“—Like red hot man candy wrapped in a bow,” Lee said.
“—as if he has his pick of women, and he does pick,” Rose continued. “He’s a predator.”
Gen drew in a long, slow breath, trying to look casual and normal. They didn’t know.
“He doesn’t assault women, does he?” Gen asked. She might have to be alone with him, perhaps in taxi cabs or other conference rooms. She could arrange to never be in that position, but she had to make arrangements ahead of time to ensure her safety.
“No, I’ve never heard of him assaulting anyone,” Rose said.
“He doesn’t have to,” Lee said. “The ladettes hand him their knickers.”
Rose rolled her huge, dark eyes. “He’s not a rapist and doesn’t assault, but I’ve heard that he’s very good at convincing women to do things that they might not do, otherwise.”
The fear of assault drained out of Gen. Indeed, that was exactly her experience. Lord Severn had backed off and stayed backed-off as soon as she had said no.
Gen asked, “Like what kind of things?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say,” Rose said.
Ah. Rose was a vault that a lot of people confided in. Gen knew better than to push. Anything that anyone had told Rose in confidence, she would take with her to her grave unless there was a damn good reason. At university, Gen had stayed up with Rose one night while she had rambled about an ethical dilemma, whether it was better to break a confidence, and in the end had gone to the authorities because a child was in harm’s way. Gen had known that Rose would make the moral choice in the end, but it was going to take some angst to get there.
“So, he’s harmless if you tell him no,” Gen said, just to clarify.
“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard,” Rose said, nodding.
“But who wants to turn ‘im down?” Lee asked, her hands rising to the corners of the room. “He’s a long and flexy mate, ‘e is.”
Long and flexy? “Is that literal?” Gen asked.
“No, berk. It just means he’s nice looking. Sexy. I haven’t had him.”
“Oh. Okay.” Gen rolled her eyes at Rose, who grinned.
“I haven’t!” Lee nearly shouted.
Rose pursed her lips.
Gen motioned for her to shut the office door.
Rose leaned back in her chair and flicked the door closed with two burgundy fingernails.
Now that they wouldn’t be overheard, Gen said to Rose, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
“I do not protest too much!” Lee said. “If I’d’ve had Lord Severn, when I was finished with him, he’d need an IV drip, an ice pack, and therapy. I’d tattoo it backward on my forehead in diamonds so I could read it in sparkly things every morning: I thumped ‘is Lordship Arthur Finch-Hatten, the Earl of Severn.” She held her scarlet hair away from her face. “Is it written on my forehead in diamonds? Well, is it?”
Gen and Rose had to admit that Lee did not have a booty call confession tattooed on her forehead in glittering gems, so it must not have happened.
Lee asked Gen, “Have you boinked him yet?”
“God, no. I’ve only had one quick meeting with him,” Gen said.
Lee and Rose looked at each other, and an eternity of debate passed between them.
“What!” Gen said.
Rose asked, “So, what’s he like?”
“Yeah, did you drop on your back on the conference table and beg him to bang you hard?” Lee asked.
Gen almost stood up. “No!”
Lee told Rose, “I’ll bet she did.”
Rose asked Gen, “So what did you talk about?”
Gen sighed. “At first, very little.” She gathered herself to spill the beans to her girlfriends because that’s what had to be done. “Up close, he’s stunning. Like, literally stunning. It was like I’d taken a Taser to the frontal lobes. My mouth would not work for several minutes.”
Rose nodded, “Those eyes.”
Lee added, “That arse.”
Rose’s loud sigh at Lee’s coarseness was audible even over Lee and Gen’s laughter.
Rose asked, “And then, what was he like?”
“Well—” Gen picked around her little freak-out and considered the rest of the meeting. “—He was funny.”
Rose gasped. “He was not.”
“He was. He was asking silly questions about the games that we play in court. Like, you know, the word game Stannis insists on playing, where you have to work certain words into the arguments?”
