by Evie Dunmore
The poetry? The poetry was published by Anonymous. She had suspected a woman to be the author, as was so often the case with Anonymous. Apparently, the truth was more outrageous. Apparently, there was a reality where her business partner was a notorious rake and where Lord Ballentine, most shallow of men, was an acclaimed poet. She had quite possibly fallen through a rabbit hole.
“Do I like it,” she repeated. “The poetry, I presume? Why, I never read any of it.” She gave him a haughty look. “Pretty, empty things don’t hold my attention.”
The gleam in his eyes faded.
He tsked. “You surprise me—I had taken you for a thorough investigator and yet here you are, buying into a company without knowing the identity of fellow share-owners or the content of one of their best-selling products. You have been careless.”
She seethed in silence, because he was not wrong. Her plans required no great knowledge of London Print at all, but she must not tell him that, and thus, she must keep quiet and let him think she was a fool.
“As it is,” he continued, “we both profit from my intervention. My book is still selling six years after publication which is remarkable. However, figures have stagnated. Now, imagine I were revealed as the author.” He looked smug, saying it. “We will need another edition, and we could—”
She held up a staying hand. “I am not doing business with you.”
“Don’t be obtuse,” he said mildly. “You must.”
“I must do no such thing.”
He shrugged. “A pity, then. Your idea about my war diaries was good. They shall be published next.”
Her stomach was a hard ball of dread. If only she had not gone to meet him at Blackwell’s at all. Why had she? “Sell your shares to me,” she whispered.
“Why—I have only just acquired them.”
She drew closer. “If it is money you want, sell them to me.” She would find the money, somehow, no matter how staggering the figures.
Tristan leaned back against the desk and swirled the whiskey in his glass, looking infuriatingly laconic and superior. “I have no interest in a lump sum, princess. I do, however, have a vested interest in London Print maintaining its profits long-term.”
She glared at him, and his smile turned into a smirk. “Come now,” he said. “We both know you would never acquire wholesome women’s magazines without ulterior motives. The pen is mightier than the sword and such. The Home Counties Weekly, in your hands? What is your plan—women’s rights shenanigans instead of sponge cake recipes? No. I want control over the content.”
Cold sweat broke over her brow.
He’d ruin . . . everything.
She swallowed, trying to force a surge of nausea back down.
“There are other ways of making money, if you must,” she said. “Pick another way.”
His expression hardened. “And idly stand by as you lose us readers? I cannot do that, I’m afraid.”
Us.
She wanted to screech and snarl like a fox clamped in a trap. There could be no us. He had just sabotaged their every hope for this enterprise while casually swilling whiskey. Her blood roared in her ears. Anything she’d say now would be petty. She must not give him such satisfaction.
“This is not over,” she said.
“Not in a long time, my sweet,” she heard him say before she firmly closed the door.
* * *
The sky was already dark like smoke behind Oxford’s chimneys and she was still pacing an angry circle on Hattie’s Persian rug, round and round. The train ride from London had failed to calm her. The sight of Oxford’s eternal walls had not soothed her.
“He tricked me,” she fumed, “and I let him. How could I? He’s not even sober half the time!”
Annabelle was watching her with overt concern from the settee. “You could hardly expect such a turn of events, no one could.”
“It is all very curious, almost like a scene from a play,” Hattie supplied from her armchair. “The odds for such a thing to come to pass, of both of you buying stakes in the same enterprise, are so low—it feels fateful.”
Lucie whirled on her. “This is not a play, Hattie. This is a disaster.”
Her friends fell silent, and she knew she had spoken too harshly.
She took a deep breath. It did not help. She was still reeling.
“You know what this means,” she said. “He will be able to veto anything. We cannot put our plan into practice—we cannot publish our report.” She pressed her palms against her temples. “We have raised a fortune and purchased a publishing house—for nothing.”
The silence became heavy and grave.
“Perhaps we find a solution while Parliament is in summer recess,” Annabelle then said. “I shall ask Montgomery to reschedule the session for his amendment proposal when they reconvene in September.”
“Thank you. But if it were easy to find another way, we would have found it by now.”
“And if we just did it anyway?” Hattie said with a small voice. “What if we just went ahead?”
Lucie frowned. “The executive processes require two signatures at every turn now. There is no legal basis for us to proceed. I am vexed beyond words.”
Catriona pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “And if we used the publishing house for some other purpose?”
Lucie blinked. “Which one?”
“It’s still a growing enterprise, which is hardly a useless investment. And whatever we shall do with it, you have as much power as Lord Ballentine. You can both veto each other’s ideas.”
“Oh, grand. Spending our days bargaining and bickering with Ballentine instead of advancing our work? Blast, to even think I should have to endure his smirking countenance every week.”
Annabelle looked intrigued. “I like it. We could use it to further the Cause in other ways. Why not employ as many women at London Print as we can? We could pay them the same wages as the men.”
Hattie nodded. “Wouldn’t that be much nicer than sending surplus women to Australia?”
