‘I’m not obliged to tell you anything about my personal life,’ I mumbled, and thought: I’m looking down at the floor! Why the hell am I looking down? I’m a strong, independent woman! ‘That’s not part of the job description of a secretary.’
‘It’s also not part of the job description of a secretary to tour the hotels of London in a dress and with a sack full of onions at the ready, but you did it anyway. Tell me. Now!’
I stayed silent.
‘If you will not tell me, I’ll deduct the time we spend arguing from your wages.’
I gasped. That was a low blow.
Well… maybe I could just tell him about me, personally. I couldn’t tell him about Ella, of course. That wasn’t my secret to share. There was only one thing left to tell. I took a deep breath.
‘Well…’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m being pursued by a man.’
‘What?’ With three long strides, Rikkard Ambrose was at my desk and had grabbed hold of my hands. Startled, my eyes flew up to look at him.
Hey! He was supposed to be calm and immovable as granite! I wouldn’t have thought him capable of an emotion such as this. True, his face still was as impassive as ever, but his eyes… His dark eyes were emitting sparks of fury.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?’ he demanded.
‘Why should I? It was none of your business!’
I tried to free my hands from his grip. It felt disturbing, having him hold my hands in his strong grasp after the episode in his personal powder room. I tried to shove that from my mind and concentrate on the moment.
‘None of my business?’ he repeated, coldly. ‘A man has been chasing you through London, and it’s none of my business? Tell me, is he connected with Simmons? What did he want? Did he mention the file or threaten to harm you? How far did he pursue you? Was he on foot or on horseback? How did you escape?’
It all clicked into place then: his reaction, the grip of his fingers on mine, even the cold fire in his eyes. I almost started to laugh. Almost.
‘Err… Mr Ambrose? When I said he’s “pursuing” me, I meant he wants to marry me.’
Mr Ambrose’s grip on my hand slackened, and he blinked.
‘What?’
‘He’s trying to get me as his wife, not chasing me through town with a knife in his hand.’
‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Am I sure?’ I glared up at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Of course I’m sure! Even I know the difference between a bouquet of flowers and a butcher’s knife!’
‘Err… of course you do. Well, that’s good to hear. That’s really…’
I stared at his face. A muscle somewhere in his cheekbone twitched, and his eyes went from side to side as if looking for an escape. Dear me. Had I managed to get Mr Rikkard Ambrose flustered?
Suddenly, an unpleasant thought struck me.
‘How come the first thing you thought of when I said I was being “pursued by a man” was that somebody was chasing me to get information out of me about you?’
‘Well, um…’
‘Do you think I’m that uninteresting? Do you think I’m a shrivelled old hag, that I could only attract men who want to stab me, not ones that want to marry me?’ As hard as I could, I tugged at my hands to free them from his grasp - but his fingers were too strong. ‘How dare you! Do you really think that I am that ugly?’
‘Of course not,’ he snapped, not looking at my face, which was good, because my glare would have burned holes into him. I was so angry with him, I would have slapped him if the thought of my pay cheque hadn’t stayed my hand. ‘Of course not, Miss Linton, you’re lovely.’
‘It is abominable that someone like you can call himself a gentleman. You should know better than…’
My voice trailed off.
‘Wait just a moment… What did you say?’
Belatedly, my ears registered his last spoken words. The ears delivered them to my brain, where they were turned around and examined carefully. Then they were submitted to an authenticity test somewhere in the dark depths of my mind.
You’re lovely… Miss Linton, you’re lovely…
The results of the test weren’t long in coming. On the whole, it was extremely unlikely that these words could have really, as I imagined, come out of the mouth of Mr Rikkard Ambrose. Unlikely? Scratch that. Impossible!
‘What did you say?’ I repeated, my voice so weak I didn’t recognize it anymore. Suddenly, having my hands in his felt completely different, and for some reason I stopped struggling to get them free. From my sitting position, I looked up at Mr Ambrose, who looked as though he had just been forced to swallow his own top hat.
‘What did you say?’ I repeated once more, though I remembered perfectly well. I just wanted to hear it again to make sure I hadn’t gone temporarily insane. Rikkard Ambrose thought I was lovely? Nobody had ever told me I was lovely! Not even my own mother! And what kind of lovely exactly? The 'Oh-that-was-a-lovely-job-Mister-Secretary'-kind of lovely, or the other kind of lovely? The kind that involved him calling me Miss instead of Mister.
‘I said…’ Mr Ambrose hesitated. Then, straightening, he suddenly let go of my hands and glared at me, his cool expression recovered. ‘I said bring me file 35X119.’
He turned on his heel and marched into his office, slamming the door behind him.
~~*~~*
Luckily, fetching files is not really an intellectually taxing task. If it had been, I would have had enormous difficulties completing the day’s work.
I was just about to leave my office at the end of the day when the door to Mr Ambrose’s office opened, and I caught a glimpse of his dark, ramrod-straight silhouette in the doorway.
‘Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment, Mr Linton?’
Oh, we are back to ‘Mister,’ are we?
Well, I wasn’t exactly sure I had heard right that time he’d admitted my real gender earlier today, anyway.
‘Yes,’ I said, curtly. ‘I would mind.’
Ha! You see? I can be rude and cold, too; it’s not just you who has that extraordinary ability!
‘Nevertheless,’ he persisted, his dark eyes flashing, ‘I would like it if you came into my office for a moment.’
‘My work hours are over.’
‘Consider it overtime to make up for your tardiness today. Come in. Now!’
From the tone of his voice I knew he would brook no further argument. Sighing, I followed him into his office, where he settled down into his chair and regarded me over top of his steepled fingers.
‘The man who wants to marry you…’ he stated. ‘You don't like him.’
‘Oh boy, I wonder how you figured that out,’ I sighed, rolling my eyes. ‘Sir,’ I tacked on at the end quickly, as his eyes flashed again.
‘You don't want to marry him.’
‘No, I don't, Sir. And?’
‘And nothing.’ He looked down at his papers and waved a hand. ‘You’re dismissed. I hope tomorrow you’ll show a better performance than today. Good day, Mr Linton.’
Bewildered, I left the office. What had that all been about? As hard as I tried, I couldn’t figure out the answer. Neither could I figure out Mr Ambrose himself. Impolite, honourable, ruthless, moral, stingy, randomly considerate - filled with all these contradicting attributes, he was the strangest man I had ever met. Hardly anything like society’s idea of a perfect gentleman, who was supposed to be moderate in all things. And yet, I realized, as I entered the garden through the back door and sneaked into the shed, although he might be the strangest man I had ever met, he was by far not the worst one.
Working for him was certainly not going to be boring. My thoughts strayed to Simmons, locked up in the cellar. Oh no, not boring at all.
Armed with my little clutch purse and parasol, which these days felt more like a disguise than Uncle Bufford’s top hat, I approached the house. To my surprise, my aunt was waiting in the hall, her bony cheeks flushed with excitement.
‘Guess who’s just arrived,’ she whispered so audibly that you could probably hear it three streets away.