How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(31)
CHAPTER TEN
“You’re ready for your meeting, lass?” Daughtry approached and peeked over Clary’s shoulder.
“I am.” She typed the last word of the letter she’d prepared, pulled the sheet from the typewriter roller, and added it to the pile. “Would you hand me those?” She pointed to a large stack of papers she’d placed on a side worktable near his elbow.
“Boss isn’t shy of giving you work, is he?” Daughtry collected the stack and placed the whole in Clary’s arms.
With both arms lashed underneath, the pile nearly reached her chin. “I had no idea we received this number of submissions.”
“Oh, aye. Never a lack of those who wish to see their stories in print.”
“I hope we can give a few more that chance,” she said over her shoulder as she weaved between desks toward Adamson’s office.
“Don’t know about that, miss.” Daughtry cast her a dubious frown. “They have to get past Mr. Adamson first.”
Ah, yes, Ruthven’s gatekeeper. And he could be a ferocious one, judging by the manuscripts he’d marked Rejected and she’d decided to reread. Some of the stories had merit, and Clary hoped that she could make Gabriel acknowledge the potential she’d seen.
“Is it noon already?” he asked as she knocked on his door with her elbow before stepping inside. “Please have a seat, Miss Ruthven.”
Always a seat. Clary suspected a good deal more might be accomplished if people were allowed to stand and move and stretch their legs once in a while. Instead of taking the chair he indicated, she strode toward his desk, edged his pen stand out of the way, and plopped her enormous pile in front him.
To say he did not look pleased would be akin to saying Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa did not look giddy.
“What’s all this?” He pushed the pile toward her with two fingers.
She pushed back with her hip to keep the whole from falling off the edge of his desk. With a hand planted on top, she explained, “These are the recent submissions, including those you’ve rejected. I’d like to speak to you about a few of them.” She slid a folder atop the pile and offered it to him. “Also, the letters you asked me to type up.”
He narrowed one eye at her, grimaced at the sight of his pen pushed off-kilter, and flipped open the folder. A grunt came, following by a disgusted sniff, as he scanned her work. “Appears there’s been a mix-up. These aren’t the letters I asked you to type.”
Clary frowned and leaned forward to see which one he was looking at. “Yes, addressed to Miss C. Bently, who submitted Lady Catriona’s Liberation. She was on the list you gave me.”
“Indeed, but the list I gave you requested that you reject her drivel and send her manuscript back to her.” He shook out the sheet before him as if hoping to rid himself of fleas. “Here, you urge her to ‘persevere’ in her fiction endeavors, to improve the plot, and to resubmit her story as soon as she’s able.”
Clary crossed her arms, picking at a zigzag of beads she’d sown on the arm of her blouse. “Yes, that is an accurate reading of the letter I prepared.”
He flung the typed sheet away from him and settled against the back of his chair, mimicking her gesture by folding his arms across his chest. “And yet the diametric opposite of what I asked you to convey. Her story is atrocious. Her writing juvenile. Have you read the letter she included with her submission?”
“I have.” Clary recalled that the lady’s language was overly stilted, and the writing did lack finesse. “But everyone can improve.”
He let out a trapped breath and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a strangled chuckle. “Why doesn’t your rose-colored view surprise me?” Taking her letter in hand again, he set it aside, flattening his palm on top. “Please revise this note and tell Miss Bently to submit her story elsewhere.”
“That’s too harsh. Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Adamson stilled in the act of reaching for the next letter in the folder. “Do you truly believe that?” He turned his gaze on her, and the brightness of his eyes was like a beacon, searching her out, seeking something more than whatever answer might fall from her lips.
“Yes, of course I do.”
The fervency of her answer kindled a dangerous pleasure in his chest.
Such hopefulness was folly. Clary’s philosophy wasn’t what most people experienced in life.
Men who died in the boxing ring, or after, never recovering from their injuries. They never got a second chance. Most of his fellow child pickpockets hadn’t gotten a second chance either, especially once they’d fallen into Rigg’s clutches.
But a tantalizing possibility kept his gaze fixed on hers. If she believed in giving others a chance to improve themselves, could she forgive a man like him for his sins?
“So may I send my letter to Miss Bently?”
He directed his attention to the next letter. “Let her resubmit. Though I reserve the right to re-reject.”
When he glanced up at her, she pressed her lips together in an expressionless line, though her eyes were dancing.
Her next letter was even worse. A gentleman had submitted a book on horses. Their physiology, biology, scatology. Far more than anyone would wish to know about equines. Gabe had skimmed the initial chapters and known instantly that the book was better off delivered to a scientific publisher.