by Juliana Gray
She brushed them into her palm instead, and from her palm into her pocket.
In the center of the old blotter sat a stack of clean white paper and a few sheets of crisscrossed scribbles, topped with a plain black marble paperweight. Stefanie removed the fountain pen from the drawer, gave it a little shake, and set to work.
The pens of the other clerks scratched around her. Someone coughed, a strangled and desperate cough that its owner tried heroically to suppress. Stefanie concentrated on her handwriting, which had never been her strong suit, or even her middling suit, particularly when set next to her sister Emilie’s perfect copperplate or Luisa’s grand strokes. Stefanie was a scribbler, fond of dashes and exclamation points and sentences that had no point at all, just a dotdotdot at the end, an unfinished thought, a suggestion, a wink.
She frowned now at the phrase before her: Therefore, it is my studied recommendation that the witnesses belong to one of two categories: Firstmost, those who will establish the character of the defendant as one who upholds the highest standards of moral and physical law; and, Secondmost, those who will establish the ability of the defendant to handle matters of bookkeeping and finance in a rigorous and arithmetically adept manner, without regard to his personal interest. So dreadfully dry. How on earth did these legal chaps read all this without falling into a drooling catatonic stupor? Stefanie’s pen hovered over the words bookkeeping and finance. She wondered whether anyone would notice if she changed them to bookmaking and forgery.
Clearly she wasn’t cut out for this work. Clearly she should have been apprenticed to a newspaperman instead, or perhaps a theater owner, or even . . .
A shadow cast across the page.
Stefanie glanced up, expecting to find the beetle face of Mr. Turner sneering down at her, about to inform her that she might gather her hat and coat and find another set of chambers to darken with her slovenly habits and her intolerable cheek.
But the sight that greeted her was far worse than that.
Sir John Worthington. Stern, gray-faced, his impartial dark eyes burrowing through her forehead to root out the corruption within. Before Stefanie could so much as leap to her feet and perform a ritual genuflection, he barked out, “Mr. Thomas. In my office, if you please,” and turned away in the obvious expectation of instant obedience.
Stefanie scrambled after him. On her back, she felt the weight of every clerkly eyeball, heavy with schadenfreude.
SIX
The telegram was waiting on Hatherfield’s breakfast tray, after he had bathed and shaved in the private if rather sterile comfort of his bachelor flat in Knightsbridge.
“Nelson!” he called out. “When did this telegram arrive?”
His manservant appeared soundlessly and miraculously sober in the bedroom doorway. “While you were bathing, sir. I have taken the liberty of putting out the brown tweed suit, sir, and the blue necktie.”
“Very good, Nelson.” Hatherfield selected a daggerlike silver letter opener from the secretary in the corner and tore open the thin white envelope with a neat slash across one side.
PERCEPTIVE STOP EXPECTED NOTHING LESS STOP GUARD WITH ALL DUE VIGILANCE STOP RETURN LONDON LATE TONIGHT STOP EXPECT YOU AT NINE SHARP TOMORROW MORNING STOP YOURS OLYMPIA
Hatherfield tapped the edge of the telegram against the secretary and swore.
Guard with all due vigilance. What the devil did that mean? Guard the secret of her disguise? Or guard young Thomas herself?
He pictured her again, her sleek auburn head bowed over her desk and then turning up to greet him in delighted amazement. The way his blood had jumped in his veins at the sight. And later, her face shadowed and exhausted in the anemic glow of the Cadogan Square gas lamps, as she disappeared up the steps of Sir John’s town house. He thought of the clerks scratching away in those damned legal chambers, in full proximity to her dancing eyes and curving posterior, and the answer to his question rose up so violently in his throat, he could taste it.
Both.
As he had been doing, without instruction, already. Watching over her like a hen with a particularly adventurous chick, guarding her travels and providing her supper.
He looked down at the telegram once more. Expected nothing less.
Damn Olympia. He’d planned it all out, hadn’t he? No accident at all, Hatherfield’s being present in that godforsaken castle in Devon when Mr. Stephen Thomas made his introduction to his new household.
