The Unsuitable Secretary (A Ladies Unlaced Novel)

by Maggie Robinson

  Destroying her blanket was all Thomas’s idea. If Harriet changed her mind, she couldn’t very well leave in the night if she had nothing to cover herself with. Why, it was below freezing!

  Knowing her, though, she would be capable of wrapping herself up in the guest room coverlet and marching out the door like some ancient queen.

  Then Thomas spotted the boxes with the distinctive department store wrappings on the console table. Excellent. No afghans or coverlets necessary for his new mistress’s comfort.

  “I see the delivery from Dickins and Jones finally arrived.” Thomas hoped Harriet’s reservations would be soothed by her new outerwear. And if her conscience was truly troubled by his proposition, she could leave and not contract pneumonia.

  “Yes, sir. They were most apologetic about the tardiness. I believe there are additional items in the boxes to make up for the inconvenience.”

  “Capital. I shall take them upstairs myself.”

  He managed to climb the stairs with the boxes tucked under his chin and also managed not trip over his own feet. He was tired. It had been a day of excitement, upheaval, and perhaps some insanity, but he was glad that the solution to his inconvenient little problem had finally come to him.

  It would solve Miss Benson’s—Harriet’s—problem as well. She needn’t have to rely on anyone again. With judicious management, the small fortune he was prepared to bestow upon her should last her lifetime. Her father, God rot his shriveled soul, would never lay a hand on her soft coral-kissed cheek again. It was all a tidy arrangement, and Thomas was proud of his problem-solving skills.

  Thomas heard the typewriter keys punching away as he walked down the corridor to the library. Miss Benson—Harriet—really was working. On what, pray tell? It was far too late for that. She’d get eyestrain at this hour, and so he would tell her.

  The door was open. Harriet sat at her desk in her grim brown suit, her luxuriant hair tamed and scraped back into a bun, her spectacles askew. He would buy her new ones. The mark on her face was deep purple, and Thomas wanted to throttle old Mr. Benson with every fiber of his being.

  “Good evening, Harriet.”

  She looked up and frowned. Blast, she was not typing a resignation letter, was she?

  “What are you doing up so late?”

  “I could ask the same of you.” Her nose twitched. Suddenly Thomas wished he’d not had that third glass of brandy. Could she smell him from across the room?

  “I have presents for you,” he said, wiggling the boxes.

  “That is what I wished to speak to you about.” She unrolled two pieces of white paper separated by a sheet of carbon paper from the typewriter and placed them on top of others on the desk. With near viciousness, she snipped the black paper into tiny little slivers with her scissors.

  “I believe this contract should cover our agreement, and I want you to keep it in your safe so prying eyes will not be privy to the details. Additional remuneration for services rendered beyond the agreed-upon sum will not be necessary in the future.” She picked up both sheaves of papers. “If you would sign on the X . . .”

  “S-services rendered?” Thomas asked stupidly. The boxes felt as if they had rocks in them. Boulders. He sat down on the Chesterfield sofa.

  Her lips pursed. “I’m not sure what else to call our arrangement.”

  “Does this mean you are going to be my mistress?” He tried to sit up straight and failed.

  She looked at her watch. “It is just after midnight. Technically once you sign this I already am. I dated the contract yesterday.”

  And cheated him out of a day, the minx. Clearly he should accept the fountain pen she held out to him. But it all seemed so bloodless. He had friends whose solicitors routinely drew up documents to delineate the requirements of both parties. Houses, carriages, jewels. Frequency of appointments and proscribed activities.

  No spanking, for example. After what she had suffered, Thomas would never think to raise a harsh hand on Harriet’s derriere, although it had appeared luscious beneath the robe this afternoon. Did she think to include such restrictions on all these typed pages? Did she even know such things existed between a man and his mistress?

  “Well? Are you going to sign this or have you changed your mind?”

  At this moment, Harriet reminded him of an impatient governess. Trust her to be organized about their relationship.

  In duplicate.

