One Scandalous Kiss

by Christy Carlyle

  Mr. Briggs hadn’t set foot in the shop in years. She usually delivered her payments in person and had even met the man’s wife and daughters when one of their visits to the bank coincided with her own. But he never came in person to the bookshop, and she’d never seen him as unsettled as he appeared today. A sheen of perspiration glistened on his upper lip, just below his quivering mustache. A shiver chased down her back as she noted additional signs of anxiety in the man. He was avoiding her gaze, and he fumbled with the latch on his leather folio before wrenching it open.

  Jess swallowed against the flutter in her throat, the anxiety bubbling up in her chest, as she watched the banker reach into his case and lift out the very check she’d given him the day before. He laid it on the desk between them and slid the slip of paper toward her as he spoke.

  “Miss Wright. As you can see, I am returning your check.” The man’s whole demeanor had changed since she’d delivered the payment toward her father’s loan the previous afternoon. The banker had seemed pleased then, happy enough to take the amount and happier still for a respite from dealing with the perversity of a woman who’d chosen to take charge of her father’s business and its debt. Jessamin imagined them well rid of each other for a while. The last thing she expected was to find him on her doorstep the next morning.

  Placing her hand over the check, she fought the urge to thrust it back at him.

  “I don’t understand, sir. Is this not the proper amount to bring payments current? You accepted it just yesterday. How has it come to be inadequate today?”

  There was no stopping the panic now. Jessamin felt the morning air chilling the sweat on her neck, and a sickening weight settled in her belly. If Mr. Briggs refused the money, all her recklessness of the night before had been in vain. If such an enormous sum wasn’t sufficient, she’d never pull the bookshop out of debt. What would she tell Jack? The prospect of putting a loyal employee out of work troubled her more than the thought of closing the shop.

  “Miss Wright, our bank is one of the most respectable in London.” He looked down his pince-nez at her, arching his bushy gray eyebrows above the golden rims. He paused for a beat, as if expecting her to take his meaning. When she said nothing, he added, “And we mean to remain respectable. In all of our dealings.”

  Jess opened her mouth but no words came.

  Briggs turned away from her dismissively, huffing out a grumble of frustration.

  Then realization hit with the force of a strike, and she covered her mouth with her hands to keep from crying out. That kiss. That bloody foolish kiss. Had one act—a choice made out of desperation to stave off this very moment—cost her everything?

  Jess closed her eyes and struggled to settle her whirling thoughts long enough to find her voice.

  “Mr. Briggs, were you by any chance at an art gallery in Mayfair last evening?”

  Please say no. But he didn’t have to say anything at all. Though she’d often suspected his disdain for her, whether because of her father or her own failures as a bookshop owner, it was clear now. His mouth tilted in a sneer, and then he looked away, as if disturbed by the very sight of her. At the gallery, after she’d kissed Lord Grimsby, many of the men and women around her had done the same.

  She’d disgraced herself, plain and simple. And somehow Mr. Briggs knew of the incident.

  He’d brought a toady along with him, and the two of them wandered about the shop, no doubt assessing and planning how to dispose of her stock. After they whispered together, heads bent, Briggs glanced back at her, and the look of disgust in his bulbous eyes was the only answer she required.

  The man who accompanied him, a younger, lankier version of Briggs himself, stepped forward and handed her a neatly folded document. Her hands shook as she tried to open it, but the gentleman spoke up in a surprisingly pleasant voice and said, almost regretfully, “Miss Wright, the bank has not acted on your overdue lien for years. Now that there is no viable means for you to settle the arrears, we have come to inform you that we will take possession of your inventory in one week in an attempt to settle the debt.”

  “It won’t be enough.” Jessamin heard her voice as if it was another’s, an echo from far away—lifeless, hopeless. “You can sell every book, the bindery equipment, everything, and it still won’t be enough to repay the debt.”

  When she looked up at the young man with tears blurring the corners of her vision, she imagined the regret she’d heard in his voice reflected in his pale gray eyes. But he merely stared down at her and said, “No.”

