“Well, yes, but they would almost certainly arrive just one heartbeat after that.”
She didn’t have the heart to argue with him. “I’m sure they would.”
“But, back to the cab rank rule, you can’t dump my case on someone else, and I think that Hawkes wouldn’t take it from you.”
“Maybe not in theory, but it’s done in practice all the damn time.”
“Then we’re at an impasse.”
“We’re not! I’m dumping you!”
“You sound more and more like a real girlfriend all the time. I thought we had a lovely time last night.”
“Not lovely enough to keep you from heading out to a strip club afterward!”
“That’s different,” he said.
“It’s totally not different. Seriously, you can’t do this anymore. If Hawkes finds out, I don’t know what I’ll tell her. It’s time for you to get right with Jesus—”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Jesus in the last few minutes.”
“If I thought a baptizing would reform you, I would hold your head under the water in a river myself.”
“Luckily, I was baptized as an infant, so I won’t be in danger of drowning.”
“Ugh. You Episcopalians are weird. Seriously, Arthur. Never, ever again. Got it?”
“Yes, I am chastised. I understand the ramifications.” The sheets rustled again.
A terrible thought wormed into Gen’s head. “You’re at home, right?”
“Yes, I’m in my own bed.”
Gen did not want to ask this one, either. “And alone, right?”
“I never bring women back to my apartment or to Spencer House. The fuss in the morning is distressing.”
“Well, there’s that, at least,” she sighed.
“I’ll see you this afternoon,” Arthur said, “in court.”
“You mean to polish me up, right? You didn’t get arrested last night, did you?”
He chuckled, a low, dark sound. “No, I wasn’t arrested last night. Yes, to polish you up.”
THE DOM/SUB JUDGE
That afternoon in court, Gen was cross-examining a witness in what had to be the dullest court case, ever. Octavia was supposed to be lead litigator on this case and in all cases because Gen was only a pupil barrister, but Octavia was sitting up perfectly straight in her chair and wearing large sunglasses because she was asleep. She hadn’t even dropped her pen, but the pen had left a black squiggle on the yellow legal pad as her arm had dropped a few inches.
Gen was making good progress on the court case, citing perfectly relevant cases in all her arguments and retorting to all the witnesses, when a paper sailed over her shoulder.
The note read, in Arthur’s neat, block handwriting, THE JUDGE IS FUCKING THE BAILIFF, AND THE BAILIFF IS DECIDING HIS CASES. JUDGE IS THE SUB. BAILIFF IS THE DOM. BAILIFF WILL TELL THE JUDGE HOW TO RULE. DUMB IT DOWN. PLAY TO THE BAILIFF.
She glanced back at him and mouthed, Are you kidding me?
Arthur shook his head, the sunlight glinting on his black hair and hard cheekbones. No, he was not kidding.
Gen spent the rest of the case playing to common sense and emotions. The bailiff, a sturdy, tattooed man with a wide, leather belt, nodded when she scored those kinds of points.
Sure enough, when the judge retired to consider the case and write his verdict, the bailiff trotted into his chambers after him, already unbuckling his belt.
Arthur winked at Gen, and she won the case.
Later, over a quiet supper in a restaurant with snowy china and sparkling crystal wine glasses, she asked him, “How did you know?”
“Body language,” Arthur said, laughing. “Every time the bailiff became bored with testimony or arguments, the judge started showing nervous tics, fiddling with pens and such, and watching the bailiff instead of listening to you and your learned opponent.”
Learned opponent. Gen chuckled. Arthur had picked up the lawyer lingo fast.
He said, “I would lay odds that the bailiff punishes the judge for boredom in the courtroom and instructs the judge to rule against the more boring barrister.”
“Would he do such a thing?”
“Unless the sub uses a safeword, some Doms can do just about anything. That’s why subs have safewords because they have the ultimate power to stop. Otherwise, it’s just abuse.”
“Good Lord,” Gen said, “and this was a motion to decide which court would hear a complaint by a bank against one of its investors for late-submitted documentation. I’ll bet that judge has welts tonight.”
Arthur smirked, “Chances are, he’s loving every minute of it.”
CHAMBERS HIGH TEA
The sun shone in the long windows of the best conference room while Gen poured tea for the senior barristers of chambers. Steam curled from the fragile china cup as the tea spun into it.
James Knightly sidled up to her. “Have you heard that Nigel Hancock’s girlfriend is in the family way?”
“Yes, James,” Gen said, adding a lump of sugar into Octavia’s piping hot tea and watching it dissolve. “Everyone has. From you. For days.”
“I’m taking up a collection for a baby gift,” he said.
She stirred the tea. “I’ll just bet that you are.”
“I was thinking a pram,” James said, “for when they take long morning walks in the park with the new baby.”
“Just quit harping on it,” Gen said. “Anyone would think you have baby fever yourself.”
A STALKER AND LEBANESE
A few hours later, when Gen was ready to leave chambers for the day, she texted Arthur so he could pick her up. She was waiting on the curb in the dark winter night when Pippa drove up in the Bentley.
