The Unsuitable Secretary (A Ladies Unlaced Novel)

by Maggie Robinson

  “I’m sorry. Tempting as your offer is, I’m afraid I have to decline.”

  “But why, Harry? Haven’t I been romantic enough? Look what I bought!” He dug the ring out of his pocket and strode across the room.

  The devil! Was she crying?

  It was the most natural thing to fall on his knee in front of her. “I should have known a woman like you—a proper woman—wouldn’t want to be my mistress. Harry, will you marry me?”

  Chapter 36

  Every girl’s dream.

  Her nightmare.

  Did the man not pay attention? The differences between them were insurmountable. If Thomas didn’t seem to know it, Harriet did.

  And he didn’t want to marry her anyway. She’d shamed him into it.

  She stared at the ring he’d slid on her finger. It was . . . spectacular. Quite simply the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, besides a sunrise.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s lovely. But I can’t marry you or be your mistress. I . . . need a fresh start.”

  “Marriage is a fresh start! For both of us.”

  She tried to twist off the ring, but it stayed stubbornly in place. She’d put butter on it later.

  “While I am honored, I can’t marry you. And that is all I want to say on the subject. You’d better get up.”

  Thomas’s face fell. “I’d do everything in my power to make you happy.”

  And that was the crux of it—he’d wield all the power. He had the money. The position. Eventually he’d grow to resent her. She’d drag him down when he needed someone who came from his world. It was one thing to help him as his secretary, but as his wife? Harriet didn’t have a clue how to do that.

  “No.” It was the hardest syllable she’d ever uttered.

  He rose stiffly. “All right. I don’t like to argue.”

  “Good. Neither do I.”

  “We agree on something at least.” He gave her a crooked smile.

  “We still have two nights, Thomas.”

  “Wear my ring until then. I like to see it on your hand. It suits you.” He went back to his leather chair. “I assume you’ll leave it behind.”

  Harriet nodded. “What would the neighbors say?” she asked, trying to make a joke.

  “I don’t like these neighbors of yours already. You won’t tell me where you’re going?”

  “I haven’t really decided. You don’t mind if I finish putting the files away, do you? I’m—I’m not very hungry. I think I’ll skip dinner, if that’s all right with you.”

  “I’m not some brute who would force-feed you. What about later?”

  “Later? Of c-course,” Harriet stammered. She’d get herself under control by then. She owed him the next two nights. Would love to give him more. But that would only make their eventual parting even more painful.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then. Leave your door unlocked.” He paused at the doorway. “I won’t stop asking, you know.”

  Thomas left, and she let go. She hadn’t cried like this since her mother died. She’d been ten years old, and thought she’d never miss anyone so much again.

  She was wrong—she missed Thomas and he was still here.

  She fished a handkerchief out of her sleeve and blew her nose. There was work to be done, and not much time in which to do it.

  ***

  He came to her as promised. She’d had Minnie bring ice packs for her eyes and she’d lain in the dark convincing herself she’d done the right thing.

  What had Minnie said about Thomas? That he’d told everyone Harriet was saving himself from himself. And so she was. One of them had to face the fact that they couldn’t possibly get married. The scandal would spell the end of Thomas’s dream.

  So there he was, a touch sheepish in his dressing gown.

  “I—I’m awfully sorry about earlier. I was a clod.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t expect you’ve ever proposed to anyone before, especially when you didn’t mean to.”

  “I meant to! I’ve thought about it. Why, didn’t I already propose once or twice?”

  Harriet could recall each occasion. In the event she became pregnant. In the event her father forced them to marry somehow.

  Most inauspicious.

  “It’s really not such a rotten idea, is it?”

  Harriet assured him it was.

  “So it won’t help to ask again.”

  It wouldn’t.

  Thomas sighed. “I just—I just don’t want to lose you, Harry. Not after I’ve waited all this time to find you.”

  If the man didn’t shut up, Harriet would need more ice.

  “Let’s not waste any more time talking, then,” Harriet said with a false hint of briskness in her tone. “What do you want to do tonight?”

