Judith Ivory (11 page)

For one cheerful moment, she thought that was what he
intended, because he turned around and came over. But he only walked smack between the chair legs again, her legs, and bent over her, leaning his palms once more on the wood seat at either side of her hips. He frowned down into her face as if she were a complicated conundrum. Then told her from straight overhead, “Your hands are tied at the small of your back. Arch your lumbar. You’re in the most comfortable position possible.”

Emma made a twist of her mouth. “Tied up a lot of women, have you?”

He raised one eyebrow, whatever that meant.

“A bit odd, are you?” She was being sarcastic, trying to taunt him into a sense of guilt. While perhaps bursting any bubble in herself of misguided, soft-hearted concern for a man with sad eyes and complicated wealth.

Though his sexual inclinations were perhaps not the wisest of barbs to do either. He looked down at her, speculative. “Difficult to say.” He actually answered the question seriously. “Legally? Decidedly. But then British laws on the subject are so guilt-ridden I’m surprised we’ve propagated as a race.” He made a small, grim smile. “How delightful we’re having this conversation. And what is it
you
like?”

Emma’s tongue grew fat. It wouldn’t move in her mouth.

He continued, “Me, I have no limiting fetishes—though neither do I have apparently the usual boundaries. Mostly, my appetites seem to be rather like those of someone who can eat and enjoy anything, provided it’s eaten in excellent company.” This amused him. He lifted an eyebrow again. “So to speak.” He added, “The pleasure, I would gauge, has more to do with the woman, the intimacy between us, than any particular act per se.” He made a small shrug of one shoulder, barely a movement. “Though I’m rather fond of the main event.” He left an intentional pause. “So? How do we match up?”

Emma stared wide-eyed, openmouthed, unable to hide how perfectly scandalized she was by his dissertation. And
changed the subject. “Do you really have seventy-seven servants?”

“More or less.” He made a shake of his head. “It’s a mistake. I don’t want them. My uncle had too many. My father had more still, while I had quite a few of my own. They accumulated. I seem to have all of them now, and I can’t sack people who have been in my family’s employ, some for years, just because—” He broke off, his brow lifting as his round, dark eyes widened for a dismayed second: He didn’t know why. It annoyed him that he couldn’t fire them, but he couldn’t.

Well, Emma thought, what a surprising little soft spot in this otherwise blackguard of a human being.

“What do you
want
from me?” she asked.

He hesitated. From overhead—staring down, leaning, while he stood between the legs of a woman he’d personally trussed up—the man eyed her now as if
she
were the one not to trust. Then he said, “I told you: my uncle. You said no.” He chewed his lip a moment, then offered, “Of course, the idea here was to influence your decision, encourage you to reconsider. You have?”

She said nothing, a mild horror dawning over her. She hadn’t. And if she never did, what did he mean to do with her? Could she lie here and simply wait him out?

He took her silence for encouragement and smiled ruefully down into her face. “Exactly
how
you’d help,” he continued with a small shrug, “I must say, remains a little vague at this point—”

He broke off, as if losing track in a quick glance. His eyes skimmed her bosom, her lapful of skirts, her threadbare thighs, spread, as it were, enough that he could stand comfortably between them. This survey took less than two seconds, but it put her unmistakably in mind of his offer in front of the bank: Some of his ideas weren’t too vague.

She fidgeted, trying to settle herself with what latitude left her.

He continued, “My uncle Leonard took some things.” He
made again that quick distracted scan of her, as if he were trying not to, but it kept coming back—his suggestive interest without doubt included her incapacitation: He liked it. “So I was thinking”—he raised his gaze slowly, reluctantly, all the way to her face, that ironic eyebrow of his rising simultaneously, till she was staring up again into that pure upper-class snottiness he could convey in the proverbial flick of an eye—“given your tenacity and abilities for exacting justice by circuitous means, that we might—”

Might what? How curious. He balked, stopped.

He gave a pat to the chair seat and stood up, towering once more up into the room. Absently, he remarked, “It could be a little illegal, I’d venture.”

“So is tying women to chairs,” she pointed out. No, there was some other reason he hesitated, one he didn’t want to pronounce.

