She jolted, sat up and put space between them. “Families?” She didn’t meet his eyes, and a tendril of trepidation crawled over his skin.
“Yes. If I wasn’t clear, I don’t do this sort of thing, meeting a woman at a party and, well, what we just did.”
“What we just d-did,” she echoed, her voice hollow.
Oh lord, this was going sideways. He cupped her cheek and brought her gaze back to meet his. “I’m trying to say that I want to do this right.” He couldn’t stop the words tumbling from his lips, even as he watched her breathing quicken, her cheeks pale. “May I court you properly—”
Three quick knocks sounded on the door. “Is everything all right in there?”
Mary pushed away from him and stumbled to her feet. “I have t-t-to g-go.” She shook her head, shoved her skirts down over her legs as she rushed away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t go, please!” Archie was already standing, but he stumbled, nearly falling in his effort to reach her. “Mary, please!”
She stopped, the door knob clenched in her hand. “This was a mistake. I d-don’t want those things from you. Ican’thave those things from you.”
Spots appeared in his vision, and he shook his head, disbelieving. “I—I don’t understand.”
But she’d pulled the door open and stood at the threshold, with the countess standing wide-eyed behind her.
Mary’s gaze finally met his, and he wanted to say he saw regret, but perhaps he was only imagining. He was beginning to suspect he’d imagined so much.
“I’m sorry,” she said once more before shutting the door in his face.
Chapter 5
TheremnantsofArchie’ssandwich—the thick slice of ham slathered in mustard and slabs of fresh sourdough bread—bounced off his window, and he immediately regretted his actions.
His assistant popped his head of white hair around the door to Archie’s private office, almost, but not quite, suppressing his wince at the state of the room. Mr. Jasper Patmore had retired three years before as the secretary for a large legal firm in London to spend the rest of his days with his wife. Sadly, she had passed shortly after, and the man needed a project to fill his days.
Getting Archie organized was his chosen project and, based on the progress made in the last six months, Jasper would be working until Archie himself retired.
The outer parlor of the storefront was Jasper’s domain, but the private inner office resembled the chaos in Archie’s mind. His space was approaching a state where Jasper would allow clientsinside without gasping aloud. Archie had unpacked all (most) of the boxes, and the pair of mismatched chairs facing his desk no longer served as supplementary bookshelves. The chipped bust of Aristotle, one Archie had rescued from a rubbish heap on a dare while in university, sat in the corner with Archie’s bowler plopped on its head and a discarded bow tie around its neck. Jasper did his best to maintain order, dusting with a ravenous urgency whenever Archie took luncheon outside the office, and kept the stacked files that defied the laws of gravity from spilling over.
“What happened this time?” Jasper said, raising one eyebrow at the display below the window.
Archie scowled, acting more like a petulant toddler than a business owner and one of the most promising attorneys in Yorkshire. “I got a letter back from Lancashire.”
Jasper flattened his lips and retreated, returning a moment later with another, far fatter, ham sandwich. “Here’s mine.”
“Then you won’t have anything to eat.”
His assistant enjoyed being of a martyr, and Archie had no issue tolerating the behavior. Jasper was a saint for holding the practice together. He experienced a burst of gratitude for the man’s endless patience and obscene competence. While Jasper’s salary was nearly the same as the rent, Archie’s fledgling business would have disintegrated into a pile of discarded newspapers and unanswered mail had Archie not hired him.
“I’ll eat my secret sandwich.”
Archie raised his brows. “You have asecretsandwich?”
Jasper held up his hands. “We’re not getting into this now. Can we discuss why you’re throwing your luncheon at the window with enough frequency that I have to prepare secret sandwiches?”
Archie dropped his spectacles onto the pile of papers on his desk and pressed his fingertips to his temples, rubbing idly. “I wrote the Countess of Whitfield about Mary, and she finally responded.”
“I’m assuming she had no information for you.”
“None.” Archie lifted the paper, scanned the lines of tidy script and read them aloud. “No one by the name of Mary is employed by my household, nor is anyone who matches your description a friend or relation of a member of the Burnley Hornets. I wish you the best with your search.“ He balled up the letter and tossed it towards the rubbish bin. He missed, of course, and Jasper winced.
“I suspect she doesn’t want to be found,” Jasper said for what was likely the thousandth time.
Archie wouldn’t listen to what he didn’t want to hear. “I need to know what happened, what I did wrong.”
