A Man Above Reproach (8 page)

“No siblings?”

“Good night, Lennox.” She was able to control rolling her eyes, but it was a powerful instinct. “Forgive me if I do not thank you for forcing me to use what little money I have to publish a second edition of my book.”

“My purchase should pay for that; I made sure of it.”

“You speak like a businessman,” she sneered. “It is very unbecoming.”

Her hand involuntarily flew to her mouth. Impertinent. She could almost hear her father chasten her for it.

“I am sorry, Your Grace.”

He had closed down. “Duke is serviceable. I think we understand each other. We needn’t stand on ceremony, Miss Grant.”

She nodded because there were no words.

“If you intend to continue doing what you are doing, you might be smarter about it.”

Another nod.

She turned to go back, but found that he was following behind her. She put up a hand to stop him.

“At least allow me the dignity of returning as I left. By myself.”

Elias found that he liked being insulted. It happened so little that it was refreshing to be addressed by someone who wasn’t shrinking away or flirting with his family name and money.

After waiting in the rotted courtyard to a count of three hundred, Elias emerged to find a flushed Nicholas waiting in the lobby. There was no sign of the bluestocking.

“Allow me a night at Ashworth?” his friend grinned sleepily. “I can smell her on my skin, and I have no intention of bathing or having this coat cleaned until the morning. My mother has been haunting the hallways late at our estate and my elder brother has returned to visit. They will know in a moment that I am in love.”

“Get a hold of yourself, man,” Elias said as much to himself as to Nicholas.

Dryden waited in the outer barroom and a rented hackney waited outside.

“What will you tell
your
mother?” Nicholas asked as the steadfast valet closed the carriage door.

“Hmm?”

“What will you tell your mother when word gets back to her that you follow a courtesan around like a trained pup?” Nicholas grinned.

Elias’s expression did not change to match his feelings. “I am a grown man, Nicholas.”

“Presumably,” he snorted.

“What are your intentions with Crimson?” Elias asked, deftly turning the conversation back to his companion. “You must know that she will begin to expect something more.”

“I am grooming her for my mistress, is that not obvious?”

“You said you loved her.”

“Lennox,” Nicholas laughed, “I will be a marquess. It’s not as if I can marry the girl.”

“And if she refuses a position as your
chère amie
? If she does not want you to marry another?”

Nicholas pointed his eyes in accusation.

“You are very interested in Sally’s welfare suddenly. Are you not considering the same thing with the bluestocking?”

Though he was not conscious of it when the questions were coming out of his mouth, it was true, he
was
now interested in Sally’s welfare. He would not have thought about it much before reading Josephine’s cursed book. Josephine had put a needling statement into his mind, too: “If oppressors just instinctively realized their mistakes and felt empathy, there would be no oppression. This is why voices are needed.” He remembered the damn introduction word for word, the harridan.

“There is nothing between us.” When Nicholas didn’t answer, he went on. “She is addlepated and irresponsible. It is amazing she has not gotten herself killed or jailed by now. That aside, the bluestocking is not a puzzle for me to solve.” Even as he spoke the words aloud, they rang untrue. “She holds me in disdain, as she plainly announced to the whole room when she cut me. I needn’t muck around in a brothel to find a willing woman, and I have more important things to do, regardless.”

All the same, he should send a note tomorrow along with the bill of sale from her books, something to put an end point on the whole misunderstanding.

“Not that she isn’t tempting,” he amended aloud. “Quite the opposite. Perhaps that’s part of the problem. I have thought of little else since I met her. She does not shrink in conversation; she extends that regal neck as if we were in court, not a whorehouse. She refuses to listen to reason, even when I am endeavoring to protect her. She has a most vexing collarbone. Should I have noticed that? I keep forgetting that she is not a lady. I saw her smoke, Nic, smoke! She drank her wine
in two gulps. She belongs in Bedlam where she can’t cause any trouble. Or maybe I do. Do I sound mad, Nic?”

Nicholas was asleep, openmouthed, against the window. He had to be carried into Ashworth and Elias was deeply jealous of him.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

“The D. of L., known as the Uncatchable, has reportedly himself caught a bluebird at the infamous S.D. The ladies will be relieved to know that he is not made of stone.”

—F
ROM A
L
ONDON SCANDAL SHEET
, M
ARCH
1832

Josephine stared into her morning coffee. Thank goodness she had told Mother that she had family business that would take her away from the Dove for a few nights. She needed the time to get her head together. The duke had turned her life on its end in a day’s time; like Napoleon’s ranks against Wellington, she could not sustain further damage. It was time to retreat and regroup.

Sally opened the front door just a hair, trying to sneak into the store. The bells announced her with a twinkle, which Josephine would have missed if she hadn’t been sitting right there. She put down her paper.

“Good morning, Sally.”

She started. “Mornin’, Josie.”

“About the sale of my books.”

“Yes.”

Josephine had not acted the manager much with Sally, because she had known her before “hiring” her and housing her at the Paper Garden. Sally worked harder than anyone, so Josephine never needed to reprimand her.

