And Then He Kissed Her (16 page)

Emma couldn’t hide her surprise at those words. “You know about me?”

“I told you I have a knack for finding things out. But I promised Harry faithfully I would not tell anyone about you, and he knows me well enough to trust me. The secret of Mrs. Bartleby’s identity is safe with me. Now, as to the reason I’ve come to see you, you may have heard I am
to be married in January to the Earl of Rathbourne.

“Yes, and please accept my congratulations on your engagement. But you make me curious, Baroness. How does your engagement bring you to me?”

“My sisters, my mother, my grandmother, and I have been reading your column faithfully every week. We adore Mrs. Bartleby.”

pleasure welled up inside Emma at those kind words. “I am so glad! I rather like her myself.”

“You should. I am here because, having guessed your identity, I have come to enlist your aid. Cheeky of me, I know, but there it is. I need your help. You see—” The baroness paused, shifting on her seat as if suddenly uncomfortable. “You may know that my brother’s divorce was a long, painful business. For Harry especially, but for the rest of us as well.”

“Yes.” Emma eyed her with understanding and compassion. “I know.”

“Many of our acquaintance condemned my brother for his action. He—and we—were shredded to ribbons in the newspapers of Harry’s competitors. The most terrible things were said. And of course, it didn’t help matters when, shortly after Harry’s decree was granted, the Queen issued a declaration condemning divorce and censuring those who break the marriage bond. It was issued in general terms, but everyone knew to whom that censure was addressed. Socially, it rather sealed our fate.”

Emma bit her lip, rather ashamed of her own
rigid stance on the subject. She was also irritated suddenly by the strictures of society in a way she had never been before. “To my mind, it isn’t right that your entire family should suffer for the action of one. And as for your brother’s divorce, he and I spoke about it not long ago, and I now appreciate what a wrenching decision it was for him. He did not make it lightly, I know.”

“Harry told you about his divorce?” The baroness stared at her. “He talked with you about it?”

“Yes, a little. You seem rather astonished, Baroness.”

“So I am. Harry never talks about painful things. Never.” She gave a little laugh. “Well, this is turning out to be quite a day for surprises.”

“I am truly sorry that your social position has been so adversely affected. If you would like me to write a Mrs. Bartleby column about the absurdity of guilt by association, I would be willing to do so.”

“No, no. That isn’t why I’ve come to you. And in any case, Harry owns the
Social Gazette
now, and everyone would think he made you do it.”

“True. I hadn’t thought of that. Why then, do you need the aid of Mrs. Bartleby?”

“I want your help with my wedding.”

“Your wedding?” Emma was astonished. “But surely your mother, grandmother, and sisters—”

“I love my mother dearly, Miss Dove, but she is, to put it bluntly, a featherbrain. My grandmother is very old-fashioned—she still believes in throwing rice and old shoes at weddings, for
goodness’ sake, and you and I both know that is never done nowadays. My sisters are helping as best they can, of course. Vivian is designing my gown herself—she loves to design clothing and such. She’s quite good at it, really. And Phoebe is handling all the details of invitations, the seating arrangements, and that sort of thing. But the woman I really need is Mrs. Bartleby. I want to be sure everything is done impeccably. I’ve come to you not only for my sake and the sake of my family, but also for Edmund. My fiancé suffers the stigma of divorce as well. If our wedding is perfect, then society hasn’t a shred of criticism to throw in our faces about it. Even more, I want this wedding to be the most stupendous social event of the year, and I need Mrs. Bartleby’s clever ideas. I want your help with the flowers, the wedding breakfast, the decorations—oh, everything.” She paused and flashed a charming smile that once again reminded Emma of her brother. “I told you I was being cheeky.”

“Not at all! I am flattered that you should think of me, Baroness.”

“I have to caution you that if you consent to help me and people find out, there are some among my set who might not look so favorably upon your advice.”

Emma considered the matter. “Some people would look down their noses, I suppose, but as I said, I don’t agree with this notion of guilt by association.” She paused and took a deep breath, aware she was making a risky decision, but knowing her conscience could not let her do
otherwise. “If people wish to condemn me just because I have assisted with your wedding plans, then let them.”

“I think we can avoid that problem if we keep your involvement a secret. We can’t tell my mother or grandmother, for they’d blurt it out to someone straightaway, but my sisters can be discreet.”

“I shall be happy to assist you in any way I can.”

The baroness clasped her hands together in gratitude. “Thank you, Miss Dove.”

“I shall enjoy the project. Truly. When shall we meet to begin planning things?”

“Let me think. My family is going to Torquay for August.”

Emma nodded. Everyone in society went sea bathing at Torquay in August.

