Judith Ivory (12 page)

“A send. A poke with a send that involves the statue.” Ah, well, she supposed, there were worse things than being shot. Staying on this chair for one minute longer, for instance. She told him, “We’ll get the earrings another way, separately. With me running—oh—What does your uncle like? Art? The stock market? Gambling?”

“Oh, definitely gambling. And art, damn his hide. That’s what the statue is about, I think. Both.” He laughed with satisfaction. “So how long will it take?”

The question brought a flash of unwanted memory. Forever, she thought. It is forever…people shot, friends going to jail, yourself going home, not a favorite place, in a foggy, angry, guilty muddle, with a new husband and faltering marriage, both mortally though invisibly wounded in a way that
would take twelve years to kill them completely. While, silently, she had grave reservations, aloud, she listed, “To plan the game, snare your uncle, run him through it, have him bring the statue.” She added up the time it would take to get truly free of this chair, this room, this mistake, to get free of Stuart: “Two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” He was delighted. “Excellent! In the meanwhile, perhaps once in between you can visit your sheep. I’ll pay the train fare.”

She blinked, taken aback by his fit of generosity, no doubt brought on by optimism. Or despotism. His offer reflected his power to give it, though it was a benign despotic gesture, she supposed. “That probably won’t be possible, but thank you. So will you please untie me now? I’m awfully tired of this.”

“And I make all decisions,” he said. “I’m in charge.”

At first, she didn’t know what he meant. Who else was in charge, given there were only the two of them here, and one of them was lying on the floor tied down? Then she realized: He was worried about her running the ruse on his uncle. Stuart’s hesitations all came together in that instant.

Indeed, his lordship here
would
be partial to legality, wouldn’t he? When a man manipulated his position and the law as well as this one, it must be jolly unnerving to step outside them. More importantly, though, the viscount who loved being a viscount had recognized, once he and she began, there would be times when only one person would know how to get them through safely, and it wasn’t the one standing here talking about being in charge. Emma wanted to laugh.

Ah, Stuart, what a very smart fellow you are.

If he allowed her to direct the play of his uncle, their positions would shift. For all his authority and wealth, Stuart Aysgarth was an innocent, when it came to small-time swindles: more like a mark than a big-time confidence man. He’d been having a devil of a time keeping a straight face, while only setting up perfectly legal loans he probably could make
good on down the road anyway—while she, gussied up and with a veneer of city sophistication, had lured richer, sharper, more powerful men than he to their undoing. Or at least she had as a participant, when she was younger. And all it had taken was a little unscrupulousness on the mark’s part, which Stuart had by the chairload, didn’t he?

She could take him, she thought. She could let the power between herself and her “partner” here do its natural shift as she showed him how to set up his uncle. Then take them both. Not that she would. It sounded as if the man didn’t need any more betrayal in his life. But she could. If she wanted to. Rather like the threats he was making with his eyes and innuendos. He wasn’t going to do anything. Nor was she. But the opportunity was built into the situation. She could have him, and for a bundle. With only a little more work than it would take to set up his uncle.

Oh, Emma,
she cautioned herself as she lay there,
what are you doing?
Disintegrating. Going to hell.

Still, in for a penny, in for pound. What else was there to do?

She nodded. Yes.
Dear Lord, let me get myself out of this, and I’ll be good. I’ll be so, so good, You’ll see.

Stuart tilted his head at her, his very handsome head. His long body stood up, slightly more attentive, his wide, angular shoulders back. “Truly?” he asked. He eyed her up, then down again. Disbelief. Or else a man reluctant to untie a woman he had designs on.

But then the chair swung upward in an arc—he lifted it by the slat at the back of her head. Oh, yes!

On her way up, she asked, “What will you tell the bank? What about the money you took out?”

The chair halted, just shy of upright. Her feet remained in the air. He spoke down into her face across his own chest. “I’ll let it ride for now, let them look for it.”

“Will you take out more?”

“I have to. I’m sorry, I need it.”

She drew in her breath. They’d be looking for her.

“Also, Emma, you realize,” he added: “It’s what I have over you.”

She frowned. The chair rocked, suspended, not up, not down, balanced on its rear legs.

