“You’re ready for your meeting, lass?” Daughtry approached and peeked over Clary’s shoulder.
“I am.” She typed the last word of the letter she’d prepared, pulled the sheet from the typewriter roller, and added it to the pile. “Would you hand me those?” She pointed to a large stack of papers she’d placed on a side worktable near his elbow.
“Boss isn’t shy of giving you work, is he?” Daughtry collected the stack and placed the whole in Clary’s arms.
With both arms lashed underneath, the pile nearly reached her chin. “I had no idea we received this number of submissions.”
“Oh, aye. Never a lack of those who wish to see their stories in print.”
“I hope we can give a few more that chance,” she said over her shoulder as she weaved between desks toward Adamson’s office.
“Don’t know about that, miss.” Daughtry cast her a dubious frown. “They have to get past Mr. Adamson first.”
Ah, yes, Ruthven’s gatekeeper. And he could be a ferocious one, judging by the manuscripts he’d marked Rejected and she’d decided to reread. Some of the stories had merit, and Clary hoped that she could make Gabriel acknowledge the potential she’d seen.
“Is it noon already?” he asked as she knocked on his door with her elbow before stepping inside. “Please have a seat, Miss Ruthven.”
Always a seat. Clary suspected a good deal more might be accomplished if people were allowed to stand and move and stretch their legs once in a while. Instead of taking the chair he indicated, she strode toward his desk, edged his pen stand out of the way, and plopped her enormous pile in front him.
To say he did not look pleased would be akin to saying Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa did not look giddy.
“What’s all this?” He pushed the pile toward her with two fingers.
She pushed back with her hip to keep the whole from falling off the edge of his desk. With a hand planted on top, she explained, “These are the recent submissions, including those you’ve rejected. I’d like to speak to you about a few of them.” She slid a folder atop the pile and offered it to him. “Also, the letters you asked me to type up.”
He narrowed one eye at her, grimaced at the sight of his pen pushed off-kilter, and flipped open the folder. A grunt came, following by a disgusted sniff, as he scanned her work. “Appears there’s been a mix-up. These aren’t the letters I asked you to type.”
Clary frowned and leaned forward to see which one he was looking at. “Yes, addressed to Miss C. Bently, who submitted Lady Catriona’s Liberation. She was on the list you gave me.”
“Indeed, but the list I gave you requested that you reject her drivel and send her manuscript back to her.” He shook out the sheet before him as if hoping to rid himself of fleas. “Here, you urge her to ‘persevere’ in her fiction endeavors, to improve the plot, and to resubmit her story as soon as she’s able.”
Clary crossed her arms, picking at a zigzag of beads she’d sown on the arm of her blouse. “Yes, that is an accurate reading of the letter I prepared.”
He flung the typed sheet away from him and settled against the back of his chair, mimicking her gesture by folding his arms across his chest. “And yet the diametric opposite of what I asked you to convey. Her story is atrocious. Her writing juvenile. Have you read the letter she included with her submission?”
“I have.” Clary recalled that the lady’s language was overly stilted, and the writing did lack finesse. “But everyone can improve.”
He let out a trapped breath and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a strangled chuckle. “Why doesn’t your rose-colored view surprise me?” Taking her letter in hand again, he set it aside, flattening his palm on top. “Please revise this note and tell Miss Bently to submit her story elsewhere.”
“That’s too harsh. Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Adamson stilled in the act of reaching for the next letter in the folder. “Do you truly believe that?” He turned his gaze on her, and the brightness of his eyes was like a beacon, searching her out, seeking something more than whatever answer might fall from her lips.
“Yes, of course I do.”
The fervency of her answer kindled a dangerous pleasure in his chest.
Such hopefulness was folly. Clary’s philosophy wasn’t what most people experienced in life.
Men who died in the boxing ring, or after, never recovering from their injuries. They never got a second chance. Most of his fellow child pickpockets hadn’t gotten a second chance either, especially once they’d fallen into Rigg’s clutches.
But a tantalizing possibility kept his gaze fixed on hers. If she believed in giving others a chance to improve themselves, could she forgive a man like him for his sins?
