And Then He Kissed Her (7 page)

“And generous pay,” he shot back.

She ignored that. “You have piled task after task upon me, yet you have never spared a moment to discuss my writing, you have taken advantage of me at every opportunity, even going so far as to require me to buy the gifts you give your mistresses!”

“I asked it. I never required it. And if it was such an objectionable part of your duties, you should have said so.”

“You have never appreciated me nor any of the many things I’ve done for you and for Marlowe Publishing,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “All you have done is take me for granted. Well, I have had enough!”

Harry’s frustration faded into bafflement as she unleashed this torrent of criticism upon him. Never before had she shown a shred of anger, or any other emotion, for that matter. This was not the Miss Dove he knew. This was not the compliant secretary who had been gliding in and out of his line of vision half a dozen times a day for five years now, who followed his instructions and obeyed his orders with cheerful acceptance, no questions and no complaints. This was certainly not the Miss Dove who always behaved with efficiency, exactitude, and propriety. This was someone else altogether, someone he did not recognize.

He studied her, and something about the way she stood in the shaft of sunlight through the
window caught his attention. “Miss Dove,” he said in surprise, “you have red hair.”

“What?” She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your hair is red. I never realized that before. I always thought it was brown, but it’s not. In the sunlight it turns red.”

She frowned at him, looking thoroughly vexed. “I know the color of my hair, thank you. What on earth has that to do with anything?”

Somehow, he’d managed to offend her yet again. “No need to get touchy about it,” he assured her. “Some people don’t like their red hair, I know, but you needn’t worry. Yours isn’t a violent sort of red. It looks brown, but when you stand in the sun, it goes all coppery and shimmery. It’s…” He paused, feeling as if he’d just discovered something rather extraordinary. “It’s very pretty.”

She was not pleased by the compliment. She actually seemed insulted. “Oh!” she cried, hands balling into fists at her sides, “you are the most manipulative man I have ever known! And the most insincere.”

“Insincere? What, you don’t believe me?”

“Of course I don’t! It’s too convenient a compliment to be a true opinion. Besides, you only like women with black hair.”

She saw his surprise and gave him a look of triumph in return. “Hah! You see? I know you, Lord Marlowe. The five years I’ve been in your employ have given me a complete understanding of your character. I know you like the back of my hand, so trying to get around me with compliments is useless. You dole out flattery as
if you are handing out candy to children. It’s all meant to charm, or to soothe, or to get what you want, or to help you wriggle out of unpleasant situations. Why others fall prey to such tactics, particularly women, is beyond my comprehension, but I am not such a fool as that.”

Red hair, and a temper, too
, he thought, amazed. He hadn’t known she possessed either. “I have never thought you a fool.”

“‘You’re a treasure, Miss Dove,’” she quoted him with scorn. “‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Miss Dove.’ Do you really think such innocuous flattery ever made me feel valued or important? It didn’t,” she said, answering her own question before he could do so. “But now you want me to come back, so you’re using flattery as a tactic, as if a compliment about my hair ought to impress me enough for that!”

Impressing her hadn’t even occurred to him. It was true that in his private life he happened to have a certain susceptibility to women with black tresses, but that didn’t make his comment about Miss Dove’s hair insincere. It nettled him that she thought so.

Harry opened his mouth to set her straight, but she didn’t give him the chance. She sucked in a deep breath and went on. “Besides, you’ve lied to me before, so why should I believe anything you have to say?”

He stiffened at those words. He was not a liar, and no one had ever dared accuse him of being one. “I do not lie, Miss Dove. Despite your assessment of me and my motives, I do not give false
compliments, only ones I genuinely believe. I concede to being manipulative—I doubt I could succeed in business if I were not so—but I do not lie.”

“Equivocate, then. Is that a better way of putting it? You didn’t even know Mrs. Bartleby was my pen name, and it’s right on the title page of every manuscript I’ve ever given you!”

“Is that what this is all about?” Now he knew the identity of Mrs. Bartleby, but at the moment, having his curiosity satisfied on that point was hardly gratifying. “Good God, I don’t read your title pages. Why should I? When you hand me a manuscript, I know perfectly well who wrote it.”

