The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  Remington gradually worked his way out of her immediate awareness and back to the door, where he stood watching her wrestle determinedly with an accounting scheme that had sent more than one clerk staggering from the room with ink blots swirling before his eyes. She was here, in his territory, in his world, and he was going to see that she stayed. He took in the stubborn angle of her jaw, the rigid set of her shoulders, and the curve of her waist and felt himself going taut with possessiveness. He was going to rescue her whether she bloody well liked it or—

  He halted, hearing her words in his mind: “When you ‘rescue’ us, you do it … to satisfy your own needs, not ours.” Surplus. She said she had always been surplus. Her anger at men wasn’t just about social convictions, abstractions about gender and place, or even the plight of destitute women. It was about her.

  Grappling with those unsettling thoughts, he withdrew to his outer office. There he encountered Aunt Hermione, perched daintily on the edge of a chair.

  “Where is Antonia?” She rose and peered past him with a wary look.

  “Having her first taste of ‘men’s work,’ ” he announced, and braced as if expecting a protest. She softened and gave him a cherubic smile that bore a hint of complicity, instead. The surprise of her goodwill disarmed him.

  “I was just about to have a bit of coffee, Mrs. Fielding. Would you join me?”

  They settled on the sofa in his office, sipping coffee and talking amicably for a time. There was no delicate way to broach the subject of Antonia’s past, and so, trusting to Hermione’s good graces, he came straight out with it. “Mrs. Fielding, would you be willing to tell me how Antonia came to marry Sir Geoffrey?” As he had hoped, Hermione was forthcoming with her impressions. But he was not quite prepared for the first words out of her mouth.

  “I suppose it’s no secret. Geoffrey rescued her.”

  “R-rescued her?” He set his cup down and reached for his handkerchief to dab at the coffee he’d spilled on his trousers. “What do you mean?”

  “Her parents died when she was a young thing, you know. And she went to live with her uncle, Wentworth, who took no interest in her.” She paused and looked a bit uncertain, deciding how much to tell him. “Some of the duke’s friends, however, took a very particular interest in her … if you know what I mean. And the duke”—her usually smiling eyes tightened briefly with a deep and fermented anger that startled Remington—“conveniently looked the other way.”

  He knew exactly what Hermione meant and it made him tighten inside. The clubs were full of the callous and cavalier boasts of men in their cups … about helpless young girls who were forced to submit to an uncle’s “care” and were expected to be properly grateful.

  “Geoffrey had been in business with her father. When he got wind of what was happening, he went to see her and offered her a home with him—which, of course, necessitated marriage.”

  “He rescued her,” Remington said, chagrined that he hadn’t realized it before now. Young girls married aging men only out of avarice or necessity. And Antonia didn’t have a greedy bone in her body.

  “He was a dear and generous man.” Hermione’s dark mood faded. “A bit of a dry stick at times, and full of crotchets. But he adored Antonia, doted on her. He had given up all thoughts of marriage long before he offered for her, you see. And he certainly never expected to have a wife as bright and lovely as Toni.”

  But how had Antonia felt about him? He thought of the anger in her voice when she spoke of being rescued, and wondered if some of it was for old Sir Geoffrey as well as for him. There was no polite way of asking what he needed to know, and at the risk of affronting her, he finally said: “Was it a marriage in every way?”

  Hermione put her cup back on the tray and stared at him, deciding how much to reveal. “It was.” She sighed. “Though I believe it took Geoffrey quite a while to get around to it. At the base of it, I believe he was embarrassed by the difference in their ages. He felt old and knotty and—” She lowered her lashes and her voice. “I believe the dear boy always insisted on nightshirts—if you know what I mean.”

  Remington nodded.

  “Funny old thing, he was. But Toni always—” She frowned and set her cup on the table. “Well, she will tell you herself, in her own good time.”

  Remington’s disappointment was softened by the fact that Hermione seemed to think Antonia’s “own good time” would actually come. He drew a cleansing breath, feeling both encouraged by his new understanding and daunted by the magnitude of the task ahead of him.

