Unlaced Corset
Unlaced Corset
A Historical Murder Mystery Romance
Michael Meadows
This book has been published by the Midnight Climax group.
Dalia Daudelin | Michael Meadows
Viivi James | Harley Harper
Victoria Ward | Asia Marquis
Midnight Climax Bundles | Veronica Violet
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1
Thomas
The post came, and with it, the last of Thomas Geis's hopes faded to dust. There would be too much to tell the boy, when he arrived, and no time that he could be sure that they'd be alone.
He'd tried to send off a letter, to explain at least what he could; some of it, he'd need to find time in person, but it had included enough of a warning that Mr. Poole wouldn't be coming in blind.
With some hope, he'd be able to think on his feet. Roy said that he'd been in the war, and that should have taught him well enough how to deal with difficult situations. Still, it did leave something to be desired in terms of delicateness.
Thomas folded the envelope into his journal and thought for a moment about what he'd write down before he did so. Only after he'd composed the entire thing did he start writing. Lord Geis hated wasted actions, but it seemed as if more and more of his efforts had been going to waste, of late.
He coughed, hard. The damnable cough had been with him for a week or more, now, and it never ceased in irritating at the worst possible moments.
The entire plan had seemed safe, when he'd first gotten in on it. They'd make a tidy profit at the end of it, and all he had to do was front some of the money.
Then a little more money, and then a little more, and before he knew it, Thomas was on the brink of insolvency without seeing one red cent on the bargain.
That was when things had started looking bleak. He wasn't a man who did things without thinking them through, and there would be downsides to backing out this late in the game. If there was a payoff, he wouldn't see it, either, which toasted his ass.
But that didn't mean that he could just ignore his finances and live in the street until things turned around. He'd have to hope that he could leave without any particular reprisal, but it was too much to hope for.
No, he wouldn't take that sort of risk. He'd already had Davis buy him a ticket on a steamer to America. When Mr. Poole arrived, he'd find the place deserted, and Thomas Geis would be in America already, talking to a realtor about buying new property, someplace where they wouldn't go after him.
If he went far enough, they'd leave him alone. He couldn't hurt them if he wasn't in Britain. So that would be far enough. He touched the tickets, lying out on the desk beside him.
Thomas Geis hated waste, and so when he looked at the table, covered in every little note he'd ever made on the subject of money, anger flashed in his eyes. A waste, and one that had ultimately meant the loss of everything he'd spent his life building. Everything was right there, all the mistakes.
He hadn't implicated himself with them. He was too careful for that, and besides he wouldn't have written out so much information. Wasted space, wasted words, wasted effort. Wasted time.
The whole pile, though, was wasted time, now that Mr. Poole wouldn't be arriving ready for a yeoman's job. For a moment he considered pushing it back off, into the bin. Then he decided not to. Two wrongs didn't make a right, and the damage was already done.
Instead he picked up the steamer tickets, tapped them on the table for good measure, and slipped them into his inner jacket pocket. Mary would be upset, he thought. She would rather stay, he was sure. She hadn't been told about the money troubles, and even after they sold the house, they wouldn't be as comfortable in America as they had in Britain.
She'd get over it, though. He was certain of that much. She was stubborn as a mule, but she was as resilient as anyone he'd known, he thought with no small measure of pride. He coughed again, hard.
"Sir," Davis said from the doorway, "Is this a bad time?"
He pushed himself back in his chair, still coughing hard.
"What is it?"
"Confirming your travel plans, sir. You'll be taking the train in the morning to Southampton, and then taking the Cunard line to America, is that right?"
Thomas was still coughing, harder now, his face turning an awful purple. Davis was already off and running as he slumped to the floor, coughing and choking, shouting for someone to come and help.
2
James
James Poole closed his ledger and slipped it into the thin bag that he would carry with himself on the train. The rest would go into the baggage car and he wouldn't see it again until he arrived in Derby. The important thing, though, was to keep everything that was really important to him in sight.
He looked across his bed and took in the sight of everything he owned laid out in front of him. It was hard to believe that there was so little of it. He'd spent four years accumulating it all, and he'd thought himself living a fairly comfortable life. Yet, the full sum of his life fit into three bags, one of them light enough to slip over his shoulder and carry in his lap.
There were other things, of course. There was a bed, that would be staying, and the sofa as well. He'd paid for the next two months in advance, so he could be reasonably certain that his landlord wouldn't throw his things out onto the curb. He would take a few days to come back, if he were employed for longer than that, and set things in order by paying or by having the rest of his things sent along.
