The Mesmerist (The Adventures of Xavier & Vic Book 3) Page 4

  The chair distracted Vic from their polite conversation. “How do you get people out of your office? This seat is far too comfortable.”

  Mr. Ascot stared at her in confusion for a moment and then burst into a pleasant chuckle. “That’s right, you work for Xavier Thorn. Maddy claimed a sadist had crafted his guest chairs.”

  Vic stared at the man in confusion. While she hadn’t a clue Mr. Ascot existed before today, he seemed to have an abundant knowledge about her life from Claire’s coming out of mourning down to the tortuous chairs in Xavier’s office.

  “So what exactly would you like to review first?” Mr. Ascot rose slowly from his chair and walked to his shelves of ledgers, pulling one out and placing it on his desk.

  Perplexed by his question, Vic explained her purpose. “I am in need of a quick education into investments to assist my efforts in a current case.”

  The old man’s hands stroked the ledger cover as if it were his lover. “Mr. Thorn is most knowledgeable in financial matters.”

  “Yes, but he lacks the patience to teach. If you could perhaps explain the basics to me, my lesson with Xavier will be more productive. I will, of course, pay you for your time.”

  Mr. Ascot waved away her offer. “Clients are allotted ten hours of my time a year, and you did not come last year, so unless we exceed twenty hours, your costs are covered.”

  Dear God, did the poor old man think her a client? She would have to clarify the situation, but perhaps after a few hours of education.

  “How much do you know at present?”

  “Consider me a blank sheet.”

  He smiled. “Ah, I see why you came to me,” he chuckled. “Xavier never does well with complete ignorance. How do you get along with him?”

  “Well enough. I began as his apprentice, and after a year, I became his partner.”

  “Partner?” The man’s eyes rounded. “I would not have thought it possible.” He studied Vic a bit longer. “You must have a quickness of the mind and fast reflexes to have achieved so much in so little time.”

  “Fast reflexes?”

  “Unless he’s mellowed and has ceased to throw ink wells.”

  Vic laughed at the man’s words. God, does everyone know his bad habits? “No. He still throws the occasional ink well, but I’ve at least broken him from throwing them at people.”

  “That’s good to know, but I still won’t visit him. Those chairs you know.” He shuddered. “No, he must always come here, and all ink wells are put away before he’s allowed in.”

  Vic couldn’t believe of all the men of business she might have approached, she’d go to the one evidently Xavier used. Then a thought came to her mind. She had never been able to find a ledger in Xavier’s office that told how much he paid his employees. Maybe it was here.

  “Do you by chance maintain the employee’s salary ledger for Xavier?”

  “Salary ledger?” Then he chuckled. “I see I’ve a lot to teach you. Pull up that chair, and we’ll use your accounts for all examples.”

  “My accounts?”

  “Yes. Bring the chair around and we’ll review them all, including the money set aside for Claire’s dowry since she has finally come out of mourning.”

  Baffled into muteness, Vic moved the chair next to the old man and listened in a state of shock as she discovered the immense fortune left to her and Claire by her dear Aunt Maddy.

  ***

  Four hours later, when Vic climbed into the carriage, she seethed with fury.

  “Problem?” Tubs asked.

  She growled and muttered something beneath her breath.

  Tubs leaned forward. “You want me to rough someone up?”

  Her eyes met his. “Any chance you’d be willing to pick up Xavier by his feet and drop him on his head?”

  Tubs choked and shook his head with vigor.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to kill him myself.”

  Chapter 4

  Vic stormed past the small sign reading Thorn’s Private Inquiries and through the front door of their office building, livid with rage.

  “Mr. Thorn wants to see you at once.” Ben pointed to the closed door of Xavier’s office.

  Vic headed towards it, head lowered, like a bull spotting a red cloak. She smashed inside and slammed the door behind her.

  “Bloody hell, have you never heard of knocking?” Xavier chided.

