Page 64 of Heiress Gone Wild

“Thank you,” he said as the doorman hailed them a hansom cab.

“Too much high society?”

He was happy to seize on that excuse. “I’m not used to it these days, so again, thanks for the chance to escape.”

Rex chuckled. “I think Paul should thank us both,” he said as the hansom pulled up to the curb and rolled to a stop. “You’ve done him quite the favor, leaving him a clear field to your lovely ward.”

Jealousy, powerful and raw, smote Jonathan with such force that he paused by the cab, paralyzed. His blood, barely cooled after his imaginings in the tearoom, heated again—not with desire, however, but with the same primal sense of possession that had nearly led him to toss the Count de la Rosa over the side of theNeptune, a feeling he had no right to claim.

“Don’t worry about Paul,” Rex said at once, seeing his reaction before he could try to mask it, but also, thankfully, misinterpreting it. “He’s not the wild chap he was at school. No title, obviously, but plenty of money and a post in the diplomatic. He’d be a very good match for the girl, in fact.”

Reassurances like that were no help at all, but they should have been. They damn well should have been.

Jonathan set his jaw, stepped into the hansom, and slid over on the leather seat to make room as Rex gave instructions to the driver and climbed in beside him.

“Still, the girl can take her time,” Rex said as the driver pushed the lever that folded the cab’s padded wooden doors over the knees of his passengers. “At twenty,” Rex added as the hansom jerked into motion, “there’s no rush for her to marry anyone.”

“Unfortunately,” Jonathan muttered. He glanced sideways, noting Rex’s inquiring gaze on him, and he rushed again into speech. “Dear Lady Truelove, my ward is driving me crazy,” he said, forcing a laugh that even to his own ears seemed filled with self-mockery. “I have to marry her off and get her out of my life. Do you have any advice to offer? Signed, Going Mad in Mayfair.”

Rex smiled. “I doubt she’ll be your problem for too long. Once she’s out, the men will be flocking to her like bees to honey, and Paul will have plenty of competition.”

Jonathan began to think escaping with Rex hadn’t been much of an improvement over his previous torment. “Of course,” he agreed at once, and decided to change the subject.

During the remainder of their journey across town, the two men discussed possible winners at Ascot, the chance of the fine weather holding for Irene’s upcoming water party, and the possibility of playing some tennis when they went down to Hampshire, and by the time they reached Fleet Street, Jonathan felt as if he’d regained his equilibrium.

Deverill Publishing had moved its offices five years ago, so to Jonathan, there was nothing familiar about the exterior of the place, but when they walked inside, he was struck at once by something very familiar: the smell in the air, a combination of scents he’d grown up with and knew well—the pungent, vinegary scent of ink mixed with the dusty one of paper.

The sounds, too, struck a chord in his memory—typists busy at their machines, tapping keys, shoving carriage levers and causing the bells to ring, the distant but rhythmic whir and thud of printing presses in the production rooms at the back, the hurried tap of footsteps as clerks and journalists rushed in and out the doors and up and down the stairs. It was a cacophony of sound as familiar to Jonathan as his own heartbeat, and yet, it stirred in him no emotion but simple recognition.

Rex led him to an electric lift operated by an attendant. They were taken to the first floor, where he followed Rex into a quieter, more elegant suite. A secretary, her auburn hair touched with a few threads of gray, looked up from one of two enormous desks piled with stacks of newspapers, magazines, and letters to give them a smile. “My lord,” she greeted Rex as she stood up, then she cast a curious glance at Jonathan.

“This is Mr. Deverill, Miss Huish. Jonathan, this is Miss Evelyn Huish, Clara’s secretary. Stephen’s gone for the day, I assume?” he asked, nodding to the empty desk beside hers.

“Yes, sir,” Miss Huish replied. “I’d be happy to step in, if there is something you need.”

“No, no, Evie, thank you. Go on home. Jonathan, let’s go into my office.”

He followed his brother-in-law around the empty desk and through the door behind it into a spacious office suite with modern morris chairs and masculine teak furnishings.

“Nice view,” he commented, nodding to the pair of large windows behind Rex’s desk that gave a view of Fleet Street and the Strand. To his right, an open door led to a much more feminine room, of pale pink, white, and ebony. “Clara’s office?” he guessed with a grin. “Pink always was her favorite color.”

Rex grinned back at him as he closed his own door. “That’s why we each have our own office. We couldn’t agree on a color scheme.” He spread his arms wide. “Well, here’s where part of your investment went. What do you think of the place?”

“I’d have chosen a bigger building,” he admitted. “Two floors doesn’t give you much room to expand.”

“True, but then, we haven’t thought much about expansion. Five papers are about all we can handle at present.” He gestured to a nearby table with glasses, whiskey, and a siphon. “Care for a drink? Or would you prefer a tour first?”

“A tour, definitely. Then the drink.”

Rex complied, taking him around the offices first, where he met the various accountants, clerks, and secretaries who were preparing to depart for home, then Rex took him through the newsrooms, where journalists were still hard at work.

By the time they returned to the ground floor, all the clerks and typists had departed for the day, and the place was quiet as they moved toward the production rooms in the back. There, the printing presses had stopped, and the sheets of an evening daily were now being run through large, hot iron plates to dry the ink before being folded, bundled, and stacked at the back door by production workers for the delivery boys to take out to the streets.

He was introduced to various production workers, he asked a variety of questions, and he gave opinions when Rex asked for them, but despite all that, he felt disconnected from his surroundings. He’d lived and breathed this business for the first eighteen years of his life, he owned nearly a third of the company, and his surname was still on a brass plate above the front door, but his tour had stirred within him no passion for what had once been the primary purpose of his life. He might just as well have been touring a factory or a brewery—or any of the many other companies in which he had a vested interest. It didn’t seem at all like the family business that had been his dream since before he could walk.

Their tour completed, the two men returned upstairs, where Rex poured them each a whiskey. “We’re having a board meeting next week,” he said as they settled themselves in two of the morris chairs. “Since you’re here, you might as well come, hear what’s going on, give us your thoughts and ideas.”

Jonathan considered, then shook his head. “I lost the right to any say in Deverill Publishing ten years ago.”

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