“Oy, I hate that one,” Lee said.
Rose shrugged. She’d read English poetry at Oxford. Gen had yet to go up against her, but she bet that Rose would be very, very good at that particular game.
Gen said, “Or playing online poker in Judge Germaine’s courtroom. James had to buy a round at The Collared Dog that night because I won twenty quid from the judge online and won the case.”
“Nice,” Lee said.
“But the weird thing is,” Gen said, “it seemed like he was really listening to me. It wasn’t like mere flirting, not like he was hanging on my words because he wanted to get into my pants, but that he was genuinely interested in what I had to say, like maybe I had something important to tell him.”
“You were telling him whether or not he’ll be keeping a whole, filthy lot of money,” Lee said, “and whether you can save his noble arse.”
Gen shook her head. “No. It was more than that. Different, somehow.”
Rose pursed her lips. “And then what happened?”
“Nothing, really.” Nothing to speak of because Gen didn’t speak of anything about that. “We discussed his case a bit, and then he left.”
Lee asked, “So are you buddies with ‘is Lordship? Have you friended on social media and declared that you’re in a twittership with him, yet?”
Gen rolled her eyes on that one. Honestly. “Uh, no. Indeed, I don’t think he likes me very much. I had to tell him to quit carousing and chasing skirts. I told him that judges and juries didn’t like it and he was going to lose the case if he kept carrying on. He didn’t take kindly to that.”
Lee and Rose looked at each other again with one of those looks that held an entire conversation, a long and sad conversation.
Gen opened her hands, begging, “What!”
“You have to be more subtle, Genevieve,” Rose said. “You have to bring them around to it. Let him understand it rather than be so direct.”
“Because he’s a man and I’m just a woman?” Gen asked. “Because of chauvinism and sexism?”
“No, dear.” Rose set her beer bottle on Gen’s tiny desk. “Because he’s British, and because you’re British, too.”
Oh. Gen had been too American again.
Dagnabit.
She admitted, “Yeah, maybe I could have done that better.”
“There’s always a next time,” Rose said briskly.
Lee piped up, “I propose a toast.” She held up her beer bottle. The light shone through the empty glass bottle. One drip slid down the inside to the dry bottom. “That’s unfortunate. Good thing I have this.” She snagged a flask from her purse.
“And what have you got there?” Rose asked her.
“Good Irish whiskey,” Lee said. “Here, pour some in that empty bottle of yours.”
“I think Patrick would have words if he saw the abomination of good whiskey being polluted with a dirty beer bottle.” Rose held out her empty bottle.
Lee tipped the flask and dribbled whiskey into Rose’s bottle. “Gen? You up for it?”
“Hell, yeah. Fill ‘er up,” Gen said, holding out her empty bottle for a shot.
Lee added at least a triple shot of whiskey to Gen’s bottle, and they held their drinks up in salute. Lee’s metal flask clicked against their glass bottles. “To ‘is Lordship Arthur Finch-Hatten, the Earl of Severn, and his tight arse.”
Gen giggled, getting a little tipsy, and they all drank to the Lord Severn’s butt.
The whiskey burne
d Gen’s throat, and she caught her breath afterward. This was awful. It was horrifically unethical to treat a client so, even in private. “I should not be drinking to my client’s butt.”
“No jury with ladies on it would convict you,” Lee said.
Rose tittered behind her hand and sipped the whiskey from her bottle.
Lee and Rose finished their drinks and left Gen’s office, saying that they would see her the next day for lunch.
It was well past midnight. Gen should go home, too. She had to be back at work in just a few hours to get Octavia her first cup of the morning at seven.
Gen sat alone in her dark closet-slash-office, alternately staring at the paperwork in Lord Severn’s case and then at her computer screen. She drained the last sip of whiskey from her beer bottle during her vigil, waiting to see if Lord Severn was indeed at a sordid nightclub somewhere or if he had gone home to a lonely bed.
