The Brazen Bluestocking
CHAPTER ONE
She’d taken this assignment on a dare.
A dare to herself.
Unbridled curiosity had driven her, the kind that killed cats. When it was just another promise-of-rain winter day. Another dismal society marriage the Duchess Society was overseeing.
Another uninspiring man to investigate.
Hildegard Templeton told herself everything was normal.
The warehouse had looked perfectly ordinary from the grimy cobblestones her post-chaise deposited her on.
A sign swinging fearlessly in the briny gust ripping off the Thames— Streeter, Macauley she’d rejected the expectations the ton had placed on her from the first moment.
“Looking for Streeter, are ya?”
Hildy turned in a swirl of flounces and worsted wool she wished she’d rejected for this visit when a simple day dress would have sufficed. Perhaps one borrowed from her maid.
The man who’d stumbled upon her lingering in the entrance to the warehouse was tall enough to have her arching her neck to view him from beneath her bonnet’s lime silk brim. And built like one of those ships moored at the wharf outside. “Tobias Streeter, yes.”
The brute gave the tawny hair lying across his brow a swipe, removed the cheroot from his lips, and extinguished it beneath the toe of his muddy boot in a gesture she didn’t think the architect of this impressive building would appreciate. “He expecting ya?”
They make them rude in the East End , Hildy decided with a sigh. “Possibly.” If he’d been alerted by his future father-in-law, yes .
“Who’s calling?” he asked gruffly, digging in his pocket and coming up with another cheroot, even as the bitter aroma from the first still enveloped them.
“Apologies for asking, but we don’t get many of your kind round here.
Some kinds”—he chuckled at his joke and swiped the tapered end of the cheroot across his bottom lip—“just not your kind.”
Hildy shifted the folio she clutched from one gloved hand to the other.
Her palms had started to perspire beneath kid leather.
This man was playing with her, and she didn’t like participating in games she wasn’t sure she could win.
“Lady Hildegard Templeton,” she supplied, using the honorific when she rarely did. “Of the Duchess Society.”
The impolite brute arrested his effort to remove a tinderbox from his tattered coat pocket. “The Mad Matchmaker,” he whispered, his cheroot hitting the glossy planks beneath their feet. Horrified, he backed up a step as if she had a contagious disease.
A rush of blood flooded her. Temper , she warned herself. Not here. The blush lit her cheeks, and she cursed the man standing stunned before her for causing it. “That ridiculous sobriquet is not something I respond?—”
“Sobriquet,” a voice full of laughter and arrogance intoned from behind her. “Go back to unloading the shipment from Spain, Alton. I have this.”
When she turned to face the man she assumed was Tobias Streeter, she wanted to be in control because that was how this day was going to go.
Confident. Poised. Looking like a businesswoman, not a lady.
Not a matchmaker —which she wasn’t . She longed to tell him what she thought of the rude entry to his establishment when he hadn’t known she was coming.
Instead, she felt flushed and damp, unprepared based on a split-second judgment of the glorious building she stood in. Adding to that, the niggling sense that she’d made a colossal error in calculating her opponent.
And then Hildy merely felt thunderstruck .
Because, as he stepped out of the shadows and into the glow cast from the garnet sconce at his side, she realized with a heavy heart that Tobias Streeter, the Rogue King of Limehouse Basin, was the most attractive man she’d ever seen.
Which wasn’t an asset. She was considered attractive as well—she surmised with a complete and utter lack of vanity—and she’d only found it to be a trap .
“I wondered if you’d actually venture into the abyss, luv,” he said idly, tugging a kerchief from his back pocket and across his sweaty brow.
He had a streak of graphite on his left cheek, and his hands were a further mess.
Additionally, he’d made no effort to contain the twisted collar of his shirt.
The top two bone buttons were undone, and the flash of olive skin drew her gaze when she wished it wouldn’t.
No coat, no waistcoat. He was unprepared for visitors.
However, if she were being fair, she’d given him no notice he was to have one.
“Those feral phaeton rides through Hyde Park I read about in the Gazette must be true. They say you’re a daredevil at heart, Templeton, a feminine trait the ton despises, am I right?
Gossip that I’d lay odds you don’t welcome any more than that charming nickname your poisonous brethren saddled you with.
” He tucked the length of stained cloth in his waistband to crudely dangle, drawing her eye to his trim waist. “They can’t understand anyone of means who doesn’t simply sit back and enjoy it. ”
“I’m, well…” Hildy fumbled, then wished she’d waited another moment to gather her thoughts. “I’m here on business. As you know. Or guessed.”
His gaze dropped to the folio in her hand, his lips quirking sourly. “My sordid past is bundled up in that tidy file, I’m guessing.”
No, actually , she wanted to admit but thankfully didn’t. I’ve gone into this all wrong.
She ran through the facts detailed on the sheet in her wafer-thin folio that were not facts at all.
Royal Navy hero of some sort, a conflict in India he didn’t discuss publicly.
Powerful friends in the East India Company, hence his move into trade upon his return to England.
Ruthless, having built his empire one brick at a time.
Father rumored to be titled, mother of Romani stock, at least a smidgen, which was all it took to be completely ostracized.
Insanely handsome had never factored into her research.
And she’d assumed this would be an uncomplicated assignment.
“Tobias Streeter,” he murmured, halting before her.
Almost as tall as his brutish gatekeeper, Hildy kept her head tilted to capture his gaze.
Which she was going to capture. And hold .
Hazy light from a careless sun washed over him from windows set at all angles, allowing her to peruse at her leisure.
She didn’t fool herself; it was an opportunity he allowed .
Skin the color of lightly brewed tea. Eyes the shade of a juicy green apple you shined against your sleeve and then couldn’t help but take a quick bite of—the glow from the sconce turning them a deep emerald while she stared.
Highlighted by a set of thick lashes any woman would be jealous of.
Jaw hard, lips full, breath scented with mint and tea.
Not brandy or scotch, another misstep had she presumed it.
When, of course, she’d presumed it.
As he patiently accepted her appraisal, his hand rose, and his index finger, just the calloused tip, trailed her cheek to tuck a stray strand behind her ear.