Which begged the question: Who the devil was she, really?
And what the flying hell was Olympia up to?
“Nelson!” he called out. “Ring down for my hansom at once, please.”
“Right away, sir.”
Hatherfield gulped his coffee and reached for his shirt. His manservant, who knew better than to attend him while in the act of dressing, disappeared into the other room to ring the mews.
Half an hour later, Hatherfield’s hansom was zigzagging nimbly through traffic on its way to the City. He had an errand to dispose of first, before he could attend to Miss Thomas.
Sir John Worthington had already positioned himself behind his desk, stiff-necked and imposing, by the time Stefanie stepped bravely after him into the office.
“Close the door, if you will, Mr. Thomas.” Sir John lifted the ends of his jacket and lowered himself into his chair.
The door made an awful echoing thump as Stefanie closed it, as of a prison gate shutting tight. This was because the office itself was large and high ceilinged and remarkably free of the usual layers of bookshelf and wainscoting, a spacious box of a room, uncluttered and well lit, with Sir John’s substantial desk positioned in the center and flanked by two chairs upholstered in leather. Also, the door was four inches thick of solid British heart of oak.
Sir John gestured to one of the leather chairs. “Sit, please.”
As if she were a dog. Stefanie stalked up to the chair and crashed into the seat with equal parts vim and vigor. If one were about to be dismissed summarily, one should face one’s fate with stubborn chin tilted.
“I have here before me your summary of the unfortunate case of Mr. Harding and the dustman,” said Sir John.
“Mrs. Harding and the dustman, really,” said Stefanie. “The husband seems to have played an ancillary role, at best.”
“Ah. Yes.” Sir John’s eyes dropped to the papers before him, ran over a line or two, and then lifted back up to meet Stefanie’s steady gaze. He stroked the tip of his beard. “I don’t know quite how to begin.”
“At the beginning, I should think.”
“Yes. Quite. In the first place, this summary is an absolute mess, Mr. Thomas. In all my years of judicial practice, I have never encountered a paper less organized, less sensible, less”—he lifted up one corner and eyed it with distaste—“less legible than the one before me now.”
“Handwriting was never my strong suit.”
“Evidently not.”
Stefanie rose to her feet. The chair legs scraped an excruciating track along the wooden floor. “Very good, then, sir. May I say that my time here in your chambers, while brief . . .”
“What the devil are you doing? Sit down.”
“I see no reason to prolong this interview, Sir John. As you yourself have observed, I’m not cut out for the practice of law, which is exactly what I told His Grace, and might have saved us all a great deal of trouble if he’d . . .”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Thomas. Sit. I wasn’t going to sack you.”
Stefanie halted her finger in mid-thrust. “No?”
“Sit down, please, and leave off this theatrical gesturing, for God’s sake. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a theatrical gesture.”
Stefanie flipped up the ends of her jacket and settled back in her chair. Her pulse was giving off odd nervous flecks in her throat, making her just a tiny bit light-headed.
Sir John steepled his fingers atop the illegible and poorly organized mess she had left on his desk last night. Stefanie fought the urge to rip
it from beneath his hands, wad it into a ball, toss it into the wastebin, storm to the door, and say, fingers stabbing the air rudely: How do you like this theatrical gesture, Sir John Worthington, Q.C.?
“Now,” said Sir John, in perfect composure, “aside from the obvious errors of composition, organization, presentation, orthography, and punctuation, this paper is a work of extraordinary legal genius.”
“Well, sir, if you hadn’t been such a dashed rigid-arsed martinet and had given me a sufficient time to prepare, instead of . . .” Stefanie blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Sir John tapped his right forefinger against the paper. “Genius. Unschooled, obviously, and quite unaccustomed to the, er, to the rhetorical terms in which the law expresses itself . . .”
“Bloody boring, you mean.”
