“Well, I admit I’m not quite up to snuff on what young ladies are allowed to eat, but why the wings? Why can’t they eat other parts of the chicken?”
“Because the wings are the only pieces that have no human equivalent.”
“What?” It took him a moment to appreciate what she meant. “Now you’re teasing me, Miss Dove,” he said. “A young lady can’t eat a chicken thigh or breast because human beings have thighs and breasts?”
A blush tinted her cheeks at those words. “I know it seems a bit fastidious, but—”
“Fastidious?” He began to laugh. “It’s absurd.”
“No doubt you think so,” she said, giving him a look of reproof. “But it’s a matter of delicacy.”
He gestured to the pages in her hand. “If that’s so, then why can’t young ladies eat quail? A quail’s wing is delicate enough for any girl, I daresay, for it has just enough meat on it to feed two ants at a picnic.”
“Exactly, which is why quails are served whole. Since young ladies can’t eat the…umm…”
“Breasts,” he supplied, vastly amused.
She folded her arms. “The point is that because quails are served whole, young ladies do not eat them at dinner parties.”
“They don’t eat much else either, from what I can see.” He moved closer to her on the settee so that he could read from the top page of the sheaf in her hand. “No plovers, no pigeons, no snipe. No oysters, mussels, clams, or whole lobsters. No artichokes, no savories, no cheese.” He paused for breath, then went on, “Nothing too rich, nothing too highly seasoned. And never more than one glass of wine. Did I miss any no-noes?”
She sighed. “When it comes to my work, I do wish you would be serious.”
“I am serious,” he assured her. “After reading this, I understand why women have such tiny waists and go about fainting all the time. I thought it was corsets, but no. You’re all hungry.”
Miss Dove pressed her lips together, but not before he saw the smile she was trying to hide. “I’ve never fainted in my life.”
“Maybe not, but you must admit I have a valid point. Life is far too short to live half-starved.”
“Hardly that. These rules are reserved for dinner parties, and are usually observed among only the young, unmarried ladies.”
“Which explains why they all want to get married,” he answered at once. “If I had to exist on a diet of plain puddings and chicken wings, even I might begin looking for a spouse.”
That did the trick. She burst out laughing. “Really, my lord,” she said, “I don’t know why you are so surprised by all this. You’ve attended many dinner parties. Surely you know when carving that you always present the chicken wings to the young ladies.”
“No one who knows me ever asks me to carve at table. I cut the beef too thick and saw at the chicken.”
“You just want to give young ladies plenty of meat so they won’t expire before dessert.”
He straightened on the settee, staring at her. “Why, Miss Dove, you made a joke.”
“Clearly, it wasn’t a good one, or you would have laughed.”
“It was dreadful,” he agreed with her, “but it proves one thing. You were wrong, and I was right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said the two of us could never work together as equals. That we wouldn’t be able to get along. This conversation proves you were wrong. I think—” He paused and leaned closer to her, lowering his gaze to her mouth. “I think we’re getting along splendidly, Miss Dove.”
Her lips parted, her lashes lowered, and it crossed his mind that in one more moment they would be getting along as well as a man and a woman ever could. But then she scooted away from him on the settee, and his hope vanished into oblivion.
She rustled the papers in her hand and cleared her throat. “So, now that I’ve satisfied your curiosity about chicken wings, my lord, shall we go on?”
Harry forced himself back to the task at hand. He explained some of idiosyncracies he’d observed in her style of writing, especially her tendency to explain things in too much detail. He argued with her over particular paragraphs he’d crossed out or where he’d edited her too heavily for her liking.
Despite all that, she seemed to take his criticisms rather wall, perhaps because their talk of hungry young ladies and chicken wings had broken the ice. They finished on a note of agreement over his suggestion that she include at least one article for men in every issue, and she promised to have one written by the time they met again, on Wednesday, as they had originally planned. She then began sharing with him some of the ideas she had in mind for future issues.
Harry tried to give her work his full consideration, he truly did, but it wasn’t long before he found his attention wandering to a far more intriguing topic than picnic luncheons and drawing room presentations. As she rambled on about various picnic viands, he stared at her mouth and started imagining again what it would be like to kiss her. By the time she stopped talking, he’d imagined it about twenty-seven different ways.
It was the silence that brought Harry out of his luscious contemplations with a guilty start, and he found her watching him expectantly as if waiting for his opinion.
“Absolutely sound,” he said, even though he hadn’t heard a single word she’d said during the past hour. “I agree.”
She gave him a wide smile, so he assumed he’d said the right thing, but he knew he mustn’t keep getting distracted this way. What was true when she was his secretary was equally true now. If they were going to work successfully together, he could not indulge in any more lusty imaginings about her. But as he remembered how she’d felt in his hands a short time ago, as he imagined the scents of talcum and cotton, he wondered why he’d never noticed before now what a pretty smile she had. He had the feeling that putting thoughts of kissing Miss Dove out of his mind was going to be like putting Pandora’s gifts back in the box. Tricky, very tricky.