“Title pages aside, if you had actually read my work, you would still have known who Mrs. Bartleby is. You led me to believe you have read my manuscripts, but you have not!”

This was becoming ridiculous. “I told you, I have read enough of your work to form an opinion. That’s all any publisher does. Unless it sparks his interest, he doesn’t read it all. If we read everything we receive all the way through, we should never get any work done. And having been employed by a publisher five years now, opening all the unsolicited writing I and my editors receive, you ought to know that.”

“What I know is that you will never publish any of my writing because you cannot look at it objectively. You are too closed-minded.”

“I am not closed-minded!”

“I have finally come to accept that flaw of your character,” she continued with blithe disregard
for his denial, “and I have taken my writing elsewhere, to someone who respects my work. Someone who respects me.”

“Respect?” The implication that he did not have respect for her was an insult to his character that made Harry truly angry. “If you think Barringer has a shred of respect for you or your writing, you are deceiving yourself. To be blunt, you’re not of his class, and Barringer is one of those pompous asses that abound in this world who care about distinctions of that sort. He’s a snob and a hypocrite.”

“He had some equally flattering things to say about you.”

“I’ll wager he did.”

“Things which my own observations of you over the years only served to confirm.”

“What observations? You claim a full understanding of my nature, but if that were true, there would be nothing that blatherskite Barringer could say about me with which you would agree. You believe you know me? Obviously, you do not know me at all, Miss Dove.”

“And if you think I will come back into your employ only to tolerate more of your denigration of my work as silly, you do not know me, my lord!”

Harry stared at her, noting the flush of outrage in her cheeks, the red glints in her hair, and the clenched fists at her sides, and his own anger faded as quickly as it had come.

Five years of having her in his employ, with each of them assuming those passing years had
given them a thorough knowledge of the other’s character. She thought him insincere and a liar and God only knows what else. He thought her cool, dispassionate, compliant, and—truth be told—somewhat inhuman. Both of them, it seemed, had been wrong.

“I want you to leave.”

Interrupted in the midst of these realizations, Harry didn’t quite catch her words. “I beg your pardon?”

She stalked over to him and stuck her chin up looking him square in the eye. “I said, leave.”

What else about her had he missed? He studied her face, not as if it was the one he saw nearly every day, but instead, as if they had never met before.

Her eyes were hazel. He already knew that, but what he hadn’t known until now was that the gold flecks in them seemed to snap like sparks when she was angry. Until now, he hadn’t really noticed the freckles sprinkled over her nose and upper cheeks like so much pixy dust, or that there was a faint, star-shaped scar on her cheekbone. Until now he hadn’t realized that her brown lashes were light at the ends, as if the tips had been dipped in gold.

“Are you hard of hearing?” She brought her hands up between them and pushed with all her might. When he didn’t comply, she pushed him again. “I said, go away!”

He outweighed her by a good five or six stone, at least, so all her shoving didn’t move him an inch. He continued to look at her in this new way,
seeing her as he’d never seen her before. To his surprise, he found himself enjoying the view. She was not a beautiful woman, but right now, with rosy color in her cheeks and those sparks in her eyes, she was a sight any man would appreciate. Miss Dove was very human indeed.

Seeing that her attempts to force him out were useless, she stopped. “Depart this instant, Lord Marlowe,” she ordered. “If you don’t, I shall fetch the police. They have a station at the corner.”

Knowing she would be unmoved by any more words about how much he valued her, he decided it was time to negotiate. “I’ll increase your wages. Say to ten pounds a month?”

“No!” She pushed him again, and this time he allowed it, knowing he would gain nothing by doing otherwise.

“Twenty,” he said. That was exorbitant pay for a secretary, but he could afford the expense.

“No.”

“Thirty. And I’ll give you all of Saturdays off, not just afternoons.”

“No, no, no!” With each refusal, she pushed him closer to the door. “This is not about days off. It’s not about money.”

“What is it about, then?” he asked as she paused by the settees and grabbed his hat. “Your hurt feelings?”

