Every night, as they came home to a dark, empty apartment with no staff around to observe them, Arthur gave her a most ardent handshake in the kitchen when he told her good night.
The first couple nights that they had lived together had been kind of awkward, especially after his Oxycontin-and-alcohol-fueled—Confession? Diatribe? Promise?—and so on the third night, Gen had stuck out her hand to shake before they walked to their different hallways. Arthur had laughed at the absurdity of it, and now every night, they shook hands before retiring to their separate bedrooms.
His hand was always warm and soft around hers, a moment of careful contact that she came to look forward to.
Gen often visited her mother in the mornings and left before Arthur was up, but when she didn’t go to the nursing home on Wednesdays, Arthur left the apartment about the same time that she left for the office.
There were business meetings for him to attend, business and charitable boards that he served on, work that had to be done on his country house, and some other sorts of meetings. He wore bespoke business suits on those days, all perfectly sharp and tailored like the upper-class gentleman that he most definitely was.
In the afternoons when Gen got home, Arthur usually emerged from that room farther back in the hallway from hers, the room that might be a Kinky Room of BDSM Pain or whatever. On the days when she was standing there when he shut the door behind himself, when he finished rubbing his eyes, he looked up, saw her, and smiled. Sometimes his smile was tired and careworn, but he smiled at her.
On those afternoons, he wore jeans or khakis and tee shirts over his broad chest.
One tee shirt was yellow with the word Enigma in an eye-shaped thing. She figured that it meant the Enigma machine, a Nazi mechanical code machine that the British had cracked during World War II, another reference to the War.
Another time, his blue shirt read, There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who can read binary, and those who can’t.
Gen had puzzled over that one.
Another day, his green shirt had two fish skeletons on it with the word Twofish below it.
Maybe it was a bar somewhere.
Ruckus still bounded around the apartment, but Gen began taking him for walks in Hyde Park.
The first few days, the pooch shot ahead, hit the end of the leash like running into a brick wall, and clawed his way down the path with his ears back, snarling as he dragged her through the park. It was a good thing that Ruckus was a little Jack Russell Terrier instead of a Labrador or Newfoundland. He might have wrenched Gen’s arm from the socket.
On the third day, she tapped him on the nose with her finger and told him no, no pulling. His soulful gaze up at her almost made her laugh at how appalled he was.
Over the next week, he learned to trot at her side, and then he was a joy to take for walks. After all, as Gen had learned from her ranch days, a tired dog is a good dog.
That sentiment was true of many mammals, Gen decided.
Her mother’s health remained the same as it had been for months. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate. When Gen was there, her mother was less agitated, so Gen still went five times a week: four weekday mornings before work plus Sunday afternoons. Most of the time, Gen read aloud the mystery novels that her mother loved.
Her mother seemed to groan in the right places, during the pauses where she might have said something. The thought that her mother might still be in there was comforting and yet frightening as Hell. At least the television was on a lot of the time, in case her mother was alert and trapped inside an unresponsive body. Gen wasn’t sure which way to hope for, so she just kept reading books to her.
A week later, she bought an MP3 player and loaded it with audio books. The nurses said that her mother was calmer, a lot calmer, all the time, so Gen kept refreshing that with new books. Her mother had never liked the telly.
During a few visits, briefs for a case that she was working on had come in overnight, so Gen read those out loud to her mother with the room’s door shut. Even though Gen suspected that she was abusing her mother’s good graces, her mother seemed to stay calm during that, too.
One day, Gen said, “Momma, there’s a guy, and I’m not sure what to do.”
Her mother’s eyes tracked floating dust mites near the ceiling.
She said, “His name is Arthur Finch-Hatten, and I think I might like him. We spend a lot of time together because of work, and I think I might be liking him more and more. The problem is that he’s a client, so you know what that means. He said that after the court case he’s involved in is over, that we should go out on a date. He did say it, and I said yes, so there’s that. I’m just not sure what to do about it now.”
Her mother didn’t move in the hospital bed, except that her right hand, the side that she could move a little, flinched and rolled.
Gen smoothed the quilt over her mother, a scrap double-wedding ring pattern that her mother had made when they lived in Texas. “I wish you could tell me what to do about him.”
She looked up. The door to the bright hallway outside was closed.
Gen continued, “I’m still having problems from that night, even though it was three years ago. I don’t know what to do about it, but I feel like I have to do something. It shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t be like this.”
Her mother’s hand, frail and bird-claw-like, rolled back and forth on the quilt, covering a blue section of quilt blocks and then revealing it, back and forth, on and off.
“I wish you could meet Arthur,” Gen said to her mother. “I wish you could tell me what you think of him.”
And then, as always, she kissed her mother on the cheek and left her in the home.
The money that Gen paid to “top up” the National Health subsidy, as substantial as it was, was worth it. Gen just had to figure out a way to keep paying for it.
Devilling for Violet Devereux at the Devilhouse wasn’t quite paying all the bills.
Her mother’s savings account balance dipped lower every month.
