That was the hard truth of it. If Fiona had belonged, if there had been any chance of bringing her into the family without simultaneously hurting all involved, he would have done it.
“Edward, that is quite possibly the least charitable thing I’ve heard you utter in a long time,” Charlotte said. “Just because a person hasn’t been brought up as a member of our society doesn’t mean we can’t show them good manners as a host.”
“Hear! Hear!” William said with a smirk. “I would think the perfect Duke of Wildeforde would want us to demonstrate the graciousness that befits a family of our standing.”
Will could be an utter pestilence. He wouldn’t have paid a second’s notice to Fiona if he hadn’t seen how much Edward didn’t want him to. “Don’t push me, William.Finleyis here because I don’t have another option. But the moment he sells his matches and finalizes his other affairs”—that blasted trial—“he’s gone and we won’t see him again.”
Chapter 13
Fiona left Faulkner and Sons on her third day of visiting distributors feeling as dejected as she had on the first.
True, her disguise had meant she was at least bypassing the gatekeepers that were the front-end secretaries, but the initial pitch was as far as she was getting.
In a good meeting, the businessmen would ask a handful of questions before rejecting her. In a bad one, it was a “many thanks, but no” before she’d even finished.
Their excuses varied.
I’m not looking to expand into new industries.
It’s an untested product, thus too great a business risk.
Mass production of a product that spontaneously combusts is an unjustifiable hazard.
And her favorite:
Why on earth would I invest in a product that makes life easier for chambermaids? They don’t have the blunt to make purchases.
Through each excuse she’d maintained a polite façade and put forth what she thought were relevant counterpoints and assurances. But it got her nowhere. She had one more day of meetings lined up. If she couldn’t close a deal then, she wasn’t quite sure what to do next.
“Finley!” A hand closed on her shoulder and she spun around, heart racing at the sudden bellowing in her ear.
William stood, hands on thighs, puffing. “I’ve been calling your name for half a block. Could you truly not hear me?”
“I…uh…” It was not so much that she was hard of hearing and more that she was unused to responding to a name that wasn’t hers. “Sorry. I was deep in thought.”
He wrinkled his nose briefly. “Huh. Can’t say that I’ve ever been that deep in thought, but to each his own. Where are you off to?”
“Nowhere in particular.” Fiona had no more meetings scheduled for the day and had planned on returning to Edward’s to distract herself with a letter that had arrived from Amelia that morning.
“Capital,” William said. “Come with me to White’s.”
“White’s?”
White’s was an incredibly exclusive male-only club that only the crème de la crème of society had membership to. Some men—lords, their sons and brothers—had membership practically at birth. Others languished on the waitlist for years.
White’s was the epitome of everything that was wrong with a society that favored men above women and titled men above all. But some sick fascination in her couldn’t pass up the opportunity to agree and take a peek inside.
William hailed a cab and made the kind of jovial, light conversation Fiona hadn’t known she’d been craving. He didn’t ask any questions of her, and instead he regaled her with stories of the numerous pranks his posse had inflicted on the scholars of Oxford.
She took some pleasure in the tales, particularly given these scions of political and scientific endeavor worked so hard to keep women like her outside of the academic community. By the time they’d reached St James Street, she was in a fit of laughter.
William exited the hackney cab and strode past the dual lampposts and up the short flight of stairs to the plain brown door of White’s with its gleaming brass knocker and handles.
As William reached the top step, an older man in dignified livery opened the door, greeting him with a bow and Fiona with a respectful nod.
She nodded in response, holding her breath as she waited for the man to spot her as a fraud as quickly as the staff at Edward’s home had. But there was no grand denunciation and as she crossed the threshold, she released her breath with awhoosh. Unfortunately, her sense of foreboding did not escape with it.
At the register, William signed his name, the date, and in the “guest” column—Finley McTavish of Abingdale.