  “Remington, come quick!” Paddington Carr’s voice burst through the partly open doors before he did. “Bexley’s gone right over the edge—taken to wearing skirts, high-buttons, and bonnets—” He barreled through the doors and jerked to a halt, staring back over his shoulder in bewilderment. “Either that, or”—he scowled as he thought belatedly of a more plausible explanation—“there’s a female planted on top of his stool.” He scratched his head. He apparently found the two possibilities equally alarming.

  “It’s a woman, Uncle Paddington,” Remington said, shooting to his feet. “And it’s all right. I know all about her.”

  “You do? Oh. Well, then.” That simple declaration seemed to reassure Paddington. His braced shoulders relaxed and he swung around to look at his nephew. Then his eyes fell on Hermione and he blinked, squinted, and went utterly still.

  “Mrs. Fielding,” Remington said with a wry smile, “allow me to present my uncle, Paddington Carr. Uncle Paddington, this is Mrs. Hermione Fielding, the aunt of the lady occupying Bexley’s stool.”

  “How do you do, sir?” Aunt Hermione flushed with pleasure and extended her hand to him, taking in at a glance his elegant charcoal suit, tastefully embroidered vest, and dapper spats. His barrel-chested form and silver hair seemed dashing indeed in a man fast approaching seventy. She gave her best midnight-blue silk an arranging stroke and perked her lace-rimmed collar with a subtle finger. After a somewhat awkward moment Paddington came out of his trance and approached her.

  “Ch-charmed,” he stammered, accepting her hand with widened eyes. After staring at her hand for an unseemly time and bestowing a reverent kiss upon it, he continued to hold it, fixing his gaze on her as if seeing a memory aged and materialized before him.

  She was nothing short of beautiful … silvery hair, saucy blue eyes, rosy-apple cheeks, and a tilt to her head that was somehow both demure and spirited at the same time. Another minute passed before he realized she seemed to be waiting for a response.

  “Beg, pardon, ma’am.” He released her and fidgeted with his hands until he tucked his thumbs in his vest. “Got quite distracted by your … by the way you …”

  “I asked if you would care for coffee,” she said, blushing prettily and sitting straighter. “His lordship asked me to pour and there is plenty left.”

  “Coffee? Oh, yes. God, yes. Coffee. Absolutely.” He realized he was staring like a red-eared schoolboy. “Love coffee, don’t you know. Have it every morning. And after dinner some days. With a cigar. Love cigars, too.” Then she extended a cup to him, and he looked as if she’d handed him the keys to Camelot. “Excellent things, cigars and coffee. And prunes.”

  Remington watched his flustered uncle with amazement, which turned to embarrassment when he remembered Hermione couldn’t know about his less than lucid spells. He dragged a chair over for his uncle, hoping to catch Hermione’s eye and give her a look that might help explain. But she was looking at Paddington with a feminine twinkle in her eye.

  “Well, how utterly refreshing to meet a handsome and refined gentleman who … appreciates a good prune,” she said. And she laughed. It was the kind of sound that came with a blush, in women of all ages.

  Paddington realized what he’d done and looked embarrassed. But something in Hermione’s teasing, absolving laughter reached through his chagrin, and after a moment he was chuckling, too. “Sink me!” he said with bluff good humor. “Don’t know what’s got into me, Mrs. �
� Mrs. …”

  “Fielding,” she supplied, sending a subtle hand to be sure her perky hat was tilted to the proper angle and settling a smile on him that could only have been called flirtatious. “Hermione Fielding.”

  “Mrs. Fielding.” He nodded. “It’s just that you put me so in mind of someone. I got a bit flummoxed.”

  “Your wife, perhaps,” she suggested, in a tone that said she hoped it wasn’t so. She lowered her chin to look at him from under her lashes.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Not married. Never made that blissful trip to the altar. I say, Mrs. Fielding, do I know your husband? Perhaps that is why you look so familiar.”

  “It is possible you knew him. I am a widow, you see. For some years now.”

  “Sorry to hear that, ma’am,” Paddington said, staring at her with an outrageously inappropriate smile. “Dashed bad luck … losing a husband and all.”

