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“Uncivil?” Miss Marshall looked about the room and then leaned in. “Oh, Stephen is being very civil, Mr. Clark. Very welcoming to you. Stephen and I don’t tell lord jokes around just anyone.”
Stephen leaned in. “As a fine point,” he pretended to whisper, “I don’t tell lord jokes around Lady Amanda. She’s a halfway decent sort. It’s not her fault her father’s a marquess.”
“Yes,” Miss Marshall put in darkly. “It was her mother’s. Marrying a lord. Hmph.”
Edward blinked at that. “Miss Marshall, are you trying to tell me that you didn’t dream of marrying a lord when you were young? That you didn’t play at being a lady, imagining what it would be like to be waited on hand and foot? I thought every little girl with any inclination at all to marry dreamed of catching the eye of a lord.”
“God, no.” She looked horrified. “Farm girls who catch the eye of a lord don’t end up married. If we’re lucky, we don’t end up pregnant. No. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a pirate.”
That brought up an all-too-pleasant image—Miss Marshall, the rich, dark red of her hair unbound and flying defiantly in the wind aboard a ship’s deck. She’d wear a loose white shirt and pantaloons. He would definitely surrender.
“I am less shocked than you might imagine,” Edward heard himself say. “Entirely unshocked.”
She smiled in pleasure.
“A bloodthirsty cutthroat profession? Good thing you gave that up. It would never have suited you.”
Her expression of pleasure dimmed.
“You’d have succeeded too easily,” Edward continued, “and now you’d be sitting, bored as sin, atop a heap of gold too large to spend in one lifetime. Still, though, wouldn’t it solve ever so many problems if you married a lord? James Delacey could never touch you again if you did.”
Stephen’s eyes narrowed at that. Miss Marshall’s expression changed from amused to serious.
Edward didn’t know what he was thinking, asking her about marriage. He wasn’t a damned viscount. He refused to be one. And whatever odd flutterings he may have felt in her presence, whatever odd imaginings he had harbored, he wasn’t going to marry her.
And yet… It was tempting, too. While he hadn’t been paying attention, his mind had constructed a might-have-been, a world where he’d never been cast out, where he’d never had to make his heart as black and hard as coal. If he’d been Edward Delacey, he might have courted her in his own right. Edward Delacey, dead fool that he was, could have had the one thing that Edward Clark never would.
Miss Marshall snorted. “God, no,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’d rather carry a cutlass.”
“Ah, but think of the advantages.”
“What advantages?” She looked around her. “I’ve built something here. It’s a business that is not just for women, but for all women. We print essays from women who work fourteen hours a day in the mines, from prostitutes, from millworkers demanding a woman’s union. Do you think I’d give this up to plan dinner parties?”
Like this—intense and serious—she was even more beautiful than before. She tossed her head, and he wanted to grab hold of her and kiss her.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to marry her; God forbid that he contemplate anything so permanent. But he’d entertained the idea. Viscount Claridge, he was sure, would have been able to woo her. It had been a strange sort of comfort—that even though he couldn’t have her as himself, some other version of himself might have accomplished it.
But there they were. Edward Clark, liar and blackmailer extraordinaire, had a better shot at Frederica Marshall than Viscount Claridge. It was the worst of his damned luck that they happened to be the same person.
He was saved from having to come up with an answer by Stephen.
“Hold on one moment,” Stephen said, setting a hand on Free’s arm. “Do you mean to tell me that James Delacey is causing you difficulties?”
Miss Marshall glanced over at Edward, and then sighed and looked back. “We believe he was behind the fire.” She sounded tired once again. “We think he’s behind the charge of copying, too. And that ugliness with you the other day.”
“I know James Delacey.” Stephen’s lips thinned. “He used to delight in tormenting me as a child. I would follow my brother around all the time, just so I wouldn’t find myself alone with him.”
Stephen had never said a word of that as a child.
“He whipped a skittish mare that he shouldn’t have been riding. It reared and kicked my father in the chest, and then he told everyone that my father had mishandled it. No surprise that he’s still an ass.” Stephen glowered bitterly. “I do wish…” He trailed off, giving his head a shake.
“What do you wish?” Miss Marshall asked.
Stephen looked up, past Miss Marshall. Right past her, straight into Edward’s eyes. “I wish his elder brother was still alive.”
Stephen could have just been addressing Edward out of politeness. They were part of the same conversation; people conversing with one another looked at each other. Still, Edward felt a cold chill run down the back of his neck.
Stephen continued. “He was a much better sort. Just goes to show that life isn’t fair. People like Ned Delacey perish, while his brother gets the title. That right there is everything that is wrong with the House of Lords. In any event, I didn’t mean to interrupt. If the two of you are talking about how best to deal with Delacey, I’ll let you get on with it.”
“Do you think you’d have anything to add to the conversation about him?” Miss Marshall asked.
Stephen looked straight at Edward. “Clark,” he said, “have you had a recent conversation with Delacey?”
“I have,” Edward said solemnly.
Stephen waved them off. “Then I trust you to deal with him. My knowledge of the man is far in the past. Clark’s your man, Free.”
Miss Marshall simply accepted this with a nod and gestured to her office. “Mr. Clark. If you will.”
Edward brushed past Stephen. But he’d gone only three steps when Stephen spoke again. “Oh, Mr. Clark.”
Edward turned.
Stephen was smiling—that sure smile he employed when he was certain he was about to say something very clever.
Edward felt a dreadful sense of foreboding. “Yes?”
