“Out,” Pippa said.
He sipped. The stinging coffee was so bitter that his throat closed. Excellent. His staff knew how to take care of him. “Where did you take her?”
“She is perfectly safe and asked for it to be kept private.”
“I’m your boss.”
“You don’t pay me that much.” Pippa sipped her coffee and went back to reading her book.
An hour and a bit later, when he was mostly recovered from being as drunk as a lord, so to speak, Pippa drove him to a scheduled meeting while he watched for cars tailing them.
No amateurs out there today, but he found three cars discreetly following him instead of falling in with the flow of traffic. From their easy trade-offs, he could tell they were obviously professionals.
Hopefully, at least one of them had been sent by Elizabeth and her organization.
For an hour prior to leaving for the meeting, he had iced the side of his face and ribs, trying to reduce the swelling. He was certainly the only one in the board room who looked like he had been in a bare-knuckle fistfight.
The others were discussing how to advise the CEO of Britain’s largest bank, considering some of the current political changes.
Arthur wanted to tell the CEO to harden his computer servers because they were exquisitely vulnerable to hacking, and that was certainly part of the current political climate.
But he didn’t. Arthur behaved like a proper nobleman board member and translated a few memos from one of their Russian associates for the board, which earned him approving nods from some of the other board members. Some of them were nodding to thank him. Some were confirming his translation was accurate.
Where had Gen gone that morning?
Arthur wasn’t stalking her. Stalking was something else entirely, and she did live in his house. Surely, this interest in her whereabouts and her safety couldn’t be considered stalking.
Wanting to make sure that she was safe was perfectly natural. Friendly. Like she had said last night, they were just friends. It was perfectly normal for friends to ensure each other’s safety, to talk to each other about many things.
He also remembered, vaguely, the other things he had been telling her.
Things he had wanted to do to her for weeks now, ever since she had begun posing as his girlfriend.
It hadn’t even been his idea that they should live together. Gen had proposed that she should move in with him. These thoughts could hardly be considered his fault. They were natural thoughts that any heterosexual male might have about a beautiful, voluptuous woman who was around him so very much.
They had lunch together several days of the week. He watched her in court often. He studied every move that she made, like when she bent over to check something on her computer and her round, curvy ass filled out her trousers so beautifully.
What man wouldn’t have such thoughts? Arthur wasn’t a saint. He had certainly never pretended to be a saint.
Quite the opposite.
The board of directors around the table was discussing cultural problems in the Middle East and a possible partnership, so he added a quick comment that the possible partner’s electronic infrastructure was not as secure as it needed to be for this bank to do business with them. Some people took his advice. Others dismissed it and were more interested in the cultural problems that the bank would face.
He should be taking notes to include who said what about which in his report, but his hand was sore where his knuckles had bounced off the car’s window.
And his broken ribs hurt.
Yet Arthur should remember his job and his duty, so he chastised himself to pay closer attention to the discussion.
The people around him talked about banking.
Arthur greatly hoped that he had not said anything off the night before. Afterward, his dreams had been all tangled up with what he had said to Gen, and he wasn’t sure where the evening had ended and his drunken dreams had begun. He had dreamed all night of taking that pale blue dress off of her creamy skin, stroking the velvet of her flesh until she cried out his name, and burying himself in her until he could think of nothing but her softness and that flowery, delicious perfume she wore.
“Lord Severn,” a woman’s voice said.
“Yes.” Arthur made it sound more like a reply than an admission that he hadn’t been paying attention.
“Don’t you think we should advise our European counterparts of this development?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” He had no idea what he’d agreed to.
He was due to meet Gen for an intimate lunch in a few hours and then watch her in court that afternoon.
Perhaps he could discern how much he had told her over lunch and apologize for whatever he had said. He hoped he hadn’t mentioned some of the things that ran through his mind, things with ropes and leather ties and certain objects.
He’d been accused of many things, but being boring wasn’t one of them.
But Jesus, if he had scared her off, he would kick himself.
He would especially hate himself because he knew that something had happened to her, something that she would not discuss.
No matter what he had said, taking any of it back would be a lie.
Maybe he could plead drunkenness.
She might believe that.
She would absolutely believe that he was an idiot, so he might consider leading with that.
Around him, the discussion went on, and on, and Arthur gazed out the window, wondering where Gen had gone that morning.
ANOTHER CLIENT GONE
After visiting her mother at the long-term care home for a few hours in the early morning, Gen was sitting at her small pupil desk in her closet-office. She interspersed typing briefs on her laptop with fielding emails from her friends Lee and Rose about where the Hell she had been lately and why she wasn’t eating take-away curry with them every night.
Coffee, she wrote back to them. I’ll meet you in the library for a bit of pupilskive and coffee.
Coffee in the library, because she was meeting Arthur for lunch and she couldn’t work late that night. Arthur had added another charity supper to her calendar. Good God, he had charity events most nights of the week. Every different disaster and cause and problem had its own charity, and every single one of those had multiple events.
