by Anne Mallory
Georgette had taken ton watching to a higher level, joining those who enjoyed observing the spectacle during the social hours. Miranda loved hearing about the parties and the people, from the fringe routs to the more noteworthy balls, but the echo of her mother’s voice telling her to be practical kept her from observing the circuit personally except when she had to make deliveries.
At those times, she couldn’t help passing by.
The glimpses provided lovely fodder for her daydreams. And the printed tidbits were temptations too rich to resist.
“And Mrs. Q. It says here ‘The courtesan of all courtesans dressed in her signature green with a bright red rose shining upon her lapel, her only other accouterments no fewer than ten rakes dripping from her pleats.’”
“You could overshadow her in your undergarments, George. Bring the rakes to their knees.”
“Don’t tempt me, Miranda.” She waggled her perfect brows. “I just might do it. We could do so together. To be Mrs. Q., even for a day, would be grand, don’t you think?”
Miranda snorted. She could see it now. The two of them together in their finest, a practical brown wren trailing the bright peacock. She sometimes thought she was Georgette’s best asset—a foil to her showy beauty.
Georgette continued, ignoring her. “Some handsome man would come into the store and sweep you off your feet. Abduct you to his lair. Have his wicked way with you while showering you with jewels and other lovely shiny objects.”
Miranda wanted to snort again, even if the idea of it held a tiny bit of secret appeal. “And then?”
“And then?” Georgette sputtered. “You have a grand time. Wear those fine jewels. Spend any spare shiny objects.”
“And be sent home with paste.”
“Paste goes for a pretty penny.”
“And so too it seems does the heart.”
“Oh, I might as well send you back to the opinion section.” Georgette sighed theatrically, holding forth the paper in martyred hands. “See if you can’t dig up more correspondents there to salve your cold, shriveled heart.”
“I couldn’t possibly leave you salivating over the social news by yourself. You might get lost in it and never return,” Miranda said lightly, pushing the paper back down. Though she slowly, secretly scooted out the page of the paper that contained the editorials. Mr. Pitts sometimes couldn’t help himself and had to post a scathing view of something. Replying was how she had met him.
“I am not the one who needs to worry about becoming lost in pen and ink.” Georgette raised her brows and looked down her pert nose. She looked back down at the column and whistled. “Lady W. is to be the subject of another duel.”
“Outdoing her husband again today on the gossip scene, is she? You’d think she gifted each new admirer with a sabre just for the task.” Miranda shook her head, trying to find the tidbit to read. Georgette had a tendency to sensationalize information that was already quite sensational. And when it came to Lord Downing and his parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Werston, it often was already shocking.
“Well, when your husband reportedly impregnates an earl’s daughter, the scandal needs to be sufficiently large to cover it.”
“This is true.” Miranda shook her head. It was difficult to believe that people did such things, but society seemed rife with scandal. The stories made for good reading, at the least. “Who is fighting over her hand this time?”
“A Mr. E and Lord D.” Georgette tapped her full lower lip. “Rumor has the duel taking place at Vauxhall. I wonder if we can discover where and when, so that we can peek through the bushes. I still can’t believe you won’t come to the park to see Lord Downing as you are always so interested in his exploits. He passed by yesterday. Only spent a few paltry minutes, but to be seen twice in a week? It’s like a bevy of good fortune for the swooner in all of us.”
Miranda tried to ignore her. She wasn’t going to haunt the park for a peek at the man. Downing’s exploits seemed especially grandiose, that was all. “Fighting for his mother’s honor?”
“You always think highly of people. It’s sweet.” Georgette reached over to pat her shoulder. Miranda glared. “But doubtful. I assume it refers to Lord Dillingham.” Georgette pursed her lips in thought. “I will have to check Debrett’s to make sure I haven’t missed anyone though.”
Miranda withheld a roll of her eyes. Georgette was always abreast of who was who. She could likely challenge the ton matchmakers.
“You check then. I am sure that there will be plenty of information over the next week. They always set up scandalous news this way, with just a hook and a lure.”
“Well, I will do just that. Look here, there is another column devoted to the sequel gossip around The Seven Secrets of Seduction.”
Miranda made a noncommittal sound, absorbing the words.
“Since I can’t get you away from your ink, I say that you write to the author again. And proposition him.”
It took a moment for her friend’s words to sink in. “Prop—” she sputtered.
“Any man who writes words like that has to be able to use his hands in other ways too. It would be good for you.”
“Georgette!” Miranda clunked her teacup onto her saucer.
“Oh, pish, you could use a little manhandling.” Georgette nibbled on a scone. “Write to your Eleutherios or come ogle Lord Downing and try to gain his interest like the rest of us—I daresay you might even be willing to let your bonds free if you had an assignation with one of them. Satisfy your needs.”
“Assignation? Satisfy my needs?” Miranda gawked, then ground her teeth. “And manhandling? As if you can speak of manhandling. I can’t believe you are practicing your wiles on poor Peter.”
“If the shoulders and thighs are good…” Georgette tapped her lower lip with her pink-gloved finger, smirking.
“Too few of the quality kind around these days under all that padding,” a husky, decidedly unfeminine voice said. “How do you ladies ever deduce what is real?”
