by Bird, Peggy
He noticed her nervous mannerisms had returned, as her hands clenched. She stood, and he followed. Reaching across the desk, she unclenched one of her hands long enough to shake his.
“I’ll tell my uncle about our meeting and get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you for your time, Mr. Cooper.”
“Avec plaisir,” Henry responded. He caught the upward movement of Miss Wyatt’s eyebrows, and was certain his own eyebrows were doing the same. He never spouted French, except when he was involved with fencing. Or in bed with a delectable woman. “Sorry, I merely thought I’d give you a bit more New Orleans flavor before you leave since you seemed to enjoy it.”
Miss Wyatt’s eyes danced again, and she smiled for the first time in the interview. “Merci, monsieur.” She dropped into a slight curtsy before she turned to leave.
Merci, indeed. Henry ran his hand over his hair before he returned to his seat. Miss Wyatt was the biggest surprise of his day. He made a note on his calendar for a week from then, when he expected her to return with her uncle’s answer.
And began counting the minutes.
• • •
Upon reaching the sidewalk in front of the office building, Rosemary skipped once before she gained control of herself. She had pulled it off! She hadn’t even needed to embellish her story about how she was a poor orphan taken in by distant relatives. Although the plot line would be a good beginning for one of her stories. And she was going to be able to write more stories! Mr. Cooper wanted one a month from her.
Of course, there was still the pesky business of finding a man to impersonate F.P. Elliott. Perhaps her father could still be of use, if he didn’t have pressing banking business to take care of. She could continue to adopt the persona of Phoebe Wyatt for any transactions other than the actual face-to-face with the author, and her father could help her in putting a face to F.P. Elliott’s name. That would lighten his load of impersonation, and allow her to keep in the middle of things. Yes, it might work just fine.
And, as for Mr. Cooper, when her nerves had calmed and she’d seriously studied him, she’d been intrigued. She had met people from Boston before, and had not been overly impressed by their pale looks, but Henry Cooper didn’t resemble any Brahmin she’d ever seen. His skin was slightly olive in tint, and his hair was so dark it was almost black. And tied in a queue at the back of his head. What Brahmin ever groomed his hair in such a manner? His eyes were large and a deep brown color. His grip was strong when he shook her hand, and his stance when he rose from his chair was lithe and commanding at the same time. She’d registered all the minute details of his appearance in mere seconds, telling herself she was merely taking note for possible use as a character in an upcoming book. If Mr. Cooper wanted one story a month, she needed some new ideas. And using Mr. Cooper as a villain might be most appropriate.
Had they met under any other circumstances, she would have been interested in getting to know him better. His background, or the bit of it he’d revealed to her today, was most intriguing. How had he come to live in New Orleans? He could not have been old enough to have struck out for the city on his own ten years prior. He would have been barely into his teen years. Boarding school? And wouldn’t his name be Henri rather than Henry if he were of French blood? Did he have a New Orleans mistress who whispered the French version of his name into his ear as he lavished her with kisses? A sudden vision of Henry kissing a large-breasted woman with curvaceous hips as they rolled around on a bed doing Lord knew what entered her mind, and her mouth went dry. Oh my.
Why was she even thinking such nonsense? Such bosh, as Harry Hawk would say? Her cheeks flushed with warmth as her active imagination made her knees buckle, and she tripped on the sidewalk. None of what she was thinking when her thoughts drifted to Henri Cooper could ever be used in her novels. It would be in her best interest to banish all thoughts of him, lascivious and otherwise, from her mind and keep their future meetings to a minimum. Even if he did fill out his trousers better than any man she’d ever come into contact with. Even if his hair begged to be touched. Even if her fingers itched to smooth the lapel of his jacket over his broad shoulder.
