Unlaced Corset (10 page)

19

Mary

The sun was streaming in through the cracks between the closed curtains when Mary opened her eyes. It seemed as if they'd been up all night, but she couldn't remember a day that she'd felt better.

She looked at James as he slept beside her. He scowled when he slept, she saw. Like he looked during the day, only less guarded. She smiled. That was just like she'd imagined.

She didn't want to wake him, not right away, so she laid there, watching him sleep softly. He looked more relaxed than she'd thought him capable of, in the week she'd known him. It was all she could do not to kiss him, but then he'd wake, and she'd feel bad all day.

The birds chirped outside the window, and she wanted to open the curtain to look, but that would have woken him, as well. She slowly eased her arm out from around him, and slid out of bed as slowly, as gently as she could. She finally let out her breath when she was standing over him and he was still asleep.

James deserved his rest, after the week he'd had. They both did, but she was awake now, and she didn't want to get dressed and go back to her life without him. For a little while, she could be with him, and he couldn't be sour about it.

She heard something from the hall. What might have been someone walking, down the hall a ways. But it was her imagination. Still, her ears strained to catch another hint of the noise, to confirm her fears, or to assuage them when nothing was heard.

The sound came again, closer this time. Someone was here. As she listened, she realized. Not someone—someones. People. There were people in the house, and they weren't walking quietly.

She rushed to the bed, her bare feet padding against the ground. It was too quiet to have heard from outside the room, but to her heightened nerves it seemed as if her steps were thunderous. She could be caught any time.

James came awake with only a light shake on his shoulder, and she put a finger to her lips to hush him.

"There's people, James. People in the house. Someone's here."

He looked distant and confused by the information, as if she'd told him that she was going to start standing on her head. She repeated it again.

"Get up. We're not alone."

His eyes slid into focus and he threw the covers off himself. The pair of them were a blur, pulling clothes on as fast as they could manage. Neither of them spoke, not right away. They both knew that dressing was more important than having a longer-term plan.

Finally, as he started pulling the strings on her corset tight, James started whispering, only centimeters from her ear. The feel of his breath on her ear lit a fire deep down inside her, but it wasn't time for that.

"If you're caught coming from the room, then we're caught. But if I leave alone..."

The implication was clear.

"So I should hide for a few minutes?"

"I'll go out and make sure that nobody is watching. If someone is going to see you, then I'll draw their attention. You'll be alright, you'll see."

Mary turned and crushed her lips into his, and James rewarded her with a tight embrace around the waist. Then she was standing in the corner, where the armoire hid her from view of the door, and he was opening the door and moving into the hall.

It seemed as if the seconds passed as slowly as hours, as Mary waited. She heard his voice, then it got slowly softer as he walked away down the hall. Was he leaving her behind? What on earth was going on?

She looked across the room at the clock on the mantel. Each tick was an eternity, and her breaths came in shallow gulps. Was that someone outside the door? She shook her head and tried to regain control of herself. She was becoming hysterical and imagining sounds that weren't there.

Eventually a minute passed, and then a second, and a third. By the time that five minutes had ticked past, her heart had nearly slowed to normal, and she was taking normal breaths. The noise of footsteps hadn't come back since James had left. Whatever he'd done to get everyone's attention, she realized, it was working.

Cautiously, she left her hiding place. The room was empty, and almost preternaturally still. Somewhere, deep down, she'd been afraid that someone was standing in the door, waiting. That they'd known and had just been playing a cruel trick on her to let her believe she would get away.

But nobody was waiting for her. She pushed the door open. The hall was empty, as well. She picked her shoes up from the floor and carried them, turned down the main hall toward her room, and started walking.

Even still, she saw nobody. It was as empty as it had ever been, it seemed. She dropped the shoes and slipped them on. Now it looked nearly as if she'd never been in the west wing. As she congratulated herself, walking toward the foyer to see if perhaps it had all been her imagination, she heard it.

A voice, raised and angry, was coming from the foyer. It sounded familiar. Was that James?

She took a deep breath. Another voice followed, and it knocked the wind from her. She knew that voice. Uncle Ollie was back. It wasn't clear what that meant, but she knew one thing: she didn't want to find out.

Something deep down inside her said that she needed to know what was happening, though. She started back towards the front of her father's house.

"Col. Geis," a third voice said. Could it have been Davis? "I'm not sure what this young man thinks he's doing, but he's not working for the house."

"What?" James, this time. "You saw the contract I signed. I was brought on to do a job, and I did it."

