Page 26 of The Trouble with True Love

He donned an air of false modesty, brushing at an imaginary speck of dust on his waistcoat, smiling a little. “Yes, that was rather a neat trick, if I do say it myself.”

If his words aggravated her, she didn’t show it. “Either way,” she said, leaning back in her chair, “telling that secret to yet another person presents a risk I am not willing to take.”

“That’s a pity.” His smile vanished, and he gave her a hard, level stare across the desk. “Since it’s not as if you have a choice.”

“My only choice,” she went on, ignoring his point completely, “is to convince you not to carry out your threat to expose me.”

He had no intention of carrying out his threat, but he wasn’t about to let her know that. “I doubt there’s anything you can say to convince me.”

“I think perhaps there is. You see, I’m prepared to offer you something that would make keeping mum worthwhile.”

She hadn’t meant her words to be suggestive, but Rex couldn’t resist speculating on some provocative possibilities. He glanced over her, his gaze skimming the long, delicate column of her throat, moving past the prim collar of her shirtwaist, over the gentle swell of her bosom, pausing at her absurdly tiny waist. Though the desk blocked any further study of her body, that didn’t matter, for he already knew her shape. He’d had plenty of opportunity to form that picture the other night during their dance, and as he envisioned the slender hips and long legs that were presently hidden from his view, as he remembered the brief, tantalizing brush of his arm against the small of her back, the baser side of his masculine nature began imagining some of the naughtier means of persuasion she could employ, and his body began to burn.

But when he looked up again into her face, the delicate flush of pink in her cheeks told him she’d perceived the direction of his thoughts—at least to the extent an innocent lamb like her could do—and reminded him that the delicious picture forming in his mind had no chance whatsoever of becoming reality. And despite her opinion of his character, he was—sadly—a gentleman, which meant even if she were of a mind to offer such things, he could not accept. Innocent young ladies were not his line of country. Shoving down reprobate images of what Clara Deverill looked like without her clothes, he spoke. “What exactly are you offering?”

“A job, Lord Galbraith. I’m offering you a job.”

That was so unexpected, so absurd, and so damnably different from what he’d been imagining that Rex couldn’t help a laugh. “Doing what, in heaven’s name?”

She gave a shrug of nonchalance, but he could see the tension in her slim shoulders, and he knew she wasn’t as nonchalant as she wished to appear. “I want to hire you to write the Lady Truelove column for me.”

This was sliding from absurdity into farce. He laughed again, confounded. “Now I know you’re joking.”

His amusement seemed to vex her, for a tiny frown knit her brows. “I’m quite serious. I don’t see why you think I’m not.”

He took one more glance over her body with a sigh of profound regret. “Let’s just say my mind was traveling in a wholly different direction.”

The blush in her cheeks deepened to absolute scarlet. “I am making you a bona fide offer of employment. It would only be temporary, until my sister returns from her honeymoon. She is expected home in about two months’ time.”

“She married in March, if memory serves. Four months is quite a long honeymoon.”

“You have no idea,” she agreed with a sigh. “Once she returns, she will find someone to take charge of the column on a permanent basis. In the interim, I’d like to hire you to do it.”

She really was serious. He leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face, thinking a moment. “Setting aside the fact that I have no need to earn my living—thank God—why would you want someone else to do it for you? And even more baffling, why choose me, of all people?”

She made a rueful face, her wide mouth twisting a bit and her button nose wrinkling up. “You find that odd, I take it?”

“Odd? Hell, no. I find it incomprehensible. Aside from the fact that I loathe newspapers and can’t imagine working for one, you think I’m a cad, a disreputable rakehell. Why,” he added, driven by curiosity, “would you want me to take on the task of penning advice to the lovelorn?”

“Because I’m no good at it.”

He laughed at that nonsensical admission, but before he could remind her of her well-established success, she rushed on, “You, however, have a certain insight, shall we say, into matters of romance. I am prepared to employ you for that insight. In a literary sense,” she added as he raised an eyebrow.

“And you think I would find such an offer of interest? I am a gentleman, Miss Deverill—”

He was interrupted by a derisive snort that told him what she thought of that contention.

“Gentlemen,” he went on, emphasizing the word, “don’t have jobs.”

“You’d be surprised, Lord Galbraith, if you knew the number of gentlemen who work for newspapers. I know of at least five who secretly write articles for our competitors under assumed names. And at least a dozen have given their endorsement to various products advertised in our newspaper, recommending everything from shaving soap to patent medicines in exchange for a fee.”

“Then perhaps you should hire one of those good gentlemen?”

“Why should I do so, when I have you?”

“You don’t ‘have’ me, as you put it.” Even as he made that point, he saw her straight brows arch as if disputing that contention, and when he looked into those dark eyes of hers, he felt a sudden, vague uneasiness. “I’m the one with the leverage here, Miss Deverill,” he said, feeling the need to remind her of that point.

“Are you?” She straightened in her chair, and with that abrupt move, something changed between them, something that only deepened his uneasiness.

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