  “I have not changed my mind.” He wasn’t precisely ready to begin right this minute, however. Somehow he’d thought of wooing her gradually with hothouse roses and champagne. Coats. Hats.

  It took the room a moment to stop spinning once he’d stood. With a flourish—and a splat of ink—he signed the first set of documents.

  “Aren’t you going to read them?” Harriet asked.

  Harriet Genet Marie Benson, hereafter known as party of the first part . . . Thomas felt a twinge between his eyes. “I trust you implicitly, my dear.”

  “This is why you need a secretary,” she grumbled. “You do know that a copy made with carbon paper is not admissible in a court of law.”

  Thomas signed the second batch. “I shall not sue you. The scandal would ruin you. Ruin us both. If you decide to renege tomorrow, you shall receive the amount in full.”

  Harriet paled. “I will not renege.” She opened her desk drawer, shoved a set of papers into it, locked it and put the key in her pocket.

  “What a lovely name you have,” Thomas said, trying to break the palpable tension between them. “How do you pronounce it?”

  “Genet is like Jeanette, with a J. Genet Marie was my mother’s name.”

  “French, was she?”

  “Not to my knowledge. She was a governess. From Yorkshire.”

  Ah. So the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. His Harriet might be a secretary, but a strict governess lurked beneath.

  “She died when I was ten.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He understood what it was like to lose one’s mother too early, even though Lady Featherstone had been rather a dragon.

  “It was long ago. Shall we go upstairs now?”

  Thomas stared at her. “Now?”

  “There’s no time like the present to get it over with.”

  Get it over with? He felt his balls shrink just a little.

  “Don’t you want to open your presents first?”

  Harriet eyed the box on the couch. “Very well. I’ll make an exception since you were unaware of the terms of our contract. No more gifts. But the clock is ticking. We only have seven days, you know.”

  She walked across the room, head high. Her fingers were smudged from the carbon copies, and left a trail on the first box top. Tissue paper exploded when she removed it.

  Thomas hurried over with his handkerchief and gently wiped her fingers. “Wouldn’t want to ruin anything before you’ve had a chance to wear it.”

  Harriet poked through the paper. “What is this?”

  Goodness, the poor girl couldn’t even recognize a high-quality coat after the day she’d had. Thomas peered over her shoulder about to explain how nice she would look in green.

  Until she fished out something cobwebby and pink.

  No, pink was too strong a word. This color was more like . . . flesh. He could see Harriet’s hand straight through it.

  “You—you want me to wear this?” Harriet asked, both eyebrows raised.

  This must be one of the extra items Hitchborn had mentioned. Thomas recollected the saleswoman who had been under the misapprehension that he was shopping with his mistress. This—whatever it was—looked like something a mistress might wear.

  Briefly.

  “You don’t like it?” Imagining her in it and out of it was not especially difficult.

  “It’s—it’s indecent.”

  “That’s the governess’s daughter speaking. Remember, you are my mistress now, and mistresses are indecent by definition.”

  “It’s transparent!”

  Had
she planned to wear flannel to bed? Would she expect to remain under the covers with the lights out? Did she want him to wear a blindfold? Thomas wondered if these negotiations were in the pages he’d stuffed into his pocket. Perhaps he should have read them before signing them.

  He understood blindfolding had its merits, but he had no intention of foregoing the pleasure of seeing Harriet completely nude. Flannel and bedcovers were out as well.

  The nightgown really was exceptionally naughty. Suddenly the next few hours didn’t seem quite so daunting.

  Chapter 15

  Harriet’s composure was as flimsy as this negligee. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t been, not really. She’d been swept away by Sir Thomas’s inexorable charm. She was only human, and no human in her right mind could resist him for long.

  She wanted this; she did. It wasn’t as if some other rich lord would stumble in her path, and if one did, he wouldn’t be Sir Thomas.

