How to Master Your Marquis (5 page)

“Of course you were.” He paused. “May I be so unpardonably rude as to ask the subject?”

The subdued light in the vehicle softened her face, making her sex so obvious it took him by the chest. In the breakfast room, she had looked so sturdy and young-laddish, with her brave cheekbones and bristling mustache and short, sleek hair. He’d had to concentrate to shift the image in his mind, to see her properly, as she really was.

Here, now, it was much easier. Hatherfield wanted to reach across the few feet of damp space and take her hand.

Take more than that.

She was still looking at him, not replying. Good Lord. Could she read his thoughts?

“I was thinking about my family,” she said. “My sisters.”

“Left behind?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. You must miss them a great deal.”

She opened her lips eagerly as if to say
Oh, very much!
But at the last instant she checked herself. “Oh, a little, I suppose.” She shrugged and looked back out the window. “They’re only girls, after all. Not much company for a young fellow like me.”

“Ah, no. Of course not. I quite understand. Have a few sisters myself. All that nonsense about dresses and ribbons and lapdogs. Appalling rot.”

“Yes, quite.” She sounded as if she might choke.

“We men, on the other hand, have much weightier things to discuss. Politics, for example. Tell me, what’s your opinion of this Corrupt Practices Act? I don’t think there’s enough bite to it, myself.”

“No, not at all. Much more bite is required. Corrupt practices are . . . simply . . . dreadful things.”

“I quite agree. Any sort of subterfuge undermines the trust.”

“The trust?”

“Yes. The public’s trust in its political institutions and services. Disguise, underhanded dealings, it’s all most distressing. Most un-British, wouldn’t you say?”

“I . . . yes. Most un-British.”

Hatherfield uncrossed his arms and stretched one hand along the back of the seat. “The worst sort of punishment should be reserved for such devious malefactors. Nothing’s too severe for them, really. It makes my fingers tingle with eagerness to deliver the proper justice.” He wiggled the fingers in question to emphasize his point.

At which time Thomas’s spine went stiff as a pole. She turned back to him and shot him a look of such haughty severity from those green blue eyes, it nearly pinned him to the seat. “You’re up early today, your lordship,” she said crisply.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The hour. I thought idle young aristocrats such as yourself were only just retiring as dawn breaks over London.”

“Ah, well.” He spread out his hand. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, then. But habits are habits.”

“You make a habit of rising at seven o’clock in the morning, in order to secure a breakfast at Sir John’s table? Are Lady Charlotte’s charms so terribly irresistible?” Her eyebrow rose, as if she’d just delivered a blow of mortal proportions.

He laughed. “No, no. Charming as the lady is, the habit is of much longer standing than my acquaintance with her. No, the thing is, I row.”

“Row?”

“A boat.” He motioned with his arms. “In the river, each morning.”

“In the
river
?” Aghast. “Each
morning
?”

“Yes, indeed. Bright and cheery. Up around Putney Bridge. A number of boathouses there. I belong to one.”

“But . . . why on earth?”

The expression on poor Thomas’s face was priceless. Such a mixture of horror and bemusement, eyebrows perched high on her forehead, jaw dipping low. How plump, those parted lips. Hatherfield could almost see the tip of her tongue, beckoning within.

She’d just asked a question. What was it? Oh, right.

“Exercise, Mr. Thomas.” He plucked at a piece of invisible lint on his trouser knee. “I find I’m rather addicted to it. And the early hour, if you care to gaze upon it, is really quite good for the soul.”

“The soul.” As she might say
the tooth fairy
.

“Yes, the soul. Even in London, even in the incessant drizzle.” He nodded to the window. “Just you, in a light little well-behaved racing scull, and the water, and your own muscles working in rhythm. Not another care in the universe.”

Her eyes were on his face, now. He rather liked them there, earnest and curious.

“Aren’t you cold, out there?”