“I’ll fix it though,” he continued, “once we’re through. Plus my lawyers can keep you out of jail for two weeks easily, even if the bank does discover you.”

No, no, this wasn’t how she imagined it. She frowned, frustrated, and threw her weight forward, trying to make the chair right itself. “Put me down. Fix the chair. Untie me.”

The more she heaved, though, the more the whole thing seemed unstable. She teetered, tipping backward on the chair legs in a kind of midair seesaw. For a few seconds, she wasn’t sure if he had safe hold or not.

He kept her there, balanced, looking at her. “You know,” he said finally, “you truly believe you’ll be able to control me, don’t you? You think you can do as you will?” He huffed air down his nose with a
hmmph.
“What on God’s earth can we do to pry you from this highly unprofitable notion? Because we’re going to butt heads over it for two weeks otherwise, and I simply don’t care to, Emma.” When she did nothing but glare, he laughed, incredulous.

“You’re a bully,” she said into his laughter.

“Yes. Good.” He nodded as if she’d understood something important, something they agreed on. “A highly successful one,” he said. “I’ve probably bullied more people simply to have the breakfast I want—without even speaking their language—than you’ve bullied your whole life.”

With his free hand, he brushed a piece of her hair that had flopped onto her cheek, just the tips of his fingers, yet touching her at all, while she tottered helplessly, felt strange, eerie. It made her belly lift.

He continued very softly, almost kindly, “Emma, I
have
power, so throwing it around makes a certain amount of sense: You don’t. We’ll get through this so much easier if you simply own up to it, concede, let it go.”

The backs of his fingers grazed her cheek again—no lock of hair for excuse this time. Then he dragged his index finger, just its knuckle, lightly across her lips. His hand was dry and warm, his touch sure. Emma grew perfectly still, motionless at the bizarre sensation, so foreign: both interesting and repellent. Arousing, off-putting. Confusing. Held in midair, her face caressed while the rest of her was confined.

He dropped his hand away, the chair seesawing for a second more. She was trying to sort out what she felt: lips dry, cheeks on fire, her body arched in the chair, taut, her emotions a mess—embarrassed, aroused, angry, antagonized. The list went on, while she tried to hide that he’d struck a chord at all. Yet such was her turmoil that, the more she tried to pretend innocence, insouciance, the hotter her whole face became. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Oh, you
are
delightful,” he murmured, whatever that meant.

And the chair came up with a sudden swoop. Her stomach flipped over, then jolted as the last two chair legs in front struck the floor with an uneven
clack.
And Stuart Aysgarth disappeared, going behind her, out of sight.

She felt a tug on the cravat. Hallelujah! Then at her neck a silky tickle: sending a shot of pure, blind panic through her.

She understood the extremity of her alarm by her disproportionate relief. An ocean of it released in her veins, letting her breathe again, as she realized that what tickled was only his hair at the crook of her neck, at the side of her cheek. His head was bent over. He was untying her! Oh, yes! At the back of her chair, his fingers worked on the cravat where it was woven through the slats. Sweet Jesus, thank you!

The first part of the knots gave, and her bound wrists came free of the chair. Emma slid forward immediately, arching
her back, stretching. As she felt Stuart lean between her shoulders and the chair to work at the ties holding her wrists together, she felt all but lighthearted. Free of the chair slats, soon to be free entirely, free, free, free, without having paid any of the steep prices she’d feared. She’d held his sexual interest at bay (though she was covered in goose bumps, she realized). She wasn’t going to jail (thank goodness). She even grew a little miffed (come to think of it) that he’d made such serious threats.

It was
he
, after all, who had turned what she’d done into something ten times worse, then threatened her with it. How fair was that?

Over her shoulder, she told him, “You were only scaring me. You wouldn’t really give me to the sheriff. I mean, I only took fifty-six pounds. It wouldn’t be right to send me to prison for taking five hundred.” Quite happily, she announced, “You were just being mean, getting even, admit it.”

Why did she say this? Why would she want him to admit anything?

Of course, he didn’t. He stopped.

