How to Impress a Marquess(57)

“Tentacles?”

“I said tendrils.”

A tiny pleat formed between Judith’s eyebrows. “I hope you aren’t doing all this for a man?” Her face screwed up tight, as if the word man emitted a foul stench.

“No, no, of course not.” Isabella had been careful to hide her little infatuation with Mr. Powers. If she didn’t, Judith would launch into her standard marital lecture, that Isabella shouldn’t give over her freedom and money to a simple-minded, barbaric man who would just gamble away her wealth. “W-what would I do with a man?” Isabella laughed nervously, trying to sound innocent. Her gaze wandered to the bed, and her mind lit up with all manner of things she would do with him.

Thankfully, Judith didn’t pursue the subject, but reverted back to her usual obsession: the Wollstonecraft Society. “Now, darling, you need to make an emotional connection with the society members in your speech. You must speak to their desires and pains. Remember how we discussed showing our emotions when writing your book.”

Isabella groaned. “We agreed never to talk about the book again.”

A fellow member of the Wollstonecraft Society had recently bought a printing press in London. Judith had thought it a wonderful idea for Isabella to write a volume educating women about investing and the stock exchange. She’d pestered Isabella for months. Finally, when the weather turned brutal in the winter, Isabella produced a work she titled A Guide to the Funds and Sound Business Practices for Gentle Spinsters and Widows by “A Lady.” She gave the pages to Judith to edit and happily forgot about it. Three months later, her companion returned a bound book retitled From Poor to Prosperous, How Intelligent, Resourceful Spinsters, Widows, and Female Victims of Ill-fated Marital Circumstances Can Procure Wealth, Independence, and Dignity by Isabella St. Vincent, majority partner in the Bank of Lord Hazelwood.

The entire village must have heard Isabella’s mortified scream. To make it all the worse, Judith had taken her modest examples, such as “Hannah was a plain spinster with only the limited means left to her by her late father,” and added such Gothic claptrap as Hannah having been used and abandoned by some arrogant lord of a manor.

She had hoped the book would languish unread on some library bookshelf until it disintegrated into dust, but it was now in its fourth printing. And Isabella, who was only a member of the society because Judith sent in her membership letter each year, was to be awarded the society’s highest honor: the Wollstonecraft—a large gold-painted plaster bust of the famous advocate of rights for women.

Judith pointed to a paragraph on page two of Isabella’s scribbled speech. “Now, where you say consuls return three percent, you should perhaps say, ‘an infirm widow whose husband, a typical subjugating, evil man, had gambled away their savings before drinking himself to—’”

“I can’t say those things.” Isabella flung up her arms. “You know I’m a horrid lecturer. I just stand there mute or start babbling nonsense. Please go to the London meeting and accept the award. You had as much to do with the book as I. And you know Milton gets mad when I go away, and wets my bed out of spite.”

“Isabella!” Judith gasped. “It’s the Wollstonecraft! Do you know how many ladies dream of being in your shoes?”

Isabella couldn’t think of more than six. “But…but…” I’ve almost got one of those subjugating, evil men hooked and squirming on my marital line. I can’t leave now. To Hades with the gold bust of Mary Wollstonecraft! If I don’t know a man soon, I’m going to spontaneously combust.

“No buts,” her companion said, handing Isabella back her pages. Surrounding her neat, efficient words and tables were arrows pointing to her cousin’s scrawled notes that read “Young widow must support ailing child,” or “Honorable, aging spinster turned away from her home.”

“This is wrong. Investing is about numbers, not whether you are abandoned or caring for your dead sister’s husband’s cousin’s eleven blind and crippled orphaned children or such nonsense.”

“Now you sound like a man.” Judith scrunched her nose again at the terrible m-word. “The women of Britain need your help. They have no rights, no vote, no control over their lives. Money is their only freedom.” She placed her palm on Isabella’s cheek. “I know what a brave, kind soul you are. Inside of you remains the grave child who didn’t cry by her mother’s casket and the young woman who waited stoically every day by her dying father’s bedside. Don’t be afraid of your vulnerability and pain. Use it to talk to your sisters in need.”