She wasn’t sure why or how Arthur attended them all.
It did look good for his case when she listed the many, myriad causes that he personally supported.
Gen worked nonstop through the rest of the morning, reading depositions and devilling some briefs for Violet Devereux.
Devereux the Devil in the Devilhouse must be clocking at least four hundred billable hours a week, maybe five hundred. Her billing required two full-time clerks, whereas most of the other barristers in the firm shared a clerk with at least three other barristers. She was bringing in boatloads of money for herself and for the chambers, which received a percentage of her fees, so no one asked how she did it.
Really, no one had to ask. Everyone saw the little devils scurrying in and out of her office all day.
Gen was writing an opinion on a libel case, for which Violet Devereux would take credit and then pay Gen. Gen did a few of these briefs and opinions a week, sometimes one a day. Devilling paid for the things that her pittance of a stipend would not begin to cover, and Gen had no qualms about heading over to the Devilhouse to make some extra cash.
And yet, even when she was thoroughly engrossed in the law and ramifications of the libel suit, she could not stop thinking about what Arthur had said last night. Portions of it played in her mind behind the words on the brief.
It was all wholly inappropriate of course. Very NSFW.
Arthur should never have said it.
Gen should never have heard it.
And she certainly shouldn’t have kept telling him to go on.
But she had.
And when he had breathed his warm, alcohol-scented breath on her shoulder and his han
d had rested on her hip, she had almost—almost—turned and flung herself against him.
When she had fled to her room, she had locked the door behind herself, but her door had not rattled at all.
Arthur must have gone back to his bedroom.
Because of course, he had.
He probably had not even realized that he had been talking to Gen. He probably had thought, in his sloppy, drunken state, that he was talking to one of the models or actresses or strippers he dated. Or Peony Sweeting.
No one would talk that way to poor, plumpy-dumpy Genevieve Ward. Not considering her cankles, her fat butt, and her horsey face, and certainly never someone rich, ripped, and hot like Arthur Finch-Hatten. It was against the laws of nature, if not actually against the laws of Great Britain.
Gen tucked her head down and got back to work.
At eleven, Rose and Lee showed up at her office door. Gen was ready to go for coffee in the library and met them at the door, holding her purse and her umbrella.
Rose Pennelegion pursed her full ruby-red lips—her lipstick perfectly applied as always—and patted her tightly coiffed hair.
Rose said, “What.”
“The.” Lee Fox looked over her over-sized sunglasses at Gen, her scarlet bangs almost touching the frames.
“Hell,” Rose said.
“Are.”
“You.”
“Doing?” Lee finished.
They both glared at her.
Lee held out her phone, the screen aggressively facing out.
A picture of Gen with Arthur Finch-Hatten was on the screen. In the picture, Gen was wearing a dove gray gown covered with shimmering beads, and the cast iron underwear pushed up her boobs to nearly under her chin. Arthur’s devious grin spoke volumes.
Gen said, “Yeah, about that—”
They bum-rushed Gen back into her office and slammed the door.
Rose started, “Gen, we are very concerned about your career and your well-being.”
Lee said, “I don’t know whether to stage an intervention or demand sex pictures.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Gen insisted, setting her purse on her closed laptop so she could hold up her hands to ward them off.
Rose said, “I should hope not.”
“Oh, it’s exactly what it looks like,” Lee said, slapping her phone on Gen’s little desk. “There are dozens of pictures all over the place. ‘The Earl of Severn’s New Girlfriend.’ ‘Britain’s Favorite Playboy Settles for Barrister.’ I found at least five different sets of pics this morning!”
“You did?” Gen grinned. “Good.”
Rose and Lee looked at each other, having a whole conversation with mere flicks of their immaculately groomed eyebrows. Gen needed to learn to do that if she was going to pass for British someday.
Rose asked Gen, “And in what possible fashion could this be considered ‘good?’”
“They’re just pics of a boring couple, holding drinks, at a charity benefit. They’re taking up real estate on the internet, and they’re pushing down the scandalous ones,” Gen said. “From those, you see that Arthur Finch-Hatten is dating a respectable, middle-class barrister and is supporting worthy causes. He hasn’t been caught doing something stupid for over a week.”
“But you’re boinking a client,” Lee said, her brown eyes huge and serious on her elfin face.
“I am not boinking him.” Gen pointed to her forehead, from which her hair was pulled back rather severely in a ballet bun on the back of her head. “Is it tattooed on my forehead in diamonds?”
Lee frowned. “You would be better off keeping it on the down-low. You could be brought before the ethics committee for being involved with a client. No chambers would touch you.”
“I’m not really dating him. It’s an arrangement. He can’t keep himself out of trouble, so I’m going places with him to be his conscience. He hasn’t been caught in any compromising situations for over a week, and he certainly won’t now that I’ve moved in with him.”
They both reared back like they’d been slapped.
Lee yelled, “You did wot?” Her Cockney accent rose up, overwhelming the middle-class London accent that she adopted during the day.
