A Holiday by Gaslight(8)

“If you’ll wait a moment,” Mr. Murray said, “I’ll tell him that you’re here.”

Sophie clasped her hands tightly together inside her muff. Doubts, heretofore kept at bay, now assailed her. They were as painfully overwhelming as a sudden shower of hailstones.

What on earth had possessed her to call on him in this manner? Was it temporary madness of some kind? Or merely desperation? Both, she suspected. Why else would she have embarked on a course of action so careless? So stupid? So unutterably pathetic?

Mr. Darwin said that a grain in the balance could determine the survival of an organic being. That adaptations in however slight a degree could, ultimately, shift the scales.

She privately wished Mr. Darwin to Hades.

Evolution was all well and good for organic beings, but for a young lady, alteration of one’s behavior simply engendered too much risk.

What if Mr. Sharpe had been telling the truth? What if he really had found their relationship a tiresome charade? The very notion sapped her courage. She did her best to martial it. To focus on the reasons she’d come. If there was a chance she’d been wrong about him—a small possibility that, under different circumstances, they might be friends—surely it was worth the risk to her pride and reputation to find out?

Wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

But there was no turning back now.

Mr. Murray ducked his head in the office door and exchanged a few murmured words with the person within.

And then Mr. Sharpe was there, his tall, broad-shouldered frame filling the doorway. He fixed her with a cool blue stare, every inch of him more imposing—more unsettlingly masculine—than she remembered.

“Miss Appersett,” he said.

“Mr. Sharpe. Good afternoon.”

He looked at her for several weighted seconds, as if she were some dangerous creature escaped from the Zoological Gardens, and then he moved aside, motioning for her to join him in his office.

Her skirts brushed against his legs as she passed him. The faint scent of lemon verbena tickled her nose. It was his shaving soap. Either that or the fragrance of his pomade. She’d never been able to tell which. It mingled with the smells of his office: fresh ink and parchment and smoke from the fire.

He shut the door behind her with a decisive click. “Will you sit down?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She didn’t feel much like sitting, but had little choice. If she stood, he’d be bound to remain standing as well. Such were the rules of polite society and, up to this point, Mr. Sharpe had followed them to the letter.

She sank into one of the upholstered chairs opposite his desk, her skirts settling around her in a formidable spill of silk and velvet. His desk was a great wooden affair, well-suited to a gentleman of Mr. Sharpe’s proportions. A barrister’s desk stacked high with papers and topped with a triple inkwell, a blotter, and an oil lamp with a fluted glass shade.

When Mr. Sharpe resumed his seat behind it, she felt all at once the weakness—the absolute insignificance—of her position. Was this how a person felt when they were petitioning him for a loan or some other favor of business?

She reminded herself that she was doing neither. She required no money from him and she wanted no favors. She was simply clarifying her position, awkward as that may be. “Mr. Sharpe. Forgive me for intruding, but—”

“I hadn’t thought to see you again,” he said abruptly.

A frisson of anxiety rippled through her veins. His voice was colder than she’d ever heard it. Cold and taut with control. She moistened her lips. “Nor I you.”

It had been a week since she’d parted ways with him. A week since she’d told him, so emphatically, that they did not suit.

“And yet…here you are.” His gaze drifted over her face. Cool. Detached. As if he were taking a dispassionate inventory of all of her flaws. “Why are you here, Miss Appersett?”

She untied her bonnet strings. “To speak with you, obviously.”

Mr. Sharpe regarded her from beneath lowered brows as she slowly removed her bonnet, her muff, and her gloves. “I haven’t much time to spare you, ma’am. I have a dinner engagement at six.”

“Do you?” Sophie placed her belongings on the empty chair beside her, unable to conceal a flash of chagrin. Who in the world dined at six?

“Promptly at six,” he said.

“Hmm.” She believed him, but only just. “It seems that, when it comes to you, I have uniformly bad timing.”

“I can’t imagine this will take long.”

Well, that certainly told her. He expected her to be quick and to the point. Not only did he have better things to do, he had more important people to do them with. More important than her, anyway.

“You’re not making this easy, Mr. Sharpe.”

“And what is this, Miss Appersett? Apart from being entirely irregular.”

Sophie frowned. She’d long desired him to show some emotion, but this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. “I beg your pardon, sir. Are you angry with me?”

His expression hardened at the very suggestion. “You’ve taken me by surprise, ma’am. And you’ve put me in a devil of a position.”

“My apologies. I didn’t realize—”

“Didn’t you?”

“I believed I was being discreet.”