every window bay in the terrace row would have been crooked if I hadn’t intervened.”

“You didn’t exactly intervene, my lord. You threw him out of the library. And it took us two months to find another architect because Mr. Anson let it be known how difficult the investors were to work with. Which,” he added sardonically, “everyone assumed included me.”

Simon laughed. “I’m sorry about that, Soames, but those terraces sold like wildfire, and you were well compensated for your trouble. Forgive me if I don’t share in your distress.”

The other man threw him a dark look, then firmly rolled up the architectural plans and placed them out of reach on the sideboard. “Perhaps we will take these out again when Mr. Russell arrives.”

Simon raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “You wound me, my dear fellow. You really do.”

Normally, he wouldn’t dream of allowing someone in his employ to treat him so cavalierly, but Soames was different. The youngest son of a baronet, they had met at Cambridge, drawn to each other by their shared love of mathematics and science. Several years later that bond had compelled Simon to offer his former classmate and friend a position as his business agent. The man had leapt at the chance, preferring a life of invigorating work to one of impecunious gentility. Simon had made full use of Soames’s negotiating skills, which enabled him to maintain the convenient fiction that the Earl of Trask was no more than a bored aristocratic investor.

As his agent bustled around the room, stacking ledgers and clearing the table in preparation for their meeting, Simon allowed himself to remember those days at university. Back then, he had been able to convince himself that a life of pure science—even a position teaching mathematics at Cambridge—was possible. It was what he had always dreamed of, a life of intellect and study. But the death of his cousin Sebastian, heir to the earldom, had crushed that dream into dust.

“If I may be so bold, my lord.” Soames’s dry voice interrupted his musings.

Simon dropped onto the Sheraton settee by the window and pulled out his pocket repository. If he couldn’t sketch, he might as well review the numbers he had gotten from his banker this morning.

“Yes?”

“Did you have a satisfactory visit with Miss Stanton yesterday?”

Sophie.

Simon threw down his book.

“No, my dear fellow, my visit did not go as planned. Instead of beginning my courtship, I found it necessary to persuade Miss Stanton that she was not to go haring off to the slums in search of a damned missing reticule and bracelet. Knowing Miss Stanton, however, she’ll find some way to disobey my injunction—and try to convince me that her reasons for doing so were completely sound.”

His agent frowned. “Mr. Russell will want assurances you’ll be able to provide a steady supply of coal from the Stanton lands.”

“Nothing is ever easy when it comes to Sophie Stanton, Soames.”

“How unfortunate, my lord. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Simon rose from his chair and wandered over to the gateleg table, now rendered as neat as a column of figures by the other man’s quiet industry.

“Yes, I believe you can. I told Miss Stanton I would search the pawnshops in Avon Street for her reticule and bracelet. She apparently thinks either one of them is valuable enough to attract a broker’s attention. You might check in one or two shops to see if anything comes in. Likely nothing will come of it, but I promised her I’d look.”

“I will see to it, my lord.”

Simon nodded. Sophie expected him to conduct the search himself, and perhaps he should feel guilty about fobbing the task off onto his agent. But the bracelet would attract little interest from a receiver of stolen goods. In any event, Soames would do the job more thoroughly, and right now Simon didn’t have the time to get involved in another one of her madcap schemes.

But it wasn’t just Sophie’s schemes that were distracting him, he acknowledged grudgingly. Everything about her distracted him. Her delicate face surrounded by a halo of auburn hair, her lithe body, her laughing voice. Even her mouth. Especially her mouth—sweet, bow-shaped, and pink as a rose petal.

He shook his head in disgust and began pacing the drawing room. He wasn’t used to thinking of Sophie that way, wasn’t used to feeling any kind of physical attraction for her. It didn’t feel right, not after years of thinking of her as…well, not quite a sister, but something close to that. He supposed it was a relief he could feel that way about her at all, but it made him hellishly uncomfortable. Still, he had every intention of being faithful after their wedding. He owed her that much—the dignity of a stable marriage and a husband who would not seek his pleasure in another woman’s bed.

Not that he wouldn’t try to make her happy. He would. He was immensely fond of Puck and wanted the best for her—always had. But she could no longer be allowed to run wild, or their life together would be a series of disastrous episodes. He simply couldn’t afford the damage that could pose to his work or their reputations.

A hand rapped firmly on the door to his apartments.

“That will be Mr. Russell, my lord. Are you ready to receive him?”

“Let him in.”

Even as he sharpened his focus on the coming meeting, Simon allowed one more image of Sophie’s face to drift across his mind.

He would approach the business of wooing her as he would any other financial or mathematical problem—logically, rationally, and with a minimum of fuss. He knew very well that she had loved him for years, and he suspected with the slightest encouragement she would tumble straight into his arms. And once he had her in his bed and flat on her back, his troublemaking elf would discover soon enough who her master was. After that, all would fall neatly into place.

Yes, Simon had no doubt whatsoever that Sophie would be one of the best investments he would ever make.

A stinging rain teemed down, mingling with the hot tears trickling over Sophie’s cheeks. She rubbed the moisture away with an impatient hand, creating blurry smears on her spectacles. Plucking a lace-edged kerchief from the slit in her gown, she snatched the lenses from her face and wiped them dry.

She refused to cry. She had told Simon she had the strength of mind to endure this, and endure it she would. But he had been right, blast him. What she had seen today couldn’t begin to compare with the genteel and carefully selected charitable work her mother did in London. The filth and disease of the place where Sophie now stood, the sorrow and despondency, were almost more than she could bear.

“Miss Stanton, please step under the porch. It will not do for you to catch a chill, especially in this place of contagion.”

Mr. Crawford grasped her elbow and steered her gently into the shelter of a small overhanging portico. He peered at her from under the dripping brim of his cleric’s hat, clearly unhappy she still insisted on searching the entire workhouse.

“Are you certain you wish to continue?” His eyes brimmed with concern, and she held on to their warmth as the one beacon of hope in this horrific place.

Sophie took a wavering breath and nodded, determined to push on. She carefully picked her way across the broken grey stones of the small courtyard separating the women’s quarters from the rest of the workhouse. The rain should have washed the cobbles clean, but it only seemed to make them greasier. A thick sludge bled from the cracks to collect in brown pools of foul-smelling water.

She followed the cleric through a door half off its hinges into a narrow hall that seemed to run the entire length of the building. If not for Mr. Crawford’s lantern, they would have been plunged into darkness, even though it was not yet five in the afternoon. The smell of human waste assaulted her senses once again, causing her stomach to pitch into her throat. Sophie pressed her kerchief over her nose and breathed through her mouth.

“At this time of day the children are still in the workrooms,” the clergyman explained as he stopped by a door at the end of the hall. “They will continue in their work until six o’clock, at which time they will be served their evening meal.”

Sophie had to swallow hard before she could speak.

“At what time of day do they begin working?”

“Seven, with one hour at noon for their dinner. Just the same as the adults.”

“How can children work such long hours?” she protested. “Surely the parish cannot expect it of them.”