The Unsuitable Secretary

Book 4: A Ladies Unlaced Novel

by Maggie Robinson

Genres: Family Life; Historical Romance

Synopsis

From the author of In the Heart of the Highlander, a romance proving that inappropriate desires can provide the most passionate encounters…

Harriet Benson takes her work at the Evensong Agency seriously, but lately, between convalescing from an illness and tending to her father and two young brothers, she’s had to shorten her hours. So when a promising position opens up for part time work, she immediately accepts, despite the fact that her new boss is scandalously indecent—and dangerously appealing.

Though his reputation paints him as a scoundrel, Sir Thomas Featherstone is more proper than anyone would guess. But Harriet’s wit and luscious curves are driving him to distraction. She’s the perfect woman to fill his office requirements, and other desperate needs he’s been ignoring…

Harriet has always held firm to the rule that a secretary must never fall in love with her employer. Only Thomas is determined to win her affections—and he’s willing to risk any cost to make her his…

Praise for the Ladies Unlaced Novels

“Downton Abbey fans will fall in love.”—Tessa Dare, USA Today bestselling author

“Full of witty dialogue and scorching romance.”—Elizabeth Essex, RITA Award-nominated author

“Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

Maggie Robinson, author of the Ladies Unlaced series, including In the Arms of an Heiress, In the Heart of the Highlander, and The Reluctant Governess, is a former teacher, library clerk, and mother of four who woke up in the middle of the night absolutely compelled to create the perfect man and use as many adverbs as possible doing so. A transplanted New Yorker, she lives with her not-quite-perfect husband in Maine, where the cold winters are ideal for staying inside and writing hot historical romances.

Release date: September 16, 2014

Publisher: InterMix

Print pages: 281

Sample

Chapter 1

London

Tuesday, December 20, 1904

Sir Thomas Benedict Featherstone, Tubby to his many friends, acquaintances, and readers of the gossip sheets, couldn’t quite see the old woman’s eyes behind her gray spectacles.

He could feel them, though, boring holes into his bespoke suit and his neatly brushed dark hair and into his earlobes, for all he knew. He felt he was under a microscope and being found insufficient. Insipid. Insignificant.

Which was insulting to say the very least. While he was disarmingly modest, Thomas also knew he was rich, handsome, and had a superb eye for the Next Thing. In art, in music, in novels—there was no one in society who moved as sure-footedly as he did amongst creative people. For a youngish man of twenty-seven, he’d amassed an art collection that was the envy of museums worldwide. He’d had books dedicated to him, and even a long rambling poem that wasn’t very good but nonetheless touted his great taste.

And he was considered universally charming, and not in any kind of smarmy way, either. Thomas had an interest in getting what he wanted, but had such a delightful way of going about it, people never felt importuned. He was, if he said so himself, just naturally nice—men and women both spoke his praises—so it seemed a bit unfair that this dragonlike Mrs. Evensong was giving him a touch of heartburn.

For heaven’s sake, he’d come to her agency to find a competent secretary on his friend’s wife’s recommendation, and was willing to pay top dollar for the privilege. His man of business, Thurston, was useless for his new endeavor. Thomas was establishing an artists’ colony, where his protégés could work in unfettered surroundings, unconcerned about where their bread or next bottle of wine were coming from. To work in peace and relative prosperity. By God, Thomas was like a fucking fairy godfather. Art for all and all for art! He was committed to enriching and beautifying society, damn it, and this little dab of a woman was making him feel like Jack the Ripper.

He could usually sell ice to frostbitten Eskimos, but was making absolutely no headway this morning at all. One question after the next, and he was feeling more and more like the boy who got thrown out of school a dozen years ago. He picked up a business card from her desk and with nimble fingers proceeded to turn it into a very good likeness of a miniature Chinese junk as he faced her inquisition.

“Look, Mrs. Evensong, I’m looking for just a secretary, not a wife,” he finally blurted out in frustration, tossing the ruined card into the metal wastebasket.

He never lost his temper. Never. But he was coming close at the moment.

“There is no such thing as ‘just a secretary,’” the ancient old crone said with hauteur. How had she managed to be in business so many years if she treated all her clients like this?

