Gen drew herself up. “You’re not. This was my idea.”
The line didn’t smooth away. “All right. Let’s go.”
He dropped his hands from her body and held the door for her.
Gen wandered out of his bedroom and somehow managed to find her way through his apartment and to the elevator, even though her brain was full of buzzing.
HOPE BALL
Gen was fine during supper and fine during the silent auction, but the dancing was coming soon.
And then Arthur was going to kiss her.
Yes, it was an actual ball and she was going to kiss Lord Severn around midnight at the ball.
That didn’t sound ridiculous or anything.
At least he wasn’t a handsome prince. That would have been completely ridiculous.
Gen swallowed hard, trying not to feel ridiculous.
The Hope Ball was held at the Royal Horseguards Hotel, a place that would have been too hoity-toity even for Gen’s mother to be comfortable touring. The ballroom overlooked the glittering Embankment, the monstrous ferris wheel called the London Eye, and the river lights glistening on the River Thames. The hotel itself looked like a blue and white castle in a kids’ fantasy movie. At the entrance, Gen almost expected pumpkin-like coaches pulled by horses with suspiciously mouse-like ears. Maybe with naked, snaky tails, too.
Inside the ballroom, the crowd was a swirling mix of men in black-tie tuxes and women in jewels and glittering ball gowns. Even a cowpuncher like Gen could tell that the intricately beaded dresses they wore were a step up from mere evening gowns. Some were crusted with thousands of beads that had been hand-sewn like Gen’s. Some were detailed with delicate embroidery. All complimented the flashing diamond and other stone jewelry that the women wore around their necks, and on their wrists, and fingers, and in their hair. These dresses were extravagant in their refined elegance.
Gen tried to feel like Cinderella, but she felt more like a Texan Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Heh, King Arthur.
She’d have to call him that. It might crack him up.
Man, she hoped that she didn’t trip over her high heels and walk up the inside of her skirt, ripping the whole thing right off herself.
They sat at a round table near the stage with ten other people, and oversized Gen was careful to keep her elbows tucked in close to her sides. Arthur introduced her around because he knew everyone, of course. Gen was becoming comfortable with meeting all these people whose names were prefaced with The Right Honorable and Their Graces.
She asked, “How d’you do?” a dozen times at least, smiling the whole time, and heard exactly that back.
So weird.
A couple of David Trent’s clients asked her advice on a minor matter. After the usual this-is-not-legal-advice and I-am-not-your-barrister disclaimers, she told them that David Trent indeed seemed to be following the best path and she hoped for the best for them. Their smiling nods to each other and Arthur’s sly wink gave Gen some hope that she was getting better at this stuff.
Dessert was sugared strawberries again. Gen purred while she ate the decadent treat.
She caught Arthur watching her as she sucked a strawberry slice off her fork, his face impassive but for a small smile and his intense gaze as he watched her lips.
She and Arthur were milling around, looking at the lots for the silent auction. Arthur was at the next table, considering a yacht cruise, while Gen was looking at a basket of spa treatments.
Around them, the crowd surged, and people wove between them.
Gen looked around. “Arthur?”
He held up his empty glass. “I’m going for another vodka tonic. Wine?”
“Yes, please.” She turned back to the spa basket, deciding what to write down. Arthur had told her that they needed to spend at least ten thousand pounds that night, to look like they were paying their way.
Spa basket. She could split it with Lee and Rose if she won it.
Beside her, Arthur’s voice asked, “Enjoying yourself?”
“Thought you went for more drinks.” She looked up, expecting to see Arthur’s dark hair and silvery eyes.
Instead, the man wasn’t quite as tall as Gen was, as she was standing there in her heels, and his eyes and hair were more pale than Arthur’s. His face was rounder and softer, and he looked older.
She said, “Christopher.”
The man nodded. “And you’re with him again.”
“Looks like,” she said, shrugging. The antique diamond necklace was heavy on her collarbones. Wearing Arthur’s diamonds in front of Christopher, who wanted Arthur’s earldom, felt gauche.
Christopher leaned on the table with the spa basket. “You’re his barrister, and it’s every bit as unethical for a barrister to fuck a client as it is for a physician to fuck a patient. You need to recuse yourself from this case and get another barrister to try it, or I’ll send around the photos that I have of the two of you.”
“The gossip sites already have all those pictures and more. Why is that a threat?”
Christopher said, “I’ll make sure you are thrown out of chambers, and no other chambers will touch you.”
She couldn’t argue that it was all a charade. Christopher would narc to his lawyer, and at the trial, they would tell the jury that it was all a sham relationship to make Arthur look like less of a lazy rich dude.
Instead, he would look like a scheming, lazy rich dude.
Gen said to Christopher, “You sound like a villain in a James Bond movie, cackling like that and telling me your evil plans. Have you even read the Evil Overlord List?”
Christopher frowned. “The what?”
“The things that stupid evil overlords do that screw them over in the end. Things like treating their army so badly that they rebel, killing their smartest general to show how powerful and ruthless they are, and telling the good guy all their evil plans.”
