Seducing Mr. Knightly (13 page)

Owens paid them no mind and leaned against the wall next to her, just outside of Knightly’s office. Then a slow, lazy smile dawned upon his mouth and he took a slow, lazy, absolutely rakish look at her person. Her lips parted, slightly aghast. Her heartbeat quickened with the pressure to perform.

Owens was acting rakishly with her. Owens, who had said she’d never be wicked, was now looking at her as if she’d been very wicked
with
him. It was appalling. It was also part of the ruse and the sort of high jinks New Annabelle engaged in.

“I trust you are enjoying this fine weather, Miss Swift. With such warm temperatures, you needn’t worry about leaving your shawl behind,” Owens said with a knowing nod and wink of his velvety brown eyes. What unfairly long lashes the man possessed.

“It was so kind of you to help me . . . find my shawl,” Annabelle replied. “I could never have done it without you.” She hoped that sounded appropriately
something.

“I live to serve—especially a beautiful girl like you, Miss Swift.” Owens smiled at her again. She smiled back.

“I thought we were talking about the weather? And my shawl?” she asked in a whisper. Owens leaned in close to whisper directly in her ear.

“We are flirting,” he explained.

“Oh,” she gasped. She was so silly, needing to have a man explain flirting to her. And Owens of all the men in the world, too. She couldn’t help it, she giggled.

“Don’t giggle. Nothing terrifies men more,” Owens said, fear creeping into his expression. “Men thrive on competition. And you need a rival, remember?”

“Oh, I remember,” she said, and it even sounded a bit naughty.

“That’s my girl. Now after you, Miss Swift.” As they walked off toward the meeting, Owens placed his palm lightly, fleetingly, on the small of her back. She just happened to glance over her shoulder in the direction of Knightly’s office. Just happened to see him looking her way with a dark expression.

“Dear Annabelle, do explain,” Sophie said the second Annabelle took her seat. The other Writing Girls turned to give the full force of their attentions to her.

“Owens and I have an understanding,” Annabelle said, and she didn’t try to hush her voice. Across the room, she caught his eye and he flashed a grin and nodded in encouragement. He was rather boyishly handsome.

“What sort of understanding?” Julianna inquired.

“According to Owens, men thrive on rivalry. And that I ought to make Knightly wonder just whom I am writing about. Otherwise, how can I write freely about my exploits?”

“He does have a point,” Eliza agreed. “I found it extraordinarily challenging to write about Wycliff without revealing my housemaid disguise.”

“But do you not want Knightly to discover your feelings for him?” Sophie asked. It was a fair question.

“I want him to discover
me.
And fall in love with
me.
I don’t wish for him to simply figure out whom I’m writing about because of a slip of the pen,” Annabelle said. Then she added determinedly, “Besides, I am having more fun than I ever have and . . .
It’s working
.”

It wasn’t just that she was now on speaking terms with Knightly, but that she felt like a new person. One who was daring, adventurous, wore pretty dresses and wicked, silky undergarments. She liked New Annabelle.

The conversation then devolved into a flurry of whispers in which Annabelle related the lost shawl adventures. With their four heads bowed together, she almost didn’t notice when Knightly arrived. Almost, for he was never far from her mind.

H
E
had caught them at it again—Miss Swift and
Owens
, of all the young, brash bucks in London. He saw them flirting. He saw Annabelle giggling. He did not miss the winks and smiles.

He couldn’t say why it bothered him. Just that it did.

Next, he caught the Writing Girls with their heads bent together in some hushed conversation. Did they discuss his own innocent, gentlemanly carriage ride with Annabelle? But he couldn’t very well let her go off into the London night alone, risking life and limb for her shawl.

He had done the right thing. The gentlemanly thing. He just hadn’t felt remotely gentlemanly about it at the time, or since. The idea of ravishing Annabelle had begun to intrude on his thoughts with a stunning regularity.

