by Lynne Barron
If Harry were to judge by Teddy’s next utterance, rogues contemplated how best to deliver unsavory news. “There is a wager in the books at White’s in regard to you.”
It took Harry a moment to process the words, to catalogue them and sort them into their rightful place. And when she had, she whipped her head around to glare at the scoundrel to her right. “Honestly, Lord Knighton, if you need one hundred pounds so desperately, Teddy will lend it to you.”
“I didn’t place any wagers,” Knighton protested, raising his hands as if to defend against attack. “I haven’t so much as stepped foot inside White’s in weeks.”
“I don’t know who placed the bet,” Teddy said, “but I saw it myself just yesterday.”
“What on earth were you doing in that particular bastion of pretention and privilege?”
Teddy ignored the question altogether. “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t surprised?”
“Very little in life truly surprises me,” Harry replied. “Do let me guess. One hundred pounds to the man who makes me laugh?”
“If that were the wager, I’ve no doubt you would invite me to tickle you right here on the street so long as I’d split my winnings with you,” Teddy said, steering her around two loitering ladies peering into a shop window. “No, the wager was in relation to the time it will take Marchant to install you in the house he recently leased in Hanover Square.”
“Me, in Mayfair?” Harry asked with a laugh that apparently was of no monetary value. “What are the odds?”
“The wager was written in horse racing terms, of all things,” Teddy answered. “A lot of nonsense about bridles and chomping at the bit and home stretches, but from what I gathered, the odds are ten to one you’ll be his mistress by the end of the month, six to one on the middle of June, and even stakes on a race to the finish of the Season.”
“If you’ve ten pounds to spare, would you mind terribly betting against my installation in Mayfair altogether?”
“I bet twenty,” Teddy said, laying a hand over hers on his arm and giving her fingers a little squeeze. “I’ll happily split my winnings with you, seeing as I’ve the inside track on that particular race.”
“Ah, here we are,” Harry announced.
“Hathaway’s Emporium?”
“Josie was taking delivery of a shipment of pearls just yesterday morning,” Harry explained. “Paste, and rather poor quality, but still suitable to your purposes.”
“What purposes, precisely?” Lord Knighton queried.
“Why, pearl necklaces, of course,” Teddy answered, pushing open the door. “To package with the leather-bound volumes of The Virile Viscount. A badge of honor of sorts.”
Chapter Eight
Phin watched in amazement while Miss O’Connell haggled with the pretty red-haired proprietress of Hathaway’s Emporium. One might have thought the ladies were negotiating a lasting and eternal peace between England and France, so seriously did they take the proceedings.
“Eight pounds, six shillings per sack is exorbitant,” Miss O’Connell argued with what might have been amusement glittering in her eyes. “I’m not opposed to your seeing a profit in this endeavor, but twice what you paid for the merchandise just yesterday?”
Mrs. Hathaway walked right into the trap. “As if I’d pay four and three for a sack of shoddily painted beads. Do you think I was born yesterday?”
“I know precisely when you were born, never mind what you tell people.”
“Oh, you’re after blackmailing me, are you?”
Miss O’Connell leaned one slender hip on the counter and lowered her voice to a parody of a whisper. “Who do you think would care you’re nearer to thirty than twenty years of age? Six pounds, three.”
“Seven and two.”
“Six pounds eight shillings and your seamstresses string them, five pearls to a ribbon so they dangle just so.” Miss O’Connell traced one long finger from the indent in her throat to the neckline of her gown, another outrageous concoction of modistic madness, though not one which brought to mind candy. Today’s offering reminded Phin of the wallpaper in his mother’s bedchamber, a vibrant pink-on-pink damask she’d been considering replacing for years.
“And I suppose you’ll be wanting me to throw in the ribbons?” Mrs. Hathaway asked, clearly vexed by the notion.
“Teddy will procure the ribbons direct from Dicky Jones at the textile mill.”
“I will?” Teddy Luther looked up from the crease in his trousers he’d been studying throughout the proceedings. “That is, yes, I’ll procure direct from Dicky.”