“What do you mean?” he asked, not much caring what her answer was. Time was wasting, and if the Evensong Agency couldn’t help him, his millions would ensure someone would.

“A good secretary will know what you are thinking before you do and make it happen. You have great ambitions, I understand. You want to make your mark as a patron of the arts. You cannot do it without the appropriate person at your side.”

“I know,” Thomas ground out. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You think it’s just a matter of handing someone a pencil and a piece of paper so she’ll take notes.”

This caught Thomas up short. “She? I didn’t stipulate I wanted a female secretary. Some of the things my employee will be required to do might best be handled by a man.”

“I thought you said this establishment you’re proposing will be above reproach,” Mrs. Evensong reminded him sternly.

“Yes, of course. But artists can be . . . difficult. I’ll require someone with very strong character and exemplary morals to manage things.”

“It goes without saying that all of our potential candidates conform to those requirements. We would not have the reputation we do if I were to stick just anyone willy-nilly into London’s best households.” She steepled her gloved fingers. “I believe I have the perfect person for you, a dear girl—why, I feel she’s like a niece to me. Very bright and organized. She managed this office until recently with executive precision and superior judgment.”

Thomas was immediately distrustful. “Why did you let this paragon go?”

“I haven’t really—she still comes in, though with reduced hours. She’s been . . . unwell.”

Aha! So he’d been right. Thomas pictured a pale, wan, fainting sort of creature and shook his head. “No disrespect meant, Mrs. Evensong, but I’ll need someone with backbone.”

Thomas needed someone with backbone and frontbone . . . to stand up to him. He tended to get caught up a trifle too enthusiastically in his projects on occasion and needed someone to steady him. Not like Thurston, who only threw buckets of cold water on his every thought, but someone who might sprinkle a gentle rain on his more far-fetched ideas and make him reluctantly acknowledge reality.

Thomas tended to disapprove of reality on the whole, and was much happier watching a curtain rise or examining an Impressionist painting.

Besides his difficulty with reality, Thomas had too many ideas. Most of them were excellent, but sometimes a few rubbishy ones encroached. He was wise enough about himself to know that while he didn’t need a keeper, it was sometimes necessary to rein things in a little. Just a gentle tug on the bit, and Thomas usually returned to the straightaway.

Thurston thought he was much too free with his fortune. Which was absurd. Thomas was immensely rich, and it would take a great many cork-brained ideas to drain him of all his wealth. The difficulty was that Thurston thought any expenditure on the arts was a complete waste of money.

The man had no soul.

Thurston also disapproved of Thomas’s little harem of complaisant actresses and singers and models. But the girls were jolly good fun and worth every penny.

“Miss Benson has plenty of backbone. You wouldn’t require her services more than approximately four hours a day, would you?”

Thomas hadn’t really given the specifics of the job much attention. He’d assumed his new secretary would be a fixture at the extra desk in the library, waiting on his every need at whatever the hour.

Well, not every need. No point in thinking of that.

“And no more than four days a week. She keeps house for her father and younger brothers.”

These limitations didn’t suit Thomas at all. Was he to be saddled with some weak female who couldn’t even turn up to work on time and then checked her watch to see when she could leave? He was about to protest when Mrs. Evensong pressed a button on her desk and spoke into a tube. “Oliver, send Harriet in. I think I’ve found her the perfect position.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Thomas began, until the frosted glass door opened and he forgot what he wanted to say.

This sublime creature was Harriet? It was as if a thunderbolt had cleaved his brain in two.

Mrs. Evensong was introducing them. The young woman’s full name was Harriet Benson, and she was dressed appallingly, in a baggy brown tweed suit that failed to hide her spectacular curves. She wore glasses, too, but Thomas thought she was Juno come to life—proud and regal, except for the slight stoop that some overly tall women resort to. Her hair was a wavy mass of caramel and milk chocolate, bundled up in a haphazard way that just asked to be released to ripple over her shoulders.

She didn’t look sickly at all, even not wearing a lick of paint, as many of Thomas’s female friends did. Her skin was cream kissed with a splash of coffee, and her straight, perfect nose was slightly freckled. Her eyelashes were astonishingly thick, and framed inquiring brown eyes made larger by the lenses in her spectacles.