“Ladies first,” Knightly said as he strolled in. But instead of smiling, he scowled. What the devil did he care if Annabelle and Owens flirted and courted and married? He didn’t care at all. They just should not engage in such behavior on work time.

But there they were, making eyes at each other across the room. Revolting.

“I have gossip,” Julianna announced.

“I should hope so,” he said dryly.

“It’s about Lady Marsden’s missing season,” she said. Across the room, Grenville sighed. Knightly scowled at him, too, because he was intrigued by this, especially after making the acquaintance of the lady in question. During their walk, he’d learned that she despised newspapers, wished to leave London, and her favorite pastime was dancing. They would be a horrible match. Nevertheless, he’d pursue her. For
The Weekly.
So he could quiet those damned words that haunted his every action:
Throw the bastard out. He doesn’t belong here.

“I have made inquiries, discreetly, of course,” Julianna continued. “The official line is that she had been ill. But many are saying she had taken a lover—a scandalous one. It seems that her brother found a packet of love letters. He was livid. Positively outraged! He locked her in her room for a whole year.”

“Who is her lover?” Sophie asked, a bit breathless in her eagerness to know.

“She still has not revealed his identity,” Julianna replied dramatically.

“And yet she has been released from captivity,” Eliza said, as dramatically.

“
If
he actually locked her in her bedchamber for a year,” Knightly interjected. But this was dismissed by the group as not being as interesting.

“I suppose Lord Marsden gave up and decided the next best course of action was to marry her off,” Julianna said. “Thus the whole matter would become another man’s problem.” She shrugged lightly. Clearly, she had not uncovered his discreet agreement with Marsden.

Another man’s problem indeed. This shed new light on the matter, but did not change the fact that she was the sister to a powerful marquis, and ladies of such high standing were not exactly lining up to marry an illegitimate man who engaged in trade . . . fortune or not.

“Nothing like secret lovers, now is there?” Owens said from the other side of the room. And then he winked—
winked
—at Annabelle, who fluttered her lashes in his direction.

Sickening stuff. Truly. This was a place of business.

“One point to consider,” Knightly said sharply, “is that Lord Marsden is leading the parliamentary inquiry into
The London Times
scandal. I would hate for him to have reason to turn his attentions to
The Weekly
.”

“Oh, but the ton can speak of nothing else!” Julianna said passionately. “I have a feeling this scandal is going to explode.”

“I don’t care,” he said. He especially wouldn’t give a damn when his paper was shut down. Plus, Lady Lydia obviously held a particular loathing for newspapermen, and it would not help his suit if his own paper were printing salacious gossip about her.

“You would not believe the lengths I went to in order to obtain this information,” Julianna argued. Knightly just shrugged.

“I’m quite sure that I don’t want to know,” he said. “When your husband finds out and comes storming in here in a rage, again, I would like to honestly say that I know nothing.”

“Very well. Perhaps I shall just allude to it . . .” Lady Julianna pressed on, as she was wont to do.

“There should be no mention of the Marsdens in this paper,” Knightly declared sharply. This elicited an audible gasp of shock from Julianna and an uncomfortable silence from the rest of the writers. He’d just violated one of the founding principles of the paper:
Everything and everyone was fodder.

To hell with the lot of them, Knightly thought. But Annabelle’s expression tugged hard at his heart. Some combination of dismay and betrayal was the only way he could describe the look in her big blue eyes. But he didn’t want to know more. He’d made his decisions and now all that remained was following through.

Besides, she had Owens and his winks and smiles and all manner of romantic expressions and sickeningly sweet glances flying between them.

“Speaking of mystery lovers, Miss Swift, an update on your column this week, please,” Knightly said dryly.

Bloody hell, had he just said
mystery lovers
? Bloody hell, he was getting soft. Except with Annabelle around, he wasn’t soft at all. What the devil was happening?

“The letters keep pouring in, as you can see,” she said, gesturing to another large stack before her. Letters full of inane suggestions from the likes of his friends Drummond and Gage. Letters full of dangerous suggestions like lowering her bodice to be positively distracting . . . and the devil only knew what else. He didn’t want to know.