“Harry only intends to come for a week, for he says he has too much work here in London,” the baroness went on. “Work is all he ever seems to do. I grow quite concerned about him sometimes, the way he works so hard.”

“It is his idea of fun,” Emma said without thinking.

The other woman gave her a startled look. “Yes, you’ve the right of it there,” she said slowly, studying Emma in a thoughtful sort of way. “Another reason for the snobs to condemn him, I fear. A gentleman, they say, shouldn’t earn his living. They would deem it beneath them.”

“No doubt most of those gentlemen are in debt.”

Her dry response made the baroness laugh. “A wicked observation, Miss Dove, and so true. Anyway, when we return from Torquay, we are going straight on to my fiancé’s estate in Derbyshire for several weeks. Then we journey to Berkshire at the end of September to spend the autumn at Marlowe Park. I propose you come to stay with us the first week of October. Though I must warn you that Mama and Grandmama will pester you endlessly to reveal the true identity of Mrs. Bartleby.”

“I’m accustomed to that,” she assured the baroness. “And I accept your invitation. We shall put our heads together, and between us, we shall make your wedding the most beautiful one of the year.”

“Oh, I’m so glad I came to see you today!” She grasped Emma’s hands in an impulsive gesture that was quite endearing. “Thank you for agreeing to help me.”

After Lady Eversleigh had gone, Emma went back upstairs. She sat down at her desk, still feeling a bit stunned by what had just happened. To be asked to help a baroness with her wedding was a great honor. To be sure, there were those who would condemn Mrs. Bartleby and refuse to read her again if they knew what Emma had just agreed to do, but even if the baroness had not suggested they keep it a secret, Emma would have agreed to assist her anyway. For once, she didn’t really care what other people thought, and that was probably the most astonishing thing of all.

H
arry had never been one for self-deceit. The reason, of course, was that he paid attention to his instincts, and they always told him the truth, if he was listening. But lately, the gut feelings upon which he had always relied could not be trusted. Right now his business instincts were shouting at him to stay away from Emma Dove. His instincts as a man, however, were telling him something completely different.

He wanted her, and avoiding her was not mak
ing him want her any less. That was the plain, unvarnished truth.

Harry leaned back against his desk and curled his fingers around the mahogany edge. Behind him, he could hear Quinn reading back dictation, but he paid no heed. Instead, he stared out the window of his office and stopped trying to push Emma out of his mind.

Emma. A sweet name. His thoughts about her of late were not sweet. In fact, they were quite torrid, and growing more so with each day he stayed away from her. He closed his eyes and formed a picture of her body in his mind, one conjured solely from fantasy, one of lithe, slim legs and small, round breasts, and a long mane of brown hair that turned red in the sunlight.

“…and therefore I must decline your countering offer…” Quinn’s voice floated past him.

Emma. A pretty name. He inhaled a deep breath, imagined the scents of fresh cotton, talcum powder, and her. For perhaps the hundredth time, he imagined kissing her mouth and all her other pretty parts as well. He imagined stripping her out of her plain white shirtwaist and doing things to her that were anything but proper.

“…should you wish to reconsider accepting the original terms we discussed…”

Handsome, she’d called him that day in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, as serious as if she were reciting back catechism, her hazel eyes wide and utterly without flirtation or guile. Innocent eyes.

He didn’t want her to be innocent.

Any man who was unmarried and wanted to stay that way steered clear of innocent virgins. He’d only had one in his entire life, on his wedding night, and his memory was perfectly clear on how that had turned out. It had been a disaster, and quite a fitting prelude to the rest of his married life.

His mind drifted back fourteen years. A lifetime ago, it seemed. The whole mess with Consuelo had begun when he’d gotten involved in several business ventures with her father, first in London, then in New York. When Mr. Estravados had invited him to spend a month with him and his family at their summer home in Newport, he’d been happy to accept. And so, on a hot, muggy August afternoon in Rhode Island when he was twenty-two, he’d looked across a tennis net into a pair of dark, haunted,
innocent
eyes, and his life had gone straight to hell.

He lowered his head, staring at the carpet, imagining Consuelo as he’d last seen her, on her knees with her hands clasped together, sobbing. Begging, for God’s sake, begging him for a divorce.

Let me go, Harry. Please, just let me go.

“…yours, sincerely, et cetera. Do you wish to make any corrections, sir?”

It was the silence that brought him out of the past. “Hmm? What?”

He glanced over his shoulder to find Quinn regarding him impassively. “Do you wish to
make any corrections to this letter, my lord, or shall I send it?”

He hadn’t heard one word of the letter. “Perfect,” he answered. “Send it.”

Quinn departed from his office, and Harry rubbed a hand over his face. Hell, if thinking of Consuelo wasn’t enough to get his priorities in order, nothing would be. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t seem to govern his thoughts about anything nowadays.

