The Brazen Bluestocking #2
The hands of a man who worked with them.
Played with them.
She shivered, a shallow exhalation she couldn’t contain rushing forth in a steamy puff. Parts of the ground story were open from quay to yard for transit handling, and glacial gusts were whistling through like a train on tracks.
“Alton,” he instructed without glancing away from her, though he dropped his hand to his side. “Close the doors at the back, will you? And bring tea to my office.”
“Tea,” Alton echoed. “ Tea ?”
Streeter’s breath fanned her face, warming her to her toes. “Isn’t that what ladies drink over business dealings? If ladies even do business. Perhaps it’s what they drink over spirited discussions about watercolors or their latest gown.”
She gripped the folio until her knuckles ached, feeling like a ball of yarn being tossed between two cats. “Make no special accommodations. I’ll have whatever it is you guzzle during business dealings, Mr. Streeter.”
He laughed, then caught himself with the slightest downward tilt of his lips. She’d surprised them both somehow. It was the first chess move she’d won in this match. “We guzzle malt whiskey then,” he murmured and turned, seeming to expect her to follow.
She recorded details as she shadowed him across the vast space crowded with shipping crates and assorted stacks of rope and tools, to a small room at the back overlooking the pier.
His shirt was untucked on one side, the kerchief he’d wiped his face with slapping his thigh.
His clothing was finely made but not skillfully enough to hide a muscular build most men used built-in padding to establish.
Dark hair, no , more than dark. Black as tar, curling over his rumpled shirt collar and around his ears.
So pitch dark, she imagined she could see cobalt streaks in it, like a flame gone mad.
Hair that called a woman’s fingers to tangle in it, no matter the woman.
The gods had allotted this conceited beast an inequitable share of beauty, that was certain. And for the first time in her life , Hildy was caught up in an attraction.
His office was another unsurprising surprise.
A roaring fire in the hearth chasing away the chill.
A Carlton House desk flanked by two armchairs roomy enough to fit Streeter or his man of business, Alton.
A Hepplewhite desk, or a passable imitation.
A colorful Aubusson covering the floor, nothing threadbare and old because it had lost its value.
Her heart skipped as she stepped inside the space, confirmation that she’d indeed misjudged.
Shelf upon shelf of leather-bound books bracketed the walls.
Walking to a row, she checked the spines with a searching review.
Cracked but good, each and every one of them.
Architecture, commerce, mathematics, chemistry.
Nothing entertaining, nothing playful. The library of a man with a mind.
While Streeter moved to a sideboard that had likely come from the king’s castoffs, and poured them a drink from a bottle whose label she didn’t recognize, she circled the room, inspecting.
Holding both glasses in one hand, he situated himself not at his desk but on the edge of an overturned crate beside it, his long legs stretched before him.
Sipping from his while holding hers, his steely gaze tracked her.
Fortunately, she realized from the travel-weary Wellington he tapped lightly on the carpet, her examination of his private space was making him uneasy.
With an aggrieved grunt, he yanked the kerchief from his waistband and tossed it needlessly to the floor.
Finally, she sighed in relief, a weakness . If he didn’t like to be studied, he must have something to hide. She’d been hired, in part, to find out what.
“This isn’t one of your frivolous races through the park.
” He leaned to place her glass on the corner of his desk.
Hers to take, or not, when she passed. The only charitable thing he’d done was pour it for her.
“Right now, I have two men guarding your traveling chariot parked outside, lest someone rob you blind. The thing is as yellow as a ripe banana, which catches the eye. They’ll slice the velvet from the squabs and resell it two blocks over for fast profit.
Your post-boy looked ready to expire when we got to him.
Guessing he’s never had to sit on his duff while waiting for his mistress to complete business in the East End.
A slightly larger man might better fit the bill next time. ”
Post-boys were all she could afford.
Hildy released the satin chin strap and slid her bonnet from her head.
Her coiffure, unsteady on a good day as her maid’s vision was dreadful, collapsed with the removal, and a wave of hair just a shade darker than the sun fell past her shoulders.
Streeter blinked, his fingers tightening around his glass.
She noticed the insignificant gesture while wondering if the fevered awareness filling the air was only in her mind.
