Judith Ivory (8 page)

She looked up then, fully into his face. Her damp, pointy eyelashes were darker than her fair hair, though like her hair they were thick and curling. They lined her blue eyes, a
pewter-dark emphasis. She had fine, arching eyebrows, a small turned-up nose, a little ball of a chin, with the hint of a second one under it, small, rounded cheeks as pink as roses.

She was round everywhere, he realized, soft-looking, yet very pretty. Pudgy-pretty. Like a little muffin, indeed. Not fat. Padded. She had just enough extra flesh to eliminate angles, to be all curves. Even in a few places where one might expect an angle on a female—her jaw, the knuckles of her round, little hands, her elbows—she had none.

For one split second, he felt a pang, such an urge…He wanted her, hang the cost or consequence. It was a marvelous feeling. Extravagant. Vivid. He wanted to drop his long, angular body—skeletal, hard-muscled—down onto her yielding flesh, press himself into her softness, drown there. All her easy curves seemed an answer somehow. As if by sinking into her, the pain and pinch of living could be eased away.

She watched behind her this time as she stepped more carefully back and around the carriage door. Then she slowly walked backward, giddily raising one hand. Stuart sidestepped to see her better and was rewarded with a little good-bye wave from a small, round woman with bright blue eyes. A cherub. A grown-up, female cherub.

“Thank you again,” she called from ten feet down the street. She shook her sweet head, the ringlet at the edge of her shawl jiggling at her cheek. Oh, she was really too much.

“My pleasure,” he answered and felt his mouth draw up, a faint smile, a rare sensation, his one eyebrow raising in surprise more at himself. He smiled. He couldn’t think of anything that had made him smile in months.

At which point, she cocked her head, paused, then turned and bolted down the street.

Her hips rocked, loose-jointed, when she ran, a voluptuous little wobble that kicked up her legs and frothed her petticoats. Oh, he loved that. He stood there in the snow, star
ing, marveling, as she disappeared into a flurry—as if a white curtain whipped up, wrapped around her, then whisked itself out again, empty: gone.

He was left standing there, tapping his hat on the side of his knee, thinking, What the blazes had happened to
easy
?

“Your lordship?” It was his cheeky whip, the reins in his hand, leaning toward him from the driver’s box. “Shall we go then?”

Stuart shot him a glare, then a pull of his mouth. “Right. As soon as you hop inside and get the woman’s address. Don’t come out till you have it.” He narrowed his eyes as the man clambered down. “And don’t lollygag. The horses need to move.” It was a fact.

But it wasn’t the reason the fellow hightailed it into the building. Though the man could be surly enough, he, along with the rest of the servants, feared any context that might engage their employer’s wrath; they fairly much thought they worked for a monster, a tyrant. Alas, though Stuart was not proud of it, neither did he hold any illusions: There were times when they did.

His servants were not alone in worrying that the new viscount had sometimes near-terrifying similarities with the old.

The upshot of what Emma did by the end of that night was open an account on paper at the Hayward-on-Ames branch of the York Joint-Stock Banking Company. Hayward-on-Ames was a market town thirty or so miles from her own village, where she could travel with reason. John Tucker’s sister, Maud Stunnel, had a tup that she and her husband just might possibly be willing to sell at a good price. Emma could go have a look and pass through the town without anyone paying much notice. Thus, she opened on paper, near the Stunnel farm, an account under the name of one Stuart Agsyarth, closed Y, open G, where she then sent through the bank draft for fifty-six pounds and change made out to Stuart
Aysgarth from some company, “Ltd,” though signed with the slight difference. It was an old fraud, but a good one.

In a few days, once the paperwork had cleared, she’d collect her money on the way to the Stunnels’ farm, a withdrawal, then close the account, ending the trail: a tiny pip in the financial fruit of Yorkshire banking that no one should even notice. And if they did, it would be too late. Though inking in the account took work—it took her all night—the rest should be clean and simple.

Less simple was the way, in the wee hours, she hummed as she sewed the binding of the bank’s records back together where she sat alone (or almost, since Mr. Hemple was in the far office, waiting—snoozing actually—for her to finish) at the ailing, absent bookkeeper’s desk. To accomplish her bit of chicanery, she’d had to replace a quarto of pages from the back. She’d opened the branch account “a week ago” in the bookkeeper’s handwriting, adjusting dates up till today, after which the transactions were in her own hand, as expected. La la, she hummed to herself. This is all going so well, the binding going back in with nary a wrinkle, on top of which the viscount, irrefutably, finds me attractive.