  She continued forward, grabbing him by his lapels before he could stand. “You bastard. You cheating, lying, bastard!”

  His hands covered hers and pried them from his clothes. “What are you going on about? I’ve done nothing to deserve such castigations. Whatever Claire said is a lie. I have told you before, there is and never will be anyone but you in my life, Vic. So calm down and gather your reason before you proceed. I do not like being falsely accused.”

  “Falsely accused? Then Mr. Ascot’s ledgers lie when they show the salary you have paid me for the last year and a half actually comes from a bond Aunt Maddy left me?”

  “Ah…” A pained grimace covered his previously outraged face. His eyes closed for a moment, and then he opened them. “What were you doing at Ascot’s? Ben said you were at your house. If the boy can’t be more accurate than that, I’m going to have to fire him.”

  “Don’t change the topic, you cheating bastard! You have lied to me since the day we met. All this time, I have been working here, and you never paid me a dime. All the while, you led me to believe you were the most generous of employers, paying me the princely sum of a hundred pounds a month.” The enormity of his lie was too much. Her hand tightened into a fist and she clocked him across his arrogant chin.

  She’d never hit a person before and never planned to again. Her knuckles screamed in pain. “Bloody hell, that hurts!”

  Xavier pushed her back and stood. “Well, if it’s any consolation, it didn’t feel so great on my end either.” Grabbing her wrist, he pulled Vic behind him as he left the office and headed upstairs.

  Once inside their bedroom, he closed the door and locked it. When he turned around, she hit him in the stomach with her other fist.

  For a female, she delivered a powerful blow. He gathered both her hands and led her to the bed, assuming he had his little pugilist under control until she kicked his shin.

  “Vic, stop it! Before we are both crippled and unable to work.”

  “Work?” Her eyes were glassy with tears of outrage. “If you think I am working for you ever again, you are not only a lying, cheating bastard, but a fool, as well.” Her lips trembled. “I trusted you! How could you do this to me? You said you loved me and all the while you were stealing my money.”

  “No!” he insisted. “That is far from the truth. I love you, Vic, with all my heart. I am sorry this has hurt you. Just let me explain the matter from my perspective.”

  She shook her head. “I know the truth already. There’s nothing you can say to change the facts. If you truly loved me, you would not have done it.” Her declaration struck him to his core, and undid her, as well. She burst into wrenching sobs.

  He gathered her into his arms and held her, ignoring her angry flailing fists. “When we first met, Thorn’s Inquiry was little more than a front for my work with the government. Any salary I could have offered wouldn’t have covered a tenth of your monthly expenses. But from the very first moment, I was intrigued and enchanted by your brain.”

  He caressed her silky two-inch long hair. “I’m not proud of it now, but at the time, I justified my actions by rationalizing that normally an apprentice is expected to pay the craftsman to learn his skills. While I would not charge you, I did have you pay your own salary.” Before she could respond, he continued. “I was wrong to do so. At the time, I thought it devilishly clever. I had a fabulous apprentice and you had the best of masters teaching you a career you were born to do.”

  “Employer,” she grumbled into his chest.

  “Yes. An employer who fell in love with you, who watched you exceed beyond his wildest imagination, who made you his partner in all ways, but who could never figure out how to undo his past clever trick without destroying everything.”

  She pushed back and stared at him with red-rimmed mistrusting eyes. “What do you mean?”

  He stroked her cheek. “Since you’ve come aboard, the business has turned profitable. But if I gave you every shilling after I’ve paid our employees and bills, you would only make fifteen pounds a month. Had I offered you a reasonable salary from the first, this might have been satisfactory. But to cut your hundred pounds down to fifteen would be intolerable. So even when you graduated from apprenticeship and became my partner, I could not alter my original deceit.”

  “You could have paid me a hundred and fifteen,” she grumbled.