She sat there, her arms free of the chair, while—she gave a useless, thwarted yank—her wrists remained caught in a loose-wrapped snarl of cravat, her feet yet lashed to the chair legs. The devil’s own throne, she thought, where a dolt such as she might stay forever…
dolt, idiot, fool
—

She would have gone on berating herself. But Stuart, with fewer words and less effort, took over much more effectively. He stepped around into view, squatted directly in front of her, and stared up into her face. “Mrs.”—a pause—“Hotch. Kiss.” He separated her name as if putting it together for the first time, remembering. “That’s your name. Do I recall it correctly from all the documents and letters?”

She blinked, bit her lip. “Yes.”

“No,” he said, as if contradicting, but then repeated, “No, you did not have a right to go into my private account. No, I am
not joking. Yes, I’ll haul your bum over to the sheriff’s office if you displease me in any way or fall short of that on which we’ve just agreed. What you did is serious. You robbed me.”

“I only took what was mine.” She lifted her chin.

“Excuse me, but not legally, it wasn’t. Legally, the money in your pockets over there belongs to me.”

“I won it in court.”

“No, you didn’t. The matter is back in court, a new court, with due process proceeding.”

She frowned, exasperated. “That’s wrong. It shouldn’t be. I can’t afford to fight you there.”

“Then you can’t afford to win.”

She jerked on the chair, kicking, trying to pull her legs free. “You swine, you—”

“Quiet. I’m making a point here. You are an adult. I’ll give you, that in your circumstance, I might well have tried something similar. I understand your frustration. But still, as an adult, you can face the consequences of your actions, and the consequences of lifting money from an account that isn’t yours, which by the way is larceny and a felony, since you’ve been caught, could result in—since you had the misfortune to be caught by someone who upped your ante—ten years’ penal servitude in a British prison.”

Emma sat back into the chair with a jerk, as if she’d been struck: deservedly. It was as if time itself had come forward, traveling through him to stare her in the face as he squatted there, retelling her a lesson she apparently hadn’t absorbed very well at seventeen. Even though she’d been sure she had. Leave it to life to shovel out a lesson twice, when the first time wasn’t enough.

Humble. For once she didn’t have to reach for humility. It swamped her. He was right.

He continued. “But, see here, there’s no reason to be so depressed about it. You are fortunate after all. You’re going to get away with it this time.”

As she had last time, she thought, which actually hadn’t
made her feel too good. She’d “gotten away” bleeding, shot at her temple and ear, sure she was the walking dead—who would have thought a person could bleed so much and not die from it? But that hadn’t even been the worst: Others hadn’t gotten away, three others shot
and
arrested, ten in all hauled off, with herself and Zach certain, simply certain, that Joanna was right behind them, when she wasn’t. “Getting away with it” had been a blithering, blooming, literally bloody mess.

He continued, “If you help me, I’ll protect you, and you’ll be fine. Exactly as you hoped. Or
rather
as you’d hoped. I suppose you’d hoped not to have to satisfy me. But, honestly, will that be so difficult? You seem to be quite up to it.”

Emma’s gaze dropped to the floorboards between his boots. She felt so downhearted all she could do was mutter, “If we’re caught, we’ll
both
get ten years. I can’t see how that’s an improvement.”

“It’s a huge improvement, since we haven’t been caught yet: and you have. Plus, there is another big difference: I
didn’t
legally owe you the money you took. My uncle
does
. He
stole
what we are going to trick him into giving back. Huge improvement. Huge difference. Don’t you see it?”

She saw a vague difference. A difference she would hate to have to argue from the dock of the accused. She shook her head, dismal, dispirited.

A hand lifted her chin. Stuart rolled forward onto one knee in his squat. He didn’t have to lift her chin very far till their eyes met. “You know how to set it up, yes? There’s no need for us to get caught, correct?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I think so.”

“Good. Then we’re set.” A pause. They stared at each other. He seemed to be thinking on something. Then came to a conclusion. “I’m going to drive my point home though. I think I should.”

Her eyes locked on his: His were level, serious—and slightly dilated. Involuntarily, she glanced down and saw,
where his trousers pulled in his squat, the beginning outline of partial male sexual excitation. She hadn’t been bold enough to look before, but she suspected it had been there off and on for the last forty minutes or so. From the start. She looked back up at him, her mouth dropping open a little, undone. He met her eyes steadily, openly, undenying. Her stomach twisted again. A point? He was going to drive home a point? What point? Not the one in his trousers, she hoped.