Thirty is not old.
For a woman of her situation in life, she was very fortunate. An unmarried woman of staunch morals with no family had few options. Unlike the poor girls who slaved away in match factories or shops, her duties were both challenging and interesting, often enabling her to exercise her intelligence and her ingenuity. Most important of all, she wanted to be a published writer, and her employer was a publisher, making him her best hope to someday see her books in print.
As her own literary creation, Mrs. Bartleby, would have said, a woman of true gentility endures what she must, and does it gracefully.
With a resigned sigh, Emma handed Miss Bordeaux another handkerchief.
Harry was late. This was a rare occurrence nowadays, but not because Harry had ever been a punctual sort of person. In fact, he was known to be the most absentminded man alive about times and dates and other such things, but he was also fortunate enough to possess the most efficient secretary in London. Usually Miss Dove kept Harry’s schedule running with the precision of the British rails, but today was an exception.
Not that Miss Dove could be blamed in any way. Harry had encountered the Earl of Barringer outside Lloyd’s this afternoon and had taken that opportunity to once again bring up the topic of purchasing Barringer’s Social Gazette. Harry knew the earl was in Queer Street at present, his financial situation perilous. Despite that, Barringer was reluctant to sell because he considered his own publication far superior to any of Harry’s less high-minded ones and considered himself far superior to Harry. He had also opposed Harry’s divorce proceeding in the House of Lords, orating at tiresome length about the sanctity of marriage.
Despite their mutual animosity, the two men had managed to be civil long enough to spend the afternoon discussing a possible sale. In the end, however, they had been unable to come to terms.
Harry loved making deals and making money. Business was child’s play to him, exhilarating, fun, and far more profitable than his title and estate, neither of which could earn a peer a shilling nowadays. The challenge of trying to persuade Barringer to sell him the Gazette for less than the exorbitant hundred thousand pounds he was demanding had put all other matters out of Harry’s mind. If the earl hadn’t ended their meeting by announcing his intent to attend the opera that evening, Harry might have forgotten all about Phoebe’s twenty-first birthday, and the fat would have been in the fire.
He was out of the hansom cab before it had even rolled to a complete stop outside the offices of Marlowe Publishing, Limited. “Wait here,” he instructed the driver over his shoulder as he headed for the entrance door of the darkened building. He reached in his pocket to retrieve his key, then unlocked the door and went inside. He ran for the nearest set of stairs, familiarity guiding his way in the dark, and he took the steps two at a time.
As he approached the top, Harry could see that the gaslights were on in his suite of offices, and he could hear the rapid, staccato rhythm of a typewriting machine.
Miss Dove was still here, a fact which Harry did not find remarkable in the least. He had come to understand long ago that outside the walls of this building, Miss Dove had no life.
She stopped her work and looked up as he entered the room. Anyone else in his employ would have been surprised to see him here at this hour, but nothing ever seemed to surprise his placid secretary. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “My lord,” she greeted and stood up.
“Miss Dove,” he answered as he strode into the room. “Did those contracts for the purchase of Halliday Paper arrive?”
“No, sir.”
Having expected an affirmative answer, Harry paused beside her desk. “Why not?”
“I telephoned Mr. Halliday’s solicitors, Ledbetter & Ghent, to inquire. Apparently there was a bit of a muddle.”
“Muddle?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Was this muddle your doing, Miss Dove? Wonder of wonders.”
She looked a bit affronted. “No, sir.”
He should have known better than to even ask. Miss Dove was never muddled. “Of course not. Forgive me. What happened?”
“Mr. Ledbetter would not say, but I was assured the contracts will be delivered here one week from tomorrow. I can read them for errors over that weekend to be sure all is in order, and you will be able to sign them Monday following. You and your family are attending the Earl of Rathbourne’s water party on that day, but it will be a simple matter for you to come here first. Shall I pencil that into your appointment book, my lord?”