“Oh, Genevieve,” Rose said. “I can’t believe that this is advisable.”
Lee whipped her sunglasses off to stare at Gen. “Are you a bleedin’ idiot?”
“Are you using that glasses trick in court, Lee?” Gen asked.
Lee studied her sunglasses. “Yeah, you like it? I think juries will like it. I got a pair of plain-glass specs so I can whip them off and stare at a witness.”
“Yeah, no. It’s kind of gimmicky,” Gen said.
Rose sighed. “The glasses bit is a diversion, of course, to distract jurors so they won’t focus on the problems with the testimony, exactly like now. Gen, did you move in with His Lordship Arthur Finch-Hatten?”
“Well, yes,” Gen admitted. “Yesterday.”
“So you are boinking him,” Lee said. “You just haven’t got the diamond tattoo yet. I hear they have a waiting period before you can get those things.”
“I’m not bumping uglies with him.”
Rose almost giggled. “Oh, your American aphorisms. How amusing.”
“It’s totally platonic. Completely and utterly platonic.” It felt a whole lot less platonic after what he had whispered in her ear last night. “It’s just for his image. Octavia knows about it, and she’s assured all the senior barristers here that it’s just an arrangement to keep him in line.”
Rose and Lee had another twenty-minute conversation in the space of one glance.
“It’s true!” Gen rolled her eyes at them.
Lee grumbled, “That explains some of the comments on these pics, then.”
Uh, oh. “Like what?”
Lee said, “Like you guys are stiff around each other and don’t act like a couple. No chemistry. Like it looks like an arranged marriage between Great Houses, except that you’re a Middle-Class Mary. The gossip sites can’t figure it out.”
“Well, it seems to be working from my end.”
“But do the senior barristers believe that it remains platonic?” Rose asked, musing to the ceiling.
Gen thought about it. “They seem to.”
“What they say to you means nothing,” Rose said. “You need to ask other people what they’re saying.”
“And more importantly,” Lee said to her, “do you think that you can keep Lord Severn from making a farce of himself until his trial goes to court? M’learned friend, I submit that no one can perform this impossible task.”
“It had better work,” Gen said. “I lost another client this morning because I’m not British enough. I’ve had Octavia sit in client meetings with me, and she’s as frustrated as I am. I’ve got all the right degrees. I say all the right things. I’ve got a pretty good track record of court wins at this point, much better than James Knightly or any of the other pupil barristers, but clients listen to me aping a British accent and run the other way. I can’t make it work.”
Rose and Lee glanced at each other again.
Lee said, “Yeah, I get it. If I spoke Cockney rhyming slang in client meetings, they wouldn’t give me a chance, either. Rose, ‘ere, is lucky, having grown up speaking the Queen’s English at ‘er posh boarding schools. Maybe you could take elocution lessons?”
“Maybe,” Gen said. “Maybe Arthur could teach me how to speak correctly if I’m planning to stay in London.”
Another quick glance between the two of them.
“Aren’t you?” Rose asked.
Gen shrugged. “I will as long as my mother is alive. I promised her that I would keep her in Britain. She didn’t like a lot of things about America, so I have to keep her here. She says that she can’t understand people when they speak with that barbaric American accent.”
“Yeah,” Lee said. “I can see that.”
MORE THREATS
Arthur was leaning his head against the back o
f the car’s seat, trying to rest, while Pippa drove him from the business meeting back to his apartment.
He should be writing down his notes and impressions.
He should be planning his abject apology to Gen.
Arthur listened to the traffic growl around the Rolls and drifted off, nearly sleeping.
His phone vibrated against his hip. When he glanced at the screen, the caller was tagged as unidentified, even on his rather over-powered phone.
He said, “Pippa, if you please.”
His driver pulled into a car park between two buildings and grabbed her paperback as she stepped out of the car.
Arthur answered, “Yes.”
“Are you cultivating the young barrister?” Elizabeth’s voice asked him. She must be calling from inside the Vauxhall Cross building since his phone had not been able to identify her phone number.
He sighed. “Yes. As we agreed.”
“It is of utmost importance—”
“It must be, if the matter warranted both a note on the micro-USB with so much identifying information and an unscheduled phone call.”
Yes, he was sharp with her, but his whole body still hurt, especially since he would not take any more of those damned pain pills.
“I want to stress to you—” she said.
“I understand the situation.”
“Your social position is paramount to your ability to gather the type of information we need.”
“I understand the situation,” he grated out.
“You must not lose the case, and you must cultivate the young barrister.”
“I understand the situation,” he said one last time. “I will do whatever is necessary to motivate the young barrister, just as I have always done all that is necessary, just as you trained me to. Good afternoon.”
Arthur jabbed the phone’s screen to hang up the call and rapped on the window to alert Pippa that he was ready to proceed.
Pain lanced through his hand.
Damn, he had forgotten about his knuckles. They were probably cracked, too.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 20