How to Master Your Marquis by Juliana Gray Read Free Book Online

identical clerks and the monochrome clock ticking steadily away. Sir John’s eyes were grave and slightly pink at the corners. “Mr. Thomas,” he said, not unkindly, “I perceive you are not a young man accustomed to discipline. But the law is exact and demanding, and you must learn to adjust your own habits, for I assure you the legal system of Great Britain will not adjust itself to yours.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I admire your pluck, however.” He turned in a swish of black robes, just as Mr. Turner emerged through the office door, bearing a large leather suitcase in his hands as if it were a holy chalice. “Thank you, Mr. Turner,” he said, and strode to the door.
    “Wait, Sir John!”
    The man turned in an astonished jerk, eyebrows high.
    Stefanie walked up to him and reached for his head. “Your wig. It’s gone lopsided, I’m afraid.”
    A gasp rent the air behind her.
    Stefanie tugged the wig into place and stood back critically. “Much better.”
    Sir John’s lips trembled. A flush pinked the tip of his nose. “I will have that summary on my desk on the dot of half eight, Mr. Thomas, or this day in my chambers will be your last. And Olympia can bloody well hang himself.”
    And he stalked out the door with a crash of his briefcase against the wood.
    B y eight o’clock in the evening, Stefanie’s back felt as if it had turned into metal wire and been left out in the rain to rust.
    A summary. It had sounded so simple. A summary: How difficult could that be?
    Very difficult indeed, as it turned out. Thirty or forty pages’ worth of difficult, of deciphering the dry legal language in the books stacked at her desk and on the floor next to her feet. Of organizing and describing each precedent, its similarities and points of departure to the case in question. All this, when she had no earthly idea of British law, or any law at all, for that matter. Thank goodness she retained her Latin, or rather thank the diligent and determined Miss Dingleby, because goodness had had nothing at all to do with it.
    Stefanie glanced at the clock, that dashed tyrannical clock on the shelf, and allowed herself to link her fingers together above her head and stretch. Oh, heaven. Long and high, that was it. Her startled vertebrae rattled together like dominoes. The swathes of linen binding her chest strained and strained. She’d imagined that dressing as a man would free her body—all those skirts and petticoats and corsets, how she’d hated them—but this was just as bad, in its way. Just as constricting. God, what she wouldn’t give to loosen them, to let her poor crushed bosom breathe for a moment. An instant or two of physical freedom, just a taste of her old feminine self.
    Stefanie cast a speculative look at the window. The glass had gone black long ago, the other clerks had left for their comfortable dinners and comfortable beds. She was quite alone.
    Why not?
    Stefanie twiddled her fountain pen between her thumb and forefinger, and then she set it down and shrugged off her jacket. She unbuttoned her drab waistcoat and pulled her shirt from her beastly black trousers, and then she slid her hands upward along her soft female skin to the edge of the linen band and . . .
    The door flew open.
    “Hullo there, Thomas!” called out the cheerful voice of the Marquess of Hatherfield. “I’ve brought you a spot of supper, what?”
    Stefanie whipped to face the bookshelf, stuffing her long white shirt in fistfuls back down her trousers. “Supper!”
    “Yes, supper! Sir John informed me of your little, er, predicament, and I said to myself, dash it all, that’s no way to . . . I say, I haven’t caught you out, have I?”
    Stefanie’s fingers flew at her waistcoat buttons. “Not at all. Only . . . just . . .”
    “Making yourself a bit more comfortable, eh? Nothing to be ashamed of, old boy. We’re all guilty of it, from time to time.” A plonk, as of something soft and heavy on a wooden surface.
    Stefanie