He jerked his gaze down to her. “Tying thieves to chairs isn’t.” He spoke with such earnest indignity that, blast him, Emma herself was momentarily struck by his point. She’d been thinking of
innocent
women, she supposed.

Finally, in a rush he made the leap. “I want us to take back two of the things my uncle took from my house in Yorkshire.”

Robbery? He wanted her help in robbing his uncle? Yet she couldn’t get past the word
house
. She murmured, “Your ‘house’ has, I think, almost four hundred rooms.”

He nodded, unfazed, even agreeing. “Indeed. Dunord is the largest house I own or ever have. In any event, my uncle took many things. I don’t care about most of them. Just two: one is extremely valuable, the other merely puzzling, a trinket of personal significance to me. He denies it, but I know he has them. I want both back. Without sending my only living relative to jail, if possible, while not incurring his wrath either—if I simply took them, he’d only come after me. For something this complicated, I need help, and I’m fairly sure you’d know how to give it. We could—what did you call it? We could run that store or wire or whatever it is—”

Emma let out a short, surprised burst of giddy laughter, unstoppable.

“I thought you were frightened,” he said drolly, staring down at her.

“Hys-hysteria, I th-think now,” she got out. Then, “We can’t.”

“Why?” He shifted his weight, his upper calf coming against one chair leg, brushing against her ankle. “You can do it. You sent my secretaries away, didn’t you? One could have recognized you, while you didn’t want the other filling in. You wanted the job of secretary that day at the bank. You arranged it.”

She nodded, still laughing. “I did. But, honestly, we couldn’t possibly run the Wire or Big Store. My heavens, that takes dozens of people and hundreds of pounds to set up.”

He made a disconcerted face. “Then something else. You’re full of invention. I know. I’ve been the victim of it.”

She shook her head. No. He couldn’t be asking her to go back into confidence swindles. She’d already said she wouldn’t and meant it. They were wrong. They were dangerous. She wasn’t even sure she’d remember how, when it came to the bigger, more complicated setups. “I—I won’t—”

He tilted his head, giving her his full, intent consideration. “If it’s money, I’ll just run whatever more required through that account you’ve set up for us. How much—”

“None! No! God, no! You’ve taken out too much already—”

“If you don’t help, you realize, I will hand you over to the sheriff. Given the amount we’ve run through to date, and the fact that it all points to you, I’d say you could end up doing ten years.”

“I—I—” She frowned up. “This is serious,” she said. “Don’t joke.” Why wasn’t he listening?

He bent low over the chair again, hands braced once more on the seat edge. “Will you look at how and where you’re lying at present, Miss Muffin or whatever your name is?” He leaned a little closer, elbows bending, as he descended to
ward her, down further over her. She looked directly into large, dark eyes that narrowed. “Do I seem to be joking? What part of this do you find funny?”

“I—I—I don’t want to go to jail.” She would have faked a sob, except a real one came out too suddenly, taking her by surprise. She caught her breath, hiccupped. Emma honestly didn’t want to go to jail. Honestly, absolutely, truly.

Jail was where Joanna, Zach’s sister, died. Jail was why they stopped their games in London. Confidence games operating on the edge of the law were hard to catch and more difficult still to prosecute, since the victims were often embroiled in the dishonesty as deeply as those laying the game. But once caught and convicted, jail sentences—rather like sheep sentences in Yorkshire—tended to be steeper than the crime because authorities were so blooming happy to have hold finally of a slippery culprit. Joanna had been dragged kicking and screaming to what had amounted to a life sentence—in her short instance, turning out to be exactly a year and three months.

There were many excellent reasons to lead an honest life, but here Emma was up against one of the more convincing, one she’d been sure once she’d never look in the eye again: punishment.

“I—I suppose, I would do pretty much anything to avoid jail.” Dear Father in Heaven, she was going to rob his uncle with him, unless she could think of a way out.

He blinked, looked perplexed, then distracted again. He asked, “Truly?”

“Oh, yes.” She had to convince him. “Positively.”

He glanced at the bed. He didn’t mean to, and he caught himself. But for one instant it was there: clear. He shook his head, a little jerk, as if he could shake the idea out.

