Unlaced Corset (3 page)

5

Mary

The sun was already streaming in through her window when Mary Geis rose. It still felt odd to her, and she had rolled over several times to go back to sleep when she woke at times that felt natural and normal to her.

She put up a front of indifference and laziness, but beneath all that she wanted to sleep in even still. The reality of her life after her father's death had been all too bleak, and the chance to avoid even a little bit of it by closing her eyes was a welcome distraction.

She dressed quickly, without Rebecca. She wasn't in the bed beside hers, and wasn't waiting in the hall for her, so clearly something must have come up. It wasn't as if Mary couldn't dress herself, after all.

Afterward she made a bee-line for the library, as she had been doing for days. She kept her head down. The truth was that she was still tired, even after all the sleep she'd gotten already. She didn't want to look or think too hard until after she'd had a cup of tea and been reading a bit.

She tried to forget the day before, and the powerful, attractive young man who had barged his way into her house by opening her book to where she'd marked it the night before. It took her only a moment to find her place once more, but reading was slow going. For every sentence she read, it seemed as if she had to read it twice more to comprehend It, and then start again at the top of the paragraph to understand a word of it.

When she finally set the book down with a weary sigh, the clock showed nearly noon, and she'd barely made it five pages. What was she to do?

She looked out the window and tried to figure things out again. This new steward, Mr. Poole. He was far too young to have any experience, she knew. That he'd been in the army only served to cement it. Perhaps he knew nothing at all about running a house.

If he were sent by whoever plotted against her family, it would only make sense that they would be the type who had been in the army. He was big enough to be dangerous, and yet he had manners enough to fit in among the servants her father had kept.

With a frown, Mary noted that she hadn't seen Davis around for the entire day. That in itself was not unusual—he had spent days before serving her father, and she was relegated to one of the maids for service. But she was the only one in the house, now, who would have any sort of need for a butler.

"Davis," she called out experimentally.

She waited a moment for the sound of the door to open. Nothing came. She waited another moment longer and then stood. What on earth could have happened, that he wasn't here? She let out a long, tired sigh.

Perhaps she should stay here. Whatever it was, surely he would be back before long, and she would look awfully foolish for having worried. She sat back and opened the book again, but she didn't read. She looked at the open pages blankly, and then pushed her chair back and stood once more. She should have been notified, at least, if he were going to go out.

That she wasn't was reason enough for concern. She marched out of the room. Whatever was going on, she would get to the bottom of it. Rebecca wasn't waiting outside, of course. And she wasn't in the attic, sewing, either.

Mary's chest felt tight, and her vision started to dim. Whatever was going on, it was bad. She began to think that perhaps, for the first time in her memory, she was well and truly alone.

If her fears were well-founded, and someone was planning something untoward towards her family, she was now well and truly alone. She couldn't do anything at all to prevent it.

She nearly stumbled down two flights of stairs on her way to the kitchens. They were empty, every pot and pan in its place. The sink was completely clean, the floor sparkling. When the cooks had left, they had done their jobs in cleaning up after the place.

She leaned against the counter and tried to still the beating of her heart and slow her breathing, which came in harsh, ragged bursts that utterly failed to give her any sort of sustenance. She needed to get out, to escape. She didn't care about the house any more. She just needed to feel safe.

As she breathed, Mary tried to think. If there was something going on, then this was the final coup de grace. What's more, she realized as a pit opened up in her stomach, there would be no escape. Not for a young woman, alone and unarmed.

She began going, in her mind, what her options were. The servants seemed to be gone, arranging for her to be left alone for some nefarious purpose. The new man, the "steward"—or perhaps "assassin"—was the only question in her mind. He was not part of the house's regular staff. And if he were still around, then he would be the instrument of her destruction. Of that much, she was certain.

She took a deep breath to steady herself and closed her eyes. She folded her hands in prayer, and for a long moment prayed to Holy Mary for her protection. She touched her breast a moment, and then began the long, perhaps final, climb up the stairs to the main floor.

The house was silent save for the sound of her shoes, clicking sharply on the floor, and with the absolute quiet it seemed to echo throughout. The sound was lonely and seemed to create a feeling of finality, one that was mirrored in Mary's heart.

At last she stood at the study door. It was closed, but when she pressed her ear against it, she heard nothing. No scratching of a pen, no one walking back and forth inside, no shuffling of papers. Finally, she knocked lightly; if she was quiet enough, she hoped, nobody would answer.

