Cloudy With a Chance of Marriage (2 page)

When Miss Jones left his front step, he instantly determined that he wanted to have a scorching flirtation with her. Other than sell his house, what else did he have to do?

He had a strict rule that he didn’t seduce virgins, so bedding her was out of the question. But imagine what creative machinations he’d have to go through just to steal a few kisses! Grabbing a delicious tendril of her hair and wrapping it around his finger would be practically out of the question unless he were good …
very
good. And if he could slip a hand up her gown at least to her knee, then his short stay on Dreare Street would go from being mildly entertaining to memorable.

This was one war he’d have to be very cunning to win.

He was crestfallen when she entered the bookstore and pulled the door shut without looking back out to see if he were still there. It was a good move. Pretend indifference to the enemy—shake their confidence. His own strategies would have to be put in place, he realized. Miss Jones was too substantial, obviously, to fall for his good looks alone, a fact which delighted him. Infatuated young ladies bored him.

He wanted a
real
dalliance. A real one, of course, engaged his mind.

And Stephen had a brilliant mind. He chose not to emphasize that point when he was out of uniform. It was something to do with his need to relax, to disengage, to not be the leader always. As captain of a ship in the Royal Navy, he’d always been at the center of things, interconnected by necessity to every man on board. It was an exciting but exhausting way to live.

Perhaps he was addicted to lack of sleep, loud noises, near-death experiences, and chasing enemies. Settling down in a quiet, peacetime navy held no appeal for him, which was why he was leaving it, despite the Admiralty’s hope that he’d take command of a man-of-war.

Neither was he tempted to resign himself to a subdued gentleman’s existence on land, complete with a demure wife, several adorable children, and a second career in banking or international trade.

Give him lots of money—more than his pension was worth—so he could live beholden to no one. Give him noise and bluster. Boxing and horse racing. Bawdy girls and boisterous men.

His own sailing vessel.

A pied-à-terre in Paris.

Give him something out of the ordinary.

Give him Jilly Jones
.

CHAPTER TWO

In the late afternoon of the day of her useless conversation with Captain Arrow, Jilly heard a loud popping noise from his house. She looked up from smoothing a page in her nearly blank accounting book and saw a young man at a second-floor window drop a bag of water onto the pavement.

“Bull’s-eye!” the fellow cried.

A roar of approval went up from the group of well-dressed gentlemen gathered on the street.

Jilly sighed. For goodness’ sake, when would a constable ever arrive and throttle the lot of them?

“I often wonder,” she heard her clerk, Otis, remark to their lone customer of the afternoon, a small, elderly woman perusing a copy of
Pride and Prejudice,
“if Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth had a few secret trysts before they made their nuptial vows.” He chuckled and looked into space. “Who could have resisted Darcy?”

“Well,” the elderly woman speculated, one hand to her lips, the other balancing the book, “I’m not sure—”

“If,”
Otis interrupted her in dramatic tones, which made her nearly drop the book, “if Darcy were too much a gentleman to propose an illicit liaison, then don’t you think Elizabeth must have been driven so mad by desire that
she
seduced
him
instead?”

The old woman stared at him.

“It’s quite a titillating thought.” Otis took the book out of her trembling hands and placed it back on the shelf. “It’s our only copy,” he confided to her in an earnest whisper. “Let me show you something else.”

Dear God. Jilly watched her assistant sway gently down the aisle toward her meager collection of atlases, crooking a finger at the tiny woman to follow him. The shop would be bankrupt within a month if the mayhem persisted at Captain Arrow’s house and if Otis didn’t learn to
sell books
.

Her father’s ex-valet didn’t seem able to part with any of them, except for the atlases, but what was Jilly to do? She couldn’t cast him out in the cold, for heaven’s sake. He’d been devoted to her father and, after his death, her only trusted friend.

“You dress very well for an older man,” she heard the little lady rasp, “but you’re quite mad. Almost as mad as those people who live next door.”

A few seconds later, the bell at the front door tinkled, and the door shut with a loud bang.

“And you have a lovely day, too!” Otis flung after their lost customer with all the sarcasm a frustrated, impoverished bookseller could muster. “That atlas was just the thing for you, if you’d only listened to reason. And how dare you call me an ‘older man’? I’m not a day over thirty.”

“Otis,” Jilly called in a warning voice.

He’d been thirty for as long as she could remember. He twisted around to face her, his large feet crossed in outrageous saffron-colored shoes, his tailcoat swinging madly.

“But Lady Jilly!”

“Miss Jilly,” she corrected him.

“Oh, dear,” he apologized. “But what am I to do? She wouldn’t have appreciated
Pride and Prejudice
. She has no fire in her soul. I’m saving it for someone who has spirit, style, and good looks.”

Jilly blew out a breath. “Some of the worst villains and biggest fools have good looks,” she reminded him.

“Yes,” Otis returned smugly and touched the nape of his neck.

He believed himself to be quite good-looking, she knew. And he did have mesmerizing eyes, a jolting blue that was quite disconcerting. But he hardly filled his waistcoat, he was so thin. He also had knobby knees, a Roman nose that looked as if it had been broken several times but hadn’t, wispy gray hair that circled his ears, and a pate as shiny and bald as a baby’s bottom.

“I never said good looks
alone
.” He lingered on the last word, which was his tendency. “I also mentioned spirit and style. Or did you forget? Those gentlemen at the captain’s house have them in
spades
.”

Jilly marched past him with a small square sign, which she placed in the window. “That isn’t spirit and style,” she said. “That’s what happens when you buy a cask of brandy and invite your debauched friends over to drink it with you until it runs out. We must start selling books soon, or we’ll run out of money.”