Thomas was large and lanky himself, and had sometimes felt clumsy with delicate society women. Truth to tell, he felt a little clumsy now. His mind was as blank as an ignorant child’s slate. He couldn’t for the life of him conjure up chalk or any of his usual smooth words.

He realized something was expected of him. Of course. A lady had entered the room and he was obliged to stand.

No. Not a lady. She was just a secretary, although Mrs. Evensong had objected to the “just” and Thomas was inclined to agree with her. Miss Benson was far beyond any kind of qualifier.

He couldn’t possibly hire her. One did not lust after one’s secretary. Thomas had a reputation to uphold, false and annoying as it was. Presumably Miss Benson was a proper young woman, and Thomas never consorted with proper young women. They were fatal to his bachelorhood, and a proper young woman who had to work for a living was even more deadly. He’d never been a cad to take advantage of the help and wasn’t going to start now. How could this vision of divine womanhood sit across from him for sixteen hours a week without him making an absolute fool of himself?

Thomas was on his feet now, and if he still had a unified brain he would dash out the door Miss Benson had just entered.

“Urk.” Urk? That was the best he could do? His throat was as dry as the Sahara.

Miss Benson held out a hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Sir Thomas.”

Her handshake was firm, her voice melodious. She spoke very carefully, as if she were trying to sound as businesslike as possible. All Thomas wanted to do was take off her ghastly suit. Encourage her to stand up straight. Or better yet, lie down. She deserved to be painted nude. Immortalized for all mankind to see.

Harriet Benson was simply magnificent.

Disaster. He’d never had a reaction like this to a woman in his life. What in hell was wrong with him?

Oh, where to start.

Mrs. Evensong was speaking; Miss Benson was nodding. She sat down next to the chair he’d vacated, and he admired a rebellious curl that had been tucked behind a shell-like ear. Eventually Thomas realized both women were staring at him, so he sat down, too.

Practicalities were then discussed, in which Thomas took no part. He wasn’t feeling at all practical. In fact, he didn’t know what he was feeling, except it was dashed inconvenient and he was grateful to have a hat to cover his lap and his burgeoning erection. He should be ashamed—hell, he was ashamed. Embarrassed. Would that shrewd Mrs. Evensong notice that Thomas was not himself? Barely coherent? Or would she think he was another society dilettante who didn’t have two wits to rub together?

Thomas might have been privately educated after his unfortunate expulsion from school, and he might play the genial man about town, but he was, in fact, rather intelligent. And he knew, without flexing any part of his shattered brain, that if Harriet Benson came to work for him, he would be in terrible, terrible trouble.

Chapter 2

Wednesday, December 28, 1904

Harriet stumbled over a fallen girder. This was not quite how she’d expected to spend her morning. Until today, she’d been blissfully warm and indoors in a magnificent library, with a fine mahogany desk and a brand-new typing machine. She’d helped Sir Thomas interview candidates for his artists’ colony and waded through files, receipts, and bits of random paper, trying to make heads and tails of her employer’s atrocious handwriting. There were still a few indecipherable remnants on her otherwise clean desk, but Sir Thomas had hustled her out of the library and pushed her into his automobile. She’d kept her eyes closed for some of the ride, feeling distinctly queasy.

Sir Thomas caught her before she made a fool of herself and fell, his hand a jolt of heat though leather, two layers of wool and her cotton shirtwaist.

He was not quite what she expected, either. He’d been nearly inarticulate—practically mute—in the first few days she’d come to Featherstone House and its library, but she was beginning to understand the quickness of his mind once he started talking about his pet project. Sir Thomas Featherstone was a man who some might say had more money than sense, but that was utterly untrue. He just had bigger ideas than most of his peers. Those men were content to flit through life without much purpose. Sir Thomas had almost too much purpose.

His grandiose plans for this cavernous empty mill were imprudent, to say the least. To found an artists’ colony in the middle of a slum was ridiculous. Unsafe. But he was very persuasive and had secured investors for this endeavor. Could it be because he was so glib that one simply fulfilled his slightest request? She’d heard him speak to friends on the telephone and watched as he entertained unexpected company in the library. He was witty. Delightful. She had to pretend not to listen and school her face to hide her amusement.

