The Wild Marquis

by Miranda Neville

  With little knowledge of the species, she had no difficulty recognizing a member of it. This was a rake.

  For no reason at all, she was a little breathless. She dropped her eyes and realized her hand was still in his. Even through a glove his grasp gave her a jolt. She almost snatched away her hand and stepped back a pace or two.

  “Good afternoon.” His low-pitched voice made the ordinary greeting a caress.

  Giving herself a moment to recover her composure, she stooped to retrieve the catalogue from the floor.

  “Welcome to J.C. Merton,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. Can you?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want and I’ll see what I can do?”

  “How can I resist such an offer?”

  His smile sent shivers through her. He was flirting with her, and she was alarmed by her instinct to reciprocate. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t already. He seemed to have found her last answer provocative.

  “Are you looking for a book?” she asked, trying to sound stern.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Merton. Is he available?”

  “I’m the only one here,” she answered, her usual cautious response.

  “Are you sure you don’t have someone hidden away in the back?”

  “As I said, I’m the only one here.” Then, since discouraging an obviously prosperous customer was hardly in her interest, she indicated her shelves. “I’d be happy to help you find your way about the stock. Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “I am looking for Mr. Merton. J. C. Merton,” he said with a twinkle of blue. “Are you J. C. Merton?”

  “I am Mrs. Merton,” Juliana owned.

  “Ah, but are you J. C. Merton?”

  Usually Juliana managed to engage a new patron for a while before revealing herself as the owner of the shop. By that time a buyer might be impressed enough with her knowledge to forgive her sex. “Yes, I am J. C. Merton, the proprietor of this establishment,” she said with a ghost of a sigh.

  “Why on earth didn’t you say so at once?” demanded the stranger with a touch of exasperation. “I apologize for my obtuseness but I was expecting you to be a man.”

  “They always do.”

  “Do they?” he asked. “And what do ‘they’ do when they find out that J. C. Merton is a female?”

  “Often they leave.”

  “Very foolish of them. I am distressed. I have descended to the banality of ‘them’ and I try never to be commonplace. And now I think of it, Lord Hugo didn’t use a pronoun when he recommended I come here.”

  “Lord Hugo Hartley sent you?”

  “He did. I assume that Lord Hugo knows that J. C. Merton is a woman.”

  “Of course. He was always one of our best customers and has remained so since my husband’s death.”

  The stranger picked up on the chagrin in her statement. “But not everyone has been so loyal?”

  Juliana gritted her teeth. “Loyalty doesn’t enter into it. Lord Hugo is wise enough to realize that my stock is superior and my taste impeccable.”

  “I infer that others are not as sensible.”

  “There are some gentlemen,” she said grimly, her grip tightening on the buff boards of the volume she still held, “who don’t believe a woman can know enough about rare books to serve their needs.”

  “That looks like the Tarleton catalogue you are holding.”

  “Yes.”

  The stranger’s eyes glinted like polished sapphires. Juliana felt a little dizzy.

  “I understand there are some fine books in that collection. Many fine books.”

  “Sir Thomas Tarleton,” Juliana said, “was adept at acquiring the best.”

  “Did you know him?” he asked.

  “My late husband started as a bookseller in Salisbury, so naturally Sir Thomas was a customer. I grew up a few miles away.”

  “But did you know him yourself?”

  “I can safely say that I am intimately acquainted with Tarleton’s methods as a collector,” she said, trying not to let her bitterness show.

  “Good. You’re engaged.”

  “Engaged? Engaged for what?”

  “To represent me at the Tarleton auction.”

  “Really?” she asked. The day had taken a turn for the better.

  The change in Mrs. Merton’s attitude was comical. She had been buzzing with irritation, like a wasp emerging from an inkpot. Now she smiled and looked pretty. Cain wasn’t surprised. He’d noticed at once that she wasn’t a bad-looking woman. Under her monstrous mourning gown lay a slight but trim figure. A strand of fair hair had escaped the hideous cap, and the unrelieved black set off a fine complexion, marred or enhanced by only a sprinkling of fine freckles across the nose.

