‘There are no flies on you, are there, Miss Brookes?’ He smiled as he nodded, clearly impressed. ‘Yes. I will have it all put in writing too.’
‘Can I think upon it?’ It wasn’t quite her dream come true but it could be, and that was surely a gamble worth considering?
‘Of course—as long as you do not expect me to wait for ever while you court my competition. There are no flies on me either, Miss Brookes, and I won’t be used as leverage.’
‘Only until tomorrow.’ She needed to consult with Luke first, even though her gut told her this was likely to be the best offer she could expect when she had never had anything published before. And the cold hard truth was that she’d have bitten his hand off for a mere tenth without quibble if that offer had come with her name attached.
‘Well?’ Luke dashed towards her the moment she stepped into the churchyard of St Paul’s where he had been pacing for the last half an hour. ‘Has he made you an offer?’
She nodded, looking at little stunned by it. ‘Fifteen per cent.’
More than she had hoped for. ‘I knew it!’ He picked her up and spun her in a giddy circle. ‘And you negotiated! I am so proud of you!’ He couldn’t resist giving her a quick kiss as he lowered her to the ground. ‘You did it, Hope. You are going to be in Hatchard’s!’
‘I am.’ But she wasn’t beaming from ear to ear at the prospect as he expected. If anything, she seemed deflated. ‘Or at leastPhantasmawill be.’
Luke almost kicked a gravestone, he was so furious. ‘The fool won’t allow you to use your real name, will he?’
‘Not to begin with. For the first edition I must be H. B. Rooke, which is my name I suppose, give or take a few pertinent spaces in the text.’ He forced himself to remain tight-lipped while she regaled all the terms where she tried to put a brave face on things and his heart bled for her. It was all so unfair. Such a dilemma wouldn’t even be a dilemma if she were Mr Henry Brookes and not Miss Hope.
‘What utter nonsense!’ Luke was sorely tempted to head directly to Paternoster Row and give the blinkered fool a stern piece of his mind. ‘Your book isn’t a gamble, it’s a dead cert and he knows it! Else he wouldn’t have sweetened the deal with a fifteenth. Please tell me you haven’t accepted.’
‘Not yet.’ He huffed in relief. ‘But I think I have to, don’t you?’
‘Of course you don’t! There are other publishers! Better publishers.’ And by Jove he would march into each and every one of them on her behalf this very afternoon and make them read her brilliant work. ‘We shall approach them all forthwith. Mark my words—old Crocker will rue the day he tried to hoodwink us.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake it’s Cooper!Cooperand Son. And there are no better publishers of Gothic fiction than Cooper’s. Or any other sort of fiction for that matter. They are and will always be my preferred choice, even if I have to swallow being H. B. Rooke for ever!’
She was selling herself short and it was killing him. ‘Then let me go and speak to the esteemed Mr Cooper now and help him see reason.’
‘Do you seriously think intimidating him is going to glean a better result? He’ll likely rescind his offer and I will have burned my single biggest bridge.’
‘I wasn’t planning on intimidating the idiot. I am not that daft. I was merely suggesting that I take over the negotiations on your behalf.’ Clearly the man had a problem with women if the fear of having the name of one of them on a book gave him palpitations. ‘He’ll listen to me. I’ll dazzle him with the Duff charm and by the time I’m done, you’ll have a proper deal on the table, not the outrage he’s trying to palm you off with.’
That was obviously the wrong thing to say because she went from frustrated to incandescent in the blink of an eye. ‘This is a proper deal and I am not an idiot, Luke!’
‘I didn’t mean to imply that you were. But you have to concede that publishing is obviously a man’s world. Therefore, it stands to reason he’ll be more agreeable to dealing with a man. He probably took one look at you.’ He flapped his hand to encompass the flower-shaped buttons on her emerald-green pelisse and jaunty feminine bonnet. ‘Didn’t take you the least bit seriously and typically thought he could take advantage as all men do when confronted by a beautiful young woman.’
The funny thing was, even as he said the words, he realised they weren’t the right ones. Not only were they poorly chosen, they werebadwords. Reducing Hope to a physical mass of attractive constituent parts which entirely lacked any substance, reason or agency of her own. Reducing her to the very thing she abhorred the most. He flapped his hand again, intending to make it right, then realised he was wafting it not just in the vicinity of her silly hat and prettily braided bodice which had formed the basis for his clumsy argument—but to her breasts. The exact same breasts most men couldn’t seem to tear their eyes from.
Her tone was clipped. Her expression haughtier than he had ever seen it but her eyes radiated such disappointment he got the distinct impression, if she had had a weapon, she would have used it on him in a heartbeat. Coldly and precisely. ‘Thank you for that resounding vote of confidence in my abilities, Luke. I do so enjoy being underestimated and patronised by a member of the superior sex.’ She spun on a self-righteous heel and he grabbed her arm. She glared at his hand in utter disgust until he dropped it.
‘I didn’t mean any of that how it sounded.’ This time he would choose his blasted words more carefully. ‘I can see how it could be taken as patronising, demeaning even, but I was genuinely trying to be supportive when I...’
‘And to do that, you needed to remind me that to most men, a woman who looks like me is only good for one thing? Because I can assure you, I need no reminders of that. Helpful gentlemen have been reminding me of that unfortunate fact near daily since I was fifteen.’
Now she was being unfair! ‘I have never...’
‘Not never, Luke, for you just did.’ She swept her arm up and down his body from ribs to chin in the exact same flippant manner which he had likely just done to her, making him wince to have the mirror held up to his face. Then she mimicked his voice, perfectly capturing the hint of west country in his accent but making him sound like a stupid and insincere oaf as she parroted some of his ill-chosen words back to him with her own acidic take on them.
‘Obviously he didn’t take you seriously, Hope. How could he possibly take you seriously when you look like you do?’
Then she shook her head, her lip curling in disgust. ‘And I thought you were different.’
She couldn’t have wounded him more if she had had a weapon.
‘Hope...’ He held out his hands beseechingly. ‘I’m sorry. Sincerely sorry. Why are we fighting when we are on the same side? When I offered my well-intentioned assistance just now, I certainly never meant to offend you, although clearly I have. Neither did I mean to imply that...’
She held up her gloved hand. ‘I am going home, Luke. I have important things to think about which concernmyfuture, and would much rather think about them without feeling any more furious at men in general, andyouin particular, than I already am.’ She marched towards the neat row of hackneys lined up outside the cathedral and he followed, desperately trying to work out how to make it right after he sent it all wrong, until she suddenly turned and skewered him with her glare.
