“Me?”
“You’re certainly the only pupil barrister who had a shot at obtaining tenancy after James Knightly’s university indiscretions came to light. Corky Niles really can’t write a brief to save her life, even though she’s improved the last few months. You were the only real choice this year.”
“So it’s just that no one else is suitable,” Gen fretted.
Octavia sighed, thoroughly exasperated. “You’ll find in this profession that results matter more than anything else. You won that abominable Finch-Hatten case in front of the House of Lords committee. You stood by your client when everyone else had lost hope. Solicitors are ringing up in droves, offering you spectacular, high-profile cases because you persevered. ‘Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death,’ said Sun Tzu. And the solicitors are definitely standing by you. At this point, we would not dare refuse to offer tenancy because you would take all those solicitors with you. Chambers will line up to make offers. So, you’re in.”
“I’m in,” Gen said, her hands fluttering around her. “But I’m not finished with my pupillage yet.”
“Yes, and good show with the committee. I meant to say that. The tenancy won’t be formally offered until the end of September, of course. We can’t offer until your pupillage is officially finished. So keep your nose clean until then and get me a cup of coffee.”
“I—But I dated and slept with and married a client!” Gen protested.
“Oh, yes, yes. Neither one of you believed my dire threats at all, did you? I must be losing my touch. It’s a good thing that it didn’t go sideways, though. You would have been in such trouble, then. I’m sure there’ll be a disapproving snort of some-such at a later date.”
“But—the Bar Council!” Gen said, still freaking out because she knew what she had done.
“Well, neither you nor he should lodge a complaint with them, should you? Remind me this fall about filing written reprimand. Maybe December. December is good for quiet reprimands because everyone is focused on the holidays.”
“So, that’s it? It really wasn’t a big deal?”
“It could have been. If it hadn’t worked out, if you had lost and if he were the vindictive type and lodged a complaint, you could have been disbarred. This was incredibly risky behavior for anyone, but especially for a professional woman and a pupil to boot. I don’t approve at all. Now, eighty-two centigrade and with a precise quarter-cup of cream. Chop, chop!”
Octavia slammed the door on her way out.
Gen called Arthur, asking him to meet her for lunch.
A few hours later at his club, back in the small, private room with dark velvet curtains and a Victorian sensibility, she told him, “I’ve been offered tenancy.”
“That’s marvelous. It’s what you’ve always wanted.” His silvery eyes glimmered in the soft light.
“But I don’t have to worry about my mother’s bills anymore.”
“And you’re the Countess Severn and worth billions,” he said.
“But that’s yours,” she said. “That’s not mine.”
Arthur stood and held out his hand.
Gen didn’t know what this was about, but she took his hand and stood up.
He drew her into his arms, holding her. “It’s not mine. It’s ours, all of it, Spencer House, the London apartment, the money and jewelry and the history and our place in England. You won the case, so by right of conquest, it’s yours.”
“No, no. I shouldn’t think that way.”
“Yes, you should. It’s ours. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and it’s ours.”
She huddled against him, laying her head on his broad shoulder. “All right.”
“Do you believe me?”
She relaxed, letting her body melt against him. “Yes, I believe you.”
“Now, you don’t need the money anymore. You are worth billions of pounds. Do you still want to be a barrister?”
The rush of winning Arthur’s case against all the odds trickled back to her, even through her grief. “Yeah, I do.”
“Good. You’re an amazing barrister. The world would be poorer without you.” He leaned down near her ear. “And I thoroughly enjoy the prospect of a Queen’s Counsel or a Law Lord sitting naked at my feet, feeding sugared strawberries to her, and then making her scream my name.”
She snuggled into his hug. “You have a thing, don’t you?”
He lifted one of her arms, wrapping it more tightly around his waist, and his arms tightened around her. “Ah, you know me too well.”
Gen mused, “I need to pick up some cream on the way back to the office.”
At The Office
ARTHUR walked into the teal Special Intelligence Services building in Vauxhall. It was supposed to be an Art Deco interpretation of a Mayan temple, though Arthur had always thought that it looked more like stuccoed-over steampunk gears grinding against each other as the cogs and wheels chewed up humans and spit out mangled lives.
Perhaps his mood was a bit dark that day.
Walking into the building where your friends had recently hatched a plot to kill you was disconcerting. He swiped his identification badge through a card reader, keyed in his PIN, and walked into the warren of hallways.
The unlabeled hallways would have stymied anyone who didn’t belong there, but Arthur knew his way.
At the end of a long walk, he opened an office door.
A receptionist was sitting at a computer, peering at something on his screen. His squint suggested he needed glasses. He looked at the screen, to Arthur, and back at the screen, doubtlessly comparing Arthur to the security photo there.
Arthur announced, “I’m here for a two o’clock appointment with C.”
The receptionist waved at the door. “He’s expecting you, Mr. Finch-Hatten. Go right in.”
The government office was one of the few places that Arthur would not be called by the title of Lord Severn. In the government’s eyes, everyone was equal.
