Page 14 of Ladies in Hating
It was after dawn now. She was going to be late to the pie shop, and Mrs. Quincy was going to be puce with outrage.
She could not bring herself to care. She shoved open the door to Martin Yorke’s small office so hard that the bell above the door did not tinkle so much as bellow its announcement of her arrival.
Elias Beckett, one of Mr. Yorke’s clerks, lifted his head and peered at her.
“Good morning, Mr. Beckett,” she bit out.
“Er,” he said. “Good morning, Miss Lacey.” He hunched his shoulders slightly, as if to hide behind his desk.
She tried to modulate her tone. She was frightening clerks, for heaven’s sake. “Is Mr. Yorke here?”
“In his office, yes.”
She looked around at the front room. Beckett’s desk was patently occupied, but the other clerk’s desk stood empty, its surface covered with neat stacks of papers.
Don’t ask,she told herself.Don’t ask.
“And—Jem?”Damn it, Catriona.“Has he been in yet?”
“Not that I’ve seen this morning. I’ve only been here for an hour or so, though.”
Of course Beckett had arrived anhourbefore dawn. Cat bit down hard on her lower lip, stifled her anxious thoughts about her brother and his career, and made her way down the narrow hallway into Martin Yorke’s office.
Yorke was a tall, faintly cadaverous man in his middle sixties. He’d been Cat’s solicitor and general man of business since the first Lady Darling novel in 1818, when she’d acquired a contract from her publisher in a fever of delighted celebration, then taken the thing home and realized she could not make heads nor tails of the legalistic language therein.
She had not known quite what to do. She’d feared that to sign the contract without understanding its contents would be to invite exploitation, but she had not known where to turn for advice.
Her father would have known. Walter Lacey had been that sort of man—would have inexplicably produced an acquaintance who printed law books or a judge whom he’d helped with some extraordinary favor involving Wiltshire bacon. Even the doctor who’d attended Walter at his death had refused payment, citing some long history of friendship, his expression sad and fond at once.
She’d tasted grief as she’d looked down at the contract, fear like ashes in her mouth.
And then she had recalled Mr. Martin Yorke. He was a regular customer at the pie shop. His orders were highly specific and his arrival unfailingly punctual.
The recipient of the pies he acquired every Monday and Thursday was, she had learned, his large and somber wolfhound, Peg.
If the man could afford to buy high-quality lamb mince pies—no onions, no garlic, no salt—for hisdog,she supposed he couldn’t be doing too badly as a solicitor. He was precise and respectful, and he never asked for the pies on credit.
And he coddled the dog. She had seen it. It seemed a good sign.
So she’d taken the first Lady Darling contract to his office. He’d returned it the next day, marked all over in scribbled notations. Then he’d insisted on going to Helen Vanhoven’s office together to present her with his changes, and somehow—quite without Cat’s realizing it—he’d managed to alter the terms of the contract to eliminate Cat’s personal liability and increase her profit share besides.
When she’d tried to express her bemused gratitude, he’d shaken his head. “Don’t thank me, girl. I charge ten percent.”
It had been more than worth the cost, these last years. He’d secured contract after contract, done personal battle with Helen Vanhoven on more than one memorable occasion, and, just this year, taken on fifteen-year-old Jem as his newest apprentice.
In fact, it was the financial machinations of Martin Yorke that had prompted her appointment with Mr. Laventille this morning and her infuriating confrontation—again—with Lady Georgiana Cleeve.
Cat cleared her throat as she pulled open the door to Yorke’s office.
He looked up and raised one ponderous eyebrow. “Do we have an appointment that I had forgotten?”
She scowled at him. “No. We have no appointment. Idid,however, have an appointment with Mr. Jean Laventille this morning, per your recommendation.”
Yorke leaned back and tented his long fingers over his chest. “And?”
“And nothing! It was a complete disaster. Were you unaware that the man also publishes the Gothic novels of Geneva Desrosiers?”
“I was not unaware,” Yorke said blandly.
