The Secretary

by Brooke, Meg

  “I see,” Eleanor said, though she still looked a little confused.

  “Don’t you agree,” Clarissa went on, “that the needs of the people of Mayo should have been considered more carefully?”

  “Not if there’s a danger to the public,” Lord Sherbourne put in.

  “Oh, really, Lord Sherbourne—”

  Leo appeared at Clarissa’s shoulder. “What are we all talking about?” he asked. “Miss Martin looks quite put out.”

  Clarissa looked as though she was about to argue, but Anders tugged at the fabric of her skirt. She pursed her lips. “I was a little...forgive me, Eleanor. I get rather passionate when I discuss politics. Perhaps we should talk of something else.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Clarissa,” Eleanor said. Over Clarissa’s head, Leo mouthed “Clarissa?” to Anders.

  “Any bets on when Princess Victoria will return from her latest progress?” Lord Sherbourne said.

  “Oh, dear,” Clarissa muttered as Anders handed her into his carriage at the end of the evening. “I really shouldn’t have argued with him. I’m terribly sorry if I embarrassed you.” She felt quite ashamed of herself. What did she mean by losing her temper that way?

  “Clarissa,” Anders said seriously, “I cherish your excellent mind, and I understand that with great intelligence comes great care for the troubles of others. Men like Lord Sherbourne parrot what they hear in their clubs. You will meet a great many more like him, and you will learn that it never pays to argue with such dolts.”

  She felt a great rush of relief at this. “You’re right, of course,” she said. What a novel idea. She had been taught always to argue.

  They rode the rest of the way to Trevor Street in companionable silence. When the carriage had stopped and he was handing her out, he said, “I didn’t mean to offend you, when I complimented your dress. If it were up to me you would always wear exactly that shade of pink. It makes you look delicious.”

  “Does it?” she stammered. His face was very close to hers, and she found herself suddenly looking right into his eyes. She felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach, where other strange flutterings had suddenly begun. She knew she was blushing.

  “You know it does,” he whispered. His lips were right against hers, so near that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. But just as she began to lean into the kiss, he backed away a step, lifted her gloved hand and pressed it to his lips. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, and then he was climbing back into his carriage.

  Clarissa stood on the sidewalk and watched him go. She felt her flush creeping all across her skin. How could the merest brush of his lips against her cheek have awoken such feelings?

  When the carriage was out of sight she turned and went into her flat, prepared to face another sleepless night.

  THIRTEEN

  February 13, 1833

  Anders was walking back from having lunch with Leo and Bain in the Peers’ Dining Room the next day when he saw a strange young man unlocking his office door.

  “Here now,” he called. The man stood. “What’s all this?”

  “I’m sorry, My Lord,” the young man stammered. When Anders got closer, he realized that the young man looked familiar, and he relaxed a little. Perhaps he had seen him the in corridors before. “I’m Richard Whibley, the Clerk of the Works. Apparently there’s a problem with the windows in your office. I was coming to inspect them.”

  Anders stared at him. “Have we met before?”

  “No, My Lord.”

  “Well, don’t let me stop you,” Anders said, and he turned back to finish his conversation with Leo.

  “The building’s falling apart around us,” his friend joked. “Now, you were saying something about the report on child factory workers?”

  Anders could not remember what he had been saying. His mind had gone elsewhere. “I’ve seen that man before,” he said. Suddenly it hit him. “I remember!” he cried.

  “Well, spit it out.”

  “I saw him with Clarissa outside her flat one day. They were standing rather closer than I would have liked.”

  Leo laughed. “That’s why you’ve got to marry her at once, man. It’ll stop her from talking to strange men in the streets.”

  “That’s not funny, Leo.”

  “Yes it is. You just can’t see it because you’ve got your head in the clouds when it comes to Miss Martin.”

  Mr. Whibley emerged from Anders’s office. “Well, that’s settled. They’ll have to be replaced. Hinges are rotting.”

  “Will you need me to clear anything out of the way?”

  “Oh, no, My Lord. If you’ve got any papers you’d rather not leave lying about, of course, you might want to pack those away. But we’ll have the windows repaired by tomorrow morning.”

  “Very good,” Anders said. “Thank you, Mr. Whibley.”

  The man nodded politely and wandered off down the corridor.

  “Why didn’t you ask him about Miss Martin?” Leo hissed.

  “And say what? ‘Excuse me sir, but I wonder if you might have had a conversation with the woman who is not my fiancée last Sunday’?”

  “That would certainly have gotten some information out of him.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so flippant about this. What if he’s an old beau?”

  “As long as he’s an old beau you needn’t worry. Besides, what woman would turn down the Earl of Stowe for Mr. Whibley, Clerk of the Works? No woman I know, that’s for certain.”

  “Well, I know one who would,” Anders said, beginning to worry.

  Clarissa was hard at work on a letter to Mr. Jensen, the steward at Ramsay, when Anders stormed into the study. She leaped out of her chair. “My Lord,” she said, “I thought you were going to work at Westminster for the evening.” They had agreed that it might be a good plan for them to work separately for part of the day, given the state of affairs. She had been looking forward to getting some actual work done, without being distracted by his presence.