  Thomas lay beside her, not moving. “It’s up to you.”

  Harriet reached for his cock. It was in a disturbingly flaccid state. This wouldn’t do at all. Harriet wanted him to enjoy himself. And she wanted her own enjoyment, too. It wasn’t as if she’d be doing this every night with some sheep farmer when she lived in Painswick. She’d have a reputation to guard. A past to hide.

  She slithered over his body, or did something that passed for slithering. She was not as slender as a snake. “Make love to me, Thomas. I need you.”

  “If you need me so much, why—”

  She put a finger against his lips. “Hush. I want you to—to f-fuck me.” She felt the leap of Thomas’s member against her belly. She’d never said the word before in her life and it felt harsh. Harsh, but effective. She trailed her hand down his long body and touched him again. Really, men were such fascinating creatures.

  “I want you inside me.” True enough.

  “I want to be inside you,” he said roughly. “All the time.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Harriet sounded most unlike herself. “I’ll help you with the condom.”

  She rose from the bed and opened the drawer. Hopefully Minnie hadn’t spotted them when she cleaned the room.

  Harriet knew Thomas liked to look at her body, whatever his reasons. He’d seen many naked women before in his travels, but he’d told her he would never get tired of watching her. She paused in the firelight so he could get his fill, dangling the condom from her fingers, forcing herself to throw her shoulders back and thrust out her breasts.

  Thomas groaned, and she felt a moment of pride. Her body had never brought her pleasure before, but now—

  Now it was a kind of sensual weapon. She took . . . pride . . . in what it could do. What it had done for a handful of days. Even her wretched scar didn’t preoccupy her as it once had.

  Thomas groaned again when she took him in her mouth, sucking him to rigidity. One day she might let him—

  No, there wouldn’t be time, and she wasn’t that brazen. She fitted the French letter with deceptive ease, then tossed back her curls. “Will it be all right if I ride you tonight?”

  “Oh, God, Harry. You’re going to kill me.”

  “Let’s hope not. What use would you be to me then?” The wicked smile came entirely naturally.

  What had gotten into her? Well, Thomas, for one thing. She was somehow wet when he hadn’t really done anything to make her so. He’d been passive, and she—well, she had behaved like an absolute hoyden.

  God, he felt good. She squeezed her inner walls and he felt even better. His hips rocked upward and he touched something inside her which made her shatter. She couldn’t catch her rhythm back and Thomas flipped her to her back, a feral gleam in his eye.

  He had never been so assertive. So powerful. Almost violent. He entered and entered and entered until she was quivering, her mind made of jelly. There was nothing to think about, just this reckless plunging. His hand covered her mouth as she started to scream, and that only made her want to scream louder. Harriet was at his mercy and reveled in it. He was . . . he was fucking her. Harder, deeper, better than any other day or night before.

  Sweat-
soaked, their hearts beating, they lay tangled in the bedclothes, too stunned to speak.

  Until Thomas brushed his lips against her throat. “You will miss me, Harry. Miss this. It doesn’t have to end.”

  Harriet shut her eyes. “Please go.”

  “I don’t want to. I don’t want you to go. How can you?”

  Harriet didn’t know the answer to that, either.

  Chapter 37

  Thursday, January 5, 1905

  Harriet slipped out of the house early, before Thomas could hector her again about leaving him. Armed with Conyers’s file, she let herself into the Featherstone Foundation with her key.

  “Hallo!” This morning there was no ragtime music to greet her, thank goodness. The piano lid was closed in the parlor, the house quiet. After a quick word with the cook and Mr. Leavitt in the basement, she marched to the back of the house where Rafe Conyers’s studio was. He was the only resident with a private entrance, so that his raw materials and sculptures could be easily transported over the back lawn. Carrying two tons of marble up and down a set of stairs would be a job for Hercules, and he was no longer around.

  She did not knock. She was not in a knocking frame of mind.

  She found the artist on his disheveled bed, an empty bottle tipped on the floor beside it. The whole room stank of sour sweat and wine. And sex. Harriet knew that smell now.

