The Allure of Attraction Read online

  “There’s nothing wrong with my dresses,” said Gillie.

  “They’re so . . . bright,” said Andrew.

  Miss Gibson pulled a face. “I can’t wear colors like this when I’m following someone, which is why I wear them now.”

  “Lavinia, you and I would meet in the gardens, but we’ll vary the time so that it seems natural. Gillie and I will find a way to let you know when that will be each week so that no one else will know, even if they intercept the message,” he said.

  “And we’ll prepare a drop spot where you can leave us messages if you need to communicate urgently. You won’t be alone,” said Miss Gibson.

  They made it sound so simple. So simple, in fact, that the idea was beginning to take root.

  “What do I actually do?” she asked.

  Andrew stepped forward into the hall, eyes fixed on her with an intensity that would’ve been seductive if she didn’t know how much he hated her. “Let Wark in. You want to string him along so subtly that he doesn’t know that he’s a fish caught on a hook.”

  Like you did to me. He didn’t say it, but she knew that was what Andrew must be thinking.

  Lavinia drew her shoulders back. He needed to know what he was asking her.

  “He wants me,” she said.

  Andrew hissed in a breath, but Moira and Miss Gibson just shook their heads, weary with the tale all too familiar to women of every rank and class.

  “He’s not a stupid man,” she continued. “He might very well only tell me what you want to know if I make a commitment to him.”

  “I’ll never ask you to compromise yourself,” said Andrew with a vehemence that surprised her.

  “But that’s exactly what you’re doing,” she said. “Maybe you don’t mean for me to invite him into my bed, but by entertaining this man I could damage my reputation. If my clients believe that I’m a kept woman, they’ll flee to Mrs. McGloughlin or Madame Hollande.”

  “Leave that to me. I can send such a steady stream of clients to your doors that you and your girls will hardly be able to keep up,” said Moira.

  She knew Moira, who had sent clients to her in the past, was as good as her word. Still, the risk she would be taking was monumental.

  She snuck a glance at Andrew, who still looked a little wild despite being land-bound. She knew this mission wouldn’t just be about persuading Wark. It would put her right in front of Andrew, tempting her to remember the heat of his breath on her neck when he would lean down to kiss her and the way their bodies fit together so intimately they were one. It would mean curling her fingers up when all they wanted to do was reach out and touch his jaw or thread through his thick hair. It would be dangerous on so many levels, yet she was considering it because he had asked her to.

  And then there was the matter of Caleb.

  “I’ll do it for two thousand pounds.”

  Miss Gibson sputtered a laugh.

  “My superiors will never agree to allocate that sort of money to an operation like this,” said Andrew.

  “Then I’ll walk away.”

  She placed a hand on the banister, but before she could take a step, he called out, “Wait.”

  When she glanced over her shoulder, he looked positively murderous, but he nodded all the same. “I’ll figure out a way to get you your two thousand.”

  “Paid out by the end of the month,” she said. “Regardless of whether the operation is successful or not.”

  His lips fell into a grim line, but he nodded once more.

  “Then it’s settled,” she said, but she couldn’t help feeling as though she’d signed a contract with the devil.

  Chapter Five

  LAVINIA PICKED UP her seam ripper, hooked the sharp, thin end under the stitches she’d just finished sewing, and pulled. She’d started using it after a salesman had come to her door a couple months before and convinced her to purchase the new invention, and usually she found it oddly satisfying to destroy incorrectly sewn seams with such brutal precision. That afternoon, however, it just signaled her distracted frustration.

  Rip.

  This was the third time she’d had to use the tool that day—two times too many.

  Rip.

  It was all Andrew’s fault. And Moira’s. And that short, curly-haired, horribly dressed Miss Gibson’s. All of them were to blame.

  Rip.

  Somehow that morning she’d found herself agreeing to work in the service of Her Majesty’s government. Yes, the two thousand pounds and a desperate brother with a broken nose could make even an indifferent Scotswoman into a patriot, and the idea of finally getting one over on Wark had been almost too tempting to resist. Still, she would be working with him, and that unsettled her.

