Judith Ivory (5 page)

She made her best sweet-fluttering smile up into the shadows of his face—dark coloring, that was all she could be sure of—her fluster entirely concocted. Then he spoke, and her mouth came open.

“Are you al-l-l right?” The sentence—in a smooth, deep voice, rich—had the slowest, most rhythmic melody she’d ever heard out a man’s mouth.

She blinked. What? She’d lost her train of thought. “I—um—” Oh, yes. “I’m fine.” She tried to gather herself, while patting the back of her dress, brushing her skirts down over her rump. There was an odd little place at her low back where his gloved palm had pressed, the pressure having left a lingering sensation—the way, if one stared at a light, then looked off, for a few seconds one saw a luminous halo over everything else.

She said honestly, “Goodness, if you hadn’t caught me, I’d have gone sprawling—”

“Yes. I’m so sorry I—”

“No, no, my fault—”

“Mine,” he insisted.

“No, I wasn’t watching—”

He made a nod, a kind of gracious bow of acquiescence that immediately contradicted itself: “My fault en
tire
ly.” Again the slight protraction. “I hope I didn’t hurt you”—there followed a kind of measured pause before he said—“unintentionally.”

She giggled. The delay gave his apology a possible second meaning—indeed would he truly not mind hurting her, so long as he meant to? “My fault. I backed into you,” she insisted, then found herself laughing. Nervously.

He stared. She took in what she could of his features beneath the hat brim, and for a moment all but wanted to take back the word
handsome
. His face was more…magnetic. Striking. Or perhaps
handsome
was the word, since there was not a pretty feature anywhere, his visage starkly masculine: strong, angular planes, an aquiline nose like the beak of an eagle though as thin as the blade of a knife, with a break at
the bridge, a tiny deviation that drew one’s gaze to deep-set eyes, with irises, she suspected, that even in full light would be as black as night.

She had the complete attention of these eyes: the eerie impression that he was aware of the smallest shift in her skirts, the tiniest lift of her shoulder. Yet he answered with calm, near stoic, detachment, “We neither one were watching. But you’re all right?”

His voice. It was so low and fluid: mellifluous. Utterly mesmerizing. His slow vowels and syllables rang neat, controlled—it seemed almost incidental that they were so perfectly public-school British upper class he could have been a textbook example of the Queen’s English well-spoken. While Emma found herself waiting for another example of…what? The odd hesitations in his speech? He paused, didn’t he? Was it an esthetic? A compensation for a mild speech problem? For unease? Shyness? What? Where was the curious rhythm she’d heard at first? Or thought she’d heard?

And why were they still standing here?

Oh. “My, um—my pen,” she said, holding out her hand. Only, of course, her hand was empty; she’d dropped the item in question. She glared down at the carpet. “It’s on the floor somewhere, I think. I was looking for it when—”

He bent immediately—they bent together—but the pen was nowhere. Emma knelt, more and more discombobulated, half-wishing she’d stayed in her chair. The blooming pen had to be here somewhere. It was probably under the folds of his coat, which pooled so copiously it took over the carpet’s center medallion.

What a coat. Its charcoal gray wool—no, as she lifted an edge by his boot, its fabric wasn’t wool exactly. It was lighter, more supple somehow. Cashmere perhaps, though even that didn’t seem quite right, not silky enough in texture. Ooh, la, his coat was fine. And, in point of fact, its hem, cuffs,
and lapel—silvery white fur mottled with light and dark gray—weren’t trim exactly. They were overflow. The coat was
lined
with the stuff: lined through and through with the softest, thickest, silvery, speckled fur she’d ever set eyes or fingertips upon. She couldn’t get over the extravagance.

At least the money for the lamb, she could safely assume, would not be missed.

While, Oh, my lord, she thought, and, What animal? she wondered. She couldn’t name the fur, so seldom did she see it. She couldn’t stop brushing a finger, a knuckle into the hem or up underneath, ostensibly looking for her pen. All she found though—

She straightened up onto her knees immediately. “Oh, no.” Ink. She lifted the bottom of the coat, the mark of her pen having been there: a black ink splotch the size of her fist on the fur.

“It will”—he said, as she hung on the low-voiced word while it seemed to take an eternity to leave his mouth—“come out,” he finished.

