AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This ruckus was no way of doing business, not when she was preparing herself for what was sure to be a trying meeting and her mind insisted on pondering the mysterious Cinderella she’d discovered in her rooms at Le Bureau. She’d been so taken by those impish eyes and smart mouth she’d forgotten to ask for a name. It was for the best, of course: she’d gone to the brothel on a whim, hoping to purge some of her nerves in anticipation of this morning’s assembly. But after that encounter, she’d lost her appetite for one of her usual bedmates. Instead, she’d stood in the middle of the empty room, sipping brandy and examining with renewed interest a fresco she’d looked at a thousand times.
“You are aware it’s your own fault? That you’ve caused the staff to pay these little street urchins to look out for you.” The humor-laced voice of her Tia Osiris brought Cora’s attention back to the present.
“How exactly did I do that, Aunt?” The older woman’s mouth twitched while Maggie’s own face turned a deep shade of red.
“By being an absolute tyrant! They are terrified of you arriving by surprise and catching them unawares.” She laughed as she said it, but Cora knew her aunt wasn’t completely jesting.
“They are perfectly aware I will be here today,” Cora rebuffed. “Besides, they shouldalwaysbe ready for me. That is why I pay them the exorbitant sums I do.” She wasn’t put off by her aunt’s words or by the suggestion her staff feared her. She had standards, and she liked things done a certain way. “When a man is exacting, he’s called a fearless leader, fit to be a general. When a woman does the same, she is a harpy.” She was being overly sensitive, but her nerves where on a razor’s edge today.
“Querida, you know that is not my view of things.” Her aunt who had fought ardently for women’s rights in their native Chile and had been even jailed for her efforts would never think that. She would also never abstain from giving Cora a piece of her mind when she thought it necessary. “You amuse yourself by catching them by surprise. The last time you did that a footman lost a tooth.” Tia Osiris was amusingherselfnow.
“How is it my fault the man tripped on a rug?”
“Because he was running to warn the cook you were arriving two hours early,” her aunt shot back. Maggie, whose face was worryingly red, squirmed in her seat.
“I am not that bad,” Cora said grudgingly.
“I think you underestimate how intimidating you can be, querida.” Tia Osiris eased the barb with a pat on the hand.
It was true that she could be forbidding, but it was the only way to earn respect in the corner of the world in which she dealt. She prided herself on being a generous employer. She made sure the people who worked for her had everything they required. She didn’t want anyone tending toherneeds while their own families went lacking. But she was not amiable. In fact, the expectation that she be some kind of benevolent matron, only because she was a woman, never ceased to irritate her.
She—and her temperament—were so well-known in Paris society that it was rare these days to encounter anyone who didn’t keep their distance from her. Which was why last night has been so surprising. No one who knew Cora would ever dare enter her Le Bureau rooms uninvited, much less think of trampling all over her furniture in their bare feet. But her little artist had done that very thing: she’d made herself at home in Cora’s space, with her art, and made her see it all in a new light. She’d been left wanting more, and it had been a very long time since Cora had been plagued with that feeling when it came to a woman.
“Your Grace, how many more minutes shall I tell the coachman?” The urgency in Maggie’s voice brought her out of her musings, and by the look on the girl’s face she’d likely been trying to get Cora’s attention for a while.
“You have your head in the clouds today, mi amor.”
This, from Tia Osiris, stung. Not because there was any kind of chastisement in her voice but because other than her stepson Alfie, Tia Osiris was the only person in her life who could see right through the mask of perennial tediousness Cora worked so hard to maintain.
“Not in the clouds, Tia. In the boardroom I am about to walk into,” Cora lied. “I have a long list of men to decimate, and I don’t want to accidentally leave any of them off the hook.” The quip was received with a rueful smile from her aunt, but she’d been right. Cora was being fanciful and that would absolutely not do today.
She had to focus on the task at hand. Diversions with pouty lips and generous bosoms were indulgences for men, not for the women attempting to beat them at their own game. The next hour could put within her grasp the leverage she’d been working toward for the last two years—the last decade, really—and she was much too close to let a pretty face to make her stumble. That she would never allow again.
