And Then He Kissed Her
Read And Then He Kissed Her Online
Authors: Laura Lee Guhrke
And Then He Kissed Her
For my critique partners,
Rachel Gibson and Candis Terry.
Without your support and encouragement,
I could never have written this book.
I’m more grateful than I can say.
Thank you.
Working for a handsome man is fraught with difficulties. To those girl-bachelors so employed, I recommend an unflappable temperament, an unbreakable heart, and plenty of handkerchiefs.
Mrs. Bartleby
Advice to Girl-Bachelors,
1893
“W
hy?” The exotic, raven-haired creature in tangerine silk started to cry. “Why has he done this to me?”
Miss Emmaline Dove did not venture a reply to that question. Practical, as always, she saved her breath and pulled out a handkerchief. She handed it to the woman on the other side of the desk without a word.
Juliette Bordeaux, the now-former mistress of Emma’s employer, Viscount Marlowe, snatched
the offered square of cambric. “Six blissful months we have had together, and when I receive from his footman the pretty little box, I am happy. But then I find a letter with the present, a letter which ends our amour.
Mon Dieu!
He thinks with jewels to soften the blow that shatters my heart! How cruel he is!” She bent her head and sobbed with an abandonment that was wholly French and somewhat theatrical. “Oh, Harry!”
Emma shifted uncomfortably in her chair and cast a glance at the ormolu clock on her desk. Half past six. Marlowe could return any minute, and she wanted to speak with him about her new manuscript before he went on to his sister’s birthday party.
She was fairly certain he’d be back to his offices yet this evening. The present she had purchased for Lady Phoebe on his behalf was still here, wrapped and waiting. Unless he had forgotten the evening’s festivities altogether, which she had to admit was not an unheard-of possibility, he had to fetch the gift from here before going home.
This was her best chance to speak with him, she knew, for he was leaving on the morrow for a week at his estate in Berkshire. With no meetings to be rushing off to and no deals to negotiate, and with his family remaining in town, he would have leisure time at Marlowe Park. Emma hoped the serene atmosphere of the country would put him in a more relaxed frame of mind and enable him to see her work in a more favor
able light than he had in the past. It was worth a try anyway.
Emma’s gaze moved to the typewriting machine on her credenza and the tidy stack of manuscript pages beside it. Her own birthday was only eight days from now, and if Marlowe agreed to publish her writing at last, what a wonderful birthday present that would be.
Suddenly, a vague disquiet stole over her, something so at odds with the delicious sense of anticipation she’d been savoring a moment before that Emma was startled. It was a feeling hard to define, but there was dissatisfaction in it, and a sense of restlessness.
She tried to dismiss it. Perhaps she was just afraid of another rejection. After all, Marlowe had rejected her four previous literary efforts. He felt etiquette books were unprofitable, but Emma knew that was because the advice offered in most of them was hopelessly old-fashioned, not at all in keeping with this modern age. In light of that, she had worked especially hard with her newest manuscript to create something fresh and current. If she could just explain to Marlowe why this new book would have popular appeal, he might be more receptive to it, especially if he was then able to read it with no distractions in the relaxed atmosphere of the country.
Miss Bordeaux, however, showed no sign of departing. Emma studied the distraught woman on the other side of the desk, trying to find a polite way of getting her out the door. If Marlowe’s former mistress was still here when he
returned, the pair would no doubt have a row, any conversation Emma wished to have with her employer about her book would be impossible, and a golden opportunity would be lost.
Some might have deemed her inattention and lack of sympathy toward the woman opposite to be coldhearted. But that was not really so. As Marlowe’s secretary for five years now, she had seen the viscount’s mistresses come and go, and she had learned long ago that love had little to do with such arrangements. Miss Bordeaux was a cancan dancer in a music hall who accepted money from gentlemen in exchange for her favors. She could hardly expect love to result from such an illicit liaison.
But perhaps, Emma reflected, these observations were unfair. His lordship did have a potent effect upon many members of the female sex. Some of his appeal, no doubt, was due to the fact that he was one of Britain’s rarest commodities: an eligible peer with money. But there was more to it than that. Whenever Harrison Robert Marlowe entered a room where women were present, there was always an inordinate amount of fluttering, hair-patting, and sighing.
