Heiress in Red Silk, Hunter, Madeline [good beach reads TXT] 📗

to talk about?” he asked lightly, hoping she would now move on. After a precarious pause, she did.

“I am in need of some help. I do not want to impose on Minerva.” She stopped walking and faced him. “I want someone to show me how to be a lady. Like you said it could be done. Minerva is going to help me with me penmanship, and you said the doing of it will improve my reading, but all the rest—I can’t do the doing of it until I learn what the doing is. The speech, the walk, the quality way to do things.” She flushed. Her earnest expression touched him. “I thought maybe you know of someone who does that. Who fixes people like me.”

“You don’t need any fixing.”

“I do. Even for my shop, I do. I’ve tried. I had some friends, and I copied them and got better, but I know I still make mistakes, especially when I be flustered or excited. Do you know anyone like that? Who would give me lessons?”

“I can find out. And if there isn’t one person, several might do. One for speech, for example. Others for other things.” He pictured her attending to the tasks as they were given, mastering them, becoming ladylike in the ways she wanted. The image made him a little sad. “I hope that you will not let such a program of improvement ruin you.”

“Ruin me?”

He groped for a way to put it. “When you put on a very expensive hat, does it change who you are? I don’t think so. Let any of these improvements you seek be like a new hat.”

“You mean don’t put on airs.”

“I mean don’t forget the value of who you are no matter what kind of hat you are wearing.”

Her expression cleared. He tried not to be affected by the gratitude he saw in her eyes as she gazed at him. “I think I understand,” she said. “I should remember that I be just as worthy now as I will be when this is done.”

She smiled at him then, and there was so much sweetness in that smile that something ached in his chest.

“Exactly,” he said, perhaps a bit harshly. “Now, are you sure you want to do this? Because it will be criticism after criticism once you start.”

“I am sure.”

They might as well find out now if she had the stomach for it. “Well, for example, while your speech is probably much different now from when you were a girl, and you have shed much of your accent, you still hold on to some notable errors. ‘I be,’ for example. ‘I be just as worthy.’ It is ‘I am.’ Never ‘I be.’”

He watched the impact of his words on her face.

As she absorbed what he was saying, to his surprise, she did not display any embarrassment or shame.

“‘I am,’” she repeated. “I am just as worthy. Not ‘I be.’”

He nodded.

She beamed at him.

“Yes. Like that. Just like that. You must do it again whenever I slip. Right away.”

To his astonishment, she stood on tiptoe then and kissed him on the cheek.

Her face was so close to his. Dangerously close.

His own kiss came in that instant, without thought. He merely brushed his lips on hers, but in that moment he felt their warmth and velvet softness and inhaled her scent.

Her hands went to her lips as she took a step back. He too stepped back.

She tore her gaze from his own after what seemed a long count, but that probably only lasted one more second after the last.

She began walking back to the house, and he fell into step next to her.

After a few moments, she said, “Do you think it will take long, the lessons?” As if nothing had happened.

He followed suit. “It will take some time to find tutors.”

“I be—am leaving Town for a spell, to take my sister to her school. I hope to start when I return.”

He held open the morning room door. As she passed him, she gave him a long look that all but said, It would be best to forget whatever just passed between us.

She was absolutely right. As far as he was concerned, nothing had happened. He had never believed in infatuation, and he wasn’t going to start now.

Chapter Six

Rosamund could not help overhearing the discussion taking place on the terrace. The window to the morning room had been left open, and Minerva, Chase, and four of their agents sat less than twenty feet away.

A young man in a nice frock coat with blond hair appeared to be the object of their current instructions.

“Don’t accept any situation except one that has you in his offices, Jeremy. You do not want to be flogging his wares out on the road or anything like that. We need you close to him,” Chase said.

“I’ll refuse anything else.”

“Good,” Minerva said. “You, Elise, will apply to work in his house. Chambermaid would be best. You can move around then.”

The young woman named Elise nodded.

A thin, sparsely haired man with a pursed mouth raised his hand. “And I?”

“Ah, Brigsby,” Chase said. “You are not here for this inquiry, but for another purpose.”

“I don’t understand. You said I performed without exception on the last one.”

“True, but this one does not require your talents.”

Brigsby looked dejected. “I think I know what you want to discuss. I have been waiting for it. You think to let the apartment go, now that you are here, what with that valet and all these servants.” He straightened his posture and put on a brave face. “I trust you will give me a good reference.”

“He is not going to let you go,” Minerva said. “Could you just be patient, until we are done here, and all will be explained?”

Brigsby retreated, leaning out so the others could lean in.

“And me?” a stout woman asked. Gray-haired and buxom, she wore a lace-trimmed cap under a large bonnet. The result framed her soft, creased face twice over. Rosamund would very