Bodice Ripper

the room in and tried to mentally tabulate what needed doing. There must have been a desk in the room; he knew that because there was a chair pushed up to it, but he could hardly see it for the heaps of paper stacked.

As he came up to them, looking at one after another, there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the order. Rather, they appeared to have been placed wherever was convenient at the time and left.

The only clear space on the desk, now that he looked closely, was a notebook that had been stuffed halfway-underneath one of the mounds of paper. He could tell that it was the most recent because it was the only thing that had not been torn away, and because a pen sat on top of it.

James took off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. There was going to be quite a bit of work ahead of him, now. A few hours of tidying and he could finally set about looking at the figures. Surely there would be an obvious answer to the problems that faced the Geis household, then, and he would be able to begin planning for the future.

He rolled up his sleeves and began separating things into more careful stacks as best he could.

Hours later, he sat back and looked at his work. James felt tired; there was a dullness in his eyes that he couldn't quite get out of them. Whatever he had planned to do after this, he wondered if he had the energy. There were no less than six ledgers, each as thick as he could possibly imagine. None were more than a quarter full, spread seemingly at random throughout the tomes. He could consolidate them, but that alone would take the best part of a day.

More worrying, though, was the other stack. There were, torn from seemingly random scraps of paper—newspapers, paper napkins, journal pages—hundreds upon hundreds of tiny jotted notes that seemed to be as perfectly obtuse as possible. One read "O 80" while the next read "P 5" and the next after that read "D 2; 3."

For a moment, he regretted the man's death once again. Even having never known him, there must have been some guiding meaning behind such obscure notes, but whatever they meant to the man who had written them had died with him.

Now they were meaningless codes on several hundred scraps of paper. That they had been gathered here, James guessed, suggested that they had something to do with money, but as to their meaning he could only wildly speculate.

Still, he guessed that with a little bit of effort he would be able to fit all the pieces together. Rather like a puzzle.

As he sat back and relaxed, he heard someone moving outside the study door. He had heard servants moving around several times as he worked, but he had ignored it. There was bound to be bustle about the house, in such a large estate.

This was unusual, though. He heard steps approaching, and then they slowed, and then stopped. He guessed they must have been right outside the door; they had come closer, but never gone further away that he could hear.

What was going on, then? Perhaps he was simply paranoid. After all, there was no reason at all for anyone to be snooping on him. He knew next to nothing about household affairs, had few possessions of any value, and if the sneak had been interested in the accounts, they could have come right in the open door.

Still, James strained to listen for footsteps. He heard none. Whoever it was, they had either become extremely quiet, or they hadn't moved since he had heard them come up.

It must have been paranoia, he reasoned, but it did little to calm him. This was not his house, and these were not his accounts. Whoever was snooping would be doing it for some reason, and he would look awfully foolish in front of his new employers, asking for money he hadn't been promised after someone had got away with the family's secrets.

All because he hadn't bothered to investigate some strange footsteps.

He stood up and turned toward the door, walking as silently as he could. He reached out, barely letting his hand graze the door knob. He took a deep breath and tried to still the ever-louder beating of his heart. Then he let the breath out, and twisted the knob and pulled the door in one swift motion.

A young woman, pretty, with long red hair piled onto her head, stood in the doorway. She had a long, narrow face and a button nose, and light freckles, and the green eyes that the Irish were prone to.

"Miss Geis," he said softly. "Is anything the matter?"

She looked at him with fire in her eyes, and dared him to do…something. He had noticed it earlier, as well: a combative attitude he couldn't explain. Whatever was on her mind, she kept it to herself.

James noticed that she was wearing her corset, now. His cheeks turned red and he tried not to think about it. It was hard to look her in the face, as well. He had met plenty of pretty women before, even gotten a kiss or two from some. This was the first one who was so completely off-limits, and it made reacting to her presence difficult.

For a moment he considered inviting her into the study. She would have known her father better than anyone; if the puzzle of the notes could be solved, she would be the one who could solve it. But then he looked at her again, and saw the look in her eyes. A mixture of mistrust and dislike, he thought, mixed with something that might have been anger.

Perhaps it would wait.

5

Mary

The sun was already streaming in through her window when Mary Geis rose. It still felt odd to her, and she had rolled over several times to go back to sleep when she woke at times that felt natural and normal to her.

She put up a front of indifference and laziness, but beneath all that she wanted to sleep in even still. The reality of her life after her father's death had been all too bleak, and the chance to avoid even a little bit of it by closing her eyes was a welcome distraction.

She dressed quickly, without Rebecca. She wasn't in the bed beside hers, and wasn't waiting in the hall for her, so clearly something must have come up. It wasn't as if Mary couldn't dress herself, after all.

Afterward she made a bee-line for the library, as she had been doing for days. She kept her head down. The truth was that she was still tired, even after all the sleep she'd gotten already. She didn't want to look or think too hard until after she'd had a cup of tea and been reading a bit.

She tried to forget the day before, and the powerful, attractive young man who had barged his way into her house by opening her book to where she'd marked it the night before. It took her only a moment to find her place once more, but reading was slow going. For every sentence she read, it seemed as if she had to read it twice more to comprehend It, and then start again at the top of the paragraph to understand a word of it.