Her eye drifted over a deep-green wall with white stuccoed mouldings and returned to her prospective employer.
The Foreign Office had handed her a slender file on Mr Hugh Cadwalader containing the barest details: of Welsh descent, his parents were deceased, but he’d aristocratic relatives in rural Wales as well as his own small estate where he was held to be a responsible landlord.
Within the social hubbub of London, however, he was known as theScandalous Hugh Cadwalader. A patron of every gambling hell in Town, from Mayfair to Cheapside, he was also the first to arrive and the last to leave from disreputable balls and notorious soirees alike.
Deemed by the great and good of theTonto be modish, debonair and an essential invitee, he was forever in demand by the gentlemen for his droll tales and by the ladies for his charm and sheer dashing looks.
Amelia had to concur with theTonladies.
For beneath tousled blond hair lay–
His eyes flicked up and caught her own lingering upon his lips.
Her breath ceased.
Not because of the lingering but…
Had he seen through her forged references?
“I must admit,” he said, leaning back in his chair with leonine grace, “that I’ve had some difficulty filling this position.”
Amelia breathed once more.
Well, yes, he would have done.
A visit to Mr Clegg and Sons’ employment agency had revealed that three other governesses had applied for this job, and so Amelia had been tasked with…dissuading them.
A Miss McKenzie had simply been bribed to withdraw her application with three guineas, a new woollen pelisse and a carpetbag from Clark & Debenham’s.
A Miss Harvey had reeked of juniper and so had required no inducement to visit Mrs Gimley’s gin shop in Holborn and hence forego the interview. All in all, Amelia felt she’d done Mr Cadwalader a favour with that applicant.
Then a starchy Miss Kane had been persuaded to meet in St James’ Park, whereupon Amelia had bemoaned how the wicked Mr Cadwalader had ravished her up against the schoolroom’s oak wainscotting and then abandoned her with child. His ninth by-blow and every single one with a governess. Miss Kane had blenched and fled.
But Amelia knew Miss Kane would find a better employer than this scandalous scapegrace.
A scapegrace with well-defined cheekbones, a straight nose, azured eyes, clefted chin and those perfectly formed lips that seemed to curve upwards with such ease.
An elegant visage, some might say, and yet the burgeoning afternoon stubble to his chin, the waning red welt to his left cheek and the dark shadows beneath his eyes all cleaved that elegant visage with a dominant masculinity.
He wore a cravat, whiter than Thassos marble and tiedL’orientale, a silver-shot waistcoat and a dark-green tailcoat that matched the colour of the chaise silk. Before Mr Cadwalader had seated himself, she’d happened to note bias-cut pantaloons in a neutral shade that appeared like flesh.
Indeed, she’d been forced to peer thrice to make sure it hadn’t been so.
She consoled herself that the fopdoodle likely padded his thighs for them to appear so muscular.
And doubtless had a corseted stomach for that trim waistline.
And cushioned his chest.
And–
That blue gaze flicked up once more.
Yet this time it held no idle humour. Just a simmering fierceness that caused an anomalous flare of flame within her.
Perhaps a warning that beneath that elegant finery and idle smile, there lay a different man.
One of dangerous nights and dangerous intent.