“It won’t. It’s India ink.” How on God’s earth was she to fix his coat?

And why try? another voice asked inside her. The stupid sheep-murdering scoundrel didn’t deserve a perfect coat: He’d certainly made a mess of her lamb’s.

How annoying to find his stature, his speech, his face, his blessed clothes interesting, beautiful. When they should only serve to remind her of how difficult he was to contact, how hard it was to discuss with him any disagreement, how many times she had been turned away by others, his minions: how many people stood between him and anything he didn’t wish to deal with.

Your nervy bum
, she reminded herself.
Mung beans. Local squabbling.

Then found herself being drawn upward by her elbows, his thumbs resting in the bends of her arms—and she knew it
felt wonderful, despite herself. A capable, powerful man pulling her up to her feet, paying her so much attention. She was aware she liked it, and so was he. That was what he was watching; he was gauging her interest in him—

No, no, she told herself. The idea made her giddy to contemplate. The irony overwhelmed. The man she was going to take for fifty pounds by the end of the day seemed struck enough by her she could have worked him over for a hundred fifty. A thousand fifty. If she could have kept her own head long enough. If she had wanted to do it.

If the whole notion of taking him for anything at all didn’t—for no explicable reason—suddenly, mildly unsettle her all at once.

They stood up, and his coat dropped back down around him with a waft of that warm, faintly Eastern scent. The fabric held a rich, spicy fragrance; frankincense, myrrh. While Emma was left to stare bewilderedly at the floor, a “stenographer” without a pen.

She murmured, “I—I’m the, um”—she actually stammered—“the, um, temporary amanuensis—”

He said nothing. For one uncanny second, she thought, He has difficulty with English. It’s not his first language. Yet that would make little sense. Wherever else he’d been, he’d been raised up the road from her till the age of six.

She continued, “Provided by the bank, of course,” she said boldly. “Since we understand your amanuensis was delayed.” Now everyone thought the other had hired her, and gentlemen didn’t dirty themselves, bless them, with discussions of filthy money when the matter had already been settled. She pointed toward her coat. “I, ah—I was just getting a new nib for my pen, when—well—” She couldn’t think where to go with the rest of the sentence.

Behind her somewhere, someone cleared his throat, while before her the viscount’s gaze remained steady. In the shadows of the brim of his top hat, he had the eyes of an Arab, large, heavy-lidded eyes, sad somehow, the whites
glowing in his dark face: the eyes of a snake charmer or rug salesman who hawked his wares in the streets of Baghdad. Unfathomable.

As if to further the illusion, like a magician, with a turn of his wrist at the end of his black-gloved fingers, he produced her pen, worn nib up. “Yours?” he said. The question was rhetorical—a bass-deep assertion spoken so softly the word wouldn’t have carried two feet: just for her.

“Aah.” She blinked, opened her mouth, then could only answer, “Well.” Still nodding her head, “Thank you.” She took the pen, then attempted to smile sweetly, though her efforts faltered.

His face remained stoic, contemplating hers: keen interest without a hint of returned friendliness, not a speck. Though finally he said more than one sentence, a huge outpouring for him, and his speech demonstrated once and for all its odd cadence. “You are
all
right then, I take it? For a moment, I thought I had
mowed
you down. You seem perfect though, after all, no harm done
I
can see.” He lingered over certain words, a rhythm that was almost predictable, like a kind of poetry. It was indeed some sort of speech impairment, yet it sounded beautiful to Emma. So beautiful she was half-afraid she might inadvertently imitate it.

She had to be careful as she answered, “I’m fine.” Then she coached herself to a cheerfulness she didn’t quite feel. “And I’ll be right there.” She indicated the table. “As soon as I fetch my new nib.”

With that, she left him behind, walking at a good pace to her coat on the wall across the room, then digging into its pocket with a kind relief. Oh, she felt glad to be free of him, happy in fact she wasn’t sitting near the man—

Then she was.

When she returned to the long table, she found the viscount—Stuart, she staunchly told herself—putting the finishing touches to his own arrangement:
You sit here. You sit there. Here, you take that chair.
He moved everyone down,
including her, so he could seat himself between the bank’s governor to his left and her to his right.

