by Juliana Gray
“Here we are,” he said. “You have your umbrella?”
“Right here.” She held it up, just as the carriage came to a stop. Her lips parted uncertainly. “Thank you, Lord Hatherfield. It’s very kind of you. I confess, I’ve never ridden in a private hansom before.”
“Not at all. An eccentricity of mine, I suppose, but a hansom is a great deal nimbler than a proper four-wheeler, to say nothing of economical. I drive it myself from time to time. Anyway, it was no trouble at all. I couldn’t have lived with the picture of you arriving here late, all wet and wilted, to face Sir John’s secretary for the very first time.”
“His secretary?”
Hatherfield opened up the door and gave her a nudge. “Give him my warmest regards!” he said cheerfully, and that was the last he saw of poor young Thomas, her face registering stricken trepidation, her luscious round, young bottom outlined against her drab black trousers as she pitched herself out the hansom door.
Hatherfield fell back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling of his carriage.
The little front window opened. “Back to the Mansions, sir?” inquired the coachman.
“Back to the Mansions.”
Back to his own rooms in Albert Hall Mansions, where he would take out a sheet of paper and compose a friendly man-to-man telegram to the Duke of Olympia: Warmest regards, faithful servant, et cetera, and what the devil sort of mischief was he plotting with this Mr. Stephen Thomas, whose luscious bottom was quite demonstrably not that of a mister?
THREE
Sir John’s secretary.
Nobody had warned Stefanie about a secretary. But here he stood before her, black of eyes, thin of hair, gimlet of face, his bony shoulders squared for battle. He said, in a voice both high-pitched and menacing, “You’re wet, Mr. Thomas. Wet and late.” The word late was uttered with particular distasteful emphasis, as he might say infected with clap.
But Stefanie was not the sort of princess to allow a mere underling to get the moral advantage of her. She placed her hat on the hat stand, removed her damp coat, and straightened her lapels before answering.
“It’s raining,” she said, “and half eight is a most uncivilized hour.”
The outrage on the secretary’s face turned so livid, Stefanie could almost smell it. Or perhaps that was the chap’s own scent, redolent of mothballs and hair oil.
He thrust his finger at the clock on the shelf. “Do you see what the time is, Mr. Thomas?”
“I do, Mr. . . . er . . . I beg your pardon. Have you a name?”
A faint titter sounded from some distant corner. The secretary whirled about, and for the first time Stefanie noticed the room in which they were standing, a large and stately chamber lined with shelves and shelves of legal texts in handsome gold-stamped bindings. Down the exact center of the room marched two rows of elderly wooden desks, containing four young men in threadbare black suits identical to her own, with identical brown whiskers bristling about their jowls in an extremely businesslike fashion. Four identical pens scratched in unison across the four identical desktops. Stefanie gazed in horror.
The tittering quelled instantly.
The secretary turned his gimlet face back to her.
“My name is Mr. Turner, and you would do well . . .”
“Turner. Charmed.” Stefanie cast a disdainful glance at the plain black-and-white clock ticking dolefully on the shelf and pulled her own watch from her pocket, a handsome gold piece given to her by a particularly generous stepmother for her eighteenth birthday, and which she had been sternly instructed to leave behind in Devon. “It is eight thirty-six in the a.m., Turner, and . . .”
“Mister Turner.”
Stefanie favored him with an indulgent smile. “Mister Turner. It is eight thirty-six in the a.m., and if those six minutes are of such critical importance to you and Sir John, I shall be happy to make them up at the end of the day. Now. Where is my office, Mr. Turner?”
“Your office!” Mr. Turner’s face, alas, had already gone as scarlet a shade as his circulatory system could support; the valiant old capillaries could apparently do no more. “You have a desk, Thomas. A . . .”
“Mister Thomas.”
Another titter interrupted the even scratching of the identical pens.
Mr. Turner’s black eyes narrowed even farther. More, and they would squint shut entirely.
“Mister Thomas. You have a desk. Right there.” Mr. Turner pointed a long and bony finger toward a battered wooden contraption in the back corner of the room, the last in the right-hand row.
Stefanie turned and gazed at the desk in question for a weighty moment. She swiveled back to Mr. Turner. “This is entirely inadequate, to say nothing of the lack of privacy. I shall require my own office.”