He shrugged. “A little. But the exercise warms one up wonderfully. And then breakfast, of course. You have me there. Sir John lays a much earlier table than my own family. I take shameless advantage.”

“They don’t seem to mind.”

The hansom lurched around a corner. Hatherfield glanced outside. They were turning into the muddy Strand now; almost there. Somerset House slid past in a monumental charcoal blur. “No, they don’t,” he said. “He does have a kind heart, Sir John, under all that bluster. You might wish to consider cooperating with those early hours of his. It’s not that hard, really. A little discipline goes a long way.”

She made a little noise of laughter, a delightful bell-like sound. “Oh, that’s easy for you to say, you paragon. You’re accustomed to rising at dawn.”

“So I am,” he said, “but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Then why torture yourself?”

Why, indeed? Why torture himself? Why rise at dawn every morning and push his body through a wall of pain, beyond the limit of human endurance, beyond memory and conscious thought, out there in the fog-shrouded Thames with no one to see or hear him?

Because it was better than lying sleepless in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

Hatherfield felt Thomas’s gaze on his face, this stranger with her elegant bones and white unmarked skin, all buttoned up in her sober man’s suit, on her way to begin a day’s work in the chambers of Sir John Worthington, Q.C., in Temple Bar. The two of them in his own carriage, masks in place, outer shells fully hardened to protect the secret centers within.

What was she doing there? Why? A hot little flame burned inside Hatherfield’s chest, a most uncharacteristic desire to know her, to look inside her secret center.

Dangerous business, secret centers. Who knew what he might find?

“It’s not torture,” he said. “You only have to retire at a decent hour, set your alarm clock—you do have an alarm clock at your bedside, don’t you, Mr. Thomas, working man that you are?—for half four in the morning . . .”

“Half
four
!”

The hansom made another sharp turn, jolting them both. Hatherfield put out an instinctive hand to steady her. The clattering rhythm slowed.

“Here we are,” he said. “You have your umbrella?”

“Right here.” She held it up, just as the carriage came to a stop. Her lips parted uncertainly. “Thank you, Lord Hatherfield. It’s very kind of you. I confess, I’ve never ridden in a private hansom before.”

“Not at all. An eccentricity of mine, I suppose, but a hansom is a great deal nimbler than a proper four-wheeler, to say nothing of economical. I drive it myself from time to time. Anyway, it was no trouble at all. I couldn’t have lived with the picture of you arriving here late, all wet and wilted, to face Sir John’s secretary for the very first time.”

“His secretary?”

Hatherfield opened up the door and gave her a nudge. “Give him my warmest regards!” he said cheerfully, and that was the last he saw of poor young Thomas, her face registering stricken trepidation, her luscious round, young bottom outlined against her drab black trousers as she pitched herself out the hansom door.

Hatherfield fell back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling of his carriage.

The little front window opened. “Back to the Mansions, sir?” inquired the coachman.

“Back to the Mansions.”

Back to his own rooms in Albert Hall Mansions, where he would take out a sheet of paper and compose a friendly man-to-man telegram to the Duke of Olympia: Warmest regards, faithful servant, et cetera, and what the devil sort of mischief was he plotting with this Mr. Stephen Thomas, whose luscious bottom was quite demonstrably
not
that of a mister?

THREE

S
ir John’s secretary.

Nobody had warned Stefanie about a secretary. But here he stood before her, black of eyes, thin of hair, gimlet of face, his bony shoulders squared for battle. He said, in a voice both high-pitched and menacing, “You’re wet, Mr. Thomas. Wet and late.” The word
late
was uttered with particular distasteful emphasis, as he might say
infected with clap
.

But Stefanie was not the sort of princess to allow a mere underling to get the moral advantage of her. She placed her hat on the hat stand, removed her damp coat, and straightened her lapels before answering.

“It’s raining,” she said, “and half eight is a most uncivilized hour.”