Miranda’s body tensed, and Georgette immediately looked up at the deep drawl.
“Ladies.” Crisp black and white once again stood in contrast as the speaker inclined his head.
Georgette uttered a shocked response, but Miranda barely registered it as her body unwillingly turned left toward him.
He raised a brow, and one side of his mouth curved. There was an entirely too-amused light in his eyes. A long finger, enclosed in black today, ran idly along the edge of his crossed arm. “Miss Chase?”
“Yes?” she answered, somewhat stupidly, wondering how long he had been standing in the early shadows listening to their conversation. Mortification, curiosity, anticipation…she couldn’t discern which emotion was winning. She thought maybe the mortification.
“Perhaps you might satisfy my needs instead?”
The mortification. Most definitely.
Georgette said something incomprehensible in a strangled voice.
“What do you need?” Miranda’s voice was a bit faint, her ears slightly buzzing. Her mind was going in four directions simultaneously. A little like the hobbyhorse that she had seen speed down a hill, breaking apart in midstride, and casting the driver one way while the two wheels and wooden body flew elsewhere.
“Oh, I’m sure together we can figure that out.” He motioned behind him, smiling. “Shall we?”
She jerkily stood and took two automatic steps toward him before she pulled herself together enough to remember that Peter was manning the counter, that Georgette was gaping like a fish, and that the man in front of her was here to pick up his parcel—which required no help from her in her mortified state. She’d probably do something even more embarrassing at this point. She’d be castigating herself for weeks as it was.
She stopped. “Peter can help you.”
“Not in the manner I’d prefer.” He smiled lazily, his questing fingers absently caressing the leather bindings on a row of Greek philosophers.
Another choked gur
gle issued from the table.
There was that same maddening flash in his eyes, a lone light bobbing in a storm-tossed sea. It made her itchy. She backed up, embarrassment becoming belligerence at the topsy-turvy way he made her feel.
That, and she was pretty sure his presence was starting to make her perspire, and she didn’t want to let him see.
“I don’t know in what manner you’d prefer, but Peter will be perfectly happy to assist you with your package.”
He raised a brow. “I think not.”
“Then he can also assist you with anything else you require.” Yes, there was definitely an overheated feeling spreading into her hairline. “He is quite familiar with the stacks.”
“No.”
“No?” She startled. Everything about this man was so beyond her familiarity. She had assumed that without something epically scintillating on her lips, he would withdraw…become bored or irritated.
That he had returned today—and so early—made the wheels on her runaway hobbyhorse spin more out of control, but also imbued her with a strange sense of feminine confidence that she usually lacked. The power of it was foreign and heady and clashed against the lingering freeze of embarrassment.
She arranged her skirts and returned to the chair across from Georgette, pulling a sheet of the paper to her blindly. “You are just here to pick up your parcel,” she said calmly, pulling forth a breeze to her voice. “I assure you that what you require is behind the desk.”
“Is that correct?”
“Yes. And I am busy, as you can see.” She pointed to Georgette, who stared blankly back, uncharacteristically speechless.
“Busy discussing the latest rag on dits?”
She colored over being caught with her hand on the gossip sheet, as it was. How long had he been standing there? “I am taking a break at the moment. As I’ve said several times, Peter will be happy to assist you. I assure you that your parcel is behind the desk.”
“But that is what you thought last eve as well. I left quite unassisted. And unsatisfied.” He moved along the shelf, drawing his hand along the spines, fully emerging from the shadows, putting himself back in her direct view.
She looked at the black-and-white print, trying vainly to pretend the page was right side up and that she was highly engrossed in an article. “I placed it behind the counter myself this morning—along with your copy of Candide. It seems that the original package was misplaced on a high shelf last night.” She peered over the edge of the paper and down her nose. “Mysteriously.”
He raised a brow, the flash of light amidst his dark eyes undimmed. “Mysteriously indeed. You should watch where things are moved.”
“I will pay careful attention next time. Now, Peter—”
“No. I want you.”
She felt the color in her cheeks bloom to life. “I assure you—”
“You have a vested interest in making sure I leave with what I want.”
“I assure—”
He tapped a binding and withdrew his hand. “And hopefully what I need as well.”
“Uh…” With her emergence into womanhood, she had thought she had overcome the inability to complete a sentence. “But I’m busy with—”
“Go.” Georgette’s voice was strangled. “It will allow me to catch up with you and read the sections about the Secrets sequel.”
“Dear me, Miss Chase. Speaking of that book again?” He cocked that infernal dark brow. “It sounds like this is an obsession. Tsk, tsk. I’ll think you truly have a secret desire to be seduced.”
Miranda pushed back her chair in a distinctly unladylike manner that would have appalled her mother, and it toppled over behind her with a clatter. She thwacked the paper on the table, crumpling the edges in mortified irritation. “Fine. Let’s retrieve your parcel.” She started around the stacks, forced to brush by him. “You can view it at the desk.”
“And such a fine view it is,” he said, as his leg brushed hers, the words low and deep. “Softly bound, the corners curved.”