  She threw open the French door to the back garden, and a roaring wind rolled through.

  “Madonna!” Conyers yelped, covering his naked body with the coverlet. “What the hell?”

  “It is I, Miss Benson, Mr. Conyers. I suggest you get out of bed and put some clothes on.”

  “Cara, shut the door, please. You will not get a good impression of me with all this cold air. My family jewels, they will frost.”

  “Your family jewels are of no interest to me, frosted or not. And I have no good impression of you already, Mr. Conyers.” She shook the file at him.

  “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” the artist said, wrapping the blanket around himself like a Roman senator. He was a very well-made man, all long black hair and soulful eyes, but Harriet’s heart did not thump in her chest.

  “The house rules, Mr. Conyers. Or should I say Mr. Michelangelo?”

  Conyers threw back his head and laughed. “My little joke. Surely you do not come to wake me over one small misunderstanding.”

  “How could you do this to Sir Thomas? You owe him everything! And how do you repay him? By not taking these rules seriously. You are a weasel, Mr. Conyers. I’m surprised you don’t have a naked woman behind the curtain right now.”

  Conyers lost all his color. “Don’t look!”

  So of course Harriet did. There was nothing behind the fringed velvet curtain but a little dust and a single silk stocking. Harriet glanced into the garden, but Conyers’s companion of the previous evening must have gone while he slept.

  “You will ruin the Foundation’s reputation before it even gets off the ground,” Harriet said, furious. “You may finkydiddle whoever—whomever—you want, but not on the premises. Is that clear?”

  “What is this finkydiddle?” With each word, he sounded more Italian. Harriet knew for a fact he’d been born in Bermondsey.

  “Never mind. I have brought new copies of the agreement for you to sign. One more transgression and you and your jewels will be out on your ear.” She reached in her purse for a fountain pen.

  “I will not sign. These rules, they are unnatural. I am a man, not a—how you say—mouse. I will not be ordered around by some secretary who does not know what amore is. Sir Thomas, he will understand. The man has had a thousand women.”

  Harriet smiled. It was not a nice smile. “As a representative of Sir Thomas’s interests, it is my fiduciary responsibility to ensure that no deleterious effects to the establishment of this philanthropic institution come from any of the residents in this facility.”

  “Cosa? Non ti sento?”

  “Oh, please. You are as English as I am.”

  “My mother came from Sicily. Why are you torturing me? I am an artist. I need my freedom.”

  Harriet kicked the bottle. “And your wine. And the roof over your head. I ask you, Mr. Conyers, who is responsible for them, as well as this piece of marble in the corner?”

  “You know who,” he said sulkily.

  “I do. You are betraying Sir Thomas’s trust in you. Do you know how many other men want to live here? We have over one hundred applicants. Creative geniuses, Mr. Conyers. Men who would have done something with that rock before now.” She pointed to the block of pink marble, still as pristine as when it was quarried.

  “I have only been here since Sunday!”

  “A lot has happened since Sunday.” More than Conyers would ever know.

  “You will tell him?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I will certainly speak to Mr. Leavitt. He needs to keep an eye on you.” Two would be preferable.

  “It is like prison. I do not know if I can work here.”

  “As I said, there are other candidates for this room. You knew the conditions before you signed the agreement. Before Michelangelo signed.”

  “I didn’t think Sir Thomas was serious. He is a genial fellow, no? So happy-go-lucky. And such a connoisseur of not only art but the ladies. How can he expect me to be celibate? Young Kenneth, I can see. He is a beardless child. The Irish poet, he is too angry for women. The cellist worries about his daughter. Freddy cares only for his art, and Camden cares only for other men. I do not mind that—to each his own. But me! I am flesh and blood.” He struck his chest and Harriet smothered her laugh. If Conyers failed as a sculptor, there was always Drury Lane.

  “I assure you, Th—Sir Thomas is serious. He has risked a great deal of his own money and reputation providing a place for you all to create and flourish. The donors would be very unhappy knowing their money was being thrown away on artists who cannot discipline themselves and who go out of their way to court scandal.”

