Chapter 6
Next day
Jake shifted in the unforgiving wooden seat constructed for the proportions of a school-aged child and attempted to find a measure of relief.
In the usual course of events, he suspected viscounts didn’t submit to such treatment. However, the formidable headmistress, Mrs. Bloomquist, had left him here, and he dared not risk incurring her wrath . . . or, at least, any more than he already had.
Their meeting had begun on a promising enough note. At his request, the Dowager had arranged a tour with Mrs. Bloomquist of The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds. After yesterday’s encounter in the Duke of Arundel’s study, he’d realized his preferred plan of gaining access to Lady Olivia through that mentorship was doomed to fail. The blasted woman was slippery as water streaming across smooth stone. So, today, he’d proceeded with his other possibility: to seek her out through the school. And, miraculously, the school had proven an ideal fit for Mina.
Half an hour into the tour, however, Mrs. Bloomquist had asked the fateful question, “And Miss Radclyffe’s age?”
Jake hadn’t hesitated. “Fifteen years next month.”
“Lord St. Alban.” A sour frown twisted the woman’s mouth. “Miss Radclyffe is well advanced beyond the admissions age for prospective students. I’m afraid you will have to look elsewhere for your daughter’s educational needs. A reputable finishing school would be a better match.”
A few dumbfounded seconds passed before Jake choked out, “You’re refusing my daughter?”
Mrs. Bloomquist looked to the ceiling as if gathering her patience to proceed forward with a room of inattentive students. “We like to mold our girls from the youngest age possible. That is, from the time they are capable of acting like proper human beings. That is, from the age of ten.” Her gaze lowered to meet his. “You see, by age fifteen, the clay is quite set. Unmoldable, if you will.”
“Ten? Is that number derived from a scientific analysis?”
“Please, take a seat, my lord. You appear agitated.”
He searched the room for a suitable chair, but saw only five or so empty school desks arranged in a semicircle. “In one of these?”
“If you please.”
His mistake became apparent the moment he squeezed himself into a desk. First, he was going to have one hell of a time extracting his six-foot-four frame from its grasp. Second, he’d ceded the power position to Mrs. Bloomquist. Was that the hint of a smile curving her lips?
She glanced at her pocket watch and made her way to the door. “My lord, if you will please wait here, I must attend to a matter of some importance.”
“Must attend to one of your proper human beings?” he’d asked. He regretted the acid in his tone when the woman flashed him a suppressive scowl before exiting the room.
Ten minutes later, here he still sat. If he ever succeeded in disengaging himself from this desk, he might consider kicking himself for having goaded the woman. This school was an impeccable match for Mina. Its emphasis on mathematics—“Not just sorting household ledgers,” Mrs. Bloomquist had informed him—and natural philosophy, including physics and astronomy, led him to the conclusion that here was a place where Mina would not only fit in, but one where she would thrive.
Additionally, the students learned French, piano, tea etiquette, dancing, and needlework. “After all, that is the world in which they live,” Mrs. Bloomquist had added on a resigned note.
In short, within these four walls lay the exact school for which he’d been searching since he and Mina had arrived in England. And he’d irritated its headmistress.
He began formulating a strategy for how best to deal with the woman. He would try charming her. If that didn’t work, he would cajole. If that didn’t work, he would bribe.
Mrs. Bloomquist had her price. His days in the sea trade had taught him that everyone did. What made a Mrs. Bloomquist tick?
A body sailed past the doorway, and he braced himself for the woman’s return. His anticipation turned to shock when a wispy blonde head peeked around the doorframe and wide, blue eyes blinked once. A beat later, the rest of her followed. There, framed by the doorway, stood a perturbed Lady Olivia Montfort, staring a hole through him as if she could obliterate his presence with the heat of her gaze.
Her mouth opened, then closed. It opened again, then closed again, her discomfiture evident by her flawless imitation of a fish gasping air. At last, she got out, “Lord St. Alban? How is it that you keep popping up everywhere I am?”
~ ~ ~
Olivia had finished meeting with the board of directors and was about to get on with her day when she caught a glimpse of a large form seated inside what was supposed to be an empty classroom.
Was her mind playing tricks on her? Or was that form a man?
A quick first glance confirmed the room’s sole occupant was, indeed, a man. A second glance revealed the man to be none other than Lord St. Alban crammed into the smallest desk imaginable for a man his size, legs splayed out into the aisle like a recalcitrant schoolboy in need of a good paddling.
