Page 24 of How to Ruin a Duke
“I wouldn’t put it that strongly, but I do want you to be safe.”He smiled at her.“Hope I didn’t give you a fright.”
“No, it’s quite all right.Why have you come?”Was that impolite?She didn’t really care right now.
“Because I like seeing you.”
She rolled her eyes.“You like everyone.”No matter who came to the shop—whether a duke’s footman or the merchant father of a daughter in need of town polish—Simon spoke to them as if they were equals, as if he’d never wanted to do anything else.
“I’m interested in almost everyone,” Simon replied.“But I don’t like everyone in the same way, or to the same degree.”
She didn’t want explanations.She wanted…what the devil did she want?Sympathy?Solutions?Oblivion?
All of it.None of it.“It’s not a good time, Simon.”
Concern softened his features.“Something has happened.Is it to do with the lease?Do you want to tell me about it?”
Did she?She supposed she did.It was good to tell someone who cared, who wasn’t relying on her for their daily bread as Nanny and Alice were.
More than that: She truly did think of him as a partner.Someone she could rely on herself.
“Come to the back,” she decided, locking the front door.“I’ll tell you all of it.”
So he followed her into the workroom, picking up the wandering Cotton and stroking the spiny-backed animal as Rowena explained Lifford’s terms.After weeks of notice, she still couldn’t quite believe the figure she had to meet.
She’d been prepared for another of the incremental increases built into the original lease.From a hundred pounds per annum to a hundred ten, perhaps.Or a hundred guineas, twenty-one shillings each instead of the nice common twenty per pound.A hundred fifty guineas?Extortionate!
But it wasn’t, really.Here on Bond Street, she was surrounded by nobles, patronized by nobles, kept in business by nobles.So, properties commanded a noble rent.
“There it is,” she concluded, “and the weekly rate is even higher.I have to look carefully at my accounts to sort out whether I can pay it.I can’t lose the shop.”
Simon crouched, setting Cotton on the floor.“Because your father told you not to?”
“My father, and generations before him, and…and what would I do?What else is there for a Fairweather?”
He gave the hedgehog a little nudge, setting the animal into snout-wiggling motion.“Anything you’d like there to be.”
“Easily said for an able-bodied man with a nice accent.No.I’ll have to think of some way to make this work.”
Work, work, work.She picked up the fingerboard she’d been sanding earlier, then returned it to its spot.Was it finished?She wanted it to be.She wanted only to be done with it, to remove it from the list of things she needed to do.Poor violoncello; it deserved better.
At her side, Simon stood again.“Do you ever do something just because you want to?”
Oh yes, and that violin needed a new sound post.She looked over her racks of wood, built in and carefully sorted, to find a piece she could sand to fit.Spruce would be best.“I want to save this business.So yes, everything I do is because I want to.”
“That’s not what I mean.I’m asking if you ever do anything only for the joy of it.”
“ReadHow to Ruin a Duke?”She laid hands on a spruce dowel.“Kiss you again, perhaps?I’d also rather like to go to Venice.Do you own a ship?”
“I don’t,” he said.“And I don’t think kissing you again is exactly what you want right now either.”
“I suppose not.Light that lamp, will you?I’ll place this sound post.That’ll make tomorrow’s list of tasks shorter.”
He lit the oil lamp she’d indicated, sliding it close to her side.Before she asked, he handed her a short, sharp knife and a pair of tweezers.“For cutting and placing the post.”
Impressed, she said, “You’ve been paying attention.”
“I have been.”He puttered around the room idly while Rowena took measurements.“Look here.Can I tell you a story?”
“AHow to Ruin a Dukekind of story?Or a story about you?”