“No.” She slammed the hat on his head with one hand as she continued to propel him backward with the other. “This is about me and what I want. I want to be a writer, not work for you.”

“I am not accepting your resignation.”

“You have to accept it.”

He took off his hat and held it to his heart. “What will it take to get you back?”

She made a sound of thorough exasperation through her teeth. “Do you never give up?”

“Not when I want something. I’m rather obstinate that way. Since you claim to know me so well, you should know that.”

“Then we have something in common, my lord, for I, too, am very obstinate.”

He had to tell her the truth about Barringer. It was only right. “I beg you to be sensible. As my secretary, your future is secure, while this venture with Barringer is doomed to fail. He’s facing—”

“I don’t want a secure future,” she interrupted, “and I shall not reconsider! I’ve had enough of being sensible to last a lifetime. And I don’t believe I will fail. There are a great many people who are concerned with good manners, though you are obviously not one of them.”

“You do not understand the circumstances under which Barringer has offered to publish your work. I’m not surprised that he didn’t enlighten you, but you need to know—”

“He’s not you. That’s the only thing I need to know.” She stepped sideways and opened the door. After a quick glance in both directions, she looked at him and waited.

When he did not move to depart, she gave an aggravated sigh and returned to stand in front of him. She flattened her hands against his chest, crushing his hat, and began pushing him out
into the corridor. “I shall finally be a published writer, which is what I have always wanted to be. Barringer will make pots of money and score off you, just as you say he wants to do. Our venture will be a raging success.” She came to a stop on the threshold, breathing hard from the exertion of getting him out the door. “But the best part of all is that I shall never have to buy another gift for one of your horrid mistresses!”

She started to shut the door, then stopped. “And Mr. Pigeon is not fat!” With that parting shot, she shut the door in his face.

He stared at the closed door, unable to quite believe what had just happened. He was supposed to have come here as the benevolent employer, giving his misguided secretary another chance. She was supposed to have regretted her impetuous decision. She was supposed to have thought things over, and upon such reflection, come to her senses. She was supposed to be back at her desk tomorrow morning. Instead, he’d had a door slammed in his face, and his compliant, sensible, efficient secretary was now working for the loathsome Lord Barringer.

Harry rubbed a hand over his eyes and began to wonder if, like Alice, he had just stepped through a looking glass into a world where everything was upside down and topsy-turvy and nothing was what it seemed.

One thing, however, was very clear. Miss Dove was unaware of Barringer’s financial situation and had no idea that her fate was to be back in Harry’s employ in very short order. Barringer
was good at putting up a show of prosperity, but Harry knew the earl was being pressed by creditors at every turn. He would soon be forced to sell the
Gazette
, and when Harry bought it, his plans to make the newspaper more entertaining did not include an etiquette column.

He’d tried to tell her all this, but she had refused to listen. Twice she had interrupted his attempts to explain. She had also insulted his manners, accused him of lacking respect for her, and called him a liar. Such behavior, damn it all, couldn’t be acceptable in anybody’s etiquette book.

Harry decided not to make any further attempts to enlighten her. Let her find out the truth about her new employer for herself. When she did, he’d be there, happy to offer her back her former post and willing to let bygones be bygones.

Harry reshaped his flattened hat, put it on his head, and started down the stairs. Perhaps this entire episode was for the best. Perhaps Miss Dove would finally see that etiquette books weren’t worth writing and they weren’t worth publishing. People didn’t want to read about how to behave. They wanted to read about how other people were misbehaving.

She didn’t know it yet, but within a few weeks, Miss Dove would be back at her desk. He just had to hire a temporary replacement for her and exercise a little patience. How hard could that be?

I
f Harry had any doubts about the demise of Miss Dove’s literary career, the following Saturday’s edition of the
Social Gazette
assuaged them. He shifted the folded-back newspaper from his right to his left hand, continuing to read her debut column as his valet, Cummings, assisted him into his jacket.

His curiosity satisfied by the first two paragraphs, Harry dropped the newspaper onto the silver tray held by his butler. “Thank you, Jackson. Take it back downstairs and put it with the
others in the dining room. I shall be down directly.”

