by Robyn DeHart
“That all depends.”
“Either you be a gentleman and assist me, or we shall stay in here all night. I’m certain I can make myself quite comfortable.” A complete fabrication. In an hour or less, she’d be longing for her bed.
“What do you need help with?” he asked.
“I cannot get out of my dress without assistance.” She turned her back to him, but looked over her shoulder to see him. “Too many buttons. You’ll need to unbutton them quickly, then turn the other way.”
He took a step toward her and smiled.
The white of his teeth looked even more so against his tanned skin. Warnings should have sounded in her head. When a man looked at a woman in such a manner, the woman should be concerned for the security of her virtue. But Meg felt no concern, only curiosity and perhaps a tad of hopefulness as to whether he would kiss her again.
Her body reacted to the memory of his lips. She swallowed.
“I’ve never had a lady ask me to undress her quickly,” he said.
She put her hand to her throat. “Well, this isn’t that sort of request.” Her voice was weak.
He chuckled.
The sound caressed her ears, and she found herself eager to hear it again regardless of the current situation.
She closed her eyes because, while she might have enjoyed the stolen kiss and might fancy a harmless threat to her virtue, she wasn’t actually prepared for him to steal anything else. She felt his warm breath behind her, and shivers scattered across her body. While she did not feel his fingers, she knew he was working the buttons as her dress was loosening.
Gracious. She felt her face flame. She’d never before had anyone, save her maid, undress her. It was intensely intimate, and she didn’t know what to feel or think about the matter. She suspected she should be horrified, but she knew that was not the feeling coursing through her at the moment.
“There,” he said. He stepped away from her. Without his body standing that close to her, she could now feel a slight breeze brush over her neck and across her back.
She faced him, then twirled her finger around to tell him to turn away, but he did not catch her hint. “Do you mind?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled. “Not at all. I might fancy a show, actually.”
Her face burned. She’d heard of such shows, and she certainly would not perform one now. “That’s not what I meant,” she said hotly. “Please avert your eyes.”
He turned away from her, but clearly found the situation far more amusing than was necessary.
“I’ll have you know that I do not find any humor in this situation.”
He angled to look at her from over his shoulder. “Duly noted.”
She quickly slipped the dress from her shoulders and then held it up in front of her to block his view. “I’m finished,” she said.
He turned, then cleared his throat. He stood a moment longer simply watching her before closing the distance between them. Perhaps he would kiss her again. She should move away from him. Instead of a second kiss, Gareth reached over and snatched the dress from her hands. “To ensure you come back and let me out.”
She swallowed a scream. No need to be overly dramatic. Standing in front of him in nothing more than her combination garment and petticoat was enough to cover her body in the heat of a blush. More than likely it already had, but she dared not look down to see if pink shaded her skin. Meg took a deep breath and tried to relax. Aside from the lack of sleeves and the fabric difference, it was not too different from a swimming costume. He could not see all that much flesh. She was a grown woman; she could take this situation in stride. To prove that to him, and to herself, she tilted her chin up a notch, then walked over to stand beneath the window.
“Shall I fly up to that window, or are you going to give me a boost?” She gave him a mocking smile.
He dropped her dress on a table, then came to stand behind her. Without a word, he wrapped his hands around her waist and hoisted her up. She grabbed onto the windowsill, then with a great amount of effort popped the window open. He moved his hands to her bottom and gave her a shove enabling her to climb through. She scarcely had time to feel embarrassed by the touch, as the encounter had been so brief that she had not even been able to tell if his fingers were warm.
From the window, she jumped into a bush, tearing her petticoat and scraping her arm and face. Brilliant. When she finally made it home tonight, everyone would assume she’d been assaulted.
She took a quick look around the grounds to ensure no one was around, then made her way back into the factory and opened up the storage room door.
Gareth strolled out and dropped her dress at her feet. He gave her a once-over and then walked off.
“Where is my thank-you?” she called out to his back.
But he didn’t stop walking.
She grabbed her dress, then rushed to meet him. “Very well,” she said loudly. “I’m certain, I’ll make it home alone, in the dark, completely unharmed.”
He stopped, and his shoulders sagged. He turned slowly. “Don’t you live right over there?” He pointed to the manor up on the hill.
“Yes.”
He walked back to her. “Let us be off then. I have delayed my supper so long now, I’ll skip it for sleep.” He passed her and started for the slope that led up to Piddington Hall.
She quickly locked the factory door, then tossed her dress over her head, leaving the fabric to gape open. It took considerable effort on her part to match his pace as she had significantly shorter legs. At this rate, she’d be panting like a horse before they crested the hill.
“Could you slow down a little,” she asked.
Surprisingly enough, he did.
“Tell me, Miss Piddington, are you always this much trouble?”
She smiled. “Yes, I believe I am.”
They spent the remainder of the walk in silence. The occasional hoot of an owl and their shoes treading upon the grass were the only sounds. Then the noise changed to crunching rocks as they stepped onto the driveway.