“So may I send my letter to Miss Bently?”
He directed his attention to the next letter. “Let her resubmit. Though I reserve the right to re-reject.”
When he glanced up at her, she pressed her lips together in an expressionless line, though her eyes were dancing.
Her next letter was even worse. A gentleman had submitted a book on horses. Their physiology, biology, scatology. Far more than anyone would wish to know about equines. Gabe had skimmed the initial chapters and known instantly that the book was better off delivered to a scientific publisher.
Apparently, Clary Ruthven had read every word of the horse lover’s manuscript. She’d replied with detailed eagerness about his work.
“ ‘I never dreamed horses’ teeth were four inches long,’ ” Gabe read before gazing up at her again. “Really? You now have an interest in horse anatomy?”
She inched up one ruffle-covered shoulder. “To be honest, I never gave horses much thought.”
“Nor I. Which is why I soundly rejected his submission. You’re too late on this one. I’ve already sent him a letter.”
“I’d like to send him another,” she said in that determined way of hers, her pretty chin set firmly in the air. “Everyone can use a note of encouragement now and then.”
Gabe pressed his thumb to the space between his brows and willed his head to stop throbbing. “If we’re to be about the business of encouragement, shouldn’t we start with our own authors? I can provide you with a list. Send a cheery note to each of them.”
She chuckled as if he’d said something amusing. “But they already have a publisher.” With one slim finger, she drew her nail along the edge of papers stacked in front of him, creating a strange shuffling tune. “These people submitted their words, their works, with such hope. No doubt fearful that they’d be rejected and that would be the end of their creative endeavors.”
“Some of them deserved to be rejected. Not everyone can succeed.”
“Whyever not? Is there not enough success to go around?”
Not where he came from. Everything was a competition for a place to lodge, food to eat, liquor to warm one’s belly. Only the strong and the dastardly survived. Resilient ones like his sister. Brutes like him, with fists big enough to beat everyone else away.
Gabe huffed as he read the next letter she’d typed. He shoved the sheet toward her. “Read that aloud, if you will.”
After skimming her gaze over the contents, she cleared her throat daintily and began, “ ‘I adore that your story started with a murder, but I would humbly suggest that you add a good deal more blood.’ ”
“You actually typed that?”
She nodded readily. “As you see. What’s wrong with it? She wrote a penny dreadful. They benefit from blood.”
“We don’t publish penny dreadfuls.”
“Perhaps we should.” Walking toward the window, she unsettled his mostly closed curtains to peer outside onto the rainy gray day.
Gabe took a deep, steadying breath and reminded himself that she wasn’t familiar with publishing. That she was here to learn, and as much as he might wish to avoid her and the reactions she sparked in him, he had been tasked with teaching her.
Standing, he rolled his head to ease the tightness between his shoulders. Then he approached her at the window. “The market for penny tales of horror is saturated.”
She whirled to face him, except that a pin in her hair had snagged the edge of the curtain, and she brought half the fabric along with her. As she reached up to dislodge herself, the curtain popped free of one of its rings, and her cheeks begin to flame as pink as her mouth.
“Let me,” he said as he found the misshapen pin and freed her from the fabric. As soon as he touched the crooked metal, the pin slipped from her thick tresses, and he swept the strands back behind her ear. Mercy, she was warm; the softness of the skin behind her nape kept his fingers lingering. And when she gazed up at him, cheeks flushed, lips parted, he learned the agony of maintaining control.
Her gaze fixed on his lips, and then her hand found his. She worked the misshapen pin away from him, but she kept her fingers against his far too long.
“Thank you,” she said on a breathy whisper. “If I had a ribbon in my hair, I’d lend it to you to tie this curtain back.”
Her grin did odd things to him. A lightness filled his chest. The knots in his shoulders unfurled. He remembered the first time he’d met her, years ago. When she’d shed her pristine white ribbon and tied his office curtain back, offending him by insisting he needed a bit of beauty in his world.
Little did he know she’d come back when she was a lush, desirable woman and torment him.
