The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,9
brushed her skirts free of the taint of that man’s desk and stepped away from it. Because of that weakness, because of what happened afterward, Josiah Brittle Junior, had it in for her.
His smiling lies and seductive grins had coaxed her into trusting him. Then came the heartbreak when he returned from a trip to Edinburgh married. Then—when she refused to give him again what she had while in the throes of naïve adoration—began his vendetta against her, a vendetta that he still held onto tightly, five years later. She could already see his triumphant grin, when the family returned and he discovered the missing type, and hear him condemning her to his father and brother, and then throwing her out onto the street.
She would never again fall for a pretty face.
Captain Anthony Masinter was not pretty. He was worse. He was the sort of man Lady Justice despised: attractive, privileged, elite, obviously wealthy, and entirely at ease with his mastery over everybody. She needed his help like she needed a fresh new hole in her heart.
Her heart was already sufficiently full of holes.
“Never again,” she said loudly to the empty shop—no matter how tempting the man and his offer to help. “Never, ever again.”
Chapter Three
She was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, in a heap of trouble he’d caused, and more disdainful than the Duchess of Hammershire on her tetchiest days.
He had to help her. Even if she didn’t want help.
There were three things Tony knew without doubt: how to command a man-of-war to victory in battle, how to turn a glum body to lighter spirits, and how to solve tricky problems. For this sassy-tongued printing-shop mistress with troubled eyes he’d haul out the twelve-pounders if it meant she’d direct that smile at him again.
Leaving behind Gracechurch Street and the girl whose name he didn’t even know yet, he turned away from the part of town where his first lieutenant had once lived and toward his own house instead. He couldn’t very well go beg the widow’s hand with his head full of another woman. And Mrs. Park probably needed a day or two to come to terms with the state in which her husband had left her and their children: broke.
He would find a solution to the pretty print mistress’s bind, and then—afterward—see about the other woman’s horrid situation that was also his fault.
But by the time his manservant, Cob, set the post beside his coffee and steak the following morning, he still had not devised a solution. Taking up a letter marked with his name in a familiar flowing hand, he passed it back to Cob.
“Do the honors, old fellow?”
His manservant opened the message and read aloud.
Darling,
Cob cleared his throat, then continued.
Uncle Frederick is crawling out of his hole to attend Lady Beaufetheringstone’s ball tomorrow evening. No other hostess can ever summon him forth; I think he must have a tendre for her. But I know he will be delighted to see you.
Tony snorted above the rim of his coffee cup. “Delighted” went too far. His mother’s brother, Bishop Frederick Baldwin, was as much of a snob as the rest of the family. But Tony could always make the old prelate laugh, or better yet, turn red and holler.
I expect to meet you there. Save a dance for me.
Bisous,
Seraphina
P.S. Do wear your uniform. You know how I adore it when the ladies flock about you like gulls around a topsail.
Tony smiled. Seraphina was the only member of his family who acknowledged his chosen profession. The others preferred to pretend that he’d been on an extended educational trip abroad. For twenty years.
He would attend the ball. Uncle Frederick was a cranky old codger, but Tony enjoyed him. He enjoyed everybody, mostly.
He wanted to enjoy a snappy-tongued, doe-eyed print mistress, however, more than he had ever before wanted to enjoy a respectable woman.
Her sweet, lush pink lips had entranced him. And her slender fingers, so graceful yet purposeful on that machine . . . He’d gotten downright lightheaded watching her hands move. And hard. Right there in that shop he had imagined removing the pins from her tightly bound hair the color of Russian sable, sinking his hands into it, and tilting her face up to his.
“Captain,” his manservant said.
“Cob?”
“I said, would you care for me to reply to Lady Beaufetheringstone’s invitation to the ball, which has been waiting for your consideration, unopened on the foyer table, for a fortnight—”
“If it’s unopened, how do you know it’s an