Bodice Ripper

"If you're caught coming from the room, then we're caught. But if I leave alone..."

The implication was clear.

"So I should hide for a few minutes?"

"I'll go out and make sure that nobody is watching. If someone is going to see you, then I'll draw their attention. You'll be alright, you'll see."

Mary turned and crushed her lips into his, and James rewarded her with a tight embrace around the waist. Then she was standing in the corner, where the armoire hid her from view of the door, and he was opening the door and moving into the hall.

It seemed as if the seconds passed as slowly as hours, as Mary waited. She heard his voice, then it got slowly softer as he walked away down the hall. Was he leaving her behind? What on earth was going on?

She looked across the room at the clock on the mantel. Each tick was an eternity, and her breaths came in shallow gulps. Was that someone outside the door? She shook her head and tried to regain control of herself. She was becoming hysterical and imagining sounds that weren't there.

Eventually a minute passed, and then a second, and a third. By the time that five minutes had ticked past, her heart had nearly slowed to normal, and she was taking normal breaths. The noise of foot

steps hadn't come back since James had left. Whatever he'd done to get everyone's attention, she realized, it was working.

Cautiously, she left her hiding place. The room was empty, and almost preternaturally still. Somewhere, deep down, she'd been afraid that someone was standing in the door, waiting. That they'd known and had just been playing a cruel trick on her to let her believe she would get away.

But nobody was waiting for her. She pushed the door open. The hall was empty, as well. She picked her shoes up from the floor and carried them, turned down the main hall toward her room, and started walking.

Even still, she saw nobody. It was as empty as it had ever been, it seemed. She dropped the shoes and slipped them on. Now it looked nearly as if she'd never been in the west wing. As she congratulated herself, walking toward the foyer to see if perhaps it had all been her imagination, she heard it.

A voice, raised and angry, was coming from the foyer. It sounded familiar. Was that James?

She took a deep breath. Another voice followed, and it knocked the wind from her. She knew that voice. Uncle Ollie was back. It wasn't clear what that meant, but she knew one thing: she didn't want to find out.

Something deep down inside her said that she needed to know what was happening, though. She started back towards the front of her father's house.

"Col. Geis," a third voice said. Could it have been Davis? "I'm not sure what this young man thinks he's doing, but he's not working for the house."

"What?" James, this time. "You saw the contract I signed. I was brought on to do a job, and I did it."

Was that all this was? A job? Mary could feel a pit opening up in her stomach, but she continued on. She needed to hear this.

"What job would that be?"

"Ask your lackey," James answered, his voice booming. "I was brought on to manage the household and balance the household budget. I did that. I had a contract, signed and sealed."

"Where?"

"What on earth does that mean, where? In my room, with my things!"

"Show it to me," Oliver answered. His voice was cool, and as he said it, Mary knew that they wouldn't find it. James must have known it, too.

"You—you took it?" He sounded less certain than he had a moment. Cracks began to show in the armor of defiance he'd put up.

"Now, Mr. Poole, I'm not an unreasonable man. You've worked for, what, a week? That's a pound right there, no doubt about it. And of course, you seemed to believe you had work here. I'm sure that you turned down work to do your job, whether it was real or imagined."

"That's not the point," James answered. Mary pressed herself against the wall; they were right through the doorway beside her, and all she had to do was step through. Then they'd all know she was there.

"Of course. So I'm prepared to offer you a severance, in spite of the fact that you don't contest that you have no contract. I think you'll find fifty pounds, plus the one that you've incurred in wage, to be more than fair. Don't you think?"

Mary's eyes fluttered shut. He had the money, she knew. He'd borrowed that much and more from her father.

Some part of her had been willing to accept that everything had been a big misunderstanding. That Oliver had made some bad gambling debts and that they'd needed to be paid off. The rest of it could all have been a series of coincidences.

But a fifty pound severance to a steward that had been working for a week? That was as much an admission of guilt as she would ever receive from him.