by Lynne Barron
The woman was lovely. Startlingly lovely. Breathtakingly, terrifyingly, almost painfully lovely.
Alabaster skin provided the canvas upon which exquisite, delicately angled cheekbones had been sculpted, creating faint hollows tinged with the slightest wash of color. There was a fragile defiance in the tilt of her square jaw, in the slope of her perfectly straight nose, in the elegant slash of her sable brows.
And holy God, those eyes. Large and luminous and as green as spring leaves, surrounded by a thick fringe of lashes as dark as her defiant brows. And damned if those gorgeous eyes weren’t alight with amusement and a hint of contempt.
Miss Price caught sight of Phin and smiled, slow and sweet and sardonic. As if she found the world to be a wondrous place but also something of a merry jest. It was the same sort of look one might witness on the Earl of Dunaway’s face at any given time.
Arthur Maxwell pushed his way through the crowd, bowed over Lady Annalise’s gloved hand and led her off to join the throng gathered around the dance floor.
All without a word of introduction to either Miss Price or Miss O’Connell.
“We’ve been left in a bit of an awkward position.” Phin aimed for gallant and amiable but suspected he’d overshot the mark and landed in the vicinity of flippant. But damn it all, he was inexplicably unsettled to be standing so near to the lady after more than an hour spent circling the ballroom in hopes of the same.
Miss O’Connell didn’t appear to be the least bit put out by the ungainly situation Phin had created with his overzealous approach. “Tsk, tsk, and you were doing so well.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“All that wandering around the ballroom as if you hadn’t a specific destination in mind,” she replied, her voice threaded with laughter and a faint accent of indeterminate origin, “only to come up short of the mark.”
“Was I as obvious as all that?”
“I saw you coming before you’d taken three steps into the ballroom.”
“I suppose I’d best work on my technique a bit,” he replied, entertained by her sharp wit and sharper tongue. “I should hate to be thought predictable.”
Miss O’Connell’s gaze flitted over the angry swelling around his right eye. “You might consider working on your technique in the ring as well.”
“Would you believe me if I told you the other man came away in worse shape?” Phin was only vaguely aware of Miss Price following the exchange, her head swinging to and fro as if taking in a rousing game of lawn tennis.
“I doubt very much I would believe anything you said,” Miss O’Connell answered, “even if I hadn’t been there to witness your ignoble fall.”
“You wound me.” Phin laid a hand over his heart, and something flickered in her eyes, temper or perhaps derision, there and gone in an instant.
“But for that hideous, mottled bruise of which you seem unduly proud, you hardly look wounded, Lord Knighton.”
“It seems introductions are not needed, Miss O’Connell,” he replied, hoping to tease a genuine smile from her luscious lips. “In light of that fortunate set of circumstances, perhaps you would do me the honor?”
One dark eyebrow took flight, winging up in a gesture as haughty as it was fetching. “I hardly think so.”
For a woman who knew her way around back rooms of pubs and tossed out offers to display her bosom, she was a prickly little thing. High strung, just as Max had warned. Some spark of mischief he ought to have outgrown years ago took hold of Phin, and he found himself wanting to ruffle her feathers good and proper. “Did you know there is a wager on the books at White’s in regard to you?”
“There is no such thing.” Miss O’Connell wore ruffled feathers with aplomb, only a hint of a blush sweeping along her cheeks.
“One hundred pounds to the man who makes you laugh.”
“I assure you men often make me laugh,” she drawled. “Nearly every time I venture out among them, in fact.”
“Quick-witted, as well as beautiful. My favorite sort of lady.” Phin suspected he’d gone too far, too fast when Miss O’Connell huffed out an exasperated breath. “Predictable?”
“Beyond predictable, bordering on calculated,” she agreed. “You might consider adding a bit of subtlety, if not sincerity, to your repertoire. Unless you’re after a bride who is both deep in the pockets and dimwitted. In which case, by all means, lather it on thick.”
Christ, was everyone in London aware of his deplorable financial situation and the method he’d decided upon to solve it?
