And Then He Kissed Her

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “That is not precisely what I said.”

  “Let’s not split hairs. It’s what you believe.”

  He didn’t argue. Instead he gave her a curious look. “Does it matter so much to you what I believe?”

  “When I worked for you, it mattered. I respected your judgment. I trusted you with my writing, something very dear to me, hoping one day you would deem it worthy of publication. All the while, you couldn’t be bothered even to read any of it, much less judge it fairly.”

  “I did read some of it, and I am not going to explain myself again on that point. Nor am I going to justify the opinion I formed.” He paused and studied her face for a moment before he spoke again. “Miss Dove,” he said and leaned forward in his chair, “I rejected your work because I honestly did not see its appeal to the public. But it’s obvious I made an error of judgment. I was unable to look at your work objectively.”

  “Because you do not enjoy reading it, you could not understand that other people would.”

  “Just so. You called me closed-minded, and I have come to realize that in regard to your work, at least, it was a fair accusation.”

  Emma was slightly mollified by that. “And now you want to publish it?”

  “Yes.” He held up his hands, palms toward her. “I freely admit I do not understand what is so fascinating about decorating a flat or planning menus for wedding breakfasts.” He paused, lowered his hands, and leaned back in his chair. “But given your success, I would be a fool not to acknowledge that such fascination exists and find a way to take advantage of it. You uncovered a need, Miss Dove, a need I did not see. Wherever there is a need, there is also the potential to make money. I don’t have to like your work in order to publish it.”

  “You mean, now that I have proven I can make money, you wish to profit from what you have rejected and ridiculed?” Emma stood up. “No. I shall take my column to another publisher, one who respects my work and appreciates it.”

  She expected him to laugh at that declaration, but he did not. “You are free to take your work elsewhere, of course,” he said as he rose to his feet. “Should you make that choice, I cannot stop you. Pity, though,” he added as she started to turn away. “If you leave, I won’t be able to expand your column into an entire section of its own.”

  She froze, then slowly turned back around. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I had thought to devote an entire section of the Social Gazette to matters of etiquette and style.” He shook his head. “A great business opportunity lost. Such a shame.”

  She frowned, studying his face, searching for any sign he was being disingenuous, but she could find none. “Are you truly serious?”

  “I told you, I am always serious about business.”

  Emma swallowed hard. She sat back down. “What, exactly, did you have in mind?”

  “What ever you like. Etiquette, shopping, recipes, clever ideas like pink flamingos and such. It would be your decision, for you would be in charge of all content. You could conduct interviews, dispense advice, answer questions from readers, share cookery recipes. Just keep the public’s interest. That is all I ask.”

  Emma felt a rush of excitement so powerful she could scarcely breathe.

  “I know that Barringer kept your identity a secret,” he went on, “and although I hate to give the man credit for anything, in this case I must agree with him. Your credibility would be hurt if people knew your background. Besides, secrecy does add to your appeal.”

  Emma did not reply. Creative ideas were ricocheting around in her brain so fast, she couldn’t think of anything of say.

  “Before you decide, Miss Dove, it’s only fair to warn you that I intend to be heavily involved in this project, as I am with all new ventures. Because I am changing other aspects of the Social Gazette in order to make its style more modern and fresh, and because I just paid Barringer an enormous amount of money for this paper, I shall oversee all aspects of it for the foreseeable future, including your section. You would report directly to me, and I would edit your writing myself.”

  Emma’s excitement dimmed with those last few words, and she came to her senses. “It will never work,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like you.” The moment she said it, Emma pressed her gloved fingers to her mouth, horrified by her lack of tact. Aunt Lydia would have been appalled.

  But to her amazement, Marlowe began to laugh. “I shudder to think how little money I’d make if I only did business with people who liked me, Miss Dove.”

  She lowered her hand. “That was rude. Forgive me. I should not have said it.”

  “But you meant it.” His amusement faded, and he tilted his head, studying her. His expression became thoughtful.

  Under this scrutiny, Emma shifted in her chair. She didn’t know what to say. She’d probably said quite enough already.

  “Despite the recent friction between us, I always thought you and I rubbed along rather well,” he murmured. “Was I wrong?”

  She sighed, knowing the damage was done. “No,” she answered. “But we got on so well because I never questioned you. I was your secretary, paid to follow your orders. My duties had nothing to do with my personal opinion of you or how you conduct your life. To have expressed my opinions would have been an unpardonable impertinence.”

  “You seem to have little trouble expressing them now.” He laughed again, but this time his laughter had a hollow ring to it. “I know there are men with whom I’ve done business who have no fondness for me, but it never occurred to me that you had any dislike for me.”

  She hadn’t known it, either, until the words had come bursting out of her mouth. “It isn’t dislike, I suppose, but more of a lack of common ground,” she began, trying to explain what she didn’t quite understand herself.

  “Don’t qualify your honest opinion for the sake of politeness.”