“I can tell you all my plans because you won’t be his barrister any longer, not if you want to keep your job and keep your mother in that posh nursing home here in London.”
Christopher Finch-Hatten was a doctor. Even though he was a plastic surgeon, the threat that he might do something to Gen’s mother loomed large in her head.
“Besides,” Christopher said, looking over the crowd around them, laser glints from the disco ball spangling his face, “you’ll want to get as far away from Arthur as you can, professionally. If you think the pictures of him and the three girls were bad, you should see the ones my investigator has.”
“Having someone follow your own brother to take blackmail photos is a shitty thing to do,” she said.
Well, it was.
Christopher sneered, “He’ll never recover from these new ones. They will mortify you. They will mortify everyone when I release them in October. By the way, I must thank you for setting a trial date. Now, I know just when to make sure that everyone who may be on the jury should see them.”
“It sounds like you hate him. What did he ever do to you?”
“He’s not even a real Englishman,” Christopher said, his lip twisting. “He was raised in Switzerland and spent his vacations in the Netherlands, Monaco, or France. He didn’t come home for years, sometimes. The earldom should go to someone who loves Britain, who has a family and will conserve the estate and revere it, not someone who is squandering it like pirate booty on liquor and European prostitutes.”
“He doesn’t do that,” she said. “And this charity thing is to pay for digging wells so that kids in Africa won’t die of dysentery. He’s not squandering it.”
“Yes, but the estate is still hemorrhaging money. It doesn’t matter if it’s for ‘good’ causes.”
Gen could hear Christopher’s angry sarcasm.
Christopher spat, “Taking the earldom away from Arthur would be an act of kindness. Without unlimited funds, he may not drink himself to death.”
Asshole. “That’s harsh, Christopher.”
“Ah, but it’s tru
e. Here he comes. Think about it. You should get away from him, and if you do, I won’t release those damning photos. Think about that.”
“What’s in the pictures, anyway?” she asked, but Christopher was already walking away.
Gen considered following him and grabbing him by his shiny black bow tie, but British people didn’t make a scene. British people would mention it in passing to others who would sniff.
Arthur returned and handed her a glass of wine. “Thinking about the spa package?
Gen said, “Your brother just threatened me.”
“Did he?” Arthur’s mouth curved up as if he were slightly amused, but his knuckles whitened where he was holding his drink.
She stepped closer to him. “He said that if I don’t drop your case, he’ll release a stack of ‘worse’ photographs of you.”
Arthur shrugged. “So?”
“I should get Octavia to put another high-powered barrister on your case, someone like David Trent to sit second chair. I can’t do it. I’m not good enough or experienced enough, anyway. If I quit, maybe he won’t release them.”
Arthur told her, “Whatever he said to you, it’s a lie.”
“He said that he had worse photos of you, worse than the one with the three women, and that one woman was a drug dealer. He’s going to release them in October, just ahead of the trial, to poison the jury pool. What did you do?”
“You mustn’t do what he told you to do. He’s trying to leverage the photos by creating chaos on my defense team. Quite smart. Whatever he said, it’s not a threat. It’s a promise. He will certainly release any and all photographs if they will create havoc.”
“What are we going to do, then?”
“I’ll protect you. You won’t get thrown out of chambers.”
“You can’t protect me.”
“You might be surprised what I can do. Are you going to bid on this spa package?”
“I’ve lost my taste for this. We should go home.”
“Home, huh?” he asked, his silvery eyes sparkling at her.
“I mean to your apartment. We should get out of here.”
“Now, now. We aren’t going to let Christopher run us off. Besides, we belong here. He doesn’t.”
“That sounds snooty.”
“Quite. I am a sought-after philanthropist, which means that I can be counted on to drop bundles of cash for worthy causes. Christopher is trying to wheedle his way into these events in case he becomes the Earl of Severn. He will need the connections that one makes at events like this.”
Gen wrinkled her nose. “That’s awfully mercenary of him.”
Arthur looked over the room. “It’s how things are done. Bid a thousand pounds on this spa package.”
She fretted, “It’s worth five hundred at the most.”
“It doesn’t matter what it’s worth. It matters how much we drop on it. Children in Africa need their wells.”
Gen bent over and wrote the sum and their names on the card. Her writing was spiky because her hand was still shaking so hard, and the spangles from the disco balls running across the card made what she wrote even more impossible to read. “If you just wrote a check rather than to go to this flashy party and buy these baskets, it would probably dig more wells.”
“Yes, but three-quarters of these people wouldn’t write a check at all, were it not for the flashy party. Plus, everyone is here and watching each other. Peer pressure will increase all their contributions. These events always net more money than a simple fundraising drive.”
“Oh. Now I feel guilty that we’re not going to two of these extravagant dress-up parties every night.”
Arthur grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
A few drinks and astronomical bids on baskets of useless luxury goods and services later, the crowd moved into another ballroom, one that was set up with a Beatles cover band in the corner.
“Dancing,” Arthur said. “Come on.”
Rich people get even weirder when they get down and funky.
