Tempest in a Teapot, page 6
“Yes. I’ve loved dogs since I was five.” He twisted to point at the painting above the fireplace. “That’s Oolong after I first got him.” A pale little boy sat curled up on a sofa with a dachshund sleeping in his lap. The boy beamed. The dog looked just like Oolong, except the painted dog had longer, darker hair than the Oolong presently on Martin’s lap.
Martin pointed to a painting behind her. “And that’s when I first went into business to follow in the family’s footsteps.” She turned. This painted dog had the right dark brown color, but he sported a white belly. Noticing her inspection as she compared them, Oolong licked the air in her direction, his head hanging upside down as Martin rubbed his stomach, and she recoiled. “Lovely.”
The dog drooling on his lap couldn’t be either of the painted Oolongs. This one looked like he was almost a puppy still. If Mr. Steepe was naïve enough to believe his dog had lived for almost thirty years, their engagement made a lot more sense. Then again the Hammond’s dogs had proved how wicked dachshunds could be. For all she knew the beast could have entered a Faustian bargain with Satan himself.
“But no matter what changes we both always love tea. Isn’t that right, Oolong?” He gave the dog’s belly a vigorous rub, making his tail wagged. “His full name is Mr. Dan Cong Oolong. He’s named after the phoenix oolong tea grown in China.”
She gave him a strained smile. “A delightful name.” But the dog was getting them off track. She straightened in her seat and brought her attention back to the problem at hand. The gentle whack, whack, whack, of Oolong’s wagging tail smacking against the chair provided a steady drumbeat. “Speaking of tea, how exactly did that spell work that you used to choose me?”
He flipped Oolong over onto his stomach. “That was a bit of intricate rune work that took me several months to figure out. I designed the enchantment to pick the lady with the closest tea tastes to mine. A magical tea leaf reading of sorts. I feared the leaves might pick more than one lady, but you are the only one it chose. Right when I was worried it wouldn’t pick anyone at all!” Oolong gave a low yip as if in agreement, and Martin rubbed his head.
“Now that I know you prefer lapsang for special occasions, I will be sure to have other selections on hand next time.” He stood and crossed to his desk to put the ball back into his desk drawer. Oolong jumped onto the floor, sniffing at the air. He settled his front paws onto the table as he eagerly lapped up Martin’s tea. Charlotte watched in horrified silence, unsure of whether she should say anything. She kept a tight hold of her cup to make sure the dog didn’t get hers next. Down the hall someone whistled. The hummingbird took flight and Oolong ran after it, tongue lolling out of his mouth as his paws skidded across the hardwood floor.
Martin returned to his seat and picked up his cup, raising it to his mouth.
She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold her horror in. That same paralysis that froze her when she saw the Hammonds’ dachshunds running toward her froze her now.
He finished off his tea before pouring a second cup. “Do you want me to send for a different tea?”
“No thank you,” she squeaked out. She cleared her throat. “Do you think liking the same tea is enough basis for an engagement?” She sipped at her teacup to hide her nerves. The lapsang was excellent.
“Tea is one of my favorite things,” he said as he leaned back, getting comfortable. “While my grandfather and father focused their efforts on the family shipping venture, my own personal business is selling tea. I wanted someone who could appreciate the business with me. It gives us at least one thing in common to start with.”
She couldn’t have come up with a more bizarre way of picking a bride. “And your family agreed to let you pick your fiancée in such a way?”
“My father chose my last fiancée. After that didn’t end well he agreed to let me handle this one as I saw fit.”
Her tea stuck in her throat and she coughed. “Excuse me, your last fiancée?” She hoped there wasn’t a secret fiancée in the attic or something like the wife in Jane Eyre. She sneaked a glance at the ceiling.
His face turned grim. “My apologies. I assumed you already knew with how people gossip about my family.”
Charlotte didn’t know how to answer, her mind caught on the idea of there having been another before her.