“Your . . . own . . . office?”
“Yes.” Stefanie removed her gloves in a few brisk tugs. “Nothing large or elaborate, of course. A nice little box will suffice, so long as there are sufficient shelves and a sturdy desk.” She cast a disapproving eye at the dull piece of furniture in the corner, which seemed, if she wasn’t mistaken, to tilt at least half an inch to the left-hand side. “And a fireplace, of course. I do dislike working in the cold.”
“Oh, I see. A fireplace, naturally.”
Stefanie began to tick off the items on her fingers. “A window for natural light, such as it is in this godforsaken fogbank of a city. Oh. And a rug. So much easier on the feet.”
“A rug!” Mr. Turner smacked his forehead. “Of course! How could I neglect such an important furnishing for Your Royal Highness! Shall I arrange for a personal servant to toast your crumpets and polish your crown?”
A squeak, as of hilarity barely contained.
Stefanie opened her lips to tell Mr. Turner that sounded very agreeable indeed, the sooner the better, though naturally one should really employ a professional jeweler for the second task, ordinary servants being so unfamiliar with the delicate and specialized treatment of precious minerals.
Then she remembered herself.
“A servant is quite unnecessary, Mr. Turner,” she said. “I am shocked you would consider such an extravagance. I will not report what I’ve heard to Sir John—I should never stoop to telling tales—but I shall bear it in mind.” She tapped her forehead.
“The cheek!” Mr. Turner said.
“Yes. Isn’t it, rather. But don’t worry, my good man. I’m sure we shall grow used to each other in no time, learn to appreciate in full the other’s sterling qualities. Fast friends and all that. Do you think . . .”
A loud bang rattled the books in their bindings. The pens stopped scratching. Stefanie spun about.
Sir John Worthington stood in the doorway, hands on hips, judicial robes dangling from his shoulders, white wig just a trifle askew. Stefanie’s hand itched to set it right.
“What the devil is going on here? Turner? What’s this racket?”
“Sir, I . . .”
“Dash it all! I’m off to court in”—a glance at the clock—“seven minutes precisely, and you look quite distinctly as if you’re about to have an apoplexy on the floor of my chambers. Bad form, Turner. Very bad form.”
At these damning words from his employer, Mr. Turner’s scarecrow throat seemed to clog with fear, or rage, or nervous anxiety, or some other emotion beyond the power of Stefanie’s comprehension. “Oh, but sir . . . Mr. Thomas, sir . . .”
Thunderous. “What about Thomas? Spit it out, man!”
“He . . . he . . .” An asthmatic wheeze.
All at once, Stefanie understood. She was a princess, after all; she had witnessed more than one underling turned into primordial jelly in the face of Royal Disapproval. Perfectly natural, if not particularly brave. Her heart softened. In such cases, the strong must naturally protect the weak.
“The thing is, Sir John,” said Stefanie, casting her eyes down contritely, “I was being cheeky.”
“Cheeky!”
“Yes, sir. Very, very abominably cheeky. A bad
habit of mine, I’m afraid.”
“I say. Is this true, Mr. Turner?”
Mr. Turner’s mouth worked. He cast a desperate glance at Stefanie. He straightened his bony shoulders, clutched his hands to the small of his back, and tilted his chin. “Cheeky, sir? Cheeky does not begin to describe the scope of Mr. Thomas’s insolent lack of respect for his superiors. This . . . this young fellow”—as he might say young fornicator—“this young fellow had the temerity to ask for an office, sir. An office! With . . . with a window!”
“And a rug,” Stefanie said modestly. “So much easier on the feet.”
A swift twitch disturbed the stern line of Sir John’s judicial mouth. “Shocking. Shocking, Mr. Thomas. You should be aware that in these chambers, only I and my fellow counsel Mr. Norham are privileged to inhabit private offices. The clerks and secretaries perform their duties in a shared space, in order to promote that atmosphere of open-minded collegiality without which learning and innovation cannot take place.” He waved a withered hand to indicate the open-minded collegiality, the learning and innovation with which the atmosphere apparently vibrated.
“I see. Of course,” said Stefanie. “Quite laudable, sir. I shall keep that in mind henceforth.”