  He shouldn’t have tried to flirt with her, he supposed. His initial examination had alarmed the little woman, respectable merchant that she was. But now she regarded him as though he were the answer to a maiden’s dream. He was used to that look. Though usually from those who weren’t exactly maidens in the technical sense.

  For a moment he considered finding out whether he’d been right about the promise of that body disguised by a forbidding exterior and dry-as-dust occupation. He estimated how long it would take him to persuade her out of the abominable bombazine.

  “I’d be happy to give you the benefit of my experience,” she said. “For the usual commission, of course.”

  He burst out laughing. “I was about to offer the same thing to you, madam. And my usual commission is nothing.”

  Mrs. Merton frowned and returned to wasp mode, glaring up at him with a mixture of indignation and puzzlement. With hands on her hips cinching in the voluminous gown he could see that she was, as suspected, petite but nicely curved.

  “No commission? I may be a female but surely the laborer is worthy of her hire? You won’t get better advice anywhere in London and you certainly won’t get it without paying for it.”

  “Very well, the usual commission,” he agreed. “And what do I get for it?”

  “Is there something particular you wish to buy?” she asked with a frown of concentration. “If it’s outside my area of knowledge I’ll tell you.”

  “A manuscript. A book of hours.”

  “The Burgundy Hours? Les Très Jolies Heures?”

  “Those are the ones. The Very Pretty Hours.”

  “Do you realize, sir, how much it is worth? I wouldn’t be surprised to see it sell for two thousand pounds, or even more.”

  “I think you’re tactfully asking whether I’m good for the blunt. The answer is yes. Allow me to introduce myself, madam. I am the Marquis of Chase.”

  Mrs. Merton seemed unabashed by the revelation that she was alone with London’s most disreputable peer. Perhaps she’d never heard of him. Or maybe she was too excited at the thought of his intended purchase. The anticipation in her eyes recalled a pointer spotting a pheasant.

  “My lord,” she said triumphantly. “You need me.”

  “I do,” he agreed, “though I’m not sure why I can’t just march into the auction, stick my hand in the air, and buy the thing.”

  “Do you play cards?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “And do you reveal your hand to your opponent?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Think of the auction as a game of whist. You just showed me all your cards. I pray you won’t do so to anyone else.”

  For once Cain had a goal more important than his own pleasure. He’d ignore—or perhaps postpone—the pursuit of a woman and take her advice. He’d play his cards very close to his chest.

  Chapter 2

  “Chase!” Arthur Nutley’s tone was deep with disapproval. “My dear Juliana, you cannot be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am,” replied Juliana, refilling his teacup. “He may not be serious. Indeed I doubt that he is a serious man. But he’s all I have if I intend to maintain a presence at the Tarleton sale. No one else appears willing to r
etain my services and I don’t have the resources to bid on my own account.”

  Arthur was in as close to a state of agitation as the dignified tradesman ever reached. She winced as he waved his cup around. They were seated at the table in the rear of her shop, surrounded by bookcases. One splash and a valuable volume could be ruined.

  “Chase is not a reputable man. He is notorious for his wretched morals and never received in respectable houses.”

  “And do you turn down the custom of those whose morals don’t live up to your standards?” Juliana asked.

  “That’s quite different. I am not a lady.”

  “Neither am I, Arthur, in the sense that I engage in trade.”

  “You are a lady in every sense of the word!”

  Arthur was fascinated by the gentry to whom he sold visiting cards, expensive hot-pressed writing paper, and engraved invitations on heavy stock. He imitated their accents in his speech—not very successfully—while pretending to decry their morals. Juliana wondered if he’d be quite so anxious to marry her if he knew the whole truth about her birth.

  “Since I prefer not to starve, I must take my customers in whatever guise they present themselves.”