“Sorry for the interruption, Mr. Steepe,” the butler called from the doorway. “A gentleman from Lapsang Limited is here to see you. He says it is urgent.”
Martin set his cup down. “I’m sorry, Miss Graham, but business calls and I must see to it.” And then he was gone with the butler trailing after him as Martin spouted off a new tea order to him. Oolong went running past the door to follow after him.
Charlotte reached for a sandwich. By the time she finished it, no one had returned for her. She poured herself the last of the tea and polished it off. Still no one came for her. She supposed that had been goodbye then with no one to see her out. She stood to make her way toward the door, but the papers spread across the desk tempted her.
She shouldn’t, she thought. Oh, but she wanted to. Who was this eccentric man who chose his fiancée by reading tea leaves? She padded on over and leaned across, being careful to not touch anything. An opened letter from Hawke House sat on the top of a small stack of unopened letters. She scanned the short letter asking Mr. Steepe if he was interested in buying the publishing house.
She sucked in a breath. If Hawke was in trouble it would explain their lack of response. Or maybe her writing had been atrocious enough that they deemed her unnecessary to reply to at all.
“Snooping, are ye?”
She jumped. Laoise cackled. “I was coming in here to dust. Didn’t expect to find you.” She shook the duster at Charlotte. “Naughty, naughty.”
“I came over to clear up the misunderstanding about our engagement with Mr. Steepe.”
“And how’d that go?”
“It hasn’t, yet.”
Laoise’s brow wrinkled. “What?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “I didn’t tell him yet who I am. The butler interrupted with something about business and he rushed off. I don’t know if I’m supposed to stay here and wait for him or leave.”
“If it was business you should leave or you could be waiting for hours. He’s been getting ready to open some more tea shops and they have kept him busy.”
“In that case you don’t happen to know where Mary Hawke lives, do you? She was at the party. I’d like to call on her.”
“Let’s check, shall we?” Laoise whipped a sheet of paper out of her pocket, giving it a dramatic flick before unraveling it. She cleared her throat and read off Mary’s address.
“Is that the guest list?” Charlotte grabbed the paper, reading the list of names and addresses. “Why do you have this?”
“A certain devastatingly handsome cousin of Mr. Steepe’s was looking for it. I felt he was up to no good and so I made sure the list happened to disappear. Probably got thrown away during a cleaning, you see. If Mr. Steepe needs your address I’ll volunteer to play messenger girl and hand deliver the letter.”
“He may have seen me in the bakery this morning and was suspicious. I bet he is trying to figure out more about me or at the very least who I am. He was aggressive about asking why he had never met me before.”
Laoise rested a hand on her hip. “He doesn’t need to know anything about you. You’re engaged to Martin Steepe, not his cousin.”
“Only until Martin finds out who I am.”
Laoise rolled her eyes. “Then don’t tell him. It’s as simple as that.”
Charlotte lowered her voice. “You aren’t suggesting I take this engagement seriously, are you? The man chose me based on tea and thinks his childhood dog is still alive.”
“And he’s wealthy. Marry him and you’ll be set for life and living in comfort.” Laoise turned to the shelves beside the desk and got to work dusting them. Most of the books were non-fiction. Books on magic, business, and finances and other boring matters dominated the shelves. Not a single penny blood in sight.
“You sound like my mother,” Charlotte grumbled, glancing back at the Hawke House envelope.
“Because we are both smart. I’d take comfort over love any day.”
“And that’s why you aren’t a romantic.”
“I’m a realist,” Laoise corrected. “Enough of one that if a wealthy man proposed to me I wouldn’t think twice. I’d drag him to the altar the very next day.” She moved on to cleaning the top of the desk, dusting around the papers instead of picking them up.
Charlotte wrung her hands. “But he is so … odd. And not as handsome as his cousin.”
“And if you married him you could spend more time writing and reading. And with his business sense you’d never need to worry about the bakery.” She flicked the end of the duster at Charlotte’s nose.