“Kate will not be taken in by such trite blandishments,” Miss O’Connell added, wholly unaware of Phin’s mounting dismay. “Nor will your particular brand of witty banter lure me into facilitating an introduction.”
Phin barked out a laugh, surprising both himself and the lady standing before him slowly and systematically shredding his vanity to ribbons. “You think I am after an introduction to Miss Price?”
“Excuse me, but I am standing right here,” Miss Price interjected, only to be ignored.
“Why else waste your abundant charms on me?” Miss O’Connell asked.
“Has it truly not occurred to you that you were my final destination?” Phin posed the question with something very much like anticipation quivering in his belly. “That when I dragged Maxwell through the crowd it was your acquaintance I’d hoped to make, you I’d hoped to take for a spin around the dance floor?”
“Well-delivered, my lord,” Miss O’Connell retorted, lips twitching. “If I didn’t know better, I might almost believe you.”
“Have you never peered into a looking glass?”
The same flicker of emotion, fury or scorn, flashed in her eyes, only to be quickly extinguished, leaving her looking back at him with cool disdain.
Phineas Nathaniel Griffith, Viscount Knighton, knew well enough when to admit defeat, however temporarily. Tossing his hands in the air, he affected a chagrined grimace. “I give over, Miss O’Connell. What will it take for you to introduce me to Miss Price?”
“Three quid,” she replied with surprising alacrity.
“Three quid?” Phin and Miss Price repeated in unison.
“I’ve my eye on a pretty feathered bonnet,” Miss O’Connell replied, as if that bit of feminine nonsense was justification for what amounted to extortion.
“You expect me to pay you three pounds for the privilege of an introduction to Miss Price?” Phin wasn’t certain whether to be amused by her cheek or alarmed by her mercenary tendencies.
“Again, just here,” Miss Price said with a gurgle of laughter.
“You paid the same to go a few rounds with Mr. Posey,” Miss O’Connell reminded him. “And you hadn’t any hope of turning that particular tryst into a profitable endeavor. Consider it an investment in your future.”
“It’s highway robbery,” he argued.
“It certainly is,” she agreed without an ounce of shame. “Especially considering Kate will skewer you with her own brand of wit and rake you over the coals with compliments before she chews you up and spits out your bones for kindling. All while smiling in your too-pretty face. Why, I ought to pay you three quid for the pleasure of watching you squirm.”
Phin hadn’t any choice in the matter; not if he hoped to survive the encounter with a shred of pride at his disposal. Reaching into his breast pocket, he extracted a handful of pound notes, the last of his ready money. Peeling off three pounds, he held them out, daring her to take them.
“My dear Lord Knighton,” Miss O’Connell purred, nimbly plucking the offering from his fingers. “Might I have the honor of presenting you to Miss Mary Katherine Price?”
Then without so much as a by your leave, the wily woman—three pounds wealthier than she’d been before he’d allowed his misbegotten conceit to lure him across the ballroom—turned away in a cloud of silver silk. Just before she disappeared into the crowd loitering around the punchbowl, Phin heard a soft snort easily recognizable as aborted laughter and wondered if she’d cut
off the surprisingly girlish sound on the off chance there truly was a wager on the books.
“Christ, could I possibly have bungled that any worse?”
It wasn’t until Miss Price spoke softly beside him that Phin recollected her presence. “You did rather make a muck of it, my lord.”
Chapter Four
Miss Harry O’Connell was a creature of habit, a follower of schedules and a woman who adamantly refused to waste so much as a minute on useless endeavors, maudlin thoughts or impossible expectations.
So it came as something of a surprise to Harry when she awoke the next morning with the bedcovers tangled around her legs and the remnants of a dream featuring Viscount Knighton stripped down to his trousers dancing around Lord Dunaway’s ballroom hovering around the edges of her sleep-muddled mind.
The handsome wastrel had no business starring in Harry’s dreams, and the fact he’d put in an uninvited appearance felt like an unpardonable invasion of her privacy. Yet one more reason to distrust the rogue, as if his pretty features, effortless charm and cocky self-assurance weren’t reason enough.