  Rip.

  “Lavinia,” said Siobhan from across the room, where she was chalking out a pattern on the tall cutting table, “you’re murdering that piece of fabric.”

  “The pieces are wrong,” she muttered.

  “What?” asked Siobhan, putting her scissors down.

  “The pieces are wrong,” Lavinia said louder.

  The head seamstress pulled her spectacles out of her apron pocket and squinted through them. “You’ve matched them inside out, haven’t you?”

  She sighed and threw the cloth and seam ripper down on her worktable. “I was distracted.”

  Just like the last two times I mis-sewed this dress. Siobhan was right. She was murdering the fabric.

  Siobhan laughed. “Out with it then.”

  “Out with what?” she asked, pulling her box of glass-tipped pins toward her.

  “Whatever it is that’s bothering you,” said Siobhan.

  Lavinia slid her eyes over to the far corner, where Siobhan’s cousin, Bronagh, was helping Kelsie, her junior seamstress, string beads onto thread ahead of the tedious job of covering a sea-foam silk bodice with flashing silver that would catch the candelabras of a ballroom.

  “We should hire another seamstress as well as Bronagh, shouldn’t we?” she asked.

  Siobhan shrugged. “We could hire in temporary work, although it would be good to have someone around for the Caledonian Hunt Ball next May too. If you can stand the cost.”

  Before she could stop it, her mind was spiraling, speculating about what she could buy with an additional two thousand pounds if she didn’t have to spend it on getting Caleb out of another tight spot. The workroom could use a new cutting table, all of the salons could do with new furnishings, and her bedroom desperately needed new drapes to keep the drafts out. That wasn’t even touching on the inventory she’d like to have. And perhaps an advertisement or two in several of the local papers would help make the boon they’d seen from the prince’s visit a constant.

  An army of seamstresses. New sewing machines for everyone. A deposit and most of the cost of buying this building. That would mean no more Wark.

  Wark. He was at the center of this all. If he hadn’t been her landlord, Andrew never would’ve walked back into her life, stirring up old memories. There had been a tiny flash of hope among all the shock and disbelief when he’d walked through the door, rugged and reminding her of the one mistake that had set the course for the rest of her life. It almost made her blush that she still had enough naïveté to wonder whether he’d come to find her. To forgive her. But then, the moment they’d been alone, he’d dropped the affable facade and she’d realized that nothing had changed. He still hated her, even if he needed her help.

  She picked her needle up again, but Siobhan stopped her by clearing her throat. She looked down at her hands and realized that she hadn’t yet fixed her mistake.

  “Why don’t you go visit Mrs. Pawar? Clear your head.”

  She sighed and put her work down, conceding that Siobhan was right. She needed calm and peace and a good gossip with a good friend.

  Lavinia grabbed a gray-and-black tartan wrap off the hook by the back door and pulled it tightly around her as she retraced the path to Anika’s shop she’d dragged Andrew along just the day before
. Once again, Hari answered the door, except this time half his face was shiny and sticky-looking.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked with a little smile.

  Hari shot her the mischievous look that, on the face of a seven-year-old boy, could only mean trouble and raced down the hall, his limbs going every which way.

  “Aai, Mrs. Parkem is here!” she heard the little boy shout as she finished pulling off her boots. She stepped into the kitchen just as Hari went careening by his mother. Anika stuck out her arm, expertly scooped him up, and popped him on her hip.

  “Hari, what have you done to yourself? Did you get into the jilabi?” Anika clucked as she snatched up a napkin from the kitchen table and began scrubbing at his face to remove the gooey remnants of the sweet treat.

  “Noooo.” Hari thrashed this way and that in his mother’s arms, doing his best to avoid her determined cleaning. A little tug pulled at Lavinia’s heart. She loved her life, full as it was with the satisfaction of her work and a few closely held friends, but she couldn’t help thinking that she might’ve had this too, if only her path had been a little different.