Ha. As if.
She refreshed the computer search again, but the top result was still the same grainy pic of Lord Severn and Peony Sweetling.
That had to be a stage name. Peony Sweetling. Sheesh.
She should call His Lordship Arthur Finch-Hatten, the Earl of Severn, and she should tell him to stay home like a good little earl and not screw up her case because judges and juries totally hated that kind of gallivanting about.
She really should.
Should.
How many beers had she had with the CTM? Three?
Probably three.
Maybe four.
And then the whiskey.
It was an excellent idea to call His Lordship Arthur Finch-Hatten the Earl of bloody Severn and tell him a thing or two.
It didn’t feel very British to be so direct. It felt very American, and it felt so very right.
Yep, Lord Severn’s cell phone number was right in his file.
That made it easy.
As Gen reached for the office phone, her wrist brushed the trackpad on her computer.
The browser refreshed itself, searching again for any news, gossip, incriminating photographs, or other dreck posted about “Lord Arthur Finch-Hatten OR Earl Severn AND gossip.”
The top photograph, that infuriating one with the blond bimbo and intimations of cocaine, floated down the screen, leaving white space.
Oh, God.
No.
Another picture materialized out of what must have been Hell.
His Lordship Arthur Finch-fucking-Hatten, the Earl of fucking Severn, was sitting on what looked like an infernal throne with three twenty-something women snaking around him. His suit was rumpled, and his silvery tie was askew. A bright red lip print marked his neck.
Even through the graininess of the telephoto shot, his pale eyes were obviously glazed over, and he was listing to the side as if he were half-dead.
The caption for the picture was “Lord Severn-and-Seven Drunk Again. Which of these Three Tarts is a Drug Dealer?”
Ah, bloody hell.
DRUNK-DIALING THE EARL OF SEVERN
Gen snatched up her office phone from the table behind her and dialed the number in the file.
Ringing chattered through the phone, and a man’s deep voice asked, “Yes?”
“Lord Severn—” Gen started, her voice a little screechier than she had meant. She was too wound up, too drunk.
“Oh, it’s you.” Lord Severn’s voice lightened a little as it came from her phone. “The contact listing said that Horace Lindsey was calling from beyond the grave.”
She tried to lower her voice, “It’s Genevieve Ward.” Still screechy. And a little slurred.
“Yes, Ms. Ward, I know.” He chuckled, a deep, low laugh. “If this were Horace, I would have to say that you’ve reincarnated extraordinarily quickly and as an attractive woman, you should know. Perhaps this time, I’ll take you up on your kind offer.”
She bulled over his words even though her tongue was numb and heavy in her mouth. “Someone saw you out carousing and took pictures of you with three women tonight. Three! Are you deliberately trying to sabotage your case? Do you not want to be the Earl of Severus anymore?”
“Severus? Ms. Ward, have you been drinking?”
“It doesn’t matter if I’ve been drinking. There aren’t any pictures of me up on gossip sites, half-unconscious and with women hanging all over me!”
“I’m flattered that you called me when drunk-dialing. Are you at your office?”
How could he know that? “How could you know that?”
“The contact identification shows Serle’s Court Barristers. I thought it was Horace Lindsey calling.” His voice was warm and gentle. “Remember?”
“I am not drunk but you are and you need to go home and quit letting those assholes get pictures of you when you’re drunk. You’re going to blow out your liver or something.”
“How are you planning to get home?”
“None of your business.”
“Is there anyone there with you?”
“None of your business.”
“Ah, I see how this game is played.” Some mumbling. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m on Chancery Lane, nearly at your office, now. Luckily, I happen to be quite close.”
“You’re drunk, too. You shouldn’t be driving.”
“I’m not driving. I have a lady who drives me around, and I never get drunk.”
“Dude, I saw the pictures. You’re probably crawling around on the floor of that car and vomiting on your way to the next bar.”
“I was on my way home to my demon-possessed dog, but I thank you for the vote of confidence.” He still sounded amused.
