Unraveled (16 page)

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Lord Justice, you do know how to woo a woman. Tell me more.”

“Precisely,” he agreed. “I’m not given to effusive sentiment. I’m not good at it, and you mustn’t expect it. It’s best we start as we mean to go on. I don’t need false protestations of love. I ask only for fidelity for the term of the arrangement and basic honesty.”

“And what
is
the term of the arrangement you’re proposing?”

“One month.” His pulse was beating more erratically than it ought. This was business—simple business. Not something to care about. No reason to watch her so carefully, to wonder what that flicker of her eyelashes might mean. No reason at all. He bent and retrieved Ghost’s stick, to avoid looking in her eyes, and hurled it as far as he could. “In addition to what I mentioned before,” he added, “I’ll pay you a thousand pounds.”

That got him an incredulous look. “One thousand pounds. Are you joking? Or are you mad?”

He’d decided on a few hundred last night. He wasn’t sure where the new, vastly inflated number had come from. Perhaps because he feared that she might refuse two hundred.

“Neither,” he said repressively.

“You drive a worse bargain than my friend Jeremy.” She put her hand to her head. “I beg your pardon for not immediately snapping up the offer. My financial understanding stretches to shillings and pence in the quantities of ones and tens. I have never heard the word ‘thousand’ anywhere near the word ‘pounds.’ I am having difficulty comprehending what you mean. You had seemed a sensible man, but you cannot be one. That’s an absurd amount for just that one thing.”

“Yes,” he snapped. “This entire endeavor is absurd. I don’t know why I asked you to come, or why I could scarcely breathe this morning until I saw you. The only thing I know for certain is that I want more than
one
thing from you. I want forty or fifty. Most of all, I want this: when we are through, I want to be certain that I will not leave you in danger. This way, I’ll know that you’ll never find your way into my courtroom again—neither you nor Robbie—and I’ll never have to compromise my judgment. I want you to be
safe
. I can’t purchase that for a few pounds and a minute against a wall.”

She was watching him. The bright green of her eyes bored into his. She raised one eyebrow at that, and he almost thought she might be laughing at him. But instead, she said, “That’s four things you want. What are the other forty-something?”

He reached out and took her hand. She was wearing knit gloves; they thinned at the fingertips. He rolled the fabric off her hand, slowly, and then pressed his hand into hers. She stared down at their entwined fingers, and then looked up at him.

“There’s really only the one other thing,” he heard himself say. “But I imagine I’ll want it more than once.”

Her hand twitched in his.

“Also,” he said, “to be quite truthful—I chose a thousand pounds because I don’t want to risk the possibility of your saying no.”

She gave him a little smile—as if she’d realized what he’d just said. He had the money, the power. And he’d practically admitted that she had him in the palm of her hand. She could have asked for two thousand pounds, and he’d have agreed. Ten.

But instead, she pulled back from him. Her nails trailed along the skin of his hand. “I have my own conditions,” she said.

“Yes?”

“You can have my body. You can have my fidelity. You can even have my honesty—” this, with a little wayward smile “—but there is one thing you cannot ever buy from me, not with any coin you have.”

“Oh?”

“You can’t buy my affection.”

It was not disappointment he felt. It would make matters easier. He should have been overjoyed.

“That hardly signifies.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Affection is not one of the forty-four other things I want to have from you.” He wouldn’t know what to do with it, in any event. “I told you I have no desire for effusive sentiment.”

She gave him a brisk nod. “There’s something else you need to know.”

“Oh?”

She cast her eyes down and then looked up at him through her lashes. “You’re adorable when you’re uncertain.”

“Uncertain?” He drew himself up. “What makes you think I’m uncertain? I’m certain. I’m quite certain. I’m—”

He lost his words, the entire rest of his sputtering speech, when she stepped close to him, popped up onto her toes, and kissed him. The feel of her was a cool, clean shock, as bracing as fresh morning air after a tortured night.

Smite remembered everything. He remembered every prisoner he’d thrown in gaol, and the ones he had let go. He remembered reports of crimes and the details of bloody history.

