The Unsuitable Secretary (A Ladies Unlaced Novel)

by Maggie Robinson

  Harriet sat up, the drape dipping dangerously. By God, was she entirely naked under there? If Conyers had touched as much as one of her eyelashes Thomas would stone him with a chunk of marble. He could chisel with the best of them.

  Harriet stood up. To Thomas’s relief, she was wearing a very pretty combination set that showed off her long legs beautifully. She folded her arms over her chest, and Thomas could see why Conyers was so very impressed.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to get Conyers to sign something. He’s full of enthusiasm, isn’t he?’

  “He’s full of something,” Thomas said darkly. “How did he talk you into taking off your clothes?”

  “Oh, that was my idea. I thought it would be a lark to serve as his model.”

  “You did, did you. And why did that seem like a good idea?”

  Harriet shrugged. “I’ve never been a model before.”

  “And I’ve never been a circus ringmaster, but I’m beginning to feel like one. Did you think of the consequences?”

  Harriet looked at him myopically. Thomas found her glasses on the bed—on the bed!—and gave them to her.

  “What consequences?”

  “You are—you are naked!”

  Harriet put her glasses on and looked down. “Not really.”

  “Naked enough! Do you know what kind of man Rafe Conyers is?”

  “He was a perfect gentleman.”

  Thomas was so enraged he couldn’t think straight. What was Harriet trying to do to him? This was so unlike her.

  Of course.

  “So, he was sketching you with a chisel, was he?”

  “I believe he was searching for paper and pencil before you came in.”

  Thomas picked up an artist’s pad from a chair partly covered by Harriet’s cast-off clothes. “He didn’t look very hard.”

  “Well, he’s an artist. He doesn’t see things like regular people. Isn’t that what you taught me the other day? Artists see things differently?”

  “Harriet, I know what you’re trying to do.”

  She blinked. “You do?”

  “You think you can get me angry. Make me jealous. Say good riddance tomorrow when you leave. It won’t work. Poor Conyers. He’s probably terrified he’ll get the boot from here. Did you think of that, Harriet?”

  “I told him I would smooth things over. Tell you it was all my idea.” She had the grace to look a little guilty now. But mostly, she just looked gorgeous.

  “What if I wasn’t smoothable? Suppose I took the pistol out of my pocket and shot the bastard?”

  Harriet rushed toward him. “You don’t have a pistol in your pocket, do you?”

  “If I did, I’d shoot myself. Harriet, I’m going to be miserable without you. I’m miserable now. If you won’t marry me, can’t you be my mistress?”

  “We’ve gone over this a thousand times.”

  She shivered. Thomas unbuttoned his overcoat and put it on her bare shoulders.

  “Yet I still don’t understand.”

  “Thomas, think. If your parents were alive, would they approve of me?”

  “No, probably not. Before you get smug, they wouldn’t approve of me, either. What difference does it make what our parents think? What so-called society thinks?” He really didn’t understand why she was so hell-bent on leaving. Didn’t she know who he’d been hanging out with for the past six years? The only time he went about in polite society was to fleece money for the foundation.

  Her incomparable brown eyes were filling with tears. Thomas simply couldn’t bear to see her so upset, so he kissed her. It was the least he could do, and she fitted up against him so snugly. She was absolutely perfect for him, a goddess, just as Conyers said.

  “Oh, please stop,” she sniffed, just as things were beginning to get interesting.

  “I don’t want to, Harry, and that’s the truth. Nothing you can say or do is going to make me change my mind. I know I’ve got a bit of a reputation for being a Champagne Charlie, but you know the truth. I know a good thing when I see it—I’m famous for it.”

  “You are making this impossible!” she cried.

  “I could do the boys a world of good, too.”

  Harriet shook her head. “You can’t bribe me with the boys. I’ve already given up too much for them. I’m not going to ruin you to save them.”

  “Ruin me? Don’t you think you’re being melodramatic?”