  “They’re repairing the windows in my rooms,” he explained. “I won’t be able to go back until tomorrow.”

  “I see.”

  “Who’s Richard Whibley?”

  “Wh—who?”

  “Richard Whibley.”

  “How did you hear that name?”

  “He’s the one repairing the windows in my office.”

  “I suppose he would be,” Clarissa said. “But how did you hear his name in connection with mine?”

  “I didn’t. But I saw the two of you together outside your flat on Sunday.”

  “On Sunday? But you didn’t come for me until almost three, and Mr. Whibley walked me home from church in the morning.”

  Anders paused. “He walked you home from church?”

  “This Sunday and the one before,” Clarissa said.

  “Why did he walk you home from church?”

  “He was...interested in me.”

  “Was he courting you?”

  “Oh, no. We only met the night of the Opening. I forgot some papers at Westminster and went back to fetch them.”

  “Dressed as a woman?”

  “Well, yes. I should hope he didn’t ask to walk me home from church when I was dressed like this,” she said.

  “It’s even worse when you’re dressed like that,” he muttered.

  “What on earth does that mean?”

  “When you’re dressed like that,” he said, “it makes me think about...about your legs.”

  “My legs?”

  “There’s a reason women wear skirts, you know. For some reason, the sight of women’s legs makes it impossible for men to get their work done.” She considered that for a moment, feeling her cheeks go rather warm as she did. “You’re blushing,” he murmured. He took a step closer to her.

  “I suppose I am,” she said, taking a step back. “Don’t you think I have a right to?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I’ve told you before that pink is your most becoming shade
.” Another step.

  “You have. You said it made me look...”

  “Delicious,” he said, and suddenly his hands were at her waist, underneath her coat, skimming the edges of her waistcoat.

  “Is this really a good idea?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, and then his lips came down to meet hers.

  Clarissa had been kissed before, by a young student of her father’s at Oxford. That was nothing like this. Anders’s mouth teased hers, forcing her lips open, and then his tongue was inside her. She used hers to play with it, and he groaned, clutching her more tightly against him. Beneath their binding, her breasts tingled. This, this was what she had been longing for all this time, only she hadn’t know it.

  When he released her at last, she was breathless and lightheaded. “Perhaps,” she gasped, “I haven’t been giving Cambridge its fair due.”

  “Why?” he laughed, his lips dancing across her forehead. “Don’t they kiss like that at Oxford?”

  “They most certainly do not,” she said, and she went up on her toes for another.

  It was only when his fingers found the top button of her waistcoat that she pushed him away. “We can’t,” she said. “Anyone might walk in on us.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and you should too, after all that talk about my reputation. Weren’t you the one who said you wouldn’t marry me if I was ruined?”

  “Yes I was, but I find I don’t care as much about that as I thought I would. I’ll get a special license and marry you tomorrow if you like.”

  “You promised me a month,” she protested. Somehow his lips had ended up against her jaw, and now they were fluttering up to her ear. When he took her lobe in his mouth and sucked on it, she gasped, feeling her knees grow weak.

  “I promised not to propose to you for a month. I don’t recall leaving anything else out of our bargain.” His lips were against hers again. She kissed him back hungrily. He put one knee between her legs, then the other, and she felt him, hard and ready between her thighs. “You know, I didn’t learn to kiss like this at Cambridge,” he whispered.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. I learned to kiss while I was at Eton. Would you like to see what I learned to do at Cambridge?”

  “Oh, God,” she moaned as he put his hands under her and lifted her onto the desk. He pushed her carefully organized stacks aside and laid her down, the buttons of her waistcoat coming undone under his deft fingers. With his other hand he was fumbling with her cravat. Then he was kissing her neck, her collarbone, her— “No!” she cried, pushing him away. She climbed off the desk and went over to the mirror above the fireplace, trying to tie her cravat with her shaking fingers. He watched her. When she had tugged her wig down and buttoned her waistcoat, she turned back to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You’re not.”

  He grinned. “You’re right, I’m not. I’ve wanted to do that for ages. I’ll do it again if you give me the chance. I think that’s the very definition of unrepentant.”

  She edged around the room. “I’m going home for the day. We’ll talk about this in the morning, when cooler heads have prevailed.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  She opened the door to the study, becoming as she did so the correct, proper Mr. Ford. “Good afternoon, My Lord,” she said.

  He smirked at her. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ford.”

  FOURTEEN

  February 14, 1833

  “I don’t know about you,” Anders said as he strode into the study the next morning to find Clarissa bending over his desk, arranging papers, “but my head is definitely cooler.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said, straightening. “So there will be no repetition of last night’s foolishness?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, hooking one finger in the pocket of her waistcoat and pulling her closer, “I fully intend for there to be many repetitions of that particular foolishness.”

  “Please,” she begged, blushing and pulling away, “let’s just get through today and then you can flirt with me all you want at the ball tonight.”

  “Is that a promise?” he asked.