The afternoon’s small flirtation had been just what she’d needed, that extra bit she’d wanted. It had made her happy—even though good sense said it should make her cower: If the viscount ever laid eyes on her again, he’d recognize her. If he ever met Emma Hotchkiss, he could put her together with Molly Muffin. She might have worried, if any viscount in the past fifty years had come down into the village from Castle Dunord. But none had, and she doubted seriously this one would be the exception.

They all stayed in London. And even if this one did venture from the city, there was about him the family’s tradition of pomposity that fairly well assured he would not mingle with the riffraff. Up to this point, the tiny village of Malzeard-near-Prunty-Bridge had never had anything to offer its English lords on the hill, and she was fairly certain it never would.

Which allowed her the luxury of fantasy: Emma Hotchkiss, a handsome viscount’s mad obsession. Never mind that the real man was an arrogant fellow—who fully deserved what she and her nervy bum were in the process of doing. All that power, she thought, and here she sat, circumventing it. La-dida, wasn’t she something? While he was so sure he was…
dangerous
, wasn’t that the word he’d chosen? So sure he was more in charge of those around him than any one man could be. Oh, what a mark he would make, so full of himself.

And what a delight he’d been to look at, speak to, smile at.

Emma laughed, closing the book. She patted it once, then scooped it up in her arms and hopped off the bench: on her way to take it to Mr. Hemple.

The bank, as it turned out, had for Miss Molly Muffin only the address of some temporary amanuensis service. Stuart cursed himself, for he had had the address for five days before he actually found the time to travel to it. By then, the service seemed to have gone under. Or that was his best guess, because its York address was that of an empty storefront, its window scraped of lettering and covered in brown paper so one couldn’t see inside. He was flummoxed and none too happy about the dead end. But what could one do? Some things weren’t meant to be. He’d find another pretty little country dumpling.

Though he dreamed of this one. Twice. Vivid dreams of how meltingly warm she’d be, a warm little muffin lifted from the snow. But, no, how foolish. He barely knew her—not at all, in fact—so it was something else…some yearning in himself he dreamed of. Another woman would eventually fit the bill.

Meanwhile, a pitiful fifty-six pounds disappeared from the final accounting at the York banking company, and no one could explain it. They told him
he
was mistaken, though he knew for a fact his investments in a South African mine had paid a dividend. He’d seen the statement, though could
not now be sure he’d seen the bank draft; he’d sent what he had to his accountants weeks before. He had no idea what had become of it; he hadn’t signed it.

He tried to let the matter go, but he couldn’t shake the suspicion his uncle had intercepted one last cheque. By God, Leonard, if I can pin this on you, I’ll see your thieving backside in jail. Fifty-six pounds. Honest to God, he thought. If his uncle was going to continue to rob him, he should at least make it worth the time in the gaol. And Leonard had promised. He’d said they were square. Even though they still argued over a few things he’d taken from the castle in Malzeard. He’d said the money was done. Now this? On top of everything else? For so little?

The puny amount niggled at him. It felt especially annoying in light of the fact that Stuart himself was having the bloody-damnedest time getting any sizable amount of money, unquestioned, from his own inheritance, free and clear of creditors, Uncle Leonard, and the law: his key financial problem since entering England. It was a slap in his face that Leonard would so breezily remove so little, and Stuart found himself wanting the stupid fellow’s balls for it.

He called the sheriff, who offered his “complete cooperation,” though that meant nothing since there was nothing to cooperate over yet: a cheque that only Stuart remembered. He wired the Boes South African Mining Consortium, Limited, asking them please to verify, to the bank and his accountants, they had sent him a cheque (which could take weeks, they wired back) and please to send notice if and when and where it was cashed (which could take months or forever). Dead ends, dead ends, dead ends. Stuart felt buried under all he’d begun that he couldn’t bring to completion.

Then a stroke of marvelous luck that dropped his uncle, or so Stuart thought, directly into his hands.

