“I might recall you mentioning him.” Throwing back the covers, Evie opened her mouth in a jaw-cracking yawn and sat up. “That’s good he can help us, I suppose. But how can we afford him? We can barely afford to stay off the streets. Although, I’m beginning to wonder if a nice alley wouldn’t be preferable to this.” She gestured to the room with a broad sweep of her arm. “The pillows are so hard my neck is beginning to ache, and I swear I saw a mouse run across the floor this morning. A mouse!”
“For the last time, this isn’t meant to be a vacation.” Trying—and failing—not to roll her eyes, Joanna picked up one of the pillows in question and gave it a good hard whack to even out the lumps before tossing it back on the bed. “There, all better. As for being able to afford Kincaid, he and I agreed to a trade. My services for his.”
Evie gasped. “Joanna! You cannot possibly mean to—to sell yourself to this man!”
“What? No! That isn’t what I…no.” Unable to stop the blush that flooded her cheeks with heat, she quickly went to the dressing table and began to mindlessly line up all of Evie’s little beauty tinctures and potions into two straight rows. “He is in need of a secretary. Someone to greet potential clients as they arrive, organize his office, and keep his schedule in order. As the oldest of three siblings, I believed myself suited to the task.”
“Naturally,” Evie said with an unmistakable bite of sarcasm.
Holding a small bottle of rose water intended to soften the complexion, Joanna spun towards her sibling with narrowed eyes. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that just because you’re the eldest doesn’t mean you’re the only one who can accomplish things.”
“I never claimed I was!”
“But you act like you are,” Evie countered. “I’m only eighteen months younger than you, yet you constantly still treat me as if I were a child.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t treat you like a child if you didn’t act like a child. Lying in bed all day, complaining about pillows and mice! That’s something a child would do.”
Evie’s brows snapped together. “You know that I’ve been ill!”
“Which was why I took it upon myself to find us a private investigator.”
“I could have found one.”
“Hiding under the blankets? I highly doubt that. Ouch!” she cried when a pillow struck her on the shoulder.
Goodness.
They were rather hard.
“I do not even know why you are upset.” Picking up the pillow, she tossed it back at her sister who managed to catch it right before it hit her on the side of the head.
“I am upset,” Evie said between gritted teeth, “because you always take it upon yourself to do things without consulting me. We came here together. We should make decisions together. You are not our mother, as much as you’d like to pretend you are!”
This time when the pillow came sailing towards her, Joanna managed to snatch it out of the air.
“I’ve never pretended anything of the sort!” As Joanna’s chest heaved with indignation, it occurred to her, somewhat belatedly, that perhaps Evie was right. Joanna did—very rarely—treat her sisters as if she were their superior instead of their equal. That included making decisions (like hiring Kincaid without giving Evie the opportunity to meet him) on their behalf. But she was older, if only by eighteen months. Surely that made her somewhat wiser, even if Evie didn’t think so.
“Why can’t we just get on?” she asked in frustration as she let the pillow drop. “We’ve traveled across an ocean, and we’re still fighting.”
“We can’t get on because we’re so different. We always have been.” Rising, Evie went to the wash basin and dipped a cloth into the lukewarm water. “You’ve never cared what others think about you, and I…”
“Care too much,” Joanna supplied when Evie trailed away.
“Yes,” said Evie, catching Joanna off guard with her honest admission. “I am well aware I’ve always put too much weight in other people’s opinions of me.”
“Then why don’t you stop?”
Evie met her gaze in the mirror’s silvery reflection. “Why don’t you start?”
“Point taken,” Joanna murmured. “I suppose we are who we are.”
“I suppose so.”
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for change. For improvement. I hate these little squabbles. I don’t want to fight with you,” Joanna said earnestly as she crossed to her bed and sat down on the edge of it. With an ominous creak and a groan, it sagged beneath her weight until she was nearly sitting on the floor. “In the moment, it feels like the right thing to do. But after…”
“You feel horrible?”