  “No, I don’t. One of us has to accept reality. I—I quit.”

  “You cannot quit until midnight tonight. Ow!” Good thing she was not wearing her boots. Really, did she not know what was best for herself? Harriet was generally so sensible.

  But by God, she was stubborn.

  “Let’s go home.”

  “I will not change my mind.”

  And neither would he.

  Chapter 39

  Her plot to disgust Thomas had been an utter failure. The butter and the grease had failed as well. Harriet was still wearing the largest ruby she’d ever seen, apart from the Crown Jewels at the Tower. She could barely lift her hand to do anything useful, like get her clothes on. The thing glittered with a mesmerizing glare.

  The center stone was so red. So dark. So mysterious. The diamonds surrounding it were so very white, and there were so many of them. The ring must have cost a fortune.

  Thomas could buy a thousand rings like this—he was one of the richest men in England.

  But it was not an engagement ring. Harriet would leave it behind.

  She’d tried to do something stupid today. Something to make it easier for Thomas to forget her. To not pester her about staying. To not ask her to become his full-time mistress or his ill-suited wife anymore and give her ruby rings.

  Certainly she had not planned well. It had all been very spur of the moment, but smarmy Raphael Conyers with his faux Italian vocabulary had been her best bet to put Thomas off.

  Harriet had prided herself on her quick wits. On seizing the opportunity. She’d seized Thomas, hadn’t she? But now it was time to let him go.

  Conyers had called her a goddess—what utter rot. If she hadn’t pulled the dusty curtains from the casement window, she was very much afraid Conyers would have tried to remove her corset.

  Harriet but hadn’t expected Thomas to do anything but yell at her. Well, he had blustered quite a bit, but blamed Conyers for everything. Which was most unfair. Conyers was a narcissistic twit but a coward at heart, and it had been child’s play to manipulate him. Perhaps she was a goddess after all.

  It had been sort of thrilling for a moment, to be fought over by two handsome men. Thomas was much handsomer, of course.

  Harriet had tried to get out of going to the theater tonight, but it was their last night. He claimed he’d been unable to interest any of his friends in going. Thomas had looked so hangdog, she’d agreed to go. Why waste the ticket? She’d never been to a real play before.

  Tomorrow she would pack up her things, cash her check, and disappear, but she still owed him tonight.

  So she was in one of the beautiful red dresses he’d purchased, sitting on a cushioned velvet chair in his private box. It was just like a little room, with a narrow door to the byzantine stairway that led to the alley between theaters and a tiny private powder room for the box holders tucked between landings. There were hooks on the wall in case one didn’t want to check one’s coat in the crush below.

  Thomas had purchased a fox cloak for her to wear against the January night chill, going quite against the stipulations of the agreement. Harriet had a feeling Thomas would break any rule with which he disagreed without compunction, just like Conyers. She would leave the gifts behind. Maybe his next mistress would find them appealing. Where would Harriet have the opportunity to wear diamonds and rubies and fox cloaks?

  A gilt console table held a bucket of champagne and two flutes, and an architectural rendering of the theater hung over it on the wallpapered wall.

  The theater was new an
d had every amenity. In fact, it was the New Theatre, built by the actor-manager Sir Charles Wyndham in St. Martin’s Lane in 1903. Harriet had never been to the theater—any theater—before and was trying very hard not to look too bowled over.

  She kept the mother-of-pearl opera glasses—Thomas’s mother’s—resolutely in her lap. Harriet did not want to see people trying to see her. She pushed her chair back a bit from the padded balcony railing and settled into the shadows.

  Thomas hadn’t even commented on her dress or her coiffure (which Minnie had spent a full hour on). For their last evening, Harriet had wanted to look perversely perfect.

  She wasn’t making any sense anymore.

  The theater was filling up below, and the noise was rising. The sights and sounds did something to Harriet’s stomach—the excitement of the audience was palpable. Everyone had come to see the famous Fred Terry as the foppish yet fiendishly clever Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel.

