Unlaced Corset Read online

  "I'm sorry, Miss Geis. I didn't realize—"

  "How can I help you, Mr. Poole?"

  "I was hired by a representative of your father, to act as a steward?"

  "And so soon before his death?" Mary set her utensils down. "That seems suspicious, don't you think?"

  "I couldn't say, Ma'am. I only know that I was contacted a month prior, with the offer of work, by a solicitor named Roy Stump. He claimed to work for the Geis estate, who wished to retain the services of a steward for his estate."

  "My father is dead, sir, and whatever he's offered to pay you is not available."

  "Surely I can work until the title is resolved, and then I can petition the new Lord…or Lady Geis for wage."

  He was too young for a proper steward, Mary thought. He might have only just gotten out of university. What on earth would her father be thinking to hire such a person, even if he hired him through a representative?

  "I presume you have some proof of your claims?"

  Mr. Poole turned back to face her, keeping his eyes decidedly downcast. He reached into his coat pocket and produced a folded piece of paper, which he held at arm's length. Davis, who had been standing off to the side, took the paper and walked it over to her.

  She opened it and started to skim over the text. Indeed, she was vaguely aware of Mr. Stump. Her father had mentioned him before. Here was her father's signature, and the signature of a James Poole. It seemed as if everything was in order, and he was offering to work without pay until someone with authority could address things.

  He sounded positively desperate to work. She looked it over. A spy might be able to get such a piece of paper. The desperation was too obvious to ignore, as well. Whatever his intention was, she was certain that he would be playing into her enemies' hands somehow.

  But the saying goes, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. She had no friends that she could be certain of. So she set the letter down.

  "You know we won't be able to pay you, Mr. Poole."

  "Yes, ma'am. Until someone else comes, I will have to wait. I understand, but please don't send me away."

  "Very well." Mary took another bite, as if she had already moved on. The reality was that her mind was racing with possibilities. "Davis, see him to one of the guest bedrooms, will you? Our new steward has come all the way from London, and I'm sure he's very tired."

  4

  James

  James sat back in the large chair that served for the desk in his new room. Rather, the room he was staying in. His bags were in a small stack in the corner. He'd need to move them over to the dressers before he could start working.

  He had known that there was a young woman here. The Baron's daughter. Somehow, he'd assumed that Miss Geis would be younger, or older, or somehow…less. He'd come in expecting to see an employer, and instead he'd seen a woman.

  And what a woman, indeed. She hadn't been wearing anything under that dress—that much had been obvious. What it said about her character spoke volumes, but it said less about her than it did about the shape of her curves.

  It implied her naked body readily, and the image it conjured up was not one that he would soon forget. What's more, he had worried that it might show on his face that he had noticed. However the stony-faced butler had managed to ignore it was beyond the young lawyer.

  No, he thought. He would need to sequester himself in the study if he were to get any work done at all. If he weren't careful, he could spend all day looking at a woman like that. Fire-red hair and a body that looked like it was built for making children…he shook his head.

  She was also a Lord's daughter, and though she may not be the heir to his title, she was so far off-limits that he should leave her be even in his dreams.

  He picked up the luggage easily and set it on the bed, unzipping and pulling the clothes out in large folded stacks, hanging what he could and stowing the rest in drawers.

  There was a lot of work to be done here. At the bottom of the bag, so as to seem inconspicuous, he had hidden another ledger, and folded into it he had a receipt of the Geis family accounts from the Bank of London. When he'd seen it, he had nearly blanched.

  Surely they had some form of income that he wasn't aware of. It was hardly unusual for a family of this stature. If they did, though, then he hoped that it would pay out for them soon. Their accounts were utterly in shambles.

  James needed the money from this job, and he needed it soon. In a week or so, he was sure that someone would come to call on the home and things with the Geis title would be settled. Then he could make his claim, and when that happened he would need to have shown that, if nothing else, he had done what was expected of him and earned the back-pay he hoped for.

  He certainly had his work cut out for him, though. Before he could begin to set things in order, he would need to figure out where the money was going, and then staunch the outward flow as much as possible. He picked up the ledger and moved over toward the study.

  He'd had Davis show him where it was on the way to his room, but he hadn't gone in. He tried the door and found it unlocked, so he pushed it open and stepped inside.

  For a moment he thought there might have been a mistake. Surely this wasn't right. The room was an absolute mess. Had the maids simply been ignoring the room? Or were they left with instructions to stay out? He made a mental note to talk to Davis about it and see what was what.

  Before that, though, work.

  He took the room in and tried to mentally tabulate what needed doing. There must have been a desk in the room; he knew that because there was a chair pushed up to it, but he could hardly see it for the heaps of paper stacked.

  As he came up to them, looking at one after another, there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the order. Rather, they appeared to have been placed wherever was convenient at the time and left.

  The only clear space on the desk, now that he looked closely, was a notebook that had been stuffed halfway-underneath one of the mounds of paper. He could tell that it was the most recent because it was the only thing that had not been torn away, and because a pen sat on top of it.