He struggled a bit speaking to her, though. Harriet thought he was nervous employing a female secretary, and did everything she could to set him at his ease, striving to an efficiency standard that was high even for her. She knew he wasn’t old-fashioned about women in the workplace—the company he kept was very Bohemian. In the week she had worked for him—well, let’s just say she had seen and heard a lot of very modern things.

Harriet didn’t think she was unduly susceptible to a gentleman’s charms, but she was afraid she was stumbling over more than a girder. She clutched her stenography pad as if the elegant Pitman shorthand written within would serve as a shield from Featherstonian folly.

She’d been reading too many novels. Her recuperation from appendectomy surgery and its complications had been endless, and the days had been long and boring. Harriet’s usually cheese-paring father had bought her more books than he could afford and her head had been filled with black-eyed sheikhs and ducal spies for months.

Harriet was not the sort of woman a sheikh or spy might appreciate. She was dreadfully tall and somewhat plump, bespectacled and brown from head to toe—brown hair, brown eyes, even her skin was unfashionably brown, though she tried every inexpensive beauty regimen available to bleach it and the freckles scattered on her nose. At commercial college, she’d been teased for having gypsy blood.

If only she were that exotic.

Sir Thomas could easily have passed for a sheikh or spy. His dark eyes and hair and lush mustache were intriguing, and she didn’t even like mustaches.

What would it feel like to be kissed by a man with a mustache?

What would it feel like to be kissed by a man, period? Harriet had never been kissed in all her twenty-eight years, and a sadder story than that she couldn’t imagine. No one would ever make her the heroine of any novel.

She may have sighed. A puff of cold air signaled her despair.

Sir Thomas blinked those dark eyes down at her. He was much taller than she, which made for a refreshing change. She towered over most men. “Are you quite all right, Miss Benson? I know it’s chilly in here.”

He also knew she had been ill. Not all the gory details, of course, but he was very solicitous. Harriet had not been able to resume her regular schedule as the Evensong Agency’s office manager since her operation, and they needed someone there who was more than part-time and not apt to get light-headed at the least little thing. She’d been completely honest with Sir Thomas when Mrs. Evensong had called her for the interview, and he’d only stared off beyond her ear as she’d confessed her limitations.

He’d made a few odd noises in his throat, so she presumed he understood and had no objection. Then he’d signed her employment contract without even reading it, and nearly ran out of the building. He was a busy man, after all. Lots of irons in the fire. Harriet noted for future reference to go over all papers before the man signed anything so he wouldn’t be taken advantage of again. She was horrified at how much her salary was.

So far, this job required only four half-days of the work week, and working conditions were more than pleasant. The situation was really quite perfect for her and she didn’t want to muff it.

“I’m fine, Sir Thomas.”

He withdrew the hand at her elbow. “So, what do you think?” He looked at her expectantly.

Harriet always had trouble lying. It was one of her virtues, yet very inconvenient at this moment.

“I’m sure my opinion does not matter,” she hedged. “It’s not my place to say.”

“Nonsense. If you’re to spend time here coordinating schedules and buying supplies and whatnot, yours is the most important opinion.”

The idea was to turn the space into subsidized living quarters and studios for artists, musicians, writers, and possibly actors, if they could behave themselves. There would be a gallery, a lecture hall, and performance spaces open to the public as well. Though an on-site porter would be on hand, Harriet would be the one juggling various creative personalities and necessities in her very own office.

“I—I don’t think the location is ideal.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Sir Thomas said cheerfully. “That’s why the building is so cheap.”

She cleared her throat of a rather fat frog. “It also doesn’t appear to be structurally sound.”

“Nothing that a little money and elbow grease won’t fix.”

Harriet stared up at the leaden December sky, which was visible since a substantial portion of the roof was missing. One could not argue it was very cold indeed, with or without a roof. A pigeon fluttered in and settled itself in the cluster of those that were already roosting overhead. “I think you may be underestimating the cost and the effort.”

Sir Thomas folded his arms across his broad chest. “So. You don’t like it.”

