Page 59 of Miss Desirable
Victor sent Armbruster an assessing glance that could have come from a much older male, then scooted under the bar, and passed through a beaded curtain into the kitchen.
“My lord is thirsty?” Nan asked, draping her towel over her shoulder.
“My lord needs information.”
She gathered up the detritus of Victor’s meal. “Then my lord had best have some coin.”
Armbruster took the stool the boy had vacated. “What if I have something more valuable than a handful of coins?” What Nan had demanded amounted to a very substantial handful when a fellow was pockets to let.
She looked him up and down as if he were a fractious colt on the block at Tatts. Good bloodlines, questionable temperament. A gamble at any price.
“What could you possibly have that would appeal to me more strongly than money?”
“A lucrative post.” He took off his hat—the plain black he wore on Sundays—and set it on the bar. “That means a position that pays quite well.”
Nan spared his hat a glance, then said something in French.
“Languages have never been my forte,” Armbruster replied, “but one need not be fluent in French to grasp that a lot of money over an extended period is better than a single payment.”
“Your favorite wealthy auntie has developed a bad cough?” Nan asked, pulling a lady’s pint from the barrels behind the bar. “Your godfather has found somesinécureto bestow on your undeserving self?”
Her utter indifference ought not to wound him, but it did sting a bit. “Why do you say I’m undeserving?”
“You earn nothing. You make nothing but noise and trouble. You aid nobody. Your definition of friendship is some fellows to get drunk with or win money from, but you aren’t smart enough to win very much. You are good-looking through no doings of your own, and you could have learned several languages, but you are too lazy. Why should the stalwart John Bull spare you so much as a farthing to encourage your many bad habits?”
The French made everything about politics, and look where that had got them. “Some of my naughty habits are quite enjoyable.”
“For you, but what of the valet who must clean the vomit from your boots? Not very enjoyable for him, is it?” She took a sip from the tankard. “Either buy a drink or leave.”
Her boldness was both offensive and refreshing—stirring even. “I’ll soon be able to pay for much more than a drink.”
“Your older brother is to be set upon by highwaymen? Not very original, but then, one wonders if you could pay the highwaymen enough to do the job correctly. They do like their ale, those highwaymen.”
“You’ve had truck with highwaymen?”
She gave him that same look again, though this time he would have said the fractious two-year-old colt was also a bit off behind.
“I have had truck with worse than that, but I do not care to have truck with you. Good day.”
“You offer free French lessons to a boy who smells worse than a muck pit, but you don’t want to hear my offer?” An offer Armbruster had concocted while trying to total his unpaid bills over last night’s gin. Not so much an offer as a means of getting something for nothing.
“I am a busy woman, and listening to your vanities and presumptions is a waste of my time.” How haughty she sounded, and yet, she did not set the drink down and decamp for the kitchen.
“I can make your life much easier,” Armbruster said. “I’ll set you up in your own place, and you will have nobody to wait upon but me. Your duties will be pleasant, and you will have most of the daylight hours free. How does that sound?”
She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. “Are you unwell, my lord? I have assumed that your afflictions are simply the usual wealth, arrogance, and idleness, but perhaps you have a true malaise of the mind.”
“I am of quite sound mind.”
She took another sip of the drink and set the tankard down, her manner as dainty as a duchess’s. “I am not for sale. You and I have one bargain, on my terms. I will give you the direction of a certain letter, and you will give me coin. That is our bargain, and if your lordly brain cannot grasp those terms, then our business is at an end.”
“I want all your passion naked in bed with me,” Armbruster said, because he knew a bluff when he heard one. “I want you panting beneath me, begging me—”
The boy emerged from the kitchen, and his surprisingly clean little paws were balled into fists.
How quaint.
Armbruster set a coin on the bar and helped himself to a deep swallow from Nan’s tankard. “I am soon to marry quite well. My intended has yet to learn of her good fortune, but it has come to my attention that she was absent from polite society’s notice without leave for more than a year. When I ponder that curious development, I am led to only one conclusion.” His conclusion being that blackmailing the lady for a few coins would not serve when he could get his hands on her whole fortune instead.