He had treated her with respect, though. Her footsteps slowed as she continued to process their meeting. She had posed as a working woman, far beneath him in status, yet when she’d offered her hand to him, he hadn’t backed down. He’d taken her hand as if she were an equal. As he would a man. And he hadn’t treated her as if she were an underling, there to merely do his bidding. No, he’d regaled her with stories, or at least the tip of a story. She’d love to learn more about New Orleans and why he’d spent a large chunk of his youth there. And where he learned to treat women as equals …
Rosemary stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stomped her foot on the pavement. Other pedestrians on the same sidewalk bumped into her because of her abrupt halt, before they veered around her. She shook her head before she continued her walk. Such ridiculousness, assigning glowing attributes to the man. A man she had barely gotten to know. The mere fact he treated her as a human did not mean he viewed her as an equal! The tidbit about his past, the fact he’d spent some time in the French-infused environment of New Orleans, only gave him a mystique he wouldn’t have had otherwise. It didn’t necessarily give him any forward-thinking logic.
She still needed to deal with the immediate problem of finding a gentleman to pose as F.P. Elliott when the praise Mr. Cooper was going to bestow should rightly fall on her ears, not on those of an impostor. For all its banishment of the archaic British titles and royalty, America was still a backward country when it came to the rights of women. Of humans, for that matter, if you considered the slaves in the South and the Indians out west. And Mr. Cooper was no exception to the rule of the land. He was just lighter on his feet. That was all. She took a deep breath before she continued her walk home. And her gloved fingers curled as she again thought of Henry Cooper’s long, dark hair.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Come on, you’re doing the wrong thing and you know it.”
“White man does us wrong, we do same.”
“And two wrongs don’t make a right.” Harry glanced from the sniveling woman to the Indian. “Your father would not be pleased with this behavior, Screaming Eagle. Hiding behind a woman’s skirts.”
Rosemary stood from her desk and moved to the small garret window, where a tiny shaft of morning sunlight shone into the room. She was restless. Somehow, duplicity, even in its simplest form, even when it was done for all the right reasons, didn’t sit well with her. F.P. Elliott might well have been Screaming Eagle, hiding behind a woman’s skirts. Did she dare let Mr. Cooper—Henry—know who the real author was? Henri.
Don’t be ridiculous, Rosemary. You don’t have any idea how the man really thinks. You can’t place your future, or lack of it, in his hands until you are able to better assess the true nature of the man. Even if his hands are large and well shaped.
Or was her hesitation merely a ruse to schedule another meeting with him? Was it because she hoped to have another discussion with him? To verbally spar with him? To get to know him better? To find out more about New Orleans? To undo his queue and run her hands through that impossibly dark mane of hair? To get close enough to register more than a mere hint of his manly scent? She gasped and tried to rein in her unruly and out-of-control thoughts. Her stern reprimand to herself fell on deaf ears, and it confounded her. Usually she had no problem adhering to common sense.
Why was Mr. Cooper still occupying her mind in the first place? She’d never been one to fill her head with thoughts of a man. Was it because she was trying to outsmart him? If so, she was in for a battle. Her gut instinct told her he would match, and probably best, whatever challenge she could place in front of him. She was a mere pawn in his chess game. Or maybe chess wasn’t his game. Perhaps he played for larger stakes.
She put away her bottle of ink and cleaned her pen, well aware her muse had vanished out the garret window. She moved down the various
flights of stairs until she got to the main level of the family brownstone. Her mother was reading the paper in the drawing room, as she always did after breakfast. Rosemary smiled at the sense of normalcy her mother provided. She moved into the room and sat. The scent of her mother’s lilac toilet water soothed her as much as a cup of peppermint tea.
“Mother, I have a problem.”
Her mother’s eyes left the newspaper and locked on Rosemary’s. “I could swear we’ve had this conversation before. And you took care of it by posing as a young secretary. Very clever of you, I must say.”
“But the problem has only been compounded by my actions.”
“What do you mean? I thought the meeting with Mr. Cooper went well.”
Rosemary sighed and clasped her hands together. “Yes, the meeting went well. Perhaps too well. He believes me to be a working woman in hire to Mr. Elliott.”