“I doubt ladies would come to visit no matter how much you renovated. Their husbands and fathers would never let them,” Harriet said baldly. Her own father would have an absolute fit if he found her working in this neighborhood. As it was, he wanted her home. He’d never approved of her going to commercial college and finding a job. If she hadn’t had a small legacy from her maternal grandmother, Harriet could never have afforded the fees. Her father certainly had not offered to pay the tuition, and in the ten years she’d been employed, he’d never once stopped ragging on her.

It wasn’t proper for a woman to work outside the home, he’d lectured. Even though his income as a bank clerk at Stratton and Son was inadequate to support the family, he gave the impression that the weekly salary she turned over to him was tainted. But it helped ensure that her two much-younger half-brothers could attend school instead of winding up in some dismal mill, as this building had once been.

Sir Thomas nodded. “You’re absolutely right. And without the support of society ladies, we’ll never get their husbands to open up their checkbooks. So, what do you propose?”

“You need a building in a more fashionable district. Somewhere one can walk at night after an event and remain unaccosted.”

“Don’t you think I haven’t looked for precisely that? It’s hopeless.”

Now he sighed, a white cloud floating through the frigid air.

“Nothing is ever hopeless,” Harriet said, although she doubted her words herself. The drive here in Sir Thomas’s Pegasus, thrilling though it had been, had revealed London’s bleak winter despair. When she’d finally opened her eyes, legless veterans of both Boer Wars and ragged children had been begging on nearly every street corner.

Why didn’t Sir Thomas use his fortune to help those unfortunates? Starving artists and musicians were somewhat lower on the needy scale, in her opinion. The poor didn’t have the luxury of being temperamental, as she well knew, and Harriet felt some trepidation at the thought of working with Sir Thomas’s so-called geniuses. There were to be only a half dozen at first, but still. Six people could seem like sixty when their demands became impossible.

Three visual artists, a poet, a pianist, and a cellist had been selected for Sir Thomas’s patronage and experiment, all male, which Harriet thought was distinctly unfair. But Sir Thomas was trying to avoid any whispers of impropriety in the communal living situation, and no doubt he was right.

“The building is too big anyhow,” Sir Thomas said, deciding to put his disappointment behind him. He was a good-humored gentleman on the whole. His rackety friends, who dropped in without invitation most mornings, even called him “Tubby,” although he was not portly at all, and he took no offence. Harriet wondered where the inappropriate nickname came from.

“What I need is a storefront, with lodging above it. The artists and the art gallery are the most important aspects. The stage can wait. Best to start off modestly, I suppose. I’ll have to tell the other fellows to be patient about the performance spaces.”

“What if . . .” No, she was probably overstepping her bounds.

“What if what? Don’t be shy, Miss Benson. I’m not paying you to be shy.”

And he was paying her quite a lot for just four half-days a week—although his project account books and personal correspondence had been in such a tangle Madame Defarge herself could not have unraveled them.

“You could use the gallery to hold exclusive recitals and lectures. Kill two birds with one stone, as if were. Sell subscriptions. Have a musicale or poetry reading with a backdrop of art. Serve champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Please all the senses. The reputation of the cooperative would grow, and eventually you might build a permanent, larger space to suit.”

Sir Thomas stared at her if she were speaking gibberish. Then a grin broke out on his handsome face. “By Jove! Mrs. Evensong was right about you!” He picked her up in the middle of the rubble and twirled her around.

Harriet hung on to her hat and her notebook, her cheeks growing warm despite the cold. Before she had the chance to ask him to put her down, he thought of that himself. Her boots hit the warped floorboards and she wobbled, then landed ignominiously on her derriere.

The flock of pigeons roosting overhead on a rafter squawked and flew out the hole in the roof, but not before one left a memento behind on her new brown coat. One of its compatriots was similarly inspired to anoint Sir Thomas as well.

Harriet was mortified for so many reasons, but from the expression on his face, she was sure Sir Thomas was equally upset. He reached down and pulled her up with alacrity.

Harriet couldn’t help but think how strong he was both to lift her off the ground and now get her up with such ease. To her despair, no corset she’d ever bought had been able to contain her curves completely. Her waist was mostly a figment of her imagination.

“I say! So sorry! Do forgive my clumsiness! Never meant to have you wind up on your ar—oh, God, someone just shoot me now,” he muttered. He pulled out a starched handkerchief and tried to dab the glob of bird feces from her breast.