Put that way, Martin was a tempting prospect. Except for the whole him not knowing who she really was bit. “What happened to the previous fiancée?”
Laoise shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t deal with Mr. Steepe personally much and their engagement ended right before I joined the household. They’ve kept mum on it.”
“Maybe Mary will know something.” Asking Mary might be a stretch, but who else was there to ask? If their father did business with the Steepes, surely Mary knew more about Martin than Charlotte.
“I can call a carriage around for you.”
“Please do. I think I’m going to pay her a visit.”
“Look at you, making new friends already.” Laoise pinched Charlotte’s cheek. “You’ll be getting invited to all the latest parties before you know it. Ask Mary for all the gossip about Mr. Steepe. Find out how to seduce him. I suggest learning more about tea and making friends with Oolong.”
“I’m not falling into that trap. I once made the mistake of not seeing how evil cute dogs can be. I won’t make the same mistake a second time.”
Laoise shook her head. “You are hopeless sometimes. I’d be more than happy to take Mr. Steepe off your hands if I could.”
Chapter 6
The Hawke townhouse was modest with flowers lining the walkway. Cheerful blue curtains hung in the windows. The rain poured down in buckets, making Charlotte wish she had Bertram’s enchanted umbrella to help keep her dry. Preferably after Martin had fixed it. She lifted her skirts, doing her best to keep them away from all the puddles.
A harried looking maid took her to the small parlor to the right where Mary already sat near the small fire, a book in her lap. She looked up, an expression of surprise crossing her face when she spotted Charlotte.
“Charlotte! How lovely of you to visit. Please get us a pot of Earl Grey,” she said to the maid. The maid left and Mary gestured to the seat beside her. “Please sit.”
She inspected the room. There was no sign of any dogs, but one could never be too certain. “You don’t have a dog, do you?”
Confusion tugged Mary’s smile away. “Erm, no. Is that a problem?”
“I’m afraid of some dogs is all.”
“My mother used to have a bird until Margaret let it fly away. Sometimes a cat visits at the back door where Margaret feeds it. But that is the only animal.”
Charlotte slid into the free seat. “Thank you for accepting my visit on short notice.”
Mary’s smile returned. “It is my pleasure. I haven’t congratulated you on your engagement yet either. I had no idea you already knew Mr. Steepe so well.” She set aside her book, putting it cover side down, hiding whatever the book was.
“I didn’t, but that is a long story.” She couldn’t shake the feeling her life was becoming nothing but her trying to explain things she also didn’t understand to others. She hoped her cousin’s curse wasn’t rubbing off on her. “I was wondering how much you know about him? In truth I caught a glimpse of his mail and saw a letter from Hawke House. I didn’t realize Mr. Steepe was connected to the company. I thought his business centered on shipping and tea.”
“The parts he manages personally do, but he has investments elsewhere including with a non-fiction publisher focused on books about magic.”
“Do you mean Rune Press?” She’d bought one of their books recently hoping she might find more useful spells for the bakery that couldn’t curse anyone. Without hiring a magician to give them spells for outrageous sums, books were the only other option. “I ran across some of their books in my favorite bookshop. I was rather surprised to find them and rather suspicious of whether or not the magic was real. After how closely the nobles guarded their magical knowledge, I found it hard to believe someone would be willing to mass produce books about it.”
Mary absent-mindedly fiddled with her charm bracelet. “They are real all right and caused quite the stir when the publisher started printing. Where the press itself is located and who works there is a closely guarded secret to keep anyone from interfering. I heard Mr. Steepe lent them books from his collection to have copied and reproduced for the masses.” She stood and crossed the room to a small shelf of books. She plucked one off and handed it to Charlotte.
“A Lady’s Guide to Growing and Preserving Flowers with Magic,” Charlotte said, reading off the title. That explained how Mr. Steepe learned to make a magical greenhouse. On the back cover at the bottom sat the Rune Press logo. “What does the rune mean?”