Halting by his desk, she reached for her drink with a nod in his direction. The scent of soap and spice drifted to her, his unique mix. “This warehouse, it’s quite unusual. Magnificent, actually. I’ve never seen the like.”
“I’ll be sure to tell the architect the daughter of an earl approves.
” His gaze cool, giving away absolutely nothing, he dug a bamboo toothpick from his trouser pocket and jammed it between his teeth, working it from side to side between a pair of very firm lips.
At her raised brow, he shrugged. “Stopped smoking. It’s enough to breathe London’s coal-laden air without asking for more trouble. ”
Hildy dropped the folio, which held little of value aside from her employment contract with the Earl of Hastings, in the armchair and lifted the glass to her lips.
The whiskey was smooth, smoky— good . “This is excellent,” she mused, licking her lips and watching Streeter’s hand again tense around his tumbler.
“Thank you. It’s my own formula,” he said after a charged silence, a dent appearing next to his mouth. Not so much a dimple. Two of which she had herself, a feature people had commented on her entire life.
His was more of an elevated smirk.
“Yours?” Continuing her journey around the room, Hildy paused by a framed blueprint of this warehouse. Beside it was another detailed sketch, a building she didn’t recognize. Architectural schematics drawn by someone very talented. She couldn’t miss the initials, TS , in the lower right corner.
Frowning, she tilted her glass, staring into it as if the amber liquor would provide answers to an increasingly enigmatic puzzle. Aside from disappointing her family and society, she’d never done anything remarkable. Been anything remarkable.
When faced with remarkability, she wasn’t sure she trusted it.
Streeter stacked his boots one atop the other, the crate creaking beneath him.
“A business venture, a distillery going south financially that I found myself uncommonly intrigued by, once I handed over an astounding amount of blunt to keep it afloat and demanded I be invited into the process. Usually, I invest, then step away if the enterprise is well-managed, which it often isn’t, but this…
” Bringing the glass to his lips, he drank around the toothpick.
Quite a feat. She couldn’t look away from the show of masculine bravado if she’d been ordered to at the end of a pistol.
“It’s straightforward chemistry, the brewing of malt.
But, lud, what a challenge, seeking perfection. ”
Finessing his glass into an empty spot next to him on the crate, he wiggled the toothpick from his lips and pointed it at her.
A crude signal that he was ready to begin negotiations.
“Isn’t seeking perfection your business too, luv?
The ideal bloke, without shortcomings. I’ve yet to see such a man, but the Mad Matchmaker is fabled to work miracles, so maybe there’s a chance for me. ”
Seating herself in the chair absent her paperwork, Hildy set her glass on the desk and worked her gloves free, one deliberate finger at a time.
If he believed he could chase her away with his bullying attitude, he hadn’t done suitable research into his opponent’s background.
Last year, the Duchess Society had completed an assignment, confidential in nature but rumored nonetheless, for the royal family.
Madness, power, fantastic wealth, love gained, love lost. This handsome scoundrel and his trifling reach for society’s acceptance, she could handle.
Although she realized she was silently reminding herself of the fact, not stating it outright.
“Nothing to do with perfection and rarely anything to do with love, Mr. Streeter. The betrothals I support are, like the marriage you’re proposing with Lady Matilda Delacour-Baynham, a business agreement.
Unless I’m mistaken from the discussions I’ve had with her and her father, the Earl of Hastings. ”
He twirled the toothpick between his fingers like a magician.
“You have it dead on. Holy hell, I’m not looking for love.
Don’t fill the chit’s head with that rubbish.
The words mean nothing to me. They never have.
Society only sells the idea to make the necessity of unions such as these more acceptable. ”
Well, that sounded personal. “Lady Matilda?—”
“Mattie wants freedom. If you know her, she’s told you what she’s interested in.
The only thing. Medicine.” He laughed and sent the toothpick spinning.
“An earl’s daughter, can you conjure it?
When no female can be a physician and certainly not a legitimate lady.
To use one of your brethren’s expressions, it’s beyond the pale. ”
He winked at her, winked , and she was reasonably certain he didn’t mean it playfully.