Kicking the covers to the foot of the bed and rolling onto her back, Harry opened her eyes to find her bedchamber shrouded in shadows. Rain beat against the roof and drummed against the windows, echoing around the cozy little room that had once served as an office and storage space for a dance school catering to the sons and daughters of Wellclose Square’s dwindling middle class population. Monsieur Savoy had long since moved his business to the more prosperous environs of Bloomsbury, leaving the cavernous front studio and back rooms vacant for years before Harry had rented them from Mr. Preston, proprietor of the book shop below.
A faint scratching and squeaking penetrated the noise of the summer storm raging outside and, recognizing the sound immediately, Harry scrambled from the bed. Dashing across the room, she grabbed up a square of linen neatly folded on the chest of drawers and headed for one of two windows facing the back alley. She yanked open the drapes and came face to face with a spitting mad, sopping wet, marmalade striped cat. Stretched up on his hind legs, front paws pressed to the glass as if he meant to break through the barrier, the feline hissed a demand to be let in from the rain.
“Oh, Precious,” Harry murmured, jiggling the lock until it gave way and throwing the window open. “You poor darling.”
The cat hopped off the window sill, landing with a wet thump against Harry’s chest. Only years of practice saved her from a mauling. Quickly bundling the rangy old tomcat in the fluffy dry cloth much the same way one would swaddle a babe, she cuddled him close.
“What were you thinking?” Harry demanded, looking down into his pale blue eyes. “Don’t you know any better than to cease chasing every she-cat in a nine-block radius at the first rumble of thunder?”
The cat only stared back at her and began to purr, not the least perturbed by the gentle rebuke, seeing as he’d heard one variation or another of the same all too frequently over the preceding four years. Since the first time he’d jumped through the window while Harry was unpacking her meager belongings the day she’d taken up residence.
She’d christened him Precious Pincushion in an uncharacteristic moment of pure whimsy and proceeded to spoil him rotten, setting up a nest of velvet blankets in the corner for his bed and feeding him only the choicest fish and beef in a silver bowl that had once belonged to the Duke of Montclaire.
After three days together, Precious Pincushion had disappeared only to reappear five days later looking none the worse for wear. It had taken Harry a month of alternately worrying and welcoming the little beast before she’d realized he likely went by a dozen names, one from each of the soft-hearted women in the same nine-block radius who regularly fed, housed and pampered him.
By then it was too late; Harry had gone and fallen in love with the fickle, faithless feline. Never mind he had more mistresses than most gentlemen could lay claim, barring those gentlemen who laid claim to every woman they encountered.
“Would none of your other lady-loves let you in?” she crooned, carrying his skinny, vibrating body to his bed. Quickly rubbing him dry, she tucked a corner of soft velvet over him and rose to see about fixing his breakfast. “One of these days, I’ll cease turning a blind eye to your wandering ways.”
Precious wiggled deeper into the bedding and closed one eye, peering up at her from the other with all too obvious skepticism. And why not? They both knew the warning for the lie it was.
After fixing the randy tomcat a breakfast fit for a king, Harry donned a thick old robe and hurried down the front stairs. Pushing open the door, she stepped under the awning and scanned the street, nearly empty but for those poor souls who must wake before the dawn to hurry through the downpour to whatever position they held in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables.
A boy dressed in mud-spattered breeches and a worn wool coat, cap pulled low over his ears and arms full of newspapers, spotted her and gave a shrill whistle. In less than ten seconds, seven other boys joined him to converge upon Harry where she waited.
“Mr. Morton said as how I’m not to give over a paper ‘lessin’ you’ve the blunt to pay outright,” Mickey Riley informed Harry even as he handed her a copy of The Times. “On account of you’re a full month in ‘rears.”
“Three weeks and four days,” Harry corrected, tucking the paper beneath her arm. “Tell Mr. Morton I’ll have my account current on Tuesday.”
“Blimey, how you figure on doing that, Miss Harry?” Jackie White asked, scratching at his nose with a rolled up copy of The Sentinel. “What with rent coming due?”