Lucie paused. The idea was good; even as her stomach churned with emotions, she knew it merited close consideration. There was indeed the rapidly growing problem of middle-class women in need of office employment, chiefly because there were not enough men in Britain to marry and provide for them. War and emigration led too many prospective grooms abroad or to their demise, and the women left behind were deemed too proper to take up manual labor for a living. The government’s current remedy of sending women to Australia with a one-way ticket so they could find husbands there was, as usual, a harebrained scheme. However . . . she shook her head. “A brilliant idea,” she said. “But no.”
“Whyever not?” Catriona looked genuinely confused.
“An office full of women workers?” Another shake. “It would be unwise, with Ballentine so close. He hardly needs the added acclaim of being a romantic poet—he could cause disruption just by flaunting himself around the office. And he will. Sensible women will turn against each other, competing for his attention. The one he lures will suffer a broken heart and do something deranged . . . you have all seen the headlines he causes. And I will have to dismiss her, because I cannot dismiss him.”
Her friends were regarding her with a collective frown, as though she had quite lost her mind.
“Aren’t you doing us an injustice?” Annabelle asked mildly. “I know he’s a scoundrel, but it will take more than a handsome face and some flirtation to turn women into imbeciles.”
“I agree,” muttered Catriona. “Have some faith in our rational faculties.”
Lucie blew out a breath. To an outsider, she would sound quite unhinged. “You have to understand something about Ballentine,” she said. “He used to be a second son, and his hair was orange. There were rumors he wasn’t even Rochester’s. What does such an unfortunate boy do to survive
? He becomes charming. And witty. He becomes a veritable Machiavelli of charm. He will eventually sense your desires and weaknesses from a mile away and will use them against you as it suits him. Now imagine that a boy with such a grudge and such skills grows into an extraordinarily handsome man, becomes the heir, and returns home with the Victoria Cross. Can you imagine what this makes him?”
For a long moment, only the crackling sound of the fire filled the room.
Annabelle’s and Catriona’s expressions had turned troubled.
“It makes him a dangerous man,” Hattie finally said. “Forever out to gorge himself on the attention of admirers to soothe old wounds.” Never mind that she looked half intrigued by the prospect.
“Bother,” Annabelle said. “Can we not buy a different publisher? I shall speak to Montgomery; I’m certain he will not deny me more funding.”
“If you find one on offer, with the same readership, certainly.”
They all knew there was presently no such thing. While their plan to use London Print as a vehicle for the suffrage cause hadn’t been perfect, it had been thought through within the constraints they were given. To think they could be executing the plan right now, rather than haphazardly collecting ideas of how to proceed!
“The more I think about it, the more I agree that Lord Ballentine shouldn’t be in our offices,” Hattie said pensively. “Just a few days ago, I was welcoming the ladies who have enrolled for the Oxford Summer School, and some of them were keen to admit they were taking the drawing course not because of Professor Ruskin’s teaching, but because Lord Ballentine has set up home in Oxford. They are hoping to cross paths with him.”
Lucie stared at her. “He has what?”
“Oh dear.” Hattie ducked her head. “You didn’t know?”
“No,” Lucie bit out. “Where does he live, do you know?”
“In Logic Lane, I think—Lucie, what are you doing? It’s not a respectable time to call on a gentleman. . . .”
Chapter 10
Tristan’s manservant did not look at all surprised to find an enraged woman at his master’s doorstep at an unrespectable time.
He did, however, bodily block her entry with his tall form. “His lordship is not at home,” he said smoothly, his sleek black eyebrows exuding more arrogance than a full-fledged duke. He was not the valet she remembered from the days of Wycliffe Hall, either.
“You are new,” she said. “What is your name?”
His dark eyes contemplated her down his nose. “Avi, milady,” he finally said.
“Avi,” she said. “Lord Ballentine and I have a business matter to discuss. Unless you think his lordship wants the entire street to partake in it, step aside. My voice carries, I have been told.”
The brows swooped. “It does,” Avi said. “Carry. You are not armed with anything sharp, milady?”
“Other than my tongue?”
The valet relented in the face of such belligerence, bowed his head, and stepped aside.
She brushed past him, her heart drumming an angry beat.
The stairway was narrow.
The landing was small.
Part of her wondered why the future Earl of Rochester would set up home in a commoner’s house—
The door to the bedchamber was open, and the warm light of a fire and at least a dozen candles spilled onto the landing.
She rushed ahead and turned into the doorway.
She froze midstride.
At the back of the room, stretched out on his side and propped up on an elbow, the master of the house was lounging on a divan.
And he was naked.
She stared, for a breathless moment suspended in time.
He slowly raised his eyes from his book, looking . . . intrigued.
Her gaze jerked away like fingers touching something hot.
Too late. The sight was seared onto her mind and kept glowing behind closed eyes: the smooth, honeyed skin and chiseled muscle; wide, straight shoulders; a broad, broad chest . . . and a tattoo on his right pectoral.
Her mouth was dry. Her heart was pounding.
A trail of dark hair below his navel had dragged her gaze down and down. . . . He was not entirely naked. A pair of soft, low-slung trousers clung to his hips.
