Judith Ivory (9 page)

Stuart’s daydream stopped here, because his frown had deepened to the point of crimping his face till the blood beat in his cheeks. Anger, such anger rose up as he considered the possibility:

Why was the woman who had been taking dictation at the bank in York—where his fifty-six pounds had disappeared, where she had done the double entry bookkeeping for the day—why was she suddenly here exactly in the strange little village where the cheque had turned up? What kind of a coincidence was this?

He remembered the baffling, papered-over window of her reputed employer.

He remembered, before that, standing in the street, while wondering what on God’s earth else she might have thought he’d wanted from her. Then her relief when she’d realized: only sexual favors.

Though, alas, now another possibility for her befuddlement materialized: guilt. Fear.

And for good reason. She was right to worry.

Stuart tried to squelch his fury, tried to imagine a rational explanation: Why would a total stranger, a woman—if she had, though he kept telling himself, surely it was a mistake, but still, if she had—why take him for such a paltry amount? He could think of nothing, no reason. All that would come to mind were the many punitive measures with regard to this woman that would make him feel much better about the whole situation. My God, he thought, if she had manipulated him and his already terribly tangled finances…

He sent a note to his own messenger stationed at the bank. It read:

E
MMA
arrived on the first Monday in January in Hayward-on-Ames, where she registered at the hotel down the street from the bank so she’d have a place to change. There, she went directly to her hotel room, where she padded herself out in a pillow, dropped a huge dress over herself that she’d borrowed from the church collection for the needy, tucked her light-colored hair up under a gray wig, then slipped out the hotel’s service entrance: off to the bank on behalf of Mr. Stuart Agsyarth, her employer, who had sent her along with all the proper paperwork to withdraw what was to be her retirement benefit—fifty-six pounds eight shillings—then close out his account for him. For fun, she even signed a jolly good facsimile of the viscount’s own signature, except for the G and Y, as a kind of joke.

The whole thing didn’t go quite as smoothly as expected, however. At the bank, first the teller on the other side of the grid told her, Fine, thank you, come back tomorrow. He’d have the money ready then.

What? she asked. No, no, this wasn’t the way a bank worked.

He claimed she was missing a paper.

No, she wasn’t. Which one? she demanded.

Oh. Well. Yes. He reconsidered. It was simply that the withdrawal had to be put on a list of transactions to be run, by telegraph, through the parent bank in York. Some sort of preliminary approval. Again, he said, come back in the morning.

What a lot of bumfodder. No, sir, she told him, she wasn’t waiting till any morning beyond this one, thank you. She was having the money today.

Looking a little uneasy, he said, Well, in that case. He could put in a request of urgency. He could perhaps have it within a few hours.

No, she wasn’t waiting any “few hours” either. It was her money. Emma knew for a fact, from having reviewed dozens of such transactions in the books in York, that she had all the right paperwork, and that it entitled her to her money immediately. What, for goodness sake, was the world coming to? she thought. How did anyone of less resolve than herself battle a simple bank teller these days?

He hemmed. He hawed. He consulted. She did the same, loudly asking the tall, long-faced fellow at the window next to hers if he put up with such shenanigans. When Emma turned to ask a similar question of the nosy, balding young man who stood behind her, looking over her shoulder, the teller interrupted, actually threatening to have her removed.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, leaning into his grid. “If you lay one hand on me, I’ll call the sheriff myself.”

“Sheriff?” he said, his enlarged eyes—he wore thick spectacles—blinking behind their glass lenses. He frowned
deeply, in at least two magnifications, then said, “No one is supposed to call the sheriff.”

Well, good, she decided. Come to think of it, she didn’t want the sheriff either. Bring on the bank’s governor.

Local branches didn’t have a governor, it turned out. Then bring on whoever was in charge, she insisted. Oh, dear, this popped up both heads from behind the two narrow wooden cubicles on the far side of the customer counter. Two more men, both tall, one with a thin face that bore a droopy mustache, the other with heavy-boned features on which hung pouchy cheeks, came around their cubicles toward her.

It took another half an hour, but in the end Emma battled three moronic men at the little country branch of the York bank, all of whom for some reason thought they could brush off a gray-wigged old lady until they were in the mood to give her her money; and won. She rode to victory on the coattails of the morning postman who arrived with a handful of business for them—the pouchy-cheeked man immediately started going through the bank’s mail, as if to emphasize how unimportant was the present discussion. Happily, though, the postman took over on her behalf. He himself, he said, wagging the next patron’s morning post at them, was always able to withdraw his own money the same day—the same minute—he asked for it, provided there was enough in his account to cover the withdrawal. Why else would someone use a bank at all? To tie up one’s money from oneself?

