Fiona focused on her breathing as she waited. It was ridiculous, this tightness in her chest. She had survived homelessness in a Scottish autumn. She’d traveled on her own from Ballater to Abingdale with barely half a crown in her pocket to make the trip. She’d been thrown in prison twice in two days and managed to wangle herself out of sure disaster.
This was a conversation. She was offering him an opportunity he’d be mad not to leap at, so there was absolutely no good reason to be nervous.
Except she was.
Because if she sold her matches today then her future would be secure. She would never again live under the threat of being evicted. She would never be at the mercy of a landlord’s whim. Nor would she ever have to worry about whether or not her father had paid the rent that month. She would be the one person responsible for her.
The clerk returned after less than a minute. “I’m afraid Mr. Duchamp is unavailable.”
The flutter of nerves became a stampede and she struggled to keep her tone calm. “I am happy to wait for him,” she said, as brightly as possible. As long as she didn’t have to wait too long. She did have another appointment in ninety minutes.
“I’m afraid Mr. Duchamp is busy for the remainder of the day.”
Oh.The thudding nerves devolved into bubbling, roiling anxiety. “I can come back tomorrow. I have time free after two.”
Smug. That was the only word that adequately captured the clerk’s expression. “I’m afraid Mr. Duchamp is busy for the remainder of the week. Or rather, the month. However, if Mr. Asterly or Mr. Barnesworth would like to make an appointment and appear themselves, he may look past this”—the clerk waved his hand at her—“and be willing to consider a meeting.”
Look past this?As though her presence was an insult or a misstep. “But these aremymatches. Nobody is better able to describe how they work or what kind of asset they’ll be.”
“Have a good day.” The clerk sat and focused on the page in front of him, licking the tip of his finger and flipping it with a sharp snap.
Fiona took a deep breath in and let it out, picked up her suitcase, and left.
She had not expected it to be easy. She had fully expected to have to justify herself to these distributors. But she had also expected that they would at least give her the chance to do so.
Well, that was his mistake, and when her matches were being used in every home in Britain, rich or poor, she’d be able to rub his nose in it.
Andrew was leaning by the door, scuffing circles in the pavement dust with his foot. He straightened when he saw her, an expectant look on his face.
In her recent efforts to convince herself of her imminent success, it appeared she’d convinced him too, which gave her failure an additional thorn, sharp and blood-drawing.
“How did it go, miss?” he asked.
“Not well, Andrew. Not well at all. I wish I could see his face the day he discovers what he missed out on.”
“What do we do next?” he asked with confidence she’d have to match in appearance even if she didn’t quite match in feeling.
He expected her to have the answer, because in their small village that’s what she’d become known for—having all the answers.
“We move on, Andrew. We have ninety minutes to reach the Tarly offices. We can make it a leisurely walk instead of rushing.”
She unlatched her briefcase and pulled out a map of London. The cab driver had dropped them off at the exact address for their first stop, but they were going to need to find their own way around the city from here.
“I think it’s this way.” She pointed down the road. Not wanting Andrew to sense her discouragement, she set a brisk pace, though truly, she was not paying an awful lot of attention to where she was going. Her mind was running over the events that had just occurred.
How. Bloody. Frustrating.
The earlier tightness in her chest hardened into a coal-like lump of fear. What if no one agreed to meet with her? When she had written to the distributors to arrange a time, she had signed her name F. McTavish from Asterly, Barnesworth & Co. She hadn’t deliberately set out to mislead anybody, but she also hadn’t felt the need to advertise her sex.
Because, surely, that shouldn’t have mattered. Business was business and a good deal was a good deal.
The fact that she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going was why she didn’t see Edward until it was too late.
He pushed off the wall that he was leaning on and into her path. Hands in his pockets and a look of extreme displeasure on his face, he stood so close that she was forced to tip her head to look at him. Her heart thudded at his nearness. He radiated an energy that could not be explained by science. It raised her temperature and quickened her breath and befuddled her thoughts with base instincts that followed no logic.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Perhaps her words came out a touch surly, but shouldn’t that be expected when one was accosted in the street by a man who’d previously sworn to avoid her?
“You took off in a cab.”
