The Brazen Bluestocking #3
“I have funds, more than she can spend in a lifetime. More than I can. She wants to use a trifling bit to rescue her father, a man currently drowning, and I do mean drowning, in debt? Fine. Finance her hobby of practicing medicine? Also fine. Or her dream , if you’re the visionary sort.
Let her safely prowl these corridors and others on the rookery trail, delivering babes, bandaging wounds, swabbing fevered brows.
They have no one else, the desperate souls I live amongst. She’ll be an angel in their midst. And me, the one controlling the deliverance.
Deliverance for her from your upmarket bunch.
Who, other than finding ways to creatively lose capital, do nothing but sit around on their arses making up nicknames for those who prosper . ”
“What’s in it for you?” Hildy whispered, not sure she knew. Was Tobias Streeter, rookery bandit, shipping titan, this eager to marry into a crowd that indeed sat on their toffs all day dreaming up pointless monikers? When she’d been trying to escape them her entire life ?
He jabbed the toothpick in her direction, his smile positively savage. “Don’t worry about what I need. I don’t make deals where I don’t profit, luv.”
A caged tiger set loose on society. That’s what he was. Half of London was secretly fawning over him while refusing him admittance to their sacred drawing rooms.
Not so fussy about admittance to their beds, she’d bet.
He slipped the toothpick home between his stubbornly compressed lips.
“Templeton, you of all people should understand her predicament, being somewhat peculiar yourself. Boxed in by society’s expectations, unless I’m missing my guess, which I usually don’t.
I understand, do you see? It’s why the girl trusts me. Why, maybe, I trust her .
“I know what it’s like to be found lacking for elements beyond your control.
Where you were born, the color of your skin.
Being delivered on the wrong side of some addled viscount’s blanket.
Think nothing of intelligence or courage, wit or ingenuity, talent , only the blue blood, or lack of it, running beneath that no one sees unless you slice them open. ”
Hildy smoothed her hand down her bodice and laid her gloves in a neat tangle on her knee, Streeter chasing every move with his intense, sea-green gaze.
That blasted blue blood he spoke of kept her tangled in a web, day in and day out.
He didn’t need to enlighten her. Resignedly, she nodded to the folio lying like a spent weapon between them.
“Let’s discuss specifics, shall we? Hastings wants you to court his daughter properly.
Even if Lady… um, Mattie doesn’t require it, he does.
Flowers, gifts, trinkets. Courtship rituals.
The servants gossip, and everyone in London then knows what’s what, so this is an essential, seemingly trivial part of the process.
I’ll assist with the selection. He’d also like certain businesses you’re involved with downplayed, so to speak.
The unsavory enterprises. At least until the first babe is born.
Rogue King of Limehouse Basin isn’t exactly what he desired for his darling girl. But you, obviously, got to her first.”
“At least I’m not an ivory-turner,” he whispered beneath his breath.
She tilted her head in confusion.
“Her father cheats at dice, my na?ve hoyden. I do many cursed things, but cheating is not one. Every gaming hell in town is after him.” Streeter growled and, snatching up his glass, polished off the contents.
Lord, she wished he’d button his collar.
The view was becoming a distraction. “There’s more to this agreement.
I can see from the brutal twist of those comely lips of yours.
More edges to be smoothed away like sandpaper to rough timber.
Go on, spit it out. I can take a ruthless assessment. ”
Hildy controlled, through diligence born of her own beatdowns, the urge to raise her hand to cover her lips.
Comely ones that had begun to sting pleasantly at his backhanded compliment.
“Aside from your agreement that my solicitors—in addition to yours and the earl’s—will review all contracts to ensure fairness for both parties, there is the matter of Miss Henson. ”
He whispered a curse against crystal and was unapologetic when his narrowed gaze met hers. He lowered his glass until it rested on his flat belly. “So, I’m to play the holy man until the ceremony?” Then he muttered something she didn’t catch. Or didn’t want to. For a wife who prefers women.
Hildy made a mental note to investigate that disastrous possibility, although it made no difference.
Lady Matilda—Mattie—had to get married to someone.
A male someone. Why not this beautiful devil who seemed to actually like her?
Heavens, Hildy thought in despair. The Duchess Society couldn’t weather the storm should a scandal of that magnitude come to light.
It was illegal, which was absurd, of course, but that was the case.
There were whisperings of such goings-on, relationships on the sly.
Rumors with the power to destroy one’s life .
It was decided at that moment, with dust motes swirling through fading wintry sunlight, in a startlingly elegant office in the middle of a slum.
This marriage, between a lady who wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t and a tenacious blackguard who wanted high society tucked neatly in his pocket, had to happen.
Or Hildy and her enterprise to save the women of London from gross matrimonial injustice was finished .
Too, she would go belly up without funds coming in to pay the bills—and coming in soon .
Streeter rocked forward, his Wellingtons dusting the floor, upsetting the shipping crate until she feared it would collapse beneath him.
“I return the question because it’s a valuable one.
Besides a hefty fee that Hastings can’t afford and will eventually derive from other sources, namely the source sharing this stale malt air with you, what’s in it for you?
Dealing with me isn’t going to be easy. Ask my partners, should you be able to locate them.
Mattie isn’t much better from what I know of her.
Her spirit is part of the reason I believed she’d be the right woman for the job. ”
Hildy chewed on her bottom lip, an abominable habit, then glanced up to find Streeter’s gaze had gone vacant around the edges.
The way a man’s does when he’s thinking about things.
She wasn’t, saints above, imagining the thread of attraction strung between them like ship’s netting. He felt it, too. “I’ll be candid.”
“Please do,” he whispered, bringing himself back from his musing, his cheeks slightly tinged. His breathing maybe, maybe , churning faster.