Was that all this was? A job? Mary could feel a pit opening up in her stomach, but she continued on. She needed to hear this.

"What job would that be?"

"Ask your lackey," James answered, his voice booming. "I was brought on to manage the household and balance the household budget. I did that. I had a contract, signed and sealed."

"Where?"

"What on earth does that mean, where? In my room, with my things!"

"Show it to me," Oliver answered. His voice was cool, and as he said it, Mary knew that they wouldn't find it. James must have known it, too.

"You—you took it?" He sounded less certain than he had a moment. Cracks began to show in the armor of defiance he'd put up.

"Now, Mr. Poole, I'm not an unreasonable man. You've worked for, what, a week? That's a pound right there, no doubt about it. And of course, you seemed to believe you had work here. I'm sure that you turned down work to do your job, whether it was real or imagined."

"That's not the point," James answered. Mary pressed herself against the wall; they were right through the doorway beside her, and all she had to do was step through. Then they'd all know she was there.

"Of course. So I'm prepared to offer you a severance, in spite of the fact that you don't contest that you have no contract. I think you'll find fifty pounds, plus the one that you've incurred in wage, to be more than fair. Don't you think?"

Mary's eyes fluttered shut. He had the money, she knew. He'd borrowed that much and more from her father.

Some part of her had been willing to accept that everything had been a big misunderstanding. That Oliver had made some bad gambling debts and that they'd needed to be paid off. The rest of it could all have been a series of coincidences.

But a fifty pound severance to a steward that had been working for a week? That was as much an admission of guilt as she would ever receive from him.

For a long time, as Mary held her breath, nobody spoke. Then she heard Oliver again.

"Davis? Richard? Remove this man from my family's estate. He's deranged, and possibly dangerous. Take care with him. He's a large fellow, and he served in His Majesty's armed services, so he'll be capable enough."

Mary chanced a peek out through the door. Four or five large men stood with their backs to her. James was facing toward her, and as soon as she moved her head out she knew that he saw her. He didn't betray it in his face, but something in the hardness of his expression changed. He clenched his jaw and waited for them to come and take him.

Two men stepped forward. A third stepped up to join them, and Mary ducked her head back behind the wall before one of them saw her watching.

She could hear James struggling against them, but it was a losing fight. He was strong, she knew, and without a doubt he was capable enough in a fight, but three largish men had him whipped without a fight. Everyone knew it.

The last thing she heard before the door closed behind him was James shouting, either to her or to Oliver or to both:

"This isn't over! I'll find proof, and then I'll be back!"

20

James

Mary would understand why he'd had to leave without saying goodbye. When it came to distractions, angry conversations were the best, and he'd stirred up a hornet's nest. She had to understand, if she'd heard the conversation—and he knew that she had. That didn't make James feel any better about it.

He let out a long breath and watched the world whip by as he took the train to Canterbury. He'd thought it might be smart for him to take Mary's transcribed copy of the address where they could find this "Pearl" person.

In the end, he'd been right. He hadn't gotten another chance at it. Lucky for him that he hadn't needed a second shot at it. Mark one for preparedness.

He'd been away from her barely a few hours, and he missed her already. It tore at his gut, but he couldn't do anything but keep the promise he'd made her as he left. He'd get his proof, even if it killed him.

He surprised himself when he tried to think of her as someone else's wife, and couldn't. She was his, whether he deserved her or not. Before, he'd thought it was a purely sexual attraction, and he'd regretted every minute they'd spent together the past two nights.

But now, he was beginning to wonder if there weren't something more to it. He felt something deep inside him stirring, and he pushed it away. There would be a time when he would be able to take a look at his feelings and figure out what he had on his hands.

Until then, he needed to be focused on the task at hand. Distractions were dangerous, for himself and for Mary.

The sun was already dipping on the horizon, when the train pulled into the station. It wouldn't be the least bit polite to call, unannounced, so late in the evening. The trip would need to take another night, though the thought of putting off seeing Mary again burned in his chest.

He set his bag down on the bed and sat back. He was tired, run ragged, exhausted, even. He'd had some of the most exciting nights of his life, the past couple of days. But the constant excitement and anxiety had been taking its toll, the same way it had in Belgium.

For a months, he'd just gotten used to not sleeping, and occasionally closing his eyes for a moment and opening them to find that he'd lost an hour. It had almost seemed normal, after a while.

He'd gotten shot in his leg, and when they offered him an honorable discharge he'd taken it in a heartbeat. He had promised himself that he was done with that part of his life. He went to uni, he'd healed up nicely, and now he almost felt as if he fit in.

