‘Talkto your mother, Luke. The pair of you never talk about her illness and I think she really wants to.’ Then she blew him a kiss. ‘I’ll see you at Gunter’s, and if you aren’t vexing for once, I’ll let you distract me in the park afterwards.’
Hope skipped breakfast with her family. Not because she wasn’t starving—because after the long and eventful night with Luke she was famished—but because she didn’t trust herself to behave normally around them. She needed a few hours to digest everything before she risked conversing with them in case they instantly spotted the change in her, knew she had been thoroughly deflowered and was totally delighted to have been so. Parts of her still throbbed from their joining, an unsettling and constant reminder of the level of intimacy they had indulged in. Because of her body’s eagerness to experience it again, her cumbersome bosoms, in particular, were heavy and expectant and there was an unmistakable need between her legs which would likely send her quite mad herself if it wasn’t dealt with soon. Their passionate lovemaking had all been so enlightening, satisfying and freeing, she practically floated to Paternoster Row, grinning like an idiot yet still feeling slightly guilty that she had twisted Luke’s arm into a proposal.
In all good conscience, she would have to talk to him about that before they announced the news to their families later. Just to be certain he did want to marry this September and not wait a little longer until they knew each other better.
She handed over the signed contract which her new fiancé had gone over with a fine-tooth comb, then settled down for a long but interesting meeting with her new publisher where he appraised her of all his plans. He wanted to releasePhantasmain January. The logic behind this was that people preferred to read ghost stories in the depth of winter, when the joy of Christmas was done and several more months of depressing cold weather stretched before them. As that made perfect sense to Hope, she trusted Mr Cooper to know the business aspect of the book market far better than she ever could.
He also had a revolutionary plan to release the first chapter to one of the newspapers on the publication day to generate excitement, assuring her that once they had read the opening scene, they would need to know who the Phantom was. The timing, he added, would be doubly advantageous as it would coincide with Charity’s debut inThe Marriage of Figaroand the wave of publicity which was bound to accompany both daughters of England’s premier portraitist and his famous soprano wife was something money couldn’t buy.
His rapid about-turn about her using the name Brookes all now made sense. As much as they all frequently lamented the gossip columns’ obsession with them, she now understood why her parents said it was both a blessing and a curse. For once, the family notoriety would work in her favour and it was about time too.
As the meeting came to a close he beamed at her across the table. ‘I suppose the only thing left to discuss is the exact name you want on the binding.’
‘I thought we had agreed on that?’
‘Indeed we have, my dear, but I have heard that by then you might not even be a Brookes at all.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘Obviously, you can of course, have Hope Brookes stamped in gold leaf on the binding and for obvious reasons I should like to keep the Brookes at all costs.’ In view of his initial reluctance, the irony of that statement was not lost on her. ‘But you could add a hyphen and the Duff.’
Hope Brookes-Duff.
She let that sink in for a moment and decided she liked it. They would have been married a good three months by then and it seemed fitting to acknowledge their union in that way. Luke was her biggest fan, in so many ways and she had him to thank for pushing her into submitting her novel. ‘I think I would prefer Hope Brookes-Duff.’
‘Then that is what it shall be.’ He stuck out his hand and shook hers. ‘Welcome to the fold and my hearty congratulations on your engagement. You’ve got yourself a good man there. Smart and charming.’
She did and smiled proudly as Mr Cooper led her to the door, until the ramifications of what they had been talking about suddenly struck home. ‘How did you know we were engaged?’ Because she certainly hadn’t been until the small hours of the morning and she hadn’t even told her own family the news yet. The pair of them were going to announce it tonight at dinner. Or so she thought.
‘Well...er... I...’ His eyes were blinking rapidly. ‘I think I read it in the newspaper.’ He was clearly lying.
‘Mr Cooper—have you, by any chance, met my fiancé?’ How else would he know that Luke was both smart and charming?
‘I...er...obviously we recently met at some function or another. I forget where.’ He waved his hand dismissing it, a hint of panic in his eyes. ‘You can tell a great deal about a chap from one meeting and your Luke...’ He clamped his jaws shut as her eyes narrowed, clearly realising he had just dug himself into an enormous hole.
Just call me Luke!
The sneaky scoundrel had obviously gone behind her back despite her explicit instructions to steer well clear. ‘Did you happen to meet him last Tuesday, Mr Cooper?’ The morning when she received Mr Cooper’s missive appraising her of his change of heart straight after the night of the roses and Luke’s pretty apology. Then blithely and convincingly congratulated her on Mr Crocker seeing sense.
Crocker!
The devious, conniving, overbearing... ‘He came here, didn’t he?’ And she was going to wring his neck when she got her hands on him. Decorate him in violet ice cream in the middle of Gunter’s while she gave him a piece of her mind. ‘He put pressure on you to allow me to use my real name instead of a pseudonym.’
‘Er...not exactly.’ Mr Cooper retrieved his handkerchief and used it to nervously mop his brow. ‘I’ve stupidly put myself in an impossible position because I promised him faithfully I wouldn’t mention it.’
This time, her tone was stern. ‘Did Luke bully you into using my name?’
‘Of course not! I am not a man to be bullied, even by a shareholder.’
‘A shareholder!’ This was going from bad to worse.
All this time Luke had had shares in Cooper and Son and not said a damn word about it! Now, all her doubts about her ability as a writer sprang to the fore, making her question why the publisher had wanted her book in the first place. Was this all Luke’s doing? In his well-meant and over-protective interference to make her dream come true, was he unintentionally setting her up for a fall?
Mr Cooper winced, then huffed, defeated. The game was up and he knew it. ‘To be fair to him, he had no idea he owned shares until last Tuesday, and simply came here to introduce himself.’ There was nosimplywith Luke. The wretch had done it all deliberately. ‘And then we got chatting and he mentioned he had read your book and we had a long discussion about the sublime complexity and page-turning qualities of your plot, Miss Brookes.’ It galled that those compliments stroked her ego even though she was still righteously furious at Luke for his interference. ‘Then he was the one who suggested January as the perfect release date as he and his mother always read macabre stories to while away the long winter nights in Cornwall...’ All so totally Luke. ‘And then he happened to mention how clever it was of me to have signed you when the name Brookes and publicity went hand in hand. Especially after all the recent splendid coverage of your mother’s performance inCosì fan Tutteand your sister’s recent success in the art world and I realised I was missing a trick in not using your real name...’
Of course he hadn’t intimidated her publisher. Luke had charmed him. Utterly dazzled Mr Cooper into re-evaluating his own rigid stance until he considered it his own idea in the first place.
How annoyingly clever of him.
‘Then news of your youngest sister’s success leaked out and it seemed as if the planets were aligned. It was only at the end of our conversation that he mentioned he was biased about your literary genius and that you were going to be his wife.’ A full week before she had pushed him into asking her to marry him.
That gloriously inescapable fact seemed to banish all the anger.