Her mother’s eyes raked over her face, and Rosemary could tell in an instant she had been exposed. “Ah, so you are interested in the young man and now feel he’ll not glance at you twice because you’re a working woman? Not of his class?”
Rosemary shifted in her chair. Then she rose and began to pace in the small room. How was it her mother could see right through her? She had to shift her mother’s line of thought. And quickly. “Not in any kind of romantic way, if that’s what you think, Mother. He is from Boston, after all, and you know how I feel about those patrician Brahmins who think they’re better than the rest of society. But I don’t appreciate the fact I must hide my true identity from him. If he were to meet Papa, or whomever I eventually do get to play the part of F.P., he would heap praise on him when it should rightfully be my praise. Even if I overhear the conversation, it won’t have the same impact. It’s my talent the man recognizes, and I should be the one he’s praising.”
Charlotte tapped her fingers against her teeth, setting Rosemary’s on edge. She hated that affectation of her mother’s. Their eyes met, and again Rosemary had the notion she was standing in the room naked.
“Do sit, Rosemary, so we can discuss your situation as normal adults. You’re acting as if you’re a caged tiger, or something.”
A caged tiger. Hmmm. Her thoughts went to her latest work. How would a caged animal fit into her Harry Hawk story? She did her mother’s bidding and sat once again opposite her, mind awhirl with plot possibilities.
“Rosemary?”
Her eyes blinked, and she came back to the present. “Sorry, Mother. I just drifted for a moment.”
“Tell me your impressions of the man from your meeting with him. Your Mr. Cooper. Is he young? Older? Short? Tall?”
Rosemary bristled and pierced her mother with her gaze. “First, he’s not my Mr. Cooper. And besides, what does physical appearance have to do with the measure of the man?”
Her mother smiled. Just a ghost of a smile, but a smile nonetheless. Rosemary suddenly became very interested in the pattern of the carpet.
Her mother replied, “As you are well aware, a man’s physical presence has little to do with the mind trapped inside the body. But it will help to give me a mental picture of him, so I can know what we’re dealing with.”
Rosemary took a deep breath. “All right, then. He’s a young man, but not too young. Perhaps mid-twenties. The publishing company in Boston belongs to his father, but he’s allowing his son to have control of the dime novel portion of the business. At least that’s what I gathered from our conversation.”
“And his appearance?”
Rosemary shifted again in her seat. His appearance. The most handsome man she’d ever met. No, she couldn’t reveal that to her mother. “He’s tall, probably around six feet or so. His hair is dark, and he ties it back into a queue.”
“Hmmm. Not at all what my image of a Boston Brahmin is. What is his origin?”
Rosemary brought her lips together into a tight line. “I’m not certain, Mother, although he did mention he spent some time in New Orleans. Does it matter?”
Charlotte straightened out the wrinkles in her skirt, brushing her hands over her lap in a casual motion. Rosemary was well aware of what the action signified. It meant her mother was devising a plan. A plan involving her and Henry Cooper. She stood again, and began to pace.
“Will you sit down, child, and talk about this? You’re making me dizzy.”
“Only if you can promise me you have no more subterfuge up your lace sleeve.”
“Oh, do sit, Rosemary, and stop being so dramatic. It’s not as if you’re tied to some railroad track with a train barreling down on you. Your interaction with Mr. Cooper is merely a bump in the road.”
Tied to a railroad track with a train barreling down on you. Her fingers itched for a pen and some paper. Harry would save her. He had to.
“How did you make that determination? A bump in the road, indeed. More like the Grand Canyon out west.”
“However you want to define it, your problem is not the insurmountable mess you make it out to be. If you want to unmask yourself and be known as F.P. Elliott, I see no reason why you shouldn’t. If Mr. Cooper is so rigid in his mannerisms as to turn his back on you when you expose whom the real author is, you can always find another publisher who will take your work. You probably would chafe at working with him if he is so straight-laced, anyway.”