She stopped abruptly, her skirts shifting and coming to rest around her legs in a way that would have been completely normal if all of her raw spots weren’t on fire. The feel of the calico might as well have been silk and iron mixed together. She faintly heard Georgette coughing behind them.
“I beg your pardon?”
He looked her over, his eyes still containing the lazy flash. “When one chooses to wrap a prize in such formless paper, it can be hard to tell, but I’m sure I detect some truly decadent curves beneath. Sweeter than words—the ones in your favorite book or otherwise.”
A mixture of a cough and chortle issued from the stacks.
“I…I beg your pardon? Are you…are you teasing me?”
“Teasing? Never.” He smiled and tapped a finger on his arm again. “My parcel? I’m not sure you truly have it.”
She studied him for a moment in heated disbelief before turning and walking again.
“I can’t wait to hold it in my hands.”
Miranda missed a step as she rounded the last stack.
Peter was fidgeting with two packages at the counter. He completely ignored Miranda and stared at the man behind her as they came into view.
“Peter, could you locate the package labeled—”
“I think Peter was just taking his break,” the deep voice behind her said.
Peter’s head bobbed, and he disappeared into the back room. Miranda stared after him, nonplussed.
“My parcel, Miss Chase?”
She shivered at the way the words curled around her, the way he seemed to savor her name. “You can’t just order people around, Mr. Jeffries.”
He leaned against the counter as she rounded it, tapping a finger, smiling. “It’s a failing of mine.”
“Perhaps you should rectify that.” She refused to fall at his feet. She had a feeling women too often did. She leaned down and gripped the coarse-wrapped paper and twine.
“Where is the fun in that?” His voice was slightly less gravelly than the day before, but still laced with the same huskiness.
“It is laudable to correct one’s faults.”
“Sometimes being naughty is much more fun though, don’t you think?”
Miranda stood up and thumped the parcel on the counter next to the two Peter had been wrapping and labeling. Her heart raced even as she tried to think of a suitable response. “Sir, I think you ought to read those manuscripts on seduction again if you think these are good battle tactics.”
He slowly smiled. “Ah, at least I know that you aren’t completely oblivious. They are superb tactics. You’ll never guess my real intent now.”
“I assure you, your intent is all too clear. You seek to play now, then have a smile about it later.”
“Oh now, Miss Chase, that is entirely untrue.” He stroked the edge of the package, the curve of a corner. “I assure you that I seek to smile now and play with you later.”
A spike of desire hit her even as she chided herself the fool. “You are not amusing, sir.”
“Isn’t it the second secret? Luring your prey or some such rubbish? Shouldn’t I be luring you away? Luring you to a deep pool, where you will exclaim over the lovely lily pads gracing the surface, never anticipating my fingers stroking you underneath?”
She folded her hands primly on top of the counter, even as her skin grew hotter, the perspiration retreating deep within, relinquishing the idea that her extremities could be cooled.
He smiled as if he knew what she was thinking, feeling. “Payment?”
She looked down at the ledger, the letters blurring together, causing her to run her fingers down the list twice until she found the right one. “No, my uncle included a note saying your package was paid in full.”
Which meant he had no more business in the shop and would walk right through the door, never to be seen again, if she didn’t say something to keep him there.
And which she realized, from the conflicting feelings he stirred, she fool
ishly desired.
When she looked up, he already held the package in his hands, ahead of her and in a hurry to be on his way.
“Well, then.” He smiled as if he knew a delicious secret—probably anticipating wherever he was off to next—to violently shake up some other woman’s life most likely—far from here. “Until we meet again, Miss Chase.”
She nodded tightly, the coil in her belly rock hard. She tried to open her mouth to say something. Anything. But her training beat down on her, ingrained, her lips stayed firmly shut. Any chance to extend the flirtation with the first man who had made her heart race fragmented as he pushed the door. The bell jingled, and he disappeared from view. The heated coil fated to be extinguished before it fully flared.
And it was a blessing, no matter the crashing disappointment. Men like him flirted, but when it came down to it, they found real prey. She’d likely never see him again, except perhaps on the scandal pages—for surely a man like that would require more than the occasional line.
She headed back around the stacks, feeling more tired than she had before. She sat with a less than graceful thump in her chair, aware that Georgette was staring at her, gaping like a market fish.
“Sorry for the disruption.” Miranda wrenched the paper toward her, determined to forget the man. After she scoured it for Mr. J’s. “Where were we?”
“Do you know who that was? Why didn’t you tell me you had met him?” Georgette’s tone neared a screech. “When? How?” The devolution into sputters would have been an interesting switch to listen to if Miranda weren’t still kicking herself for not saying something, anything, before he walked through the door, blessing or not.
She’d never castigate Georgette for her instantaneous attraction to rogues again. Being enamored of some rakish beast. Miranda had never had to deal with the direct attention of someone so magnetic before. It was overwhelming.
“I just met him last eve. Completely crazed, is he not?” she muttered as she drew the gossip page closer. She’d have to quiz her friend on his past. Later. When she had her mind and body under control. “And awfully bossy under all of that false charm. Thinks he rules the roost, I bet. I daresay I shall find him in these pages everywhere now.”