“In the future,” he said, “if you continue to go out at night, and you find yourself in questionable situations, you might want to consider a chaperone.” And with that he left her on the stairs to her house and headed toward the employee boarding rooms.
The man was an absolute cad.
Chapter 2
Meg was still frowning when she crept into her bedroom. Ordinarily she would awaken her maid, Ellen, to help her out of her dress, but seeing as she didn’t need her services tonight she would let the woman sleep. Thankfully no one had awoken upon her entrance, so she hadn’t had to come up with a story for her state of undress. She shrugged out of her dress and dumped it on the floor. Standing in front of the mirror, she took a good look at herself. Her petticoat was torn, and the scratches on her face and arm stung, but there was no permanent damage to anything. But neither the tears nor the scratches was the source of her irritability.
No, that came in the form of a tall, arrogant Irishman who, for all intents and purposes, seemed to hate her for no good reason at all. But the most annoying part of the entire ordeal was that, despite his ill temper, she was rather intrigued by him. She sat at her dressing table and swiftly unbraided her hair.
Why would a man be nasty to her, kiss her, and then offer advice about her safety? For that matter, why had he kissed her at all? He was a complete paradox. There was something about him, though. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but nonetheless she couldn’t not explore it. She was too curious by nature to ignore a man with such contradictions.
Samson, her great black tom, jumped onto her dressing table demanding attention. Meg ran her hand over his lush fur, and his rhythmic purr filled the room.
He watched her through sleepy green eyes, then decided he’d had enough caressing. He moved to the bed and curled up with the already sleeping Bandit. Evidently they were not overly concerned that their mistress had come home late. Traitors.
> The fact that Mr. Mandeville could get her riled into a less than pleasant mood was intriguing as well. Meg took great pride in the fact that she was nearly always agreeable, if not cheerful. In a world where people walked around looking as if they smelled something rotten, she had always tried to see the sunnier side. But tonight she was feeling almost ill-tempered.
He hadn’t liked her, but he had kissed her. And then he had seen her practically nude. The kiss wasn’t merely a friendly sort of kiss, but rather the sort that devilish men stole from maidens in the dark of the night. She ran the brush through her hair. Try as she might, she could not deny the simple fact that she’d enjoyed it. Immensely.
She was being foolish. The fellow might be intriguing, but there was no sane reason she should set her cap for him. Not only did he work for her father, but she knew nothing about him.
Meg finished undressing and examined the damage done to the silk petticoat. No doubt her friend Charlotte, who was rather skilled with a needle and thread, could fix it. Longing for a hot bath to soothe muscles and calm her nerves, Meg resigned herself to the basin so she wouldn’t wake the servants at this hour.
Then it occurred to her that after the evening’s trying ordeal, she had not even retrieved the ledger book that her father had sent her after. She would have to return to the factory tomorrow. Her poor papa was nearly losing his mind being laid up. The riding accident had happened a few weeks earlier, and he’d been confined to his bed ever since. The good thing was, the doctor didn’t believe it was a bad break and expected it to heal rather quickly.
When it became clear he couldn’t return to work immediately, she had assured him she would tend to the factory in his absence. He’d humored her and said yes, but she knew he wasn’t expecting her to actually do work. This could be the perfect opportunity for her to prove to him she has the necessary skills to care for the factory when he passed on. As it stood now, upon his death the factory would no longer be a personal business and instead would become a public company. Her father pretended not to be bothered by such a thing, but Meg knew different. He didn’t want Piddington Confectionery to belong to anyone else.
It wasn’t that he’d prefer her to be a male, but having a daughter as his only heir weighed on him. Meg couldn’t ask for a more doting father, but that was part of the problem. He still saw her as a little girl and didn’t want to burden her with the strain of a growing business.
She’d purchased new dresses befitting a woman of business and she’d eagerly agreed to assist in any way. Regrettably she had not been successful with the one task he’d sent her on, but she would not dwell on the evening’s failure. Tomorrow she would retrieve all that was necessary.
The great concern was how to handle the situation with Mr. Mandeville. Inevitably she’d run into him on a few more occasions. If they happened to interact, she could persuade him to be civil. Perhaps he was shy, and it merely took him a bit longer to warm up to people than it did with her.
She doubted that was true, but everyone could learn to be pleasant. And to prove it, she would endeavor to be kind to him, regardless of how he baited her.
What the hell had he been thinking? Gareth flopped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. The moonlight cast shadows against the wall that resembled fleshless fingers more than the branches from the ash tree outside the window.
He wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess had he not been doing twice the workload today, which caused his shift to run over. But Jamie, the man who worked at the next station, had looked so defeated when he’d come to work that morning. A man should get to be by his wife’s side while she gave birth, so Gareth had volunteered to work Jamie’s load that day and let the man go back home.
His mind was too active to fall asleep. Too many thoughts about the fair Miss Piddington. Other men might have been able to avoid provoking her. Avoid speaking to her, let alone teasing her.
Apparently he was not other men. Not only had he been unable to avoid those behaviors, he’d kissed her. He still couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t in the habit of kissing women he did not know. Hell, he wasn’t in the habit of kissing women he did know. But he’d thought that if he could kiss her once, the desire to do so would wane and he’d be able to concentrate on freeing them from their storeroom prison.