  James took off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. There was going to be quite a bit of work ahead of him, now. A few hours of tidying and he could finally set about looking at the figures. Surely there would be an obvious answer to the problems that faced the Geis household, then, and he would be able to begin planning for the future.

  He rolled up his sleeves and began separating things into more careful stacks as best he could.

  Hours later, he sat back and looked at his work. James felt tired; there was a dullness in his eyes that he couldn't quite get out of them. Whatever he had planned to do after this, he wondered if he had the energy. There were no less than six ledgers, each as thick as he could possibly imagine. None were more than a quarter full, spread seemingly at random throughout the tomes. He could consolidate them, but that alone would take the best part of a day.

  More worrying, though, was the other stack. There were, torn from seemingly random scraps of paper—newspapers, paper napkins, journal pages—hundreds upon hundreds of tiny jotted notes that seemed to be as perfectly obtuse as possible. One read "O 80" while the next read "P 5" and the next after that read "D 2; 3."

  For a moment, he regretted the man's death once again. Even having never known him, there must have been some guiding meaning behind such obscure notes, but whatever they meant to the man who had written them had died with him.

  Now they were meaningless codes on several hundred scraps of paper. That they had been gathered here, James guessed, suggested that they had something to do with money, but as to their meaning he could only wildly speculate.

  Still, he guessed that with a little bit of effort he would be able to fit all the pieces together. Rather like a puzzle.

  As he sat back and relaxed, he heard someone moving outside the study door. He had heard servants moving around several times as he worked, but he had ignored it. Ther
e was bound to be bustle about the house, in such a large estate.

  This was unusual, though. He heard steps approaching, and then they slowed, and then stopped. He guessed they must have been right outside the door; they had come closer, but never gone further away that he could hear.

  What was going on, then? Perhaps he was simply paranoid. After all, there was no reason at all for anyone to be snooping on him. He knew next to nothing about household affairs, had few possessions of any value, and if the sneak had been interested in the accounts, they could have come right in the open door.

  Still, James strained to listen for footsteps. He heard none. Whoever it was, they had either become extremely quiet, or they hadn't moved since he had heard them come up.

  It must have been paranoia, he reasoned, but it did little to calm him. This was not his house, and these were not his accounts. Whoever was snooping would be doing it for some reason, and he would look awfully foolish in front of his new employers, asking for money he hadn't been promised after someone had got away with the family's secrets.

  All because he hadn't bothered to investigate some strange footsteps.

  He stood up and turned toward the door, walking as silently as he could. He reached out, barely letting his hand graze the door knob. He took a deep breath and tried to still the ever-louder beating of his heart. Then he let the breath out, and twisted the knob and pulled the door in one swift motion.

  A young woman, pretty, with long red hair piled onto her head, stood in the doorway. She had a long, narrow face and a button nose, and light freckles, and the green eyes that the Irish were prone to.

  "Miss Geis," he said softly. "Is anything the matter?"

  She looked at him with fire in her eyes, and dared him to do…something. He had noticed it earlier, as well: a combative attitude he couldn't explain. Whatever was on her mind, she kept it to herself.

  James noticed that she was wearing her corset, now. His cheeks turned red and he tried not to think about it. It was hard to look her in the face, as well. He had met plenty of pretty women before, even gotten a kiss or two from some. This was the first one who was so completely off-limits, and it made reacting to her presence difficult.

  For a moment he considered inviting her into the study. She would have known her father better than anyone; if the puzzle of the notes could be solved, she would be the one who could solve it. But then he looked at her again, and saw the look in her eyes. A mixture of mistrust and dislike, he thought, mixed with something that might have been anger.

  Perhaps it would wait.

  5

  Mary

  The sun was already streaming in through her window when Mary Geis rose. It still felt odd to her, and she had rolled over several times to go back to sleep when she woke at times that felt natural and normal to her.

  She put up a front of indifference and laziness, but beneath all that she wanted to sleep in even still. The reality of her life after her father's death had been all too bleak, and the chance to avoid even a little bit of it by closing her eyes was a welcome distraction.

  She dressed quickly, without Rebecca. She wasn't in the bed beside hers, and wasn't waiting in the hall for her, so clearly something must have come up. It wasn't as if Mary couldn't dress herself, after all.

  Afterward she made a bee-line for the library, as she had been doing for days. She kept her head down. The truth was that she was still tired, even after all the sleep she'd gotten already. She didn't want to look or think too hard until after she'd had a cup of tea and been reading a bit.

  She tried to forget the day before, and the powerful, attractive young man who had barged his way into her house by opening her book to where she'd marked it the night before. It took her only a moment to find her place once more, but reading was slow going. For every sentence she read, it seemed as if she had to read it twice more to comprehend It, and then start again at the top of the paragraph to understand a word of it.

  When she finally set the book down with a weary sigh, the clock showed nearly noon, and she'd barely made it five pages. What was she to do?