  He glanced at a sheaf of document in his hands, and then looked at her again with his cool, direct gaze. “Your lease. I see here it is—”

  They wanted her out and would no doubt be pleased to know she was already halfway there.

  “My lease has been up for months. The landlord has allowed me to pay month to month, but there’s the matter of . . .” The bank men knew more about her father’s money troubles than anyone, but acknowledging that he had even failed to pay the rent, that it was another debt she had yet to bring current, seemed like a final betrayal. “There was a previous arrears. Landlord wished me to clear it before he would allow me to sign a new lease.”

  He nodded as if that bit of information was very interesting indeed. The fact that she didn’t have the certainty of a roof over her head was simply a fact to him, as if a life wasn’t attached to it at all.

  “Mr. Briggs has noted here that you started a lending library on the premises. You should make arrangements to retrieve any of the books currently lent and—”

  “No.”

  Finally that sparked some emotion. Mr. Briggs’s assistant narrowed his eyes, and his smooth-shaven cheeks began to bloom with color.

  “No, Miss Wright?”

  “No, sir. Those books are not part of what is owed to the bank, nor to anyone. They were donated or purchased with charitable funds.”

  “I see.”

  “Did you charge your borrowers a fee?”

  “Whatever fees I collected were used to purchase more books. In that way, I hoped to make the lending library self-sustaining.”

  The young man glanced around her shop and expelled a pitying sigh.

  “If only you’d put the fees toward saving your shop, Miss Wright.”

  The coins she’d accumulated from the borrowers would never have made a significant impact on her father’s debt. But she wasn’t going to argue with Mr. Briggs’s assistant. The young man believed he’d won the point, and Jess was too busy willing herself to stop shivering and worrying over her future to mind conceding it to him.

  “Yes, perhaps you’re right.”

  Fisting her hand, she crinkled Kitty’s check, still folded in her palm. If Mr. Briggs wouldn’t accept the payment, she’d have to return the funds. They’d been given to support her father’s shop, and there wouldn’t be a bookshop anymore.

  There won’t be a bookshop anymore.

  It couldn’t be true. Father’s bookshop had always been here. She’d spent nearly every day of her life in it. An infant when her parents rented the space and started their bookselling venture, Jess didn’t remember a single day before Wright and Sons Booksellers existed.

  And she promised her father she wouldn’t let it founder. His last words to her had been about the shop, urging her to stay on, to keep it going, and to succeed in all the ways he’d failed.

  I trust you’ll fare better than I ever did, my girl.

  In four years she’d barely managed to keep the shop afloat. A bit had been paid to all of Lionel Wright’s creditors, but none of the outstanding debt had been cleared. Some days her burdens all seemed so heavy she would stand in front of her mirror, feet sore from standing, head sore from worrying, and swear she’d shrunk an inch under the weight. Now it was collapsing around her, the sense of loss a hollow, gaping pain. She’d felt it only once before—the day Father died after urging her to keep up his shop.

  “Miss Wright?”

  Jess looked up to find M
r. Briggs and his assistant staring at her. She’d forgotten they were still in the shop. The mild expression she’d come to expect from Briggs had settled on his whiskered face, but his assistant watched her warily, as if she might break into a fit of hysterics.

  Her mouth had gone dry but Jess managed a few words to send them on their way.

  “As you’ve requested, gentlemen, I’ll be out in one week. Would you mind seeing yourselves out?”

  Turning her back on the men, Jess approached the door of the small back room she used as an office. It was as much rudeness as she’d ever shown to anyone who’d visited Wright and Sons Booksellers. But she couldn’t face them, not when tears welled up and began sliding down her cheeks faster than she could swipe them away.

  The moment the bankers were out the door, Jack Echolls emerged from the back room and thrust a well-used scrap of cloth into her hand.

  “Dry your eyes, miss. We both knew this day was coming.”