  “Oh, I didn’t lose him, Sir Paddington. I know exactly where I put him last.” She laughed coquettishly, behind a discreet hand.

  Uncle Paddington caught the humor in it and chuckled, his eyes bright in a way Remington couldn’t remember ever seeing before. Remington sat dumbfounded, watching his elders flirt like giddy adolescents. A short while later he asked his uncle to entertain Aunt Hermione for a while and slipped out. Standing just outside the door, he watched his uncle glowing with robust good humor and, unless his senses had completely betrayed him, with an unmistakable spark of amorous interest.

  Lord. Who would have thought the old boy had it in him, at his age? At any age? It caused a strange fullness in his chest to think of his lonely and sometimes bewildered uncle finding a bit of happiness and companionship at this time of life.

  He stood watching the pair a moment longer, realizing that whatever was happening between them, it was a stroke of luck for him. For with Antonia’s chaperon out of the way, he had more room to maneuver her into his arms. For it was in his arms, he sensed, that she would finally be persuaded to marry him.

  Four hours later Antonia was still sitting on Bexley’s tall stool, listening to him drone on about his method of reverse checking, and wrestling with credits and debits, in such large numbers that just keeping the columns straight was a monumental task. Her eyes were burning from the glare, her fingers were cramped and ink stained, and her back felt as if it were going to snap in two. When Bexley checked her balances and declared there had to be a transposition somewhere, she frowned at him and demanded to know just how he could know that without re-adding the lot.

  “The rule of nine, madam,” he said evenly, in tones that made her sense he had given this same lecture to junior clerks again and again. “You divide the balance by nine, and if it comes out even, you know there’s been a transposition.”

  “And how do you know it’s not just divisible by nine?” she insisted testily, straightening her protesting spine. He shook his head in a way that said he had expected that very question.

  “Because it never is unless there is a transposition. I don’t claim to know all the number theory. I’m not a mathematician. I only know it is the usual practice for us, because it works.”

  “That’s one of the things about men’s work,” came Remington’s voice from the door behind her. “We discover sound rules and practices and we employ them without wasting a lot of time asking why. Time is of the essence here. Many of the things we do have strict time requirements, for when a doorway of opportunity closes, it is gone. And it almost never comes around again. In the world of trade and commerce, we seldom have time for the luxuries of ‘why.’ ” He turned to his head clerk. “What do you think, Bexley? Does she know something about bookkeeping?”

  The wiry head clerk raised one eyebrow. “She would do … in a pinch.”

  Antonia’s first reaction was indignation at that bit of male condescension. Then, over his shoulder, she could see several of the junior clerks suppressing smiles. Her reaction must have shown in her face, for Remington laughed and lifted her down.

  “You may not realize it, but you’ve just been given a mighty compliment. Now, come with me and let these poor overworked wretches get on with their dinner.”

  She paused by the door and looked back around the clerk’s room, realizing that she’d spent the entire morning there, doing exactly what Remington had planned for her to do: men’s work. It annoyed her that she had found it more rigorous and complicated than she might have expected. The clerks were brisk and efficient and, oddly enough, they didn’t seem to mind Bexley’s sharp comments and corrections. They concentrated on the work and didn’t take mistakes and admonishments quite so personally as she would have expected. And if she thought her ladies had to deal with petty details …

  Once outside the door, she shrank from Remington’s guiding hand and looked up and down the hallway. “It’s time we were going. Where is Aunt Hermione?”

  “She is occupied at the moment.” He took her elbow and steered her toward a nearby door and the encounter he’d been planning for the last two hours. “I thought, since you’ve worked so hard on my books, the least I could do was offer you something to eat.” He pushed the door back, and there, in the middle of a comfortably furnished office, sat a small linen-draped table, supplied with china, crystal, and fresh flowers. As she watched, a black-clad waiter lit a pair of candles and reached for a bottle of wine chilling in a silver bucket.

  Her knees went weak at the sight; it was a pure seduction for her aching senses. And it was that very thought that saved her. Seduction. She whirled and was halfway down the hall before he caught up with her.