While at a rural inn near a northerly village (where Stuart was dallying with the local baker’s wife—he found himself lately with an unholy attraction for short, sweet-faced York
shirewomen, the baker’s wife being the second woman in six days, though both were missing something which he hesitated to call
refinement
, yet that appeared to be what it was, for lack of a better word), he chanced to meet a fellow in the common room over ale who thought he knew Stuart. Or knew his name. Only it turned out
not
to be his name exactly. Agsyarth. The fellow was a teller at the local branch of a bank used by most of the farmers of the district. And then the branch turned out to be a branch of the York Joint-Stock Banking Company, and Stuart grew terribly interested.

It turned out, this small branch office had had a remarkable cheque come through—from a diamond mine company. Farmers didn’t see such a thing very often.

“Diamonds! Can ye fathom that? Some bloke with a name similar to yours gets big fat cheques off his mines in Africa.” The fellow shook his head.

Fifty-six pounds was a long way from fat, but Stuart talked to the man for half an hour about it, paid for all his drinks and dinner, then was at the bank the next day, laying a trap for Leonard, shoulder to shoulder with the local constabulary. He filed a complaint of criminal misconduct, intending to have the damned relative out of his hair for thirty years. Forgery. Fraud. Theft.

As it turned out, the cheque had been deposited, but the monies hadn’t cleared the clearinghouse in Leeds—the London bank of the African consortium, he suspected, was dragging its heels, having been alerted to a possible problem. Stuart wired them to let the cheque go through in hope of catching the culprit when he picked up the cash.

At which point, it became a simple matter of waiting. The sheriff’s office was across the street and down one block from the bank. A messenger was set up to watch and fetch the sheriff at the appropriate moment. When Leonard arrived, Stuart and Sheriff Bligh (the perfect name!) would be ready. Stuart himself, very quietly without so much as a valet, took up residence in the only hotel—of five rooms, three of which
he rented just so he could have peace and quiet on either side of him—on the only high street in Hayward-on-Ames, the town where the branch bank held the account.

Then, bliss of pure blinding bliss—a sure sign he was in God’s grace—the third day of Stuart’s stay at the hotel, while sitting in the lobby, who should walk in but the lovely Miss Molly Muffin, full of smiling good humor, replete with bouncing blond curls—more of them than last time dangling out from the same plaid shawl she used to protect her head.

At first Stuart thought, no, it was wishful thinking. Because she somehow didn’t look herself. Her clothes were newer, coarser. And she had about her—the way she walked, nodded, chatted cheerfully, inquiring after a room—a kind of indomitable…confidence, yes, that was the word. Molly Muffin here wasn’t self-effacing for a moment, but rather was all bustle and aplomb in a way that simply hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen her.

Still, beneath that familiar gray coat with a sturdy navy wool skirt rippling out, was the unmistakable swish and swing of a most singular bottom.

As Molly Muffin, no other, registered there for the night, Stuart nearly dropped his newspaper. But didn’t. Instead, he watched, holding his Monday
Times
up just enough to stare around its edge. He watched her shed her coat in the warm lobby, then bend over the registry book, her glorious backside outlined in a navy skirt that ended upward in a striped blouse. Beneath the skirt, even more out of character, she was wearing boots. Large, gum rubber boots so oversized for her proportions they suggested they belong to someone else: a man. Which made Stuart all but rock in his seat, until he told himself
her father’s
. They belonged to her blind, lame, deaf father.

When her perfect backside swiveled around and made its way toward the stairs—he would be galled later to remember—he actually had to still the impulse to rush after her. Or at
least rush up to the concierge and find out if there were a place, anywhere, that had flowers this time of year in the country, a hothouse. Send that woman six dozen something-or-others that smell…that smell at least as good as clover.

Even as a frown descended deeply into his brow, as the print blurred before his eyes, one part of his imagination could still see huge, surprising bouquets of hothouse roses or forced tulips or lilies or fragrant narcissus or all of them. A card with his name. An invitation to dinner, since—what a coincidence!—they were staying at the very same hotel. He would approach her again, this time with more flourish.
Your humble servant
, bowing his head, removing his hat.
Yes, you’re welcome for the whatever-they-turned-out-to-be flowers. Yes, yes, so beautiful, so unusual in winter, lovely gesture. So perhaps dinner—