“Except that,” Emma said quickly, the back of her head pressed to the chair slat, full alarm.

He was going to pretend she had it all wrong, that that flicker of his eyes hadn’t happened: that he wouldn’t con
sider for an instant making her female body, her sovereignty over it, a part of their bargain for her getting up off this chair and staying out of jail.

She wouldn’t humor him. “You should know,” she explained, patiently, explicitly, “I—I don’t sleep with men for money or any other reason, except that
I
might choose to.” It was a lifelong decision she was proud of, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had opportunity or as if rationalizing wouldn’t have made matters easier at various points in her life. As now.

“Slept with a lot, have you?” He looked curious, not disappointed.

“No.” In fact, one, when it came down to it. Her husband, when he was able, and, years and years ago,
almost
with a boy of seventeen. She pressed her mouth closed, a taut line, and stared up, vigilant.

“You’re going to jail,” he pronounced and stood again, dusting his hands on his thighs. He pointed at her—“You wait here”—and snorted.

A joke. Told to a woman bound hand and foot to a chair upside down on the floor. “Very funny.” When he walked out of her line of vision, though, anxiety got the better of her. “Where-wh-where are you going? Don’t! Oh, don’t—”

“Don’t find the bloody sheriff? Don’t have you hauled away as you deserve?”

“Yes. No. Right, don’t—” Quickly, defensively, “I’ll tell. I’ll tell them you took the larger amount.”

“I’ll show them the wig. They saw you today. They know this room number. There’s nothing to link me. I’m just here trying to stop you. It’s all yours, Miss Muffin—what
is
your name, by the way?”

“Emma.”

“Emma?” He came back into view, looking again at her upside from his tall height overhead. “How lovely.” He studied her, really studied her.

Till she looked away. She had to fight another odd little
moment of humanity, connection, something…something she didn’t want to feel for him.

He added, “It suits you better.”

How would he know? she told herself. Then, aloud, suggested, “I—I, ah—I have an idea for your uncle.” Oh, anything to get out of this mess.

He frowned. After several long seconds of silence, he said, “I’m listening.”

“Wha—” She couldn’t say it at first. Oh, she hated what she was about to offer. “Wha—what did he take? How much?”

“There’s no recouping the money. I told you, that’s not the issue.” He shrugged. “Besides, my father was a cruel man; his younger brother no doubt took the brunt at times. Leonard is entitled to something. Just not the viscountcy nor, willy-nilly, whatever his greedy mind might happen to land upon.” The pause he left said that the two things—yes, that’s what he’d said, “things”—would be much more difficult to recoup than money. He told her, “Though he denies it, Leonard took a statue. I know he has it; I want it back. He went to Dunord before I could get there and took a lot, but the statue is dear to me, not to mention worth a fortune. And he also took”—he laughed—“the damnedest thing: He took a pair of my mother’s earrings, the only pair I ever remember her wearing. I want both returned to me, the jewelry and the statue.” He raised that eyebrow. “Can you get them?”

“Yes.” No. Who knew? She’d promise anything at this point. Time to make it sound real. “We could do, I suppose, a poke with a send.”

The authority of the two words,
poke
and
send
, made him grow still—cautiously regardful. She had him. From upside down, his shadowed eyes focused on her with new interest.

A poke with a send. Could she do it? Did she want to? That was the real point. There were a dozen very good reasons not even to begin. For one, the last time she’d done a
poke with a send, four people had ended up shot, herself one of them. “Th-though I can’t just—I mean, I have responsibilities. My sheep—”

“Who’s taking care of them now?”

“My neighbor. Though I did everything this morning before I left. And I bake bread—”

“We’ll have one of my chefs do it.”

“For half the village—”

“They have a lot of new ovens.”

“And a cat—”

“Whoever looks after the sheep—”

“I do other things—”

“Make a list.”

“Some only I can do,” she insisted, frowning, resistant, plaintive.

It won her only a sideways pull of his mouth. “No one is irreplaceable, Emma.”

Emma. They were even. They’d each appropriated—inappropriately—the other’s given name.

“Make a list,” he repeated. “How long will it take to do this—what did you call it? A poke”—he paused, amused; he liked poking—“and a what?”