“It means knowledge.” Mary leaned closer with a smile. “A nobleman tried to shut the press down, but without being able to say where it was located he couldn’t do anything about it. There has been a lot of speculation about Rune Press, but nothing has been proven. It seems to be its own publisher and printing press all in one.”
“That is rather noble to bring more knowledge to the common people. I had no idea he was involved with Rune Press.” If he was printing his own magical collection to share, she assumed his views on magic were more progressive like the other magicians without title. She sank into the armchair, the thick cushion feeling divine. With the tension of meeting Mr. Steepe off her shoulders, she found she sorely wanted a nap. She’d never known awkward engagements could be this tiring. “Does he invest in Hawke as well?”
“No, at least not yet. My father …” Mary swallowed and pressed her hands together. “The truth is my uncle was my father’s business partner until he made off with too much money to cover his gambling debts. Father has been left with the option of getting new investors or selling. He is hoping Mr. Steepe might invest in the company to keep us afloat until we can repay all our debts. Hawke was doing well up until my uncle took off.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea.” There could be hope for her story yet. Charlotte had submitted INTO THE OVEN to Hawke for publication, and while she hadn't heard back, they could be ignoring it to focus on the business first. If they wound up passing after all, she’d be stuck again until she stumbled upon her next story.
“Most don’t. Only those closely connected to publishing have realized Hawke is struggling.”
The maid appeared with a tea tray she set down on the small table between them. Next came a full loaf of bread with some honey. The top of the bread had sunk in on itself, making it look rather pitiful.
“Sorry about the bread,” Mary said once the maid left. She squirmed in embarrassment. “Father is trying to cut back on our expenses and has asked me to make all our bread instead of buying it. I don’t know where I went wrong this time.”
As a child Charlotte had made similar loaves. Back then her father’s perfect loaves had been a marvel to her. If not for his endless patience she wouldn’t have improved. “You likely let it proof too long and the dough fell in on itself when it baked.”
Mary blinked at her. “Proof?”
“Proofing is when you set the dough aside to let it rise. If you let it rise too long that happens.” She pointed at the bread. “Some recipes will say to let it proof for two hours, but depending on the temperature of your kitchen the dough could rise faster or need longer. The best way to ensure your dough has risen is to learn how it should look when it’s ready.”
“I see.” Mary gave the bread a glum look. “I did get distracted by a good book when I made it. I’ll set a timer next time.” She cut into the bread, offering Charlotte a slice.
Charlotte accepted to be polite. “Is it that dire then that you have to make your own bread?”
Mary sighed. “Father is trying to avoid luxuries and save every coin possible to put to Hawke’s debts. It’s why I’m rather glad you came today. Most visitors used to be authors and booksellers, but with the company in trouble no one has been interested in visiting. Authors are looking to publish elsewhere and our editor already accepted a job with a competitor.”
“That is dreadful. I’m sorry. I hope Mr. Steepe buys it if it helps.” She supposed this meant she shouldn’t expect a reply back to her submission. “What will happen to the authors whose stories aren’t finished?” There were far too many she’d been reading the last few months that had yet to be finished. Not getting an ending to them would be maddening. It’d be like never knowing whether Dick Turpin got caught in the end for all his illicit highwayman activities in Rookwood by William Harrison Ainsworth. Without his former school teacher recognizing his handwriting and turning him in, she wouldn’t even remember his story enough to be thinking about it right now. His downfall made his story.
“They will simply be over.”
“No!” Charlotte gasped. “Even ‘Twilight at Hallow Manor?’”
Mary gave another sigh. “Even ‘Twilight at Hallow Manor.’” She stirred a drop of honey into her tea. Her voice went up a note. “Not that I’m invested in a dreadful story about vampires. It’s just one of the most popular stories in Hawke’s serials.” Her thumb traced circles around a charm on her bracelet.