  But now the seriousness of the contract weighed upon her. How foolish she’d been typing it up. She’d applied the knowledge garnered from this morning’s—no, yesterday’s—real estate transaction. Deposits, due dates, leaving the property as he found it.

  Ha! She would be forever altered.

  Legal words were very different from illegal reality. Sir Thomas expected her to wear this wicked sheer thing? If that was what he wanted, Harriet supposed she’d have to do it. She had made an agreement, but she would look utterly ridiculous.

  “Wait. There’s more.”

  Harriet dug deeper in the box. Sure enough, there were silk stockings and a rosette-studded garter belt. Just what she needed to accentuate her thunderous thighs. She swallowed hard.

  “Not those.” Sir Thomas frowned. “Where the devil is it?” He grabbed the box from her and pulled out a deep green winter coat edged in black velvet. “Aha! Try it on.”

  At least he wasn’t asking her to put on the nightgown. Yet. Harriet did as she was asked, feeling foolishly on display. If it was this hard to put on an ordinary coat, how would she manage that shocking night rail?

  The coat was beautiful, the wool petal-soft and obviously very costly. Its rich color was like the moss that grew on the damp back wall of her father’s shabby little flat, a brilliant jewel climbing the gray stucco.

  Sir Thomas stepped backward, a gleam of appreciation in his eye. “Very smart. There’s a hat in the other box. Wait a minute.”

  Harriet hadn’t had a new hat in years. She trembled as Sir Thomas angled a feathered green confection on her head.

  He pushed her in the direction of the large mirror over the fireplace. “There. Can you see yourself? The mirror in my bedroom would be better, though. You could see the whole effect.”

  What Harriet saw in the partial effect was a pale, somewhat pudgy woman with a purple handprint on her face. Well, that was too many P’s for one thought. The coat was very becoming, and the elegant hat gave her great consequence. She didn’t look like someone’s secretary or someone’s mistress. Harriet looked like the respectable woman of modest fortune she was to become once this week was over.

  Seven days. She could do anything for seven days. Even if she didn’t exactly know what she was doing. God help her, she’d looked for those books in Sir Thomas’s drawers while he was out tonight, but couldn’t find the key.

  Oh, she had a general idea of what transpired between men and women, and was determined to enjoy it for the brief tenure of her mistress-ship. Living where she did, there wasn’t much privacy. She’d heard things. Wet, slapping things. Grunts and shouts and odd keening. She’d been at an impressionable age when her father remarried, and he did things with Veronica he hadn’t done with Harriet’s mother, as far as she remembered. Her parents’ constant fighting had precluded many acts of intimacy.

  Harriet had learned quite a bit at commercial college and working for Mrs. Evensong as well, although she didn’t venture from the office, not going undercover as Mary and Oliver had. Mary was discreet, but Oliver had told her some hair-curling tales as to what went on behind the closed doors of the peerage.

  Sir Thomas wasn’t a peer, just a baronet. And he was a nice man. A very nice man. Surely he wouldn’t want her to do something unnatural like from one of those hellfire clubs of the last century. His kiss had been transformational—it had been so wonderful that Harriet had forgotten to stop it quite in time.

  It was a shame that in this modern age, women were still kept in ignorance. But to be truthful, Harriet had not pressed to learn all that much, as she never expected to be in the position to engage in carnal relations. In a very short while, that would change.

  Sir Thomas was grinning behind her in the mirror, looking admiringly at her reflection. Harriet had been so absorbed in her own thoughts she hadn’t thanked him.

  “No thanks necessary,” he said as she stumbled over her words. “You look very handsome indeed. I knew it would suit you.”

  “You picked it out?”

  “Of course I did,” he said, a bit smug.

  Harriet pulled off the beautiful hat. “How did you know the coat would fit me?”

  Sir Thomas’s cheeks flushed. “I had assistance. The . . . uh . . . saleswoman was most helpful.”

  “You bought it for me before I agreed to be your mistress.” Somehow, that made it more palatable to Harriet, although one should never accept a present from a gentleman. People might get the wrong idea.