“He approached me soon after the show. I told him you’d be right angry,” Sally said earnestly, setting her reticule on the counter. “He’s persuasive.” She paused, quirking an eyebrow. “And a little grating.”

“You should have told him that under no circumstances would you be able to approve of the sale of the whole stock of books. I cannot undo this; you have entered into a legal contract with the duke, on my
behalf. I know you did not mean harm, but this is a grave situation. You are aware that our funds are beyond limited. I cannot print more. It nearly bankrupted us the first time. It was a silly idea from the start.”

Sally sat down beside her, slumping.

“I am sorry, Josie. I realized at once what I did, once he left. He’s like a fog, isn’t he? Says things that make you think everything will be all right.”

Damnation, that he does
, Josephine thought.

“It is no excuse,” she said. She put her coffee down with what she hoped was an air of authority, though inside she felt terrible. “You are not to speak with him. If he returns, tell him that if he has legitimate business, he can conduct it through my solicitor.”

“I’ll… I’ll pay for them somehow.”

“Sally. You very well will not. I am not angry… I just cannot have this go any further. This man is a duke. He is not a random man on Fleet Street.”

“I understand.” Sally relaxed. “I really do, Josie. Thank you.”

“Good, wonderful, we will complete the transaction and that will be that. Good-bye, Duke.”

The words “good-bye” and “duke” were bisected by the jingle of the door bells.

This was no customer. This was an elegantly dressed footman with white hair, no wig. He looked wooden and immovable, and he did not offer a greeting. He stepped in, looked around, and walked toward the two silent ladies once his eyes found them in the room overstuffed with books.

“Miss,” he nodded to Sally. The same to Josephine.

He handed her a crisp envelope.

“The Duke of Lennox.” He bowed.

Josephine nodded mutely. She wracked her brain: Was there some social convention with footmen that she was forgetting?

“Good day to you both,” he said pleasantly.

The bells again, then more silence. The envelope sat in front of them.

“I’ll… continue alphabetizing the essays,” Sally said. She backed away from Josephine as if she was possibly infected with plague.

The envelope sat there for another full minute while Josephine stared at it. It was not addressed to her, just a thick ivory rectangle. It was better paper than some of her most valuable manuscripts were printed on. Though it had no eyes with which to stare back, it was making a good show of it.

She broke the wax seal with the duke’s crest on it, imagining that she was actually flicking him in his infernal, beak-like nose.

One piece of paper, a simple bill of sale, drawn up through his solicitor. She did not recognize the name of his man of business, of course. She would have no dealing with the rank of man he represented. It stated that the duke had verbally agreed the day before to purchase the whole stock of
On Society’s Ills and the Real Price of Prostitution
, the price, and that a carriage would pick them up at her convenience. At the bottom, a scrawl read “Please accept the duke’s personal thanks in the enclosed letter.”

There was another smaller sheet, folded and again wax sealed.

She turned it over a few times, seeing that the ink did not seep through the back. Quality, all quality. It was wearisome. She needed to find a flaw with him, outside of the fact that he was a married man who frequented a brothel. She wished that his outside appearance reflected the wretched man he was inside.

It would not do to delay the inevitable, so she opened it.

Miss Grant
, it read.
If you take issue with me addressing you in this way, you are free to burn this letter after you have read it. The price of the books in addition to your commission will more than pay for another run, if that is what you wish to do. I regret that we entered into this situation. If
you would be so kind as to sign one edition for my collection, I would call it even. Respectfully yours &c, Lennox.

Call it even! He was one for calling it even, if she kowtowed to his will. Why did he think that he had done nothing wrong? What gave him the right to meddle in her life at all? Did he think that no one would ever argue with him, that he was unimpeachable?

She grabbed the nearest copy of her book, every copy of which Sally had stacked neatly in a box near the front counter. There were quills everywhere to suit her purpose. She had one in her hand, in fact. She scribbled in anger before she really processed her thoughts.

Josephine slammed down the book and walked away.

Later that afternoon, a letter of acknowledgement arrived at Ashworth Hall, directing Elias to send someone to pick up the books at any time to complete the sale. It was not even signed, no sense of familiarity at all. He sent a carriage at once, in a snit, and then stood scowling at the window for twenty minutes, awaiting its return. He had wrestled over whether to go himself and finally decided no.

Nicholas was fiddling with his cuff, bored.

“Eli, chap. Come away from the window. Have a drink. You are dreadful.”

“They are back,” he answered, without turning around. He watched as his footmen efficiently unloaded stacks of yellow-bound tomes, piles and piles of words that he wished he’d never read. He had directed them to place the vile things in the red sitting room. He could imagine how they’d be in neat little rows, like troops, like a damned battalion in his home.

“I do not understand this,” Nicholas continued, deciding to drink alone. “I do not understand it at all. You found her; she runs a shop, so you bought fifty copies of the same book?”

“Yes. That is all true. Do you not have somewhere to be?”

He started walking; Nicholas followed him down the stairs and into the receiving area.

“As a matter of fact, I do not. Your servants kindly allowed me to sleep late, which means that I missed breakfast with the family. The rest of my day would have revolved around their whims, so I just sent word with Dryden that I would be returning late.”