Joanna nodded.
“I do as well.”
“Then why do we do it?”
“As I said, we’re different.” After washing her face and neck, Evie laid the cloth on the edge of the basin and turned around. “If we weren’t sisters, I honestly don’t believe we’d be friends.”
It was painful, but true.
Evie adored clothes, and attending parties, and flirting with handsome men. Joanna liked reading, and going on walks through the countryside, and visiting new places regardless of how fashionable they were.
They had absolutely nothing in common.
But they were sisters.
Well, half-sisters.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” Evie said when a grimace flitted across Joanna’s countenance. “I want you to stop. Us having different fathers by blood doesn’t change anything. I hope you realize that.”
“I do. Up here.” Joanna tapped the side of her skull. Then she pressed a closed fist to the middle of her chest where a weight had been consistently growing ever since she’d learned the truth. “But in my heart…it’s going to be difficult to reconcile. What this changes and what it doesn’t.”
Throughout all the hard times—the war, their father’s death, selling the house, being so poor they couldn’t afford butter at fifteen cents a pound—she’d clung to the certainty of who she was and where she’d come from. It had been an unconscious source of strength. Something she hadn’t even realized she was drawing on when a problem or struggle presented itself. But it had seen her through nevertheless.
Asking herself what her father would do had seen her through. Channeling his strength and his wisdom had seen her through. But now…now that she knew her father wasn’t her father, how was she expected to see anything?
She felt like a ship adrift in a stormy sea, and the lighthouse beckoning it towards safer shores had just gone out. She felt lost, and angry, and betrayed.
Betrayed by a father who was never hers.
Betrayed by a mother she could hardly remember.
Betrayed by a grandmother who had kept it all a secret.
The Thorncrofts may have lost all of their material belongings, but they’d always been rich in family, and Joanna had taken pride in that. She was proud of the strong bond that connected them. Proud of the way they’d always protected each other. Proud of the way they’d held their chins up through good times and bad.
But how could she be proud of a family built on a lie?
“Not to worry,” said Evie as she pivoted back to the mirror and picked up the vial of rose water. “I found you bossy and irritating in Somerville, and I still find you bossy and irritating in London. That isn’t going to change anytime soon.”
A reluctant smile teased the corners of Joanna’s mouth.
“Brat,” she said with great affection.
“So, tell me more about this private investigator you’ve hired.” Pouring a small amount of rose water into her left hand, Evie rubbed her palms together and began to massage the sweet-smelling tonic onto her face. “Mr. Kensington?”
“Kincaid,” Joanna corrected. “As I said, he came highly recommended by Mrs. Benedict. I thought him to be very competent and nice. He was also quite handsome.” Joanna frowned. She didn’t know why she’d just said that. Kinc
aid’s physical appearance had no bearing on his ability to conduct a thorough investigation. She wanted to take the words back, but it was too late. Mentioning a handsome man in front of Evie was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
The damage had already been done.
“He is?” Having finished applying the rose water, Evie moved on to a glass jar filled with white cream.
Joanna had no idea what the cream contained. Knowing how seriously her sister took her beauty regiment, it was probably the sacrificial blood of a newborn lamb.
Or maybe it was just honey and glycerin.
“What does this Kincaid look like?” Evie asked as she smeared the lotion onto her forehead.
“Er…” Joanna thought back to the morning and her first impression of Kincaid. Wet from the rain, she’d been chastising herself for not bringing an umbrella when the door opened…and the most striking man in all of her life had appeared.
The sheer size of him was what she’d noticed most. As a woman of taller than average height, Joanna was accustomed to either looking men straight in the eyes or looking down on them. But for Kincaid, she’d had to look up. Up into a serious gaze the color of coffee with a bit of cream lightly stirred in.