And yes, the SIS did use a silly code name to refer to the head of the organization, though the letter was said more often in jest than with seriousness. The origin of the single-letter code name had been the first man to hold the post, Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming, who had signed documents with the initial of his surname. “C” eventually came to stand for “Chief” as later people adopted the convention.
Arthur stepped inside and identified himself to the man behind the desk. “Arthur Finch-Hatten at two o’clock, sir.”
The current “C” was of average height, average weight, middling appearance, beige coloration, with a slightly receding hairline and some weathering. He was, in short, indescribable for his averageness and thus possessed the perfect appearance for a spy.
Arthur, with his extravagant height and tendency to pack on muscle, had had to go the other route for camouflage, to make it ridiculous that anyone would think the drunken and debauched playboy could ever be a sober, solemn intelligence officer.
C walked around the desk and shook Arthur’s hand. His skin was neither warm nor cool, not moist nor raspy. “Good to see you, Lord Severn. Shall we order up some tea?”
“I would appreciate tea, sir,” Arthur said, sitting when C gestured to a conversation grouping.
“I should like to say that there was some bad form in that situation,” C said. “It was unfortunate how things were handled. You will indeed be reassigned to another minder.”
“Thank you,” Arthur said.
“I must say, the way you’ve managed to ingratiate yourself back into your usual orbits so quickly was impressive. You’re very useful to us, you know. And your report on connections between the Solntsevskaya Bratva and the Turkish syndicates was fascinating.”
Arthur smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
The Red Room of Tech
“ARE you sure?” Arthur asked her, his hand resting on the doorknob.
Gen steeled herself for what was behind the door. “Enlighten me.”
“Oh, now, that’s far too British. ‘Enlighten me.’” He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Inside, monitors of various sizes—from minuscule to enormous and curved—were arranged around a desk with a keyboard, mousepads, and peripherals. The stacks of glowing screens looked like the window of a television store that was trying too hard.
Gen said, “Wow.”
She walked in, glancing at the blank walls and the floor-to-ceiling window that shimmered oddly behind sheer curtains, but the computers shone in the gloom, drawing her attention.
“This is amazing,” she said, running her fingers over the warm monitors. “What kind of chips are in these things?”
He blinked and told her.
“And what OS are you running?”
He told her then asked, “Are you interested in computers?”
“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t had time to indulge the last few years, but I like gadgets and stuff.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I must admit, I’m kind of disappointed in your secret Red Room of Pain. I thought there would be more whips and handcuffs and blindfolds and stuff in here.”
“Did you?” His silvery blue eyes took on that predatory gleam that she liked.
“Yeah,” she said, staring straight into his eyes.
He grabbed her around the waist, spun her around, and crowded her back against the desk. With one wave of his arm, he pushed aside the keyboard and accessories on the table, lifted her up there, and forced her backward.
She said, “Will the desk hold—”
Arthur grabbed the computer mice lying to the side, jerked them out of their ports, and whipped the cords around her wrists above her head.
“Wow, Arthur, I never thought of a computer den as a—”
“No more talking,” he growled.
Arthur shoved her skirt up around her hips, pulled her panties off, and raked his teeth over the inside of her thigh.
A Dark Flat
SCOTT Rickard shrugged off his shoulder bag and his coat as he walked into his dark apartment, unsettled. The early September weather had turned unseasonably chilly. Autumn never agreed with him.
He had hired a cab for a lift home from the airport, and his credit card had been declined.
Not just declined, but the cabbie had accused him of having a fake card, saying that the card and account had never existed.
That was obviously wrong. Obviously, the card existed. Scott had snatched the very solid card back from the cabbie and thrown cash at him.
It was a boon that Scott had cash on him after a week out of the country. He traveled constantly for work to Geneva, Paris, and Cairo.
After he had gained a second-class degree in law from Oxford University because he hadn’t worked particularly hard, he’d done a business course. Being a barrister had been right out, of course. He couldn’t have matriculated to a bar course, let alone been accepted for a pupillage, not with marks like his.
Anyway, it was a wonder that he’d had any cash on him at all after he’d spent most of it at the bars and brothels in Geneva.
He opened his shoulder bag to retrieve his laptop. Time to figure out what the Hell had happened to that credit card.
Scott pushed his laptop open and typed in his password.
It didn’t work.
It didn’t work when he tried typing it very slowly with two fingers, either.
He pulled out his phone and glared at it.
The lack of bars at the top signaled that he had no reception.
That was absurd. Scott had let this flat specifically because it had excellent cellular reception and the building had free wifi.
On the screen of his phone, icons began disappearing.
“What the fuck?”
His social media apps, his picture albums, and his contact list evaporated. Finally, the empty screen went black.
Scott dropped his phone. “What the actual fuck?”
From somewhere in the dark of the living room, a man’s voice said, “You’re a hard man to find, Scott Rickard.”
Scott turned. “Who’s there?”
A very tall man stepped out of the dark of the living room. His hair was black, but his eyes were an unnatural silvery blue that seemed to have sucked up all the light in the room. “I’m a friend of Genevieve Ward.”