Gen looked around at the charity goers, all wiggling to the Beatles.
“I—wow. I thought most of these things were waltzes,” she said, looking at the crush of people under the flashing stage lights, all banging into each other.
“We can keep to the edges,” he said. “No reason to get in the middle of all of that.” He bent to whisper near her ear, “We’ll be more visible that way.”
Because he was going to kiss her, here in public, for the cameras.
“Right,” she said. “Edges.”
Gen followed him over to a side of the dance floor, just where the parquet floor met the carpeting. They jostled their way into a gap, and Arthur was just reaching for her hand to dance when something knocked into her.
Falling.
She reached out as her knees buckled and she flipped forward, trying to catch herself before she smacked the floor.
Arthur’s strong arms grabbed her, cinched around her waist and back, and he picked her up and set her back on her feet just as a flash blazed out of the crowd.
Gen was holding onto Arthur’s arms. His biceps rounded and strained the fabric of his tuxedo jacket.
Arthur asked her, his voice pitched low and concerned, “Are you all right?”
She didn’t let go of him. Her legs were trembling, and she might fall into a heap. “Yes. Fine. What was that?”
Arthur looked over her shoulder, and the expression on his face went blank. The line between his eyes smoothed, and he became as handsome as a cold statue. “Christopher, did you push her?”
“Oh, no, no. Just an accident, I’m sure. Ever so sorry, there,” Christopher said to Gen, his pale eyes reflecting the purple and green stage lights revolving overhead.
Pushed? Christopher had shoved her and she had fallen? Snakes of memories slithered up her brain, crawling on her, and she shrank back from him.
Arthur slid one arm around her back, holding her closer, and his voice was so low that he sounded grim when he told Christopher, “If you touch her again, I will punch you in your fucking face.”
Gen’s eyes widened. Direct threats were very not-British, but anyone watching them would never have known from Arthur’s placid expression that he was threatening Christopher.
Christopher looked at his phone, which he held beside his head. “I say, that picture almost looks like Arthur is grabbing you and you’re fighting him off. Have a good night.” He strode off into the crowd.
Gen leaned against Arthur’s broad chest, letting him hold her up. “Let’s go home.”
Arthur said, “This is harassment. This must stop.”
“We could counter-sue,” Gen said, perking up. Arthur might have threatened Christopher with bodily harm, but she could slap that jerk with a lawsuit that would beat the crap out of him.
Arthur ran his hand along her spine between her waist and the top of her dress. “We’ll see. We shouldn’t leave immediately.” He sighed. “People will talk.”
The Beatles cover band finished a song and started playing “Yesterday.”
“I like this song,” she muttered.
“Me, too.” He caught her other hand up in his. “One dance. Then we can leave in an orderly fashion.”
The tremors running through her wouldn’t stop. His body was far closer than he normally held her when they danced, cradling her. His arm around her waist and back buffered some of the terrified vibrations, absorbing the panic out of her body.
Gen leaned her head on his shoulder.
His swaying stuttered for a moment, and she felt his head turn as he looked down at her. His arm around her back pressed her closer, holding her. He moved her hand on his shoulder up, closer to his neck.
They shouldn’t allow Christopher and his machinations to derail their plan. Damn it, if Christopher had gotten a bad-looking photo, they needed to counteract it with the one they had planned.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it. Let’s do it for the cameras.”
“I beg your
pardon?”
“Kiss me,” Gen said. “Just do it.”
“No.” Arthur looked around, peering over the heads of the other dancers. “It’s not the right time. The point of this exercise was to distract from the problem. If I kiss you now and it upsets you, it will add to the disturbance, especially after what Christopher did.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
His arms tightened around her waist, and she just barely felt the warmth and softness of his lips on her hair.
Gen melted against him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. Just for that moment, the place that she felt safest was in his arms.
Near her ear, he whispered, “It’s not the right time.”
HACKING HIS PHONE
After dancing, as they pushed through the crowd on their way out of the Hope Ball, Arthur paused by the bar, looking around the packed ballroom. Between the band’s electric guitars and over-amplified drum kit and the shouting crowd, he could hardly hear himself think.
Gen looked back at him and then toward the exit. The Duchess Sarah diamond set glittered around her neck and on her tiny ears as stage lights whirled through the darkness.
On the other side of the bar, Arthur’s brother, Christopher, was drinking something dark in a glass and talking to Lindsey Norris, a high-ranking pencil-pusher in the National Health Service. Christopher was shaking his phone and showing Norris something on the screen. Arthur couldn’t hear his voice over the hundreds of people around them, all shouting to be heard over the music and the other shouting.
“Just a moment,” Arthur told Gen as he took his phone from his jacket pocket. “I need to check something.”
Gen settled down with a bowl of cocktail peanuts and a very attentive bartender asking her what she would have. Arthur had tipped the woman heavily a few hours earlier, not out of any fiendish plan but just because guests at these charity events could be stingy, not tipping properly for the free drinks.
He enabled his phone’s hotspot and named the free wifi that he created Royal Horseguards Hotel Guest 2.7.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 27