Unlaced Corset (9 page)

17

Mary

Mary sat down and waited for her heart to slow down, and her brain to catch up with what James had just told her. The house had been searched? But why? Even with the knowledge that someone was working against them, to stop the investigation they'd begun—if it could be called that—what could they have hoped to find?

There had been ample time in the week since her father's death. At least four of those days were completely uninterrupted, with her hiding in the Library and pretending not to realize that something was going on. So why now, all of a sudden, had someone taken a renewed interest in the house?

The only answer she could think of was that they had figured something out, and were heading in the right direction. If she had figured something out along with James, that meant that there were still clues in the house somewhere.

The only place, though, that she had found anything was her father's journal. And she'd brought that with her to London. She had thought it would be stupid not to, and now it seemed as if she had been right to think so.

There were the scraps that her father had collected before his death, as well, but they weren't proof of anything at all. They'd had to guess at their meaning, and the guesses were hardly accurate. They were almost certainly not what the burglars had been looking for, she thought.

They were only meaningful along with the journal. So if she was going to find answers, she realized, she was going to need to look through it again.

She'd been distracted from her attempts to decipher the dense text by the discovery of the letter to James, and the subsequent research they had been doing in the study. She hadn't even mentioned that she had it to James. It wasn't exactly a secret, but somehow it felt private. As if it were hers alone.

She had taken it out again when she got back, while she packed the rest of her things back into her armoire, and now she turned to look at it. It looked so ordinary, and yet Mary was afraid of it, now. She couldn't be sure, but she thought that it was probably what had brought down the invasion of her home on her head.

She cracked the spine and read the last pages again, going backward. His "adventures" with this Pearl woman were mentioned almost daily. He certainly had been going into town quite a bit, but she'd assumed it was on business. She put it out of her mind as best she could. After all, it was her father's business, not hers.

Further, they needed to find people that her father was involved in. It was becoming clearer and clearer that they needed to find more people who had known him. If they didn't have the answers, then Roy Stump wouldn't have left town in such a rush, no doubt at the prompting of her uncle's mysterious guest.

She shuddered hard, having already guessed who her uncle had been hosting. There was no way that Davis was anything other than a kind old man. And yet, now that she thought of it, it seemed harder and harder to justify anyone else being involved.

For the past month, he'd mentioned only five names in his journal: Roy, Oliver, Davis, Pearl, and an 'M'—Mary herself, she guessed. It felt odd to read memories of herself, and she did her best to skim over those parts.

A month ago was the first mention of Pearl, and the only mention of her with her name fully written out. She lived in Canterbury, which seemed awfully far to visit a woman. Still, perhaps it was an effort to maintain his local reputation.

He'd gone out to meet her at her house—he'd given an address.

Mary got up and grabbed a pen, scrawling the address on a slip of paper and creasing it. She would need to visit the place, along with James.

Still, there was no mention of who this Pearl was. How had they met? What exactly had driven them together? It all seemed odd, altogether. Her father was a fairly well-known man, and the idea that he would be spending time with some stranger, for no identifiable reason, was unthinkable.

If there had been some formal introduction, then it made more sense. But this time there hadn't been anything like that. Mary frowned.

It wasn't likely that he would have mentioned her before—the use of her name in long-form suggested that it hadn't been written down before. But perhaps there was some clue in the pages before that was more lateral.

She turned the page back, and began reading once again. She could feel her eyes starting to strain from reading by the electric lights, as the sun went down outside, but she didn't let it stop her.

There was a mention, only a page before, of going to meet someone new the next day. They weren't referred to by name, of course. That would have been too clear. She was left only with the implication that they might have been Pearl.

What confused her more, though, was the specifics of the reference. "G2 Nu Ex."

New Ex? What on earth could that mean?

Then it clicked in her mind, and things started falling into place. That was why Mr. Stump hadn't had a will to read, even though her father had realized that he was in danger and might die soon. He used a different executor altogether. Someone else had the will.

Her heart leapt into her throat. This was a big clue: a completely secret executor? If someone were going around and trying to silence anyone connected to her father, then someone who nobody knew about would be able to tell the whole thing.

She tried to blink. It wouldn't do to get her hopes up. She'd only get hurt that way, if she wasn't careful. But it sounded good. It sounded right. This was going to be the big break, the way that they tied everything up in the end.

For the first time in a week, she saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

She marked her page with the address she'd written down and went looking for James.

18

James

James sat down on his bed. It seemed as if every time he thought he could rest his head, something more came up. He'd barely been able to sleep for the past week, between trying to set the Geis house in order and trying to mend fences with Mary. Then... other things.

He had tried not to think too hard about what he'd done with her in London. It probably didn't mean anything. She was still grieving, and he'd taken unfair advantage of that. But he'd been weak, too, and a little drunk. If he'd been in his right mind, he told himself, it wouldn't have happened.

Even though he tried not to think about it, though, it seemed as if he couldn't get it out of his mind, either. The vision of a beautiful goddess naked beneath him, the two of them moving together...

He could feel himself getting hard at the very thought of it, and he tried desperately to banish the image from his mind. More work would distract him adequately, but he was completely exhausted. He'd need his wits about him for the days to come.