“Sir Thomas!” she said, shocked, yet somewhat intrigued. If she hadn’t been kissed, she certainly had not been touched there.

Though perhaps it was time.

His hand drew back as if scalded. “Quite right. Trying to be a gentleman but failing rather spectacularly.” He gave her the handkerchief.

Harriet took care of the problem, then raised her eyes to the shoulder of her employer. Sir Thomas’s coat was in need of some assistance as well. Dare she touch him? The mess was in an awkward spot. He’d have to be a bit of a contortionist to reach it without removing his topcoat.

She heard the warnings of her dead mother in her head. She heard the warnings of her dead stepmother in her head. Harriet ignored them both.

“Hold still.” With brisk efficiency, she wiped him clean. “There. Almost as good as new.”

“Miss Benson, I do apologize. Permit me to buy you a new coat.” Sir Thomas looked awfully penitent, his brown eyes liquid and sincere.

The coat had been her Christmas present to herself, since her father and brothers couldn’t be bothered to give her anything. She’d saved for two years to buy it with its velvet frogs and piping, but she shook her head at his offer. Somehow she’d get the stain out. “Oh, I couldn’t permit that. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“Consider it hazardous duty pay. I was thoughtless to drag you to this pigeon-infested building.”

“You didn’t drag me. Your chauffeur drove us here. Perhaps we should leave—he must be getting nervous.” Though Josephson was a sturdy fellow, this neighborhood was apt to give even a pugilist pause.

“Yes, of course.” But he was still rooted on the uneven floor. He cleared his throat. “I know I’m impulsive. Not organized. That’s what you’re here for. If you’ll stay.” He waved his arm. “Sorry about all this, honestly. Didn’t mean to put you in jeopardy.”

She felt the beginnings of a smile. In her opinion, her teeth were her best facial feature, so she relented and revealed them. “You’re not responsible for the birds, Sir Thomas.”

“What came before. Shouldn’t have—well, you know.”

Harriet’s friend Eliza Raeburn had described Sir Thomas Featherstone as being thick as thieves with artists’ models and actresses. If he were as tongue-tied with those other females, she didn’t see how he ever accomplished anything.

Of course, there was his money to sweeten the seduction.

“Really, I’ve forgotten all about it,” Harriet lied. She’d never been spun in giddy joy before, and Sir Thomas had been giddy and joyful. But now he was sober and a bit awkward. Maybe he was just shy with her. With his reputation, he’d probably never dealt with a respectable woman besides his mother.

Harriet was nothing if not respectable, no matter what her father thought. She was a little boring, really. She’d never done the sort of undercover work that the Evensong Agency was famous for, and now never would. It was her lot in life to straighten out cluttered desks and minds without much fanfare.

Except she had been twirled around an empty mill. And that had been fun.

She looked at her wrist, where a cheap watch told her that her morning was done. She still felt perfectly well, though. Working with Sir Thomas served as a kind of tonic. One couldn’t feel too blue around him. He was very enthusiastic about this project, and Harriet resolved not to tamp it down too severely.

He noticed her look at her watch. “Time’s up, eh? You’re like Cinderella fleeing from the ball.”

Harriet knew she was blushing. She wore worn half-boots, not glass slippers, and was much too large to be a Cinderella. Truly, she was more like the pumpkin coach. “We agreed to the terms, Sir Thomas.”

“That we did, and I never go back on my word. I’ll have Josephson take you home.”

“That won’t be necessary.” There was no need for anyone to see the grim exterior of the flat she shared with her two brothers and her father.

“I insist. You don’t want to try to get on an omnibus here and ride along with the riffraff. I’ll even keep you company.”

Harriet was more or less riffraff herself. “No! That is to say, you’re very kind, Sir Thomas, but I wouldn’t like you to go out of your way. You’re an important man with many things to do.”

Sir Thomas lifted a dark brow. “Am I? I rather thought I was just going home for lunch. And possibly a nap. I came in late last night.”

Harriet could only imagine. Sir Thomas was fond of music and had probably been in some smoky cabaret with a group of giggling chorus girls.

“I don’t want to keep you, then. We