As the car coasted to a stop, the back door opened while the car was still moving. Arthur stepped out, walking, from the moving car.
“Hey!” Gen called. “Hey, look. We should probably—”
Arthur walked right by her, his unbuttoned suit jacket fluttering as he strode by.
“I’m right here!” she called after him.
She was just turning around to go after him when Arthur grabbed a man three steps behind her by the lapels of the guy’s coat and drove him back against a wall. Arthur snarled, “Who are you?”
The guy had his hands up by his shoulders. A gray-streaked beard covered his ruddy cheeks. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”
“You’ve been following her for two days.”
“No, I have not!”
Arthur spoke quietly, quickly, “You drive a faded red banger, a Saab, about ten years old.”
The guy stuttered and glared at Arthur. “How did you know that?”
“Because you are shit at surveillance. Who employs you?”
Arthur’s low, intense voice was far scarier than if he had been screaming. Gen stood back and clutched her briefcase to her chest.
“None of your business!” The guy squirmed, trying to fight, but Arthur held him fast against the wall.
“It’s Christopher, isn’t it? Christopher Finch-Hatten is paying you.”
The guy’s arms flailed, slapping and punching at Arthur, but Arthur blocked the guy’s arms and grabbed his wrists.
He said, “I asked who was paying you.”
The guy’s dark eyes widened, and he was nearly hyperventilating. “I do not know that name. I am not a private investigator.”
“You’re shit at lying, too. If I see you following her again, I’ll ring the police for stalking and sort you out in the meantime.”
Arthur shoved the man hard against the wall and let him go. He walked back to the car where Gen was standing, frozen.
He told her, “Get in the car.”
Gen looked behind Arthur, but the guy was scurrying down the sidewalk toward a dirty red Saab.
She got into the car and asked Pippa, “Does he do that often?”
The driver shook her head. “Not to speak of.”
“Oh, okay.” That was a negative, right?
Arthur got i
n the other side of the car, and Pippa pulled the car into the thick, London traffic on the left side of the street.
Arthur turned to her. “About court today—”
“Who was that guy?” Gen demanded.
Arthur shrugged. “A private detective, I think, and terrible at his job. I imagine he was hoping for compromising photographs.”
“Why did you do that?”
“So he would leave you alone.”
“You can’t run around and threaten people like that! What if he calls the police?”
Arthur smiled. “I’m sure it won’t come to that. Now, about court today—”
Gen shook out her hands, trying to shake the crazy away. “Fine. Fine. You win. We won’t talk about the guy you threatened with violence any more. In court, I was awful, right? I’m hopeless?”
Arthur’s startled glance was a little reassuring. “No. None of those. What would you like for supper? Indian? Lebanese?”
“Sure. Anything. Whatever.”
“Now, now,” Arthur said. “You’re my girlfriend. If we were actually dating, you could play the whatever-you-want card. But since we’re in a long-term, committed relationship, we should be past the point of these little self-abnegating games. Tell me what you want for supper.”
“Okay. Lebanese,” Gen said.
“Lebanese, it is. Pippa?”
From the front seat, Pippa said, “Right-o, Lord Severn,” and steered the car into a sharp left turn around a corner.
It still freaked Gen out, sometimes, that they were driving on the wrong side of the road, and the driver sat on the passenger side of the car. Creepy.
The restaurant was close to Lincoln’s Inn, and the waiter who bustled up to them when they came in the door shooed them into a private room at the back of the restaurant. After they ordered—grilled chicken and salad for Gen and a falafel wrap for Arthur—they settled down to talk privately.
“So, what did I do in court that was terribly plebeian?” she asked.
Of course, that was the moment that her phone beeped with an incoming text from her boss. Octavia Hawkes was assigning her another case, a medical malpractice defense. Fifteen arch files would be delivered to Gen’s office from the instructing solicitors the next morning. The trial would be in two weeks.
Seriously, why were all these other trials so dang speedy but Arthur’s had been dragging on for years?
Gen thumbed her screen, saying that she would be pleased to take the case and thanking Hawkes for her confidence.
Arthur rolled his wine glass stem between his hands. “I need to ask you a question, a personal one.”
Gen swiped her finger across her phone, replying to another lawyer about another case.
The polish didn’t quite meet the bottom of her nail as her finger glided over the glass. Time for a manicure. Octavia Hawkes would be horrified at how slovenly Gen’s nails looked.
One dressed for the job one aspired to, Octavia had assured her on several occasions. Octavia wore a silk blouse on most days.
Gen kind of wanted to come to work dressed as Catwoman, just to throw her off.
Gen told Arthur, “I’m your lawyer. You don’t need to be asking me personal questions.”
Arthur’s gentle voice was low in her ears. “Have you been sexually assaulted?”
A wave of grief and shame tumbled Gen, and she dropped her phone but caught the flipping screen as it hit her thighs. “That’s none of your business.”
Arthur’s hands were folded in his lap under the table. “We’re pretending to be a couple. We’re spending time together. I don’t want to do or say something that will make things worse.”
Her hand was shaking so badly that she couldn’t continue composing the email. “It’s just none of your business.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that it happened to you.”