Harry might have asked how a boy of seven knew Tuesday was rent day for nearly every inhabitant of St. Sebastian Place, but as Jackie’s mother ran a bath house beneath the tobacco shop on the corner, he likely knew more about the minutia of a mercantile existence than most full-grown men.
“Never you mind,” Harry replied, plucking a paper that hadn’t made contacted with his nose from the stack pressed to his chest. “You can tell Mr. Thorn he’ll have his funds on Tuesday as well.”
“You don’t need to worry none ‘bout my pop,” Nick Luther piped up, handing over a copy of The Gazette with a grin. “He said as how he knows you’re good for it, one way or t’other.”
His statement was met with snickers from the other boys, and a few blushes, all of which Harry ignored as she gathered up the morning’s news, wished them a collective good day, and turned to rush back upstairs to begin her day in the same fashion she began every day: Collecting knowledge about everything and everyone of importance in London.
Thus, it came as no surprise to her maid-of-all-work when she found her mistress comfortably ensconced in her chair, a newspaper spread across the desk before her and a mug of tea steaming at her elbow.
“Morning, Pru,” Harry greeted without looking up from a pithy article on the expansion of the railway between Leeds and Liverpool. “You’re late.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you none,” Prudence McGuire replied, carefully balancing a tray on which sat a plate of coddled eggs and thick slabs of bacon. “It’s raining cats and dogs—”
“You know the rules, Pru,” Harry interrupted. “No quaint clichés, trite idioms or tired euphemisms before noon.”
“The green’s little better than a swamp, so I had to take the long way ‘round,” Pru continued, undisturbed by the reminder. “Might be you’ll want to remain indoors this morning.”
“I’ve a million things to do before tea time,” Harry replied. “Have you any idea the amount of grain required to feed a crew of railroad workers?”
“I can’t say as I’ve ever pondered the matter.”
“Neither have I, but it is certainly worth pondering.”
Pru set the tray on the edge of the newspaper, smack dab over an advertisement for Mrs. Hathaway’s Emporium on the corner of St. Sebastian Place and Smithfield Street.
Harry reached for a strip of bacon, looking up to flash a grin
at the big-boned, ruddy-faced woman who’d kept house, among other things, for her the last four years. “I’ve already seen it, Pru.”
“All the same, there’s no point in you getting riled up all over again.”
“I am quite over my pique with Josephine Hathaway,” Harry replied, nibbling on the fatty end of crispy pork. “In fact, I’ve three pounds just burning a hole in my reticule, and there’s the prettiest feathered confection in her shop window.”
“Josie’s eyes are likely to pop right out of the sockets, she sees you crossing her threshold with three quid to spend,” Pru replied with a braying laugh. “But won’t that bonnet look right nice with your celery-green and cream striped day dress?”
“Is it cold enough I’ll need a pelisse, or will a spencer do?”
“I made do without either, but seeing as you’ve no flesh on your bones, you’d do well with the spencer. I’ll drag it out for a good brushing while you finish your breakfast. Mind you eat some of those eggs with that there bacon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You want I should ponder the matter of the grain while you’re out and about today?” Pru’s voice was muffled by the fact her head, and most of her torso, was inside the armoire across the room. “Seems Mr. Johnston might know a thing or two about it, seeing as he worked laying rail some years back.”
“Would you mind terribly?”
“Not a bit of it,” Pru replied. “What’s a wandering hand or two when measured against the possible profit to be made feeding hungry railroad men? But how are you thinking to come by this grain?”
“I recently made the acquaintance of a gentleman with fields of the stuff. He only needs an investor to offset the cost of harvesting it come autumn.”
Pru hauled a cream brocade spencer from the closet and turned around to face her mistress. “You sure you’ve funds to spare just now? What with every ha’penny your grandmother left you tied up with in the mining venture.”
“I have precisely three pounds at present,” Harry admitted with a laugh at her own foolishness. “And more sense than to invest in agricultural endeavors with their incumbent challenges, weather being the worst but not the least of them. This sort of short-term, high-risk scheme is right up Charles’s alley. He has friends and colleagues well-placed to ensure he is awarded the necessary contracts, and he has the wherewithal to withstand any losses, should it prove a poor investment.”
