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Authors: Kate Moore

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BOOK: To Tempt a Saint
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It was worse than she thought. A late summer rain had made a mire of the lanes. Muddy straw clung to her drooping hem, and her half boots would disgrace the lowliest private. She had saved a shilling six riding in Farmer Davies’s cart only to look as if she were collecting for a Bonfire Night effigy.
The privacy of the men’s corner beckoned. If she were quick, she could repair her skirts and meet Evershot with some dignity. With a burst of resolution, she tore her glance from the tea and ducked behind the screen.
The private area was as rich as the rest of the president’s office, with a tall cheval glass, a leather-covered bench, and a handsome commode. Cleo ignored the glass, knowing what she would see. A torn flounce was the least of her problems. She was thin and brown and looked ready for the parish workhouse, not the ballrooms of Mayfair in which she’d danced away countless evenings. She should slip out the door with her bag of potatoes, find her coach before it became a pumpkin, and get home while there was still light in the sky.
Too bad she had no coach.
She dropped down on the bench and pulled her bedraggled skirts up over her knees. Trying to move Evershot to generosity was one of those impossible fairy-tale tasks like spinning straw into gold.
At least she had the straw. She had only to pick it out of her skirts.
She bent to her work, her mind taking up familiar and dismal calculations. If she simply did nothing, in time, six years to be exact, things would right themselves. In six years she would turn thirty and have access to her money with no interference from her trustees. In eight years Charlie would come of age. Though he was now the Right Honorable Lord Woford, as a minor, he had no access to his fortune.
At the time of her father’s death, his half brother, Archibald March, had come to their aid when everything seemed most difficult and confusing. But Uncle March had had shocking revelations to make of the circumstances of her father’s death and the size of his gaming debts. Cleo had agreed immediately to the strictest economies. She had signed the documents put in front of her, believing them necessary to protect her father’s reputation and the inheritance he left for her and Charlie. She had believed then that they would remain in their own home, and have enough to eat and decent clothes to wear, and the company of friends. Only later did she understand how she had played into her uncle’s hands.
Now she simply had to convince Evershot to give her a more substantial allowance. A single woman of four and twenty should have control of her own purse and not live at the whim of outmoded ideas of female capability. It was intolerable for the bank to keep
her
money, while she and her brother lived like parish paupers on relief.
At thirteen Charlie was a tall, gangly young man whose wrists and ankles stuck out comically from his coats and trousers. He didn’t complain, but he was becoming dreamy and absentminded. Cleo was convinced he would become a hermit if she didn’t get him to school among boys his own age. Worse, lately, her Uncle March had sent letters hinting that he could take Charlie from her on the grounds that she was not able to support him properly. By her calculations they needed five hundred pounds to set Charlie up in school. Without the bank loosening its hold on their funds she could not even hire a proper tutor for Charlie’s entrance exams.
A rumble of voices outside the office gave a brief warning of someone’s approach. She plucked out more straw and jabbed another pin through the worn fabric as the door opened. A flirtatious feminine voice, not at all the voice of a bank president, announced the newcomer.
“La, sir, you are so clever to arrange this assignation! Papa will never think where we are, and we will be quite alone.”
“Quite,” came the reply in a grim baritone.
Oh dear.
Cleo froze.
Where was Meese?
The door closed with a discreet click. A long silence followed, giving her time to wish she had helped herself to the tea.
“Miss Finsbury,” the baritone finally said. “Let me be plain with you.”
Cleo was not leaving, but politeness dictated that she should stop her ears. No doubt she was about to hear some private discourse, though taking a woman into a bank president’s office to make love to her struck Cleo as a poor romantic strategy even to avoid a disapproving papa. The man must be very sure of himself to attempt wooing without the aid of moonlight or music or the sweet air of some garden.
She gave her gown a quiet shake and let the folds fall back into place. At least the lovers did not seem interested in her tea. She had only to wait in perfect stillness for the affecting scene to play itself out. She folded her hands in her lap.
The gentleman cleared his throat. Another dreadful pause followed. Cleo hoped he was thinking the better of his plan. She considered whether she could see beyond the screen without being observed and decided not to risk detection.
Blast Meese!
Now she understood his peculiar alarm about letting her into Evershot’s office ahead of her time. He had obviously pocketed a tip from Sir Baritone for the use of the space. Perhaps he had thrown in the tea.
“Miss Finsbury,” Sir Baritone began again in that deep, assured masculine voice, a voice that made Cleo’s skin stir as if he had touched her. “Your fortune has drawn the attentions of many suitors.”
Miss Finsbury tittered. “I am sure, sir, I never dreamed of your particular notice.”
The gentleman took a deep breath at that bit of falsehood, and Cleo shifted ever so slightly toward the thin crack where the panels of the folding screen met. Did he actually mean to
propose
in a bank office?
“Miss Finsbury, we are both of an age and time in life when the world expects us to marry, so it will not surprise you to be addressed on the subject by me.”
Not surprise her. Of course, it didn’t surprise her. What female with half a brain was ever surprised by a proposal of marriage? Really, it took very little to bring one about.
Cleo herself had received four proposals in her first season alone. And, unless she missed her guess, Miss Finsbury had angled assiduously to bring Sir Baritone to the sticking point. Cleo leaned a bit more to the right toward the crack above the panel’s hinge. A quick peek would give her a better idea of the two parties.
“Miss Finsbury, I am prepared to offer you a comfortable home, freedom . . .”
There was a pause Farmer Davies could drive his hay wagon through.
Why couldn’t the poor man get on with it? Was he hopelessly shy? And why did he insist on repeating his beloved’s name?
Cleo adjusted her position slightly.
“. . . And children, should you desire them.”