“Do not make me cry where a waiter is going to see, you bastard.”
“I shan’t mention it again. Have you discussed it with a counselor?”
“No, and I don’t want to.”
“I’ve heard they can be quite helpful.”
“I’m not the only person that it’s happened to. It’s not even special. When you get a group of women someplace private, in a secret internet group or in a bar late at night without any guys around, you hear it. The official statistic is one in three, but it’s wrong. It’s everybody. Everyone has a story, and everyone deals with it. Some people deal with it better. Some deal with it worse. But everyone deals with it. So I deal with it.”
Arthur had been watching her, not smiling, not scowling. His silvery eyes took in her speech without comment, just listening. He said, “I’m sorry it happened to you.”
“You already said that.”
“I suggest a counselor,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it with anyone.”
He looked down and adjusted his tie. “You’re in a profession where people will attempt to manipulate you. If they saw anything similar to what I saw last night or in the courtroom today, and if they knew what they were looking at, they would know how to use that in court to disrupt your case.”
Gen’s hand cramped around her phone. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“There are many manipulative bastards out there, Gen.” He stared into his wine. “I’m acquainted with enough of them. You shouldn’t let them manipulate you, but they will try.”
“Yeah, barristers play evil games like that. I don’t know what to do about it, though.”
He shook his head. “I can ask people about counselors. I don’t know what else to say.”
“If anyone in chambers found out that I was in counseling for a personal problem, they would use it against me. They’re all snipers in there, whispering about each other, using anything they can against each other to be seen as superior. James Knightly won the Lombardi case in two days. Damn, that looks good for him. And then Knightly found out that another pupil barrister in chambers, Nigel Hancock, knocked up his girlfriend, and she’s having the baby. Knightly keeps leaving gifts of baby booties and onesies in his cubby where everyone can see them, and now all the senior barristers think that Hancock has lost focus. Can’t have a baby and be a powerhouse in chambers, you know.”
Arthur nodded. “It’s the British way.”
“Plus, I just don’t want to talk to someone about it. I don’t want to relive it and think about it. I feel best when I just forget about it.”
Arthur glanced at his phone. “The symphony starts in an hour or so. There’s an interesting piano concerto on the schedule.”
Gen glanced down at her black pantsuit, one of several that she owned that were nearly, but not quite, identical. “I don’t think I’m dressed for it.”
“You’re fine. People wear denim, these days. Let’s go hear some music tonight.”
WAFFLING WITNESSES
The next afternoon, Gen was in court again, arguing what should have been a simple drunk driving case except that the witness, Nathan Singh, was being weird. In his deposition for the solicitors, he had been far more precise about who was doing what, when.
Now, Nathan Singh was waffling.
Waffling witnesses lost cases.
Gen frowned.
Octavia had another case to defend, so she had left Gen all on her lonesome in court that day. In the folder, Gen had found a quote handwritten by her previous pupil master, Horace Lindsey: Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall (Measure for Measure).
Dang Horace and his cryptic quotes, but it was comforting to see his flowing handwriting and know that he had touched the folder at some point.
Arthur was sitting in the back of the courtroom, watching Gen. He wore dark slacks and a white shirt, open at the throat, no tie, and was taking notes on a legal pad.
Great. Notes. He should have all kinds of points to cover over supper that night. She should be all polished up in no time.
Even though the logical part of her brain was chastis
ing her for being so snippy about an excellent opportunity to smooth out some of her rough edges and to meet the right people, the rest of her was fit to be tied. She was fine the way she was.
Unfortunately, no matter how fine Gen thought she was, she was not fine with the right people. One of her instructing solicitors had informed her that morning that his client had asked to be transferred to a barrister who understood English courts better. Even though Gen protested that she knew them as well as anyone and had gained a first at Oxford and was top of her bar course, she could hear in the solicitor’s voice that it was a lost cause.
She wasn’t British enough.
So, she needed to let Arthur British her up a little.
But first, she needed to examine this witness, who was hemming and hawing.
The case was pretty simple, a drunk driving case where the defendant, Joe Popov, had driven his car into a tree. Three other people had been in his car, and no one had been hurt, thanks to the excellent airbags in his car and a metric ton of sheer, dumb luck.
That tree could have been a playground full of toddlers, if there had been kindergarteners playing at two o’clock in the morning.
But still.
Gen had to defend Joe Popov, who had been driving while smashed and endangered everyone around him, because of the cab rank rule. When a cab was empty, they had to take the next person in the line for cabs for any fare, lest they be accused of discrimination. When Gen was offered a case, excepting for very specific situations, she had to take it.
Joe Popov had absolutely no spots on his previous record, by all accounts was a model citizen who worked hard on a loading dock all day to provide for his growing family, took care of his kids at night so that his wife could take an extension course, and had gone out with the blokes for a pint on a Saturday night. He was facing jail time. At the very least, if she couldn’t get him off, he would lose his driver’s license, which would be a hardship for the family.
Thus, she was trying to poke holes in the testimony of a witness, but Nathan Singh was being weird.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 13