“I have seen in an increase in sales, not to mention all the talk about your column,” he said. Annabelle was wearing another one of those low-cut bodices, and it took every ounce of his considerable willpower to lift his gaze a few inches higher. “Which means we have a good thing going, so draw this one out as long as you can.”

Even if it killed him. Even if it slowly, excruciatingly tortured him. And then killed him. But he would endure, especially if it delayed and thwarted and slowed the budding romance between her and Owens, or perhaps Marsden, which he did not care about. Not at all.

No matter how many times he told himself that, however, the thought wouldn’t stick.

“Yes, Mr. Knightly,” Annabelle agreed softly.

He couldn’t stop himself; he snuck one last glance at her bodice, and the generous swells of milky white skin rising just above the fabric. His mouth went dry. Where was her damn shawl when she really needed it?

T
HIS
really was the happiest hour of her week, Annabelle thought. She propped her chin on her palm and just enjoyed being in the same room as Knightly. And her friends. And even her pretend-beau.

She battered her lashes at Owens for good measure. She even considered treating him to one of her sultry glances that were anything but seductive.

Knightly was in a terrible mood today. She wondered why, and if it was wrong that she thought the dark and broody look suited him.

Was it something with the newspaper, or another matter?

And what was this business with Lady Marsden? First, he’d been calling upon her and walking with her on sunny afternoons. And now he had banned her name from the pages of the newspaper.
It is probably nothing
, she told herself. She hoped it was naught but a strategic business decision that had nothing to do with his heart.

But still, it meant competition.

For the moment, though, there was nothing to do but enjoy this brooding version of Knightly in which he scowled, gazed darkly at his writers, raked his fingers through his hair and paced like some magnificent caged beast.

His gruff demeanor made her want to soothe his temper and smooth the rough edges. She wished to run her fingers through his hair, cradle his cheeks in her palms. Press her lips to his and kiss away that scowl . . .

Was it wrong that she wasn’t paying attention in the slightest? It was. A Good Newspaper Woman would attend to the conversation.

“So let’s get this straight,” Owens said, brow furrowed. “A reporter for
The London Times
was caught impersonating a physician. Now he’s imprisoned in Newgate, and Parliament and this parliamentary inquiry is looking into . . . what?”

“What exactly is the crime that merits such a massive investigation?” Eliza asked, puzzled. The methods of investigating were immoral, Annabelle thought. But it did seem like an isolated incident, as Knightly had said. It didn’t seem to merit an investigation of the entire newspaper business.

“Why impersonate a physician anyway? That’s an awful lot of risk and work,” Grenville grumbled, and Annabelle quietly agreed with him.

“To get the story, of course,” Eliza said, who thought nothing of adopting all manner of disguises for a story.

“What story?” Annabelle asked. The words were out of her mouth before she thought to censor them. And oh, she wished she had.

The room felt silent. Pin-drop silence. Pin drop on plush pile of sheepskin silence. Pin drop on plush sheepskin a country mile away.

The blush crept high onto her cheeks. Knightly focused on her intently. Had she thought his brooding stares were attractive? Because she could feel herself wilting under the intensity of his focus.

Would she
ever
stop humiliating herself in front of Knightly?

“What you’re suggesting, Miss Swift, is that Brinsley didn’t just wake up and decide to impersonate a doctor for amusement. He adopted that ruse because it enabled him to gain access and information to the
real
story.”

“Just a means to an end,” Owens added, thoughtful.

“Something like that,” Annabelle mumbled.

“Brilliant,” Knightly said, his voice rich with awe. Annabelle felt the warm heady rush of a rare, exquisite feeling: pride. She had impressed Knightly! “Miss Swift is right. What is the real story here?”

“Can we publish it if we uncover it?” Julianna dared to ask. “Given that Parliament is mucking into the practices of journalists . . .”

“Publish and be damned,” Knightly said, with a grin that spoke of daring and danger.

Chapter 15