Judith Ivory (14 page)

No, sir, she told herself. Not in a million years.
Don’t let him near you
, she told herself.

Yes, she would help as she’d promised, because she had to in order to keep herself out of jail, but he wouldn’t touch her again, not for love nor money. She wouldn’t let him within three feet of her. Not for any reason. One Zachary Hotchkiss per lifetime was enough for any woman. She’d cried herself sick over Zachary; she didn’t plan on starting again.

“So what is the plan?” Stuart asked for at least the third time, as he looked at her across the bed and his filling satchel: He threw in a nightshirt—made of generous amounts of heavy white silk, rolled hems—very masculine, very luxurious. He slept apparently with all the ostentation of a white peacock.

No, Emma thought, the plan could wait. She needed to get this one point across. “Your lordship,” she said with enough exaggerated respect that it came out rather disrespectfully, “I want you to understand that I did not like what we just did in the other room. For other reasons, besides the sexual. I do
not
want to do it again. If you attempt it, I’ll do far worse than bite you.” Not that she’d bit him the last time, but since that seemed to be a concern of his, she’d use his fear for all it was worth.

“Fine,” he said. “I won’t force you: I didn’t last time.”

“I did not like my hands tied.”

“You could have fooled me. But all right. I won’t tie them again. How’s that?”

“Better.”

“So you like your hands free?”

“Yes. At all times.”

He laughed that deep, dirty chuckle he had, unfazed, as he bent to retrieve a pair of navy velvet-and-leather slippers, which he then tossed into the satchel.

You are sick, tying women to chairs, she wanted to say. While
I
am not. Best, however, she drop the subject. The man was hopeless.

He tossed in a sheaf of papers from the bed, legal docu
ments of some sort, then braced his hands on the brass-hinged edge of the bag and contemplated her for a moment, as if he couldn’t figure out how to say something. He said finally, “You know, Emma, you were married. Surely your husband had his moments—”

“His moments?” she broke in. Why did he make her so furious? She wanted to slap him again. She held her hands behind her back, literally gripping them: tying herself.

“His own idiosyncracies to lovemaking,” said the nervy viscount before her.

Stuart,
she reminded herself, then answered, “My husband made love to a bottle of gin most of the time. And to his sorrow and guilt over all the mistakes he’d made that he thought we’re so unique and original and entirely his own doing, as if he were God—” She stopped.

They both stood there blinking at her admission: her tirade.

After London, Emma could count on one hand the times she’d made love with her husband, and not once had it been without incident or embarrassment—after London, Zach perpetually lost his erection at just the wrong moment. It had been the despair of both of them that the good Reverend Hotchkiss had never been able to perform as well as had the bad Reverend Hotchkiss—though in the end she’d stood by her husband, for better or worse.

She was no stranger to the pleasure between a man and woman, though, now that she remembered it. It was fine; it was normal. Yet neither did she know much about the sort of thing that had happened here just minutes earlier, which was
not
normal, she decided. Nor did she want to know. She had always assumed that variety of pleasure was confined to the bedroom, to being under the man, to wordless movements in the dark.

Dark indeed. Stuart’s darkness was open, brazen.

She bowed her head. Silence. When she looked up again,
Stuart was taking out a handful of fresh cravats from a drawer of the nightstand, all of dark, dark blue silk, almost black. There was more fabric to Stuart’s cravats than to the usual English one; they were more voluminous, almost French, if she remembered correctly. He drew one around his shirt collar, then slid a handful of others through his fingers like slithering snakes as he more or less poured them into the satchel. Perfect, she thought. The devil here wore snakes around his neck.

He began to tie his new cravat. She couldn’t think what had become of the other one, didn’t know where it was.

She looked away, surveying his room, trying to get her bearings, make herself feel better. The room looked exactly like hers, except for one less window. She’d been surprised to walk down the hall and realize his rooms were right next door. He’d rented three, for goodness sake, “for privacy.” He slept in this one, the middle. As her gaze came back to him—he could tie a cravat without looking in the mirror, simply knot it, and it came out neat, splendid, dapper—she stared across his mussed sheets, no maid yet. Their mess seemed strangely provocative. He didn’t sleep peacefully, she thought. He kicked his sheets.

