Page 1 of Her Magnificent Mistake
PROLOGUE
The curtains were down, blocking all view into the second-floor window of the office used by the Lindsay Group. This could mean one of three things:
Her brother had been out carousing last night, and hadn’t yet managed to stumble to his desk and throw open the sash and let in the crisp late-April air, despite it being almost noon.
He wasstillcarousing, and the light hurt his eyes.
Bull had received some bad news and, as he always did, drew the curtains in case anyone outside—like a particularly well-sighted pigeon meandering past—might see him as he brooded.
Sighing, Lady Marcia Calderbank, daughter of the Duke of Peasgoode, hefted the stack of newspapers against her hip and stomped toward the front steps of the red brick townhouse.
She justknewit was the third option, and it would be up to her to drag the news out of Bull.
Then draghimfrom his brooding.
“Hello, Mrs. Cartledge!” she called as she let herself in the front door. “Just me. Is my brother awake?”
From the back of the building, the older woman called, “Good morning, dear. I brought him up his tea and toast hours ago, along with the post.”
Damnation. That meant whatever had Bull so worried had come by mail.
Shaking her head, Marcia climbed the stairs.
Bull was completely capable of taking care of himself, but he rented a suite of rooms on the second floor of this perfectly respectable house from the elderly widow downstairs. Not because heneededher fetching him his meals and fussing over him but—Marcia suspected—because he liked the company.
“You had better be decent,” she growled as she knocked on his door, trying to force from her mind the Great Shirtless Interruption of last spring. Without giving him time to answer, she clomped into his sitting room and dropped the heavy pile of papers by his door. Then she crossed to the office that fronted the street and normally let in lovely light. “Why are you hiding in here?”
Sure enough, her older brother was sitting with his back to the window, the curtains pulled tight behind him, slouched in his chair with a frown. His nimble fingers—never still—tapped a heavy envelope against the desk. With each tap, he’d turn the envelope a half-turn, so it seemed to rotate across the desktop.
It was a sign of how engrossed he was with his bad news that Bull startled at her voice, turning his irritated frown on her.
Bull’s situational awareness was what had kept him—and once or twice,her—alive this long, and the fact he hadn’t heard her come up the stairs or even into his home was…alarming.
So, it wasn’t pique. It was real, whatever this was.
Marcia forced her tone to calm as she crossed behind him toward the window. “What is wrong? I was making enough noise to wake the dead.”
“Aye,” he muttered, returning his frown to the small fire in the hearth. “Ye need new shoes. Those are too big. Sliding off yer heel and hitting the ground too early.”
Snorting to hide how impressed she was—his sartorial knowledge was second to none—Marcia threw open the curtains.
Her brother merely grunted and turned away, as if his shadow could somehow hide the contents of that envelope from any possible spy pigeons roosting outside.
I suppose it is good he did not hiss and shy away from the light, like a spooked vampire.
“For your information, thesearenew shoes,” she declared haughtily, trying to shuffle instead of stomp as she moved to one of the free chairs on the other side of his desk. “I am trying to break them in. But the socks are old.”