  “I’m not. It’s just that we are very different people, you and I, and we see things from a very different perspective. You think what I write is silly and pointless, but that is partly because you’re a peer. Peers can be rude, and no one cares. Peers can bend the rules, sometimes even break them. People in my class of life don’t dare behave that way. This is particularly true of women. When I was a girl, my father was very strict. He was a retired army sergeant and I had—” Emma stopped, feeling her throat start to close up.

  “You had what?” he prompted when she paused.

  It was hard to talk about personal matters with anyone, especially about her life with her father, but she owed Marlowe some sort of explanation for her opinion. It was only fair.

  She forced herself to go on. “I had what you would no doubt deem a rather…rigid childhood. There was no teasing or any such nonsense in my father’s house hold. So to me, you seem glib and brash and insincere. Everything seems like play to you, so it’s hard for me to know when you are serious and when you are making fun. And I think you have very little consideration for others, not buying presents for people yourself, your lack of punctuality, that sort of thing. And your life, I cannot help but feel, is a terribly dissolute one—your disdain for marriage, your liaisons with cancan dancers and other women of low moral character.”

  He laughed again. “Well, a liaison with a woman of high moral character would hardly serve the intended purpose.”

  Emma supposed that was a joke.

  His grin faded and he gave a little cough. “Yes, well, so you disapprove of me. In addition to being manipulative and insincere, I am glib, brash, inconsiderate, unpunctual, and a rake. Did I leave anything out?”

  Put that way, it sounded quite harsh. She hadn’t meant it to be such a thorough condemnation, but then, she wasn’t accustomed to criticizing anyone. “It’s not as if you have much regard for me, either,” she hastened to say, terribly uncomfortable. “I know you think I’m dry as dust and have no sense of humor.”

  “Well, you can’t blame me for that. You never laugh at my jokes.”
<
br />   That did make her smile a little. “Perhaps because they aren’t amusing?”

  “Yes, yes, all right. I did leave myself wide open for that, didn’t I?”

  She became serious again. “The point is that I cannot go back to the sort of…of unequal arrangement we had. For what you propose to work, I would have to feel free to express my strongest opinions as a writer and you would have to respect them.” With every word, Emma’s spirits sank a little more. “We would have to look at each other in a new way. Not as an employer and his secretary, not as a lord and an army sergeant’s daughter, but instead as two people whose opinions and ideas are equal in importance and value. We should have to regard each other with mutual respect and consideration.”

  “You don’t think that’s possible?”

  Emma thought of all the times he’d taken her for granted. All the times she’d been too intimidated to speak up. “No.”

  There was a long pause, then he nodded. “You’re right, I suppose. You don’t like me, and I don’t really like what you write, so it does seem rather a hopeless business.” He gestured to the door. “I’ll walk you downstairs.”

  Neither of them spoke as he escorted her out of the office and down to the foyer. They paused by the front doors.

  “I am going across the street to my offices,” he said, “but I can arrange for a hansom to take you home.”

  “That isn’t necessary. I am sure the Social Gazette will do very well under your leadership. I hope so,” she added and meant it.

  “Thank you. And I am confident you will easily find another publisher for your column.” He opened one of the front doors and after she had walked through, he followed her outside. “I shall see that you are compensated for the column you gave me today. I wish you every success, Miss Dove.” He bowed to her. “Good-bye.”

  Emma watched Marlowe’s broad-shouldered back as he turned and walked away, and a heavy tightness pinched her chest. She told herself she had made a sensible decision. If she had agreed to write for him, allowed her work to be edited by him, it would have been a disaster, for they were like chalk and cheese. They should never agree on anything. She’d been very sensible to refuse.

  There it was. That horrid word again. Sensible.

  “Wait!” she cried and started after him.

  He paused and turned at the corner, waiting as she approached and halted before him. “If we do this, what would be my compensation?”

  This abrupt turnabout caused him to raise an eyebrow, but he didn’t question her sanity. “You would receive ten percent of the net advertising revenue for your section,” he answered.

  She thought of all the times she’d negotiated merchants down to a reasonable price and decided this was no different. She decided she was going to ask for what she really deserved. “Fifty percent would be fair.”

  “Fair is not a consideration. I am taking all the risk.”

  “I’ve heard you say many times the higher the risk, the higher the potential reward. And you love risk. You thrive on it. Besides, the Gazette has had a significant increase in popularity because of my writing, and I deserve to be rewarded for that.”

  “Believe me, I have already paid dearly for that popularity, which might not last. The public has taken a fancy to you, granted, but that could be a transient thing, here today and gone tomorrow. If that happens, I’m the one who loses thousands of pounds. I’ll give you twenty percent.”

  “Forty,” she countered. “I think I can keep the public’s interest for a long time to come.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound, Emma.

  “And since we are negotiating terms,” she rushed on, “I want it understood that regardless of your station or mine, regardless of our history, you will treat me as if I were your equal from this point on. I won’t make you coffee, and I won’t buy gifts on your behalf, and I won’t be responsible for whether or not you make meetings on time, ours or anyone else’s. And when it comes to the editorial decisions, you will have to trust my instincts, not yours.”