Perhaps he needed a new mistress. That would surely set him right again. Or perhaps he needed an even quicker form of relief. He grabbed his hat and left his office at a rapid stride. Passing by Quinn’s desk, he said over his shoulder, “I’m leaving for the day.”

“But, sir, I think…that is, I believe—”

Harry halted by the door. “Yes, yes,” he said with impatience. “You believe what?”

His secretary looked at him with uncertainty. “I have a notation that you have an appointment here in your office only a few minutes from now.” He glanced down at his desk, running his finger along a line written on his blotter. “Mr. William Sheffield, manager of production at the
Social Gazette
, two o’clock. I believe you intended to discuss improving production procedures? I could be wrong, of course.” He looked up with that agonized expression Harry often found so irritating.

I think you have very little consideration for others…and your life, I cannot help but feel, is a terribly
dissolute one
—
your disdain for marriage, your liaisons with women of low moral character…

Recalling those words, Harry’s desire to invade a brothel and spend a few hours in the arms of a courtesan didn’t seem quite so pleasurable a prospect after all. He ground the heel of his hand against his forehead with a sound of frustration. He was supposed to be putting Emma Dove out of his mind. Imagining her naked was bad enough. Did he have to hear her lectures in his head as well?

Harry looked up. “No, Mr. Quinn, you are not wrong.” He pulled his watch out of his pocket, noting his appointment was in a quarter of an hour. “I shall go across the street and see Sheffield myself,” he said, hoping the short walk would be enough to clear his head. He put his watch back in his pocket and started to depart, then stopped. “Quinn?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Thank you for reminding me of my responsibilities. It is part of your duties to make certain I get to appointments on time. Keep doing it.”

Leaving an astonished Mr. Quinn staring after him, Harry departed. By the time he arrived at Sheffield’s office a few minutes later, he had resolved to keep his mind on business matters, and for the next two hours, not a single thought of kissing a prim, innocent spinster entered his head. Not once did he have fantasies of unbuttoning her starched white shirtwaist or pulling up her plain wool skirt as he returned to his office. Not once did he imagine the scent of tal
cum powder or the feel of soft, white skin as he wrote his next editorial for
The Bachelor’s Guide
. Not once.

Then she showed up and ruined everything.

He had already bid good day to Quinn and was on his way out when the woman he’d been trying so hard to forget cannoned right into him, bringing both of them to a halt in the corridor outside his offices. Involuntarily, his hands came up to grasp her arms and keep her from falling.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said and looked up from the papers in her hand.

The momentary collision of her body against his sent arousal coursing through him like a jolt of electricity, and her upturned face with its pretty golden freckles and soft pink mouth served to vanquish two hours of carefully cultivated resolve in an instant.

“Lord Marlowe,” she said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Harry realized he still had hold of her arms. He let go of her, stepped back, and forced himself to say something. “Well, I do own this building, you know,” he said, striving to sound offhand. “And this is my office. It’s not unheard of for me to come by on occasion.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, laughing a little as she touched a hand to her forehead. “That was a rather inane question, wasn’t it? It’s only that I was just thinking of…” She paused, gave a little cough, and gestured to the papers in her other hand. “That is to say, I was reading, and
was not paying any heed to where I was going. Are you all right? I didn’t tread on your feet or anything?”

“No.” Even as he answered her, he wanted to shout that damn it, no, he wasn’t all right, not in the least, and it was all her fault. At this moment, his body was burning everywhere hers had touched him. Desperate, he tried to think of something ordinary to say. “So what are you reading that has you so preoccupied?”

She rustled the manuscript pages. “Outlines for our next issue. I thought I would bring them to your office, since I had to pass right by. I’m on my way to Inkberry’s, you see.”

Valiantly, he tried to carry on mundane conversation. “Inkberry’s Bookshop?” When she nodded, he went on, “I thought we were doing an entire issue on the topic of sweets. Have you changed your mind?”

“No, no,” she assured him. “I still intend the next issue to be all about sweets, as you’ll see from my outline.” She handed over the typewritten sheets to him. “I am going to Inkberry’s because I want to see if Mr. Inkberry has any books on the history of the…of the…” She paused and cleared her throat. “The history of…the, umm…chocolate trade.”

She thrust her gloved hand into her skirt pocket, the same hand he’d been kissing that day two weeks before, and a delicate flush came into her cheeks. Harry realized he wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking about that day,
and with what he’d been going through, he found that fact very gratifying.

“Your sister, Lady Eversleigh, paid a call on me this afternoon.” She glanced around, then added in a whisper, “She guessed I was Mrs. Bartleby. She wanted help with her wedding plans.”