“And have the ribbons delivered Monday,” Miss O’Connell added with a wink for Teddy before turning her attention back to her adversary. “You’ll have one hundred necklaces finished by Friday next.”
“Friday next?” Mrs. Hathaway yelped. “I’ve other orders to fill and can’t be taking my girls from them to string pearls on ribbon from dawn until dusk.”
Thus began another round of negotiations in regard to deadlines and quantities. The ladies even argued over who would bear the expense of ribbons frayed and beads cracked or gone missing during the stringing process. In the end, Miss O’Connell agreed only to Teddy’s splitting the cost of damaged or lost merchandise. On each and every other point she came out the winner.
Which surprised Phin not in the least. The woman was a force of nature, the equivalent of a commercial cyclone blowing through the milliner’s shop. A man might be forgiven for imagining Miss O’Connell to be laying out the funds and expecting to realize the profits from the proposed endeavor, so strenuously did she argue in Teddy Luther’s favor.
When the final, minute details of the transaction had been agreed upon, Miss O’Connell smiled at the lady on the other side of the counter and offered her hand.
“You rob me blind and now you want to shake on the deal?” Mrs. Hathaway demanded with an answering smile as she took the offered hand and gave it a good jostling across the counter. “You’ve nerve, Harry, I’ll give you that.”
“Harry?” Phin repeated, amused by the name after seeing the lady conduct herself much as a gentleman of business would do. “Short for Harriet, I take it?”
Miss O’Connell ignored the interruption entirely, all of her attention focused upon the other woman. “We both know you’d have taken six pounds even, Josie.”
“Then why didn’t you dicker me down to six pounds?”
“You’ll pay your girls by the piece from the proceeds,” Miss Harry—Harry, of all things—O’Connell replied with a little shrug. “The way I figure it, the eight shillings will just about offset Teddy’s share of the losses due to nimble fingers, seeing as the more you pay them, the less they’re likely to pilfer.”
“And if I don’t?” Mrs. Hathaway asked. “If I simply pocket the extra eight shillings per sack?”
“You’re a lot of things, Josie Hathaway, stubborn and shortsighted not being the least of it, but tightfisted with the women in your employ you aren’t.”
“You think you’ve gained a toehold in my business, don’t you?”
“I’ve no interest in your business,” Miss O’Connell replied. “Apart from the blue bonnet in your window, that is.”
As if on cue, all four occupants of the shop turned to the big bow window where the ugliest bonnet imaginable sat on a pedestal raised above half a dozen other perfectly pretty bonnets. None of those perfectly pretty bonnets was blue.
The hideous headwear was no bigger than a soup bowl and constructed of white straw, though little of it could be seen beneath all the ribbons and silk flowers in various shades of blue. Here and there a purple or green jewel winked in the sunlight, only adding to the overall gaudiness of the thing.
And if all those bows and beads and flowers weren’t enough, rising from the back of the monstrosity of millinery were two peacock feathers pointed straight at the ceiling.
“I don’t suppose you would consider holding it for me until I’ve scraped together a few pounds?”
The lady would likely have argued to the contrary, but there was a definite edge of wistfulness in Miss O’Connell’s voice.
“It’ll cost you more than a few pounds. Five to be precise.” Mrs. Hathaway strolled out from behind the counter, weaved her way around the various tables strewn with all manner of ordinary, non-offensive bonnets, as well as gloves, silk fans, reticules and various feminine fripperies and plucked the ridiculous hat from its pedestal. “I’ll hold it through noon-time Tuesday. You can stop by for tea when you’re making your usual rounds.”
“Twas a pleasure doing business with you,” Miss O’Connell called out by way of farewell as she started for the door with a swish of pink skirts.
When they’d reached the walkway outside, Teddy stopped and turned to Miss O’Connell with a smile. “Well done, my dear. If I’d gone in alone, Josie would have squeezed three times the sum from me, on principle alone.”