  Arthur put down his cup. Her relief at the loss of danger to her books was muted when he reached for her hand instead. His was fleshy and slightly damp. “Your year of mourning is almost completed and then, as you know, it is my deepest hope that you will allow me to take care of you.”

  She pulled away. Not that she wasn’t, in a way, fond of Arthur. He came once a week to help her with bookkeeping, and their teas afterward were almost her only purely social interactions. But his heavy hints about his intentions were becoming impossible to ignore.

  If she had any sense she’d have him, and unless things improved she might have to. His business was vastly more prosperous than hers, and his wife would, as he’d made clear on numerous occasions, want for nothing. Except privacy, independence, and an interesting life. He’d never allow her to continue in her own trade, seeing it as an affront to his abilities as a provider. Instead she’d be helping him sell stationery in the Strand and producing a crop of little Arthurs to follow in his footsteps.

  The thought of sharing a bed with Arthur made her queasy. Joseph’s demands in that area had been moderate, if dull. He wasn’t interested in much aside from books.

  The look in Arthur’s eye when he delivered his clumsy wooing suggested he might be demanding in the bedroom. On occasion, during her marriage and since, she’d wondered if there was more to that side of things than she’d discovered with Joseph. Surely there must, else what were the poets writing about? She’d never woken in her husband’s bed feeling like Juliet on her wedding night, desperate to deny the arrival of dawn.

  She glanced at Arthur’s wet mouth and shuddered.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said firmly. “You need not fear any danger from Lord Chase.”

  A fleeting vision of flashing blue eyes was hastily repressed. Her relations with Chase would be strictly business and conducted standing on her feet.

  Arthur wouldn’t leave the subject alone. “To be seen in the man’s company is to court gossip and disgrace.”

  “You exaggerate,” Juliana replied. “When I accompany him to the auction rooms people will view our association precisely as it is. I am a bookseller and he is a collector. He will employ me for the advice I can offer and no other reason.”

  “Chase a collector! Actresses, singers, and light-skirts are the only things he has ever collected.”

  “Great booksellers make great collectors. Under my guidance that is what the Marquis of Chase will become.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, Juliana thought. The commission on the Burgundy Hours would be large, enough to let her buy at least some of the Shakespeares. But if Chase could be persuaded to wider purchases, she could earn enough to make acquisitions for stock at the Tarleton sale. That would place the world of London booksellers and buyers on notice that the widow Merton, her sex notwithstanding, was a force to be reckoned with.

  And she wouldn’t have to even think about marrying Arthur.

  She drifted into an agreeable fantasy of her shop thronged with well-to-do cognoscenti. She really must get those windows cleaned.

  “Juliana?”

  “I beg your pardon, Arthur. My mind was wandering.”

  “I am worried about you.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “The Marquis of Chase is reputed to be irresistible to females.”

  “Oh really, Arthur,” she scoffed. “He’s nothing out of the ordinary. I can’t even remember exactly what he looks like.” And truly, she couldn’t now recall his features or his height or the color of his hair.

  Just a vision of piercing blue eyes stripping her naked.

  “I am in no danger of succumbing to the advances of such a rake,” she said, shaking off the last image and fixing her thoughts on that commission. What did blue eyes matter in comparison to a really important manuscript? “I may assist Lord Chase in forming his collection, but I have no intention of becoming part of it.”

  Juliana turned the corner into Waterloo Bridge Street, grateful for the slight relief from the cold east wind whistling down the Strand, and looked for her new patron. Two gentlemen stood in conversation outside Sotheby’s premises, both too tall to be the marquis. She felt a twinge of anxiety; Lord Chase hadn’t given her an impression of excessive reliability.

  Unease mingled with irritation as she drew near enough to identify the pair.

  God in heaven! Mr. Iverley of all people! Tarquin Compton she could stand. He’d been polite on the occasions he’d visited her shop, even bought a few volumes of seventeenth-century poetry. He now acknowledged her with a bow. Sebastian Iverley was a different matter. He peered at her through gold-rimmed spectacles and apparently hadn’t yet recognized her. If he deigned to acknowledge her presence at all, it would be with snide astonishment that she ventured within three streets of the Tarleton collection.