Resting her elbow on the desk and her cheek in her hand, Emma considered her employer with thoughtful detachment as Miss Bordeaux continued to weep over him with dramatic fervor.
He was handsome. A woman would have to be blind not to notice that. His eyes, a most extraordinary shade of deep blue, were all the more striking because of his dark brown hair.
He was a well-proportioned man, too, very tall, with fine, wide shoulders. He had wit and a boyish sort of charm, the latter trait enhanced by what could only be described as a devastating smile.
Emma imagined that smile without feeling any increase in the pace of her pulse, but she hadn’t always been immune. There had been a time early in her employment with the viscount when she had felt that fluttering, feminine thrill at the sight of his smile. In the beginning, she had even patted her hair and sighed a time or two. But she’d realized early on that nothing honorable could come of such hopes. Aside from their difference in station, Marlowe was a thorough scapegrace, whose only associations with women were of the most dishonorable sort. As his secretary, she regarded his reprobate private life as none of her business, but as a virtuous woman, she had ridded herself of any romantic notions about him long ago.
Any other female with sense ought to be able to see the flaws in his character as clearly as she did. He had divorced his wife for adultery and desertion, a scandalous proceeding that had taken five years to obtain and had shocked all of society. His family felt the social stigma of it to this very day. Whether his wife’s infidelity had brought about his contempt for marriage or had only served to make that contempt obvious was anyone’s guess, but those who read Marlowe Publishing’s weekly periodical,
The Bachelor’s Guide
, knew from the viscount’s editorial page
that he approved of matrimony as much as he approved of slavery—pronouncing the former merely a manifestation of the latter.
His past actions and cynical views should have impelled women to regard him as a poor prospect for future happiness and steer clear, but strange as it seemed to practical Emma, the opposite was true. His well-known vow never to wed a second time only seemed to enhance his attraction and make him an irresistible challenge. There were many women of all classes who dreamt of being the one to capture Marlowe’s unyielding heart. Emma was far too sensible to be among them. Rakes had never held any charm for her.
She studied the crying woman opposite, thought of Marlowe’s beguiling smile, and her conscience began to smite her. Not all women were possessed of good sense. Perhaps the dancer had been foolish enough to fall in love with him and had hoped for his love in return. Perhaps his abandonment had hurt her deeply. Emma’s experience with affairs of the heart was not extensive—she’d had only one to her credit a decade earlier—but she still remembered how painful heartbreak could be.
She opened a drawer of her desk and pulled out a cardboard box of pink and white stripes. “This entire business must be very distressing for you,” she murmured as she lifted the lid off the box. “Will you have some chocolates? I find them most comforting in situations such as this.”
The woman across from her did not seem to regard the offered candy as a kindness. She lifted her head, sniffed, and eyed the box with disdain. “I do not eat chocolates,” she said and blotted her rouged cheeks with the handkerchief. “They ruin the figure.” She paused, giving Emma a critical glance across the desk. “Although you should certainly eat more of them,
chérie
, for you could do with the padding. Not that it matters,” she added at once. “A spinster does not worry about her figure,
n’est-ce pas
?”
Emma stiffened.
Spinster.
That stung.
Her strange, restless discontent returned, stronger this time, and she realized the cause was her impending birthday.
She put the chocolates away and tried to adopt a philosophical attitude. Turning thirty was just something that happened. To everyone. It was a fact, one she could do nothing about. Granted, thirty sounded rather…old…but it was just a birthday. Nothing to make one upset.
As for her figure, it wasn’t as if her shape had
anything
to do with her unmarried state. She gave Miss Bordeaux’s jutting bosom a resentful glance and tried to tell herself a French cancan dancer’s opinion didn’t matter anyway.
“So you are Miss Dove.” The Frenchwoman studied her with an intensity that was quite rude. “His secretary.”
Those words were spoken in an assessing, calculated sort of way that put Emma on guard. Readying herself for more thoughtlessly cruel remarks, she replied, “I am Miss Dove, yes.”
The dancer laughed, but to Emma’s ears there was no humor in it. “Marlowe would have a woman for a secretary. It is so like him. Tell me, does he keep you in a flat, or in a house?”
