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around. If you’re willing to forego a benefits package, I can pay you as a consultant—” Boppy snapped her fingers. “Perfect. That will be your title. Claire Heyworth, Project Consultant. What do you think?”
    Claire had stood up as soon as Boppy had, so they were facing each other in the crisp autumn sunshine. “I think I might faint.”
    Boppy pursed her lips. “Well, don’t.”
    “Okay.” Claire smiled. “Thank you.”
    Boppy turned toward the metal stairs. “I think we’ll be thanking each other. There are a few clients in particular that I can already think of who will thrill to the fact that I have a peeress on staff.”
    Claire cringed. She despised the idea of being marketed as the resident aristocrat. “Ms. Matthews—”
    “Boppy. It’s a ridiculous name, but everyone calls me Boppy. Including you.”
    They were standing in the quiet front hall by that point.
    “Boppy.” Claire looked at the floor, then up at her new boss. Her first boss. “I was rather hoping not to put too much emphasis on my…”
    “On your bloodline?”
    “Well, I guess you could call it that. Yes.”
    “Look here, Claire.” She gestured around the hall. “It’s just a facade, remember? All the work takes place up here.” Boppy pointed at her temple. “Let people think what they want, and you just be you. Leave the rest to me. Please.”
    “Okay.” Claire swallowed.
    “Okay.” Boppy said with boundless confidence and then led the way up to the offices on the top two floors.
    From the moment they reached the second floor and Boppy began showing her around, Claire felt like she was simultaneously drowning and taking her first proper gasp of air. She nodded and smiled and shook hands with the other people who worked for Matthews Interiors. There was a receptionist who sat at an immaculate, petite desk, with a sliver of a laptop and a telephone and nothing else. Not a scrap of paper.
    “I like to keep it clean…at least at first glance. You’ll see how it gets progressively more unwieldy the farther we get.”
    Claire nodded, terrified at the idea of sitting at a desk without a mug full of her favorite blue pens and several perfectly sharpened pencils and a black notebook with a red spine.
    The second floor had been gutted to create an opened-up communal work area. Eight desks lined the walls, four on each side. Luckily, there was more evidence of old-fashioned work methods. One man even had a yellow pad.
    Boppy did a cursory introduction, too quick for Claire to retain everyone’s full name, but she repeated their first names three times over as she had always done since her mother had first trained her for the life of a peeress or—more to be hoped for—the wife of a peer.
    Claire must have sighed aloud because Boppy turned to look at her over her shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t expect you to remember all their names.”
    “Ned, Emily, William, Kim, Allison, Skylar, Henrietta, Marni.”
    Boppy turned around to face her full on. “Nicely done.”
    “Old habits die hard. My mother was a strict taskmistress when it came to introductions.”
    The older woman continued up the next flight of stairs to the top floor of the townhouse and paused at the upper landing. “I can imagine it wouldn’t do to forget the ambassador’s wife’s name.”
    “Exactly. Though, I’m beginning to realize it might be just as egregious to forget Allison, Skylar, Henrietta, and Marni if you expect to get your projects done on time.”

Chapter 5
     
    Boppy rested the palm of her left hand on the brightly polished mahogany bannister. “I have just the project I want you to work on. And there’s a dishy ex-husband.”
    Claire’s face clouded. “Oh, I don’t think I’m in the market for dishy just now. Maybe ever.”
    “Oh, that’s just ridiculous. I didn’t meet my husband until I was forty. What are you, thirty-five?” Boppy was walking again.
    “You’re too kind. I’m going to be forty in a little over a