When he called at her flat Saturday afternoon, however, he found that a meeting to discuss her work might not be possible. She appeared to be in the midst of redecorating. The door leading into her flat was open, and the smell of fresh paint was in the air. When he paused in the doorway, he found that the walls were now a pale robin’s-egg blue with cream-colored moldings, and a new carpet of gold, cream, aubergine, and teal had been laid over the center of the wooden floor. She had removed one of the settees and rearranged her furnishings in order to make room for a cherrywood desk and matching chair.
During this redecoration, however, she had not abandoned her flair for the exotic. A small teak table, its base carved in the shape of an elephant stood beside her desk, and on it reposed an enormous vase filled with peacock feathers.
As for Miss Dove herself, she was standing on a ladder before one of her front windows, hanging a length of heavy teal-blue silk onto a cherry-wood rod. The other window along that wall was open and already boasted a similar drapery, which rustled in the warm June breeze.
She made a sound of vexation, and Harry watched her as she rose on her tiptoes and lifted her arms overhead. Curling one hand around the rod to keep herself steady, she used the other to tug at the drapery, which had caught somehow on the bracket. Her efforts, however, seemed to be in vain. Harry set down his dispatch case and started toward her, thinking to assist, but something stopped him halfway across the room.
Her position in the tall window, with her arms raised above her head and the late afternoon sun pouring in, made the silhouette of her upper body plainly visible through the white linen of her shirtwaist. He could see the lines of her torso tapering to her narrow waist. When she turned sideways on the ladder and stretched her arm toward the edge of the rod, he caught a glimpse of her body in profile, including the small, unmistakable swell of her breast.
Suddenly Harry couldn’t move. He felt riveted to the floor, and he could only stare at her as the slow burn of arousal began spreading through his body. Before he knew what was happening, his mind was conjuring up images of Miss Dove that were far more specific than the silhouette framed in the window. He’d always preferred voluptuous women, but the modest curves Miss Dove possessed began to seem damned luscious in his imagination.
He tried to collect his wits. He reminded himself this was Miss Dove he was looking at. Miss Dove, who was straitlaced and buttoned-down and smothered in rules. Miss Dove, who didn’t like him, who disapproved of him, who thought him dissolute. He couldn’t refute that description at this moment, for some very dissolute thoughts were going through his mind.
His gaze skimmed down the length of her dark brown skirt, then traveled slowly back up. She had to have beautiful legs. If they were long enough to need that much fabric to cover them, they had to be quite fine. He’d speculated about her legs once or twice since she’d first come to work for him, but this time Harry allowed his thoughts to become much more detailed. He began to envision shapely thighs and pretty knees.
She shifted her weight on the ladder, her skirt swaying with her effort to free the drapery, and Harry took a step closer, giving her backside a most ungentlemanlike study. With all the froufrous women wore under their clothes, it was hard to be certain, but after due consideration, Harry decided the curve of Miss Dove’s hips wasn’t due to any sort of padding.
“Oh, hell and damnation!”
Her frustrated exclamation was so unexpected, it shattered the fantasies Harry’s imagination had been conjuring, and it was so out of keeping with her strict notions of propriety that he laughed in surprise.
She turned sharply at the sound, the ladder rocked, and she almost fell off. “Careful, Miss Dove,” he admonished, and came to her side. He put a hand on the ladder to steady it.
“The curtain is stuck,” she said and moved as if to have another go at loosening it.
“Don’t,” he ordered. “Come down from there, and let me do it.”
Before she could descend on her own, he put his hands on her waist, thinking to be chivalrous and lift her down. But the moment he touched her, he forget that intent and his thoughts became much less noble. His forearms brushed the sides of her hips, and another wave of desire shimmered through his body. He’d been right. She was wearing a petticoat or two, maybe, and a corset, definitely, but no padding. He slid his hands down an inch or two, grasping her hips, and his thumbs brushed the base of her spine. There might not be much to Miss Dove, but what she had was genuine.
His hands tightened, and he leaned closer, breathing deeply of talcum powder and fresh cotton, pristine, maidenly scents he’d never dreamt could be erotic until now. If he moved one inch closer, he’d be kissing—
“My lord?”
Good God, what was he doing? Harry shoved lusty thoughts of kissing Miss Dove’s backside out of his mind at once and reminded himself that he was a gentleman. He lifted her down from the ladder, set her on her feet, and then, reluctantly, he let her go.
She turned around, but she didn’t look into his eyes. She stared straight ahead, looking at his chin. Her cheeks were pink, and she was frowning.
Probably because she wanted to slap his face for manhandling her as if she were a wench in an East End pub and he were a longshoreman. He’d deserve the reprimand, no doubt, but he couldn’t regret the cause. Harry gave her another long study, from the coppery sun-glints in her brown hair all the way down to the toes of her hideous, high-button shoes, then back up again, ending his perusal at the tip of her freckle-dusted nose. No, he didn’t regret it a jot. He wished he could manhandle her again. And that was stupid.
