Kate said, “I apologize, my lord, if my thinking you were a vile abuser of innocent women offended you. But I don’t apologize for thinking it. You did look suspicious. It was a natural assumption.”
“A natural assumption? That there was a—what did you call me?—a vile abuser of innocent women, running around loose on Park Lane? Do you run into that sort of thing often during your rambles about the neighborhood, Miss Mayhew?”
Kate gave a barely perceptible shrug. “I was not the one with a screaming woman thrown over my shoulder, sir.”
“I explained to you,” Lord Wingate said, “that she was my daughter.”
“Yes, but why should I have believed you? If you really were a vile abuser of innocent women, you might say anything in an effort not to be caught.”
Lord Wingate cleared his throat. “Yes, I see. Well, do you suppose you could set aside your suspicions about the true nature of my character long enough to listen to a proposal?”
“A proposal?” Kate was relieved. It wasn’t her he wanted at all. Hallelujah! “Oh, you must wish to speak with Mr. Sledge, then, after all. He is the one, my lord, who is collecting donations in support of the Reverend Billings, who intends to save the downtrodden peoples of Papua New Guinea. Shall I fetch him for you?”
“Certainly not.”
Lord Wingate was looking at her curiously—quite curiously, she thought, and quite a bit too long. She wouldn’t drop her gaze again, but she dearly wanted to. All she could think, when she looked at him, was that he certainly had the arms for throwing another man out the window. His biceps, the outlines of which she could plainly perceive through the finely tailored sleeves of his coat, were massive.
That, and the fact that the deep grooves that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his full, oddly sensitive-looking mouth had probably been put there by his unhappiness over his wife. For a moment, she almost felt sorry for him, in spite of all his money and the fact that he’d treated his wife so abominably. She had to rebuke herself sternly. There was no need to feel sorry for the likes of the Marquis of Wingate.
“I don’t care a whit about the Papua New Guineans,” Lord Wingate declared, startling her out of her bemusement. “Are you a great supporter of the Reverend Billings, Miss Mayhew?”
Kate couldn’t help letting out a little bark of laughter at that. “Hardly!” she said. “He came here for dinner once, and he—”
She broke off, realizing she couldn’t possibly tell this large and intimidating man what the Reverend Billings had done, which was consume the whole of a bottle of claret at dinner and then corner her in the pantry afterward, where he’d attempted to enlighten her on the mating rituals of the Papua New Guineans. Kate had crowned him with a pie dish for his efforts, and he’d left rather hastily after that, without any explanation to his benefactors, who declared his odd behavior a sign of his great genius.
If Lord Wingate noticed she’d left a sentence unfinished, he didn’t let on. Instead he said, noticeably relieved, “Well, that’s all right, then. What I’ve come to ask, Miss Mayhew—and you’ll excuse me not writing first, but I felt a personal application would be better received, considering our somewhat … unconventional meeting last week—”
Here he pegged her with such a piercing look that Kate nearly staggered backward, but saved herself just in time by seizing hold of the corner of the wooden stand that held the family atlas.
“I’m wondering,” his lordship continued, “whether you might consider leaving your employment here with the Sledges, and come to work for me as chaperone to my daughter, Isabel, with whom you are, I believe, somewhat acquainted.”
Kate blinked. Just once. And tightened her grip on the wooden stand.
“I’m quite certain,” Lord Wingate went on, “that I can offer at least as comfortable accommodations as you’ve been afforded here—” He looked about the library distastefully. Though expensively furnished and very well stocked with all the classics, the room had remarkably uncomfortable furniture, and was quite small, besides, being quite the most unused room in the house. “And at twice the salary.”
Kate felt her jaw drop. It was perfectly uncouth to stand with one’s mouth open—something she’d tried, unsuccessfully, to impress upon the youngest Sledges—but she simply couldn’t help it.
The Marquis of Wingate had just asked her to come work for him. It was extraordinary. It was more than extraordinary. It was unbelievable.
Wait until she told Freddy!
“Oh,” Kate said, finally managing to lever her jaw back into place. “Thank you kindly, sir, but I couldn’t possibly.”
It was Lord Wingate’s turn to stare, and he did so admirably. Kate felt quite sure he intended to make her feel as if she were as small and insignificant as the tiniest crumb on his table. But she would not allow herself to be cowed. She stood her ground, holding her chin high.