“Dude, I saw the pictures!”
“Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. I’m driving past Lincoln’s Inn now. Where is your office?”
“None of your business.”
“Ah, yes. There are only a few lights on. Those are the law library,” he mused. “Are you in Horace’s office?”
“No. When he died, they assigned me to a new pupil mistress, Octavia Hawkes.”
“So you’re in her office?”
“I have a little office right next to hers.”
“Is that in the same chambers as Horace’s office was?”
“Two doors down, past the clerk’s suite.”
“Splendid. You’re doing so well, helping me find you.”
A warm glow touched Gen’s cheeks. “S’alright.”
The growl of the car motor in the background of his voice died away. He said, “I’ve arrived. I’m coming up. Don’t go anywhere.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s entirely in my self-interest to make sure you get home all right. If my barrister dies of alcohol poisoning, I’ll definitely lose the lawsuit.”
“There are over sixty lawyers in this office. Someone else would take your case.” She wasn’t sure that was true.
“Horace wanted you to take it.”
“No, he just had me write a Shakespearean quote on it while he was dying.”
“And that was?” Gen could hear the smile in his voice and the tapping tread of his steps on the marble staircase.
While he lay dying, Horace had instructed her to write: Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
She told him, “Sonnet eighty-one.”
Silence grew over the phone as his footsteps stopped. Lord Severn asked, “That one?”
“Yes. I thought it was odd. What do you think he meant by it?”
The footsteps resumed clacking in the background of Lord Severn’s voice. “I’m almost there.”
“It was weird that he wanted me to write that. He knew he was going to die, didn’t he? It’s so sad that he died. I miss him a lot. I think about him every day, and it’s hard to keep from crying when I find his handwriting in files. Does that mean that he wanted me to take his case?”
“I suspect he did. Horace was a wise man and a good friend.�
��
“It took forever for the ambulance to arrive. I called them right away.”
“Of course you did.” His voice echoed from the phone and from down the hallway. “I’m sure you did everything you could. Where are you?”
“The only lamp still burning in the office because the industrious little American has to prove her worth.”
“I see your light.” The footfalls quickened. “Are you all right?”
Gen wiped her eyes. “I didn’t cry at his funeral.”
“Of course not. Horace wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.” Lord Severn rounded the corner of her doorframe and held on, his phone still pressed to his ear.
Gen mashed her eyes to dry any tears that might be still in them and looked up.
Damn, Arthur Finch-Hatten was gorgeous even when he was wearing jeans and a rumpled dress shirt instead of a tailored suit. The denim clung to his long legs, accentuating the lean muscles underneath. His dark shirt had one button open at the throat, no tie, just a peek of his collarbone. Without a suit jacket covering him up, his shoulders looked even broader, and his chest, more rounded under the thin fabric. He had a trim waist, narrow and tight, with the suggestion of hard muscles wrapping his body.
Gen’s brain turned to alcohol-soaked goo.
She hung up the office phone in its cradle.
Lord Severn stuffed his phone into a back pocket and walked into her cubby of an office. “Let’s get you home.”
Gen braced her arms on the desk. “Why would you come here?”
“It’s important to me that you arrive home safely,” he said.
“And why is that? I’m nothing to you,” Gen fretted. Drinking made her surly, sometimes.
“That’s not true. You’re my barrister who is going to save my earldom and a great deal of my money.”
She shrugged. “Barristers are a dime, a dozen.”
“Horace recommended you. I trusted him with my fortune and my title. I trust what he said about you.”
“Horace didn’t give me your case. The head clerk assigned it to me for absolutely no good reason. It was dumb luck for me, and it was bad luck for you.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure Horace Lindsey left instructions, or perhaps he had discussed the matter with my solicitors and they made the recommendation. On several occasions, he said that you would be his second at the table during the hearings. He told me that if anything happened to him, I should make sure you handled my case.”
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 5