“A week or two ago, yes.” Rick watched him through the mirror as he spoke.
“Did you meet Melissa?”
“Nope. Should I?” He leaned his hips against the table that had cost Fletcher too much money. The gilt-edged, spindly-legged console had sat in a king’s dressing room, but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that it was supposed to carry a certain level of cachet.
As if respectability could be bought. Not if you started too late, he was finding.
“She’s twelve if she’s a day,” Fletcher spat.
Rick’s expression turned wary, the laugh lines turning white. “Is that right?”
“I told you I’d have none of that. You bloody assured me you’d see to it.” Fletcher stalked down the hallway toward his office, confident Rick would follow. “If we’ve got to keep the prostitution running, I draw the line at children.”
He’d almost tossed up his accounts when he walked through the back door of Mrs. Kordan’s and found the girl sitting in the parlor. She’d been dressed—or not dressed, as was the case—in a dressing gown and too much rouge.
Mrs. Kordan had hemmed and hawed, trying to claim the girl as seventeen years of age. But her hips had been entirely too narrow and her bosom nonexistent.
Fletcher felt like he needed a bath simply for being forced to make that observation.
He dropped into his desk chair and curled his grip around the back of his neck. His nails scraped up his scalp with a sharp tingle that did little to distract from his fury.
Rick entered the study much more carefully. He seated himself across the desk in the chair meant for visitors. He must be feeling particularly wary of Fletcher if he didn’t immediately make his way to the sideboard and its crystal decanters. “I made your position perfectly clear to her. If she didn’t follow, there’s not much I can do.”
Fletcher jerked his head up. “Like hell there isn’t. You can fire her.”
“Oh come on, my man. I can’t do that.” Rick leaned back in his chair, hands spread out. “Mrs. Kordan’s been working for this organization since before you had your first cockstand. Your father thought she did a fine enough job.”
“I’m not my goddamned father.” He’d tried explaining that plenty of times as well, but it had sunk in about as well as his decree about employing no child whores.
Rick had known Fletcher since he was barely off his mother’s teat. He was convinced he knew how to run the business better, and to him better always involved dirty. He watched Fletcher’s attempts at joining the up-and-up with amusement, as if fully confident of failure.
The hell of it was he seemed to be right.
Before Fletcher could make another attempt at convincing Rick, the study door swung open. Hareton stood in the open doorway. Fletcher dropped his head back into his hands, unwilling to think of how many times he’d tried to tell the butler that if he consistently failed to announce himself properly, the rest of the staff would fail as well.
“There’s someone here for you,” Hareton said.
Fletcher lifted his head and looked at him expectantly. No further information was forthcoming. “Yes?”
Hareton shifted from side to side. Tugged on his waistcoat. “Should I send ’em in?”
“It depends,” Fletcher drawled. “Who is the visitor?”
He consulted a small white card that was dwarfed in his ham-hock hand. “Miss Seraphina Miller.”
Fletcher started shaking his head before the words were even out of the butler’s mouth. “No. Not now. Tell her she’ll have to visit another time.” With the day he’d had, he simply didn’t have the patience to begin any sort of lessons.
If anything, Hareton looked more uncomfortable. He pulled at his collar with a finger. “She doesn’t quite seem to be visiting.”
A cold trickle of dread dribbled down Fletcher’s spine, chilling his skin. “Excuse me?”
“She’s got trunks and boxes. A bag or two.”
Rick got up from his chair and wound his way over to the brandy. He chuckled as he poured a hefty measure. Fletcher pinned him with a look that did nothing to alleviate the pure annoyance flooding him. “Got a joke?”
Rick tossed back a swallow. “No. None at all.”
Fletcher pushed to his feet. To his unending annoyance, he dislodged a pile of receipts and sent them fluttering to the floor in a flurry of white. He left it to deal with later as he stalked from the room.