The outrage on the secretary’s face turned so livid, Stefanie could almost smell it. Or perhaps that was the chap’s own scent, redolent of mothballs and hair oil.

He thrust his finger at the clock on the shelf. “Do you see what the time is, Mr. Thomas?”

“I do, Mr. . . . er . . . I beg your pardon. Have you a name?”

A faint titter sounded from some distant corner. The secretary whirled about, and for the first time Stefanie noticed the room in which they were standing, a large and stately chamber lined with shelves and shelves of legal texts in handsome gold-stamped bindings. Down the exact center of the room marched two rows of elderly wooden desks, containing four young men in threadbare black suits identical to her own, with identical brown whiskers bristling about their jowls in an extremely businesslike fashion. Four identical pens scratched in unison across the four identical desktops. Stefanie gazed in horror.

The tittering quelled instantly.

The secretary turned his gimlet face back to her.

“My name is Mr. Turner, and you would do well . . .”

“Turner. Charmed.” Stefanie cast a disdainful glance at the plain black-and-white clock ticking dolefully on the shelf and pulled her own watch from her pocket, a handsome gold piece given to her by a particularly generous stepmother for her eighteenth birthday, and which she had been sternly instructed to leave behind in Devon. “It is eight thirty-six in the a.m., Turner, and . . .”

“
Mister
Turner.”

Stefanie favored him with an indulgent smile. “
Mister
Turner. It is eight thirty-six in the a.m., and if those six minutes are of such critical importance to you and Sir John, I shall be happy to make them up at the end of the day. Now. Where is my office, Mr. Turner?”

“Your office!” Mr. Turner’s face, alas, had already gone as scarlet a shade as his circulatory system could support; the valiant old capillaries could apparently do no more. “You have a desk, Thomas. A . . .”

“
Mister
Thomas.”

Another titter interrupted the even scratching of the identical pens.

Mr. Turner’s black eyes narrowed even farther. More, and they would squint shut entirely.

“
Mister
Thomas. You have a desk. Right there.” Mr. Turner pointed a long and bony finger toward a battered wooden contraption in the back corner of the room, the last in the right-hand row.

Stefanie turned and gazed at the desk in question for a weighty moment. She swiveled back to Mr. Turner. “This is entirely inadequate, to say nothing of the lack of privacy. I shall require my own office.”

“Your . . . own . . .
office
?”

“Yes.” Stefanie removed her gloves in a few brisk tugs. “Nothing large or elaborate, of course. A nice little box will suffice, so long as there are sufficient shelves and a sturdy desk.” She cast a disapproving eye at the dull piece of furniture in the corner, which seemed, if she wasn’t mistaken, to tilt at least half an inch to the left-hand side. “And a fireplace, of course. I do dislike working in the cold.”

“Oh, I see. A fireplace, naturally.”

Stefanie began to tick off the items on her fingers. “A window for natural light, such as it is in this godforsaken fogbank of a city. Oh. And a rug. So much easier on the feet.”

“A rug!” Mr. Turner smacked his forehead. “Of course! How could I neglect such an important furnishing for Your Royal Highness! Shall I arrange for a personal servant to toast your crumpets and polish your crown?”

A squeak, as of hilarity barely contained.

Stefanie opened her lips to tell Mr. Turner that sounded very agreeable indeed, the sooner the better, though naturally one should really employ a professional jeweler for the second task, ordinary servants being so unfamiliar with the delicate and specialized treatment of precious minerals.

Then she remembered herself.

“A servant is quite unnecessary, Mr. Turner,” she said. “I am shocked you would consider such an extravagance. I will not report what I’ve heard to Sir John—I should never stoop to telling tales—but I shall bear it in mind.” She tapped her forehead.

“The cheek!” Mr. Turner said.

“Yes. Isn’t it, rather. But don’t worry, my good man. I’m sure we shall grow used to each other in no time, learn to appreciate in full the other’s sterling qualities. Fast friends and all that. Do you think . . .”