But after a long moment, as she held her breath, the door did open.

A big man in a waistcoat, with close-cropped hair, broad shoulders, and strong, attractive features stood behind it. He had a reproachful look on his face as he looked down at Mary.

"Where has everyone gone? What have you done with Davis and Rebecca?"

He inhaled a deep breath through his nose and the square posture of his shoulders softened slightly.

"I've sent them home, Miss Geis."

Mary recoiled as if she'd been slapped. He didn't attack her outright, and his hands were empty. If he were an assassin, he ought to get it over with. Her only hope, if it could be called that, lay in continuing to feign ignorance.

"Whatever for, Mr. Poole?"

"They couldn't be kept, Miss."

Mary bit her tongue to keep from speaking too soon. She needed to think. He was big enough to snap her in half without thinking. Like a twig for kindling.

How much longer could the charade go on for? She was tired. Tired of the fear, tired of the lies. She closed her eyes for a moment. What right did he have to do any of this? Her face twisted in anger, and she slapped him with the full weight of her body.

James made no effort to stop her. Her hand stung, she thought, more than his face appeared to. She slapped him again, with her other hand.

"Well," she said, defiant. "Do your worst."

James Poole looked at her for a moment, confused. He looked at her face, and then over her shoulder. Then he frowned.

"If that's all, ma'am. I need to get back to work."

Mary looked up at him, her face angrier and angrier.

"Very well, then."

She wouldn't give him the satisfaction, she decided. Whatever happened now, she wouldn't be able to stop. But if he weren't going to admit to it, then she wouldn't reveal that she knew. The door was closing as she thought of one last, closing jibe.

"And Mr. Poole?"

The door stopped, and opened up once again. James Poole stood on the other side, filling the door frame and obscuring her view of the room inside.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Don't ever do anything of this sort without my express permission again. Is that clear?"

"I apologize, ma'am. It won't happen again."

"Good," she said, turning on her heel and walking away.

Why did he torture her like this? What motive could he have? She was right there before him, and if he were going to do her harm, that had been as good an opportunity as one could hope for.

If he hadn't, though, then why had he been so secretive and so unilateral in dismissing her household servants?

It made no sense. But Mary knew one thing. There was a hidden advantage that he hadn't thought of when he had tried to get her alone. She was free, now. Free to pursue the mystery of her father's death away from prying eyes, because there was only one person in the entire house to stop her.

6

James

James sat back, not for the first time that day, and tried to think for a moment about what he could possibly do next. He had thought that he'd reached the end of his rope several times before. Each time, with a little bit of thought, he'd found a new avenue to pursue. Each time had been a dead-end.

He had expected things to be a challenge. If the finances of Lord Geis had been easily deciphered, and his problems solved trivially, then there would have been no reason to hire James in the first place. What worried him more than that, though, was that there didn't seem to be any issue at all.

He had checked carefully, several times. The numbers didn't add up whatsoever. It seemed that the house's daily expenses were fairly carefully tracked; each week, hidden somewhere in the tomes that Lord Geis had kept, he had taken down the food costs and wages paid. He'd marked taxes each month.

And all of that money was more than compensated for by his real estate trading. In theory, the house should not only have been solvent, but should have been fairly well-off.

The answer, he had decided long ago, was in the scraps.

He had a few guesses as to what they could have meant, of course. The first letter more than likely signified a fellow's name; the numbers more than likely referred to debts incurred by the named party.

He had acted on that assumption and tallied the total on a separate sheet. They seemed to add up fairly closely. The problem was the sheer amounts. To one of the men, he paid out very frequently, and never was paid back. The sums were too small to be overly concerned with, but given that there were no dates on any of the scraps it was as likely to have been near-constant as it was to have been an occasional couple of pounds.

To another, he paid out vast sums that seemed to be paid back…at some point,  if he guessed at the timeline correctly. To a third, he paid out regularly, the same few pounds each time. There was never a second number on the note; he must have either been collecting money from the man, or been paying him "off the books," so to speak.

There was a clear picture being painted by the notes, and the picture was of a household that was being crushed not by their expenses, but rather by the charitable nature of its head. The answer was nearly obvious, but it was there that the trail stopped.

All he would need to do to get things back into order would be to collect on the debts that Geis had lent out, and the bank should be more than satisfied with the account statements.

Therein lied the rub.

None of the names were ever more than a single letter, written in the midst of a cryptic string of letters and numbers that he could only guess at the meaning of. That they got him to within a few dozen pounds when he summed them, meant he was almost certainly on the right track. But that meant nothing if he couldn't identify the men in the notes.