  Yes. She’d feared it, dreaded it for years. Even while she’d been working to stave it off, the inevitability of the shop’s failure had always loomed over her. For the past four years, she’d only held it at bay, toiling as futilely as Sisyphus forever pushing a boulder up the hill.

  Jack pulled a straight-back chair from the office and Jessamin sat down hard, deflated, her whole body sagging despite the restraint of her corset, as if the weight of all that her father had left her—his poorly managed business and completely neglected obligations—had finally flattened her.

  “I thought we could get out from under the debt.”

  Jack made a tsking sound. “By borrowing more?”

  The word borrow brought Kitty Adderly and her ridiculous bargain to mind. Jess closed her eyes to block out the memory of her foolishness, but shutting her eyes only heightened the memories. She saw the gas lit swatches of bright color in the gallery, the ladies and gentlemen in all their finery, and the black-haired figure in the midst of it all—a man with the coldest eyes and the warmest lips.

  “Did you hear me, miss?”

  Jessamin pushed the memories away and looked up at her employee.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. What was it you said?”

  “You’re not going to faint on me like some proper lady, are you?”

  “I don’t faint. And I’m sitting down. Now, what was it you said?”

  Jack averted his eyes and scuffed the toe of his boot across the floor. “It was hard enough to say the first time.”

  “Out with it, Jack. I can take it.” If bad news had to come, let it all be at once.

  “Mr. Harker’s offered me a position.”

  Jessamin gasped, and Jack’s next words tumbled out quickly.

  “I would never have considered it, you understand. Not unless I knew there was no chance of work at the shop. I would have stayed loyal to you, miss, just as I was to your father.”

  Jess didn’t wait for him to finish before wrapping the older man in a quick embrace. When she pulled back, it was clear she’d embarrassed him, but her joy at his news was too much to contain.

  “Jack, that is the best news you could have given me. Nothing worried me more than the thought of leaving you without employment.”

  A bit of the morning’s tensions began to seep away. A bit of the hollowness had eased. She could breathe again, and she sucked in a greedy breath, letting the relief of knowing Jack would be all right ease a bit of the guilt she felt over losing the shop.

  She beamed at Jack and pressed a palm against her chest, attempting to quell the ache there. Breathe. Focusing on the rhythm of her slow-to-steady heartbeat, Jess noticed another sensation—a fluttering, a lightness, as if a pressure on her chest had subsided. It was anxiety, surely. Her future had never been more uncertain.

  With his usual practicality, Jack fixed on the biggest question of all.

  “I’ll be fine, miss. Please don’t worry yourself about me. But what about you? What will you do now the shop is closed?”

  Chapter Five

  THOUGH THE WEATHER had been dreadful during his entire stay in London, on the morning following the incident, it suddenly turned warm and unseasonably bright. The sun rose with an extraordinary show of color and hung in a sky as clear and blue as a robin’s egg. Sleep had eluded him, and Lucius witnessed every moment of the sunrise’s bold display and had been awake, turning and tossing and checking the mantel clock far too often, during all the hours of evening’s dark before it.

  He’d returned to his sister’s town house and consumed more than enough brandy to assure a sound slumber, but the moment his body was prone and his eyes slid shut, the scent of violet water assailed him. His thoughts kept tangling in strands of auburn hair. Auburn hair released from its pins and cascading in waves over the shoulders of Miss Jessamin Wright. Miss Wright, whose mouth was full and delicious and had moved so sweetly against his own.

  He blamed his ruminations on the brandy. Romanticizing the woman was utter folly. She’d behaved outrageously. Appallingly. Yet as Lucius considered just how outrageous she’d been, his arousal grew in equal measure. And the relentless ticking of the clock did nothing but set his mind turning. And despite admonishing himself, reviewing the whole scandalous matter with logic and reason, and vowing to set it aside, Miss Jessamin Wright remained vivid in his mind’s eye—with her wire-rimmed spectacles, shabby clothes, pretty hair, and floral scent.

  He’d intended to remain in London for a fortnight but when he’d finally given up on sleep and risen early, he yearned for nothing more than to prepare for the journey back to Hartwell. Distance from the incident in London and a return to the responsibilities of the estate would cure him of the fanciful notions running through his head.

