But they would.
Sterling thanked him for his time, then rapped on Edwina’s door.
She opened it briskly, a small towel in her hand. The cap he hated so much was gone, and her thick flaxen hair was threatening to escape its tight confines.
She had no idea how much he wanted to pluck every pin from her hair and let it spill down her spine.
“Well?” she asked.
“The Willoughby’s aren’t receiving anyone.” He leaned against the doorjamb as she returned to the washbasin. She’d removed her spectacles in order to wash the travel dust from her face, and the effect never failed to make his breath catch.
She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was Edwina.
He could remember the first day she’d turned up at his manor with the newspaper held clenched in her fist, wearing the same bloody dress. He’d been expecting an Edwin Sheffield for the job interview and the shock of her tiny—most definitely female—figure had made his jaw drop open.
And then his gaze had locked on the affront of her matronly cap, before travelling to her spectacles, and then alighting with faint horror upon… the Serge as he called it.
“What the devil are you wearing?” Somehow his tongue had run away with him—he, who could charm the very birds from the trees. “Did you rob a nunnery? Is there an elderly spinster out there who is missing half her wardrobe?” He hadn’t been able to stop his gaze from lifting again in horror to the scrap of lace guarding her hair. “I swear my Aunt Minnie was buried in something like that. I didn’t know they made them for anyone under the age of sixty.”
Edwina had settled that penetrating gaze upon him. “I am starting to understand why the advert called for someone with ‘an iron-strong constitution and an unflappable nature.’”
Dismay had been his most pressing emotion. He’d advertised for a secretary who could handle the rigors of his profession, and this mousy little spinster was most certainly not it.
He was going to get her killed.
She’d faint at the first sight of blood.
How the devil was he going to manage her, when he had demons to hunt and imps to kill?
It wasn’t until she set her hands on her hips and coolly told him that she wasn’t scared of anything that he could throw at her, that he’d finally seen beyond the plain armor she wore.
Those gray eyes flashed with mutiny. Her lips pressed together tightly in challenge.
Maybe she’d work.
She certainly knew her stuff.
More so than the other candidates.
And so, he’d succumbed to gut instinct and hired her.
And she was perfect—more perfect than he could have imagined. Brilliant, and argumentative, and determined, and brave…. She’d never met a challenge she couldn’t overcome, through sheer perseverance, if nothing else.
And she was utterly disregarding of his title or his familial connections to the duke.
It was like being seen for the first time in his life. And regardless of their social positions, she treated him like an equal.
Or she certainly argued with him like one.
Taking tea at four in the library became his favorite pastime. They could talk for hours over a case, or one of the latest scandals within the order. Sometimes he found himself prolonging the encounter so that he could watch the way the fire in the grate gilded her pale moonbeam hair.
Hair that he wanted to pluck all the pins from before he combed his fingers through it. Hair that he wanted to spread over his pillow so that he could see if it turned silvery in the moonlight, the way it did in his imagination.
Her laughter sounded like the tinkling of bells.
Her sense of humor actually had a naughty side to it.
Her smile…. His breath began to catch when she smiled.