  On the way to the theater, Thomas had explained a little about the play. He’d seen it almost two years ago in Nottingham, where it had not been a resounding success.

  Thomas could have been a model for this Sir Percy, minus the French Revolution business. Now that Harriet knew him, she saw that his rakish ways were false and he had surprising depth. Besides his interest in the arts, she’d discovered that he was indeed providing for wounded soldiers, as well as orphans and scholarship students and who knows who else. No wonder Thurston was tearing his hair out at the monthly outlay.

  Thomas excused himself once he’d poured her a glass of champagne to make his social rounds before the play began. She was happy not to accompany him, but he might at least have asked so she could have refused.

  The bubbles tickled her nose. She’d had no champagne since New Year’s Eve. Harriet sat primly finishing her drink, focusing on the theater’s decorations rather than on the teeming masses below. Everything was very grand and dazzling. She tried not to be too impressed, without much success.

  Bells rang and lights flickered, indicating that people should get themselves settled. Still Thomas did not return. She’d deliberately not looked for him in the boxes across the way, but now raised the opera glasses. No Thomas. It was impossible to try to spot him in the crowd below. All the men wore black-and-white evening clothes, like a population of penguins on this cold winter’s night.

  A hush fell as the theater went dark and the curtain rose. Harriet was riveted instantly by the Georgian costumes, so engrossed that she stopped worrying where Thomas was.

  “We seek him here, we seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That demmed, elusive Pimpernel,” Terry boomed.

  Oh, it was wonderful. Harriet inched forward, hanging on every word. She didn’t even notice the door to the box open until Thomas slipped into his chair beside her.

  “Like it so far?”

  “Shh!” she scolded.

  Harriet gasped as Sir Percy performed his derring-do. Thomas squeezed her hand, and she forgot to pull away. She could honestly say she had never enjoyed herself so much in her life.

  Except, of course, for the days and nights she had spent with Thomas in bed, but that was a completely different kind of experience. She shivered a little, remembering.

  “Cold?”

  She shrugged. Instead of Thomas getting up for the fur, he draped his arm around her, pulling her close. Her bare arm brushed the fabric of his coat. It was such fine material, so soft. It was the most natural thing in the world to lean against him, heart racing as the Pimpernel went off to France in secret to rescue aristocrats from the guillotine. Oh, Marguerite. How can you be so blind to who your husband really is?

  When the first act was over, Harriet blinked as the lamps in the theater were turned back on. She was practically in Thomas’s lap.

  “What do you think?” His breath tickled her ear.

  “It’s wonderful.” Everything was wonderful. She was impatient for the play to continue.

  “Thought you’d like it. Would you like more champagne?”

  Harriet still clutched her empty glass between stiff fingers. “All right.”

  Thomas rose, and she missed him at once.

  “I hope it hasn’t gone flat. Ah, good. Bubbles.” Thomas handed her the drink and then fiddled with the velvet curtains draped on each side of the balcony. Tugging them shut, he returned to his chair. They were now blocked off from prying eyes.

  An electric sconce threw a dim little light into the room. It was so . . . cozy. Harriet was suspicious.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Privacy. People were asking about you.”

  “M-me?”

  “Don’t want them getting any ideas. Door’s locked, too. No one’s going to barge in here now and give you an interrogation. Told them you were my secretary, but they didn’t believe me.”

  Harriet set her drink on the railing. “Who did they think I was?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Thomas! Tell me!”

  He ran a finger under his starched collar. “They think you’re my new mistress. You’ve broken a lot of hearts here tonight, male and female. The girls want to be you, and the gents just want you.”

  Harriet was speechless.

  “I had a devil of a time getting away from them and all their questions. A lot of people aren’t here to see the play, you know, but to be seen. They didn’t care that the curtain was going up. I practically killed myself trying to find the box in the dark.”

  Harriet knew she should have stayed home. She had never wanted their affair to be public.