“But I don’t know the man well enough yet to gauge his reaction. Perhaps after another meeting …”
“Tell me, do you know if Mr. Cooper is a married man?”
Rosemary stirred in her chair. “I don’t know for certain, Mother. He didn’t make mention of a wife, but that means little.”
Her mother smiled, and again Rosemary thought her mother’s gaze could pierce through her clothing and to her soul. “Yes, perhaps another meeting with Mr. Cooper would be just what you need.”
Bosh. What nonsense. Her mother could not possibly see right through her.
• • •
The next few days were a wild flurry of activity for Henry. In spite of his initial disdain for his father’s business, he was fascinated by the printing department of his new company, and had spent many hours on the floor with all the heavy presses, inhaling the pleasurable scents of ink and paper, learning how the dime novels were mass produced. He was especially interested in the pictures on the front page of the pocket-sized novels. While the inside pages were all text, which was the most economical way to produce them, the cover usually contained one large, black-and-white picture along with the title. Henry loved watching the illustrators at work on their covers, which took days to finish.
The three illustrators cast a wary eye at Henry every time he appeared on the printing floor. They were well aware this man held their futures in his hands, and Henry tried to brush away their worries.
“Gentlemen, I plan to keep all of you on staff, so put your trepidation aside. I’m here to learn what you do. Please teach me.”
The oldest of the group, a man named Levi, grinned at him. But then, Levi had a perpetual grin on his face, anyway. He was stooped over from his many years as an illustrator, but his touch with his etching equipment was unparalleled. “Be happy to explain. We do a drawing first, on paper, and get it approved before we begin the etching process. We use a soft wood and a tool called a burin.” He held the tool up to Henry for examination. “What we do is carve away the part of the picture that’s to remain white. If a part of the picture has some ink, we create lines in the wood in varying widths to make the ink lighter or darker.” He held up a picture he was working on and circled an area on the image.
“And how long will it take you to finish a picture?”
“Depends on how complicated the picture is. A couple of days, usually.”
“What about adding another color?”
“Well, sir. It would take a different carving, and would be applied separately, over the black.”
“Have you ever done it here in this shop?”
“No, but I’ve seen it done other places. It’s tricky to g
et the ink laid down in the right place, but it can be done.”
“Well, Levi, as you probably know, the Harry Hawk series is among our most popular, and I’ve been told there’s another story about to be presented to me. I’ve got an idea for the cover of Harry riding on the back of a bison. How hard would it be to create an image similar to what I’m thinking? Possibly with a red banner for the title?”
Levi smiled. “Good old Harry. He’s one of my favorites. I can see him on the back of a burly bison. I’ll work up a couple of ideas for you to take a look at, sir.”
Henry grasped Levi’s curved shoulder. “Great. I hope I can add to the staff down here, maybe update the presses. I’m just now getting a grasp on what works and what needs attention. Carry on, gentlemen.”
As Henry wandered upstairs to his office, he gave some thought to his progression in taking over the company. He had successfully gotten through one round of interviews with all the authors who were currently under contract with Page Books, and had sorted through them, deciding to which he should extend new contract offers. He didn’t appreciate having to deal with Mr. Elliott’s secretary instead of the man himself, but obviously if he was giving thought to the next cover for F.P.’s story, he’d already made his decision about the man’s future with the company. There was no denying his talent. He was exactly the kind of mysterious, reclusive man that came to mind when Henry thought of an author. F.P. Elliott fell into the category of authors to keep. He made a note to himself to remind Miss Wyatt he still needed an official meeting between himself and the elusive Mr. Elliott, preferably this week.
He had yielded parry to the fetching Miss Wyatt during their first interview, and it was now time to counter-attack. He’d change up things between them by paying a visit to her residence unannounced today. She thought she could have the upper hand, to be the one to initiate contact and hold their meetings on her schedule. But her initial attack had fallen short because she had neglected the simple fact he had her address—everything that had transpired between the author and Mr. Page had been transacted by post. It was time for a riposte. He’d go straight to his target.