She held out her hand. Harry pulled out the small leather volume and handed it to her. After writing the reminder in his book, she handed it back. “Once you’ve signed the contracts,” she went on, “a boy from Ledbetter & Ghent can pick them up, and you will arrive at Adelphi Pier in plenty of time to board Lord Rathbourne’s yacht.” She picked up a handful of papers. “Here are your other messages.”
“You are the soul of efficiency, Miss Dove,” he murmured as he accepted the offered slips of paper.
“Thank you, sir.” She took a deep breath and gestured to a stack of paper beside her typewriting machine. “I have written a new manuscript. If you have just a moment—”
“I don’t, I’m afraid,” he was relieved to inform her. He started toward his office, skimming through his messages as he went. “I’m supposed to be at the opera to night, you know, and I’m already late. Grandmama will cheerfully shoot me with a pistol if I make them miss the opening act, especially on Phoebe’s birthday. What is this?”
He stopped at the doorway into his office, staring at the note that was now on top of the stack in his hand. “Juliette was here? What ever for?”
His secretary, having written the details of Juliette’s visit on the paper at which he was now staring, made no answer to that, correctly assuming his question was rhetorical.
“Hmm,” he murmured as he read. “Displeased with her gift, was she?”
“I am truly sorry, sir. I thought a topaz necklace with diamonds would be suitable, but it seems she did not agree.”
“I don’t have time for the details, and I don’t give a damn if she liked the blasted thing or not.” He crumpled the message in his fist and tossed it to the floor. Juliette could wrap her greedy little hands around some other man’s jewels—and his gemstones, too—from now on. The only females whose opinions he cared about were in his own family.
“Ring up my house, Miss Dove, and tell my mother I won’t have time to fetch them from Hanover Square. Have them take the carriage and meet me at Covent Garden.”
“I already telephoned, my lord.” She circled her desk, picked up the message he had tossed aside and put it tidily into her wastepaper basket, then sat back down. “I inquired if you had arrived home, for you had not returned here to pick up Lady Phoebe’s gift, and I thought you might have been delayed. I was informed by your butler that your mother, grandmother, and sisters had already departed for Covent Garden without you.”
“Gave me up for lost, did they?”
Ever tactful, Miss Dove did not answer that. She resumed her typing, and Harry went into his private office, a once sparse affair Miss Dove had redecorated a couple of years ago, and though he approved her taste, he wasn’t ever in his office long enough to appreciate her efforts. As Harry well knew, money wasn’t made sitting behind a desk, even if that desk was made of exquisitely carved mahogany.
He tossed his remaining messages onto his chair, then walked through a connecting door into his dressing room. Because his London residence was across town, his valet and his secretary saw that this room always contained several suits and plenty of fresh shirts. He poured water from the pitcher on the washstand into the basin and soaped a shaving brush.
Within fifteen minutes, he had shaved, exchanged his striped wool suit for a black evening one, and fastened his cuffs with heavy silver cufflinks. After turning up his shirt collar, he looped a black silk Napoleon around his neck, tucked his watch into the pocket of his waistcoat, slipped on a pair of white gl
oves, picked up a black top hat, and headed out the door.
Miss Dove stopped typing and looked up as he paused beside her desk. “Phoebe’s present?” he asked her.
“In your pocket, sir.”
He set down his hat and patted the pockets of his suit jacket. Feeling a bump in one of them, he pulled out an absurdly tiny box wrapped in pale yellow tissue paper and tied with a bow of thin lavender silk. A cream-colored card no bigger than the box dangled from one end of the ribbon. “What did I get her, in heaven’s name? A petit four?”
“A Limoges box. Your sister collects them, I understand. This one dates from about 1740. It has angels on it, rather fitting, if I might be so bold as to venture an opinion. Angelface is your pet name for your youngest sister, is it not?”
The things Miss Dove knew never ceased to amaze him.
“Inside the box is a sapphire ring,” she added.
He frowned with a vague sense of uneasiness. “Don’t I usually get her a pearl or something?”
