Page 41 of The Trouble with True Love

“Should I not be? To see you undeservedly berated and then to hear you confess you are accustomed to such treatment and that it doesn’t matter... should I not be angry?”

She stared at him, noting the glint in his brilliant eyes and the rigid set of his perfect jaw. She’d seen him angry before, but this time, she realized, it was different. This time, his anger was on her behalf.

Tightness squeezed her chest, making it hard to breathe, or even think. Her lips parted, but any sort of reply proved beyond her, and before she knew it, her lips were curving into a smile instead.

That smile seemed to make him self-conscious, for he stirred in his chair and looked away. “Any man would be angry, I daresay,” he muttered. “I could hardly restrain myself from seizing him by the collar and hurling him into the street.”

The pleasure she felt widened, opening inside her like a flower in the sun, because despite what he seemed to believe, men willing to toss other men into the street on her behalf had until now been a nonexistent species.

He looked at her again, and Clara pressed the smile from her lips, for he seemed embarrassed, and she didn’t want to exacerbate it. “As much as I appreciate your offer to dispatch Mr. Beale into the street, I’d rather you didn’t. It would be momentarily satisfying, I admit, but it would also make my life more difficult. As for the rest,” she added as he opened his mouth to argue the point, “when I said I’m used to it and it doesn’t matter, all I meant was that he makes it plain what he thinks of me at every opportunity, but I don’t set enough store by his opinion to care.”

“And what is his opinion?”

“That I am just a silly girl, too immature and foolish to be involved in business matters.”

“Then he’s the foolish one.”

“Perhaps, but to be wholly fair, it’s true that I have no experience being in charge. I was Irene’s secretary for a time, but that’s all. And Mr. Beale’s understanding was that he’d be working under my brother Jonathan’s supervision. Upon my sister’s marriage, my brother was supposed to come home from America, go into partnership with her, and take over managing things. Mr. Beale took the position as editor under those terms. But Jonathan kept putting off his return, and now, he has decided to stay in America for the foreseeable future, so Mr. Beale and I are stuck with each other until Irene returns.”

“None of that is your fault. The man ought to accept the situation as it stands with good grace.”

Clara made a face. “He doesn’t yet know about my brother’s decision to stay in America. I keep putting off telling him about Jonathan, because when I do tell him, I’m sure he’ll resign. Still, I suppose it’s unfair of me to keep the knowledge from him—”

Galbraith’s sound of derision interrupted her. “I shouldn’t worry about that, not with a man like him. What’s unfair is that your brother and sister have left you here to deal with their problem.”

“About my brother, you may have a point, but as for my sister, it’s not like that at all. Irene has always looked after me and our father. When we had no money and we were about to lose our home, she was the one who saved us. She started this paper and earned enough of an income from it to provide for us, and I am glad of the chance to do something for her. That said, when she returns, I shall happily hand the paper back over to her, and Mr. Beale along with it.”

“At which point, he’ll learn he’ll still be working for a woman, and he’ll probably quit anyway.”

“Possibly, but Irene can hire someone else at that point. As for Mr. Beale, I don’t know that his resentment stems from working for a woman per se, or if it’s that he just doesn’t like working for me. I’m afraid my sister does a far better job of being a publisher than I do.”

“Stuff. I’ve no doubt you’re doing an excellent job in your sister’s stead. You’ve enough sense to hire excellent staff,” he added with a grin, pointing at himself, “and that’s probably the greatest talent one needs when one’s in charge of a business enterprise.”

She gave him a wry smile in return. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, but I can’t imagine I’m a better judge of who to hire than my sister. Irene is usually an excellent judge of character. She’s also a suffragist, and if Beale held any resentment against women with careers, I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t have sensed it when she interviewed him.”

He shrugged. “Not everyone proves to be as worthy at their job as they might seem in interviews. Any butler or housekeeper could tell you that. And your sister was about to be married, wasn’t she? She might have been too preoccupied with wedding plans to notice his defects.”

“Perhaps.” Clara was doubtful. “Distracted or not, it’s not like Irene to make a mistake.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Not my sister.” Clara laughed at his frown of skepticism. “It’s obvious you’ve never met her.”

“I shall look forward to the privilege of doing so,” he murmured, a frown etching between his brows. “I’ve never met a paragon.”

“Not a paragon, but close to it,” Clara assured him, happy to boast of Irene’s many talents. “She succeeds at everything she does. She’s brilliant, confident, accomplished, clever, and if all that’s not enough, she’s beautiful, too. And she has excellent business instincts.”

“Does she?” His frown deepened, and a muscle moved at the corner of his jaw. “Does she, indeed?”

His voice was tense, the question terse, and Clara looked at him in bewilderment. “What’s wrong? You seem quite vexed.”

“Do I?” His frown vanished at once. “I daresay it’s watching you pull your punches with Mr. Beale that’s put me out of sorts.”

Clara blinked in surprise. “But why should you care? It’s not as if—”

She broke off as that hot tightness squeezed her chest again. It felt like one of her bouts of shyness, only more acute, and yet... sweeter, too. He spoke as if he were genuinely concerned about her well-being, and yet, they barely knew each other.

She swallowed hard, reminding herself that making any woman, even one he didn’t know, feel singled out and extraordinary was as natural to him as breathing. It didn’t mean anything to him, not really. She cleared her throat, and when she spoke, she worked to put an indifferent note into her voice that she was far from feeling. “I don’t see why it matters to you.”

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