Five years of having a female secretary, and he’d always been able to shove away any lascivious thoughts about Miss Dove that had occasionally crossed his mind. He’d managed to do it, in fact, without any serious effort. But at this moment it was proving far more difficult. He couldn’t explain it, but something had changed between them.
He knew he had to put aside these inexplicable new notions about Miss Dove and get his priorities back in order. She wasn’t his secretary any longer, but they were about to engage in a venture that could be highly profitable, and he had no intention of messing that up. He took a deep breath and pointed to the ladder behind her. “If you move aside, I shall endeavor to solve your problem.”
She finally looked into his eyes. “Hmm? What?”
Instead of repeating himself, he put his hands on her arms and gently moved her out of the way, then he ascended the ladder and freed the drapery ring from where it had gotten hung up on the bracket. When he came back down, she was still frowning, and he decided a bit of levity might not go amiss.
“Hell and damnation?” he teased, ducking his head to look into her face.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Hell and damnation. That’s what you said.”
She gave a huff of vexation, her frown deepening. She pulled at the cuffs of her shirtwaist rather in the manner of a disapproving nursery governess. “Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t say any such thing.”
“You did. I heard your words distinctly.” He shook his head and made a sound of tsk-tsk. “Such language from London’s greatest arbiter of proper decorum. What would people say?”
“Well, I didn’t know you were standing there!”
“You only swear when you’re alone, then?”
“I don’t swear.” The absurdity of that statement made him grin, and she went on, “Well, I don’t! Not usually.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” he went on in breezy disregard of her denial. “I won’t tell anyone you curse like a Blackpool sailor.”
“It was just that the curtain wouldn’t move, and I couldn’t reach it where it was caught, and I was so frustrated and then…and then…Oh, dear.” She pressed three fingers to her forehead, looking thoroughly unhappy with herself. “It was very wrong of me,” she said on a sigh. “Very wrong.”
Harry couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be wound so tight that an occasional slip
of the tongue could be cause for such self-reproach. “Enough of this, Miss Dove. You take things far too seriously, you know, and really need to laugh more. To advance that end, I could make jokes. Oh, but no, that won’t do,” he added, tongue in cheek. “My jokes are not amusing. At least, so I’ve been told.”
She gave him a wry look, but there was a promising curve to one corner of her mouth. Encouraged, he went on, “Perhaps you should tell jokes to me.” He leaned a bit closer to her, adopting a confidential air. “Know any naughty ones?”
She looked away, pressing the smile from her lips before she returned her gaze to his. “If you’ve teased me enough for one day,” she said in the brisk, no-nonsense fashion he was used to, “perhaps you should tell me why you are here.”
“I have finished reading your work, and I wanted to discuss it with you.”
“Oh.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable. “I thought our meeting for revision was to be on Wednesday. In your office.”
“It is, but I was so overcome by curiosity, I couldn’t wait.”
“Curiosity?”
“Yes. I have to know why young ladies are only allowed to eat the wings of a chicken at dinner.”
“At dinner parties,” she corrected.
He pretended to be enlightened. “Ah, that explains it. Now I understand.”
She bit her lip, studying him in obvious uncertainty. “Are you teasing me again?”
“I’m not, I assure you. I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a reason for this custom, and I’ve given up in despair.”
“You came all the way across town so that I could explain why young ladies eat chicken wings?”
“And because the revisions I am going to suggest are fairly extensive and might take some time. Not that I’m going to shred you to ribbons or anything,” he added, noticing her expression of uncertainty deepening into worry. “But I did think you might be glad of some additional time to complete them.”
“I see.” She glanced past him, then walked to the door and closed it, reminding him of her nosy landlady.
“No one saw me come up,” he said before she could ask.
“Good.” She turned around, flattening back against the door. “This is a lodging house exclusively for women. You shouldn’t really be up here.” She gave an awkward half laugh. “People can be so silly, you know. Ladies, especially. They gossip, and think things. I should hate for anyone to see you and think…that you and I…that we are…” She straightened away from the door and her chin came up. She met his gaze. “I should not wish anyone to believe I entertain men in my rooms. I am not that sort of woman.”
At this moment, Harry rather wished she were just that sort of woman, but he didn’t think it would be wise to say so. “Does it matter what other people think?”
“Of course it matters.” She stared at him in disbelief. “Don’t you think it matters?”
“No. Why should I? More to the point, why should you? You just said people are silly to be thinking things and gossiping about nothing. Why are you are wasting a moment caring about their opinions?”
“Because…well…because…oh, it just matters, that’s all. They might think we’re having a…an amour!”
She looked so appalled, Harry didn’t have the heart to tell her that dozens of people in London had come to that conclusion long ago about Viscount Marlowe and his female secretary. “If that sort of gossip got to your landlady, would she toss you out?”
Miss Dove considered that for a moment. “No, but she would have a long, heart-to-heart talk with me.”
“She takes quite a keen interest in your affairs.”
“Mrs. Morris is a bit of a fussbudget, and overly protective, but she was a dear friend of my aunt, and she has known me for years. I have a care for her opinion.”