  Suddenly the box didn’t feel cozy, but confining. What would Thomas’s friends think they were doing behind the closed draperies?

  She had a fairly good idea.

  Chapter 40

  How long was intermission, anyway? Thomas had made a terrible mistake by insisting Harriet come tonight. For one thing, it was so damned hard to sit next to her in the dark and not tip the chairs over and have his way with her. He’d imagined just such an occurrence and had been tortured with the idea all evening.

  They only had a few hours left.

  But here he was behind the velvet curtains, Harriet looking alarmed at his side. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her what was being said.

  This was exactly why he hated conventional society. The titters, the hypocrisy, the endless speculation. The people here simply didn’t have enough to do.

  Thomas hadn’t expected to bump into Alistair St. Cuthbert. The man was a philistine—he probably didn’t even remember the name of the play he was attending. But he remembered their conversation yesterday all right, and had spotted Harriet and the damned ruby ring without even lifting his binoculars to the balcony.

  “I hope you told them they were misinformed! I mean, I know I’ve been your mistress—”

  “Still are,” Thomas said, making a show of looking at his pocket watch.

  “But no one needs to know that, do they? It was a private arrangement.” She was glaring at him.

  He’d protected her reputation since New Year’s Day, not going anywhere with her except to the Featherstone Foundation, where she was meant to be “just” his secretary. True, he’d gone slightly berserk with Rafe Conyers, but that was well-deserved.

  “Of course I did, Harry. I said you were my secretary, over and over again, but I don’t think a single soul believed me. You remember Herbie Croxton? He met you that first week right before Christmas when he came for a loan. Swore up and down he’d seen my secretary and you were not she. Herbie said you were much too beautiful to be my secretary.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Harriet said faintly.

  “Sorry, but that was the general consensus. They all think you’re a . . . goddess.”

  “It must be the dress.”

  “Must be,” agreed Thomas. Damn it all to hell, did she not see herself in a mirror? He’d bought her new spectacles.

  Trouble was, Harriet had gotten used to t
hinking of herself in one way. She’d never believe anything he or his friends said unless it was a headline in one of the daily newsrags.

  Or perhaps in all of them. Thomas stopped himself from smiling. There were journalists downstairs, a slew of them, come to report on the rich and famous out and about. A word whispered in the right ear, and Harriet would be forced—

  Thomas shut off the tap of his aberrant mind. He didn’t want to force Harriet into anything. It was ungentlemanly, and Thomas, no matter how much in love he was, was a gentleman.

  “Perhaps you should open the curtains.”

  “All right.” He tied them back with a flourish. Harriet sat, blushing like the dawn, biting a pink lip.

  Did she look kissed to the crowd? He hoped so.

  The lights dimmed again, and Harriet was spellbound by the drama unfolding on the stage. Maybe Thomas needed a sword stick like this Blakeney fellow to impress her. Practice twirling it a bit; not that he wanted to stab anyone. Unless they deserved it, like Conyers or the villain of the play. St. Cuthbert would qualify, too.

  Every time Citizen Chauvelin returned to the stage, he was booed. Harriet booed right along. When the Frenchman was tricked with pepper instead of snuff, Harriet applauded wildly.

  “Oh, Thomas! This is so much fun!” Impulsively she pecked his cheek, her propriety lost for a precious, welcome second.

  Harriet hadn’t had much fun in her life. Thomas wished he could take her to see a play every night to make it up to her.

  There was one thing that would make the evening linger in her mind forever. Thomas slipped off the chair and raised Harriet’s skirt.

  “Thomas!” she hissed. “No!”

  He hoped she didn’t really mean it, for the scent of her clouded his senses. He parted her silk-stockinged legs and licked her. God, she tasted like nectar. She sunk lower in her seat, giving him greater access.

  So, not no, then.

  Thomas kissed her center with all the pent-up yearning he possessed. She was hot and wet and his.