by Lynne Barron
“Come along, and I’ll introduce you,” Phin offered, starting toward the couple standing in a dimly lit corner. “But bear in mind she’s mine.”
“You might want to apprise Marchant of that fact,” Remington suggested as the marquess bent down to whisper in the lady’s ear, one arm curling around her waist and his hand coming to rest on the small of her back. “More importantly, you might want to hasten along your search for a bride as the lady looks decidedly expensive. I imagine her modiste bills alone would bankrupt most men, if that preposterous gown is any indication.”
Miss O’Connell’s gown was rather preposterous, a frothy concoction of scarlet and white striped silk that left little of her slender figure to the imagination. With a tiny scrap of velvet and feathers perched atop an intricately woven coil of flaxen braids, she looked like nothing so much as a syrupy sweet peppermint stick.
Phin rather doubted she would appreciate the comparison.
Miss O’Connell looked up just then, her gaze colliding with Phin’s and one corner of her lips lifting ever so slightly. As had happened the previous night, he felt an odd shift in the atmosphere, a slight tilt that left him faintly dizzy.
“Damn, but she’s almost too beautiful,” Remington murmured. “Can you imagine waking up to that face each morning?”
Phin could imagine it all too easily, along with the nights of lovemaking proceeding those mornings. He didn’t much like knowing his friend was imagining the very same thing. “Be sure to compliment her beauty, Rem.”
“Vain, is she?”
“And in constant need of reassurance.”
“Hasn’t she a looking glass?”
“You might begin with just such a compliment,” Phin suggested as Marchant turned to follow the lady’s gaze. “Lather it on thick, as Miss O’Connell hasn’t a preference for subtlety.”
“Which works to your advantage as you haven’t a talent for anything even remotely approaching subtlety.”
“Mr. Remington,” Marchant greeted when they stopped before the pair. “And Lord Knighton, fancy meeting you here.”
“Fancy, indeed,” Phin agreed.
Fancy was the perfect description for Charles Radcliff, the Marquess of Marchant. Fancy title, fancy attire and fancy, gold-as-new-guineas curls artfully tousled and fixed with enough pomade to keep each in its proper place. And most recently, a fancy fortune he flaunted about Town when all the world knew he was heir to a nearly bankrupt dukedom.
With his fastidious appearance and fussy manners, it had always struck Phin as odd that Marchant was rumored to prefer the company of tavern wenches, scullery maids and whores worn rough around the edges. The fancy piece now clinging to his arm gave lie to the rumors and irritated Phin to an unreasonable degree.
Which perfectly explained why he began his second encounter with the lady much the same as he’d begun the first—stumbling and bumbling and launching the entire episode into the realm of the ridiculous. “Is that my bonnet you’re wearing, Miss O’Connell?”
“It isn’t, my lord, but it would look splendid on you,” Miss O’Connell replied without so much as blinking at the ludicrous salvo he’d tossed out. “Would you care to try it on?”
“Perhaps another time,” Phin answered with a chuckle.
If Marchant was the least surprised or remotely annoyed by the opening stanza of what promised to be another discordant symphony of the absurd, he gave no indication. Instead, he looked from Miss O’Connell to Phin and back again, smiling fondly.
“I don’t believe I’ve been introduced to your friend,” she prompted when no one appeared inclined to do the honors. “Or to you, Lord Knighton, now that I think on it.”
Marchant accomplished the necessary niceties with customary pomp and circumstance, leaving off her given name entirely, much to Phin’s disappointment.
“Mr. Gideon Remington,” Miss O’Connell repeated with a frown that formed a perfect arrow between her brows. “Why is your name familiar to me?”
“I’ve no idea, as I am quite certain I would remember had we met,” Remington replied, staring at the lady a bit dazedly. “I pride myself on never forgetting a beautiful woman.”
Miss O’Connell ignored the compliment entirely, turning to Marchant and nodding to indicate something or someone across the room. “That’s twice now, Charles.”