But when she kissed him, he forgot. He forgot everything in the world except the heady feel of her hands, resting against his lapels. For just that moment, he was nothing but an ordinary fellow out with his sweetheart. When she kissed him, she made him feel like a man—just a man, not a burdened magistrate responsible for the fate of half of Bristol.

And so he deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue between her lips. He set his hands on her hips and pulled her close, and she didn’t resist. She nestled against him, sighing deep in her throat. He kissed her until the rumble of a cart intruded on the quiet fog shielding their tryst.

She drew back. He felt almost unsteady on his feet. He was drunk on the taste of her. He’d been knocked off balance, and he wouldn’t be able to walk a straight line for years.

No, he definitely wasn’t going to miss his thousand pounds. He’d got the better end of that bargain. Even if she never gave him one scrap of affection.

But what he said instead was, “So that’s a yes, then.”

“It’s a yes.”

The sun wasn’t coming up yet, but it ought to have done. It felt like dawn, warm and red, arriving on the heels of a very dark night.

“About your other concern,” he heard himself say. “Do you know how to avoid pregnancy?”

She hadn’t stopped smiling at him. “I was raised by actors,” she said archly. “And if those measures prove ineffective… Well, there is that thousand pounds.”

If they proved ineffective, there’d be more than a thousand pounds, but he saw no need to spell that out. All he said was, “Good. Then I’ll be in contact to arrange further particulars.” He cast her one last look. “Don’t expect to wait long.”

“J
EREMY,
” M
IRANDA WHISPERED, “NOW
I
know
I’ve done something foolish. Tell me I mustn’t go through with it.”

It was a scant few hours since her assignation with Lord Justice, and Miranda was still reeling. She’d wandered about in a daze after, watching the city come fully to life. She’d waited until the shops opened—and as soon as she’d been able, she’d come to see Jeremy.

Jeremy dropped his thimble and leaned in. “What? Oh God. Don’t tell me. You—”

“I just agreed to be a man’s mistress.”

“What?!” His eyes widened.

“Shh!” Miranda glanced across the shop, searching out Old Blazer. He sat in his place at the front, watching the passersby through the window. He nodded and waved at acquaintances as he smoked his pipe.

Jeremy obligingly dropped his voice. “Why?”

“Because he’s going to put me up in a nice house. And pay me a tidy sum.” Because he’d
wanted
her, so damned badly he couldn’t stop thinking of her. Because he’d made her think she was worth a thousand pounds—that, in fact, he was getting the better end of the deal.

Jeremy must have caught the dazed look in her eyes. “You know,” he said cautiously, “whatever he’s said, he doesn’t love you.”

“I’m not stupid,” Miranda scoffed. A bit impulsive, yes. “He said he didn’t want affection.” She believed that story as much as that tale he’d spun about the cats. “And if you must know, he kisses like the devil. I want him, and he wants me. It’s horribly wrong of me. I can’t stop thinking how wicked it is, how much of a risk, how it’s not too late to back out and tell him I’ve changed my mind—”

“But you don’t want to,” Jeremy finished softly.

“There’s that, and…” She ran her hands along the countertop, not sure how to express her other reason.

“You don’t think he’ll hurt you,” Jeremy finished.

Miranda nodded. Impulsive girls with a taste for wicked men…well, it didn’t always turn out so well for them. It wouldn’t have made sense if she’d explained it to anyone else.

“Besides,” Jeremy said, “I always thought you were more likely to be a mistress than a wife.”

“Raised by actors,” Miranda said, mock-mournfully. “My morals have never been what they should.”

“No.” Jeremy frowned at his hands. “You’re happier when your relationships can be framed in terms of commerce. You never accept help from anyone.”

“I’m not so bad as that!”

“As you say,” Jeremy said, which was his way of disagreeing without arguing. “Is this going to get you away from the Patron?”

“With what he’s paying me? It’ll get me out for good. Me
and
Robbie.”