  She looked out the window and tried to figure things out again. This new steward, Mr. Poole. He was far too young to have any experience, she knew. That he'd been in the army only served to cement it. Perhaps he knew nothing at all about running a house.

  If he were sent by whoever plotted against her family, it would only make sense that they would be the type who had been in the army. He was big enough to be dangerous, and yet he had manners enough to fit in among the servants her father had kept.

  With a frown, Mary noted that she hadn't seen Davis around for the entire day. That in itself was not unusual—he had spent days before serving her father, and she was relegated to one of the maids for service. But she was the only one in the house, now, who would have any sort of need for a butler.

  "Davis," she called out experimentally.

  She waited a moment for the sound of the door to open. Nothing came. She waited another moment longer and then stood. What on earth could have happened, that he wasn't here? She let out a long, tired sigh.

  Perhaps she should stay here. Whatever it was, surely he would be back before long, and she would look awfully foolish for having worried. She sat back and opened the book again, but she didn't read. She looked at the open pages blankly, and then pushed her chair back and stood once more. She should have been notified, at least, if he were going to go out.

  That she wasn't was reason enough for concern. She marched out of the room. Whatever was going on, she would get to the bottom of it. Rebecca wasn't waiting outside, of course. And she wasn't in the attic, sewing, either.

  Mary's chest felt tight, and her vision started to dim. Whatever was going on, it was bad. She began to think that perhaps, for the first time in her memory, she was well and truly alone.

  If her fears were well-founded, and someone was planning something untoward towards her family, she was now well and truly alone. She couldn't do anything at all to prevent it.

  She nearly stumbled down two flights of stairs on her way to the kitchens. They were empty, every pot and pan in its place. The sink was completely clean, the floor sparkling. When the cooks had left, they had done their jobs in cleaning up after the place.

  She leaned against the counter and tried to still the beating of her heart and slow her breathing, which came in harsh, ragged bursts that utterly failed to give her any sort of sustenance. She needed to get out, to escape. She didn't care about the house any more. She just needed to feel safe.

  As she breathed, Mary tried to think. If there was something going on, then this was the final coup de grace. What's more, she realized as a pit opened up in her stomach, there would be no escape. Not for a young woman, alone and unarmed.

  She began going, in her mind, what her options were. The servants seemed to be gone, arranging for her to be left alone for some nefarious purpose. The new man, the "steward"—or perhaps "assassin"—was the only question in her mind. He was not part of the house's regular staff. And if he were still around, then he would be the instrument of her destruction. Of that much, she was certain.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself and closed her eyes. She folded her hands in prayer, and for a long moment prayed to Holy Mary for her protection. She touched her breast a moment, and then began the long, perhaps final, climb up the stairs to the main floor.

  The house was silent save for the sound of her shoes, clicking sharply on the floor, and with the absolute quiet it seemed to echo throughout. The sound was lonely and seemed to create a feeling of finality, one that was mirrored in Mary's heart.

  At last she stood at the study door. It was closed, but when she pressed her ear against it, she heard nothing. No scratching of a pen, no one walking back and forth inside, no shuffling of papers. Finally, she knocked lightly; if she was quiet enough, she hoped, nobody would answer.

  But after a long moment, as she held her breath, the door did open.

 
A big man in a waistcoat, with close-cropped hair, broad shoulders, and strong, attractive features stood behind it. He had a reproachful look on his face as he looked down at Mary.

  "Where has everyone gone? What have you done with Davis and Rebecca?"

  He inhaled a deep breath through his nose and the square posture of his shoulders softened slightly.

  "I've sent them home, Miss Geis."

  Mary recoiled as if she'd been slapped. He didn't attack her outright, and his hands were empty. If he were an assassin, he ought to get it over with. Her only hope, if it could be called that, lay in continuing to feign ignorance.

  "Whatever for, Mr. Poole?"

  "They couldn't be kept, Miss."

  Mary bit her tongue to keep from speaking too soon. She needed to think. He was big enough to snap her in half without thinking. Like a twig for kindling.

  How much longer could the charade go on for? She was tired. Tired of the fear, tired of the lies. She closed her eyes for a moment. What right did he have to do any of this? Her face twisted in anger, and she slapped him with the full weight of her body.

  James made no effort to stop her. Her hand stung, she thought, more than his face appeared to. She slapped him again, with her other hand.

  "Well," she said, defiant. "Do your worst."

  James Poole looked at her for a moment, confused. He looked at her face, and then over her shoulder. Then he frowned.

  "If that's all, ma'am. I need to get back to work."

  Mary looked up at him, her face angrier and angrier.

  "Very well, then."

  She wouldn't give him the satisfaction, she decided. Whatever happened now, she wouldn't be able to stop. But if he weren't going to admit to it, then she wouldn't reveal that she knew. The door was closing as she thought of one last, closing jibe.

  "And Mr. Poole?"

  The door stopped, and opened up once again. James Poole stood on the other side, filling the door frame and obscuring her view of the room inside.