The sign promptly fell over, and she adjusted it again until it was right. “I need a ledge beneath the window.” She brushed past Otis, wishing she had enough money to ask the carpenter who’d put in the bookshelves to come back and make the ledge. But she didn’t. She’d have to make do for a while, until profits started coming in.

Otis traipsed after her. “I abhor what Hector has done to you,” he said over her shoulder. “A lady should never worry about money. And she should stay far away from the taint of trade. We may thank Hector for this state of affairs.”

“Be that as it may”—she picked up a feather duster and swept it over a line of dictionaries—“please try to remember, the next time a dull, unattractive patron requests
Pride and Prejudice,
to acquiesce and allow him or her to purchase it.” She turned and faced him. “
If
you want to keep food on your plate.”

Otis made a moue of distaste. “I hate when you get dramatic. Of course I want food. Good food, too. It’s been a week since I’ve had a decent brioche.” He put his hand to his mouth, suddenly looking quite hungry. “I suppose I can part with
Pride and Prejudice
. But only—”

“No
but only
s.” She strode past him with the feather duster and threw it in a cupboard filled with cleaning supplies, including a bottle of vinegar-and-water and the rag she used to shine the windows and the large, ornate looking glass her father had always had in his library. The rag she used to clean it was one of Papa’s old shirts, actually. She had a feeling he’d approve of her new endeavor were he alive to see it.

Comforted by that thought, she wet the rag with the vinegar-and-water solution and rubbed it in great circles around the looking glass. London was a smoky place. But even where she’d made a clean spot, the mirror appeared murky, able to reflect back only the meager gray light slanting through the shop windows.

The bell rang again.

“If you’ve come back for Mr. Darcy, you can’t have—” Otis said in a singsong voice then paused.

“Him,” he finished in a whisper.

The glow from the lamp cast over the books went from a watery yellow to a deep, burnished gold in a trice. And no wonder. Captain Arrow, who until this moment hadn’t deigned to grace their shop, was now blocking the doorway and the scant light coming through it. Not only that, he was grinning as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Maybe he hadn’t, which annoyed Jilly no end.

“Ahoy, Captain,” Otis said in an overly admiring voice.

The captain did have particularly gleaming white teeth set off by his swarthy tan, but Jilly did her best to ignore his sterling good looks. “I don’t believe we can help you,” she told her new neighbor, the rag still in her hand. “We’ve no brandy here. Only books.”

She knew it was self-pity making her churlish, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

“I’ve come to reinvite you to the theatrics,” the captain said, ignoring her slight. “You and your assistant both.”

Otis bowed. “You do me a great honor. I am Mr. Otis Shrimpshire, bookstore clerk extraordinaire. And fashion connoisseur.” He waved a hand. “Not that it matters. Books are my business now.”

Captain Arrow seemed only slightly taken aback. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said in amenable tones. “And marvelous shoes, if I do say so myself, Mr. Shrimpshire.”

“Please call me Otis.” Otis positively beamed at him.

Jilly pursed her lips. “Thank you for asking, Captain, but we’re not interested in attending the theatrics.”

“
I
am.” Otis elbowed her.

She sent him a dirty look.

“Do come, Miss Jones,” Captain Arrow urged her. “One must make merry occasionally”—his face took on a noble, serious aspect—“even a stalwart woman of business such as you.”

Woman of business. She was that, wasn’t she? It was lovely to hear herself addressed with respect.

And
stalwart.
That was a good word.

“Yes, well—” she began, about to tell him that owning Hodgepodge was a massive responsibility she didn’t take lightly, then pulled herself up short.

He was making fun of her, wasn’t he?

There was a distinct twinkle in his eye.

“I’d rather be a stalwart woman of business than one of your silly lightskirts,” she snapped at him, and flicked the cleaning cloth at an invisible spiderweb. She would pretend it was the captain’s broad shoulder and that he was so cowed by her skill with the rag, he left her in peace and went home and became quiet and subdued for the rest of his life.

“The shocking female who owns this wretched store is right,” called an ugly voice from the door.

Jilly’s mouth dropped open. She ceased her rag-flicking and turned around to see who had freshly insulted her. A prune-faced elderly woman, her pinched mouth stained in cherry juice, shuffled into the shop and eyed them all with disdain. Her gown was elegant but unfashionable, and a small porcelain figure of a lady looking eerily like her—snooty and grand and diabolical—was hand-painted at the top of the Continental dress stick upon which she leaned.

“Your housewarming celebrations are ill-advised, Captain,” the woman continued. “You should take up your command again and go back to sea. The sooner the better.”

Jilly would have smiled triumphantly at the captain, but she was far too wounded by the woman’s scathing rhetoric about herself to bother.

“Do tell me you three simpletons already knew that despite its exalted location in Mayfair, Dreare Street is considered an unlucky address,” the crone uttered, her words slithering out like a curse.

There was a dreadful stillness.

What a thing to say! Otis gave a small cry and blinked madly. Jilly wanted to speak, but once again, she couldn’t find her voice. Captain Arrow appeared completely unperturbed. Perhaps his having dealt with pirates had something to do with that.

The woman thrust a withered finger toward Jilly. “You, Miss Jones, are the first to buy here in over thirty years. And Captain Arrow, you’re the first person to voluntarily accept your inheritance. I know for a fact that your second cousin thrice removed attempted to give the house to at least three other distant relatives of yours. None of them wanted it because it’s on Dreare Street.”

There was a beat of awful silence. Jilly’s head felt as if it would burst.

“No!” Otis flung a hand to his brow. “
Why,
God? Why us?” And he drew out an outrageously oversized lace handkerchief with which he covered his face and proceeded to burst into tears.