James tried to steel himself for what he knew would have to come next. There was only one person in the entire world who would know the meaning of these notes; he was lying in a beautiful plot in the churchyard. James had made a point of going to see it before he sent the servants away.

After he had examined the expenses, he had found that there were virtually none that were perfectly unnecessary. His only concern had been that with only one person living in the house, the personal staff was fairly massive. With her father alive, the Geis family had entertained fairly regularly, and the staff paid for itself in those evenings.

With her father gone, Mary Geis received no guests, and rarely left her library. When she did, it was for food or to sleep. Or, it seemed, to snoop on his work.

So he had done what he had to do in order to keep the household accounts in the black: he notified the help that, effective immediately, they would not be paid until a new head of household had arrived. Since he was taking no wage, there was no reason for him to leave. Indeed, it would only help to show his commitment if he were to stay for no pay.

It had been an overstep, he knew, but he hadn't counted on her reaction. Mary seemed, for all the world, to be nearly as combative as anyone he had ever known.

He massaged his knee; it still ached, sometimes, even though he had learned to hide the limp he'd walked with for months after his return to university. He hadn't even brought the cane from his flat in London, and he hadn't needed it once. Now he was beginning to regret it.

All the sitting made it hurt when he did have need to walk, and there was no hostler to prepare a horse for him. The family, it seemed, hadn't felt it worthwhile to purchase a horseless carriage, so on the occasions that he had needed to go into town he had to walk for the better part of an hour.

He rubbed it for a moment, and then ignored the pain and pushed himself up from the chair. He picked up a few of the scraps of paper from the stacks he had carefully separated them into and slipped them into his pocket. Then he steeled himself for a battle that he knew he couldn't win, and set off in search of Mary Geis.

She was sitting in the library. He wasn't sure why, but it surprised him to see that she was keeping to her routine even once the servants were gone. He opened the door and, seeing her inside, waited for her to invite him in.

She didn't. He waited a little longer, and she ignored him. He let out a cough; nothing. He let out a long, deep sigh and stepped through the threshold into the room that she had claimed as her territory. He had already done quite a bit of encroaching on her, and now he would have to do it again.

His only defense was that his work was absolutely vital to the continued prosperity she seemed to so enjoy.

Having stepped inside, he steeled himself against the onslaught that was sure to come, but none did. Instead, she continued to stare intently at the book in her lap. He could smell the perfume she wore, even several meters away, and it was nearly as intoxicating as her beauty. If only, he thought, before he caught himself.

He took another step towards her, and then another, and then he stood at the desk where she sat and loomed over her. He could see that she hadn't turned the page since he had walked through the door, nearly five minutes. As if she were reading his mind, she turned the page slowly.

For a long time, he waited for a response that did not come. He could see a stiffness developing in her shoulders, and he knew that whether she acknowledged him or not, she was nearly as acutely aware of his presence as he was of hers.

"Miss Geis?" His voice was soft, almost tender. It surprised him; he had hoped to maintain his professional tone as long as he could, in spite of her preternatural beauty.

She ignored him, and he repeated her name once more, harder. More like he had hoped to sound initially. Like someone who could not be ignored.

"What do you need, Mr. Poole? Can you not see that I'm busy? Or do you need to dismiss my books, as well?"

Having grown silent, she looked up at him.

"I'm sorry if I've offended you, Ma'am, but—"

"Oh, sorry, are you?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "So you're going to set my house back in order, then?"

"If this is about your help—"

"You had no right, Mr. Poole. You may have been hired by my father; I'll allow that, but you're not in charge of this house, and you're not in charge of me."

"If you want me to re-hire your servants, Miss Geis, I'm afraid I can't do that."

"And if I told you to leave, and allow me to do it for you?"

James inhaled sharply. He couldn't afford to lose this opportunity, he reminded himself.

"I—" He stopped himself and started over. "I have been going over your father's books, Miss, and needed some assistance in deciphering some rather… arcane text. You would have known your father best, and if anyone could make heads or tails of what he's written, then it would be you. I would only need an hour or two of your time—"

"Why on earth would I help you, Mr. Poole? You've done nothing but throw the house into disorder, and you're not even capable of balancing an accounts book?" Mary closed her book and stood up. She had a defiant expression, and James thought that he would like very much to kiss her until it came off. "Don't be absurd, sir. Get out of my way."