“I wasn’t paying the least bit of attention, I’m afraid. I’ll see to it straightaway, my dearest,” Marchant answered before bowing to Phin and Remington. “I’ve a pressing matter of business to attend to, if you gentlemen will excuse me a moment?”
“By all means,” Phin replied. “Your dearest is in safe hands.”
Miss O’Connell gave a quiet little snort before fastening her gaze on Remington. “Have you an interest in mining?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Remington replied, raising his voice slightly to be heard above the three-deep crowd around the brawlers. “Though it is a recent interest.”
“You’ve purchased an abandoned mine in Dartmoor, if I remember correctly. Wheal Beth Anne?”
“As I said, my interest is recent and not common knowledge.” Remington’s words held an unmistakable edge. “Which begs the question, how do you know of it?”
Miss O’Connell waved one hand through the air, as if she might disburse his suspicions along with the haze of smoke lingering in the room. “It is the relevance effect.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The relevance effect,” she repeated, not the least put out by the man’s haughty manner. “Rather like when you suddenly begin to see…oh, say a bright yellow curricle everywhere you look.”
“A bright yellow curricle?”
“After you’ve only just the day before looked at a yellow curricle in consideration of purchasing said conveyance,” Miss O’Connell said as Phin watched Marchant approach Mr. Prince to whisper a few words that had the dandy fellow flushing and shaking his head.
Odd that the marquess should have pressing business with a publican, of all people.
“The manufacturer in Surrey assured you the curricle is one of a kind,” Miss O’Connell continued, drawing Phin’s attention once more. “And you’ve no reason to disbelieve him, as you can’t recall ever having seen so unique a vehicle on the streets. Alas, the price was too dear and the workmanship not quite up to your standards, so you did not purchase the bright yellow curricle.”
Realizing where she was going with her curricle, Phin took up the explanation when she stopped to draw breath. “Still, the next thing you know, you are seeing bright yellow curricles on every street corner. So often, you might think it some sort of magic trick.”
Miss O’Connell rolled her eyes at the notion magic might play a part in any sane person’s reasoning. “Or a trick perpetrated by the manufacturer solely to provoke doubt as to your decision to forego purchasing the nifty little gig. If you haven’t a suspicious nature, you might deduce it to be a coincidence when, in fact, it is nothing more than your brain sorting and prioritizing by relevance.”
From the corner of his eye, Phin watched Remington open his mouth only to snap it closed again, clearly dumbstruck and perhaps a bit confused.
“At any given moment, on any given thoroughfare in London, your brain is taking in hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of sensations,” Miss O’Connell explained. “Sights, smells, sounds and touches. Bright lights, a shadow shaped like a finger making a rude gesture, a pink paisley waistcoat, the blur of a ball rolling by in your peripheral vision. A baby crying, carriage wheels on cobblestones, lovers whispering words too soft to be deciphered. Meat pasties cooling on a hawker’s cart, wet wool from a man’s coat as he brushes by you, the ever present miasma of the Thames. A cool breeze, a drop of rain, the warm press of bodies waiting to cross a busy street. Truly, the list is endless.”
“And quite fascinating.” Phin might have exchanged fascinating for frightening, as both applied to her agile mind.
“Your brain cannot possibly proce
ss all those varied sensations at one time, so it sorts through them all, organizing and prioritizing them by relevance. It only stands to reason that those things of significance would rise from the mire to the surface.”
“Things such as the curricle you considered purchasing,” Phin said. “Or a familiar face in the crowd.”
“But only if the owner of said face is of some significance to you.”
“I tend to pick out even the insignificant,” Phin replied, and oddly enough, it felt as if he were admitting to a flaw in his character.
“Every woman with whom you’ve discoursed, danced or dallied, not doubt,” she replied tartly. “But I am speaking to the nuances. Lemon tarts fresh out of the oven. The murmur of a boy reciting the catechism beneath his breath.”
“Triggering a happy childhood memory, perhaps,” Phin suggested.