My point exactly, she said. Thank you very much. I will take my money now please.

The fellows on the other side of the window grate all exchanged the exact same worried look, passing it from one to the other across their very different faces—from the small, thick-eyeglassed teller to mustachioed Mr. Thin-Face on to Mr. Pouchy-Cheeks, who even stopped tearing open letters long enough to make a fretful grimace. Then the morning’s post distracted him and Mr. Thin-Face, leaving the large-
eyed, bespectacled teller alone to deal with her. He hemmed and hawed some more, looked plaintively over his shoulder.

Then gave her the money.

The whole business took more than forty minutes. Men, Emma thought to herself. Always thinking they were in charge, being their usual batch of idiots.

Still, as the teller counted out the money and passed it under the grate, she had to restrain herself from doing a little jig.

There was some further mix-up. The account wouldn’t close, theoretically from some sort of paperwork problem again. Only God knew what was wrong. She doubted seriously it had to do with anything on her end in York, especially given what a mess these folks had made of a simple withdrawal. It didn’t take two seconds, though, to realize that all she had to do was abandon the idea of closing the account. It wasn’t as neat, but who cared? With men like these crossing all the wires, no one would ever trace anything to her anyway. She received her fifty-six-plus pounds in cash, in fivers and change, as requested. She felt jubilant as she left the bank!

It was more money than she’d seen at one time in twelve years.

As she sashayed back to the hotel, pink-nosed from the cold, she grew more and more cheerful: her hands deep inside warm pockets full of money. The victor. A woman on her own who could handle herself, the world, and any man in it; she didn’t need one.

For the first time in her life, she felt sure of that. And glad. She needed no Zach to protect her. No John Tucker to offer help. No father to support her or insist she marry the wrong fellow. No no one. Just Emma herself. What a wonderful zing the idea put in her step.

At the door to her room, she had trouble with her key, but then it gave. She was relieved to step inside and yank off the itchy wig. She caught a blast of heat—someone must have
been in to stoke the fire. What a nice hotel, she thought. Perhaps she should stay for a nap. In a hurry to be more comfortable still, she immediately hiked up her skirts to uncinch the belt that strapped her old-lady-pillow belly to her.

She was standing there, leaning more or less backward against the door for balance, two wads of skirt tucked into her armpits, her petticoats above her bosom, while she attempted to see over her blasted breasts that were so large they got in the way of pretty much everything, trying to undo the belt buckle—

The buckle gave just as a sarcastic voice from nowhere said, “Oh,
most
attractive.”

Emma leaped an inch straight into the air, falling back to clonk her head on the door. “Sw-swee’ Jesus—” she breathed and scrambled around.
Out of here!
It was all she could think of.
Le’me out!

The voice though—soothing, low, with a familiar rhythm to it—mollified her. First it laughed, a deep, slow chuckle, then said, “You are truly something, do you know that?”

Well, yes, she did. Carefully, she turned around, her hand still on the doorknob.

The voice cautioned, “That’s a good girl. Don’t run.” There was a pause, possibly a snort. “I’d only catch you: You run like a three-legged rabbit. I’d have you before you were down the hall.”

She jerked, blinked. A three-legged rabbit? Was that an insult? It wasn’t a compliment. And have her? She very seriously doubted that. She had a ten-foot start, and he—for it was
a he
up there under the shadowed canopy of her high hotel bed—looked very settled in. She could see the sole of one boot, his foot on her bed.

Nonetheless, it gave her a start, her heart unwillingly swelling up into her throat, to realize she was staring at a person here in a room that was supposed to have been empty, no one in it but her.

The shadowy shape made no aggressive move, while she tried to comprehend, heart pounding, what someone might be doing here, threatening to chase her: a man, a long man with one leg extended, one knee in the air, his other boot sole on the counterpane. Or, no, his tall, black boot—glassy smooth leather oiled to a high gloss—was on his own coat. And that was when her heart sank back down so suddenly and so low it made her stomach flip over.

The Viscount Mount Villiars’s coat lay on her bed, the viscount himself on it, she was fairly certain. The coat lay discarded carelessly under him, shrugged off, crumpled under one leg. Stuart Aysgarth sat with his back on her pillows on his coat’s fur lining, a silver white run so dense it crowded in on itself there in the shadows, fur so thick it wrinkled in places.

Emma quietly turned the doorknob behind her.