“She completed her add-a-pearl necklace last year. In any case, Lady Phoebe is now twenty-one, old enough for other jewels. I felt a half-carat sapphire ring set in platinum was just right.”
“I have no doubt of it.”
Miss Dove picked up a quill, dipped it in her inkwell, and handed it to him. “Might I suggest you sign the card, sir?”
He eyed the cream-colored square of paper with doubt. “Good thing my name is only five letters long.” He pulled off one glove and scrawled his name as best he could in the small space.
He handed Miss Dove her quill, remembered to blow on the ink to dry it, then tucked the box back in his pocket. He put his glove back on, picked up his hat, and started to turn away, but her voice stopped him.
“My lord, your tie.”
“Hell!” Once again dropping his hat, he lifted his hands to his neck and formed his Napoleon into a bow. “How’s that?”
She shook her head. “Crooked, I’m afraid.”
With an impatient sigh, he tugged at the ends and began again.
“Sir, about my new manuscript,” she said as his gloved fingers fumbled with his necktie. “I was hoping you would consent to read it and—”
“Confound this thing!” Harry gave up and gestured his secretary to her feet. “Miss Dove, if you please.”
She rose and circled her desk. “About my new manuscript,” she said again as she began to repair the mangled mess he’d made of his tie, “it’s different from the others.”
Harry felt a smothering need to get away. Even the opera was preferable to Miss Dove’s etiquette books. Unfortunately, she still had hold of his tie. “Different in what way?” he asked, manfully forcing himself to remain where he was.
“It is still a book of correct conduct, but it speaks directly to women such as myself. That is, to girl-bachelors.”
Oh, God. Not only etiquette, but also girl-bachelors. Harry suppressed a groan.
“Yes,” she went on, working to free the knot in his tie. “It is a…a sort of…girl-bachelor’s guide to life, along the same lines as your Bachelor’s Guide, you understand, but for women. How to find a respectable flat at a reasonable rent. How to eat well on four guineas a month. That sort of thing.”
Harry glanced between the upraised arms of the woman in front of him, eying her slender frame with doubt. In his opinion, Miss Dove needed to increase her bud get for food by a guinea or two. Perhaps he should raise her salary and order her to spend the increase on pastries.
As for her manuscript, well, Harry would rather go to the dentist and have teeth drawn than read a guide to life for plain spinsters in shirtwaists who lived in respectable flats. He had no doubt other people felt the same. And that was the problem.
He published books and newspapers to make money, not to teach people how to behave. “Miss Dove, we have discussed this before,” he reminded her. “Etiquette books are not profitable enough to be worth the bother. There are so many nowadays, it’s difficult for any particular one to stand out.”
She nodded. “That is why I took quite a modern approach with this manuscript. Given the success of The Bachelor’s Guide, and taking into consideration your views that women ought to be allowed to work in any profession for which they are qualified, I hope you will see the appeal of my idea. Girl-bachelors are a growing segment of our British population. The statistics…”
Harry felt a headache coming on as she trotted out the number of girl-bachelors currently living in London. He didn’t care about statistics. He cared about his instincts, and his instincts told him that no matter what approach Miss Dove took with her manuscripts, she would never be able to write anything that would stand out, for she was so innocuous in reality. A bit like her name, really. With her brown hair, hazel eyes, and dulcet voice, Miss Dove was soft agreement personified.
He had originally hired her on a whim, tickled by the chance to prove his theory that women were fully capable of earning their keep, just as most men were forced to do. She had gone beyond all his expectations. She was exemplary at her job, far superior to any male secretary he’d ever had. She was never late, never sick, and always efficient.
Most important, she had that quality so often attributed to females and yet so often absent in their character: Miss Dove was compliant. Hers not to reason why. If Harry had ordered her to get on a ship, go to Kenya, and bring him back a one-pound sack of coffee beans, she would have glided out of his office and headed to Thomas Cook & Son to book passage.