“When I arrived, I would’ve said I was doing it to secure future business with the Earl of Hastings. He has five daughters, as you know, and no wife to guide them. A line of inept governesses, another quitting every week it seems. My proposal?
“I guide him to appropriate men for the remaining four since Mattie has you on the hook. Decent men my people have investigated thoroughly. Then assist with the negotiations, so his daughters are protected, pay my coal bill, and we’re both happy.
” Hildy ran her finger over a nap in the chair’s velvet, her gaze dropping to record her progress.
“Frankly, I need the money as I wasn’t left a large inheritance, more a burden.
An ever-maturing residence and staff and no funds allocated for preservation.
“And I’m not planning to marry myself, so survival falls directly to me.
Likewise, I do this to benefit the young women I work with, if you must know, not simply as a business venture.
You have no idea how lacking they are simply from being isolated from any discussions outside the appropriate tea to serve.
They’re forced to sign contracts they can’t even begin to understand— lifelong , binding contracts—with no assistance. ”
The toothpick bounced in Streeter’s mouth as he bit down on it. “What’s changed?”
Digging her fingertips into the chair’s cushion, she decided to tell him.
“I’m bored with earls and viscounts in fretful need of an heir to carry on a line that should cease production.
In need of capital to salvage a crumbling empire.
A rumored Romani bastard who’s hiding what he really wants, and I’m the person hired to find out what?
” She snapped her fingers, a weight lifting as she spoke the truth. “Now, there’s a challenge.”
For a breathless second, Streeter’s face erased of expression.
Like a fist swept across a mirror’s vapor.
She’d stunned him—and her pulse soared. Foolishly, categorically.
Then a broad smile, a sincere smile, sent the dent in his cheek pinging.
His teeth flashed in wonderfully startling contrast to his olive skin.
“Well, damn, I can be surprised.” He saluted her with the glass he’d picked up only to find it empty.
“A worthy opponent steps out of the mist.”
“I’m not an opponent,” she murmured, knowing she was.
With a sigh of regret, perhaps because she’d gone back to fibbing, he braced his hand on his thigh and rose to his feet.
She watched him cross the room because she couldn’t help herself.
Tall, broad yet lean, an awe-inspiring physique even in mussed clothing.
He moved with an innate grace even a duke wouldn’t necessarily have possessed.
Natural and unassuming. The stuff one was born with—or without. Elegance that simply was.
He stopped before another of the schematic drawings, an imposing brick structure laid out with mathematical precision she suspected existed only in the sketch.
“What if I say no to working with you? Refuse your kind service. Toss it back to Hastings like a flaming ember, pitting his desperation against my ambition.”
Hildy understood after a moment’s panic that this was part of the negotiation.
That the correct response, or non-response, was vital.
Retrieving her glass, she took a generous pull, smooth liquor chasing away the chill.
“Is it any different than working with your”—she gestured over her shoulder to the warehouse—“bountiful trading partners? We’ll be in business together. End of story.”
He paused, studying her in a way few men had dared to even while telling her how beautiful she was. Men she’d never wanted to undress her with their eyes, as the saying went. A phrase that until this second had held no meaning.
A peculiar tension, the awareness from earlier, roared between them as if Alton had reopened the doors and let the Thames rush in. As if Tobias Streeter had laid his hands on her. An experience she had no familiarity with which to visualize.
“End of story,” he murmured joylessly and turned back to his sketch.
She deposited her folio on his desk, the thump ringing through the room.
Outside, a dockworker’s shout and the rub and bump of a ship sliding into harbor pierced the hush.
He was equally damaged, she could see. And very good at hiding it.
They were alike in this regard, a mysterious element only another wounded animal would recognize.
Making the call on instinct alone, Hildy nonetheless made it.
Tobias Streeter wasn’t a fiend. He wasn’t an abuser like her father.
He was just a man.
A man she was willing to polish until he shone like the crown jewels. “There will be events. Part of your engagement and introduction to the ton , as it were. You’ll likely need some instruction.”
He tapped the sketch three times before shifting to lean his shoulder against the wall in a negligent slump she no longer counted as factual.
“I clean up well. Never fear,” he said, his voice laced with scorn.
Who it was directed at, she wasn’t sure.
“I’ll review the contract in that tasteful folio of yours this evening, then we’ll discuss the details tomorrow afternoon.
I’ll send a carriage with a coachman ready to protect you should the need arise, not those lads just out of the schoolroom you have manning your conveyance. ”
Glancing to a clock on the mantel that had been cautiously ticking off time, his smile thinned, frigid enough to freeze water.
“I’m sorry to rush you out, but I have a meeting in ten minutes that will, if successful, net me close to a thousand pounds.
My men will escort you home. Your chariot can follow along for fun.
” His jaw tensed when she started to argue, and he pushed off the wall with a growl.
“Not on my watch, Templeton. Not in my township. Don’t even begin . ”
However, stubborn chit that she was, she did begin, opening her mouth to tell him who was managing this campaign to show London how bloody wonderful a husband he would be.
“Tea and some of them lemony biscuits from the baker on the corner, coming right up,” Alton proclaimed, stumbling into the room, a silver teapot she wondered where in heaven’s name he’d located clutched in a meaty fist and two mismatched china cups balanced in the other.
Halting, he took one look at his employer’s thunderous expression, slapped the cups on the first available surface, and hustled Hildy from the office.
The teapot was still in his hand as Streeter’s coach rolled down the congested lane with her an unwilling captive inside. She suppressed a clumsy laugh to see a coat of arms, painted over but visible, on the carriage’s door.
Another aristocrat who’d lost his fortune to the Rogue King.
Hildy collapsed against the plush squabs of the finest transport she’d ever ridden in, realizing she hadn’t asked Tobias Streeter how he planned to profit from a marriage he didn’t want.
Read on!