  “You haven’t a drop of shame in your blood, do you?” she said, making straight for Remington’s office to find Aunt Hermione. “You never quit scheming.”

  “What? A bit of luncheon?” he said, gritting his teeth at his stupidity.

  Antonia burst through the door of the office and stopped dead. Aunt Hermione and a silver-haired gentleman with oddly familiar features were snuggled together on the sofa, hands entwined, foreheads together, gazing into each other’s eyes. They didn’t bother to break apart, but turned together to face the interruption.

  “Toni dear!” Hermione flushed becomingly. “You simply must meet Paddington—Sir Paddington Carr—his lordship’s uncle. Ever since his lordship introduced us, we’ve been having such a lovely time.”

  Antonia stared at the ruddy, beaming face of the gentleman holding her aunt’s hands, then at Remington. The resemblance was unmistakable. Fury erupted in the middle of her. Remington had gone behind her back to introduce her aunt and his uncle! And Aunt Hermione, who was supposed to be helping her avoid Remington’s scheming, had apparently succumbed to it herself. She felt doubly betrayed.

  Whirling, she rushed back down the hall and snatched her hat from the coatrack. Remington was close behind and followed her out into the wide upper hallway. There he startled several people passing in the hall by demanding: “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Anywhere, as long as it is away from you!” she insisted, plopping her hat on her head and fumbling to pin it in place, while walking briskly for the stairs.

  “Don’t be absurd, Antonia. Come back with me and have something to eat, and we’ll discuss this as two responsible, sensible people.”

  “You’re not responsible and I’m obviously not sensible—otherwise I would never have come here in the first place!” she said, halting in the middle of the main stairs to glare at him. “Do you think I don’t know exactly why you brought me here?”

  “Why did I?” he demanded, adding, “I’m beginning to wonder myself.”

  “You obviously intended to … White linen, flowers, wine in the afternoon … Lord—you’re as transparent as glass. And you must think I’m as thick as lead!”

  He pulled his aristocratic chin back as if she had smacked it. He watched her hurrying down the stairs and jolted after her, red-eared with chagrin at being so easily understood and dismissed. When he caught up with her in the lobby of the building,
there were people all around—men who recognized him, then quickly guessed who she must be and nudged each other. He vibrated with the urge to snatch her back, but dared not put a hand on her in so public a place.

  “Antonia, listen to me—” he said in a loud whisper as he reached her side.

  She ignored him and quickened her pace, blending into the stream of pedestrians when she stepped out onto Queen Victoria Street. He had to dodge and weave and excuse his way through the flow of foot traffic to keep up with her. Then he ran into a knot of elder gentlemen taking up the middle of the sidewalk, and his frustration erupted. “Antonia—come back!” he yelled across them.

  But she kept going, and when he disentangled himself he caught sight of the feathers of her hat bobbing along between the top hats well ahead of him. Then she seemed to pause, and he thought she might be changing her mind, until he glimpsed the sign of a cab stand on a lamppost above her head. The sight spurred him to a near run.

  He arrived just in time to see her lifting her skirts to mount the steps of a cab. He felt a terrifying sense that if she got into that carriage and left, she would somehow be exiting his life forever. Only mild panic could have made him behave so rashly. He grabbed her by the waist and snatched her back from those steps.

  “Ohhh! What are you doing? You’re mad—let me go!” Antonia tried to squirm away from him, but he held her firmly by the waist. The cab driver jumped off his box to intervene, but Remington was already hauling her out of his reach.

  “Just a bit of a tiff with the wife,” he growled at the confused cabbie. “Nothing for you to get involved in.”

  “Wife? You lying bully—” she snapped, straining to peel his arms from her.

  He wrestled her as discreetly as he could along the side of the buildings, feeling his grip on her gradually loosening. Then he spotted the alley behind the Mappin and Webb Building, and it seemed the closest place both to get her alone and to make her listen to him. He pulled her into the shadowy lane and, after a short scuffle, had her imprisoned between his arms and pinned against a brick wall with his body.