While convenient for his own life, Miss Dove’s compliancy made her seem a bit unreal, not like any flesh-and-blood woman Harry had ever known. Having an interfering mother, an even more interfering grandmother, three interfering and woefully disobedient sisters, as well as a personal weakness for tempestuous lovers, including—alas—his former wife, Harry’s lifetime of experience with the fair sex told him that real women were anything but compliant.
It was Miss Dove’s lack of passion, he supposed, more than her unremarkable looks, which made employing her so uncomplicated. An enticing, defiant female secretary, now, that would have been an impossible situation, much more fun but very short-lived. No, as secretaries went, he preferred Miss Dove, and from the beginning he had vowed never to entertain amorous notions about her. It was fortunate she’d always made that resolution so easy to keep.
“There,” she said and stepped back, bringing Harry’s observations about her to an end. She studied him for a moment, then gave a nod. “I hope you will find that satisfactory, sir.”
Harry didn’t bother to verify her handiwork in a mirror. He had no doubt whatsoever that his tie was now a perfect bow, and probably the one most fashionable for gentlemen at the moment.
“Miss Dove, you are a treasure.” He folded his collar down, picked up his hat, and once again started for the door. “I don’t know what I should do without you.”
“About my new book,” she began, her words impelling him to walk toward the door at an even faster pace. “Will you—”
“Have it delivered to my house before I leave tomorrow morning,” he said quickly, cutting her off before she could cite him any more statistics about girl-bachelors. “I’ll have a look at it while I’m in the country.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Harry departed with profound relief. Too bad he couldn’t avoid the opera as easily as he avoided Miss Dove’s manuscripts.
Chapter 2
Sisters are the very devil. When they are children, they torture and torment you. When they are grown, they try to find you a wife, which amounts to the same thing.
Lord Marlowe
The Bachelor’s Guide, 1893
“Lord Dillmouth and his daughters have arrived in town. Their cousins, the Abernathy girls, came with them.”
With those words from his sister Diana, Harry knew what was coming next. He signaled to the waiter hovering nearby for more wine, knowing he would need it. “What a thrilling piece of news. Shall I print it in one of my papers?”
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“Mama and I saw them at intermission tonight.” The eldest of his three sisters, six years younger than himself, Diana was beautiful and clever. She was also amazingly single-minded. Undaunted by his lack of enthusiasm for the subject she had introduced, Diana ceased discussion of it only long enough to tuck a loose tendril of her dark brown hair behind her ear and take a sip of her wine, then she carried on. “They were looking so well. Lady Florence, especially. She is an acknowledged beauty.”
“I daresay she is,” he agreed at once. “Odd how her brains are less admired.”
“Juliette Bordeaux being a prime example of how much you value feminine intellect,” Diana shot back at once.
Harry decided not to mention he’d broken with Juliette. It would only encourage the hope he’d remarry. “She’s a keener mind than Lady Florence,” he said instead. “Although that’s not saying much, I grant you.”
His youngest sister spoke up. “Why do you associate with that woman?” Phoebe asked, her adorable cherub face scrunching up with genuine puzzlement.
Harry didn’t enlighten her, for the appeal of voluptuous cancan dancers was hardly a subject that a gentleman discussed with his sisters.
His mother seemed to share his opinion on the topic. “Phoebe, that will be enough,” Louisa said, trying to sound firm and authoritative, but his mother, alas, was as firm as a custard. Which was why, Harry felt sure, he had three impossible sisters.
“After all,” Louisa added obscurely, “we are dining at the Savoy.”
His middle sister, Vivian, began to laugh. “What does that have to do with it, Mama?” She glanced around the luxurious private dining room in which they were seated. “These red walls, crystal chandeliers, and gold brocade draperies seem lavish enough for a music hall dancer.”
“Vivian!” Antonia, his grandmother, cast a disapproving glance around the table. “We shall not discuss that Bordeaux woman any further,” she ordered, her ponderous voice far more impressive than his mother’s dithery accents. “It upsets my digestion.”
And Then He Kissed Her Page 2