Seraphina stood in the entryway, directing a stream of footmen and a scullery maid in the carrying of her baggage. She wore a pale gray cloak, the bottom of which split open over blue skirts with several layers of flounces. Her dark hair had been divided down the center and drawn back into a complicated braid wound at the back of her head.
He had the sudden, distracting urge to take that braid apart piece by piece. He’d bury his face in the dark curtain of her hair and nibble the soft skin behind her ear.
“Careful with that.” Though she never lost her clear, sweet cadence, her voice easily carried to the landing where a footman bobbled a heavy leather trunk. “I should be very disappointed if you were to drop it.”
The footman spared her a calf-eyed expression before clutching the chest more closely.
“God forbid you be disappointed in a footman,” Fletcher gritted out.
She didn’t seem to notice his sarcasm. She turned to him with a pleasant demeanor that looked like a mask. He much preferred the slightly annoyed expression he’d seen when they were tucked in their curtained alcove, when her flowered scent had wrapped around him. “Taking the Lord’s name in vain in mixed company betrays low origins.”
“Good, because my origins are about as low as they come.”
Her smile verged on beatific. The years of protection and planning he’d given her had created his own personal angel, now come back to torment him. “That’s why I’m here, to help you improve.”
Fletcher wrapped a hand about her arm and hauled her into the nearest parlor. No matter his displeasure, it served no purpose to air their dirty laundry before all and sundry. The room was cool and shadowy since the curtains and shutters were still pulled closed. His time seldom provided for doing nothing in parlors, nor did he have the slightest clue how to play the piano that took up one corner.
“Exactly what do you mean by
here
? You can’t possibly mean to stay here.”
“Certainly I can.” She tugged at her white gloves, pulling them off finger by finger. The exposure of her pale skin was an undressing that affected him as strongly as if he’d stripped her entire wardrobe, one tasteful slip of lace at a time. He could barely concentrate on his words over the rushing response of his body.
He gave himself a mental shake, for all the good it did. “No, you can’t.”
She raised a single eyebrow. “You’re beginning to sound a bit like a parrot.”
“What would it do to your reputation to live here? Destroy it, that’s what.” He stalked away from the tempting scent of her skin. Flowers and silk and good health. “I haven’t sunk a small fortune into you only for you to throw it away.”
Her laugh was husky, nothing like the clear giggle he remembered from when she was a little girl. “Exactly what do you imagine settling a fortune on me will do for my reputation?”
“Increase it, naturally.” He rested a hand on the end of the piano. “Money always increases reputation.”
“Of course you don’t understand.”
He growled. A growl, like he was some sort of animal. There was no holding back his frustration. His bones felt locked into place. “Then do please explain my foolishness.”
She swept off her cloak. The dress underneath was nowhere near as silly as he’d expected from the rows of flounces about the hem. All sleek lines to her hips, it delineated every gentle curve and hugged a bosom of which any of Mrs. Kordan’s women would be proud. “I’m a known foundling. An orphan who has lucked into a proper education and who is tolerated due to influential friends.”
“Lady Victoria Wickerby,” he supplied.
She accepted his knowledge with an unsurprised nod. “Yes. And Miss Charlotte Vale. Though she has less rank, and she verges on scandalous, her father owns vast stretches of land in Derbyshire.”
“All well and good, but that does nothing to explain why gaining money would destroy your reputation.”
“If I am a foundling with no resources who suddenly comes to money without good explanation for the source, precisely how do you suppose people will say I obtained it?”
He’d never meant for her to precisely
appear
in society before she’d become his wife. Various setbacks over the years had meant adjustments to his timetables. Though he’d hoped that their swift marriage would ameliorate any talk, he couldn’t say as much yet. He was well aware of the possible implications. “On your back.”
She flinched at the bald-faced statement but nodded in agreement. “Precisely. I’ll require you to suddenly acquire a decrepit elderly member of your family to whom I can become companion.”