“Hell hath no fury and all that,” she agreed, tilting her head to study Teddy and in the process tipping her precariously perched frilly pink bonnet rakishly over one eye. “You might consider apologizing to the woman, seeing as you’re to be business partners for the foreseeable future.”
“I was rather hoping you might handle Josie, as you’ve a knack for that sort of thing.”
“Managing your cast-off mistresses, you mean?”
“It was only the one time,” Teddy protested with a sheepish grin. “Two if you count Mrs. Mortimer, who was never technically my mistress.”
“And now it’s to be three,” Miss O’Connell replied. “Well, at least Josie is unlikely to weep all over me as the other two did.”
“Josie’s more likely to lob objects at my head than weep over my cavalier treatment of her,” Teddy agreed. “And likely would have done just that today had you not been at my side.”
“I’ll act as intermediary, but it’ll cost you.”
“I never doubted it for a moment.”
“So long as we understand one another.”
Teddy nodded. “I’d best be on my way to pay a call on Dicky Jones in regard to ribbons. Knighton, can I drop you in Mayfair?”
“I’ll find my own way, thank you.” Phin fully intended to find his way into Miss Harry O’Connell’s bed. Perhaps not today, but certainly he could begin to lay the groundwork for that eventuality.
“Are you certain?” Teddy asked with a frown, his gaze darting to Miss O’Connell and back again. “It’s no trouble to drop you in Mayfair on my way to Blackfriars.”
“Your textile mill is in Blackfriars, is it?”
“It’s hardly my textile mill. Rather, it belongs to Mr. King.”
“And you’d best go on if you hope to get there before Dicky leaves for the day.” Miss O’Connell tucked her hand into the crook of Phin’s elbow. “His lordship will see me home.”
She smelled of flowers today, roses perhaps, with the same faint hint of lemon.
“I’ll be off then.” Teddy bowed to Miss O’Connell, gave Phin a sharp nod accompanied by a sharper look, turned and walked off toward his quarters above Luther and Son Publishing. Though why the man chose to reside in Wellclose Square now that he could afford a house and a full complement of servants anywhere in London was something of a mystery.
“Come along then,” she ordered, steering them in the opposite direction of the departing man. “We’ll need to hurry as I’ve one more stop to make, and I should hate to be late for my dinner engagement before the theatre this evening.”
“How is it nearly every conversation I’ve entered into in recent days works its way around to include Mr. King?” Phin asked as they strolled down the busy thoroughfare arm in arm. “I’d never even heard of the man before Wednesday.”
“Perhaps you simply do not remember having heard his name.”
“Ah, it’s the relevance effect at work,” he agreed with a nod. “I’ve likely heard the man’s name dozens of times and never remembered it as he was of no significance to me.”
“Perhaps even hundreds of times,” she agreed. “But as Mr. King hasn’t a daughter in possession of a large dowry and female attributes better suited to a bovine, you simply ignored all mention of the man.”
“Female attributes better suited to a bovine?” Surely the woman was not referring to breasts. Defying all arguments to the contrary, his gaze fell to her bodice and the small but distinct bosom beneath the too-bright pink fabric.
“Specifically those belonging to a dairy cow in need of milking.”
She was most definitely referring to breasts, and without the least bit of subtlety.
“Have I in any way indicated a preference in regard to the size of…er…” Phin wasn’t customarily concerned with propriety, nor had he made a habit of following Society’s convoluted rules relating to polite discourse, but even he adhered to a strict policy never to say the word breasts in the presence of a woman before he’d become intimately acquainted with her female attributes. “Bovine…er…teats?”
“I think you mean udders,” she corrected.
“There’s a difference?”
“Clearly you’ve spent little or no time on your country estate, else you would have enough rudimentary knowledge of animal husbandry to know the difference between udders and teats.”
“It seems to me one goes hand in hand with the other,” Phin said because…well, she’d started them down this path, lured him into this ludicrous, licentious discussion of female attributes thinly veiled in barnyard euphemisms.