Emma thought their discussions that afternoon had gone very well. Surprising, after the way things had begun.
She lay in bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling of her room, scarcely hearing Mr. Pigeon’s loud purr beside her pillow or the clatter of London traffic through her open window. Her thoughts were fully occupied with Lord Marlowe and what had happened that afternoon.
He’d touched her. Never before had he done such a thing. His intent had been a chivalrous one, to be sure, assisting her down from the ladder, but then he had not carried it through. Instead, he’d slid his palms down to her hips and held her there. In his hands.
Aunt Lydia’s many warnings about gentlemen and the animalistic aspect of their nature came back to haunt her. Emma knew she should have slapped his hands away, told him in no uncertain terms what she thought of such ungentlemanlike behavior. But instead she’d stood there with his hands on her hips and his thumbs caressing her spine, too shocked to move, with a strange, hot sort of tension flowing through her, something she’d never felt before.
No man had ever touched her, at least not in the way Marlowe had done today.
She thought of Mr. Parker, the only man with whom she’d ever shared any sort of intimacy. Their friendly conversations in the drawing room of Auntie’s genteel little house had been conducted in chairs spaced half a dozen feet apart. Their strolls around the park in Red Lion Square as he’d told her his plans to become a barrister had been side by side, without even a brush of hands. Their waltzes together had been beyond reproach, their bodies separated by the perfect distance. And always there had been Auntie hovering nearby, ever watchful of Emma’s virtue and reputation, ever ready to intervene should young Mr. Parker make any untoward advance upon her young niece.
But he never had. A clasp of hands, a kiss on her knuckles, a hand on her waist during a waltz. But nothing more than that. Not a single thing that was improper.
Not sliding his palms down her hips. Not caressing the small of her back with his thumbs in slow circles that made her burn an
d tingle in the strangest way. Nothing like that.
She closed her eyes, and put her hands where Marlowe had put his. Before she could stop herself, she slid her palms along her hips just as he had done, and felt again that hot tension in her body. She jerked her hands away.
What Marlowe had done was just the sort of thing Auntie had always warned her against, the sort of thing no gently bred woman should ever permit, the sort of thing that had always made her maintain a cool, impersonal distance toward her handsome male employer. Gentlemen being what they were, Aunt Lydia had often said, it was up to females to enforce the boundaries of propriety with the most scrupulous care.
But he touched me, Auntie. He touched me.
She’d been very wrong to allow it.
Emma sat up, wrapping her arms around her bent knees and curling her toes beneath the hem of her cotton nightgown. She rested her forehead against her knees, hot with guilt and shame, even as she felt an unmistakable thrill. Now she knew the effect a man’s caress, however brief, however improper, could have on a woman.
She could not allow it to happen again.
Emma fell back into the pillows with a sigh. Perhaps she was fretting about nothing. With that thought, she tried to adopt an attitude of determined optimism. Perhaps Marlowe, like herself, had realized the impropriety of what had happened and would be sure to behave more appropriately in future. After all, once they had moved to the parlor downstairs, things had seemed to smooth out between them, and for the remainder of the afternoon, his demeanor had been quite gentlemanlike.
Despite his warnings, she had not found his critiques to be brutal. And he’d listened to her ideas with an assiduous attention she’d never seen him display before. She’d gone on far too long about the details of her picnic luncheon menus, but even then he hadn’t expressed either boredom or impatience. And though he had occasionally offered a murmur of agreement or a nod of encouragement, he had kept mum for the most part and listened to her in a most polite fashion.
Perhaps she had judged Marlowe too harshly. Perhaps he wasn’t as insincere and dissolute as she’d always thought him to be. Still, gentlemen being what they were, she knew it was up to her to be sure that episode on the ladder was never repeated.
Chapter 9
Pandora is a most uncooperative creature. Female, of course.
Lord Marlowe
The Bachelor’s Guide, 1893
By the time of their meeting on Wednesday, Miss Dove had once again donned the aura of brisk, cool efficiency Harry was used to. That was very wise of her, no doubt, and a sensible course for both their sakes, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit let down. He wanted to see more of the other Miss Dove, the one whose smile could light up a room. The one who cursed when she thought she was alone. The one who hadn’t slapped him for caressing her hips.
Her revised work had been delivered to him by messenger the afternoon before, and he approved all the changes she had made. The article for men she’d added at his request, however, had required some heavy editing, for it was clear Miss Dove had never needed to choose a valet, but she voiced no objections to the changes he’d made.
Though her manner today was very much that of the Miss Dove he had always known, there was something different about her these days. The woman who’d been his secretary wouldn’t have lost her temper and tossed him out of her flat. She wouldn’t have hurled criticisms at his head or bargained with him over the percentages of a business deal. Miss Dove had changed, and he didn’t know quite how the change had taken place, but he did know that she was beginning to intrigue him in a way she never had before.
Perhaps her newfound success had given her a mea sure of quiet confidence in herself he’d never seen her display. Or perhaps it was because she now demanded a level of regard from him he’d never really accorded her before. His gaze lowered to the starched pin tuck front of her shirtwaist. Or perhaps, he added wryly to himself, it was just because he kept imagining her naked.