His too bright gaze bored into her with all the intensity of a blaze from a furnace.
“Why,” he said slowly, with a patience that was in absolute contrast with the look on his face, “not?”
Kate couldn’t help reaching up with her free hand and laying her fingers upon her heart. It struck her as far too dramatic a gesture, of course—he was not able to burn a hole through her chest with his merest gaze, as she rather fancifully imagined—so at the last minute, she played with the cameo at her throat, instead.
She couldn’t, of course, tell him. Not the truth. There was no need for that. There were plenty of other reasons she couldn’t possibly go to work for him. Besides the fact that he had the worst reputation in the world—only just the other day, she’d heard he’d shot and almost killed a man in Hyde Park, in a duel, it was rumored, over something to do with Sara Woodhart—he was the most physically intimidating man she had ever seen.
Not that he wasn’t good-looking. He was attractive enough, she supposed—though he was by no means handsome. Freddy was far better looking, with his fair hair and dimples—a true Englishman, in both looks and empty-headedness. Burke Traherne, on the other hand, had the look of the gypsy about him. There was nothing irregular about his features, certainly, but they hardly seemed to have been arranged with any intention of pleasing. His face was compelling, she supposed—in a fierce, almost cruel way—but certainly not anything to swoon over.
Those shoulders, on the other hand …
“I just,” Kate said, swallowing. “Couldn’t.”
“Then I’ll ask again, why?”
Well, this was certainly awkward. Why couldn’t the man simply take no for an answer, and go away? But a glance at Lord Wingate reminded her that he was not a man to whom the word “no” was uttered very often. A plague take him! What was she going to do?
She took a deep breath, but before she could say anything, the marquis demanded, “How much is your current annual salary?”
Suddenly, Kate saw a glimmer of hope. That was it. She’d simply be too expensive for him.
“A hundred pounds a year,” Kate said at once, pulling from the top of her head the most outrageously high number she could think of.
“Fine,” Lord Wingate said calmly. “I’ll double it.”
For a moment, Burke thought the girl might faint. She was clutching the side of a mahogany atlas stand, and he saw her knuckles go white—as white as her face had been, when she’d first entered the room. Some of the color had returned to her cheeks as they’d talked, but it was all gone again now as her lips moved, and she whispered, like someone in a daze, “Two hundred pounds? Two hundred pounds?”
“Yes,” Burke said firmly. “That seems a reasonable sum to me.”
It didn’t, of course. He’d had Miss Pitt and all of her previous incarnations at thirty a year. The girl was lying, of course. There wasn’t any possible way that that sniveling mole Sledge could afford her at a hundred a year. Well, he could afford her at a hundred a year, but he wasn’t the type to spend that kind of money on something as important as his children’s education. No, Cyrus Sledge would think nothing of throwing a hundred pounds at that wretched missionary of his. But spend it on insuring that his sons grow to be clear-thinking, well-brought up members of society? Perish the thought!
But it was clear—for whatever reason, and Burke, having come to the conclusion that he would never understand females, wasn’t even going to bother himself wondering very much what that reason was—Miss Mayhew didn’t want to come work for him. So if he had to pay her two hundred pounds a year, then by God, he’d pay it.
And it would, he’d already decided, be money well spent. He had passed the better part of the past few days observing the much-debated—in his home, anyway—Miss Mayhew, and he had come to the conclusion that she was the ideal solution to his problem. Not as terribly young as he’d first believed—he didn’t guess she could be more than few years over twenty—Katherine Mayhew carried herself with an assurance that belied her station in life. In church—yes, he’d even gone to the effort of dragging himself to mass with Isabel on Sunday morning, all in an effort to ascertain Miss Mayhew’s worth—she’d kept the four young Sledges, the eldest of whom could not have been more than seven, quiet, a feat at which Burke, who well remembered Isabel at that age, could not help but marvel. On the street, she was greeted pleasantly by everyone she met, and returned those greetings with equal pleasantness, every bit as polite to icemen as she was to duchesses. She dressed soberly, yet attractively, maintaining at all times a neat appearance. And she had already proved that as a chaperone, she was matchless in both courage and resourcefulness: hadn’t she attempted to assault him with an umbrella, when she’d believed Isabel to be in danger?