A pair of bookshelves held a few hundred notebooks, with notes along the spines that said what he'd copied into them out of the university library. He would probably need some kind of reference, even now that he was out of school, and the notebooks would serve him until he could acquire proper copies.
Lastly, he sat down and pulled a pen out of his pocket. It was a Waterman, and he doubted that his father could have afforded to buy it for him. Yet, when he'd graduated, his father had handed him a box and inside it was the pen. He looked at it for a moment, admiring it, and then set down to make a note to the hospital.
The words didn't come to him. He knew better than most what sort of position he was in. There wasn't much to be done. He would need to pay, or his father would be turned out. Begging would do nothing to change it.
He tried to push the thoughts from his mind. After all, he had no reason to be concerned. He'd gotten a better job than he could have hoped for, and he could afford a few pounds when he had been paid. Indeed, Lord Geis had been made to sound quite a nice fellow; if James asked, certainly, he could have a small advance, and the money could be sent off in only a couple of days.
James rubbed his temples and tried to think. He'd made the best of his situation, and what problems remained were going to be dealt with soon. Still, it seemed too good to be true, and he had tried to take as few risks as possible in his life. That he needed to take one now was more than a little bit worrying, but again he set his concerns aside.
There had been other jobs, other jobs he knew he was more qualified for. A head steward, at twenty-two? It was unheard of, and it was unheard of for a good reason. Yet, the solicitor he had dealt with had seemed quite certain that he was the right man for the job, in spite of his misgivings and his youth. The wage was nearly double what he could have made at any other job, and Papa was looking worse and worse now that Mam had died.
He capped the pen and set it down, pulled his jacket on, and carefully slipped the pen back into his pocket, and left. There was nothing left for him to do tonight, and he was only going to drive himself mad by trying to stay in. He had no food in the pantry, given that he would be leaving in a matter of days, after all, and he hadn't had supper yet.
The concierge stopped him on the way out. He'd received a letter from a representative of the Geis estate, the same Raymond Greer who had hired him. He slipped it into his breast pocket, thanked the man for keeping the message, and continued on his way.
He tore the envelope gently open and eased the letter out. He skimmed it once, and then had to stop and read it again, more carefully. There must have been some sort of mistake, so he read it a third time to be certain, held it up to the sky as if the overcast sky might help him see the trick.
Lord Frances Geis was dead. He'd died three days ago, from pneumonia that had caught in his lungs. He'd left behind a daughter, Mary, and was to be succeeded by his brother. It read like a newspaper clipping, and it was possible that Mr. Greer had copied some of the text from the obituary.
The ground seemed unsteady under James's feet. He had feared that things were too good to be true, and now it seemed as if everything was coming apart at the very last moment. He choked on air and blinked. There had been other jobs, certainly. He might even be able to find another, in a week or two, but so many of the offers had come in when he had graduated.
Most of the firms had been waiting for the graduating class, and now, in August, they would have made their hires. He took a deep, heady breath and held it.
He started walking again, toward the pub on the corner. He tried to reason things out, but he could feel himself suffocating under this new strain. There was no way that anyone would keep him on as a head steward. His visions of an easy-made future under a peculiar Baron were gone, to a pneumatic fit, and now his father...
He shook his head and pushed the door of the pub open. A friendly hand clapped him on the shoulder, and he heard a laugh, but it didn't mean anything to him, through his thick haze of panicked fear.
He sat down, signaled the bartender mindlessly, and waited for his food to come. The beer went down without the usual crisp burn, the food tasted like nothing. He stared down at it, trying to figure out what could possibly be done.
Then he sat back and watched the food sit on his plate. He had a contract, and at least until the Geis household was in order, he would be able to push himself into the position, whether he would be kept or not. He could make a particularly impressive showing, he hoped, and then he would be kept on. After all, even if he were too young, if he were capable and worked for less than a more experienced steward…
It seemed like wishful thinking, but as he took another bite of the meat they'd set down in front of him, and he chewed it mechanically, he realized there was nothing else to done. No other options appeared magically before him. It was this, or nothing.
He finished his meal and counted out the bill carefully, then dropped a small gratuity on top of that and started the long walk home. He would be a long time getting to sleep, and he needed to be up early tomorrow, to make the morning train. After all, he'd already paid for the ticket.
3
Mary
Three days after her father's death, Mary was lounging in her father's library, reading whatever trash books that Davis could find for her at the chemist's. They were lurid and dramatic and had little of substance to distract from it. She looked for all the world like she was unaware of the death.
That was how she had hoped for it to look.
