Read Sex and the Single Earl for Free Online Page B

what he’s doing? These aren’t plans for a pleasure garden or a lady’s boudoir. There must be enough room for the weavers to move about, and for the bolts to be carried to the wagons.”
    “Perhaps Mr. Russell plans to use children to operate the looms.”
    Simon gave a low curse. “Then we’ll have to disabuse him of that notion. These jobs must go to the men who need them, not children. Children have no place in a mill.” He reached for a pencil and rule.
    Soames let out a long-suffering sigh. “It is not necessary for you to correct the drawings, my lord. I will discuss the matter with Mr. Russell, and write to the architect this evening.”
    Simon ignored him, sliding the rule across the crackling parchment, visualizing the space as he methodically built an image of the factory in his mind. The discipline of the calculations took him to that familiar and welcome place where boredom and distracting emotion slipped away—replaced by stark, beautiful numbers whose clarity and precision never disappointed him. The ticking of the mantel clock, the swish of carriage wheels on the rain-washed cobblestones, even the other man’s presence all but disappeared.
    “My lord.” Soames’s voice held a barely repressed note of irritation.
    Simon reluctantly tore himself away from the computations he had scratched on the parchment. He couldn’t help grinning at the sour expression on his business agent’s normally impassive face.
    “Yes, Soames?”
    “Please forgive my impertinence, your lordship, but may I remind you what happened the last time you became so closely involved with the architect’s work?”
    “That bloody bastard Anson quit, that’s what happened, and a good thing it was. Every window bay in the terrace row would have been crooked if I hadn’t intervened.”
    “You didn’t exactly intervene, my lord. You threw him out of the library. And it took us two months to find another architect because Mr. Anson let it be known how difficult the investors were to work with. Which,” he added sardonically, “everyone assumed included me.”
    Simon laughed. “I’m sorry about that, Soames, but those terraces sold like wildfire, and you were well compensated for your trouble. Forgive me if I don’t share in your distress.”
    The other man threw him a dark look, then firmly rolled up the architectural plans and placed them out of reach on the sideboard. “Perhaps we will take these out again when Mr. Russell arrives.”
    Simon raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “You wound me, my dear fellow. You really do.”
    Normally, he wouldn’t dream of allowing someone in his employ to treat him so cavalierly, but Soames was different. The youngest son of a baronet, they had met at Cambridge, drawn to each other by their shared love of mathematics and science. Several years later that bond had compelled Simon to offer his former classmate and friend a position as his business agent. The man had leapt at the chance, preferring a life of invigorating work to one of impecunious gentility. Simon had made full use of Soames’s negotiating skills, which enabled him to maintain the convenient fiction that the Earl of Trask was no more than a bored aristocratic investor.
    As his agent bustled around the room, stacking ledgers and clearing the table in preparation for their meeting, Simon allowed himself to remember those days at university. Back then, he had been able to convince himself that a life of pure science—even a position teaching mathematics at Cambridge—was possible. It was what he had always dreamed of, a life of intellect and study. But the death of his cousin Sebastian, heir to the earldom, had crushed that dream into dust.
    “If I may be so bold, my lord.” Soames’s dry voice interrupted his musings.
    Simon dropped onto the Sheraton settee by the window and pulled out his pocket repository. If he couldn’t sketch, he might as well review the numbers he had gotten from his banker this