Heiress in Red Silk (Duke's Heiress #2) - Madeline Hunter Page 0,8
hold her own ground, let alone give as good as she got.
He smiled. A nice smile. A bit seductive, if truth be told. “I will take care of everything. You can tend to your other affairs until the money starts pouring in. Then you can worry about how to spend it all.” He reached into his frock coat and extracted a folded paper. “Because we are equal partners, we both need to agree to decisions regarding funds and developments. However, I can relieve you of that obligation after you sign this.”
She took the paper and read it. While she did, he rose, went to the writing desk, and returned with a pen and the inkwell. He set them on the table next to the divan.
“Do you understand it?” he asked.
Partly. Mostly. There were some big words that interfered, but she thought she had the main points. “This document would give you full control of the enterprise, and the right to make contracts, spend money, and decide on this invention’s future use and cost without my signature.” She looked up at him. “Do I look like a stupid woman to you, Mr. Radnor? If I do not sell my share—and nothing that has happened here today has convinced me to keep it—I will be involved in the decisions going forward. I have no intention of signing this.”
She let the paper slip from her fingers and onto the floor.
He stood abruptly, turned, and muttered. She thought she heard the words “impossible female” between a few colorful curses. She let him regain control, which took several long moments. Finally, he turned back to her, his face still reflecting his anger.
“It will take anything three times as long to accomplish if you insist on being involved. I’ll spend hours explaining the details of every decision and tutoring you in mechanics and mathematics,” he bit out. “Even finding you took too long and left this in limbo to the whole plan’s detriment.”
She stood. “And yet I be here now. Let me ask you something, Mr. Radnor. Have you ever run a profitable business?”
He did not respond fast enough, so she knew the answer.
“Well, I have. Now, I have things to do this afternoon. Good day to you.” She sailed out of the library, head high, and waited until she was back in her bedchamber before she vented her frustration by screaming into her pillow.
Chapter Three
“Well, I have.” Kevin mimicked Rosamund Jameson’s last words while he finished describing the irritating meeting with that most annoying woman. Only he knew he had pitched her voice wrong. Hers was softer, almost velvet in its timbre. Still, the words were what mattered. “As if managing a hat shop for women compares to running an industrial company.”
He felt better having gotten the entirety of it out of his head by telling Chase and Nicholas. They sat in Nicholas’s dressing room, on those ugly, blue upholstered chairs that had been inherited along with the rest of Whiteford House when Nicholas became the new duke. Nicholas had just come up to Town after a month at his estates. His baggage still littered the chamber because he had sent the valet away when Chase and Kevin walked in.
Now they shared a bottle of claret, and after much talk of politics and of Chase’s marital bliss, Chase had asked about the enterprise.
“In other words, the conversation was a failure,” Nicholas said.
Kevin watched how the fire created orange ghost flames in the wine in his glass. “She would not listen to reason.”
His cousins remained silent for a stretch. He knew what that meant. They didn’t approve. Now he would have to listen to them explain how and why they didn’t approve, like two fussy aunts.
“I in no way insulted her,” he felt some obligation to say, because Chase might report to Minerva the substance of the meeting. He didn’t really think Minerva would make his life miserable, but if she truly put her mind to it, he suspected the potential was there.
“You also in no way flattered her,” Chase said.
“Not true.” He had called her beautiful, hadn’t he? Not that he would tell these two that. It had slipped out, surprising them both, the result of how very aware he was of her beauty even while he negotiated with her. That had put him at an unfair disadvantage. He would have come away with that document signed if not for the way her appearance and presence interfered with his clear thinking.