  His valet, Mather, assisted him to dress, but in his usual slow, precise method. Lucius bit his lip, praying for tolerance to bear the man’s snaillike pace. It didn’t work. He pulled his neck cloth from Mather’s gnarled hands and began tying it himself, ignoring the fact that he was making a mess of the thing.

  In his low drone, Mather said, “Are you in a very great hurry, my lord?” He spoke the word hurry as if it was a distasteful and a quite unexpected possibility.

  Why was he suddenly so keen to be away from London? Surely the scent of violet water and the memory of Miss Wright’s kiss would have the power to haunt him as far as Berkshire. And departing early might provide more fodder for those who’d make much of the incident at the gallery. Not to mention that he’d yet to speak to Aunt Augusta at any length about her short list of marriageable young ladies. It had been the main impetus for coming to London. The need to marry well, to refill the estate’s coffers and see to long overdue repairs weighed on him more and more. Yet this morning, for reasons he refused to ponder too deeply, the notion of marriage held no appeal, practical or otherwise.

  “No, Mather. Carry on.” Lucius thought he saw amusement lifting the elderly man’s mouth but couldn’t be sure. Mather generally disdained displays of emotion as much as he loathed hustle. The man resumed tying Lucius’s neck cloth, slowly and precisely, and heaved a sigh when a knock sounded at the door. Mather loathed interruption too.

  “Beg pardon, my lord.” The housemaid pushed through the door almost as soon as she rapped. She bustled forward and held a letter out to Lucius. “A messenger from the Countess of Stamford just delivered this, my lord. He waits for your reply.”

  Unlike Mather, his aunt wasn’t known for rising early, and Lucius feared she might be unwell. Her note was short and to the point.

  Lucius, come at once. A.

  For such a talkative woman, his aunt was an unhelpfully vague correspondent.

  “Let the messenger know I will come at once.” His aunt wouldn’t settle for anything less.

  The young maid bobbed a curtsy and made a hasty retreat, nearly slipping on the polished floor as she pulled the bedchamber door shut with an unpleasant bang. The sound echoed painfully in his brandy-soaked head. Perhaps Mather had a point about the undesirability of haste after al
l.

  “LADY STAMFORD IS well?”

  Nothing about the demeanor of his aunt’s energetic butler, Noon, seemed amiss, but Lucius needed to hear from the man’s mouth that his aunt wasn’t ill.

  “Quite well, my lord. Lady Stamford is expecting you. She asked that you join her and her guests in the drawing room.”

  “Guests?” Lucius pressed his lips together to stifle a yawn. He never minded time spent with his aunt but, still bleary-eyed from his sleepless night, he didn’t fancy being sociable. And why must it be now, so early in the far too sunny morning?

  “Dearest nephew!”

  Lucius arched a brow, instantly awake. His aunt’s use of such a sugary endearment put him on high alert. He knew she felt a great deal of familial warmth toward him, but she’d never express it in such terms, especially in front of others. The crafty woman was warning him. Even her constant companions, twin pugs Castor and Pollux, their stout, biscuit-colored bodies tucked on either side of her, looked unsettled.

  Lucius leaned in to place a kiss on his aunt’s cheek and whisper near her ear, “I feared you were unwell. Tell me why I’m here so early.”

  She patted his arm and whispered back, “You shall soon see. Gird your loins.”

  Pulling back to squint at her, Lucius had only a moment to ponder why she’d advised him to prepare for battle before turning to face the two guests she indicated with the sweep of an arm.

  “I believe you’re all acquainted with my nephew, Viscount Grimsby.”

  She spoke his title with special emphasis. Lucius couldn’t remember the last time she’d bothered to do so. But as he took in the two ladies perched on her settee, he understood. Both of the women had been at the gallery the previous evening.

  “Lucius, you know Mrs. Ornish, of course.”

  He nodded to his late mother’s friend and she returned a tight smile.