When he pulled out her new chair for her, Emma hesitated. Then sat, smoothing her skirts under her, feeling all the while that somewhere she’d completely lost control.

By way of explanation, he raised his shoulder, a small shrug. “I may as well”—he paused in that odd way he had—“sit beside the prettiest one here.” He spoke his flattery less like a compliment, more like a conclusion he’d reached of unquestionable logic.

She couldn’t figure him out, except that the word
unhappy
came to mind. When he sat—in her corner chair, as if he would remain at the sidelines of all that was about to take place—his movement seemed weary. He shed his coat onto the chair behind him, then crossed his legs as gentlemen could do, and as anyone less than a gentleman couldn’t without appearing effeminate. He had quite the air about him, educated, cultured. And power.
Lord Mount Villiars
. And
your lordship.
She realized, in the near-reverent introductions—everyone was so ridiculously pleased to meet him—he himself never returned a smile, though it seemed more through preoccupation, melancholy, than from rudeness exactly.

In a casual remark from the deputy governor, she was surprised to learn that the viscount’s power extended beyond money and position. He was “on loan” from London, having to return the next day “to vote.” Emma was nonplussed to realize he’d taken his seat in the upper house—on the very opening day of the new session, as it turned out, full regalia, processions, the queen in crown and parliamentary robe, speeches, state coaches, the whole business. How unpredicted. No Mount Villiars had sat his seat in generations, let alone taken it seriously this time of year, when most members of parliament were still in the country, galloping with their dog packs, wreaking havoc on the local wildlife.

The newest sitting member of the House of Lords sighed lightly as dossiers and documents and papers came out.

Then never paid another moment’s attention to her as a woman through the entirety of his business; flirtation over.

She realized, ten minutes into the transactions of the day, she was miffed.
Prettiest one here, indeed.
The only female was more like it. Perhaps that was it. He simply enjoyed possessing, like a sultan, every female within view. His lordship here certainly had the looks, money, and mien for it, odd, interesting stammer or not.

Meanwhile, she pieced together his story through the business proceedings. The viscount, whose father had died six months before, had returned from his travels to claim his inheritance, only to find his father’s brother already had. The returning son and the College of Arms had brought the uncle into check, but not until there were double accounts and plenty of avuncular debt, all run up to the viscountcy, backed by the title’s property and good name.

The genuine heir, beside her, was presently transferring a great deal of foreign currencies, converting other assets to cash, selling land, keeping them carefully separate from the mess of the estate.

All of which, theoretically, Emma wrote down in small, tidy unreadable symbols that she fancied looked a great deal like shorthand. If only these symbols had meant something, for she herself might have liked to think this story through again sometime.

It took half an hour for them to get down to the specifics, wherein Mr. Hemple, the bank’s governor, cleared his throat and untied a big leather-bound folder. There was a stack of papers within it: loan notes to be signed. Mount Villiars was taking out personal loans, wary of enmeshing himself in the viscountcy’s monies till his uncle’s damage was sorted out and covered. The governor read out the content of a promissory note for fifteen thousand pounds sterling, no less, un-guaranteed, extended simply in view of the returning Englishman’s new title. Thus began a trail of papers, passed to the viscount’s solicitors, who each read a sheaf as it came
by them, then passed it round the table toward her, then the viscount himself.

As she handed him the first sheet, Mount Villiars turned toward her, tilting his hat up slightly to where she could see his dark eyes again (they had circles under them as if he didn’t sleep well), and stared at her a long moment.

“Did you”—his pause—“get that?”

“What?”

“What Mr. Hemple said. About the loan being due.”

“Yes.” No. She looked down at her several pages now of gibberish. Happily, she was fairly sure no one around her knew shorthand either. She certainly hoped the viscount had a good memory—

Then she prayed he didn’t.

He asked, “Could you please read me the
las-s-st
”—the esses stretched out, unhurried—“paragraph? I’ve lost my train of thought.”

She wet her lips, stared at him, then down at the tablet. Her eyes grew hot. She could see nothing, not even her own scribbles. Think, think, she told herself. What had they been saying? She said what first came to mind:
“That the undersigned, Stuart Winston Aysgarth, the sixth Viscount Mount—”