  Or the right idea. Harriet was now officially a fallen woman. It said so in black and white, and she’d typed up the terms herself.

  “You needed a new coat. Those bloo—blasted pigeons. And you cannot wander around London in a blanket, Miss Benson. Harriet,” he corrected himself. “I won’t allow it.”

  Goodness. Was she supposed to address him now as Thomas? Harriet didn’t believe she could. She would be overstepping her place. And who was he to tell her what she could and could not do? He was overstepping, too.

  Her protector. What a very odd word to use when he was about to remove her from polite society.

  Oh, who was Harriet kidding? It was not as though she had any standing to begin with. She’d been raised at the very edge of poverty and had been doomed to take dictation until her vision failed her and her hand shook with palsy.

  “And I’ll buy you whatever I feel like, whenever I like. I’ll have you know all my friends think I have impeccable taste.”

  It was true. Sir Thomas had a good eye for pretty things. His whole house was a showcase. Why did he want her? Harriet shrugged out of the coat and laid it carefully back in the box. Hopefully he would not remember the naughty nightgown underneath it.

  Harriet had planned to leave her shift on for this new experience. It was one of the specifics of the contract she’d drawn up.

  Sir Thomas should never have signed the document without reading it. Poor man. He really did need a good secretary to advise him.

  After January 5, she would have to leave her position. Harriet couldn’t imagine them going back to being employer and employee after engaging in an affair. And she wouldn’t need to work anyhow.

  She looked up to see Sir Thomas studying her. His face had gone from grinning to grave.

  He cleared his throat. “Are you sure you wish to begin tonight? I’m not sure I’ll be at my best. If I knew what my best was, that is. I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

  “Are you, as you would say, blotto?”

  “Not entirely. Being with you is like a splash of cold water.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I don’t know yet. Come, sit down.” He laid the boxes on the carpet and sat on the sofa.

  Harriet headed for a chair, but Sir Thomas stopped her with a look. “Sit next to me.”

  She chose a spot against the arm of the sofa. Next to was open to interpretation, and she wasn’t quite ready to rush things.

  He patted his inner pocket. “I hadn’t planned on us being quite so formal about this.”

  Harriet sat up strai
ght. “I feel it’s best when there are clear rules. Like with the residents at the Featherstone Foundation. That way there will be no confusion.”

  Sir Thomas laughed. “I expect there’s going to be a lot of confusion. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen how things are done. But as an observer. It will be different to participate.”

  Harriet stared. “You mean you’ve watched people?”

  “I’ve gone to some strange parties in my time. Couldn’t help it. They were right there, weren’t they? But I don’t want you to think I’m some pervert who sits in a corner and enjoys himself.”

  “Of—of course not,” Harriet croaked. Strange parties indeed.

  Sir Thomas examined his long fingers. “I thought we’d start off gradually. You’ll let me seduce you, bit by bit. Starting at your toes or something. I don’t think we need to consummate our agreement tonight. It would be awkward just to dive in.”

  Awkward! The whole thing was bloody awkward! Harriet was poised to dive, even if the lake had been drained. The longer she put it off, the likelier it was that she’d reconsider and check herself in to Bedlam.

  But she was the mistress, and the mistress awaited her gentleman’s pleasure. If it pleased Sir Thomas to drag this whole ridiculous scheme out, so be it.

  Her toes were ticklish anyhow.

  “Our agreement is just for seven days,” she reminded him.

  “I’m well aware of that. I imagine after a day or two, we’ll be ready. Warm up to the job.”

  Harriet would go mad with the mystery of it hanging over her head. Though perhaps he was right. It was late, and she was exhausted.

  And she might do better with him if she had access to those books Sir Thomas had mentioned. She’d never had the misfortune to attend strange parties.

  Chapter 16

  Saturday, December 31, 1904

  Thomas sat bolt upright in his bed, blinking at the sunshine.

  He was alone in it. As he should be. His valet, Cressley, stood over him, arms crossed.