She wouldn’t stop talking, and her sweet voice had been distracting. Her beauty hadn’t helped matters. She was all inquisitive green eyes and blazing red curls. All feminine curves and clean lace. Then when he’d gotten close to her, she smelled so clean and fresh and feminine that one look at her mouth and he couldn’t resist the temptation.
Blast it, how tempting it had been. He still could feel her soft, wet mouth. He groaned and rolled onto his side, ignoring the hint of arousal building. Clearly that one kiss hadn’t sated his appetite.
The last thing he needed was to allow himself indulgences that would distract him from his main purpose. He’d finally found a factory where he felt he could move up the ranks. Shortly after he’d been hired, it had been announced that in the months to come they’d be opening some staff positions. These would be managerial, administrative duties, something he felt he could excel at. He needed to make a good impression at the factory so that when they began hiring for the staff positions, he would make his intentions known.
Precisely the reason Gareth didn’t need a woman diverting him from his plan, especially the daughter of the factory’s owner. In the future, he would ignore Meg Piddington and hope fate would be kind to keep them apart.
The following morning, Meg knocked on her father’s door.
“Come in,” he said loudly.
She stepped inside. “Father, I apologize, I completely forgot to retrieve that ledger you wanted, but I will stop by the factory after my meeting today.”
Her father lay propped on a pile of pillows, his silk dressing gown covering his tall, lean frame. She’d never seen him so helpless before; usually he was the pinnacle of health. His valet was taking good care of him, though, as his soft white hair looked newly washed and combed.
It was then that she saw Mr. Sanders, her father’s factory director. “Many apologies, I didn’t realize you were already having your own meeting,” she said.
“Not to worry dear, this is your house too,” her father said. “Sanders here was about to give me a rundown of the financials.”
She winced. “And you don’t have your ledger. I am really sorry, Papa. I can go fetch it now.”
“No, no, we’ll manage with the information we have, Meggie.” Her father nodded.
She sighed. He would always see her as a child.
“Do not fret, Miss Piddington, I have other information we can discuss today.” Henry Sanders wasn’t an overly tall man and his thin stature always left Meg wondering if the man ever ate. He had a kind face with warm eyes and a ready smile. “We’ll look at last quarter’s earnings once you have delivered the ledger to him,” Mr. Sanders said with a smile.
“He’s absolutely right,” her father said. “You run along and tell those girls I bid them hello.”
She nodded in agreement. “Thank you, as always, Mr. Sanders, for being so well prepared. We are quite fortunate to have you.” She made a mental note to keep Mr. Sanders employed when she retained control of the factory. He would be invaluable.
“If I might be so bold, he is quite lucky to have you for a daughter. And I must say you look lovely this morning,” he said, although his voice sounded far from bold.
“Thank you, sir, you are too kind.” She ran over and placed a kiss on her father’s cheek. “I must be off to my meeting.”
“Stay out of trouble, dear girl,” her father said with an indulgent twinkle in his eyes, as if he neither expected nor wished her to comply.
He knew her only too well.
Perhaps her propensity for trouble was part of the problem.
Yes, staying out of trouble is precisely what she ought to do. It was perhaps years of her foolish antics that prevente
d her father from seeing her in a different light. Well, she would remedy that today. No more trouble.
Despite her best efforts, Meg was late. Not an unusual occurrence for her, but she always strove to be prompt. Especially to her Ladies’ Amateur Sleuth Society meetings. Amelia, the creator of the society, preferred to start the meetings on time.
Meg supposed it really did not matter all that much since they were not an official society, merely four friends who had a fancy for mystery stories. Amelia had actually solved a real mystery not too long ago, and it was how she’d met her husband, Inspector Brindley. For the most part they looked for mysteries where they could, but because they were ladies of good breeding, it was a challenge. Yet still they met weekly to discuss potential cases.
Meg made her way into Amelia’s town home, the usual location for their meetings, yet a different home now. Amelia and Colin had married, and shortly after that Amelia’s father had remarried and moved in with his new wife, leaving the town home to his daughter and her husband.
She entered the parlor. It looked different as of late. Less blue and ornate. An improvement, in Meg’s opinion. Now it was more welcoming.
“Ah, there you are,” Charlotte Reed said. Charlotte was Meg’s closest friend, and Meg longed to have a private conversation with her. She wanted to tell her about getting locked up in the storeroom and the kiss. And she wanted to let Charlotte know she was swearing off trouble for the time being. Since Charlotte was her usual partner in such activities, she deserved to know.
“Many apologies on my poor timing,” Meg said. “I was assisting my father.” She claimed her favorite seat.
“How is he faring?” Willow Mabson asked. “Mr. Piddington has always been so strong.”
Meg shrugged. “He’s doing as well as can be expected. His spirits are high, and he’s alert and ornery as ever, but quite tired of lying about.”
“Well, of course he is,” Amelia said. “He’s always been so energetic.”
