Gilded cage, p.12
Gilded Cage, page 12
“Nonsense.”
“Don’t be chivalrous. You’re bigger than me and you need the sleep.”
“You need the sleep. I’m depending on that razor-sharp mind of yours to save my neck.” James glanced at the obvious honeymoon bed. “Look, it’s big enough for two of me, or four of you. If you want to share, you have my word of honour I will behave as a gentleman.”
“I’ve met gentlemen.”
“Good point. I will behave as a gentleman ought to.”
Susan had few illusions about men, and James’s interest was clear. But he was offering, not pushing, and he’d backed off when she’d wanted him to. It wouldn’t do to pretend he was still her James, her steadfast ally and first lover, but she was pretty sure she could trust him this far.
“I’ll take your word,” she said, and refrained from threats as to what she might do if he broke it. He already knew. “So. It’s past ten.”
“Bed, then.”
“Best.”
“Shall I...?” He indicated the other room.
“I’ll just get my night-things.”
It felt ludicrously exposed to find her hairbrush and tooth powder under James’s eye. There was nothing intimate about carrying a nightgown through to a bedroom. James had seen a lot more than her nightgown in the past.
Of course, in the past they’d both known what they wanted and it had seemed like an indisputably good idea.
She got ready for bed as quickly as she could, and slipped under the covers. “All right, you can come in.”
James entered. He looked slightly self-conscious. “You may wish to revoke permission. I realised I don’t have night-clothes.”
Of course he didn’t; she hadn’t bought any. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said tartly. “Get on.”
She rolled over on her side, facing away. He put out the lights anyway. She heard him moving around—still quiet, even though there was no need for quiet. Maybe it was ingrained habit by now, or an effort not to be large in order not to intimidate her with his presence.
He pulled back the sheets very carefully, only lifting his corner, and got in. The mattress dipped considerably. He shuffled around, adjusting his position with the tiniest possible movements.
“If you’re trying to be imperceptible, it’s not working,” she said after a moment. “I know you’re in here.”
“I’m trying to be considerate and respectful.”
“But you’re actually wriggling like a two-year-old. Just make yourself comfortable and have done.”
He snorted, but shifted more noticeably. “Do you have much acquaintance with two-year-olds?”
“Emma has two children. And a husband,” she added, somewhat as an afterthought. “They live at Robin Hood Yard.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Why don’t I have a husband and two children?”
“I meant, why don’t you live at Robin Hood Yard.”
Susan looked up at the ceiling. The curtains were good and thick but a little light seeped in from the street all the same. “I work there. I grew up there. I could live and work with Justin all my life and have Emma and Nathaniel and Mark around every day and the Moretons dropping by, and everyone else. If I lived like that I dare say I’d be happy, but my happiness would be dependent on them.”
“Is that bad?”
“People die,” Susan said. “They leave. They let you down and change things, and—” She didn’t want to talk about this. God damn the champagne. “The point is, you have to take responsibility for yourself, not sit back and wait for other people to make you happy. I need to run my own life, not just enjoy the one Justin gave me. Same for my work. I’ve got a career because Mark and Justin let me have one. Nobody else would have taken me on as an enquiry agent because I’m a woman, and plenty of people who engage the firm still don’t want me on their cases. I’ve earned my place but that’s not enough. I need to do it myself.”
“You want to start on your own?”
“I think so.” She hadn’t told anyone this since Cara, but it felt like old times, the pair of them lying together on their backs, staring up to the sky. “I think I have to, or I’ll always feel as though I’m getting by on Justin and Mark’s name.”
“If it helps,” James said, “most of the underworld is terrified of you. I certainly am.”
“Unfortunately, yours are not the opinions that matter.”
“I don’t see why not. They’re a great deal more informed than the opinions of decent people, because we’re the ones who can assert the value of your services. In fact, you ought to put criminal testimonials in your advertising. Susan Lazarus, Lady Detective. ‘If she’s on your track, you’re scrobbled!’ says Mr. SK, receiver of stolen goods. ‘Oh Christ, not that bloody woman’—Mr. TL, jewel thief, London.”
