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“Bless my soul and whiskers,” she whispered. “I’ve the Haymarket production coming up as well.”
“I need to be as elegant as Miss Lewis,” Jake said.
“Bless me,” Mrs. Quimby said, fanning herself with a scrap of cloth that she had snatched up. She looked up, her eyes damp. “I’ve gone from being terrified about moving to the colonies or being destitute, to dressing friends of nobility.”
“Life,” Jake said, nodding. “One moment you’re a free spirit and then next you’re on the verge of marriage.”
Mrs. Quimby took a deep breath. “I’ll have some sketches made up for you, sir.”
“There’s a twist. I shall be ordering Miss Lewis’s wardrobe, and she will order mine.”
Mrs. Quimby’s voice rose to a squeak. “Miss Lewis will wear what you order?”
“She will. I’ll tell you now that I’m not ordering anything like that gray dress you put her in. Conversely, I will wear whatever she orders for me.”
“I thought it was an evil day when you caught sight of Quimby’s,” Mrs. Quimby said. “I’m big enough to say as I was wrong.”
Jake grinned at her. “That day, I walked in here furious with you, and here I am, not so long after, with . . . well, not with a bride, but at least with the hope of one. We’re good luck for each other, Mrs. Quimby.”
“Martha,” she said. “You call me Martha.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Grandfather, you mustn’t!” Cleo exclaimed, rushing forward to rescue the poor footman being poked in the back by the viscount’s cane.
“They’re liable to spill me onto these steps,” Viscount Falconer complained. “Watch as you go, fellow!”
Her grandfather had adamantly refused to be left at home when Cleo arrived, requesting Byng’s aid. Given that the viscount’s gout was particularly painful in the morning hours, he was reclining on a litter carried by four hearty footmen rather than walking on his own from the carriage and up the steps to Quimby’s Emporium.
They entered to find the bottom chamber of Quimby’s thronged with people. Several of Martha’s seamstresses were clustered around a low pedestal, two of them with sketching paper, others with measuring tape. A box of pins had scattered on the carpet.
In the middle of it all, standing with his back to them, was Jacob Astor Addison.
With a silent intake of breath, Cleo realized that Jake wore only a pair of sleekly fitted breeches and—oddly—a length of shimmering violet silk over one shoulder that spilled off the pedestal.
Gussie instantly shrieked and clapped a hand over her eyes.
Cleo did not.
Such a ladylike response didn’t even occur to her. Instead her eyes opened wider, and she caught every lineament, every muscle. Strong legs . . . burly, even. Thighs like the trunks of oak trees. A taut, muscled arse. His body narrowed above it and then flared out to shoulders that seemed constructed for manual labor.
One of his shoulders was slashed by an old scar. No, not one scar: three.
Three white streaks curved across his wide back and tucked into his waist. Her stomach clenched, following the realization that he might well have died from such a brutal wound. The scars were bleached and cruel against the golden hue of his skin.
Not gentlemen’s skin.
He wheeled about.
Cleo instantly looked away.
Too late. The maleness of his chest was emblazoned on the inside of her eyelids and perhaps even in her bone marrow. His muscles were grooved across his stomach, as if made to guide a woman’s touch below his waistband.
She wanted to trace them, to follow the line of his scars and know the story behind them.
That unwelcome emotion, desire, swelled up inside her again.
She was getting to recognize it, shameful though it was. Desire was a longing spark in her chest and a warm glow between her legs. It ran through her, deep as . . . as the ocean, she thought irrelevantly.