  “I could have. However, you have always complained your salary was too large as it is. So instead, I had the amount left over placed into a pension for our employees, so when they become injured or too old to work, they will continue to have an income to live upon. In that way, neither of us is paid by our business. We each live off our investments.”

  Once again, she gripped his collar. “You swear that is the truth?”

  It killed him that she no longer trusted his word. “I swear on my life and the love between us.”

  “How much is in their pension?”

  “About two thousand, five hundred pounds.”

  She shook her head. “But that makes no sense. You said—”

  His fingers covered her lips and stilled her protest. “Davy has been with me for seventeen years now. While I am nowhere near as wealthy as you, I have built a tolerable sum from my investments. From it, I’ve supported myself, paid Davy’s salary, and put away what I could into a pension for him. However, when you made our business profitable and we acquired more employees, I moved each month’s entire net income to a pension fund for them all. Given the way you fret over our employees’ salaries, I hoped if my foolish trick ever came to light, you would at least approve of where the money from your hard work had gone.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me I was rich and you couldn’t afford to pay me? I would have still come to work for you.”

  His right brow arched in challenge to her claim. “Really. If I recall correctly, you turned the job down until I offered you a hundred pounds, paid in advance.”

  “Well, you had a reputation for firing secretaries after a week.” Her face darkened with a scowl. “You’re changing the subject again. The point is you were the trustee to my fortune and never said a word!”

  “Maddie requested I keep the extent of your fortune to myself until you had succeeded in a career of your choosing. She had seen far too many young men with potential fall to drink and gambling for the lack of a profession. She could not bear the idea of her money destroying your fabulous potential.”

  “But I have proven myself,” Vic growled and slammed his arm with her fist.

  “Yes, you have. But unfortunately, I was still held silent by my initial bit of cleverness. I feared this exact reaction once you knew.”

  He gathered her hands and held them to his heart, so she might understand where her blows truly landed. “I have never once touched your fortune. Mr. Ascot can attest to that. The only money removed has gone to you. And had you ever stated a need for additional monies, I would have ensured you receive it.”

  She glared at him with red sulky eyes. “That should have been my decision.”

  “Yes, it should have. You long ago proved yourself competent to run your life and your money. However, I was initially silenced by Maddie’s promise and later by my deception. One, which resolved with time, and the other, which grew uglier with each passing year. Yet, I could not seem to untangle myself. I feared I would lose you over my foolishness.

  When she turned her head away from him, he pulled it back, determined to humble himself if that would return her trust, for he could not live without her. Whatever it took, he would do.

  “You have to forgive me, Vic. If your love is half what I feel for you, then we cannot lose it because of something I did before we fell in love. You have to forgive me.” His voice cracked with emotions he rarely felt: shame, regret, and an underlying terror she’d leave him over this.

  Her fisted hands unfurled and moved up his chest until they encircled his neck. After a deep sorrowful gaze, exposing the depth of heartbreak he’d caused her, but also the love she still held for him, Vic pulled his lips to hers.

  Relieved and exhilarated they had survived this moment, he answered her kiss with passion.

  If he had lost her over this foolishness, he would have never recovered. She was his purpose and reason for being.

  Chapter 5

  Vic rested her head upon Xavier’s bare chest. She could not believe how close she had come to leaving him over nothing. How could she have ever thought him a thief? Doubted everything he was? She pressed her lips to his chest and then met his sad eyes. Unquestionably, he was disappointed in her lack of faith.

  “While you should have told me the truth from the start—”

  He nodded. His capitulation touched her deeply. She scooted higher upon his chest so her face hovered directly over his.

  “I should not have doubted you. In the future, I will not react to any disturbing facts, which lie between us, until you’ve had a chance to explain them from your perspective.”

  The sadness dissipated, and a smile came to his lips. “Thank you, and I will do the same. However, for my part, I never intend to lie to you again.”

  She pressed her lips against the purplish hue on his chin where she had hit him. Regret threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed it away. “Like iron, we’ve been plunged into fire and beaten, but the end result is that we’re stronger than before.”