He reiterated, “Truly. Don’t run. I’d have you so quickly, it would knock the breath out of you, and I’d rather your breath were in you at the moment. We must talk.”

She pulled a face.
Ran like a rabbit
indeed.
Knock the breath out of her.
Not likely. Then she remembered,
her nervy bum.
She hated this man. No, she wouldn’t run; she’d have him thrown out. What was he doing in her hotel room? Where was the concierge? Whom did she call to have him ousted?

From under the canopy, as if they were having a nice chat, he said, “And I’m quite struck by the bounce and swing of you, if you took offense.”

Which she did. Bounce indeed. She didn’t bounce. She ran in a very ladylike manner, with a slight, unavoidable wiggle of hips having to do with her being a girl.

“I’m struck by
you,
your movement, your demeanor, what appear to be your
ha
bits.” That interesting low-voiced pausing again, that left her waiting for each stupid, deep-voiced public-school syllable as it came out his mouth. “Most at
tractive. In truth.” As if she might not believe him, he pressed his backhanded compliment further. “Sincerely. You are quite attractive. Even in that tentlike frock.”

He sat forward to rest an arm over his knee, which put him into better light. It was he, hatless, handsome, dark, with those round, sad eyes and his mesmerizingly quiet voice. Dear God. Emma squirmed, fingering the smooth-carved glass doorknob behind, in turmoil as to what to do, while he looked her over, up, then down.

“It’s simply,” he explained, “that, as a means of locomotion, your running isn’t very effective. Please don’t do it. Just stand there and tell me why you would want to rob me of more than five hundred pounds.”

Hundred?
She almost blurted “fifty-six,” but didn’t. No, she wasn’t falling for that one. Yet he looked earnest. Hundred. Five
hundred
pounds. She shook her head, as if to make sense of the number. She flushed. She blushed. She couldn’t account for all that was going on inside her. The remarkable thing was, when she finally found words, they were so perfect. She said with utterly heartfelt innocence, “I didn’t.”

“Ah, you did, you see.” He leaned further forward, reaching across himself—he was left-handed, the only part of his signature that was a challenge at all to duplicate—to unfold the edge of his coat.

In a dip of fur lay a wad of banknotes. A lot of them.

He continued, “You sent several cheques through in the morning’s post, all drawn on the York Joint-Stock Banking Company itself, no clearinghouse, so they had to cash them. Rent, you see, from my local tenants. The only cheques I happened to have with me. Lord, but you were difficult. If you had only given me a day, I should have run much more money through. But there’s no hurry, I suppose. This is a nice beginning. Anyway,
you
sent the cheques, as it turns out, sneaked them somehow from my accountants, so far as I can tell, then ran them through the bank, which delivered all this
to your room just now, as
you
instructed. Lovely little account you set up for us, Miss—”

He paused and consulted something. Gad, he appeared to have the hotel registry book on the bed at his hip. He ran his finger down a page, then continued. “‘Peep,’is it, this time?” He laughed. “Not enough courage, I would presume, to make your first name ‘Bo’? Alas.” He shook his head with genuine remorse. “No, only Mildred. Lovely. Mildred Peep, distant relative to Molly Muffin. What is your real name?”

Emma couldn’t open her mouth, even if she had wanted to.

“All right, don’t say. But thank you. I honestly never would have thought to run my money through this new account, if you hadn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t have known how to set it up. I owe you so much. In a blink, you have solved a problem I have been working on for months without half your success. Thank you, abundantly, whoever you are.”

He shifted to his side, swiveled, and came to the end of the bed, dropping his legs over the edge, putting him and her within four feet of each other, in good, clear daylight.

Lord, he was better-looking than she remembered. It had something to do with leaving behind all his furs and gloves and hats. Just himself, slim, muscular. He wore no frock coat, no vest, just a generous, starchy-white shirt, his dark cravat loosened, buff-colored trousers. His stiff collar was unbuttoned, open at the neck. He’d certainly made himself at home. The heel of his black boot kicked the bedframe as he studied her.
Clack. Clack-clack.
Even his long, loose-looking legs hadn’t length enough to reach the floor from the high bed top.

She licked her lips once and mumbled, “You’re welcome.” Then realized, frowned swiftly, and said, “What? No, you’re not. You can’t—You’ll—”

He shook his head, holding up his hand. “Tut-tut, no complaining. I only ran half what I need through. You didn’t give me time for more.” He laughed. “My goodness, but you were tough at the bank today. You had them running in circles. Me,
too, once my messenger came back with the news. You are fierce, do you know that? A tiger.”