The math was easy: in two months, Gen must find a way to bring in substantially more money, or the system would move her mother back to the awful, unkempt, unethical nursing home outside of London that was too far for Gen to visit.
There must be more money.
POKER TELL
For her court case with Octavia that afternoon, Gen had read the brief that the instructing solicitor had sent over the day before.
Open and shut case.
Open and shut losing case.
Gen had visited the accused in the courthouse cells before the trial, juggling her cases overflowing with tranches of evidence from this case and his prior convictions. The solicitor had sent them all over to chambers, probably so Octavia Hawkes understood what she was getting into, which meant Octavia had understood very well and had thus passed the losing case on to Gen.
But Octavia also knew that Gen wanted to go into criminal law rather than civil, so Hawkes passed most petty offenses over to her and just sat at the table, looking as if she were informed about the case. This was straight in line with her previous actions.
And yet, Arthur’s comment about Hawkes applying for silk rankled Gen. Being named a QC was hard, really hard, and whispers were that it was even harder for a woman.
But Hawkes would not throw Gen under the bus to further her career.
Probably not.
Gen shook her head. No matter. She had a case to fight today.
Grant Williams was a career pickpocket. He had been plying his trade in the Tube on a crowded train, directly beside a plain-clothes policewoman.
Just bad luck.
The bailiff twisted the keys in the heavy steel door and leaned back to open it. “‘Ere ya are, miss.”
“Thank you, sir.” Gen crammed all her cases under her left arm, held out her right hand, and said, “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Williams. I’ll be representing you today.”
Her horsehair wig sli
pped on Gen’s hair, and she righted it. With the flowing sleeve of her court robe, she slapped herself across the face. The chemical, flowery scent of dry cleaning solution shot up her nose and clung to the back of her tongue.
The accused man, Grant Williams, was almost six feet tall and had the dark hair and good looks of a movie actor. Perhaps his parents had realized he would grow up to look like Cary Grant when they had named him. Maybe he had been a failed actor before he turned to a life of crime.
Gen needed to get over such fanciful thoughts. Fight the case.
Mr. Williams stared at Gen’s extended hand. “I should know better than to get nicked in the winter.” His middle-class, London accent was a drawl to her American ears. “All the baby barristers come out to try their hand at playing with people’s lives. Where’s your pupil master?”
Gen dropped her hand. Barristers don’t shake hands, and she had forgotten because Texans do.
She said, “I’m not inexperienced, Mr. Williams, and I will be representing you today. Your solicitor sent over your files yesterday. Is there anything else you should tell me? Any extenuating circumstances?”
He shrugged. “I have three small children to support.”
“And you support yourself by?”
Grant Williams grinned. “Odd jobs.”
Lovely. He was admitting a life of petty crime.
“And how are these children regularly supported?” she asked.
He blinked, a little dismayed. “Their mothers support them, but I chip in.”
“Oh, splendid,” Gen muttered. A deadbeat father with multiple baby mommas on top of it all. She peered at him, frowning.
He must have seen her disappointment because he insisted, “But I chip in as much as I can. My youngest needs school uniforms for next year, so I needed money. That’s the only reason I took a few quid off that lady.”
Gen wrote that down. “If you say so.”
Grant smiled at her, a warm, sexy smile with straight, white teeth. “Don’t you worry. Get me into the witness box, and I’ll charm the pants off the jury.”
Maybe she could use his looks to her advantage if there were women on the jury. Gen frowned and calculated the odds.
Hmmm. Usually, when Gen was confronted with a handsome man just a few years older than herself, she got giggly. Not this time. Her concentration wasn’t perturbed in the slightest.
Maybe hanging around the insanely handsome Arthur had inoculated her against merely good-looking men trying to manipulate her.
Gen said, “Yes, well. Good luck with that.”
“Let’s hope the jury is made up of mostly women like it was the last five times.”
So he was using his looks to get away with it. Just great.
At least he was merely a petty thief, not a murderer.
“I’ll see you in court, Mr. Williams.” She gathered up her cases of solicitor’s instructions and swept out of the room.
She ate a sandwich out of her purse in a corner before the case and trotted into Court One with fifteen minutes to spare. Grant Williams was brought into the dock to observe the proceedings.
The evidence against Williams was quite damning, between the police officer who watched him do it and the CCTV footage of him falling against the woman, jostling her, and taking an item out of her purse.
Extenuating circumstances would determine how long he was going away for.
Gen did her best to argue the sob story, that his youngest child of three, all of whom depended on him, needed money for school uniforms.
Octavia Hawkes sat beside her at the table, reading briefs for other cases. Occasionally, she looked at the court, nodded sagely, and went right back to working on something else.
After the other testimony, Grant Williams signaled to Gen that he wanted to testify.
Well, fine. She didn’t think he could get into any worse trouble.
Grant Williams was called from the dock to the witness box, and Gen led him through his several children and his many money woes. She’d read all this in the brief. It was just a matter of getting him to repeat it while he was waxing rhapsodic about how wonderful his children were and how much he loved them.