“Look, I don’t know what she told you—”
“She didn’t tell me anything. I found you anyway.”
“—but she was drunk that night.”
“The hospital records show bruises on her arms, wrists, and the back of her neck. Deep bruises.”
“She wanted it.”
“She was too drunk to say no, wasn’t she?”
“Look, man, it was a party. You know how uni is. And she wasn’t too drunk to say no. She said ‘no’ quite a lot. I had to haul her drunk, fat ass up three flights of stairs before I fucked her. It’s kind of fun when the fat ones squirm around like they don’t like it, you know? She kept saying no, even though I could tell she wanted it. I was doing her a favor.”
Pain exploded from Scott’s nose, and the floor slapped him on the face.
“What the fuck?” Scott yelled.
“You raped her,” the man said. He drew back his foot.
Scott gathered his arms and legs under himself, trying to kneel. “No! I don’t know what she told you—”
The man kicked.
His ribs crunched inward, spiking pain through him, and air rushed from Scott’s lungs. “What the fuck!”
The man didn’t say anything for several more minutes.
Scott screamed for help as he tried to scramble to escape, and then with his mouth crammed against a wall while the man pummeled his kidneys, and then from the floor, bleeding from his mouth and nose, while the man kicked deep bruises into his stomach and legs.
Scott tried to reason with him, saying, “It was a long time ago, man. Years. She was just some cunt, a working class girl aping her betters. She didn’t belong at Oxford.”
Scott’s reasoning seemed to anger the man more. He shut up and tried to protect his face. It didn’t work.
Finally, the man walked toward the door.
Scott called after him, “I’ll call the police,” before he thought better of it.
The man said, “Go ahead. Explain to them what I said, and when they find me, I’ll give them the records that show it was you who raped her. And then I’ll make sure the police find more records about you, about other women you raped, about other things that you did—”
“I haven’t done anything!” Scott protested.
The man laughed a low, sinister chuckle. “There is video surveillance of a man who looks like you walking away from crime scenes, some truly deplorable crimes.”
“No, there isn’t!”
“There is now. Plus, the police will arrest you for carrying forged documents and probably deport you, as there is no record of a UK citizen named Scott Jeremiah Rickard. All records of your university degree are gone. Your school records have been wiped. Your driving license has vanished. All traces of your existence have been wiped clean. You don’t exist.”
The door closed behind the man.
Scott spat teeth onto the carpeting, terrified for the first time in his life.
Poopy-Butt Pupil Barrister
A few days after Arthur came home with scraped knuckles and some bogus story about a malfunctioning punching bag at the gym, Gen struggled out of the silvery Aston Martin, holding onto Arthur’s hand as she hoisted her burgeoning belly around.
Her whole body felt unwieldy these days—pregnant tummy, swollen ankles, and a skull stuffed with everything she had learned during her pupillage, which was finally over.
As a tenant at Serle’s Court Barristers, she occupied a properly sized office to accommodate her growing body.
Arthur kissed Gen goodbye, a long, slow kiss on the sidewalk amidst the rushing c
rowd. She touched his shoulder to steady herself, his suit jacket soft under her fingertips.
When he backed up, his silvery blue eyes caught the autumn sunlight showering down on them.
He was flying out to Benhall in Gloucestershire today, to meetings with his other masters at the Government Communications Headquarters there. Hacking was too much of an intellectual challenge for him to give it up. GCHQ had long realized that it was better to have Arthur hacking for them rather than let him and his overdeveloped sense of honor loose on the world without supervision.
Arthur was also too useful to MI6 for them to let him go, either, so he was still splitting his time between hacking for Britain and spying for the Queen.
They still attended all the high-profile charity and social events in London, just not so many of them as when they had been dating, thank goodness.
They spent many more of their evenings at home, either the penthouse or Spencer House.
When Gen glanced back, Arthur was watching her walk through the small courtyard park of Lincoln’s Inn.
Just as she opened the door to her building, Arthur took a look around, one of his wary glances that she had only seen after the fiasco of nearly being killed to cover up his patriotism, and folded himself into the back seat of the car. The sleek Aston Martin pulled away and blended with the flowing traffic.
Gen waddled up to her office, which was down the hall from Octavia’s. The office with windows overlooking London used to be Horace Lindsey’s office, so she had fond memories from there. She had done a little redecorating, but she had kept the carved, antique desk that he had owned.
In one of the bottom drawers, on her first day as a tenant in chambers, she had found an envelope with her name on it.
The letter inside, written in Horace’s precise handwriting, begged her not to drop Arthur Finch-Hatten’s case, no matter how hopeless it seemed.
Get the Finch-Hatten case. It’s a good case. He’s a good lad, Horace had written. I know it seems like he’s a wastrel, but he cannot be the drunken lout he seems. Any man whom I can drink under the table isn’t the alcoholic he claims to be. ‘Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.’ Arthur needs good company and good welcome—I think he’s had neither in his young life—and he needs good wine instead of those awful vodka tonics. Save him.
Hard Liquor: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #2 Page 34
