He poked his tongue into his cheek and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me.” He held up one finger. “I’ll return shortly.”
Her eyes widened a little, but she agreed, finally deigning to take the seat he’d offered.
Mr. Jones glanced up the moment Max closed his office door behind him. “Do you want me to get rid of her?” he asked.
“No. In fact, make sure she doesn’t leave. Where did Wallace go?”
Mr. Jones pointed up. “His office.”
Max jogged to the stairs and then took them three at a time until he was on the floor where most of his reporters wrote up their final stories. It was empty, still—too early for any of them to have arrived yet.
Well, it was almost empty.
Wallace glanced up from shuffling papers on his desk, his spectacles perched on the top of his head.
“Are you going to hire her, then?”
“She’s the sister of an earl,” Max said. “The Earl of Standish.”
“Does that matter?”
Amongst the ton, yes. In the newspaper business, the answer to Wallace’s question wasn’t as clear. Max shrugged.
“She does seem to have an eye for finding errors. At least from what I saw.”
Max nodded. “She wants to be our precision editor.”
“What the hell is a precision editor?”
“Just what it sounds like, I imagine. You’ve never heard of one?”
“Not in all my thirty years…”
Max frowned while Wallace scratched his jaw. “An earl’s sister working for a newspaper. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Standish will have something to say about it, I imagine.”
Max stared out the window. That had been his thought as well.
And yet, his primary concern was the paper.
“If she doesn’t work out you can always sack her. Unless you think Standish would take offense at that,” Wallace offered.
“I’m not worried about Standish.” Not really.
Wallace was frowning, though. “I’ve never heard of a precision editor.”
Neither had Max.
But…
Maxwell remembered his mother’s complaint that he needed to cover society more thoroughly, and began nodding, slowly at first, and then more vigorously. His two reporters had never taken those articles seriously.
Max could kill two birds with one stone.
“I’ve got it!” he said. And, without explaining himself, he spun around and flew back down the steps. He shouldn’t have left Lady Caroline alone for so long anyway, busybody that she was. He didn’t stop until he was at his office door, where he ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat.
Max peeked through the glass and his brows lifted in surprise. Lady Caroline was not sitting primly in her chair, back straight and hands in her lap as any proper lady should. No, she was leaning over Max’s desk, her bottom facing the window, while she flipped through his papers as though she had every right to do so.
As though it was not a major breach of etiquette.