“Very good, my lord.” The butler withdrew, and Harry turned around, lifting his chin so that Cummings could do up his tie. The proper way to give a luncheon party was just the sort of stuff he’d expected Miss Dove to put in a column, and he could see little help there for the sinking fortunes of Lord Barringer. He and the earl ought to be able to come to an agreement on an acceptable price for the newspaper quite soon. A fortnight, Harry judged as he went downstairs. A month at most.

“Go to Chelsea for table linens?” his mother’s voice was saying as he entered the dining room. “I don’t believe it. Good morning, dear.”

“Morning, Mama.” He kissed Louisa’s cheek. “Good morning, ladies.” He bowed to them, noticing in amusement that Lady Felicity seemed to have developed a passionate interest in newspapers, for she held one in her hand this morning.

“You are in good spirits today, Harry,” Diana commented as he walked to the sideboard.

“Should I not be?” he asked, helping himself to kidneys, bacon, and toast.

“You weren’t a few days ago,” his eldest sister reminded him. “Yet today you seem quite reconciled to the loss of your secretary.”

His grandmother spoke before he could reply. “Harrison, I cannot believe Miss Dove has left your employ.” She shook her head with a heavy sigh. “You shall never be on time for anything again, I fear.”

“Do not distress yourself, Grandmama. I have not lost Miss Dove.” He took his place at the head of the table. “She is temporarily absent, that’s all.”

“Only you would refer to a resignation as a temporary absence,” Vivian said, laughing. “You are forever an optimist, Harry.”

“Why Chelsea?” Louisa asked, reverting to the topic they’d been discussing when he entered the room. “Does she favor a particular shop there?”

Felicity lifted the folded-back newspaper in her hand, skimmed it for a moment, then nodded. She cleared her throat and began reading aloud to the others at the table. “‘If one is in need of fine table linens, Maxwell’s of Chelsea is an excellent place to acquire them. Their Irish linen is of an unsurpassed quality, and those of a frugal nature may be assured that Maxwell’s is most reasonable.’”

“Let me see.” Louisa stuck her pair of gold-framed pince-nez on her nose and took the paper from Felicity’s outstretched hand. “Hmm…she says that for decorating the tables at a luncheon party, ivory linen or white are equally acceptable.”

Harry stopped eating. “Are you reading the
Social Gazette
?”

“Yes, dear,” Louisa answered without looking up. “Some woman named Bartleby. Felicity wanted to see which newspaper had so captured your interest that you had Jackson fetch it specially from your plate this morning, though
I wouldn’t have thought you interested in luncheon parties and where one ought to buy linens. Hmm…she favors orchids as a centerpiece, which would be lovely—unscented, of course…hmm…place card holders that have the shape of pink flamingos? How charming.”

Charming
was not how Harry would have described it. Downright absurd, he’d have said.

“Origami, she calls it,” his mother went on, “a tradition from the island of Nippon. ‘Using origami,’” Louisa quoted, “‘paper is folded into the shape of animals or flowers, and provides the hostess with an infinite variety of unusual decorations suitable for any party. At the conclusion of the event, the hostess may choose to give one of the origami decorations to each guest as a parting gift.’”

“What a unique idea,” Vivian commented, “and very clever.”

This elicited nods and murmurs of agreement from all the ladies at the table, and Harry felt a glimmer of uneasiness in his gut. “Surely you’re not taking this woman seriously?” he asked.

“Giving a luncheon party, or any other sort of party, for that matter, is a very serious business, dear.” His mother unfolded the newspaper and turned the page, looking for the remainder of Miss Dove’s column. “One party, properly given, can make a hostess the shining light of the season.”

“Somehow,” Harry said, “I doubt pink paper flamingos would have much influence upon a hostess’s social status.”

“Oh, but things like that can be very important, Lord Marlowe,” Lady Felicity informed him. “Because my father is a widower, I act as his hostess, and I can assure you that giving a party requires a great deal of thought and attention. I’m certain Melanie, who acts as hostess for her own widowed father, would agree with me. Clever ideas such as this woman describes can be most helpful in making a social event successful.”