Because Gen had seen the CCTV footage of the pickpocketing, which was about as non-violent as a crime could be and still be considered a crime, she asked him about that.
Grant Williams smiled some more. “She was a beautiful woman, well-dressed with expensive shoes. From what she was wearing and the easy way that she carried herself and her purse, I could see that she didn’t need the money. Money was nothing to her. It wouldn’t be right to take a bit of money off of someone who needed it, but this lady dropped a few coins after she bought a coffee and didn’t bother to pick them up. One was a quid. She didn’t take her receipt, either. Just unconcerned about the money.”
So he was playing the Robin Hood card. Sometimes that worked.
Gen watched the jury, that notoriously erratic, twelve-headed hydra.
Some of the women tut-tutted.
One of the guys rolled his eyes, but he was laughing. Grant had caught his eye, and the two of them had a bromance-type rapport going.
A lad wouldn’t convict a fellow lad, now would he?
Gen stood between the prosecution and defense tables and asked Grant, “And that was all? You just bobbled into her and took a bit of money? You didn’t hurt her at all?”
“Not at all. I’d had a few pints that night—”
The jury guy snorted and nodded. He had done stupid things after a few, too, Gen just bet.
“—And so I just bumped into her and a bit of money that she didn’t even need fell out of her purse,” Grant explained. “I just scooped it up. It was practically cleaning up litter.”
Jury guy nodded.
One of the other women was watching Grant intently. She probably had a thing for bad boys.
Grant caught the eye of his fellow lad on the jury again, and he continued, “And while I was at it, I grabbed a bit of a feel of her arse.”
Panic zinged through Gen, professionally at the thought of her client admitting to sexual assault on the stand, and deep inside her stomach, a colder, more terrified shock.
“Thank you, Mr. Williams. That will be all. Thank you.” Gen walked back toward the defense table while the prosecutor stood and advanced to methodically take Grant Williams apart.
Gen shook out her hands, trying to dispel the crazy spiders crawling up her spine.
Octavia glanced sideways at Gen but didn’t say anything.
While Gen walked back to her table, Arthur was watching her from the gallery, his easy smile gone. His silvery eyes seemed as reflective as mirrors.
She shook her hands harder, but the thought of Grant Williams’s hands reaching and grabbing, his fingers sinking into the woman’s flesh, wouldn’t leave Gen’s mind.
Despite Gen fumbling and hemming her way through the closing argument, Grant Williams indeed walked out of court a free man that day to pick more pockets and, doubtlessly, charm more juries when he was caught the next time.
CAR CONVERSATION #2
Gen leapt into the back of the Rolls Royce—still a weird statement even inside her head—and Arthur slammed the door behind her. He strolled around to the other side of the car and folded his tall body into the back seat on the other side.
She was furiously digging in her bag, pulling her laptop out because she had downloaded a precedent she had to read that night. As her screen glowed and the file loaded, she asked, still watching the screen, “How was your day?”
Arthur crossed his legs toward her. “Fine. How did you think court went today?”
“Swimmingly.” The precedent case was all loaded up and ready to read. She lifted the computer closer to her face to see it better.
Arthur leaned forward in his seat. “Pippa, could we have a moment?”
The driver found a parking lot within seconds—Gen was astonished at how she could do that in central London—and stepped out, holding a
paperback book. Wintry air washed into the car.
“Do you think that court went well today?” Arthur mused.
“Look, I have a thing about that. I don’t think I should accept sexual assault cases anymore. Octavia doesn’t do rape.”
“This wasn’t rape,” he said. “It was a case where a lad copped a feel when he shouldn’t have.”
“I defended him as well as anyone could have,” Gen said. “He got off. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Yes, as far as the logic and facts were concerned, you did as well as anyone could have, but the paper was rattling in your hands while you spoke.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll get better.”
Arthur looked out of the side window. The small parking lot was behind some liquor stores and take-away restaurants. “You have a lot of ‘tells,’ like poker tells, and they make me worry about you.”
“We’ve never played poker.”
He shifted in the seat and crossed his legs away from hers. “Concerning your assault.”
Gen felt her body curl inward, and she cringed into the corner of the car. “I don’t want to talk to a counselor about it.”
“I understand that, but I could teach you a few ways to conceal your reactions.”
“Don’t I do that now?”
“No. Anyone looking at you will know what you’re thinking. I can teach you how to move so that your demeanor says something other than what you’re thinking.”
“You would teach me how to lie.”
“You’re a lawyer. You already know how to lie. I would teach you how not to get caught at it.”
“And you could do that because—”
“I’m good at discerning when people are being deceptive.”
“Like the way you knew that the doctor-for-hire was lying?”
The day before, Arthur had been watching her in court, and he had passed her a note that the doctor who was testifying that the claimant was completely disabled was lying. Gen asked the doctor a series of pointed questions, and she had admitted on the stand that she had only examined the claimant for two minutes in the lawyer’s office and never received the X-ray films from the solicitor. Gen had won the case.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 22