  “If you don’t want your face washed, don’t steal the jilabi, especially after I told you not to,” his mother scolded.

  With an impressive, spine-breaking twist, Hari freed himself, dropped to his feet, and raced out of the room, laughing triumphantly all the way.

  Anika shot Lavinia an amused look. “I would have tried to do the same when Caleb was a child, but it won’t be much longer until he’s too big for me to wash his face for him.”

  “I can’t believe he’s already seven. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that you were carrying him in one arm and cooking dinner at the same time?” asked Lavinia.

  “Don’t remind me. Then I begin to think of how old I am and I want to weep.” Anika moved a large ledger, a pen, and a pot of ink to the side and gestured to one of the chairs pulled up to the kitchen table. “Please sit.”

  “You don’t do your accounting in the office?” asked Lavinia with a nod to the book.

  “Even in the summer it’s cold in this country. At least in the kitchen I know it will be warm.”

  “I don’t think I was ever warm growing up by the sea, but I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed it either.”

  Anika leaned back in her chair to scrutinize Lavinia. “What’s wrong?”

  She sighed. “Where do I start?”

  “I’ll make chai. Then you can tell me everything,” her friend said.

  Lavinia rubbed her forehead, willing away a growing headache as she watched Anika put cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves into a cloth and tie the packet up before adding it to a pot of water. Then her friend turned and crossed her arms. “What’s the matter? Does it have anything to do with the tall, handsome man you dragged into my storeroom the other day?”

  “I hadn’t noticed that he was handsome,” said Lavinia sourly. She was at Anika’s to escape that sort of thinking.

  Her friend laughed. “The man is objectively handsome. If you showed him to ten women, they would all say, ‘Yes. That is a handsome man.’ Besides”—Anika gave a sly smile—“why would you lock yourself in a storeroom with a man who isn’t good-looking?”

  “Out of necessity. If I’d had him in my shop any longer, I’m positive the gates of hell would’ve opened up, or at the very least hell would’ve frozen over.”

  “Dramatic,” said Anika.

  “Accurate,” she retorted.

  “Who is he?” her friend asked.

  Lavinia liked a good gossip as much as anyone, but she struggled with this part. The talking-about-herself part.

  “Do you remember when I told you that I’d been engaged to be married to a merchant sailor before Mr. Parkem?” she asked.

  “Yes, and your fiancé died. That’s why you married . . .” Anika’s eyes widened. “He’s the sailor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s not dead.”

  “He wasn’t dead then, and it appears he’s managed to stay alive for all these years as well,” she said.

  “Then what is he doing here?” her friend asked over her shoulder as she added tea to the simmering water. “Did he find out you’re a widow and now he wants to marry you?”

  She scowled. “You’re far too romantic for your own good.”

  “I’m a happily married woman whose husband spends half the year buying cloth in India. Of course I am.”

  “I can promise you that marrying me is the last thing on Andrew’s mind,” she said, but then paused. Although she wanted to tell her friend everything, the gravity with which Andrew and Miss Gibson spoke of the mission made her hold back. “He thinks I can make an introduction to Mr. Wark.”

  Anika made a face at the name of their landlord. “That horrible man? Why would he want to know him?”

  “I can’t think of a single good reason,” she said, the little white lie passing her lips easily.

  “Will you do it?” Anika asked.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. He’s offered to pay me for the introduction, which I would normally find offensive, but Caleb has complicated things again.”

  “His debts?” Anika asked softly.

  “He pounded on my door at four o’clock this morning wanting to be let in. They’d broken his nose after he couldn’t pay.”

  “How much?” her friend asked.

  “He owes just under two thousand pounds this time.”

  “Oh, Lavinia,” said Anika.

  “I should’ve known he was playing cards again,” she said, giving voice to the guilt she’d been holding on to all day. “The signs were there. Bloodshot eyes, never at his office, always short of cash.”

