Today's Reading
Grantham stood as the Fenley boy turned around, his fair skin scarlet with embarrassment. Phoebe remembered him as being much younger than he appeared now. Life amid the secret scientists of Athena's Retreat must prematurely age a man.
"Lady Phoebe." Grantham was as handsome as ever. More so. It blunted the edges of his anger.
Phoebe was not supposed to be here.
Putting the confrontation off for the moment, she turned to the Fenley boy.
Man.
Man-boy.
"I understand you are the owner of this broadsheet?"
Sam nodded, the blush reaching the tips of his ears, turning them flaming pink. "I must beg your pardon, Lady Phoebe. I meant no...disrespect."
A laugh rattled at the bottom of Phoebe's throat, surprising her. She kept it trapped, however. No reason to let the man-boy off easily.
"I like the descriptor, villainess of majestic proportions. Makes me sound intimidating," she said.
"Oh, you are indeed," Sam agreed jovially, as though he considered it a compliment as well.
"How can we help you, my lady?" Grantham asked, sounding strangled. This must have been the warring emotions of righteous indignation and his ever-present urge to treat her like a wounded bird.
Irritation itched the back of Phoebe's neck. They had a history, she and Grantham.
She'd spent her last years in England riding a whirlwind of rage. Nothing quenched the anger that had built inside her for twenty-six years, and it had to come out somehow. At first, Phoebe turned the rage on herself; drinking, dancing, fucking—even cutting herself. None of it helped. So, she'd turned her rage outward. Grantham had tried to save her. By offering marriage.
They would both have needed rescuing from that.
If there was one thing that angered Phoebe more than being an object of pity, it was being held an object of pity by a man. Grantham may have had the best of intentions, but the more he tried to reel her in, the further out Phoebe ventured into the extremes.
So extreme, Phoebe had committed treason.
As punishment she'd been exiled from England with the threat of prison if she returned without permission.
One of the delightful parts of Phoebe's banishment to America was a life free of traditional expectations. In America, she was simply Phoebe Hunt, a new employee of a private detective agency—not the wreckage that was Lady Phoebe, the daughter of a marquess. No, a daughter of a marquess didn't ride horses astride while wearing trousers, she didn't carry a gun with her, and she certainly didn't wash her own clothes or cook her own meals.
That, however, was what Phoebe had been doing these last four years in America. Along with learning new hobbies such as how to braid her own hair and sew her own menstrual rags.
Keeping her gaze trained on Sam, Phoebe put off the inevitable confrontation with Grantham.
"I need an advert placed, Mr. Fenley. It should go out with this afternoon's edition and in every edition afterward for one week," she demanded.
Sam's brow quirked. "The clerk at the front desk couldn't help you?"
Like his sister, this one. Not cowed in the least by the presence of the aristocracy. The memory of Sam's sister Letty caught her by surprise and a sharp pain, almost like homesickness, pricked her heart.
Once upon a time, she and Letty had been friends.
"What are you here to advertise?" Grantham asked, bringing Phoebe's attention back to him.
She considered making a joke, but the sight of Grantham's clenched fists kept her from such stupidity. Phoebe was not welcome here anymore—an outsider in a home where she never quite fit.
She had changed.
Everything had changed.
"I was under the impression Mr. Fenley was in charge here now," Phoebe said, taking a few steps farther into the room, sizing Sam up with a glance. "Have you not tutored him in the fine art of servicing the peerage?"
...