His brows had been thick and forbidding above the thin wire rim of his spectacles. His mouth had been twisted into a grimace before she’d even had the chance to introduce herself. And his jaw, that hard, clean-shaven jaw, with its lines and angles, had been sternly disapproving.
A jaw like that could make a girl swoon if she wasn’t careful.
Which Joanna rarely was.
“Well?” Evie prompted. “I’m waiting.”
“He has brown hair.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “How descriptive. You should be an artist. Is he tall? Muscular? Both?”
“I don’t know. Unlike you, I am not here to find a husband, Evelyn.” Scowling, Joanna stood up and crossed her arms. “He looked like a private investigator. He stood about this high”—she waved her hand vaguely in the air four inches above her own head—“and physically fit with broad shoulders.”
And strong thighs.
And a very taut backside.
Her cheeks heated.
Evie gasped with delight.
“Jo, you’re blushing!” she crowed.
“I am not,” Joanna protested even as she slapped her hands over her cheeks and turned her back on her sister. “It’s just…warm in here.”
“Stifling, but that’s not why you’re blushing. You like Kincaid, don’t you?” Evie came up behind Joanna and gave her arm a playful pinch. “No wonder you wanted to be his secretary. Was this your ploy all along? Come to England and fall in love with a dashing detective?”
Joanna slapped her sister’s arm away. “Don’t be absurd. Kincaid is going to help us retrieve Mother’s ring and identify my birth father. That’s all. Our relationship is strictly professional.”
But if that was true…why had she tingled when he’d touched her? Just a glancing sweep of his fingertips across the small of her back as she’d preceded him into his office, but still…
She had never tingled before.
Certainly not for Charles, or any of the beaus that had preceded him. Yet she’d tingled for Thomas Kincaid. All the way from her nose to her toes…and everywhere in between.
“You will not speak of this conversation to anyone.” Because she knew exactly how her sister operated, she wagged her finger warningly at Evie’s lotion-covered countenance. “That specifically includes Kincaid.”
“Why would you presume I would tell Kincaid anything?” Evie said, all wide-eyed innocence brimming with thinly veiled mischief. “I do not even know the man.”
“Because you love nothing more than to play match maker. But there’s no match to be made here. We did not come to London to fall in love.”
“I did,” said Evie unabashedly. “With a duke. A blindingly gorgeous, adorably charming, obscenely wealthy duke. He’ll fall in love with me at first sight. We will take carriage rides around the park and attend the theater and send the ton into an absolute tizzy. You’ll see.”
Joanna had no doubt that she would. Once Evie set her mind to something, she was a force to be reckoned with. Her sister’s duke—whoever he may be—did not stand a chance. But while Evie was dreaming of romance, Joanna had no such notions.
“I am to report to his office first thing tomorrow morning,” she said, striving for nonchalance. “You may come, if you’d like.”
“And interrupt your alone time?” A sly smile curled Evie’s mouth. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“It isn’t alone time.”
“Oh?” She batted her lashes. “Is someone else going to be there?”
“For your information, yes. There is.”
“Who might that be?”
“James and Jane.”
“Are they investigators as well?”
“Not exactly,” Joanna hedged.
“Servants?”
“They’re cats, if you must know.”
“Cats!” Evie chortled, her slender body shaking with giggles as she fell back onto the bed. Bouncing lightly, she sat up on her elbows and grinned. “Cats! Joanna, you do make me laugh.”
“So glad to be of service,” Joanna said sourly. “I was going to walk up to Bond Street since the rain has stopped. If you’re finished taking amusement at my expense, would you care to join me?”
Evie’s gaze sharpened like a fox who had just smelled a rabbit. “Isn’t Bond Street where all the best shops are?”
“According to Mrs. Privet. We cannot afford anything, but—”
“I’ll be ready in a moment!” Moving with surprising speed given how sick she’d been all morning, Evie rolled off the mattress and disappeared behind a changing screen tucked away in the corner of the room.