Susan whooped aloud. “I’ll do it.”
“When they hang me I’ll give you a deathbed endorsement, in rhyming couplets. What about the husband and two children, or lack of? Is that down to Lady Caroline?”
She felt her smile fade. “Not just her. I never wanted the first, and I took more care not to put myself in the way of the second.”
“You’ve never considered marrying anyone else? Marrying anyone,” he corrected himself hastily. “Anyone who wasn’t Lady Caroline, I meant. Which of course you couldn’t.”
Susan gave him a sardonic look, completely wasted in the darkness. “Have you seen what happens to married women?”
“In what sense?”
“Marriage means absolute surrender of my money, my future, my body, my name. Mortgaging my life to a man and hoping I haven’t guessed wrong. If he decides to make me miserable or spend every penny I earn, there’s no way out but an endless trudge through the law-courts with no guarantee the judge won’t decide he hasn’t treated me quite badly enough. A wife is property, James. Why would I give away my humanity for a ring?”
“That’s...quite a strong view,” he said cautiously. “Isn’t Emma happy in her marriage?”
“She is now. Her first husband hit her.”
“Ah.”
“I’d have seen him off the first time he did it, but she wanted to give him another chance. The next time, she was three months gone, and he beat her so hard it brought on her bleed. I wonder how many women have died giving men a second chance.”
“Christ,” James said. “I trust he didn’t get a third?”
The process of removing Emma’s husband from her life had been lengthy. Mark had thrown him out of the house while Nathaniel helped her embark on the long process of legal separation and prosecution, but the bastard wouldn’t leave her alone. Emma was his wife to do with as he pleased, he’d said, with the righteous anger of thwarted ownership. He’d hung around the house, followed her in the market and hammered on the door at night, and after three months of that Justin and Susan had stopped waiting for the law to take its course.
“No. He didn’t, and he won’t.”
“Good. May I ask—?”
“It was a funny thing,” Susan said. “He passed out in a pub, and woke up in a goldsmith’s shop with his pockets full of loot, surrounded by policemen. He couldn’t explain what he was doing there and the judge wasn’t convinced by his claim that someone had drugged him and set him up. He got six years, and Emma got her divorce.”
“Nicely done. When does he get out?”
“Next year. I’ll be waiting at the gates, and we’ll have a little chat about what his future might hold.”
“I’m sure he’ll find it informative. All right, I see your point about marriage, though I’m convinced you could pick a reasonable specimen of the male sex if you wanted.”
“I don’t know why you say that,” Susan remarked. “Your experience of my taste in men is you.”
“Ouch. Do you have anyone currently?”
She hadn’t tried. She missed Cara far too much; the thought of missing someone else in the future was not inviting. She’d have liked a casual bed partner, someone to whom she could bid farewell without regret, but not enough to actually go out and find one. “Too busy. What about you?”
“Nobody for a while. Don’t ask how long a while; it’s somewhat embarrassing.”
“I’d have thought you’d be fending the ladies off with a stick.”
“Ladies who would like to be draped in unlawfully obtained jewels, yes. Unfortunately, that’s the fastest way to the Old Bailey I know. Ladies who don’t know my profession—well, it would be unfair to involve them.”
Susan considered that and found it good, not that she had any intention of telling him so. “So, any woman who chooses to be involved with you must by definition have dangerously poor judgement?”
“That is a very characteristic interpretation of my words.”
“There must have been someone.” She wasn’t sure why she was prodding at this.
“Yes, of course. I was particularly fond of a young lady in the States who handled a gun with remarkable skill. And there was a professional gambler who could fuzz cards so beautifully it would bring a tear to your eye.”
“The sort of people who move on.”
