Page 33 of The Trouble with True Love

She waved aside the offered glass. “No, no, thank you. I had two glasses of wine with dinner. Champagne so soon afterward will make me tipsy.”

“I believe I’d like to see that,” he murmured, earning himself a look of reproof.

“Now that you are here, Galbraith, I shall leave Miss Deverill in your hands and mingle with some of our other guests. Try not to offend her again, if you please. And Miss Deverill?” She turned to Clara. “If he dares to be impertinent, you have my leave to turn your back on him and walk away, just as you did at my ball.”

With that, she departed for the other end of the room, and Galbraith moved between chairs to join Clara at the rail.

Clara turned toward him. “Lady Petunia doesn’t know about that, does she?” she asked in alarm, glancing back to be sure the other woman was out of earshot.

“About what?”

She faced him again, her gaze rising as far as his tie, but she knew from the heat in her cheeks that her face was about the same rose-pink shade as her evening gown. “What you said,” she whispered, oddly more embarrassed now about his suggestion of kissing her than she’d been at the time.

But he only laughed. “God, no. If she knew I’d made such a naughty proposition to a young lady, she’d not only have stopped giving me an income, she’d have flayed me alive. No, that secret stays between us, if you don’t mind.”

Relieved, she lifted her gaze to his, and at the sight of those brilliant eyes, she suddenly wanted to know why he’d made that wicked proposition in the first place. But she’d have died rather than ask.

“I’m glad you came,” he said in the wake of her silence. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Was my presence here really at your instigation?”

“You seem skeptical.”

“Should I not be? When you left my offices this afternoon, you seemed angry enough with me to spit nails.”

“That’s true enough,” he conceded, leaning one hip against the railing. “But if you knew me better, you’d know I don’t hold grudges. I...” He paused and looked down, frowning into the glass in his hand. “Holding onto anger, Miss Deverill, is an ugly thing, something I’ve watched people do through most of my life, and it never answers. Therefore, I strive never to do it.” He paused and looked at her again, lifting his glass. “Truce?”

“Truce,” she agreed, clinking her glass to his. “I’m not the sort to hold grudges, either.”

His eyes creased at the corners as he smiled. “Good, because I’m afraid my effort to mend fences with you has an ulterior motive. I’m wondering if your offer of employment is still open?”

Clara froze, her champagne glass halfway to her lips, feeling a jolt of hope, for her attempts to compose an answer for the Devastated Debutante after his departure this afternoon had been dismally unsuccessful. “Why do you ask? Have you changed your mind about accepting it?”

“That depends,” he said, an ambiguous reply that reminded Clara getting one’s hopes up about a man like this was a foolish thing to do, even as she mentally crossed her fingers.

“Yes,” she answered, “my offer is still open.”

“Before you say that, I must warn you, I have a few conditions of my employment. For one thing, my fee would need to be one hundred and twenty-five pounds per column.”

“Done,” she said, too relieved to quibble about an additional two hundred pounds, especially since the paper could easily afford to pay it.

“And,” he went on, “I would require all the money in advance.”

“All of it?”

“Yes, all. That is a nonnegotiable point,” he added before she could reply.

“Wages are usually paid only after the work has been done,” she felt compelled to point out.

“True, but anything less than one thousand pounds paid immediately negates my sudden need for funds.” He did not explain further. Instead, in the wake of her silence, he raised an eyebrow, looking amused. “What’s wrong? Are you afraid I won’t come up to snuff and you shall have to give me the sack before I’ve earned my pay?”

“Let’s just say I’m not sure I can trust you to take the responsibilities of the job seriously. Laughing,” she admonished as his smile widened, “only underscores my concern. Writing the Lady Truelove column is not a lark, Lord Galbraith. It is a task that requires serious thought and deliberation.”

“Inventing problems for fictitious correspondents and scribbling advice to solve those problems seems rather a lark to me, but I won’t debate the point.”

She could have told him that the people Lady Truelove advised were not fictitious, but she decided to save any explanations of what would be required of him for later. If he truly was serious about taking this on, she didn’t want to scare him off. “I will pay the funds in advance. Are we agreed?”

He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he turned toward the rail, staring out at the boxes across the way. “I have one other condition.”

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