A Lady of Persuasion by Tessa Dare Page A

them man and wife, or she’d have him renouncing all his worldly belongings and taking orders himself.
    “Toby in Parliament,” Lady Aldridge said in a tone of false innocence. “What an idea.”
    He gave her a warning look over his wineglass. She’d been hinting at him to challenge Mr.
    Yorke’s seat in Commons for an age now, and he’d been loudly denouncing the idea for an age and a half. Indulging his mother’s petty vendetta was an even worse reason to seek office than appeasing his naïve bride.
    Now his mother fixed him with the most unnerving gaze, coupled with a serene smile. Just like a mother, to take an unnatural delight in watching her offspring squirm.
    “Mother,” he said in a conciliatory croon, “you’ve ten grandchildren now—three of them tearing apart the nursery as we speak. Might I suggest you sharpen that look on one of them?”
    “Isabel,” she finally said, still directing her smile at Toby, “have we told you how delighted we are to welcome you to the family?”
    “What the devil—”
    Josiah Grayson bit off the chain of curses uncoiling in his mind. Such language wasn’t meant for a child’s ears. But then, neither were children meant to be climbing atop their fathers’ desks and emptying inkwells onto stacks of crucial correspondence.
    Joss lunged for his son, scooping the boy off the polished cherrywood desktop now marred with inky fingerprints. He attempted to pry Jacob’s chubby fingers from the inkwell, holding the wriggling urchin at arm’s length so as not to spoil his own new topcoat.
    Damn Gray. This was all his fault for leaving London so soon. He’d gone to Southampton to survey progress on two ships under construction, taking Sophia with him. Two days he’d been gone, and already everything had gone to hell. Wouldn’t the arrogant devil just love to know it, too? First, Jacob’s nursemaid quitting her post, then problems with these insurance contracts, and to top it all off, Bel taken ill…
    “Jacob, give that to Papa. I said, give it to Papa. Jacob, for the love of—”

    Suddenly, the boy let go the inkwell. Bereft of resistance, Joss’s arm snapped back at the elbow. Ink splattered him from cravat to trousers.
    “Blast, bugger, damn, and hell.” There was no preventing the improper vocabulary lesson Jacob received then. Mara would have been furious with him for using that language in front of their son.
    “Mrs. Prewitt.” Joss summoned the housekeeper from the hallway and deposited Jacob in her reluctant embrace. “Clean him up and send him to Cook for a biscuit.”
    His son temporarily occupied, Joss turned his attention to the ink-spattered contracts covering his desk. God, what a mess. As partner in Grayson Brothers Shipping, Joss was fully empowered to sign the contracts and deal with the matter in Gray’s absence. But it chafed him that he didn’t truly understand the crux of the problem, had no idea whether he signed the new contract for good or ill. He had only the advice of their solicitor to work from, and Joss didn’t trust that toadying prig with tuppence.
    Not that Gray would have known any better how to handle the situation. His brother had no education in legal matters, either. This was why Joss was determined to study law. They couldn’t build a successful family business unless one of them could look at these piles of legal prattle and make sense of them.
    The butler appeared in the entryway. “A caller, sir.”
    “I’m not at home.”
    “It’s Sir Toby Aldridge, sir.”
    “Damn,” Joss muttered, sifting through a stack of parchment. Just what he needed—the task of entertaining that insufferable ass in addition to everything else. “Didn’t he get the message that Bel’s taken ill?”
    “Yes, he did,” a voice said from the corridor. The insufferable ass himself rounded the doorway and entered the study. “All the more reason for me to call.”
    Joss dismissed the butler with a look. “You’ll have to come back