Melanie, who still seemed to have no ability to speak when he was in the room, could only confirm this with a nod.

“Girls, listen to this.” Louisa leaned forward in her chair, eager to impart more of Mrs. Bartleby’s wisdom. “She says there is a stationer’s directly across the street from this draper’s shop in Chelsea that supplies beautiful colored papers suitable for this origami business. They can provide instruction on how to make the flamingos, or one can have them made to order in quantity. She gives this stationer’s her soundest recommendation.”

“Oh, does she?” Antonia sniffed and took a sip of her tea. “And who is this Mrs. Bartleby, that her recommendation means so very much?”

Harry could have enlightened them, but he had no intention of doing so. If his sisters discovered the Bartleby woman was Miss Dove, they’d rag him endlessly for rejecting her oh-so-clever ideas and for losing her to Barringer. Even though it was only a temporary situation, they’d never let him live it down. Wisely, he kept his mouth closed.

“What are her connections?” Antonia went on. “Who are her people? I know of no prominent family in Britain with the surname of Bartleby.”

“Perhaps she is American,” Phoebe suggested.

“Oh, American,” Antonia said with an emphasis on the second word that made her opinion of both the fictional Mrs. Bartleby and the possible country of her origin quite clear.

“She couldn’t be American,” Vivian said, gesturing with her piece of toast to the newspaper held by her mother. “An American wouldn’t know the best places in London to shop for linens and stationery, would she?”

“Regardless of who she is, one thing is obvious,” Diana put in. “We shall be making a shopping expedition to Chelsea today.”

“Go to Chelsea?” Harry looked at her askance. “Because some woman you don’t even know tells you to go there?”

“No,” Diana answered at once. “We are going in the hope of finding beautiful table linens.”

“And so that we may learn to make pink flamingos!” Lady Florence said, laughing. She looked at Harry. “Will you accompany us, Lord Marlowe?”

He’d rather jump off a cliff. “Alas, Lady Florence,” he said, feigning polite regret, “but I cannot. I have matters of business to attend to. If you will forgive me?”

With that, he rose to his feet, gathered his newspapers and his morning post, and gave the ladies at the table a bow of farewell. Deep in
discussion of pink flamingo place-card holders, shopping expeditions to Chelsea, and the possible bona fides of Mrs. Bartleby, they didn’t even notice his departure.

During the two months that followed, Harry’s uneasiness at the breakfast table proved far more accurate than his long-held opinions about Miss Dove’s writing. By the time sixty days had passed, everyone seemed to be talking of her and praising her clever ideas, much to Harry’s amazement and chagrin.

He had always known Miss Dove was an intelligent woman, but even he hadn’t known the vast scope of her knowledge. She seemed to be a walking, talking
Encyclopedia Britannica
.

Mrs. Bartleby knew everything about everything, it seemed. She knew how to get ink stains out of silk, the appropriate way for a young lady to refuse a marriage proposal from a widower, which restaurants were respectable establishments where ladies might dine after the theater—accompanied, of course!—and which bakeries could be counted upon for the freshest tea cakes.

She assured girl-bachelors that it was perfectly acceptable to walk with a young man along a public street in the afternoon unaccompanied, provided their acquaintance had been of at least several years’ duration, the woman was on her way home from her job, and she was certain of the young man’s respectability and good character. Ladies, it seemed, had less freedom than girl-bachelors, for they were required to have their
chaperones present at all times until the age of thirty.

Mrs. Bartleby did not neglect the male sex in her weekly dialogue. She knew where a gentleman might find the best-made, most comfortable boots. She knew which tobacconists carried the finest cigars, which the gentlemen would, of course, have the consideration to smoke
outside
. She staunchly defended detachable shirt collars and cuffs as sensible devices for unmarried professional men, but abhorred cuff protectors and dickeys as inventions unworthy of even the poorest clerk.

The words “Mrs. Bartleby says…” were repeated in so many conversations, Harry felt if he heard them one more time, he was going to go mad.