Oh. Where had that come from? She didn’t even believe in corporal punishment for children.
Her eyes traced long muscular thighs outlined by tight-fitting buff buckskins that conveyed the illusion of naked skin. This man was no child . . .
She gave herself a mental slap, barely aware that they were conversing. What was it she’d last said? Oh, yes . . .
“My question stands, Lord St. Alban.” Her insides gave a tumble at the use of his name. She must collect herself. The man’s powerful thighs were of no consequence. “What is your business here? I thought you a burglar. We don’t get many men in the school.”
The horizontal line of his mouth firmed. “I’m here to discuss with Mrs. Bloomquist the possibility of a place for my daughter.”
Olivia nodded. “I imagine our school would benefit from adding Miss Radclyffe to its ranks. She strikes me as most impressive.” She absently picked up a piece of chalk from the board beside her and pivoted toward it. The burn of Lord St. Alban’s gaze threatened to set her back aflame.
“Has Miss Bretagne been here long?”
“She was the school’s first student two years ago.” A face began to emerge from Olivia’s hand.
“That would make her twelve years of age?”
Olivia’s hand stilled, and she half turned toward him. “I’m not certain that is any of your business, but yes.”
“Your daughter must be a proper human being then.”
“Well,” Olivia began, setting the chalk down and dusting off her fingers as she turned around, “she has her moments, but I wouldn’t go that far. The word barbaric has escaped Lucy’s teacher Miss Scace’s lips on more than one occasion in reference to Lucy.”
His gaze shifted left. “Your likeness of Mina is remarkably lifelike for so few strokes.”
Olivia’s cheeks blazed into twin flames, and her heart banged out a hard thud. She had, indeed, drawn Miss Radclyffe’s likeness. How bothersome that his praise elicited the unruly wave of gratification now coursing through her.
He sat forward in his ridiculous chair, his gaze, intense and penetrating, pinning her into place. “Such mastery must take years of practice.”
“I’d hardly call myself a master.” She shifted on her feet. The movement was an obvious indicator of her discomfort, but there was no help for it. “That appellation belongs to Jiro.”
He cocked his head. “An unusual name for London. In fact, I haven’t heard the name Jiro since I was last in Japan.”
She should make her excuses. She didn’t want to discuss the details of her life with this man. He knew too much about it already. In fact, it was possible that he knew more about her than ninety-nine percent of her acquaintances. “This drawing has to do with naught other than the fact that I sketch when I’m—”
“Nervous?”
Poised on the edge of flight, she froze. Now he was finishing her sentences?
It wasn’t his presumption that unsettled her, but rather his accuracy and familiarity. He’d not only finished her sentence correctly, but had done so without hesitation.
“Why would you be nervous, Lady Olivia?” he pressed. “Not when we’ve become such old friends over the last few days.”
Like an old married couple.
Oh. Why had that phrase come to her?
Well, it wouldn’t do. She must leave this room and find a way to avoid this man. When she saw her future stretched out before her, it didn’t include any man, particularly not this one. “I bid you good day, Lord St. Al—”
“Have you any insights?”
A few feet shy of the doorway and freedom, she stopped, curious. “Into what?”
“Into how to gain Mina’s admittance into this school.”
Olivia’s eyebrows drew together. “Is there a problem? I’m fairly certain that if this school had an exemplar, Miss Radclyffe would be she.”
“She’s too old.”
“Ah,” Olivia breathed out. “You’ve been speaking with Mrs. Bloomquist. She has firm ideas about young ladies and their malleability, or lack thereof, at certain developmental ages.”
Olivia found herself standing one desk removed from Lord St. Alban and saw only now that their conversation had drawn her forward. Separated by no more than five feet, a memory came to her, unbidden: the night of the Dowager’s Salon, when they’d danced the waltz, his breath had tickled the fine hairs of her neck. Its impact on the rate of her breathing was not insignificant.
“This school is the best I’ve found for her.”
“Is that so? Most of London considers our little school unnecessary and inappropriate.” She couldn’t resist challenging him. Women likely never did.
He shifted in his seat and crossed his powerful legs. His gaze never wavered from hers, radiating a seriousness and confidence that she couldn’t help envying. She wanted some of it for herself.
“Have you heard of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia?” he asked.
“The school has a copy in its library.”
