“She’s better at this.” He turned the paper to gaze her profile. “She taught me how to do it. I let her trace me. She would enjoy taking your likeness. Everyone’s really. She collects the things.” He was babbling.
His mother rubbed her palm up and down his arm. “Then you’d better bring her here so she may do so.” She went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek then turned back to her room. “And make sure to make me another copy of that silhouette.” She looked over her shoulder from the door frame. “I’m building a small collection consisting of the most valuable of art works. After that”—her gaze dipped to the silhouette—“I’ve only one more to go.”
He nodded, and she shut the door. He paced back to his chamber, looking at the silhouette the entire time. He’d makeanother copy for his mother. Edited, of course. No need to share the entire thing.
But first he must return to London.
Twenty-Three
The hammering on the floor above would split Amelia’s head in two before she finished writing out the list for Tidsdale. He was an imbecile, knew nothing of business matters, and she’d found her primary task as his secretary was to hold his hand. And she couldn’t even be comfortable while doing it. On top of the noise, there was the snow, falling outside as if it had a right. Which, perhaps it did in November. But the fireplaces in the new agency townhouses had not been cleaned and could not be used. And Amelia would rather raze the building to the ground than hire a sweep who used climbing boys.
But that’s what Tidsdale wished. Because it was neater. A few select sweeps used new machines to clean the chimneys. But the fashionable set refused to use them, and so did Tidsdale. Cleaning the chimneys had become the very bottom item on her list, so she wore shawls. Two of them. And her pelisse. Gloves too. At all hours.
A bit like Drew used to. But the biggest annoyance of all was the man sitting behind the desk across the room from her own.
She looked up at him, glared. “You promised I would get to run the agency myself.” She pushed away from her wobbly deskand stabbed him with her archest gaze. If he let her have full control as he’d promised, she’d hire whomever she wished to clean the chimneys. Or demand the renovators widen them to begin with, so children were not deemed necessary by soulless scoundrels. Drewneverused climbing boys. “Why are you here?”
“A man must know the business he funds, Mrs. Dart. And I know any business I’m about quite thoroughly.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Blasted man. His every sentence an innuendo. And often, not skilled ones. Sometimes, only the waggle of his brow, the slickness of his leering clued her in. He’d not made good on his words, though, seemed content to swing his legs beneath his massive desk on the other side of the room and whistle while he worked. A boy playing at being a man.
Heavens, but the desk was huge. And ornate, and with such a monstrosity placed above a man’s lap, she could not help but wonder… did he compensate for something?
She winced at another round of hammering. “The carpenters should work during our break hours. At noon. And before we arrive for work. These are insupportable work conditions. My brain is rattling in my skull.”
“A little noise is not much to pay for a quick renovation.” He rubbed his hands together. “This will be the most fashionable house on the street, and in a year’s time, this very agency will have made this street one of the most fashionable in London. Lord Andrew possesses no creativity. No sense of the future, of how things change. I assure you, Mrs. Dart, I amquitecreative. In all ways. You’re going to love the bedchamber I’m arranging for you.” Were his eyebrow dancing caterpillars? “I’ve used all my talents in that particular location to meet your every pleasure.”
What an unmitigated arse.
She sighed and scooted closer to her desk, grasping for a notebook from the pile on the corner. “There is much to do before we open.”
“Just do whatever Lord Andrew did.”
“Must I repeat myself, Mr. Tidsdale? I refuse to share any of Lord Andrew’s business practices with you.” Her admonition the music his caterpillar eyebrows danced to. An incessant waltz she must play continuously because either he did not believe her, or he was attempting to wear her down.
He would not. And as soon as the deeds for the Aster Square residences were safely in Drew’s hands, she’d leave this place, find a new position. Tidsdale was too sure of his own power to contemplate that very clear fact. Once what he held over her head was safe, then she was gone. He hadn’t even asked her to sign a contract. Nothing held her here but her own purposes. She tempered a smile. Tried to. It would not work, so she opened the notebook to hide it. If he saw, he’d not ask her why. He’d assume she smiled at some improper thought regarding him and, no doubt, fashionable bedrooms, and she’d have to endure his eyebrows once more.
A bit of paper, folded and stiff, dropped from the notebook pages onto her desk.
“You know, Mrs. Dart. Fashionable bedrooms are not all I canerect.” She groaned. Perhaps if she told him she was not, after all, a widow, he’d stop this nonsense. “But I do my best erecting inside them.”
Her eyes rolled so hard into the back of her skull the world went dark.
The hammering started back up. Sawing with it, too. Thank God, though. It would drown out Tidsdale’s incessant prattling.
Her fingers had opened the paper while she’d been inspecting the inside of her skull, and she looked down at it now. She inhaled sharply. She’d forgotten about this—the listshe’d made just before Drew’s arrival at Hawkscraig. The list of reasons not to love him. The last two struck her as most important, wise warnings from a past her who could, somehow, see the future.
He’s a blind fool.
He’ll never fall in love.
Truths to knock some sense into her if not to console her. If she’d only listened to her wiser self, the self who had compiled this list, she’d not be heartbroken now. Oh, she would be. She’d already been in love. Why else make the list? But she was more so now, despite his blindness, his foolishness, his refusal to listen to the cries of his heart. Peeking at Tidsdale to make sure he paid her no mind, she reached into her pocket and pulled forth another bit of paper. A bit of remembrance. The stark black of Drew’s profile on now-crumpled cream paper. She traced the silhouette, wishing she could trace the jaw and temple of the real man instead. Likely never again. She folded the paper and replaced it in her pocket, its dark home.
Soon, he’d own the Aster Square townhomes, and she could leave Tidsdale. But what then? Returning to his employ seemed impossible. Returning to Scotland seemed a cold and lonely end. More travel?
The banging from above shook the house.
From above? No. This banging was of a different tenor and rhythm. No hammer on wood and nails. Closer, too.