Oh my
.
Would poor Miss Finsbury have to lead him to her bed?
Cleo had a feeling the girl was hardly expiring from strong emotion, unless it was frustration with the pace of the gentleman’s proposal.
Really, did men never read novels? Did they have no idea how to proceed?
Cleo let herself lean that final fraction more, so that one eye looked out on a thin slice of the two people in the center of the carpet. The main object in view was the gentleman’s back, the powerful back of a tall, athletic man. He wore a dark blue coat and gray trousers perfectly tailored to his form. He did not look like a man who would feel unduly shy at the thought of the marriage bed. He had thick black hair and broad shoulders in that excessively fine coat—oh, how she would love to put Charlie in such a coat—a narrow waist and long, lean legs.
The girl, whom Cleo could see rather better, was hardly a girl even with her mass of golden curls and pink cheeks, and entirely too many bows. She appeared to be a few years older than Cleo herself and confident of the charms of her bosom, the white expanse of which swelled appreciably above her bodice.
“I don’t understand.”
Of course you don’t, poor dear.
“You will have a house in Mayfair, and you may visit your family and friends in Cheapside as often as you like. I will never reproach you for those connections.”
Generous of you, Sir Baritone. Did you notice, you idiot, that she isn’t exactly swooning with delight?
“And you need have no fear that I will be reckless with your dowry. I am no gambler, whatever you may have heard. The bulk of your money may be settled on any . . . progeny that ensue from our union.”
Ensue! Does he imagine that children will turn up in the kitchen garden like turnips?
Cleo watched the girl’s expression falter. Miss Finsbury’s eyes were big and round in her pink face.
“You don’t love me?”
Sir Baritone seemed not to hear. “All I ask is the immediate use of a portion of the thirty thousand pounds to invest in an enterprise that will change the face of London.”
Cleo had to clap a hand over her mouth. Tears welled up in Miss Finsbury’s blue eyes and spilled over. It would have been tragic except that she looked as if she were playing a part in a bad farce.
“Oh, I should never have come here. My papa said that you, sir, were a common fortune hunter and, and . . .” Miss Finsbury produced a lacy handkerchief from between her breasts and dabbed her eyes with it. “. . . Lord Candover’s . . .
bastard
.”
The awful word in the cloying voice hung in the air. For a moment Cleo feared that she had actually gasped. Surely no sound had escaped her. She felt the change in Sir Baritone.
Run
, she urged the girl.
“I could never marry such a man.” Miss Finsbury’s tremulous voice caught, and she dashed for the door.
It banged shut behind her.
Cleo held her breath. The very air in the room was motionless. No coal on the fire dared to crumble.
Her nose itched and her stomach threatened to complain about having nothing to eat since before dawn, but she didn’t stir.
As long as he didn’t turn, she was safe, but the crack compelled her to watch him standing with his back to her. The stillness of his person suggested a man of iron will composing himself, holding his energy in check.
No doubt he was shocked to be rejected. Really, Cleo could explain it to him. It had nothing to do with his flawed pedigree, although she was sure that, at the moment, his pride stung from the unexpected attack of an enemy at whom no gentleman could strike. Cleo was equally certain he never permitted a man to say that word to him.
At last he moved, reaching down and picking something up from the chair where Cleo had been sitting moments earlier. Slowly he turned until he faced the screen. Cleo’s black bonnet dangled from his long fingers like something offensive that he wished to keep at a distance from his immaculate person. Her wretched stomach sank alarmingly.
“Are you coming out?” he asked in that deep baritone. His voice had the dangerous edge of controlled rage. His gray gaze, cordial as steel, met hers through the crack in the screen, and alarm like a chill draft rippled over her. At the same time she wanted to shake him for letting that pudding-faced snob get to him. She preferred his arrogance.
She stepped from behind the screen. “Well, that could have gone better, don’t you think?” She lifted her eyes to his and halted, instantly making a series of mental corrections. She was wrong to think his proposal marked him as awkward, shy, or inexperienced in any way. Wrong to think Miss Finsbury could wound his self-assurance. And most of all wrong to think any woman could take the lead from him in the marriage bed.
Cleo could not take another step or say another word. She was not prepared for the man’s looks at all. He was taller than Charlie and broader in the shoulders than Farmer Davies. Not that he was so very handsome, but the angular symmetry of his face mixed with the leashed sensuality of his limbs had a devastating effect on her senses.
“You want to offer advice?” He might have been asking if she wished to die. She should beg his pardon for eavesdropping, but she had the feeling it would be fatal to do so. At the least sign of fear, he would drop a smoking thunderbolt at her feet and send her ragged cloak up in flames.
“Oh, you are quite beyond advice, I’m sure. A sheep driver could have done a better job.”
He tossed her bonnet aside. “Familiar with the amorous practices of sheep drivers, are you?”
She forced herself to move toward the tea table and chairs and desperately tried not to think about anyone’s amorous practices. “I know the female mind. I daresay Miss Finsbury’s a novel reader.”
“I didn’t investigate her reading habits.”
“I rather think you didn’t investigate anything about her besides her bank account.” Cleo took a seat before her knees could give out. Her stomach clenched again. “Tea?”
His face hardened, the darkness of the brows becoming more evident. He had a terrifying frown, and it was really all because of that unflinching gaze. She suspected that he was not a man who readily admitted errors. Still, there was a sensual jut to that lower lip.
“How did you get in here, Miss . . . ?”
“Spencer, Cleo Spencer. And I am here by appointment.” Really, he was the interloper. She looked away and steadied herself by concentrating on filling the two waiting cups with the lovely steaming brew. It was a rich amber, and the heady steam made her mouth water.
BOOK: To Tempt a Saint
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