  “I promise to keep an open mind, but if I feel you’re rambling on too long about tableware or printing too many pieces about Afternoon-at-Homes, I will have no compunction about saying so. I’ve never really critiqued your work as an editor would, but from now on you’ll receive detailed, honest criticism from me. I might seem glib to you, but I can be brutal when I need to be, so be prepared to take it on the chin, Miss Dove. If you can do that, I’ll give you twenty-five percent. Are we agreed?”

  She looked down at the hand he held out to her, a big hand with long, strong fingers. She might not like him much or approve of the way he lived his life, and she thought half of what he said was utter nonsense, but she knew one thing. When Marlowe shook hands on something, he kept his word. She clasped his hand in hers, and in doing so, she grabbed on to a dream bigger than any she could have imagined for herself. “Agreed.”

  There was a reassuring strength in his grip, but she felt dizzy. This had happened so fast, she found it hard to take it all in.

  He let go of her hand. “We’ll continue to adhere to a Saturday publication date. I’ll need four full pages of content from you each and every week. Can you do that?”

  “I can do it.” With those words, all the exhilaration she’d felt upon first hearing his plans came flooding back. “What I can’t do is believe this is really happening.”

  “Believe it, Miss Dove. I want to put out the first issue of the new Social Gazette three weeks from Saturday. Since your last column’s gone to press, and you just gave me one for the following week, I’ll need one more ordinary column for the interim period.” When she nodded, he went on, “I’ll also need an outline of your proposed content for our first issue by Monday. Once I approve it, you’ll have one week to give me the articles. I’ll need two days to go over them, so we’ll meet on Wednesday to discuss my edits. Get your revised content to my secretary by Thursday night. I’ll approve it the following day before it goes to press. And bring me your outlines for the next issue the following Monday. Does all that make sense?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. From then on, we’ll meet on Mondays so you can submit your work and outlines, and on Wednesdays to discuss revising them. I hope that suits you?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “We’ll go over your first edits a week from Wednesday. I don’t have any engagements or appointments scheduled for that day as yet.” His brow creased with a frown. “At least, I don’t think I do. With the secretary I have now, I can never be quite sure.”

  “What time shall we meet and where?”

  “Nine o’clock in the morning. My office.”

  She laughed. “Don’t be late.”

  “Without you, I’m late for everything nowadays.” He glanced up and down the street, looking for a break in the heavy traffic so that he could cross. “But I shall do my best to be punctual, if only to improve your opinion of me.”

  She turned away, but she’d barely taken half a dozen steps along the sidewalk before his voice called to her.

  “Miss Dove?”

  She looked over her shoulder to find him smiling at her.

  “If you had stuck to your guns,” he said, “I’d have given you fifty percent.”

  “If you had stuck to your guns,” she answered at once, “you’d only be paying ten.”

  Harry gave a shout of laughter. By God, Miss Dove had wit. Who’d ever have thought it? He watched her as she started down the sidewalk, and he realized that was another facet of her character he’d never seen until now.

  She’d been spot on about his assessment of her. He had thought her dry as dust, but her words of a moment ago and the grin that had accompanied them told Harry he’d been wrong about that, too. And about the appeal of her writing. In fact, he’d been wrong about a lot of things.

  He’d always thought her rather plain, at least until the day she’d resigned and he had discovered there were red glints in her hair and gold sparks in her eyes. He thought of ho
w she’d looked moments ago, breathless and laughing as she’d told him not to be late, and he realized that he’d never seen her laugh before. A great pity, that, for when laughter lit up Miss Dove’s face, she wasn’t plain at all.

  One thing was clear. She didn’t like him. That took him back, rather. Women usually liked him. Without being unduly conceited, he knew that. On the other hand, Miss Dove was giving him cause to doubt a lot of the things he thought he knew.

  It was obvious she had drawn some strong conclusions about his character over the years—his flaws, in particular, and he’d had no idea of it. She disapproved of him, yet she had worked for him for five years. Why?

  Intrigued, Harry studied her slim, straight back as she walked away, and it occurred to him that in this new equal relationship they were supposed to have, he was at a distinct disadvantage. She had made a far greater study of him than he had of her.

  It was clear he was going to have to even things up in that regard and do some studying of his own. His gaze lowered speculatively to the curve of her hips. All in the name of equality, of course.

  Chapter 8

  Chivalry is required of a gentleman. It also has some very pleasant rewards.

  Lord Marlowe

  The Bachelor’s Guide, 1893

  Miss Dove was always efficient, and Harry was not surprised when he received all her articles for their first issue three days early. After reading them, he realized two things. First, she truly could write. Second, no matter how excellent her descriptions, no matter how warm and friendly her narrative, he would never, ever understand why napkin rings made out of lavender fronds or what young ladies were allowed to eat at dinner parties made for interesting reading.

  Still, because of her already-proven success, he used as light a hand as possible in editing her work, and he tried to keep an open mind about the content, but he did have some definite criticisms for her that needed to be addressed, as well as some significant changes he wanted made, and he decided to return her work to her for revision as quickly as possible to give her more time. He could have accomplished this by messenger, but he decided it would be much better for their new spirit of cooperation if he explained his opinions and suggestions in person.