“Yes, Mr. Thomas. Bloody, bloody boring. Dry, passive, riddled with clause. You’ve expressed yourself here in entirely too straightforward and dramatic a fashion, but the content itself—your lines of argument, your grasp of the subtleties of the legal principles involved, your ethical insight—it’s all brilliant. It’s—how do I describe it? A sort of cognitive leap, extraordinary in one with no previous exposure to the law.”
Extraordinary. The word rang against the sides of Stefanie’s skull.
Six months ago, Stefanie had been sitting in the Holstein Castle schoolroom, staring out the window as Miss Dingleby read over her latest composition. Stefanie couldn’t now remember the subject, but she did remember counting the gardeners outside in the clean summer air, an extraordinary number, all of them harvesting immense quantities of roses and lilies from the royal gardens in preparation for her sister Luisa’s nuptials the following Wednesday. She could hear their laughter as they worked, could smell the dense June-warm fragrance of the flowers drifting up from the soil below. Miss Dingleby’s voice, when it finally carried across the stone room, had sounded distant: Really, Your Highness, you must endeavor to put a little more effort into these essays, the way your sisters do. You must concentrate a little. You haven’t the brains to keep up with Emilie; you have to focus your meager faculties, for God’s sake, or you’ll never be good for anything other than flirting with unsuitable men and getting yourself into scrapes.
Now, in this chilly box of a November room, not a flower in sight, Sir John’s voice sounded equally distant. Echoing. Genius. Brilliant. A cognitive leap.
Extraordinary.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t believe I quite understand you.”
“It’s masterful, Mr. Thomas. You’ve a talent, a natural talent for this kind of thing. The only thing wanting is a little discipline, of which any idiot is capable. Look at Mr. Turner, there.” Sir John waved his hand to the door. “Thick as a plank, poor chap, but he keeps everything in order and that’s what I need from him. You, on the other hand, Mr. Thomas, have a different sort of mind altogether, a very valuable mind, and with a certain amount of cultivation, I don’t doubt you might eventually prove one of the most eminent men called to the bar this decade.”
Stefanie’s head felt as if it were floating. “Sir?”
Sir John rose to his feet. “I intend to take a close and personal role in your development, Thomas. I want you to brief yourself on all my current cases and accompany me to court. I shall be asking you to dine with me, inviting other members of the bar, because that is the proper way to learn, Thomas. Discourse.”
Stefanie lurched upward. “Discourse. Yes, sir.”
“For now, you will return to your desk and begin educating yourself. I shall want summaries of all my active cases, just like this one”—he held it up for a demonstrative jiggle—“except with perhaps a little more attention to organization and clarity, Thomas. Clarity.”
“Clarity, sir. Of course. Organization and clarity. There is one difficulty, however, sir,” Stefanie said, a little numbly, for she felt rather as if she were dreaming this episode instead of actively participating in it.
“Difficulty, Mr. Thomas?” Sir John’s thicket of eyebrows hefted upward. “What possible difficulty could there be?”
“I have a few letters to copy, sir. On my desk this minute.”
“Letters? Letters, you say?”
“Yes, sir. A dozen or so.”
Sir John waved his hand and sat down. “Never mind the damned letters, Thomas. Do your duty, that’s all. Now off you go.”
Stefanie turned her body and walked slowly to the four-inch portal through which she’d passed a few minutes ago, in another lifetime, as another Stefanie. At the very last step, she turned.
“Sir.”
He looked up, a little crossly. “What is it, Thomas?”
“Are you . . . are you quite sure, sir? One of the most eminent this decade, sir? That’s . . . that’s quite an assessment, based on a single poorly organized paper.”
“Damn it all, Mr. Thomas. Are you suggesting I’m wrong? I am never wrong. Now off you go, and close the door behind you. I’ve the devil of an amount of work to get through before I attend sessions.”
Stefanie floated through the door and shut it firmly behind her. She made her way back to the desk and sat down, staring blankly at the half-finished letter before her. She knew, somewhere at the back of her mind—her valuable mind, had he really said that?—that the other clerks were staring at her, that the incessant scratching of pens had unaccountably ceased, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Psst! Thomas!”