“I shall have these ready to be typeset by tomorrow,” she promised, breaking into his speculations.
Curious, he asked, “How do you know so much about these things? Crystal and napkin rings and what’s proper? And where do you get all these creative ideas of yours?”
“My Aunt Lydia was a governess prior to her marriage, and she was very meticulous in matters of conduct. That’s how I learned what’s proper, as you put it. I lived with her from the time I was fifteen.”
“What about your mother?”
“She died when I was only eight. I barely remember her.” Miss Dove looked past his shoulder, staring thoughtfully into space. “She was always telling me not to play in the mud,” she murmured. “I remember that.”
“You weren’t allowed to play in the mud? Why not, in heaven’s name?”
“My father didn’t like it if my clothes were stained or dirty. Being a military man, he was very precise, you know.”
Harry did know. He was getting a fairly clear picture of Miss Dove’s childhood, and it was too grim for words. “So, you went to your aunt when you were fifteen. Was she married?”
“She was a widow by then and lived in London, only a few blocks from here, in fact. When my father died, I came here to live with her.”
“Your aunt did not make her home with you and your father before his death?” Harry asked in surprise.
The oddest expression stole across her face, a hard, frozen sort of look. Like a mask. Looking at her, he got an uneasy feeling he could not explain. “No,” she answered his question after a moment. “My father did not…did not care for my aunt. She was my mother’s sister.”
The aunt didn’t care much for the father, either, Harry guessed. There was something very wrong with all this. He could sense it, and he didn’t like it. “But surely, with your mother gone, would it not have been best for you to have lived with your aunt anyway?”
“No. At least,” she added with a smile that seemed forced and brittle, “my father did not think so. As I said, they did not get on. But to answer the rest of your question about crystal and napkin rings and the like…” She paused to consider the matter, then said, “I don’t quite know where I get my ideas. They just come into my head. I read a great deal. I take long walks, observe what I see, and write about those things that interest me. I converse with many people—matrons, merchants, craftsmen. And, of course, I love to visit the shops. Today, for example, I intend to explore the area around Covent Garden Market. In fact,” she added with a look at the watch pinned to her beige jacket, “if we are finished here, I should be on my way. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.” She put her papers for final revision in her dispatch case and stood up.
Harry rose as well. “I should like to accompany you,” he found himself saying.
She paused and gave him a dubious look. “You want to go with me? You?”
He laughed. “I know it’s a shock.”
“To say the least. You loathe visiting shops.”
“And you adore it. Which is precisely why I always fobbed off the buying of presents on you. You’re far better at choosing gifts than I am. You have a talent for finding just the right thing for each person.”
“Why, thank you, my lord. There’s a great deal of pleasure in knowing you’ve chosen a gift the recipient will appreciate.”
“If it’s so much fun, why don’t you take up that task on my behalf again?”
“Absolutely not,” she said at once.
He sighed. “You have become so heartless. Think of my poor sisters.”
That didn’t seem to impress her.
“I’m no good at choosing gifts, Miss Dove,” he said as he walked her to the door. “You have no idea how frustrating it is when it’s two days until Christmas, and you can’t think what to buy.”
“Serves you right for waiting until two days beforehand.”
“Perhaps, but I’m still dreading Christmas-time without you.”
“There’s no need. You just need to pay closer attention to
what people say. And you’ll have to go shopping, of course.”
He groaned.
That made her laugh. “Think of our outing as a perfect way to practice.”
“Oh, very well. I shall endeavor to hone my shopping skills by watching you.”
With that, he and Miss Dove departed for Covent Garden Market, and during the next two hours, he came a bit closer to understanding her. He discovered she was a good listener, and that gave her a natural ability to interview people and draw information out of them. A butcher’s wife told her where she might purchase the finest mustards. The costermonger taught her how to make the best Cornish pasty. The policeman at the corner of Maiden Lane and Bedford Street informed her which side streets were safe and which were not. She was willing to be schooled by anyone on any subject, paying careful attention to what people told her and penciling notes about what she learned into a little notebook. No wonder she knew where to find the best boots and how to make paper animals. She took advantage of a basic truth about human nature. People loved to feel important by sharing what they knew.
He kept himself in the background, and there were times when she seemed to become so absorbed in her conversations with others that she forgot he was there. He enjoyed this opportunity to study her unobserved, but there was no possible way he was going to get another tantalizing peek at her silhouette in the sun. Not today anyway.
She was clad from head to foot in a beige linen walking suit, buttoned up tight to show only the high collar of her white shirtwaist and the narrow green ribbon tie around her neck. The enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves and peplum of her jacket exaggerated the width of her shoulders and hips all out of proportion to her slender shape, and a straw bonnet with heaps of green ribbons and cream-colored feathers prevented him from appreciating the red lights in her hair. Unless he ducked his head to look her full in the face, the wide brim of her hat concealed her eyes from his view.
And Then He Kissed Her Page 12