  The proof of her supposition was postponed by the express approach of a town coach painted brilliant red. The matched pair of blacks drew to an exact halt at the entrance to the auction rooms. A footman in red and black livery was perched behind, but the door opened without the servant’s help. Juliana glimpsed a padded interior of what looked like black velvet as Lord Chase, disdaining the step, sprang to the ground with the grace of a large cat.

  “Mrs. Merton. I trust I haven’t kept you waiting. It’s devilish cold. I should have thought to pick you up.” It came back to her how the foggy timbre of his voice imbued a commonplace courtesy with sensuality.

  “I’ve just arrived,” Juliana murmured, nodding in approximation of a masculine bow. She never curtsied to her customers. She wasn’t attending a ball.

  The marquis smiled at her, and Juliana noticed his mouth. The lower lip was fuller than its partner. And not at all wet. Really, she ought to look away. She’d given herself a strict lecture on the importance of seeing Lord Chase as a book buyer and only as a book buyer.

  On the other hand she’d had trouble recalling his features to mind. It was very important to be able to recognize a customer. Essential. She should memorize his face.

  Mr. Compton regarded the marquis’s coach with disfavor. “God’s breath, Chase,” he said. “What is that? I’ve never seen anything so vulgar.”

  Chase’s grin carved twin slashes on either side of his face, throwing his cheekbones into relief. Just looking at him gave her a shivery feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “You don’t like my new coach, Compton? Never mind. It isn’t you I’m trying to impress. The ladies love it.” He pinpointed Juliana with a flash of blue. “What do you think, Mrs. Merton?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “The coach.”

  “You see?”

  Mr. Compton raised an eyebrow. “Why a coach? Why not a curricle? If you must make a spectacle of yourself, at least let it be with a sporting vehicle.”<
br />
  “I don’t care for that kind of sport. I prefer a closed carriage. An open one is so…limiting. And I don’t like to drive myself. I prefer to have my hands free for other activities.” He seemed thoroughly pleased with himself, and it struck Juliana that his aim was to shock as he stood laughing, his greatcoat blown open by the wind to reveal his beautiful tailoring.

  Not that anyone appeared well dressed standing next to Mr. Compton. But while the latter’s garments seemed sculpted to his tall form in exquisite understatement, Chase, a good six inches shorter than the dandy, wore his with an air that bespoke careless enjoyment and a desire to please himself and anyone else who happened to observe him.

  “What are you doing here, Chase?” Compton asked. “Not your usual milieu I should have thought. Precious few”—he glanced at Juliana and changed whatever word he’d been about to use—“ladies to be found at a book auction.”

  Iverley, who had been staring into space, oblivious to the presence of either marquis or carriage, grunted something that sounded like “A good thing too.”

  “I’ve come to buy a book, of course,” Cain said.

  That got Iverley’s attention. “What book?”

  Juliana stepped in before her client could say anything indiscreet. “Lord Chase wants to see the Tarleton Caxtons.”

  Iverley ignored her, of course, but regarded Chase with a glimmer of interest. Or perhaps it was his spectacles catching the light. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Compton intervened. “Chase, let me introduce Sebastian Iverley. Iverley, this is Chase. And you must already know Mrs. Merton. I daresay you’ve been in her shop.”

  Iverley grunted again. “I have,” he admitted. “She still has some decent books left from before her husband’s death.”

  Then and there Juliana swore to herself she’d never sell a book to Iverley, not if he crawled the length of St. Martin’s Lane and his money was the only thing between her and the workhouse.

  “I can’t wait to see the indecent books she has acquired since,” Chase said, then paused, smiling at Iverley with a look of pure innocence. “Mrs. Merton has kindly agreed to guide me through the Tarleton collection and help me decide which book to buy.”