Even though it was early, he started stripping off his waistcoat and shoes to prepare for bed. He'd have time to figure things out in the morning, and with some luck he would get a good night's sleep.

Then a knock came at his door, and a voice called out his name, and he knew that sleep would have to wait.

He opened the door and found himself face-to-face with the goddess of his visions. She had a strange look on her face, a mix of excitement and apprehension.

"Yes?"

"I've got something to tell you," she said. The coy tone in her voice was unmistakable.

James took a deep breath. They needed to figure out what was going on between them. No, that was wrong. There wasn't anything going on between them at all. The only thing between them was a scared young woman and wishful thinking.

"So do I."

"I'll go first," Mary chirped, and pushed past him into the room without waiting for confirmation. She threw down the book he'd seen onto the bed.

"What's this?"

"I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out and say it. My father kept a journal, and I found it after he died." She looked at him, searching for some sign that he was going to throw up a complaint, and when he didn't she continued. "I was looking for some information on anyone who might have known my father before he died."

James didn't respond immediately. This was going somewhere, but he didn't want to jump to conclusions about where. Mary continued watching his face for some reaction, and evidently didn't get the one she wanted, but she continued anyways.

"And, well, I wasn't entirely honest with you."

"Do tell," James answered dryly. She was on a roll, and he hardly needed to say anything other than to confirm that he was still listening.

"Those papers—I knew who 'P' was, as well." Mary did her best to look sheepish, but she wasn't capable of it. Rather, she just barely managed to blunt the edge of her defiance, and came off like she was daring him to say something.

He didn't. Once again, he waited for her to continue on her own.

"I had thought," she continued, "that Pearl—that's the name, you see—had been some sort of... lady, and that my father had been calling on her socially."

"But now you don't think so?"

"No. I have an address for this 'Pearl' person, and we should visit them post-haste. Moreover, though, I think Pearl is a lawyer that my father hired to execute his will."

As she was speaking, she had been moving slowly towards James, and now her body pressed into him, and she was looking up into his eyes with a glimmer in them that he recognized.

James was feeling light-headed. He couldn't breathe, this close to her, and he felt as intoxicated as he had the night before, without a drop of alcohol. The revelation was a heady one. Though he knew they were on the right track, it had seemed as if they had completely exhausted their resources.

Of course, he hadn't counted on Mary to have resources that he'd never accounted for. That changed the playing field considerably, and they both knew it.

James tried to keep his expression neutral. They both needed to keep a level head about this. It could be nothing, and he could know nothing. But if the relationship had been kept a secret, that was an important thing to remember.

He'd been hired by Thomas Geis as an outsider, but now it seemed that he'd hired at least one other. If he had intended to confide in one, it stood to reason that he would have confided in the other. When he finally spoke, his voice trembled with the effort of containing his excitement.

"And you kept this book with you at all times? They couldn't have found it when they searched the house?"

"It went with me to London," she said, beaming.

She'd been worried, he saw. Worried that he'd be angry for her having not trusted him. He pulled her closer still, holding her in his arms, and smelling the floral scent of the perfume she wore. Then he felt her hand moving against his pants, in a dangerous place.

He was already hard. It was difficult to be close to her for long without having an uncomfortable reminder of how he felt about her. She looked up at him, her eyes heavy-lidded.

"Can we celebrate now?"

Every part of his brain screamed to tell her no, to stop her. He pressed his lips against hers, instead, and pressed his aching need into her hand.

James had had scant few chances to loose a woman's corset, but he proved more capable than he had imagined at undressing Mary, and she laid back on the bed, propped up on her elbows, and smiled at him with a welcoming glint in her eyes.

He'd meant to take off his own clothes, but seeing her lying there he found himself distracted by her beauty, the way her breasts lay on her chest, each tipped by a rosy bud of a nipple. He crossed the room in a single long stride and picked her up easily to pull a breast into his mouth.

He heard her gasp and pulled her nipple between his teeth lightly, to be rewarded with a soft moan. James could feel himself straining against his trousers, but he stopped himself and pressed a finger against her wetness. It went in easily, and he started probing deep inside her.

Mary pushed against his hand, slowly at first, and then when he added a second finger to the first, with increasing vigor. James kissed her breasts, and then her neck. When her body tensed underneath him, he pressed his lips against hers and kissed her deeply.

Mary lay back on the bed, panting and staring at the ceiling, and then he started to undress, coming up to stand between her parted thighs. Then he pressed himself against her and took her.

She wrapped her legs around him as they moved together, both of their breathing coming in ragged bursts between kisses and whimpered moans. James could feel the pressure building up, the feeling that any moment he was going to lose himself. It was all he could do to pull out and spill himself on her belly.

Mary reached up and grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him in close for another kiss. James grabbed a handkerchief and wiped himself off of her, then lay down beside her.

Lord, he thought, but she was beautiful.

They pulled the covers aside and lay down beside one another, still naked, and he held her in his arms.

It was too late, now. Too late to tell her that they couldn't do this again, that she was better off without him. He teased a hardening nipple between his fingertips.

It was going to be a long night.