“Is she or is she not a woman?” Lord Andrew asked.
The secretary did not seem pleased to have such a question asked about her. Her lips were pressed into a tight line, and she gripped her quill so tightly, Clara feared it might snap. An angry woman, but definitely a woman. “I take your meaning, my lord. But can I?—”
Lord Andrew stood and bowed. “We are making no decisions today. We will let you know when we have.”
A dismissal. She hadn’t even been able to describe her work, the projects she’d helped her father with before his death. She should have known two titled men would never let her speak. She should not have trusted them to do so. So she stood, offeredher prettiest curtsy, and swept from the room like a queen, shutting the door softly behind her.
Then muffled a shriek when she saw Alfie standing just before her, wide-eyed. He was taller, ganglier than the other children his age, and at seven years old had seen more death than she would have liked. Losing a father… it should not happen so soon. He looked just like Everette, too—yellow hair with a stubborn cowlick at the very top and brown eyes. Not much of Clara in him but for, perhaps, his lips and nose. His brave heart, too. At least she hoped hers was brave. She worked daily to be so.
She knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing here, love?”
“I wanted to hear.”
“You were eavesdropping?”
He nodded, his hair flopping over his eyes. He needed a haircut, and she swept it out of the way.
“You should not eavesdrop.” And yet… she looked at the door behind her. It did not muffle well the sounds of conversation within the room. If their voices could be heard in the hallway… well then, the conversation was not private, was it?
She winced but turned on tiptoe until her bunched knees brushed the door and pressed her ear against it. Alfie joined her, leaning close to her so they were almost nose to nose.
Not every word made it through the wood, but one voice did so, hammering like a battering ram through the door.
“Clearly not her.” Said in Lord Atlas’s deep honey-silk tones.
On top of his voice, another, cutting and sharp. “She’s the one, quite obviously.”
Thank you, Lord Andrew.
A softer voice, then. The secretary’s? Clara couldn’t quite make it out.
“What’d she say?” Alfie whispered.
“Shh!” Clara pressed a finger to her lips.
Lord Andrew seemed to be making something of a speech in her defense, though she only caught a few of the words. “Her boy needs fresh air… at Briarcliff… Mother would hate… we turned them away.”
“But she’s too delicate to help me finish the dower house,” Lord Atlas protested. That voice came through loud and clear and shiver-inducing.
Clara and Alfie snorted.
“Didn’t look delicate to me,” Lord Andrew countered.
She wasnotdelicate, thank you very much. She’d had a child and looked it. But even before then, she’d never been the slender sort. Her hips had always been the kind heir-mad men coveted for breeding. And her bosom ripe for ogling. But who cared for curves? She had muscle enough to build a chair, to paint a wall, to fit molding to a drawing room ceiling. She’d used her curves once to save her hide and with decidedly mixed results. She’d use nothing but her talent now.
“Sheraton!” Lord Andrew’s voice boomed from behind the door. “If she learned ornamentation in his style, we should not ignore that influence.” The man proved to be, surprisingly, a gem. A truly superior intellect who recognized that the daughter of a student of the most-renowned furniture maker in England—nay, the world—should not be dismissed so lightly.
“I’m the one who must work with her.” Lord Atlas again, and she suddenly wished she was not eavesdropping. No one wished to hear what others thought of them. “Restoration is dangerous work. We cannot have a child wandering about. No. Not her. The first fellow seemed perfect. Good experience. No children. Likable. We’ll do well together. No need for further interviews.”
“It’s your decision to make, brother.”
Clara bolted upright and snatched her son’s hand.
“They’re not done yet,” he hissed, trailing along behind her on reticent legs.
“They will be soon, and we don’t want to be caught. Lesson one in eavesdropping, darling—leave before you wish to.”
He sighed but followed all the way up to the room they shared at the art school. She set him in a chair in the corner with a book and paced back and forth in the small, spartan space.