  “You’re his sister. You want to believe that he’s the man you think he should be,” said her friend.

  “More fool am I,” she muttered.

  “And so you said yes to your sailor,” said Anika. “Two thousand pounds is an extraordinary sum for an introduction.”

  “It’s more . . . complicated than that,” she admitted.

  “What does he want you to do, exactly?” Anika asked.

  Lavinia tipped her head, trying to think of the best way to explain her task without revealing the sensitive nature of it, for although she trusted her friend with her life, this secret was bigger than just her.

  “He wants me to . . .” She searched for the word. “. . . guide him into a friendship. Wark isn’t exactly a trusting man, so that would mean laying the groundwork for Andrew.”

  “And spending a great many more hours tolerating Wark,” Anika said.

  She shook her head, still in disbelief that she’d agreed to expose herself even more to such an odious man as Wark. That wasn’t even taking into consideration the matter of seeing Andrew at least once a week. Oh Lord, she’d be putting her safety, the future success of her business, and the security of her home into the hands of a man who hated her. What had she been thinking?

  “Well,” Anika said as she strained the tea adding vanilla and honey before pouring the steaming chai into a pair of stoneware mugs, “I suppose you’d better start planning.”

  “Planning what?” asked Lavinia, accepting the mug gratefully.

  “What you’ll wear the next time you see this Mr. . . .”

  “Colter. He was Captain Colter, but he’s gone into business selling buttons.”

  Anika snorted a laugh. “I’m certain there’s a story there.”

  Lavinia took a sip of the tea, relishing the sweet, comforting warmth of it. The first time Anika had invited her to take a cup in the parlor above the shop had been the first time she’d tasted chai, and much like her affection for her friend, her devotion to the drink had only grown over the years.

  “A captain? Well isn’t that something,” said Anika, settling into the chair across from her with her own cup.

  “It would be if I had even the slightest bit of interest in Andrew,” she said.

  “Would it be such a bad thing
to marry a man who looked like that?” Anika asked.

  “Since he loathes the very ground I walk on? Yes.”

  Anika patted her hand. “At least it wouldn’t be boring.”

  “Never that,” she said.

  Laughing, they clinked cups before settling in to gossip about the other shop owners on the street.

  Andrew stood on a ladder in the front room of his temporary store, refilling drawers of buttons when what he really wanted to do was smash something.

  He’d never tell Home or Gillie, but he’d been relieved when Lavinia had said no. Her refusal to cooperate gave him an excuse to call the mission a failure before it even got off the ground. After visiting Mrs. Sullivan’s and once again being rebuffed, he could’ve telegraphed London knowing that he’d done his best and then retired in peace. But now his big house with a view out to the sea and the little dinghy he’d had stored off the dock he’d built would have to wait a little longer. She’d said yes.

  It was the money that had convinced her. The cynical part of him that still hurt just looking at her had barely been able to hold back the snort of derision when she’d named her price. He should’ve expected that of the woman who’d not even waited a year to mourn his supposed death before marrying the wealthiest man in Eyemouth.

  But why is she working now?

  The question had nagged at him from the moment he’d heard she’d gone into trade. Lavinia was beautiful, a gentleman’s daughter, and a young widow. Surely she wouldn’t have had difficulties finding another husband, but instead she was the mistress of her own shop, making her way in the world. He couldn’t help but admire her for it.

  The realization that there was something he liked about her had buzzed around in his head, persistent as a swarm of summer gnats, as he’d been trying to fall asleep the previous night. Night was, he knew from years of experience, a dangerous time to think of Lavinia. When they’d been engaged and he’d been at sea, that had been the time when he’d recalled the night of their engagement and every stolen moment they’d spent wrapped around each other. His blood would heat when he recalled the dig of her nails into his back as he sank into her, and the way her muscles clenched around his cock. In his memories, she’d been glorious and gorgeous and his.