“How positively droll you are,” she replied, staring straight ahead even as her lips twitched.
“A teat for each udder and an udder for each teat, I mean.” Phin knew he should cease speaking, knew it full well, but he continued to bumble through a conversation that never should have begun in the first place. “Not an udder and a teat in each hand.”
“I took your meaning without further clarification. Though surely even you know udders are mammary glands while teats are…” Miss O’Connell turned her head and peeked up at Phin from beneath the cockeyed brim of her bonnet, green eyes glittering, all but daring him to complete the sentence.
He would not say it, absolutely would not. “Nipples.”
Bloody hell.
“I was going to say teats are something else entirely,” she said, lips curling into a decided smirk. “In point of fact, an udder is a single organ consisting of pairs of mammary glands, most typically two pairs, and each mammary gland has a single teat. Thus, unless one has four hands or is in the habit of milking in tandem with a friend, two teats go wanting at any given time.”
“Two teats go wanting,” Phin muttered, mostly beneath his breath.
“Unless milked in tandem with a friend,” she repeated in the unlikely event he’d missed it the first time. “Or perhaps two dairy maids milking in tandem. I don’t know as I’ve ever seen dairy maids working in pairs. Have you, my lord?”
“I…uh…” Phin made a valiant attempt to gather his scattered wits. Taking a quick peek down, he breathed a sigh of relief, only faintly resembling a groan, upon discovering that his coat did in fact hide the growing bulge in his trousers.
“My lord?” Was there laughter in her voice? Phin couldn’t be certain, what with the blood roaring in his ears on the way to parts far south of his brain.
“I don’t suppose you would consider calling me Phin?” he finally asked with what he hoped was a boyish smile rather than a lecherous leer. “Or Phineas, or even Knighton? While I’ll call you…”
“Well, I certainly cannot call you Knighton as it too closely resembles Knightley, and you are no Mr. Knightley.”
“Who is Mr. Knightley?” First King, then Marchant and, if he’d correctly interpreted the frown, Teddy Luther. Now he had a Mr. Knightley to contend with as well?
“Mr. Knightley is Miss Woodhouse’s friend and later her husband.”
“I can’t say as I know either the gentleman or the lady.” Phin would be hard-pressed to remember who was Prime Mi
nister in his current state.
“They are characters in Jane Austin’s Emma.”
“Ah, here I thought it was the relevance effect all over again.”
“Will you leave off throwing that bit of nonsense in my face at every turn?” she demanded with a huff that might have been exasperation or amusement. “You know perfectly well there is no such thing.”
Phin stopped and, as she was tightly tethered to his side, Miss O’Connell halted as well. “Are you saying you made up the entire thing?”
“From thin air,” she admitted without the slightest hesitation. “Did you not know I was having one over on your friend?”
“I hadn’t a clue.”
“How on earth would I know the first thing about the inner workings of the human mind?”
“You seem to know quite a lot about a great many things,” Phin replied before another thought took hold, one he knew ought to go unvoiced even as he spoke. “Do cows really have four teats?”
“Four is the normal number. Though, sometimes they’ve superfluous teats.”
He only just barely refrained from asking the obvious question. “And that business with the odds of a boxing match, five to one being perfect and doubling twice over in proportion to differentials, or what have you? Did you pluck that bit out of the clear blue as well?”
“Not at all,” she replied, tugging on his arm to get them moving once more. “I’ve made a study of the odds in relation to ale consumption. And while I may be off by a pint or two, mostly due to variables having to do with the crowd on any given Thursday, the potency of one particular batch of ale over another and the duration of the current champ’s reign, my calculations have proven true far more often than not.”
Phin couldn’t begin to ask all the questions swimming around in his head, not the least of which was how teats could ever be superfluous. Then there was the question of how she’d come to study the odds of anything, much less boxing matches in relation to ale consumption. And of course the ever present question as to why she’d called out the invitation to Mr. King to ogle her breasts when the man had been nowhere nearby and she was nothing more to him than a piddling name on a list pages long.