“I’m the sort of person who moves on,” James pointed out. “You always said, you can’t have stuff that slows you down when you need to run away.”
“And that includes people?”
“You’re the one who isn’t living at home with the family.”
“I’m not the one trying to flee the country.”
“That isn’t by my choice. If I get out of this mess...” He paused, long enough for her to wonder if he knew how to finish the sentence. “Well, we’ll see. Stan can retire at any time he likes, and I know Christiana would like him to. I don’t know what Jerry wants. I could probably find out by asking him.”
He didn’t sound like a man devoid of personal ties, a fact Susan chose not to point out. She had something else on her mind. She chewed it over a moment, wondering if it was too raw, but the hell with it. They were in the same bed, it was dark, and if she wanted to know what he thought, this was her chance.
“If it hadn’t gone wrong,” she said. “If your father had approved, or just cut you off, and I’d had the baby, and we’d got married. Would it have worked?”
“I’ve wondered that. Sometimes I’ve felt cheated of the life I should have had. Then I wonder if I’d have been fit for it. I was a damned fool of a boy; you were the sum total of good sense I ever displayed. Would I have pulled myself together to be a father and husband? I meant to, but I recall a lot of promises that I meant when I said them. And would you have handed the baby to a nurse and become an enquiry agent? What would I have thought about that? What else might you have done?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s possible we’d have been extremely bad for one another,” James said. “It’s also conceivable that you’d have turned me into a model citizen and I’d be Chancellor of the Exchequer by now. I’d have liked— No.”
“No what?”
“I was going to say I’d have liked the chance to find out, but I’d probably have made the same damned mess with you as I did everything else. I wouldn’t want to have let you down any more than I actually did. I’d rather be where I am.”
“Wanted for murder?”
“Apart from that.”
“I think I’d have made a mess of it too,” Susan said. “I’d have given you a hard time, and you’d have started to see me as another adult nagging you to behave and telling you what to do—”
“Oh Christ, don’t. What a callow little tit I was.”
“You weren’t little. And I didn’t want to be a wife, or a mother. Still don’t. I wanted to be an enquiry agent, and that was all.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She turned to give him a blank look in the dark. “Eh? Of course it was.”
“No,” James said. “What you wanted was to be Susan Lazarus. Not Mrs. James Vane, and certainly not James Vane Junior’s mother, just as you’re chafing at being part of Braglewicz and Lazarus when it isn’t the right Lazarus. You wanted to claim your name for yourself.”
“Because I wasn’t entitled to it.” Her throat felt dry. “Because Justin gave it me when I was twelve. God knows what my real name is, if I have one.”
“It’s Susan Lazarus. You’ve worked for it. I wouldn’t give that away either.”
She took a couple of breaths, for control. “And what about Templeton Lane?”
“That saved my life, I think,” James said. “It meant I did things differently, for good and ill, and left a great deal behind me that I couldn’t bear to bring along. Templeton Lane wasn’t lonely, because he had nobody to miss, and he had no regrets because he had no past. Templeton Lane was a blank slate.”
“In my old trade, a blank slate was a lie. I’d write on it with onion juice, then Justin would wipe it with a chalky handkerchief, and there you are, a message from the spirits. The flats fell for it every time.”
“Perhaps the invisible writing is always there, whatever you do,” James said. “You were always Susan Lazarus. It was just a matter of the rest of the world learning that fact.”
Susan turned on her side, an aggressive motion, and felt the mattress undulate as James turned too, toward her. She reached out, hand landing on his bare shoulder, and gripped it as she pulled him close, and their mouths met.
It was a motionless kiss for a moment, both of them stiff and still, lips pressed against lips. Susan’s fingers relaxed without her conscious will.
James made a low noise in his throat. His hand came down on her back, warmth perceptible through the linen of her nightgown, and his mouth moved against hers almost savagely. Hungrily. Susan was hungry herself. She slid her hand across his shoulders, feeling their strength and some thin ridged scar-lines, as his hand moved downward.