“You will allow me to observe, Mr. Thomas, that you have not made a particularly auspicious beginning to your law career. It is not yet nine o’clock on your first morning, and you have already demonstrated a propensity to both tardiness and”—another twitch—“cheekiness. This must be nipped in the bud, Mr. Thomas. In the bud.”
Someone coughed at the back of the room. The sound echoed delicately from the ceiling plasterwork.
“Yes, sir.”
“You must endeavor to keep your cheeky remarks to yourself in these chambers. You will also keep strictly to the stated hours of business.”
“Strictly!” piped up Mr. Turner, with raised finger.
“To that end, Mr. Thomas, I shall assign you to prepare a summary of the relevant case law for a matter just brought to my chambers on Friday. A most extraordinary case. Mr. Turner will give you the necessary details and direct you to the necessary resources. I expect to find this summary on my desk when I arrive in these chambers tomorrow morning. Is that understood?”
“Tomorrow morning at half past eight!” shrieked Mr. Turner. “Not a minute later!”
“Yes, sir,” said Stefanie.
“Mr. Turner, my briefcase,” said Sir John.
Mr. Turner scuttled into the office like a bony black beetle, leaving Stefanie and Sir John in the vast book-lined hall with the battered desks and the identical clerks and the monochrome clock ticking steadily away. Sir John’s eyes were grave and slightly pink at the corners. “Mr. Thomas,” he said, not unkindly, “I perceive you are not a young man accustomed to discipline. But the law is exact and demanding, and you must learn to adjust your own habits, for I assure you the legal system of Great Britain will not adjust itself to yours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I admire your pluck, however.” He turned in a swish of black robes, just as Mr. Turner emerged through the office door, bearing a large leather suitcase in his hands as if it were a holy chalice. “Thank you, Mr. Turner,” he said, and strode to the door.
“Wait, Sir John!”
The man turned in an astonished jerk, eyebrows high.
Stefanie walked up to him and reached for his head. “Your wig. It’s gone lopsided, I’m afraid.”
A gasp rent the air behind her.
Stefanie tugged the wig into place and stood back critically. “Much better.”
Sir John’s lips trembled. A flush pinked the tip of his nose. “I will have that summary on my desk on the dot of half eight, Mr. Thomas, or this day in my chambers will be your last. And Olympia can bloody well hang himself.”
And he stalked out the door with a crash of his briefcase against the wood.
By eight o’clock in the evening, Stefanie’s back felt as if it had turned into metal wire and been left out in the rain to rust.
A summary. It had sounded so simple. A summary: How difficult could that be?
Very difficult indeed, as it turned out. Thirty or forty pages’ worth of difficult, of deciphering the dry legal language in the books stacked at her desk and on the floor next to her feet. Of organizing and describing each precedent, its similarities and points of departure to the case in question. All this, when she had no earthly idea of British law, or any law at all, for that matter. Thank goodness she retained her Latin, or rather thank the diligent and determined Miss Dingleby, because goodness had had nothing at all to do with it.
Stefanie glanced at the clock, that dashed tyrannical clock on the shelf, and allowed herself to link her fingers together above her head and stretch. Oh, heaven. Long and high, that was it. Her startled vertebrae rattled together like dominoes. The swathes of linen binding her chest strained and strained. She’d imagined that dressing as a man would free her body—all those skirts and petticoats and corsets, how she’d hated them—but this was just as bad, in its way. Just as constricting. God, what she wouldn’t give to loosen them, to let her poor crushed bosom breathe for a moment. An instant or two of physical freedom, just a taste of her old feminine self.
Stefanie cast a speculative look at the window. The glass had gone black long ago, the other clerks had left for their comfortable dinners and comfortable beds. She was quite alone.
Why not?
Stefanie twiddled her fountain pen between her thumb and forefinger, and then she set it down and shrugged off her jacket. She unbuttoned her drab waistcoat and pulled her shirt from her beastly black trousers, and then she slid her hands upward along her soft female skin to the edge of the linen band and . . .
The door flew open.
“Hullo there, Thomas!” called out the cheerful voice of the Marquess of Hatherfield. “I’ve brought you a spot of supper, what?”