He smiled. “I’m so pleased to see your feisty nature wasn’t simply a figment of my imagination the other day.”
“So long as we keep the gossips at bay, staying here will draw less notice than constant comings and goings.” She ignored him and draped her cloak over the end of the sofa. “For a woman of my social standing and prospects, becoming a lady’s companion is quite acceptable. Even encouraged.”
“I must say I hadn’t expected you to move in. Nor to somehow attain an aunt who will no doubt be crotchety.” He’d conjectured a few meetings where she “taught” him how to take tea, perhaps. If she could actually get him entrée with Lord Linsley, he’d kiss a monkey. But he couldn’t deny there was a certain…temptation to the idea of having her so near. “Am I to walk on eggshells in fear of constant reprimand?”
She seated herself on one of the small couches. In her pale blue dress and sitting on the darker blue cushions, she looked a bit like a sapphire in a jewel box. No, that wasn’t quite right. A perfect pearl, cool and smooth and untouched by the world around her. Every inch the ladies’ jewel. “Certainly not. This is your home. I wish to improve your conditions through a sort of management position. I’d never wish you to feel unwelcome in it.”
He bit back a laugh, the source of which she could never guess. He hadn’t felt comfortable in this house since it had been built. The embers had barely cooled on the wreck he shared with his father before construction began anew. Rick had insisted on the grand edifice, and the architect had created a masterpiece to declare that the Thomas’s enterprise had not finished with Mac’s passing.
Only after the fact did Fletcher realize pushing a second son into doing the decorating was perhaps not his best decision. Through years of living with the risqué décor, he’d learned to take a perverted pleasure from having such a scandalously attired house.
Still, it was his house. The center of his territory, where he could keep the most control and security.
“Don’t you think you should have asked before you moved your belongings into my home?”
She had the grace to look abashed. “If I’d asked, you’d have only denied me.”
That was for bloody well sure. “I’ll move Mrs. Viers in by evening. She’s senile and bedbound, but she’ll benefit from having that bed be better than a cot.”
“I’m sure that will work well. Small sacrifices are enough to keep the gods of society pleased.” A wry smile had her tipping a glance from under her straight, dark brows.
“And what of yourself?” He dropped into a chair with spindly legs. He’d always half feared breaking the furniture with his hefty build. He had the bones of a dockworker. Unsurprising since his grandfather had been one. “What do you seek to get out of this arrangement?”
Everything enigmatic and serene, she folded her hands over her lap. Crossing her ankles caught her undermost skirts on the eye of her kid boots, displaying a tiny hint of stocking. He wondered how serene she’d remain if he dropped to his knees and circled his fingers around those fragile ankles.
Scrubbing the back of his hand over his mouth did nothing to dislodge his strange imaginings. Never had he been the type to go to his knees before a woman. He was much more the taking and plundering type. Something about her fragility had him feeling as if he’d been lifted out of his regular world.
“You seem determined to settle funds on me with or without my residence. I refuse to be the charity case, the pitiable one. Not any longer.”
“Come now,” he said, remaining firmly in his seat. There would be no ankles touched on his watch. Not yet. “People have reasons behind their actions. There’s always a gain.”
“That doesn’t mean we all understand our own motives. Humans are complicated creatures.”
“Not so complicated. Men, for one, have few needs. Sustenance, shelter and…companionship.” He couldn’t name the devil that goaded him, but whichever of the legion it was, the thing had a damn sharp pitchfork. He wanted to see her flinch, to know he could affect her with salacious words that would hopefully arouse in her the images that flooded him. Taking her. Claiming her.
She was barely ruffled. Her smooth smile never drooped. Only the faintest wrinkle about her eyes gave her shock away.
“Let us commence with our first lesson, shall we?” She stood and gave her skirts the tiniest flourish. In an instant, she was everything of perfection again, with no hint as to the graceful curves of her ankles. “It is inappropriate in any company to allude to men’s base natures.”