  His eyes sparkled with teasing mischief. “If you start spouting poetry, I’m tossing you to the floor.”

  She tried to roll off him, but he held her above him. “The horrid poetic analogy aside, we are stronger for having gone through this. For that I am grateful, but to be honest, I hope we never go through another test of faith.”

  Her attempt to kiss him failed when he rolled her off the bed. “Sorry, pup, but we’ve work to do. While you were not at your house determining the evening menu as you told Ben, did you manage to acquire any of the information you failed to obtain from the client?”

  She grimaced as she pulled on her trousers. “No. Did your scolding of Stone go as planned?”

  Xavier sat up and ran his hand through his short black terrier hair. “Stone didn’t cooperate. He was too intent upon yelling at me for putting him in the middle of a cock fight.”

  Vic assumed the cock fight was only a poetic analogy, and Stone’s complaint was that he didn’t want to choose sides between Xavier and the First Minister. “Well, he does need to keep his job to be useful. And if you bully him into losing it, we’ll likely be sorrier than him.”

  While she made this keen observation, she had once again managed to get herself tangled in the tight muslin bodice she used to flatten her breasts and widen her waist.

  Xavier came to her rescue and helped her pull her anaconda shirt over her head. “When Stone mentioned his likely replacement, I came to the same conclusion.”

  Even though she dreaded his reply, she couldn’t leave her worry alone. “So Stone was against having me on the case?”

  Xavier returned to his own dressing, which was just as well, because the man hadn’t a clue how to set the three-inch collars of her shirt, or tie an octagonal bow.

  “Stone agreed you would be a valuable addition and complimented your intuitive skills, but then expressed a worry for your safety. Since the earl cares not a whit for other people’s safety, the inspector’s words supported your inclusion.”

  “But?”

  “But, I foolishly attempted to ameliorate the safety concern by mentioning Tubs would protect you.”

  She pulled on her jacket and tended to Xavier, who had little patience for dressing himself. “While I object to Tubs’ job being reduced to such a menial task, since he does far more than ‘protect’ me, I cannot imagine why Stone would have an opinion on the matter.”

  Xavier pulled away before she could finesse his tie. “Because professionally, Tubs has outwitted Stone at every turn and he resents it. So he told the earl the man is a mass murderer, and now the First Minister is dead set against providing Tubs immunity for his actions during the case.”

  “Is this case so dangerous we cannot do without him?” The truth was she really wanted to work on a secret government case. She suspected it would be far more exciting than determining if Mrs. Penderheim’s money was in the care of a thief.

  Xavier met her eyes. “This particular case is rife with danger. I have attempted to track the Mesmerist for over a year and I still do not even know his identity.”

  “Are you even certain of his gender?”

  His long finger chucked her beneath the chin. “Not even that.” Then he sobered. “But whichever gender, thirty-seven good men are dead, and yesterday, the First Minister came damn close to being the thirty-eighth.” He paused. “You understand, by telling you this, I could be sent to prison for treason.”

  Her eyes rounded in horror. “Then why did you tell me?”

  “Because there are no more secrets between us,” he replied and opened the door. “And since you’ve wasted the entire day lollygagging about, we had better go visit Mrs. Penderheim before she goes out for the night. Otherwise, tomorrow will be a waste, as well.”

  ***

  When Vic entered Mrs. Penderheim’s parlor, the woman seemed pleased, until Xavier followed in. Before an objection could be raised, possibly demanding he return to the carriage, Vic spoke. “I asked Mr. Thorn to accompany me, since this is my first financial investment case, and thus, in this situation, I am still an apprentice. I hope you do not mind. He has promised not to speak unless absolutely necessary.”

  Xavier had promised no such thing, but fortunately, he did not correct her. Instead, he sat in the high back furthest from the lady in a profile of aloof arrogance, or perhaps an eagle searching the valley beneath for rabbits.