“Mina has all three volumes memorized from cover to cover.”
“Impressive.”
And it was impressive, truly, but her proximity to Lord St. Alban made it difficult to appreciate Miss Radclyffe’s intellect. Somehow she was standing so close to him that, had he liked, he could have lifted his foot and her dress in a single, swift motion.
“It’s beyond impressive, Lady Olivia. Mina has the sort of brilliant mind that could make her one of the great thinkers of her generation. That’s what is at stake.”
Olivia set a balancing hand on the window ledge to her right and looked through its clear pane of glass in an attempt to slow the conversation, to reassert rationality over herself. Below, a group of girls were pruning rosebushes in the back garden, preparing them for their first spring bloom, but she watched them almost sightlessly.
At issue was the not insignificant problem that her brain, and her body, were refusing to think of Lord St. Alban as a viscount in this intimate space. Stripped away were Society’s constraints and dictums about who he was, who she was, and who they were in relation to one another. In the small patch of air they shared with no one but each other, it was simple, even elemental: he was a man, and she a woman.
Yet Society’s rules would reassert themselves, and she remembered precisely who she was: a mere woman.
“What I wouldn’t give,” she began, a burgeoning righteousness increasing with each word she spoke, “to navigate life with your utter privilege. Have you never been denied anything a day in your life?” A silent huff of a laugh escaped her. “No wonder Mrs. Bloomquist’s refusal has you stymied. But fret not, you will prevail. Your kind simply does.”
“My kind?” he asked, his voice low and deep, wary.
She was being unfair, but she cared not. Life was unfair.
“You take me for nothing more than an entitled viscount who must have his way?”
“My characterization of you tends more toward the general. An entitled man? Absolutely.” She rested her hip on a neighboring desk. A sleeping beast had awakened inside her, and it wanted, demanded, release. “It isn’t only that you can do whatever you please; you can do whatever pleases you. What a heady feeling it must be to have the world at your fingertips.”
He didn’t answer her immediately, allowing the moment to stretch out and the import of her words to sink into the air. All the while, he continued to regard her with eyes cool and penetrating. At last, he spoke, his voice a velvety rumble in his chest. “And what in this world doesn’t a woman under the protection of a duke have at her fingertips?”
Her own Mayfair townhouse, she didn’t reply. Instead, she pressed her lips together and held his piercing gaze.
A possibility stole in. He wasn’t only a man. He was an opportunity.
She and he each had something the other wanted. And they each had the power to give it to the other. It was simple.
Misgiving seized her. This was Lord St. Alban. Nothing would remain simple with him for long. She felt it in her bones. But how badly did she want her independence?
It felt like a test question. And Lord St. Alban was the correct answer.
She cleared her throat and spoke the words before she thought better of them. “As one of the school’s founders, I could request a reevaluation of its admittance policy.”
He sat taller in his seat. “Is that so?”
She hesitated. Every no no no clanging through her head was countered by a yes yes yes that this was her opportunity, and she dare not miss it. “I could even put in a good word for Miss Radclyffe. That she be the first student admitted under this new policy.”
“Only good?”
“Persuasive,” she replied, unsure how she’d come this far. She would be further entwining her life with this man whom she hardly knew. How badly did she need her independence? “On one condition,” she added.
“Which is?”
“For a favor in return.”
“Yes?” He was prodding her along, rightly sensing her ambivalence.
She screwed up her courage and finally said what she needed to say. “Buy me a Mayfair townhouse.”
~ ~ ~
A lightning flash of anticipation shot through Jake and quickened his pulse. Lady Olivia stood tensed before him, every ounce of her body awaiting his counter. He saw it in the tightness about her lips, the clench of her hands, the rawness of her gaze. Every cell in her body wanted him to say yes.
And he would. But he sensed that he could get more out of her if he held off.
After all, in the span of ten minutes she’d confirmed her connection to a Japanese artist, had even revealed the man’s name. Jiro. What would another ten minutes yield?
Still, he couldn’t allow the opportunity to provoke her further to pass him by. “A gentleman doesn’t gift a lady with property, unless”—He was being a scoundrel, no doubt—“she agreed to be his—”
She held up a forestalling hand. “Do not finish that sentence.”
His rational brain, at last, asserted itself. What was he thinking? Among other things, this woman was an aristocrat. One didn’t offer to make such a lady one’s mistress in exchange for a townhouse, even one located in Mayfair. “Would you care to elaborate on your proposition then?”