In all, despite her tender years, Katherine Mayhew seemed the ideal employee. It was only her appearance which gave him pause. He had noted, when she’d accosted him on the street, that she was on the puny side—especially considering the fact she’d thought to fell him with an umbrella. But what he had failed to realize until the moment she walked into Cyrus Sledge’s library was that Miss Katherine Mayhew was absurdly pretty.
Not beautiful, by any means. She was much too small to be labeled any sort of beauty. But Isabel hadn’t been at all wrong when she’d declared Miss Mayhew pleasant to look at. In fact, Burke found it rather hard to look away from her. She certainly wasn’t the type of woman he normally admired—he preferred dark-haired women to blondes, and liked, on the whole, a more robust figure, than the one Miss Mayhew possessed. Yet her honey-colored hair seemed to suit her, the fringe in which it had been cut across her forehead emphasizing the enormity of her grey eyes, the lashes of which were a darker shade than her hair. Her plain, neat dress—a blouse and skirt, entirely suitable attire for a governess—only made one more aware than ever of the narrowness of her waist, and if she hadn’t a lot to fill the front of that blouse, what she had was at least perfectly in proportion with the rest of her.
It was her mouth, however, which Burke found difficult to ignore. Miss Mayhew’s mouth was, like the rest of her, exceedingly small—smaller than any mouth he’d ever seen, except perhaps on a child. And yet it was an undeniably appealing mouth, the lips delightfully curvy and surprisingly mobile, twisting into all sorts of different expressions in the same manner that a flag twisted in the wind. Currently it was hanging open, as she stared at him in astonishment. He was awarded a glimpse of some straight white teeth and a sharp little tongue, and found the glimpse quite charming ….
Then wondered if perhaps he wasn’t overtired, since he normally didn’t find views of the interior of anyone’s mouth charming, to say the least.
“Miss Mayhew,” Burke said, since it didn’t appear to him that the pretty Miss Mayhew was going to be able to speak again anytime soon, so great was her astonishment over his proposal. “Are you all right?”
Mutely, the girl nodded.
“Can I get something for you? Water, perhaps? Or a glass of wine? Perhaps you ought to sit down. You look quite done for.”
The girl shook her head. Burke, perplexed but resolute, went on. “Well, then, I suppose the thing to do would be to make arrangements to have your things brought over. I’ll send my footmen, Bates and Perry. How soon do you think you can be packed? Would this evening be too soon? Isabel has some dance or other she insists on going to, and it would probably be just as well if you started right away. In fact, if you like, I can send my housekeeper over to pack for you—”
The little pink mouth snapped shut, as if the girl were a marionette, and the puppeteer in control of her had pulled an unseen string.
“I couldn’t possibly!” the girl declared, in tones, Burke couldn’t help thinking, of horror. But why should she be horrified? A fanciful imagining on his part. Her tendency to fantasize was contagious, perhaps.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose you feel you need to give the Sledges time to find a replacement for you. I quite understand. What was your agreement with them, then? A week’s notice? Not two weeks, I hope.”
“I—” The girl shook her head. As she did so, strands of dark blond hair that had fallen from the knot atop her head swayed around her face. Not curling—she hadn’t a single curl about her—but swaying, like seaweed in water.
“I’m terribly sorry, my lord,” she said. Her voice, Burke found, was as pleasing as the rest of her, low in pitch and not at all screechy, as young women’s voices often were.
A second later, however, he didn’t find her voice half so nice, when she went on to say, “But I couldn’t possibly come work for you. I’m very sorry.”
Burke didn’t move. He was certain he didn’t so much as twitch a finger. But suddenly, Miss Mayhew darted behind the atlas stand, as if desirous for some sort of barrier between them. Clutching both edges of the wooden structure, which came up to her chest, she added, “Please don’t be angry.”
Burke stared at her. He wasn’t angry. Exasperated, maybe, but not in the least angry. He had given up anger long ago. His temper was something he’d never had much skill at mastering, and so he’d simply given over being angry about anything. Except Isabel, perhaps, and that young man of hers. The name Geoffrey Saunders was possibly the only thing that could still send him into a rage.