With a long sigh, Joanna sat down to wait. When Evie and clothes were involved, there was no such thing as “in a moment”. While she had only brought a single traveling trunk, neatly packed with three dresses, a shawl, and an extra pair of shoes, Evie’s wardrobe had taken two sailors to haul it onboard the ship.
After a small eternity, Evie emerged from the screen in a sunny yellow gown with a full skirt, cinched waist, and elbow-length sleeves trimmed with ivory lace.
“Can you help with the buttons?” she asked, scooping her dark hair out of the way as she presented her back to Joanna.
Tucking her tongue between her teeth, Joanna made quick work of the long line of black glass buttons that ran from Evie’s neck all the way to the base of her spine. When she’d finished, she waited several more minutes for Evie to pick out just the right hat and then they were off, passing Mrs. Benedict on the way down the narrow, creaky staircase.
“Aren’t you two lovely!” exclaimed the young widow. “Off to explore a bit of the city, I take it?”
“Bond Street,” Joanna confirmed with a nod.
“Do you know if there will be any dukes there?” Evie said anxiously.
Mrs. Benedict blinked. “There’s always the possibility, I suppose.”
“You’re welcome to come with us,” Joanna invited.
“That’s nice of you to ask, but I am having my sister over for tea. Another time, perhaps.” Mrs. Benedict started past them, then stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “Were you able to speak with Kincaid?”
“I did, just this morning.” As her heart gave a sudden and unexpected thump, Joanna bit back a smile. “He is going to take our case. Thank you again for recommending him.”
“My pleasure. If anyone can help you, it’s Mr. Kincaid. Such a kind fellow.”
Joanna did not know if she would describe Kincaid as kind. Polite, perhaps, in that he hadn’t tossed her out on her ear when she’d revealed she had no money with which to pay him. But there’d been an edge beneath that disheveled, bookish veneer. A sense of danger. A lingering hint of the man he was before he took up as a private investigator helping widows find their missing sisters and old lad
ies retrieve their misplaced jewelry.
“Joanna is going to be his secretary,” Evie put in.
Mrs. Benedict’s brows rose ever-so-slightly. “That’s wonderful. Kincaid has been a bachelor for as long as I’ve known him. His home and office would benefit greatly from a woman’s touch.”
“I’m not going to touch him,” Joanna began, only to stop short at Mrs. Benedict’s resulting expression. “That’s—that’s not what you meant.”
“Enjoy town,” said Mrs. Benedict. Then she dashed up the stairs.
“I must say, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you in such a state,” Evie said as the two sisters continued on outside. The rain from the earlier in the day had finally cleared and the clouds were beginning to lift, exposing a sky painted in various shades of clear, crisp blue. “Blushing. Fumbling your words. It’s really not like you, Jo. If I did not know any better, I’d believe you were quite taken with Kincaid.”
“Evie?” Joanna said sweetly.
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
Chapter Six
All things considered, Kincaid had a better chance of finding a virgin in a brothel than the stolen ring of an American. Make that the stolen ring of an American’s deceased mother. Who may or may not have received said ring from a British lord with the initials JW.
Twenty-two years ago.
It would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And ever since he’d received eighteen stiches across the back of his skull following a scuffle with a bloke who very much did not want to be dragged in front of the magistrate, Kincaid had a particular aversion to needles.
The fact of the matter was that he never should have agreed to take the case. He certainly never should have allowed himself to become bewitched by guileless, blue eyes and a siren’s smile. But he had, and he was, and there was no going back on it now. He’d given his word. He would honor it. Then he’d put Joanna Thorncroft on the first ship setting sail for Boston and never think of her again.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered to James when the cat slanted him a cool, unblinking stare from his lofty perch atop the bookshelf. “Fat lot of help you were this morning. If you’d acted like the devil I know you to be instead of preening about like a besotted idiot, we wouldn’t be in this bloody predicament. Was a tiny, little bite too much to ask?”
Bewitched by the Bluestocking Page 8