“It’s simple,” she said. “I’m in need of a new residence, and I’ve exhausted all acceptable options for obtaining one.” Her eyes told him what her lips wouldn’t: there was more to this story. And she wouldn’t be revealing it to him today.
Was she aware how near her body was to his? How easily he could reach up, cup the back of her head in the palm of his hand, and draw her face toward his . . . He cleared his throat, as if his mind could be cleared with as little effort. Focus. “No doubt the Duke—”
“I would like to accomplish this transaction without the Duke’s knowledge.”
“Behind his back?”
“The Duke isn’t to know until the purchase is finalized.”
“The man clearly dotes on you.” Jake didn’t relish the idea of going against the Duke of Arundel. “He would give you anything you wish.”
“I need to accomplish this on my own.” She hesitated. “With your assistance, of course.”
He didn’t like the hard edge racing alongside her words, but that was the world they inhabited. Like that, he understood something central to this woman: she wanted to forge a life on her own terms.
“And in exchange—” she began.
“You will help Mina gain entry into this school,” he finished for her.
She nodded. “All must be done in your name and through your solicitors. I require absolute discretion from you. And, of course, this won’t be a gift. I shall reimburse you with my own funds. In fact, I can’t imagine there will be any need to involve you beyond the use of your solicitors and, of course, your noble name.”
“On the contrary, my lady,” he persisted, “I couldn’t, in good conscience, allow you to navigate the vagaries of the townhouse hunt unescorted. It would be ungentlemanly.”
“Lord St. Alban, I must decline your most generous offer,” she countered. “I need only your solicitors and your name, not your . . . person.” Her mouth snapped shut on that last word, and she shifted on her feet, a habit of hers. “Secrecy would best serve both of us. Your hunt for a proper stepmother for your daughter needn’t be compromised if no one knows of your dealings with the scandalous Lady Olivia Montfort.”
What was that strange, sharp note he detected in her tone? If he knew her better, he might suspect resentment. But he didn’t really know her. Not yet, anyway.
He held his tongue, and waited. It wouldn’t do his cause any good to keep arguing his point. But that didn’t mean he’d ceded it.
This bargain was exactly what he needed. Here she stood before him, offering him this opportunity like it was her idea: time. Her time, even though she had yet to accept that fact. She would lead him to this Jiro, and Mina’s future would be secure. All he had to do was spend time with her.
Now to extricate himself from this desk and properly shake on their arrangement before she reconsidered her proposal. Another chance like this wouldn’t land in his lap again. If he wiggled left—
“You’re ridiculous in that desk.” The side of her mouth tilted up into a mean, little smile. It was more charming than it had a right to be.
He stopped cold. “I think that was the idea.”
“You wouldn’t be the first man to regret underestimating Mrs. Bloomquist.”
Again, he began muscling his way to freedom, and her mouth crept wider into a smile that revealed the tip of her crooked tooth. He saw with no small amount of gratification that when he stood, the mean, little smile slipped.
How very small and vulnerable she could appear in the blink of an eye. That curious instinct to protect her pulsed through him, and he squelched it. Instead, he held out his hand. “Lady Olivia, you have a bargain.”
Pointedly, her gaze lowered and returned to his eyes. “Gentlemen do not shake hands.”
“Sailors do.”
Her fingers inched forward until they touched his as gently as a butterfly alighting upon a petal. He squeezed her silk-gloved hand within his grasp and gave it a quick shake. A surprised laugh escaped her, and their eyes met, holding for a beat too long. Her smile faded.
She dropped his hand like a hot coal and stepped backward until her skirts touched the wall at the front of the room. Afraid to move and break the spell, he held still. In a matter of seconds, he could close the gap and have her pressed against the chalkboard, legs wrapped around his waist.
But what good would that accomplish? No good. None at all. Untold depths resided within this woman. If her depths could be reached, how far would he have to fall?
She blinked once, twice, swallowed, and the moment was gone. “I expect to hear from your solicitors in the next few days,” she murmured, her gaze refusing to meet his one last time. She neatly rounded the corner and stepped out of sight.
Alone in the room with his thoughts for company, a possibility came to him. A possibility unworthy of a gentleman. But he was a man who shook hands, so what sort of gentleman was he, anyway?
He strode to the doorway and poked his head around the corner just as the front door closed behind her.
She wasn’t getting away that easily.