“Perhaps,” she agreed with a small smile, there and gone in an instant. “A woman crossing the street dressed in a gown precisely the same shade of apricot as the settee in your grandmother’s front parlor.”
“The sound of a pianoforte drifting from an open window.”
“When just that morning you’d been practicing the very same tune on the cello.”
“Do you play the cello?”
“I don’t know as I play the cello so much as I play at playing the cello, like my grandfather before me. Every Tuesday morning, in fact.”
“And take in boxing matches on Wednesdays and Thursdays.”
“Yesterday was something of an anomaly, the result of a series of convoluted circumstances which wreaked havoc with my schedule. Beginning with an unexpected visit from an arrogant rake and ending with an entirely anticipated encounter with another.”
Phin barked out a laugh, enchanted by…in truth, every blessed thing about the woman. “And this evening? How is it you came to be here tonight?”
“I’ve three quid on Mr. Tyson.” The cheek of the lady, so subtle it was, a man might be forgiven for misinterpreting it as mockery.
“If you should win, I lay claim to seven pounds, six, seeing as it was my initial investment that made your wager possible,” Phin teased, only vaguely aware Remington was staring at him as if he’d lost his wits. Perhaps Phin had, for he couldn’t remember ever having enjoyed a woman’s company more. “And the odds are five to one against.”
“Au contraire, mon frere.” Miss O’Connell’s French was lamentable, the gleam of genuine amusement in her green eyes a wonder to behold. “The odds are currently four to one, and I spent your three quid on a pretty little bit of fluff, so should Tyson win the bout, I’ll pocket my twelve pounds and call it an evening well spent.”
“I’m not at all certain I believe you.”
“Which part wasn’t convincing?” she asked with the same adorable little frown, “that I actually purchased a bonnet this morning or that I’ll not play fair and give you a piece of my winnings?”
“Oh, I believe you’ll pocket every pence and leave me out in the cold,” Phin replied. “It’s the bit about the bonnet I’m having trouble believing.”
Miss O’Connell’s lips trembled, curled up along one edge, and slowly, infinitely slowly, lifted into a brilliant smile complete with a crescent-shaped dimple just to the right of her mouth.
Phin ceased breathing.
The blood rushed from his head, roaring south with alarming alacrity and settling, heavy and hard, between his legs. His cock pulsed and twitched, his body’s instantaneous reaction leaving him lightheaded with lust.
A queer little moment of silence followed. Miss O’Connell watched Phin with an odd sort of focus, as if seeing him for the first time. Her brain sorting and categorizing his features for relevance. Would she see the sincerity of his interest, or only the desire she was far too intelligent not to recognize, and far too discriminating to take into account when weighing the choice hovering on the air between them?
Gideon Remington shattered both the silence and the moment. “As fascinating as your hypothesis regarding brain functions may be, I don’t know as you’ve quite answered the question as to how you know of my recent purchase of Wheal Beth Anne.”
Miss O’Connell blinked as if awaking from the same foggy moment and turned her attention to Remington. “I might have had occasion to peruse the list of persons holding shares in the British Consolidated Mining Corporation and their contributions, including mines, materials and manpower. Had I not seen the list, I might have looked at you and seen only another pretty face rather than someone of significance with whom I might enter into conversation. Voila! The relevance effect.”
“Never mind the relevance effect,” Remington replied. “You’ve seen the list of shareholders?”
“Not the major shareholders, as that particular list is kept under lock and key. In the Tower of London, to hear Mr. King’s clerk tell it. Your name appeared on the list of middling shareholders.”
“Middling?” Rem repeated in some shock. “I’ve poured nearly my entire fortune into the venture.”
“Don’t feel too bad, Mr. Remington,” Miss O’Connell replied crisply. “My pin money barely qualifies me for the piddling list.”
“There’s a piddling list?”
“Pages long,” she confirmed.
“Who is Mr. King?” Phin asked when what he really wanted to know was why she’d tossed out an invitation for the man to ogle her bosom.
“Mr. King is a man of astounding business acumen and financial foresight,” Remington answered. “A pioneer of industry and commerce with a talent for transforming struggling businesses into thriving enterprises.”