Isabella’s throat turned dry. Judith didn’t know what she was talking about. Emotions were wild and confusing variables. Their unpredictability scared Isabella, making her feel like that helpless child unable to stop her mama from dying. Logic was, well, logical. It had numbers, lines, formulas, and probabilities. If she could teach those ladies anything, it would be that the key to good investments was to discard those useless, confounding emotions that only muddied the issues and look at the cold, hard patterns in the numbers.

“I knew from the earliest moments of our acquaintance that you would grow into a brilliant leader of women,” Judith continued. “Now you must go to London and accept your calling.” She turned and sat in the chair by the grate. “Let’s rehearse. So chin up, shoulders straight, and begin.”

Isabella stared down at the pages and began to drone, “Thank you, ladies of the—”

Mary, one of the servants, slipped through the door. Mr. Powers is here! “Pardon me,” Mary said with a bob of a curtsy. “Lord Randall has called.”

“Lord Randall,” Isabella said, disappointed. “What is he doing here? Isn’t his parents’ annual house party starting today? Oh bother. Put him in the library.” At least she could use the loathsome viscount as an excuse to escape this oratorical torture. “I’m sure this is about extremely urgent bank business that needs attending to immediately,” she told Judith.



After the last session of Parliament, what Lord Randall, the House of Commons’ famed Tory orator, needed to fortify himself was twelve uninterrupted hours in bed with a lovely lady before heading home to his parents’ annual house party and shackling himself to a powerful Tory daughter, living unhappily, but politically connected, ever after.

If things had gone as planned, at this very moment he might have been leisurely arriving on the train after one last good morning tumble.

Of course, things hadn’t gone as planned, as they hadn’t for the last six months. Instead of feeling the soft curves of a stunning little ballet dancer or actress, he had felt the bump and rumble of a train as he traveled alone through the night, staring at the blackness beyond the window, his mind swirling with scenarios of political ruin. Now he stood in the library of a woman he was desperate to see. But hell and damnation, he would rather gnaw off his own leg than share twelve uninterrupted hours of frolicking with Isabella.

He raked his hands through his hair, feeling little strands come loose. Great. On top of everything, he was losing his hair. Could something else go wrong?

And where is she?

He paced up and down the Aubusson rug adorning her somber, paneled library. Some books lined the shelves, but mostly financial journals in leather boxes labeled by date and volume. A large oak desk was situated between two massive arched windows, its surface clean except for a lamp and inkwell. He tugged at his cravat as if he were choking. How could Isabella live in such oppressive, silent order? It stifled his soul.

He strode to one of the windows and watched the line of carriages and flies from the railroad station heading up the hill to his father’s estate. Inside them rode Tories of the “right kind” as his mother had phrased it, along with their daughters, all vying for Randall’s hand in marriage. He leaned his head against the glass. “You’ve got to save me, Isabella,” he whispered.

“I’m surprised to see you,” he heard that familiar soprano voice say behind him.

An odd, warm comfort washed over him at the sound. He turned and found himself gazing at the fashion tragedy that was Isabella. She wore a dull blue dress or robe or something that made a slight indentation around the waist area and concealed everything else from her chin to the floor. Her glasses magnified her gray eyes, and she had styled her wild hair in some new, odd, dangly arrangement. Still, a peace bloomed in his chest at the sight of her frumpy dishevelment, like that nostalgic, grounding feeling of coming home. Well, not his real home, where, despite all British rules to the contrary, his strident mother ruled. As the rest of his world was coming undone, Isabella remained the same old ungainly girl of his memory—his faithful adversary.

“Just ‘I’m surprised to see you’?” he repeated in feigned offense. “Perhaps ‘Good morning, Lord Randall. I’ve missed you terribly. You haunt my dreams. I’m enamored of your dazzling intellectual and manly powers. There is a void in my tiny, black heart that only you can fill.’” His anxiety started to ease as he settled into the thrust, glissade, and parry of their typical conversation.