“If she’s known you for years, then she ought to be convinced of your good character by now. If she’s not, the worst that happens is that you have to abandon a friendship with someone who clearly wasn’t much of a friend to begin with. And find a new flat, too, of course.”
“That’s bad enough,” she said with a touch of humor. “Do you know how difficult it is to obtain an affordable flat in London nowadays?”
“You and I are going to be making so much money, you won’t care.”
She tilted her head, giving him a thoughtful look. “What if we don’t make any money?”
Harry dismissed that notion with a laugh. “We will make money. Trust me on that.”
“How can you possess such confidence?” Before he could answer, she went on, “I’ve seen you lose money before.”
“I’m not saying it never happens, but I don’t think it will in this case.”
“You never think it will. That’s my point. And when it does, you always shrug it off as if it doesn’t matter.” She gestured to him with an up-and-down wave of her hand. “I’ve seen you lose thousands of pounds on a deal without letting it affect you. You always think you’ll make it up somewhere else.”
“I always do, don’t I?”
“Yes, but that won’t be of any use to me.”
“You worry too much.” He walked over to her and put his hands on her arms. “It never does any good to dwell on what could go wrong. There is risk in everything.”
“Not all of us have your confidence. I don’t.”
“Don’t be absurd, of course you have confidence. Yes, you do,” he insisted when she shook her head. “You are the one who resigned her safe, secure post to go off and write for a living. If that’s not confidence in one’s abilities, I don’t know what is.”
Unexpectedly, she smiled, a winsome, wide curve of her lips. “That wasn’t confidence at all. It was rage. I was furious with you because you didn’t know who Mrs. Bartleby was.”
He’d rarely seen her smile, and he liked it. “Now, that’s a sight, by heaven,” he murmured. “You must smile more often, Miss Dove, for I vow, you look very pretty when you do.”
He was rewarded for this by seeing her smile vanish at once, and he remembered how she’d accused him of insincerity. He suddenly felt self-conscious, and he didn’t like the feeling. He wasn’t used to it. She had described him as glib, and he supposed he was, for he didn’t often say the wrong thing, especially to women. But with this particular woman, it seemed he couldn’t ever manage to say the right thing. She stirred in his hold, and he let his hands fall away.
“Don’t stiffen up and get all starchy,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to pet you or soothe you or anything of that kind. I simply decided I like your smile, and I said so.”
“I didn’t mean to…to get all starchy, as you put it. It’s just that…” She tugged at a loose tendril of her hair. “It’s just that I’m not accustomed to receiving compliments. From you, I mean. I don’t know quite how to react.”
“I believe the established mode when given one is to say thank you.”
That made her laugh. “I’ll try to remember that. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And I cannot believe I am now dispensing advice on etiquette. Who’d have thought it?”
“My influence rubbing off on you, perhaps?”
“No doubt.” He bent and picked up his dispatch case from the floor beside the door. “Next time I need to come here, I’ll send my card up and you can receive me in that drawing room downstairs in the proper way. I hope that meets your notions of propriety.”
“It does. And in light of our new spirit of cooperation, I shall endeavor to accept compliments more graciously.”
“And you’ll smile more often.”
“Yes, yes, all right, that, too! Are you satisfied now?”
“Satisfied?” He lowered his gaze to her mouth and noticed for the first time that her lower lip was very full and looked very soft. “No, I’m not satisfied at all.”
Innuendos such as that were clearly wasted on her, for her face took on a hint of bewilderment that told him she hadn’t the first clue what he
meant. That was probably for the best. Kissing her was a bad idea. Arousal stirred again inside him. A very bad idea.
“Did you want to go over those revisions now?” she asked.
“Revisions?”
She gestured to the dispatch case in his hand. “Isn’t that why you came?”
“Of course. Yes.” Harry struggled to remember the reason he was here. “Quite right.”
“Very well, then. Go downstairs to the parlor, and I’ll follow you directly.”
“We could just stay up here,” he suggested with a naughty grin, only half in jest. “Liven up the lives of your neighbors, you know, and give them something sensational to talk about.”
She didn’t seem to find that suggestion as intriguing as he did. “If they talk about something sensational, it isn’t going to be me,” she told him and opened the door. “Go,” she urged in a whisper when he didn’t move, “and make certain no one sees you.”
He looked at her with mock sadness. “There is no sense of adventure in you, Miss Dove,” he murmured, shaking his head as he started through the door. “None.”
Harry went downstairs in a hole and corner manner, his efforts to avoid detection in a ladies’ lodging house making him feel rather as if he were the dastardly villain in a comic play, but all his skulking proved unnecessary. He encountered no one on his way down to the parlor. The place was quiet as a tomb.
He sat down on a terribly uncomfortable horse hair settee in the parlor to wait, but he didn’t have to wait long. Miss Dove entered the room only a few minutes later.
“What revisions did you have in mind?” she asked, sitting down beside him.
He handed her the typewritten sheets she’d sent him three days before, sheets now marked with his scribbled notes and comments. She began to look them over, but almost immediately glanced at him again. “You were serious,” she said, pointing to his query in the margin of the first page. “You weren’t teasing.”
And Then He Kissed Her Page 11