Oblivious, Stuart found more possessions to toss through the hinged opening of the bag: a pressed, unworn shirt, a neatly folded vest, a spare collar. He rethought something, digging through the satchel suddenly, and pulled the sheaf of papers out. He rolled them, tied their ribbon, then set them on his coat by the satchel, apparently planning to carry them.

Then he turned his back on her, the bed, the satchel, and walked over to the sink. No undergarments, she realized. He’d picked up everything from the bed, the floor, and nightstand, but there were no undergarments whatsoever. Nor nightcap. Zach wore a nightcap to bed. Didn’t all men? Seemingly not.

At the washstand, he picked up a hairbrush, its silver handle scrolling with fanciful engravings, initials, she’d guess,
the handle mildly tarnished around the grip of finger impressions. He stuck a tortoiseshell comb into the brush’s bristles, then gathered up a shaving cup with a fairly fresh bar of dry soap at the bottom, since she could hear it rattling around. He stuck a folded razor and damp lather brush into the cup as well, wrapped it all in a small towel, then dropped the whole bundle into a smaller case beside the water pitcher, as well as a toothbrush and tooth powder, then closed the case by means of a little trick of the leather,
pop
, that cleverly folded it in on itself.

When he turned completely it was to toss the case the short distance into the suede satchel. Then just Stuart himself. He stood in the middle of the room, apparently packed, pulling on his frock coat.

She was suddenly struck by how mortal he looked. Just a man. A handsome one, but ordinary. She said, “Where is everyone?”

He glanced up from buttoning his vest. “Everyone?”

“Your—” She hesitated. He didn’t seem insulted, so she went ahead. “Your crew, my captain. Your acolytes. I didn’t think you went anywhere without at least a half a dozen people.”

He answered her question with a question. “How does a countrywoman know words like
acolytes
?”

“Married to a learned man for twelve years.” When he wasn’t foxed, Zach was brilliant. Half the time he was brilliant even when he was. “Four years in London with a lot of quasi-learned ne’er-do-wells.”

Stuart pondered the information, frowning, as he smoothed his coat, then said, “I’ll ring downstairs. My ‘acolytes,’ as you call them, will bring my carriage. What is the name of the farm we’re going to again?”

“The Stunnels.”

“After the Stunnels, shall we stop by your house? Do you have any clothes you’d like to pick up?”

Clothes. That was a laugh. “I have a better skirt and
blouse in that bundle you just threw into your satchel. Other than that, I have the one dress you saw at the bank and all the clothes I want”—she indicated the big, baggy dress she wore—“from the church charity bazaar.” A bright thought occurred to her. “You’re going to have to buy me better clothes, if you intend for me to play your uncle.”

“Of course. What do you sleep in?”

Of course? He was buying her clothes? Then she glared at him. What did he mean, what did she sleep in? “None of your business.”

He sniffed a breath of amusement down his nose, picking up his papers, then his coat. “For your
com-m
fort,” he insisted with one of his pauses. “I notice you have no nightgown. Do you want to stop by your house and get one?” He laughed more leisurely, fully at ease, as he added, “I love how dirty-minded you are. It’s one of my favorite things. Everything with you is about sexuality.”

“I am
not
dirty-minded! It’s you! You asked about my nightclothes.”

He only smiled. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t sleep in a nightgown. Sleep naked for all I care. In fact, I rather prefer you do, though it’s going to be damned cold in the winter.”

“I—” Where had she gone wrong here? “I—I sleep in Zach’s nightshirt. I don’t have one of my own.”

“He didn’t buy you one?”

“H-he liked that I liked his.”

“Then you can sleep in mine.”

“No!” She thought of all that heavy, sliding silk on her body and…well, it would…oh, God. She didn’t know. She couldn’t wear Mount Villiars’s nightshirt. Could she? “Zach’s is flannel. It—”

“It’s a poor man’s nightshirt,” he finished. “Emma, do we have to bring your husband along with us on this? I take it he wasn’t always an asset. Let’s not bring his nightshirt. Mine will be fine. It won’t devour you.” He let out a light laugh. “Only I want to do that. The nightshirt is harmless. It will be
far too big, but warm and comfortable for the time being. Then we’ll buy you some very pretty things in London.”

