Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,38
equitable. They favor me more than they do you.”
“You know what I want. It can’t be measured in coin.”
For the briefest of moments, she imagined he wasn’t talking about getting out of the brothel business but was talking instead of having her. What would it be like to be wanted that desperately, that badly? To be a need, an ache that overrode all good sense?
“If you are looking at the amounts referred to in this document,” he continued, “and believe you are getting the better deal, I assure you, you are not. I’m ready to sign. Are you?”
Never in her life had she signed a legal document; never had she placed her signature on something that tied her to another. She had always assumed the first time she did would be the day she married and signed her life over to her husband. Yet, she would secure freedom in signing this document with this man, something marriage would not have granted her. With a deep breath, she calmed her nerves. “Yes.”
Three times she dipped the gold nub of the pen in the inkwell. Three times she signed her name. Three times she watched him do the same. Then the solicitor as witness.
When they were finished, Benedict Trewlove looked at her with satisfaction reflected in his onyx eyes. “’Tis done.”
“Indeed it is,” Mr. Beckwith said as he neatly folded two of the sheaves, once, twice, and handed them each one.
She placed hers in her reticule. Benedict placed his in the inside of his jacket and stood. She followed his example, which resulted in Mr. Beckwith also coming to his feet.
“Before you take your leave, Mr. Trewlove, as you’re here, and if you would not consider it an imposition, I wondered if you’d be good enough”—he opened a drawer, withdrew a book, and set it on the desk—“to sign your novel for the wife. She enjoyed it immensely.”
Stunned, Althea wondered if he was talking to someone who had wandered into the room unobserved. Although Mr. Beckwith had addressed him by name, she couldn’t fathom that he was implying Benedict Trewlove was an author.
But Benedict picked up the book and the pen with which he’d signed their agreement only moments earlier. “Is there anything in particular you’d like me to say?”
“I shall leave it to the discretion of the wordsmith. Her name is Anne, with an E at the end.”
In fascination, she watched as Benedict turned back the cover, dipped the pen in the inkwell, and scrawled inside the book. Not closing it, he handed it back to Mr. Beckwith.
“‘To Anne, a woman of mystery. Yours sincerely, Benedict Trewlove.’ Ha. She’ll love that.” He smiled. “I very much appreciate it. She did want me to inquire as to when the next one might be published.”
“Sometime late next year.”
“I shall so inform her. Do you require anything else of me?”
“Not at the moment. We appreciate your discretion on this matter.”
“By all means. It is one of the things for which you pay me so handsomely.”
He shook Mr. Beckwith’s hand. “Good day to you, then.”
Mr. Beckwith smiled at her. “It was a pleasure, Miss Stanwick.”
“Thank you, sir.”
With his fingers splayed over her lower back, Benedict urged her toward the door, and she wondered if it was with that hand that he penned novels.
It seemed while he’d asked many questions of her, her shame over her answers had numbed her to the need to make inquiries of him as well. Quite suddenly, she realized she knew very little about him and wanted to know everything.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were an author?”
She’d waited until they were settled in a hansom cab and were on their way to ask her question of him.
“It’s not something that easily comes up in conversation.” Beast sighed. “And to be honest, I’m not quite comfortable with it yet. I don’t know that it’ll last. The one I’m writing now is not . . . cooperating. Which makes me sound like a madman, as though a novel is a living thing that determines where it goes.”
“But it is, isn’t it? A living thing? Even when it’s finished, it breathes life into people as they read it. Or they breathe life into it. The reason I love books is because it’s as though I’m traveling with a friend.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Mostly because he felt much the same way, and for him, books had always provided an escape from a reality that had not always been kind.