Page 33 of Ravishing Camille

“Anything.”

“I open a show in London a week Wednesday. New fabrics and cabinetmakers, architects I’m working with. Two days later we are all slated to go to Paris for Remy’s new joint exhibition with Claude Monet. I have yours and Victor’s silks, thank you very much. But I’m having a few problems with shipments of the silks from Lyon. Camille has always helped me with such problems in the past. She says she’d gladly help me now that I’m rather in a crunch.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Camille had planned to go up to London with me in three days. She must meet with her publisher there, and so she said she’d happily help me with my suppliers. But now I’d like her to go early for me because I am having problems receiving my supplies.”

“And what precisely do you need me to do?”

“I cannot go up to London earlier because all my correspondence for the shipments come here. It won’t do for me to use cables. One doesn’t cable pages of orders. I’m hoping that you’d go up to London with her.”

“To give her a hand with the suppliers?”

“Oh, no, she’d hate that. The implication would be that she couldn’t do the transactions properly. And she can.”

“And?” He gave her a crooked smile.

“You do plan to go to London yourself.”

“I do. I have a few urgent matters to take care of. I’m to meet with Victor’s and my man in the City and then my own manager, too.” His correspondence with his father’s men in Liverpool about laborers’ wages was ongoing. That meeting in mid-September did not affect his trip to London or Paris.

She tipped her head and smiled. “So then, it sounds convenient. I hoped I might ask you to go with Camille as a chaperone of sorts, but also as an escort.”

He struggled with that. But how could he refuse her? “Oh, well, Liv…”

She licked her lips. “You see, it’s more than that. I know you and she have a special relationship.”

Special? I’m not certain I know what to term it.

“You’re her friend. And she looks up to you.”

As a friend? An advisor? How could that prick both his pride and his conscience?

“And I hoped you might take her dancing…”

“Dancing?”

“She loves to dance. And she hates to rattle around in that big house alone.”

Alone.With Camille.He liked that idea. So did his body.

She inhaled. “Oh, hell. She needs diversion. She’s got it in her head that she’s interested in marrying.”

“Not Aldridge Connor?”

“Yes. Maybe. I’m not sure. He’s certainly interested in her!”

Pierce snorted. “He’s not suitable material for any woman.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“Not last night nor when I first met him last week at her autographing party.”

“Rascal.” She huffed. Took a sip of her coffee and glared out the window over his shoulder. “He’s relentless.”

“Is he?”

“Very much so,” she said. “Victor knows him better than any of us and he thinks Connor wants our connections and her money.”