Yes. She frowned. No. He was going to buy her very pretty nightgowns? No, he meant he was going to buy her very pretty clothes, and she would need them to convince his uncle of her authenticity as an underground art dealer. Very pretty clothes. This was good, wasn’t it? Stuart here would pay for them. This was all harmless. She was being foolish. She liked pretty clothes.

So why was she uncomfortable? And angry again?

It occurred to her, “Don’t expect it to get you anywhere.”

“Oh, I don’t,” he said immediately and smiled, shaking his head. Then smugly, “I don’t need help. I’m very capable of getting where I want to on my own, without buying you anything.”

Right. She blinked. Here was why she was angry, not the other: He’d already gotten where he wanted once without so much as a sweet word. Just a chair and his neckcloth. What was wrong with her? There was something here he understood better than she did. And the damn man intended to use it. While she had the eeriest feeling that if she didn’t figure out what it was soon, she was going to end up in bed with him again.

He picked up her coat, the satchel, carrying everything. Emma’s hands felt empty, bare. With Zach, she carried everything and, half the time, him.

She took one last look at Stuart and said, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to London and swindle your uncle.”

“We’ve already been through this. Why are you hedging?”

“Besides the fact that it’s a stupid idea?”

“What’s stupid about it?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“So was robbing me.”

“I didn’t see that.”

“Ah. So swindling my uncle is more dangerous than swindling me?”

“I don’t know. What are your uncle’s limits? Will he shoot us if we make a mistake and he realizes the truth? Is he violent?”

Stuart frowned. “I can’t say for sure. If he’s like my father, yes. But you’ve done this in London. So then you’ve dealt with all sorts: You know how to deal with potentially violent people.”

She turned away. She did. “A cackle-bladder,” she murmured.

“A what?”

“It’s a way to deal with the violent ones. You make them party to the consequences of violence, make them believe they’ve murdered someone.”

“Well, there you go then. We’ll make Leonard think he’s killed someone? Who?”

“You or me. One of us shoots the other before Leonard thinks to. We use a gun with no powder in the bullets, blanks, and a little bladder of turkey blood that one of us puts in his or her mouth just before the shot. Then you break the bladder with your teeth and bleed all over him.”

Stuart laughed, startled. “My goodness. Oh, let me bleed on Leonard. Then how does he not find out? I mean, I’m a member of the Legislative Council. I’ll have to be there the next vote.”

“Leonard won’t be. If all goes well, if he’s scared enough, we send him to some far corner of the world to hide out forever. Timbuktu.”

“Goodness, this sounds rather like a lot of fun.” Stuart was delighted. “Not
only
do I get my possessions back, I never have to lay eyes on Leonard again. I can
hardly
wait to bleed on him.” His odd-appealing pauses again—
only
, then
hardly
—provided a kind of emphasis and rhythm. The more she talked to him, the less she noticed the pattern. She made
a special note to herself to listen, to see if she was simply getting used to it or if he was doing it less.

“Just pray it isn’t your own blood,” she told him. “It’s not a joke, Stuart, what you’re planning. I wish I could talk you out of it. You simply can’t account for every possibility.” She hesitated, because she hated to remember: “We had a mark once who had a real gun. No one knew. He shot four people, myself one of them.”

Stuart’s expression grew grave. He furrowed his brow. “I’m glad you lived. Where were you shot? You look perfectly fine.”

“Here.” She touched her temple and ear, running her fingers into her hair, holding them there a moment. “And I am perfectly fine, but of the ten people involved, I am the only one who is.”

As she said the words, something inside her quaked, something she held down by tightening the muscles of her chest till the feeling subsided. Steel. Zach used to say she was made out of steel.
You are so strong, Emma. As if your flexible, sturdy spine, each disk, were made of Excalibur-hard metal: mettle. I love your sturdy mettle
.

While she’d loved how he loved her and that he could express it while playing with words. A long cry from any sheep farmer’s son.

Confidence. She’d been so full of confidence in herself once. Confidence games. Arrogance games. She didn’t trust herself anymore. Not as she once had, and perhaps that wasn’t so bad.