“What time is it?” she asked, looking out the window.
“Two minutes before the convocation time,” Maggie answered. She’d been sitting in the carriage for an hour now, waiting for the men she’d summoned to arrive at her building. With her carriage out of sight a few hundred yards from her door she could time her own arrival. There was very little left in her life that gave Cora as much joy as making a room full of men wait for her.
“Let’s linger another five minutes and then go,” she instructed and sat back just in time to watch Edouard Blanchet ascend the steps to her door. A smile tipped up her lips at the thought of the pompous, odious Blanchet fuming as he sat waiting for her. Men like him were accustomed to the world bending to their whims. They could not abide even the smallest discomforts, which was why Cora strove to ply him with as many as she could every time they met.
It was elemental for a woman playing the games of powerful men to cultivate a slight air of unpredictability. Men—spoiled, wealthy men, in particular—could be like children: one had to keep them just a mite untethered. She never overdid it with her lateness—when dealing with fragile prides, it never served one to indulge in hubris—she just took long enough to assert the fact that her time was more valuable than theirs. “Five minutes are up, Your Grace,” Maggie voiced, her ever-present pocket watch in hand.
“I hope they’re ready for me, becauseIam ready for them,” she declared, coaxing an unsure smile from the young woman. As the carriage began to move again, Cora turned her attention to her appearance. She ran the palm of her hand over the coiffure done to her specifications and the small hat by her favorite milliner. The trousers from the night before had been replaced with one of her business day suits. The luscious artist had not commented on Cora’s attire, but she’d certainly appreciated it. Her eyes had widened, and an enticing flush had pinked her cheeks when she’d noticed the trousers and jacket. She’d been so deliciously expressive. Eyes large and dreamy when she’d stared up at Cora’s mouth.
She should’ve kissed her properly. She should’ve taken her to the bedroom and peeled off all those layers of emerald silk. She’d been barely able to sleep, wondering how all that beautiful brown skin would look on her pristine satin sheets.
“Did you hear me, sobrina?” her aunt asked from the banquette across from hers.
“Sorry, Tia,” she apologized with an internal wince, as she noticed her aunt’s not-so-subtle examination of her face.
“You can’t be nervous about the meeting? Or did one of those pretty girls you like to entertain at that den of iniquity you frequent finally snare you?” For a second Cora panicked, wondering if she’d been affected enough to give herself away, but then the older woman laughed and leaned to buss her on the cheek. “As if you’d ever let that distract you.” She paired the woeful comment with a click of her tongue, as she reached for Cora’s hand. “I wish you would find someone, but I know you. Too focused on business to make time for love.”
Despite herself, the comment smarted. “I am sure you have not forgotten what happened the last time I made time for love, Tia.” The older woman’s smile flagged at her words, and Cora turned away, swallowing the bitter bile of those memories. She knew her aunt could not help it. Osiris was a romantic, with an ability to love and forgive that went beyond anything Cora could comprehend. But her aunt’s grace did not live in Cora. She was unforgiving, and she was ruthless with anyone who detracted her from getting what she wanted, even herself. Once before, love had almost cost her everything. She would not let that happen a second time.
Her aunt made one of those worried sounds of hers as Cora breathed through her nose, forcing down the bitter taste of her old shame and futile regrets. She had absolutely no time for dwelling on a past she could not change. Not when she had a room full of men to bend to her will. “Does this jacket look right, Tia?” she asked, smoothing a hand over the row of small buttons running down her chest and changing the subject.
“You look beautiful in anything you wear,” her aunt said affectionately, the harsh words already forgotten.
Cora smiled and leaned in to kiss the familiar papery warm skin of her tia’s cheek. Her mother’s younger sister, and the only blood relation she willingly spent any time with, had never judged Cora’s choices. Not when at seventeen in a fit of rage she’d shot the man her father informed her she’d be forced to marry. Not when her father shoved them together on a steamer to London with a trunk of money and told Osiris he’d kill them both himself if Cora was not married to a peer in six months’ time. Not when Cora informed her she’d be marrying Benedict Bristol, the financially embattled Duke of Sundridge, after only knowing the man for a day.