They were devouring each other, as though kissing now could make up for all the embraces they’d lost, all the love that had gone wrong. Susan tried to get her other arm out from underneath her, and found herself trapped by the sleeve of her nightgown. She cursed in his mouth, and James pulled away.
“Sukey?”
“Sodding arm’s—just a second—” She attempted to lift her hips and pull at the same time. Her arm came free more easily than she expected, and she bumped James’s chest. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise.” His voice was a rasp. He’d always loved it when she touched his chest, hadn’t he? She ran her hand over the expanse, feeling unfamiliar muscle and hair, and wondered if she wanted the gaslight on. Possibly not.
She found a nipple and circled it with a fingertip. His intake of breath suggested nothing much had changed. “Christ. Can I touch you?”
“Within reason.”
“Reason doesn’t come into it.” His hand slipped over the curve of her bottom, and he cupped one buttock through the linen, thumb brushing back and forward. “Ah God, Sukey. Please.”
He leaned in as he spoke, meeting her lips. Susan tasted toothpowder and a tang of the wine they’d drunk, felt the prickle of stubble against her skin. They were lying on their sides, face to face, like a pair of youths. She shifted a leg—the voluminous skirts of her nightgown at least let her move—and hooked it over his hip to lean into him. His drawers and her gown did very little to muffle the pressure of his stand.
Funny what you forgot. The taste of a mouth, the press of a prick.
“Jesus. Sukey.” James sounded hoarse. He still had his hand on her arse. He urged her forward and shifted himself so that her quint was against his hip. Susan couldn’t help a noise in her throat, and James must have heard it because he pressed her closer, intention unmissable.
And why not? She rubbed against him, felt the pleasurable tension build. James’s fingers were flexing, urging her on without exploring further. His other hand brushed against the cloth over her breasts, sending shudders through her.
“God. Yes.”
He was half lying on that arm and this was a stupid position, but the pressure on her arse wasn’t losing any urgency. She had always come easily this way, rubbing against him, and he’d loved it. She had his hip more or less locked between her thighs now; she could feel his rigid stand, and shifted to press against it. James rolled his palm over her breast and squeezed gently, the way he’d known she liked. “Christ, you wonderful witch. Your tits. Ah God, I want to see you come. Is there any chance that you’d care to have the light on, or the nightgown off, or both? I would do—not murder, but certainly a great deal to see you.”
Did she want to be naked in his view? She was older, but so was he, and she wanted to see the way he’d filled out.
Oh, what the hell. This couldn’t get any more foolish.
“You do the light, and I’ll get this thing off.”
James found her lips and kissed her gently. “No, I’ll do the lights and then I shall remove the...thing with all due care and attention.”
“Will you indeed?”
“I’m virtually a condemned man. This is a last request.”
“Hmph. When I prove your innocence, you’ll have to pay me back.”
“Done.”
She rolled off, and shoved the covers down as James stood and lit a single gas-lamp. Susan shut her eyes as it flared to life, and opened them to see him standing by the bed, looking down.
He really was a lot bigger. Youthful lankiness had been replaced by extremely solid shoulders and a burly chest, sprinkled with dark hair. His upper arms were stained blue with tattoos. He looked huge in the dim light, his eyes shadowed. The drawers against which his stand strained were not an aesthetic touch, but Susan liked that they were still on, in principle at least.
“What I would like to do,” James said, deep and low, “is to work my way under that frankly unflattering gown and remove it from the hem upwards.”
She stretched her arms above her head, a deliberate motion. “I didn’t pick it for its attractiveness.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I should have started to question your judgement.”
“If you dislike it so much, you’d better hurry up.”
He put a knee on the bottom of the bed, which made it dip notably, and crawled over to her. Susan watched him, watched the muscles of his back and shoulders, waiting. He cupped her foot in one big hand and stroked up the sole with a thumb, making her shiver.