“Watching the world pass by is a distraction.” What he truly wished to tell her was that she was a distraction. His world had been ordered, manageable, respectable before she walked into Ruthven’s as its new co-owner. Now he found himself longing for the kind of intimacy he’d spent his life avoiding. One touch. One glance from her, and he was on tenterhooks. Eager for more. Each moment in her presence had him thinking ridiculous thoughts. Wishing for what could never be. He’d never been one to waste his energy on daydreams.
What had to be done. What he needed to do to survive. That was all that mattered.
“Shall we finish these?” He moved back toward his desk, and after a moment she followed. “Are there any you seriously believe we should consider for publication?”
Leaning toward him, she flicked through the pile and tugged out one manuscript. He recognized the title. A short story about a waif who’d risen from his humble beginnings to become a successful barrister, eventually prosecuting the vile crime lord who’d forced him into thievery as a child.
“I’m quite fond of this one.” She squared the manuscript in front of him.
“Sentimental nonsense,” he pronounced.
At her sharp inhale, he looked up to find her sharp violet glare on him.
Yes, that was better. Let her loathe him. Her disdain was precisely what he deserved.
“Don’t you have a heart, Mr. Adamson?”
“Not that I am aware of.” He knew it wasn’t true. She’d put a lie to the claim. Since Clary strutted into his life wielding a croquet mallet, he’d been reminded of the nuisance of his heart every damned day. The rusty organ responded to her, crashing against his ribs every time she was near, as if she was a magnet and his heart nothing but a twisted bit of metal.
“The story is well written,” she insisted while he got lost studying her lips. “You cannot deny the merits of the author’s style. So you must object to the content.” She started pacing around his office, in front of his desk at first and then circling around behind him.
Which he loathed. He hated anyone at his back. Especially her. She was the most dangerous of all.
“I can’t help but wonder why the tale disturbs you.”
“As I said, it’s ridiculously sentimental. There is a glut of such stories on the market. London doesn’t need another.”
Hovering at the edge of his desk, she stared down at him, which caused him to focus furiously on the next letter.
“The boy in the story is from the East End,” she said as she traced shapes with her finger on the surface of his desk. “Obviously, you’ve visited the area.”
“Not as often as you, apparently.”
“You still haven’t told me why you were in Whitechapel that day.” She tiptoed around the topic he was determined to avoid.
“The day I stopped you from attacking a drunken man with a mallet?” he threw back at her.
“Here I thought you’d stepped in to save me,” she said in a small voice.
And he’d happily do so again. Just the thought of Keene stoked violent impulses Gabe had spent years attempting to bury under layers of propriety.
“Do you often rush in to assist others? Perhaps you’re a bit like the hero in the story.”
“I’m not a hero. I don’t rush in.” He stood up from his chair, determined to end this mentoring session. She was too appealing, too near, too damned curious about his past. “Luckily, I know very few ladies foolish enough to put themselves in harm’s way.” Lifting the manuscript she seemed determined to champion, he shoved the sheaves back at her. “Contact the author. Ask if she has additional stories. Preferably less overwrought. We could consider a small collection of her tales.”
She beamed at him, and he tried not to get caught in the glow of her smile. Bending to retrieve a folder from the small cabinet he kept in the corner, he pulled out an original of a letter that he often replicated when responding to dreadful submissions.
“This is the letter I sent to the horse gentleman. It’s the wording I suggest you use when rejecting the others. A personalized note to everyone will take far too long.”
Taking the paper, she read, her eyes darting from line to line as her expression crumpled into a grimace. “This is ghastly. Cold and unkind. There’s not a single line of praise or a shred of gratitude that an author would entrust their work for our consideration.”
After casting him an angry glance, she lifted the foolscap and tore the sheet in two, then again, and again, until she’d gathered eight uneven squares between her fingers.
“Ruthven’s can do much better than this.” Stepping toward him, she slid the fragments into his top waistcoat pocket, patting her palm against the lump she’d created. Suddenly, she stilled, her hand a soft weight against his chest. “Oh, Mr. Adamson, I’ve found it.” A delicious smile lit up her face, her eyes, the entire room. “Apparently, you do have a heart after all.”