Jeremy leaned toward her, his pale eyes intense. “Do it,” he said. “Do it. Go. Get out.”

“I won’t be living in Temple Parish any longer. I…I might not ever come back.”

Jeremy didn’t flinch. “Well, don’t look back at me.”

Miranda had always known that Jeremy was a good friend. But she hadn’t quite realized how good until now. She’d just told him that she might never see him again, and he’d told her to grab hold with both hands.

Footsteps sounded behind her. And then a gruff voice spoke. “What are you two whispering about?”

“Becoming a mi—” Jeremy stopped, and blushed red hot, as if suddenly realizing what he’d been about to disclose to his grandfather. “A muh,” he sputtered. “A mah.”

“A magistrate,” Miranda filled in smoothly, turning to Old Blazer. “We’re talking about how one becomes a magistrate.”

Jeremy screwed up his face in a grimace and gave her a short shake of his head. But it was too late. Old Blazer’s eyes snapped, and he thumped his fists onto the table in front of them.

“A magistrate!” Old Blazer said. “It takes nothing to become a magistrate but lily-livered idiocy, that’s what. They don’t do any good, magistrates. Do you know what they’ve done?”

She’d seen Old Blazer run off on a tirade before—usually about workmanship and machine-knit cloth. She’d not known he put magistrates in the same category.

“Yes,” Jeremy was saying soothingly. “I know.” He shrugged hopelessly at Miranda.

Old Blazer would not be calmed. “Back in ’31, it was, when they sent that nasty piece of work Wetherell down for the Assizes. City broke out in riots. And what did the magistrates do, Jeremy?”

“Nothing, Old Blazer.” Jeremy spoke like a child repeating a lesson learned long before.

“Quite right. They did nothing. They hid in their homes like rabbits. Didn’t bother to muster the militia. Not even when the rioters broke open the gaol and let the criminals free. The whole thing went on for days. And then, because the bloody magistrates had let the whole thing explode beyond fixing, what had to happen?”

“They called in the dragoons,” Jeremy intoned dutifully.

Old Blazer’s eyes swept the room. “They called in the dragoons. Opened fire on innocent men. Killed quite a few. Including my son—your father.” By now, Old Blazer was practically spitting with rage. “So don’t talk to me about magistrates. Those useless bastards killed my boy.” He drew a deep breath, and then another.

“Blazer,” said a voice behind them, “are you fretting again?”

Miranda breathed a sigh of subtle relief as Mrs. Blasseur stepped out from the back room.

“You know it’s not good for you.” She took his arm and gently led him to the back.

Miranda could hear her humming, could hear Old Blazer’s raspy protests, muffled by the curtain. Finally, Mrs. Blasseur came back through.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Jeremy said.

“It’s my fault,” Miranda added. “I didn’t know it would set him off. Truly.”

Mrs. Blasseur simply shook her head. “He’s a strong man, Old Blazer. But the older he gets, the angrier he becomes. Sometimes, it simply can’t all be contained.”

“He’s not unwell, is he?”

As if in counterpoint, the smell of pipe smoke drifted into the room.

Mrs. Blasseur rolled her eyes. “No. He’ll be perfectly well in a few minutes. It’s just better that he not fuss at the customers while he’s in this state. He
does
take it personally.”

“But his son died.”

“My husband.” Mrs. Blasseur sighed. “Jeremy’s father. That’s the way these things go. Only lawlessness and chaos can be born out of lawlessness and chaos. No point getting angry when it happens, no matter whom you might lose. All you can do is try to make things better. Old Blazer has yet to learn that.” She reached for a pair of scissors, and began to cut up bits of foolscap with a vengeance. The little slips of paper would be adorned with prices, and pinned to goods.

“But so solemn a subject, and on such a gloomy day. Tell me, Miss Darling—what’s this I hear about Robbie and a shipyard?”

There were some details one divulged to one’s best friend’s mother. And then, there were some things one lied about. Doubly true when one’s friend’s mother wanted one to marry her son.