Page 12 of Lady Frederica and the Scot Who Would Not
Freddy swallowed the large lump that suddenly formed in her throat. If she didn’t belong here, and she didn’t belong in Mayfair, where did she belong? Nowhere? She refused that idea.
“I do belong here,” she protested. “Maybe not perfectly yet, but I’m learning. Please,” she said, when she saw the wary look on Blythe’s face. “Don’t abandon our agreement.”
“Gabe will never give you my job as bookkeeper.” Blythe sounded sorrowful and as if she’d already made up her mind to relent to her brother’s demands. “I’m sorry, Freddy. I don’t know why he’s reacted the way he has to you being here. I suppose it’s because he’s protective of women in general, and maybe he senses a vulnerability in you.”
“Your brother cannot stop me from coming to Covent Garden,” Freddy said, and when Blythe looked at her as if she’d said the most foolish thing in the world, Freddy had to clench her teeth to keep from screaming. When she got herself under control, she said, “It’s not as if he owns Covent Garden.”
Blythe arched her eyebrows. “What he says goes here. And that’s a good thing, Freddy. The people here respect him, and they count on him. He deals with men like Marco when they threaten women, and he provides a lot of jobs.”
“That may be, but he doesnotown this place. If I want to come here and live here, I will.”
“You can try,” Blythe said, “but I doubt you’ll get very far.”
“He cannot be everywhere at once. Why, he didn’t even know I had been here before!”
“True enough,” Blythe said, “but now that he knows you’ve been here, putting yourself at risk, he’ll have people watching out for you. And I promise you that if you set foot in Covent Garden, someone will send you right back to Mayfair.”
“What of our deal? What of your wish to become a lady?”
Blythe cocked her head. “Are you telling me that you’ll not help me if I cannot help you?”
Drat. No, she wouldn’t tell Blythe that. She wasn’t so selfish. “No, no, of course not. But I’m going to prove to you I can get past your brother and make a life for myself here.”
Blythe snorted.
“In the meantime,” Freddy continued, ignoring Blythe’s doubtful look, “if I don’t appear at the appointed time tomorrow at the theatre where we were to meet, come to my home at Mayfair. We’ll just have to continue our lessons there if it comes to that.”
“Blythe!”
The booming voice of Mr. Beckford made Freddy jump.
Blythe rolled her eyes but tugged Freddy toward the door. “Come on.” They started down the hall together, but at the top of the stairs, when Mr. Beckford came into view, already standing at the foot of the stairs, Blythe added, “It may hit you later what’s happened tonight. If it does, have a nip of whisky. It helps to calm the nerves.”
Freddy didn’t think she could manage that without her father knowing, so rather than admitting that defeat, she said, “I want to learn to defend myself. Maybe your brother will teach me that if he’s so concerned about the safety of women.”
Blythe was still laughing when she left Freddy standing by Mr. Beckford, and the woman departed for the club as she’d been commanded.
Chapter Four
He didn’t like sitting so close to her in the carriage. It stirred the desire he’d tried so hard to subdue. Lady Frederica was not the sort of woman one could bed and then bid farewell. She was a proper lady, whether she wanted to act like one or not. He had no room in his life for proper ladies and the entanglements that came with them, and he never would.
He tried to turn his mind to the club, but that made him think directly about Belle and Brooke, which circled him smack around to the enticing lady sitting across from him. He didn’t steal a look at her, though he wanted to in a bad way. The image of her creamy skin, the top little peaks of her chest exposed by that bastard Marco, was now seared in Gabe’s brain. Likely forever. Damn it.
The lust he was trying to ignore was screaming at him. It didn’t help that every time he took a breath, he got a lungful of her spicy scent. He would not think on it. He opened the carriage window, wishing he’d sat with his coachman instead of in here, but she’d practically been ravished not long ago, and though she acted fine, had said she was, he knew well enough from Georgette and Blythe that women often said they were fine even when they weren’t.
Still, the decision to sit in this small space with her hadn’t been a wise one. He shifted his position, keeping his gaze on the passing streets, but it didn’t matter that he wasn’t looking at her. He could feel her stare from the seat across from him, and even with the window open, he still smelled her. And damn it, she smelled good—some sort of mixture of cinnamon and clove, cedarwood and musk. It made him curious if she smelled like that everywhere, and he had no business being curious if this lady, an innocent, who had traipsed around Covent Garden in the middle of the night wearing a silk gown, smelled of cinnamon under her unmentionables.
He couldn’t believe she’d called herself Freddy. She was not a Freddy. A Freddy would be streetwise and dressed in breeches as Blythe had been. A Freddy would have damn well known not to—What the hell had they been doing anyway? She’d said she and Blythe were helping women. What women? Cyprians? Had to be.
Don’t look at her. Don’t ask her. Get your answers from Blythe.
His head turned toward Lady Frederica by some force beyond his control. She arched her eyebrows challengingly, as if she were tough, yet he noted she had her arms wrapped around her midriff as if she were holding herself together. Her loveliness struck him just as it had the night he’d met her and made him feel as if something was wrong with his chest. “Are you cold?” He wasn’t sure she’d admit it even if she was.
But she nodded. “Yes.”
“Shall I shut the window?”
She shook her head. “I need the fresh air,” she said, but her shaking voice contradicted her words. Yet, maybe she was feeling ill now from her experience with Marco.