  “Art is not discipline. It is not like accounting, or . . . or typing. You fix your mistakes, yes? I make them! It is more interesting when everything is not perfect, all the little roosters not lined up in a row.”

  “Ducks, Mr. Conyers. I am not here to discuss analogies or artistic philosophy with you. Sign or begone.” She handed him the pen.

  “It is blackmail,” the man mumbled.

  There was a rap on the doorframe. Harriet turned to see Mr. Leavitt limp into the room.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Benson, but we just received a call from Sir Thomas. He was looking for you and seemed very agitated that you were not at your desk. I explained that you were here, and he said he would be right over to drive you home.”

  Conyers swallowed. “Sir Thomas is coming here?”

  Mr. Leavitt nodded. “He should be here within the next quarter of an hour.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Leavitt. Mr. Conyers and I are just finishing up some paperwork. When Sir Thomas arrives, will you send him back here?”

  “Of course, Miss Benson.”

  Harriet waited until the tap of the man’s wooden leg faded down the hall. “I have a proposition for you, Mr. Conyers.”

  Strike while the iron is hot.

  Line up all the little roosters.

  Thomas would be glad to see the back of her.

  Chapter 38

  Rafe Conyers was standing over Harriet with a chisel. She was reclining on a chaise wearing a smile . . . and apparently nothing else, except what appeared to be a window curtain.

  Where were her spectacles?

  Where were her clothes?

  Conyers enveloped him in a bear hug. “Buongiorno! My savior, Sir Thomas! I cannot tell you how delighted I am to see you this morning. As I said the other day, I was so pleased to receive Miss Benson’s communication and find such agreeable accommodations! The lupo—you say wolf in English, yes?—was at the door, I tell you, and a hungry wolf it was. Not only do I have proper space for my
art, but this angel for my inspiration! I cannot thank you enough. I only hope to be worthy of your confidence.”

  Thomas flinched at the man’s lusty kiss on both his cheeks. The Italian half of Raphael Conyers was on full display, and Thomas couldn’t like it. He wasn’t in the mood to like anything at the moment.

  Harriet had been nowhere to be found when he’d come downstairs. He’d turned the house upside-down looking for her. As discreetly as possible of course. So far, no one suspected that he and Harriet were . . . whatever they were.

  It was their last day, and he didn’t want to lose a minute of it.

  And where had she been? Right here with this Italian Lothario. Romeo? Whoevero.

  Was that Harriet’s bare shoulder under the curtain fringe Thomas saw?

  “What is the meaning of this?” He’d meant to roar, but his words came out as if someone had tied a bowknot in his vocal chords.

  “Don’t move, cara. I shall explain all,” Conyers said expansively. Thomas felt his fists bunch. “I am sketching, you see. Just the preliminaries. Miss Benson was kind enough to act as my model temporarily. I have a vision—the eternal woman, strong yet vulnerable. The earth mother. A goddess. Gaia and whatnot. I do not know the classic goddesses—my education was sadly lacking. The poverty, you know. Miss Benson is my ideal. Just look at those cheekbones! The velvet skin! That proud nose, those bre—those incomparable brown eyes. She is magnifique!”

  Conyers’s appreciation of Harriet’s attributes was mixing up his languages and irritating Thomas no end.

  Conyers sighed dramatically and dropped the chisel, where it dinged the floorboard. Thomas tallied up an expense against Mrs. Evensong’s outrageous damage deposit.

  “Conyers, would you give us some privacy, please?” The implication was clear. If the man didn’t get out, Thomas would throw him out. A window, even if he had to drag him upstairs to do it, since they were on the ground floor.

  “But of course! This is your establishment, Sir Thomas. Without you, we would all be out on the street, hungry and cold. With the wolves, yes? My humble little room is fully at your disposal. Make use of what you will. There is wine in the cabinet. The chair, the bed, whatever. Relax and enjoy yourselves. I shall go see about my breakfast.”