She turned her head to the side. Her neighbor clerk leaned toward her, shifting his eyes watchfully back and forth to Sir John’s door, his brown whiskers bristling with mutton-chop curiosity on his jaw.
“Thomas!” he hissed again.
“Yes?” she heard herself whisper.
“The lads are I are headed to the pub this evening, after old Turner makes his disappearance. Care to join us in a bit of shenanigans?” His eyebrows gave off a waggle. He tapped his fountain pen against the side of his jaw.
And all at once, Stefanie was as light as air, as free and wind-drunk as a bird on the wing. She wanted to laugh out loud with the joy of it.
Instead, she smiled at the clerk in his identical black suit.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve a great deal of work to do.”
By the time the Marquess of Hatherfield reached the offices of Wright Holdings, Ltd., on London Wall, it was nearly ten o’clock in the morning, the result of an overturned delivery wagon in Cheapside that had brought all wheel-bound traffic to an immediate and fatal halt. After ten minutes of fruitless waiting, he’d gotten out and walked, despite the clogging yellow fog and the stagnant water collected in the rutted pavement.
“Mr. Wright is attending a meeting at the moment, your lordship,” said the secretary, concealing his surprise with impressive self-control at the sight of the plain ecru card Hatherfield had handed him. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I do not, as I’m sure you’re well aware,” said Hatherfield. “A certain matter has come up, an urgent matter. I should appreciate the opportunity to speak to Mr. Wright at the earliest possible instant.”
“I see, sir.” The secretary glanced at the clock. “If you’ll do us the honor of taking a seat, Lord Hatherfield.”
Hatherfield settled himself in a chair. The minutes ticked away in the silent interior of the reception room, an elegant space, furnished in serene colors with simple richness. Hatherfield had the impression of an immense amount of activity taking place behind the quiet door at the other side of the room, a beehive made of ticker tape with accountants buzzing about in green eyeshades. The door opened, and a man popped out, looking flustered, and strode without pause to the hat stand. The secretary jumped to his feet.
“If you’ll excuse me, your lordship. I’ll see if Mr. Wright is available.”
A moment later, the secretary returned.
“Mr. Wright has ten minutes, your lordship.”
If Hatherfield was expecting the notorious financ
ier to own a grand office, stuffed with important furniture and lined with priceless Old Master paintings in gilt frames a yard thick, he was disappointed. The room was neat and small and businesslike, anchored by a quite ordinary desk, a few maps decorating the walls. Mr. Wright stood at Hatherfield’s entrance.
“Your lordship,” he said, in a voice no less powerful for its quiet volume.
Hatherfield shook his outstretched hand. “Mr. Wright.”
“Please sit down. May I offer you refreshment?”
“No, thank you. I’ll be brief. I understand you’re a busy man.”
Wright smiled and made a deprecating motion with his hand. Hatherfield had met him once or twice, at this or that party. A tall man, robust, blunt boned, and not unhandsome. His dark hair was brushed back from his forehead with a touch of pomade, and his mustache was clipped and modest. His eyes shone dark and keen from beneath his straight eyebrows. What had Hatherfield heard? That he was the bastard son of one aristocrat or another, brought up in genteel obscurity in some unfashionable quarter of London. He had that look, watchful and predatory and a little hungry. A touch ruthless, when he had to be. Or perhaps that was only his reputation. Reputations could be so often mistaken.
Hatherfield sat down. “I understand from my father, the Duke of Southam . . .”
“I know who your father is, Lord Hatherfield.”
“Very good. Then perhaps you know why I’ve come. You hold my stepmother’s marker for forty-three thousand pounds.”
“Forty-two, I believe.”
“I presume you know that my family has no possible means of paying it.”
“There are always means, Hatherfield, if one’s willing to find them.”
Hatherfield leaned back and studied the man before him. “I suppose a man in your position knows everything that goes on in this little world of ours, don’t you?”
A shrug. “I hear many things, of course.”
“May I be so bold as to inquire why you drew a woman, a lady, deep into play, when you knew she had nothing at all to back up her markers?”