Free My Man Pendleton by Elizabeth Bevarly

a snit, Hensley's Distilleries, Inc. and the rest of the McClellan legacy would be nothing but a sweet memory in a couple of months, and then he'd be lucky to pull in fifty-five hundred a month in salary. But hey, he reminded himself halfheartedly, they still had two whole months to find Mr. Right for his kid sister, and then they could marry her off like a good little heiress, right under the wire, and still be solvent. Otherwise …
    He let the thought go. He couldn't even imagine his life otherwise. Holt braced his elbows on his desk and knifed his fingers restlessly through his dark blond hair. Hell, you'd think Kit would have been grateful to have Michael Derringer—her intended husband, for God's sake—exposed for the money-grubbing, gold-digging sonofabitch that he was. But nooooo. Not Kit. No way. She would have been perfectly content to live the rest of her life as a lie, as long as it meant that she didn't have to be alone.
    Just as Holt began to reach for the collection of pink telephone memos fanned out across his blotter, the intercom on his desk beeped discreetly. "Yes, Jeanette?" he responded absently, already feeling weary in spite of the early hour.
    "Mr. McClellan, a woman who says she's a representative from the Louisville Temperance League is here to see you." After a slight, but significant, pause, she added, "Again."
    Oh, great, he thought. Just what he needed to make a cold, rainy morning even more frigid and forbidding.
    "Does she have an appointment?" he asked, even though he was already certain of the answer.
    "No, she doesn't. Again."
    Of course she didn't have an appointment. What distiller in his right mind would make an appointment with someone whose single-minded goal in life was to put him out of business?
    For months now, the Louisville Temperance League had been after all the area manufacturers of spirits, hammering them mercilessly—however ineffectually—with petitions, surveys, press releases, flyers, and other various and sundry promotional materials. They'd hosted everything from bonfires to prayer vigils to walk-a-thons, had done everything within their power to raise money, hackles, and public awareness. All in the name of sobriety.
    Like any normal person would want that.
    Nevertheless, representatives from the organization had been turning up at all the local distillers' doors, pretty much weekly, since well before the holidays. They never had an appointment, but they always had an agenda. Holt supposed his father was right. Sooner or later, they were going to have to let the group's members vent their respective spleens—spleens untouched by the poisonous presence of liquor, he was sure. He might as well get it over with.
    "Her name?" he asked his secretary with a sigh of resignation.
    "It's a Ms. Ivory," Jeanette replied.
    Naturally, he thought. Naturally such a woman would have a wholesome, uncorrupted name like Ivory.
    "Ms. Faith Ivory," his secretary elaborated further.
    Naturally. "Faith Ivory," he repeated, the woman's moniker feeling stiff and unpleasant on his tongue. Relenting some, he asked, "Do I have any other appointments this morning?"
    "Not until ten," Jeanette told him.
    He sighed again. "All right. I suppose it's inevitable. Show her in."
    Expecting a hatchet-wielding grandma trussed up in black like Carrie Nation, Holt was almost pleasantly surprised by the woman Jeanette led into his office. Instead of black, she wore a suit the color of champagne—good, pale golden champagne, not the cheap, yellowy stuff. What didn't surprise him, though, was the fact that the hem of her skirt fell modestly below her knees, and that her snowy shirt was buttoned to the neck, then pinned closed even more tightly by what appeared to be an antique brooch.
    Even from the other side of the room, he could see that her creamy complexion was flawless, touched by a blush of peach riding high on each cheek. Her hair, almost the same pale gold color as her suit, was also bound up