It seemed as if the minute he'd been ready to move on with his life, to put that part of his past behind him, the war had come back to get him. He sat back against the headboard of the bed, sized for two, and set his eyes in the darkness. Then he was back in the trenches and getting ready for the trouble that the morning would bring.

When he opened his eyes again, he couldn't remember what time he'd fallen asleep. He couldn't tell what time it was, either, except that the sun had risen and was being inadequately blocked by a thin curtain.

He pushed himself off the bed and straightened his clothes. The mirror showed that he looked shabby, but it wasn't as if he had another set of clothes with him. It had all been left in the Geis house.

Perhaps it could serve as his excuse for returning when he'd talked to Pearl. Then the trap would spring, and he'd finally be able to sleep again.

There was a man behind the counter of the hotel he'd picked, in a uniform and a plastered-on, unconvincing smile.

"I need help finding an address, could you give me directions?"

For a moment, the man didn't register what he was saying, and James almost repeated himself before realization dawned.

"Ah, yes, sir, of course."

James showed him the address, and he gave directions. They were simple, but James had him write them down anyways.

The weather was cool and damp, and with his jacket on it was just right for a walk. He didn't have time to enjoy it, though. He needed to get back to what was important, before she got hurt.

The directions were good. It was a scant thirty minutes' walk, and the place was just where he'd said. Good lad.

When he arrived, James saw that it wasn't actually a single building at all, but rather a line of buildings, all in a row, and over one of the doors was written "Law Office." James's heart stopped when he looked at the door beneath.

Someone had kicked it in, hadn't even bothered to hide it. The frame was utterly destroyed. That the police hadn't arrived yet meant that either it was very recent, or that the police were very slow.

He stood outside the door and called in. He didn't receive an answer. Calling out again, he stepped inside. The front room was a wreck. Papers all across the floor, a table flipped. There was a hole in the wall that was sized for a large man's shoulder.

James frowned. This was all wrong. Pearl had been a secret. Nobody knew except him and Mary. Neither of them would have given it away, and even if they had, James wondered, who could have gotten here before him?

He took a deep breath and looked around the room. Two doors, plus the one he'd taken in. He tried the first and found it locked. The second was a water closet.

There was an office on the end of the row of buildings, and James went inside. A woman was there, reading a magazine, and she didn't look up when he came in.

"Excuse me, is this the landlord's office, for this row of offices?"

She hummed in agreement that it was.

"May I speak to him?"

She set her magazine down unhappily and knocked on the door.

"Yeah?" A voice boomed from behind the door.

"Someone to see you, sir," the woman croaked out with a voice like a toad's.

A moment later, a portly red-faced man opened the door.

"I think there's been a robbery."

"What?" The man said it as if he needed James to repeat it, but he turned and grabbed a ring of keys from the wall and motioned for James to lead the way.

He stepped in cautiously, calling out for a third time, and for a third time there was no answer. The landlord, who James had learned was called Marley, had little patience for these sorts of antics.

"I'm worried there might have been some sort of struggle, the room's in a terrible state. There's a locked room in the back, and I thought perhaps someone might be hurt in there."

Marley gave him a sideways look. A look that asked how he knew this or why he cared. Then he shrugged and unlocked the door. The knob turned, but the door was stuck, as if something were propping it shut. James had to put his shoulder into it before it would move.

There had been something propped against the door. A man in his middle ages, who the landlord identified to police as Pearl Langdon, a lawyer of no particular renown. He'd been shot twice in the chest, and had apparently locked himself into the room.

James had been brought in. They'd thought his story seemed awfully strange, at first. He had to admit that it sounded odd to him, as well. The fact that he had to adjust the truth to keep Mary's name out of it made the story stranger.

In the end, though, he'd had no gun, and the body was still warm when they'd found it. It seemed he'd been shot some time that morning. When James offered that he had been speaking to a concierge forty minutes before he'd spoken to the landlord, and they went to the hotel to confirm, they let him go without much fuss.

James was glad they'd done it that way, because he had a train to catch back to Dover. He didn't know what Oliver Geis was involved in, and he didn't know how he'd found Pearl Langdon.

What James did know, and what sent a chill racing down his spine, was that he wasn't just throwing money or threats around any more. A forty three year old bachelor was lying on a slab somewhere in a morgue in Canterbury.

He was dead because he'd known a Baron named Thomas Geis, and it was possible that Lord Geis had told him some dangerous information.

And to James, the most important thing in the world was the safety of the baron's daughter.