“I think we haven’t much time,” he said quickly. He sat next to her on the settee. “Allow me to go straight to the heart of the matter. This is a great opportunity for you, Miss Woodchurch. The gentleman is the Duke of Santiava, and now, Viscount Abbott. You may have heard that the viscount’s title passed to a foreigner?”
Hattie was stunned into silence. She couldn’t form a coherent thought, which was just as well, as her tongue felt thick in her mouth.
The earl continued to talk, but she didn’t hear some of what he said. He frowned. “Miss Woodchurch? Do you know of whom I am speaking?”
Only the most sought-after bachelor in all of London. Only the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. “Yes, my lord.”
“His spoken English is impeccable,” the earl continued. “You’d not suspect for a moment that anything was amiss. Unfortunately, his ability to write and read English is not as impeccable and he needs some help in that regard.”
Help. He needed help.Fromher? Hattie couldn’t grasp how this was happening. Lord Iddesleigh wanted her to write things for that beautiful man?
The earl leaned forward and looked her directly in the eye. “I don’t think I’m getting through to you. This position could open doors for you. Doors that might not otherwise open, if you take my meaning.”
She did not take his meaning. She could hardly even think.
He sighed. “Miss Woodchurch. What do you want in life?”
“Pardon?” She didn’t know what she wanted in life since Rupert had rejected her. The visions she’d held of her future had disappeared like smoke. “I... A cottage of my own. Perhaps a dog or two. Maybe even a cow.”
Iddesleigh frowned. “I think you should know that owning a cow is more trouble than you think. Nevertheless, if that’s what you want, then you’re even more perfect for this position than I first thought.”
She wanted to ask what cows had to do with anything, and really, she hadn’t meant she would rush out and buy one straightaway. But as it was, she sat numbly, trying to make sense of it.
And then the earl told her what the viscount would pay for her services, and everything the earl had been trying to say was clear. It was an amount that Hattie could hardly grasp. An amount that could be the start of endless possibilities. Her uncertainty about being alone with a beautiful bachelor still raged, but so did the want for that money. It truly was a way out of her father’s house. “I accept,” she said, her voice clear.
On the way home, Hattie’s father demanded to know what the position would pay. When she told him, her father’s thin eyebrows rose almost as high as his receding hairline. “That much? Well, Harriet, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take only fifteen percent.”
She looked at him aghast. “What?”
“It’s only fair. You’re an adult now, and you should have been married and out of my house long ago. Fifteen percent is a bargain compared to what you might pay for room and board.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I would have been out of your house long ago were it not foryou, Papa,” she said. “You and our house and my brothers!”
“Nevertheless,” he said with a shrug.
Yes, Hattie would do whatever it took to get out of her father’s house. Whatever it took.
CHAPTER FOUR
MATEOTHOUGHTTHEviscount’s house on Grosvenor Square looked rather plain from the street. Pale brick, a dark green door with brass knockers. A boot scrape to remove the mud off one’s boots, a hitching post for horses. It was a fine, respectable home, he supposed, but unremarkable. But he did like that he could stand at the window of his sitting room and look down to see who stood on his doorstep.
Today, it was the Earl of Iddesleigh, or Beck, as he’d reminded Mateo more than once. He was with a woman who wore a bonnet that obscured her face, but she looked to be average in bearing and height. As unremarkable as this house. Not that her appearance mattered to Mateo—she was a clerk, come to write his English correspondence for him. And there was a lot that needed to be written.
On the afternoon his mother had brought the matchmaker into his life, she’d also managed, over tea, to complain about the slow pace of Mateo’s work. He’d been mortified for a second time by her, but before he could explain himself, before he tried to describe how indecipherable his grandfather’s writing was, Beck had seized on the complaint as a problem he could solve. He said he knew of a woman from his school in need of a position.
Lady Aleksander had pointed out what Mateo had been thinking—that it would be frowned upon to have an unchaperoned, unmarried woman work alone with the viscount, who was a bachelor.
“No reason to fret,” Beck had said confidently. “She’ll be no temptation to the viscount.”
That remark had landed with a thud. “I beg your pardon, sir?” Mateo’s mother had snapped.
“My apologies for misspeaking. I would not presume to know. What I mean is that the young lady is accustomed to work,” Beck quickly amended. “And her family is accustomed to her working. Instead of thinking of her as an unmarried young woman, ripe for the plucking—”
“Good God,” Lady Aleksander complained.
“Think of her more like a spinster aunt who comes for tea. No one would think twice about that, would they? Furthermore, if she comes and leaves through the servants’ entrance, who can speculate what job she has come to do?”
It did not sit well with Mateo. The discussion was cold—whoever the woman was, she was a person. “Regardless of the door she uses, she is still a woman whose reputation deserves to be respected.”