In addition to this unexpected and rather nauseating development, Harry had been unable to find a satisfactory replacement for Miss Dove. The day after their altercation at her flat, he had rung up an agency, and since then, a series of secretaries had come and gone from Harry’s offices. Time and again he had been promised someone with vast secretarial experience, but there was always something wrong. One took dictation with all the speed of a turtle, another could not get it through his head that Harry preferred coffee to tea with no milk or sugar, another couldn’t keep track of appointments.

The latter flaw was the most inconvenient of all, for Harry had somehow mislaid his appointment book. With Miss Dove, the loss would not
have been a problem, for she had always managed to know where he needed to be and when, but in this regard, her successors were hopeless.

The most recent one, a chap named Quinn, Harry deemed the worst of the lot. He had the irritating habit of hanging his head like a whipped puppy every time a mistake was pointed out to him. Still, explaining the same procedures to a new face every other day had grown wearisome for him and the others on his staff, and Harry had reluctantly accepted Quinn as a temporary replacement. But as the days of May went by and Mrs. Bartleby’s popularity continued to rise, Harry began to fear he was saddled with Quinn, or someone equally irritating, for a long time to come.

As if all that weren’t bad enough, the females in his own house hold had found their shopping expedition to Chelsea and the subsequent advice of Mrs. Bartleby so gratifying that they insisted upon reading her column aloud to each other at breakfast every Saturday morning. They were now planning their lives around what ever new information Miss Dove’s fictional counterpart chose to hand out and spending Harry’s money on what ever she advised them to buy.

“Diana, today’s column might have been written for you.” Louisa rustled the newspaper in her hands. “Today Mrs. Bartleby discusses the giving of wedding breakfasts.”

This news was greeted with exclamations of delight by every female at the table. Harry, who was contemplating a ban on reading newspapers
at breakfast with the excuse that it was rude, stared glumly into his plate of eggs and bacon and wondered if he should start eating at his club on Saturdays.

“‘Stand-up and sit-down breakfasts are equally fashionable this year,’” his mother read, “‘although each requires a menu particular to its design.’ Hmm…no hot entrées during a stand-up breakfast, of course. Crab puffs and pâté de foie gras to start, a chilled tomato soup served in teacups to be sipped. That way guests needn’t bother with spoons as they mill about the room—what a sensible idea! And so clever!”

Harry couldn’t help rolling his eyes, but the women didn’t seem to notice.

“‘In addition to the customary cold meats and game,’” his mother went on, “‘a hearty salad is always a welcome addition. A chicken salad, for example, with almonds and mayonnaise, is most delicious when served on tiny croissants as finger sandwiches.’”

This suggestion was met with a torrent of praise, though what was so exciting about chicken sandwiches Harry couldn’t fathom.

Jackson appeared beside him with the morning post. Harry pushed aside his plate and sorted through his letters, pausing on one with Lord Barringer’s coronet.

He opened it, and the information it contained was so appalling, he had to read it twice to be sure he wasn’t having a bad dream. Circulation had doubled at the
Social Gazette
during the past
two months, Barringer informed him with obvious relish. As a result, advertising revenues had also increased significantly, and the earl was raising his asking price for the newspaper to one hundred fifty thousand pounds. Barringer was in desperate need of ready money, and time should have made him more willing to lower his asking price. Instead, he was raising it. And why? Because of paper animals and soup served in teacups.

“Harry, dear, don’t grind your teeth,” Louisa admonished him, then peered over her pince-nez at her eldest daughter. “Diana, Mrs. Bartleby’s menu is an excellent one, don’t you think? Most suitable for your own wedding breakfast.”

Harry could take no more. “Absolutely not!” he snapped and stood up. “I am not going to sip cold tomato soup out of a teacup, Mama, not even for Diana!”

With his opinion on that now perfectly clear, Harry tossed his serviette into his plate, thrust Barringer’s letter into his pocket, and departed from the table, leaving nine astonished women staring after him.

Since he didn’t know what his appointments were and neither, it seemed, did his secretary, Harry decided to go to his club. A gentleman’s club was sacrosanct, the last bastion of sensible men who didn’t give a damn about wedding breakfast menus and which young men the girl-bachelors walked out with in the afternoon.