“Yes, but who is he?” Phin persisted, not the least satisfied with his friend’s answer, as it did not address the actual question at hand. “Is he the younger son of a peer, a self-made man, old or young, married or widowed? Who is the man?”
“I’ve no idea, as I’ve yet to make his acquaintance,” Remington replied. “Our business has been conducted through intermediaries, solicitors and clerks and what have you.”
Phin turned to Miss O’Connell to find her watching him with patent amusement and perhaps a certain expectancy, as if he’d once more proven himself predictable.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “My name is on the piddling list, remember?”
“The question you ought to be asking is: What is the British Consolidated Mining Corporation,” Remington said, not giving Phin time to actually ask any such question, even had he been of a mind to do so. “It’s a consortium of sorts. Investors, mine owners, refineries, smelting factories, railway and shipping companies, all working together to increase production and distribute both the expenditures and profits in a more proportionate manner than current standards of practice dictate.”
“Good God, you’re looking to corner the copper industry.”
“Iron and tin as well.”
“You’d do well to sell off everything of value you own not nailed down, entailed or otherwise encumbered, and invest the lot of it in the venture,” Miss O’Connell suggested.
“It sounds a bit risky.” Phin had formed something of a love-hate relationship with risk since acceding to the title, in that he liked it too well for his peace of mind, or his pockets; thus, he avoided it whenever possible.
“There can be no reward without a certain amount of risk,” Remington retorted.
“Perhaps after the harvest,” Phin said, when what he really meant was after he married.
“Come autumn, it’ll be too late. Already a promising iron vein has been discovered in Cornwall. When the first load is extracted, the selling of shares will be prohibited.”
“As will trading, wagering, gifting and collateralizing,” Miss O’Connell added, shrugging when both men looked at her in surprise. “The bylaws were right there in the same drawer as the middling and piddling lists.”
“How precisely did you come to have occasion to peruse said lists?” Remington’s smile clearly said he’d recognized her quick wit and cheeky humor. Damn it a
ll, but the man could easily afford Miss O’Connell, demented modiste and all.
“Today was another day of peculiar abnormalities to my schedule, actually,” Miss O’Connell replied with an answering smile which she generously shared with Phin, much to his relief. “Beginning with the purchase of a bonnet—quite dear it was, three quid it cost me—and quickly progressing to the bargaining away of the same.”
“You traded my bonnet for a look at King’s books?” Phin demanded on a mock growl.
“Surely you aren’t surprised, my lord,” Miss O’Connell said. “Not after I traded Kate’s virtue for the three quid required to purchase it.”
“I wasn’t after Miss Price’s virtue,” Phin protested, surprised she still believed that bit of nonsense after the moment they’d just shared—a moment fraught with questions of a carnal nature. “I wasn’t even after an introduction to the lady.”
“Who is Miss Price?” Remington asked.
“A lady far too wise to be taken in by your friend’s less than subtle charms,” Miss O’Connell retorted, her eyes sparkling with wicked intent. “Though I dare say you’d capture Kate’s attention and hold it a moment, Mr. Remington.”
“I’m afraid my attentions are otherwise engaged,” Remington replied with an air of one resigned to his fate, if not altogether happy about it.
“Engaged you say?” Marchant repeated, rejoining their group. “As in to be married?”
“Near enough,” Remington answered, his gaze shifting to Lord Dryden and his friends as they made their rambunctious way into the already crowded back room. “I’d best do my duty. Shall we, Knighton?”
“I’m afraid you’re on your own,” Phin replied with a grin. “I’ve a mind to stay and watch Miss O’Connell lose three pounds.”
Miss O’Connell waited until Remington had weaved his way through the crowd before turning on Phin with a scowl. “Never say you’ve wagered on Mr. Tyson?” She wore peevish with the same panache she’d exhibited in ruffled feathers. “Honestly, when will gentlemen learn to leave off wagering funds they cannot afford to lose?”