“Yes, I know. Diana has a talent for discovering secrets. But I’ve sworn her to keep mum.”

“Yes, she told me.” There was a long moment of silence, then Emma shifted her weight and glanced at her brooch watch. “It’s already past four o’clock. I should be going.”

“Wait a moment, and I’ll escort you down,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them. But he couldn’t take them back, and worse, he didn’t want to. He went into his office, dropped the sheaf of papers she’d given him onto his desk, then he returned to the corridor. He gestured to the stairs, and both of them began walking in that direction. “Does Mrs. Bartleby believe Inkberry’s is the finest bookshop in London?”

“Of course. Even if it weren’t, I shouldn’t dare say so,” she added as they went down the stairs. “The Inkberrys would be quite hurt were I to be so disloyal as to recommend a rival establishment.”

“You know the proprietors, I take it?”

“Oh, yes, I have been acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Inkberry since I first came to London. Mrs. Inkberry was my Aunt Lydia’s greatest friend.” She smiled. “And Mr. Inkberry is such a
dear. If any books on etiquette come in, he always sets them aside for me. I like to see what other etiquette writers are advising.”

“Ah, keeping abreast of the competition, are you? That’s very wise.” He paused to open the front door for her. “And I understand it is a fine bookshop,” he said, following her out to the sidewalk, “with a fine collection of old, rare volumes. Is that true?”

“Have you never been there?” she asked.

“No, I have not had that pleasure.”

“Would you…” She paused and cleared her throat. “If you do not have another engagement, perhaps you would…that is, Inkberry’s truly is the best bookshop in London. There are others which are more famous. Hatchards, for instance. But Inkberry’s is superior in every way, at least, in my estimation. And…and besides, you ought to see it. I mean, being a publisher, and…and everything—” She broke off amid these ramblings and took a deep breath. “Would you care to accompany me?”

He shouldn’t. But he was going to. He’d known that before she’d even asked, because he’d never been very good at doing what he should. “It would be my pleasure.”

The bell jangled as Marlowe pushed open the door of Inkberry’s. He followed Emma as she went inside. The elderly man behind the counter smiled at the sight of her. “Emma!” he greeted warmly and came around from behind the counter.

“Good day to you, Mr. Inkberry. Are you well?”

“Well enough.” He wagged a finger at her. “Josephine has the opportunity to visit with you every Sunday afternoon at tea, but I am not so fortunate. It has been far too long since you’ve come to the shop, my dear.”

“I know, and I am sorry for it. Truly. But I shall do better in the future, I promise. How is Mrs. Inkberry?”

“Very well. She’s upstairs, so you must go up and have a visit before you leave. Take tea with us.” He glanced at the man beside her.

“Oh, Mr. Inkberry, this is Viscount Marlowe. I worked for Marlowe Publishing at one time, you know. My lord, this is Mr. Inkberry.”

“How do you do?” Marlowe bowed. “Your bookshop is the finest in London, I hear.”

“And I’ve no doubt who told you that.” Mr. Inkberry chuckled and gave Emma another fond glance. “I believe we’ve some new etiquette volumes in, and some cookery books, too.” He gestured to the doorway that led to the bookshop’s deeper interiors. “I’ve set them in the usual place for you.”

Emma walked through the doorway, making her way toward the back of the shop. Marlowe remained behind, talking to Mr. Inkberry, and the voices of the two men faded as she wandered through the rooms to the back. The windows were high, enabling light to filter in over the tall, overstuffed bookshelves, but the interior was still rather dim, and the air felt cool after
the summer heat outside. The distinct scent of book dust permeated the air.

Emma went to the very back wall where Mr. Inkberry set aside books for certain favored patrons. The crates containing these books were located under the stairs that led up to the Inkberrys’ living quarters above the shop. She pulled the crate out into the light to have a look, but she found nothing of interest. A few of Mrs. Beeton’s cookery books she’d already read and some of Mrs. Humphrey’s etiquette volumes, which were nothing extraordinary. There was also a copy of
Everybody’s Book Of Correct Conduct
, by M.C., and that most excellent standby,
Manners and Rules of Good Society
, by a Member of the Aristocracy.

Since she had read all of these, Emma pushed the crate back into place and decided to browse through the other books in this room, for this part of the shop was her favorite. It contained more exotic reading fare, travel guides from Baedeker and Cook’s, history texts of many lands, and heaps of maps. Anything Mr. Inkberry had on the history of the chocolate trade was sure to be somewhere in this room.

She perused the nearby shelves, noting with pleasure some fine volumes of Arabian poetry. She scanned the titles, her gaze moving upward shelf by shelf until she reached the top. There, a matching set of books in red leather caught her eye.