Still. Her face burned as if she’d stepped too close to a furnace. This was bad.
The divan creaked. She opened her eyes and, peering sideways, noted that his lordship had sat up. Her fingertips dug into her palms. Let the circus commence.
“Lucie.” His voice was rough. “Should they become true at last, my dreams of you in my bedchamber?”
“Would you mind making yourself decent?” she said to the door frame, her tone unnaturally prim.
“I say,” he drawled. “If nudity offends your sensibilities, I recommend you refrain from storming men’s boudoirs after dark.”
Some instinct told her not all nudity would make her nervous. It was this particular well-formed, golden nudity that had made her go a little weak in the knees.
In the periphery of her vision, she watched him rise and stretch with the grace of a large cat, his back muscles rippling beneath gleaming skin—could she blame herself for watching? It was as though a piece of art, a Roman marble, were coming to life.
Still, as he walked to the wardrobe, she was tempted to skip down the stairs again, past insolent Avi, and leave with whatever decorum she had left. Sometimes she had to wonder about her choices. She had just burst into a man’s bedroom, utterly unacceptable behavior even for a confirmed spinster, scandalous even by her standards. Years and years of shared antagonism must have given her a false sense of familiarity where Tristan was concerned.
“Voilà,” he purred.
She turned back.
He was standing next to the fireplace, not decent at all. He had slipped on a dressing gown of sorts: red silk, exotic floral trimmings. It fell open in the front and revealed a flat abdomen with well-defined slabs of more muscle. In the glow of the fire, his bare skin looked smooth like satin to the touch, and her lips responded with an excited tingle.
She steeled herself. This was as presentable as he would make himself. She strolled into the room with a nonchalance she did not feel, because hovering at the door like a ninny would be worse.
She noted a four-poster bed taking up near half the chamber to her right, and colorful wall tapestries and a wood cabinet to her left. The air smelled of him, and being cocooned in his scent was as unsettling as being confronted with him being in a state of dishabille.
“Did the cat get your tongue?” he asked, his voice soft.
He was watching her with a glint in his eyes. If he were a lion indeed, his tail would now have the telltale flick of a predator ready to pounce.
Except that he had already gone for the kill.
The resentment over why she was here in the first place surged anew; her body went rigid with it.
She propped a hand on her hip.
“Is it true?” she demanded. “You have set up residence in Oxford?”
He took his time contemplating her belligerent stance before granting her a reply. “For now, yes.”
“Why?”
He gave a lazy shrug. “It is such a pretty little town.”
She shook her head. “You would never voluntarily settle in such a provincial hovel,” she said, the sweep of her hand encompassing the room. “First you buy half of my publisher, then you set up house in my city—what are you scheming, Ballentine?”
He raised a brow, rather superciliously. “Your city? A bit grandiose, don’t you think?”
Her hands curled into fists. “We cannot both be in the same room, or the same town, for a minute without quarreling,” she said. “Working together is impossible, you must know this. Sell me your shares. I shall put it in writing that your books will be well cared for.”
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He cocked his head. “Perhaps I enjoy our quarreling,” he said. “It adds a certain piquancy to my day.”
Of course, he would draw it out and try and make her beg.
She’d sooner give her first vote to the Tories.
“See reason,” she tried. “We cannot both own exactly half.”
Again his brow went up. “Because it means I can—and will—veto anything endangering our sales, such as, say, radical women’s politics?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
She realized then that she was closer to begging than she’d ever been. Her plans, for two years in the making, dashed. By him, of all people. To her horror, tears of frustration were burning in her nose, when she couldn’t remember the last time she had cried.
Tristan’s brow furrowed. “Come now,” he said. “Potentially ruining your own business cannot be in your interest, either. And I know I played pranks on you during those summers at Wycliffe Hall, and some were not in good taste. But we are both adults now, so can you not forgive and forget and let us begin anew? I shall apologize for my youthful transgressions if that settles it.”
Bells of hell. She saw red. A lecture on grace by a man, who, if rumors could be trusted, had recently jumped from a balcony into a rosebush to escape an enraged husband. But he’d toss her an apology, if doing so made her biddable?
Any sense of defeat went up in angry flames. “You think I dislike you for your childish pranks?”
His eyes narrowed. “What else could it possibly be?”
“Your ignorance is astonishing.”
“Enlighten me,” he said darkly. “Just what crimes have I ever committed against you to merit such a degree of dislike?”
“Dislike?” she said. “Very well, this is why I dislike you: you are a libertine. You seduce people for the sake of it, for sport. You will use and discard a woman just to pass an afternoon . . . you value trivial things and mock serious matters, and you talk a lot but say very little, which leads me to conclude your mind is lazy or foolish, or both . . . you misuse your superior station with your hedonistic ways, when most people cling to their positions by the skin of their teeth, and, worst of all, you have been assigned a seat in the House of Lords and yet you have not used it once—not once!—when millions go without a voice in this country. Truly, I can think of few men more useless than you, and I don’t dislike you, my lord, I detest you.”