She laid there at awkward angles that were only possible thanks to having left off her corset. It had seemed like an intriguing notion at the time. She wanted to look disinterested and lazy, as well, so she'd gone along with it, and when Rebecca suggested that she put her corset on, Mary had told her to leave it off. The look on Rebecca's face alone had made the entire idea worth it.
Still, hours later, her dress fit poorly and she was endlessly adjusting herself to try to get a pinched bit of fabric out of her side. Suddenly she sat up with a start. What time was it?
She looked over to the clock, softly ticking at the front of the room. Past noon.
"Davis," she called out, hoping he was nearby. He was, as he always was.
"Ma'am?" He stepped through the door and waited for her to instruct him.
"Do you think it might be time for lunch?"
"Certainly, ma'am. I'll have the cooks prepare something immediately."
"Thank you," she answered, but she had already gone back to her novel. There was a stack of them, and she bet that she could be halfway through the second by the time she went to bed in the evening if she were quick.
There was one thing she was certain of. Her father's death was no accident, and he hadn't been suffering pneumonia. He was the picture of health, and he had always been careful to keep himself bundled up heavily. Lord Geis was a man who preferred warmth, did not engage in parties, and since her mother had died, he had largely kept to himself.
The notion that he might have become ill over the winter and died, without seeing a single doctor…
It was unthinkable. And that meant that whoever had concluded his death to have been caused by pneumonia was either incompetent or lying. It would have been comforting to believe it may have been incompetence. Mary didn't have that luxury. She needed to act on the assumption that there had been foul play involved.
Whatever someone might kill her father over would be an equally convincing reason to see her off along with him. The charade of a disinterested, lazy girl provided a wonderful mask.
Davis came back, announcing himself with a knock before pushing the door in and setting the platter on the desk Mary had set aside for herself. She thanked him and poured a glass of water from the pitcher he had brought in earlier that morning.
The food was lovely. A cut of beef steak and parsnips, and truffles set aside for a dessert. Mary smiled and for a moment she nearly felt herself again. There was reason for concern; she was certain of that. But more than that, she knew that things would go on. She would go on, even if it felt painful.
She'd devised the entire charade of her own incompetence to hide from the outside world while she dealt with her grief, and then with the threat that her family was facing, and that was enough for now.
She cut a bit of the steak and speared it with her fork. The cut was delicious-looking: thick, juicy, charred just so. Yet, when she put it in her mouth it tasted like ash. She closed her eyes and swallowed. The cook was not at fault, she knew. Rather, her mood was affecting her more than she had thought. Some day, things would be perfectly alright again. Until then, she ate to deal with the hunger, and drank to quench her thirst, and that was enough because it had to be enough.
When a knock came at the door, she waited for a moment. Only Davis knew where she was, and he would come in if he needed to speak to her for some reason. As expected, the door opened just enough to permit him to step through.
"Ah, ma'am, there is a Mr. James Poole here. He's asking after the head of the house."
"What on earth for? Send him away. I'm not receiving guests; it's not proper, Davis."
"Very good, ma'am. I would have done so immediately, of course, but he says that he is not here to visit, but was hired by your father before his passing."
Mary sat back against her chair and thought for a moment. Whoever had murdered her father would have an agent in the house. She was certain of that. She had guessed as much before, but she had assumed tha
t they were already in the household staff. Very possibly, they had even been involved in the assassination themselves.
The notion that the spy might be an outside agent hadn't even occurred to her. If, indeed, this Mr. Poole might be a spy working for her father's assassins, then it would be a worrying sign to his handlers if he were sent away without a thought.
Further, she thought, if he were not a spy, and truly was hired by her father…he could prove an interesting entrant into the situation, as well.
Mary thought through the line of logic again, making sure that she hadn't missed anything important. Then she opened her eyes again and cut a bit of steak.
"Send him in, Davis. I'll need to make sure that everything is in order before I make a decision."
Davis paused before answering, but Mary didn't notice. "Yes, ma'am."
With that, he left the room silently. Mary listened to his steps grow quieter as he walked away. She swallowed another bite, and another. It was a mechanical action, and one she needed to keep up appearances with.
There was a knock at the door again.
"Come in."
The door opened and a man stepped through. Mary looked up and watched him. He was a big, strong man. She wondered what sort of job he might be here to do. With such broad shoulders, he looked like he was better suited to soldiering than he was to any genteel work.
With the war on, she wondered at it until she saw the pin on his lapel. She'd seen it before. A silver circle set around the King's cipher. Around the edge was the text: "For King and Country. Services Rendered."
He stepped through the door and looked up, seeming to take her measure in the same way that she had been taking his. And then, all of a sudden, he went stiff and turned immediately on his heel, facing the wall.