Stefanie whipped to face the bookshelf, stuffing her long white shirt in fistfuls back down her trousers. “Supper!”
“Yes, supper! Sir John informed me of your little, er, predicament, and I said to myself, dash it all, that’s no way to . . . I say, I haven’t caught you out, have I?”
Stefanie’s fingers flew at her waistcoat buttons. “Not at all. Only . . . just . . .”
“Making yourself a bit more comfortable, eh? Nothing to be ashamed of, old boy. We’re all guilty of it, from time to time.” A plonk, as of something soft and heavy on a wooden surface.
Stefanie tugged her buttoned waistcoat in place, along with her dignity. She turned. The Marquess of Hatherfield it was, right enough, standing before her like a Thoroughbred in the sales ring, hair glossy, eyes bright, clothes molded lovingly around his triangular torso. She aimed her gaze between his arrow-straight eyebrows, the better to avoid the mesmeric power of those dancing blue eyes. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean. Is that Bordeaux?”
“Rather. A sixty-two Mouton Rothschild, if you like that kind of thing.”
“Egad.”
“I thought a celebration of some sort was in order. Your first day of gainful employment.” Hatherfield set down the bottle and swung his jacket from his shoulders, arranging it about a nearby chair with a bullfighter’s flourish. He plucked a corkscrew from the hamper and applied himself to the matter at hand. “Ghastly place, these chambers of Sir John’s. The flesh positively shuddered at the thought of you slaving away all night, not a soul for company.”
Stefanie was trying to keep her eyes fixed on the bottle, instead of the play of muscle beneath his white shirt as he twisted the corkscrew. Her brain was still reeling in shock. Hatherfield. Here. Amid the books, the battered desks. A few feet away, gathering up all the meager light and energy in the room and radiating it back outward like a beacon of divine hope. Apollo come to life. “I can manage well enough.”
“Ah. You were planning to work all night with no sustenance at all?” The cork slid free with a faint relieved pop.
“I .
. . well, I hadn’t thought of that.” Which was quite true. Stefanie hadn’t given supper the slightest consideration. After all, food simply arrived at the appointed hours, didn’t it? Borne by servants, prepared to varying degrees of excellence, piping hot and accompanied by the appropriate garnish.
Except when one was a lowly law clerk slaving away unnoticed and unaccompanied in Temple Bar.
“You see?” Hatherfield tapped his temple and poured out two glasses. The liquid slid downward in a silky curl. Stefanie’s mouth tingled.
“It was very kind of you to think of me. To come all this way.”
“I hadn’t anything better to do.” He handed her a glass. “To your health, my good fellow.”
“To your health.” She clinked and drank. Oh, heaven. A masterful vintage, a masterful wine, thick and plummy and perfect, all the more so for arriving so suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of her loneliest hour. She opened her eyes, which had closed briefly in ecstasy, and found the gaze of the marquis fixed intently upon her face. “Sir?” she said, and her voice, good Lord, it squeaked! Stefanie had never squeaked in her life, not even when confronted in the middle of the night by the mayor of Huhnhof Baden while exchanging his prize bull for a rather bad-tempered white goat.
But that gaze of his, all blue and alive. God in heaven. You could almost touch it. You could die from it, if you weren’t careful.
The obvious question began to form in Stefanie’s discombobulated brain: Why, exactly, had the eminent and Apollonian Marquess of Hatherfield troubled himself to bring the unremarkable Mr. Stephen Thomas a picnic supper in Temple Bar this evening?
“Ah. You’re probably wondering why I’ve troubled myself to come so far this evening,” said Hatherfield. “Cheese?”
“Yes, please.”
Hatherfield brandished an ivory-handled knife, sliced a wedge, and placed it on a soft white roll. “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Thomas, I’m curious about you.”
“Curious. About me?” Stefanie accepted the bread and cheese with her best innocent air. She was rather good at innocent airs, or so she flattered herself. God knew she’d had ages of practice. When the Archduke of Schleissen-Pleissen stormed downstairs to breakfast complaining publicly of a bed short-sheeted the night before, an innocent air might prove the only thing standing between a certain mischievous young princess and a week spent with the solid weight of a Gutenberg Bible balanced atop her head.
