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“Please shake hands with me.” Cleo rose, holding out her hand, and Martha stood as well.

“You can call me Martha,” the lady said.

Cleo smiled at her and turned the seamstress’s hand over. “Sewing calluses?”

“Indeed,” Martha whispered. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”

The boots were pounding their way up the stairs now. This was no gentleman mounting the steps; he walked with purpose, his heels sharply striking the wood.

Fortunately, Cleo was accustomed to the men who worked for Lewis Commodes. Moreover, her mother’s penchant for leaving home and accompanying traveling theater companies around the country had necessitated that Cleo often found herself chatting to theater managers and, for that matter, solicitors when she had to pay off an unhappy lover—or his wife.

She linked her hands together and waited.

Gussie wound an arm around Martha’s waist. “Don’t you worry, my dear. My mistress may look young but she’s an old soul.”

Cleo had to smile at that. She felt old. Part of it was grief for her mother’s death. But part was . . . exhaustion, perhaps. Or, equally likely, the result of her mother’s predilection for racketing around the country in a theatrical wagon.

The American didn’t just enter the chamber: he burst into it. It wasn’t a matter of speed. He simply had the sort of character that dominated a room.

Partly because he was big. Big and rough. She’d never given America much thought, but she could imagine this man making his way through untamed forests in the snow.

Yet here he was in London, his dark hair looking as if it’d been in a high wind. It hardly needed to be said that his hair wasn’t brushed forward in the currently fashionable style; unruly curls tumbled over his head like one of those Italian statues they had in the British Museum.

His features were harsh, his jaw remarkably strong, and his nose too. He certainly wasn’t a gentleman, unless this was what all American gentlemen looked like. It was rather fascinating, like seeing a disheveled lion padding its way down Oxford Street.

And his chin—

She was staring at the fellow, which was fantastically rude and quite unlike her. “Good afternoon,” Cleo said, walking toward him.

His gaze brushed over her and landed on Martha.

“Mrs. Quimby,” he said, striding toward the costumier and ignoring Cleo entirely, “I am told by your solicitor that you declined to sign the contract earlier this morning.”

Cleo blinked.

That didn’t happen to her.

She wasn’t vain, but she was a wealthy young woman whose mother had painstakingly taught her how to catch a man’s attention. Julia, after all, had considered a day wasted in which she didn’t attract male notice. Obviously, clothing could make a woman into a wallflower.

Or invisible, however you wanted to put it.

The puffy gray turban wasn’t that unattractive.

Her mother begged to differ, but Cleo wasn’t in the mood to entertain impertinent comments from deceased relatives.

Slowly she wheeled about to watch as the American started talking to Martha about his offer. A spark of amusement curled her lips. He thought she was not worth a greeting, did he? Yet given that handshake agreement with Martha, he stood in her emporium.

With that, her smile turned into a grin. Lately, life hadn’t seemed very interesting. Life with her mother had been full of adventure, exhausting adventure.

But besting this man, with his lack of manners and dismissive behavior?

It would be a pure pleasure.

Chapter Three

“Mrs. Quimby,” the American was saying, with a distinct note of impatience.

His voice had a roughness that caught Cleo’s attention. She was used to accents that could be put on and off at will. Actors were chameleons. For example, Gussie, who harked from the East End, could speak in refined tones, thanks to her time on the stage. Her own mother, Julia, was raised in the heights of society, even though she had chosen to forsake it. Yet she often dropped her elegant accent in order to make an actor feel more comfortable. Or, in other words, seducible.