  She glared at him.

  “All right, I’ll be good. Now, there’s to be more discussion of the disturbances in Ireland this afternoon.”

  “Is anything to be done?”

  “Not yet, as far as I can tell. So far it’s all been bluster and posturing. Sligo doesn’t want to admit that he made a mistake in allowing the magistrates a free hand and everyone has been falling over each other trying to denounce him and agree with Earl Grey.”

  “And you?”

  “It’s delicate, Clarissa,” he said. She frowned. “What is it?”

  “It’s that tone. I’m beginning to recognize it. It means you’re about to say something political.”

  “I’m a politician,” he protested.

  “You’re a human being,” she said, leaping from her seat and beginning to pace. “You have obligations to others of your kind. How can you decry slavery in the colonies but allow the Irish to be held forever under the thumb of the king?”

  “I would say that it was for their own good, but I’m sure you have an answer ready.”

  “Of course I do! Do you know what the slave masters say when abolitionists argue that the slaves ought to be free to choose for themselves?”

  “Yes, Clarissa, I do. And so do you. But this is different.”

  “How?”

  “Because...well, because...”

  “You see!” she cried.

  He threw up his hands. “Do you know, you’re even more beautiful when you’re right?”

  She flushed. “What a strange thing to say.”

  “But it’s true.”

  She came and perched on the edge of his desk. “You’re not just agreeing with me so that I’ll stop arguing?”

  “Of course not,” he lied, and when she smiled and he knew he had caught her off her guard, he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into his lap. “I’m agreeing with you so that I can do this,” he said, and he pressed a kiss to her lips.

  She giggled and pushed half-heartedly at his chest. Down below, the door slammed.

  Clarissa was up off his lap and in her own chair in the blink of an eye. A few moments later, when Phelps showed Leo in, it was as if nothing at all had happened. Still, Clarissa did not look up when Leo paused before the desk. Anders stared at her for a moment until he remembered that he had told Leo her secret.

  “It’s all right, Clarissa,” he said when Phelps had closed the door.

  Leo, leaning on an elegant walking stick, said in a weary tone, “I can’t imagine why he doesn’t just allow you to do your job as you are.”

  Clarissa smiled warily.

  “If you were my secretary,” Leo went on, “I’d want you in the prettiest dresses I could find. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking, Anders.”

  “I’m thinking that you should keep your hypotheticals to yourself.”

  Leo laughed and dropped into a chair. “Have you heard the news?”

  Anders looked up from his papers. “What news?”

  “Sherbourne’s gone and gotten engaged to Miss Granger.”

  “Thus depriving both you and your sister of very dedicated admirers,” Anders said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “And endless hours of entertainment,” Leo said.

  “Really, Lord Sidney,” Clarissa put in, “it was cruel of you both to use them. I don’t blame them for seeking solace with each other.”

  “Spoken like a woman, Ford,” Leo said laughingly, his eyes bright with mirth. He leaped up from his chair and was halfway out the door when he asked, “Will I see you for luncheon, Anders? Bain is coming.”

  “Very well.”

  “Good morning!” he called.

  After he had gone, there was silence for a considerable period. Then Clarissa grumbled, “I will never forgive you for telling him.”
>
  When the Stowe carriage arrived that evening, Clarissa almost sent the footman back down the stairs with the message that she wasn’t coming, after all. But she reminded herself that she couldn’t run from society forever. Sooner or later she would have to be seen in public.

  Besides, she told herself as she followed the footman down the stairs, it would be a shame to waste the money she had spent on tonight’s gown. It was the finest of the three she had purchased. Mrs. Simms had assured her it had never been worn, but made for a young foreign lady and then given to the maid who, having nowhere to wear it, had sold it. It was a lovely creation, of deep blue satin with delicate lace trim, and when Clarissa put it on it made her feel quite pretty indeed. It would not do to leave such a confection moldering in her wardrobe.

  Their party was assembling at Stowe House before the ball, but when she arrived it was to discover that she was the first one there. Anders smiled cryptically as if this had been her plan all along and led her into the parlor.

  “I have something for you,” he said, and he produced a long, thin box. “In honor of Saint Valentine’s Day.” Rather than give her the box, he opened it himself. Inside lay a perfectly matched string of pearls.

  “Oh, Anders,” she gasped. “you cannot give me such a gift. We are not married, nor are we even engaged.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her so that she could see herself in the mirror over the fireplace.

  “No one has to know they came from me,” he said, lifting the necklace from the box and moving behind her. “Besides,” he added as he fastened the clasp, “they’re only pearls. Every woman should have pearls. Or at least, that’s what the chap in the shop assured me was the case.” Before he stepped away, he brushed his lips over the soft skin on the back of her neck. Every hair on her body stood on end. She put her hand up and stroked the smooth pearls with her fingers. She knew she shouldn’t accept them, but she had never owned such a lovely piece of jewelry, and they did set off her gown wonderfully. And besides, since when had she cared about he conventions of society? She sighed resignedly and leaned back against the comforting pressure of his hands on her shoulders.