Emma bristled. This was not the first time others had cast aspersions upon her character. She was employed by a man in a man’s position, and her employer’s reputation with women was a notorious one. But none of that meant she had to allow reprehensible assumptions about her virtue to go unchallenged. “You are mistaken. I am not—”
“It does not matter.” Miss Bordeaux gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Now that I have seen you, I know you are no threat to me. Marlowe does not like flat-chested women.”
Emma made a smothered sound of outrage. She wanted to offer a cutting reply, but she knew that would be foolish. There was always the possibility that the dancer and Lord Marlowe would reconcile, and she could not afford to risk her position for the momentary satisfaction of losing her temper. Though it galled her, she held her tongue, just as she had done so many times in her life before.
Besides, she acknowledged to herself with wry chagrin, her anger was hardly of a virtuous kind. It was the dancer’s dismissal of her as too old and too thin to compete for a man’s affection that had gotten under her skin, not the assumption that she was a kept woman.
“
Non
,” Miss Bordeaux continued, interrupting Emma’s train of thought, “it is not you for
whom Marlowe has abandoned me.” She leaned forward, and her black eyes narrowed. “Who is she?”
Putting aside the rather petty desire to fabricate a
small-bosomed
mistress for her employer, Emma said primly, “That is his lordship’s business, mademoiselle, not mine.”
“It does not matter, for I shall learn her identity in time.” Miss Bordeaux cast aside the damp, wadded-up handkerchief, and her tear-stained face took on a hard expression that made her seem older—by ten years, at least, Emma decided. Not that she would ever stoop to being catty.
“Miss Dove,” the dancer went on, “since you are Lord Marlowe’s secretary, you may give him a message from me.” She opened her reticule and pulled out a dazzling chain of yellow topaz and diamonds set in gold. “Tell him this pitiful excuse for a necklace is an insufferable insult, and I will not stand it!” She flung the string of jewels on the desk with contempt. “I shall not be bought off with such a paltry thing as this!”
Emma had gone on an exhaustive shopping expedition the week before, not an uncommon occurrence, for Marlowe was hopeless when it came to the choosing of gifts and remembering the occasions on which to give them, and she had long ago taken over that task on his behalf. Not only had she found Lady Phoebe’s birthday present, she had also purchased the necklace Miss Bordeaux found so unappealing.
Though she didn’t mind buying presents for
his family, she had always regarded finding gifts for Marlowe to give his various mistresses one of the more distasteful tasks of her job. She was certain it could not be a proper thing for her to be doing. Aunt Lydia, were she still alive to see it, would have been appalled, for she had instilled within her niece the most scrupulous attention to proper behavior. Nonetheless, Emma felt a bit miffed at the dancer’s condemnation of her judgment. She had put a great deal of thought into the purchase, spending nearly an hour at the jeweler’s on Bond Street, though in all fairness, she had wasted some of that time lingering over the lovely emeralds and indulging in a bit of wishful thinking.
She had finally chosen a necklace for the dancer she felt was just right. It was expensive enough, yet not too expensive—it was meant to be a parting gift, after all. It was also big enough and gaudy enough for others to admire through opera glasses at the opera, and eminently salable should the woman ever need funds. Emma had thought that important, deeming the job of mistress a precarious one at best.
Miss Bordeaux did not seem to agree with her judgment in such matters. “Topaz?” she cried. “Topaz is all I am worth to him? This necklace is a trinket, a
bagatelle
, a mere nothing!”
This particular trinket would have kept Emma in funds for a dozen years, but it was clear Miss Bordeaux was not so thrifty.
“He casts Juliette aside like a worn boot, believing a necklace of topaz sent by a servant will
pacify her?
Non!
” Miss Bordeaux jumped to her feet.
Breathing hard, her dark eyes glittering with tears of fury, she leaned over the desk. “This pathetic offering is nothing to me!”
These theatrics only served to make Emma all the more impassive. “I shall convey your message to the viscount,” she said without emotion, “and I shall inform him that you have returned his gift.” Hoping this uncomfortable scene was now at an end, she moved her hand to pick up the necklace from the desk.
Miss Bordeaux was quicker than she, snatching back the string of jewels before Emma’s hand had even touched it. “Return it?
Non!
Unthinkable. Did I say so? How could I return a gift, however trivial, from the man I love? The man who has been my dear companion? The man to whom I have given all my affection?” She clasped the necklace to her bosom. “Though he has broken my heart, I love him still, and I have no choice but to accept my fate and suffer.”