Chapter 8 #2
“It’s a very straightforward question, Mr.—what is it?
—Skulltop?” Harry put her fists on her waist, her arms akimbo, her brow furrowed.
“Compound or simple? And if compound, how often is it compounded? Was the eight hundred and seventy pounds borrowed all at once? Or is eight hundred and seventy pounds even the principal? And if it is, has it been exactly three years to the day since the debt was contracted? And are you representing a bank, a private moneylender, a merchant, a house of gaming?”
Sculthorpe was clearly not used to being the one questioned. He tucked his snuffbox into a waistcoat pocket.
“I will call again, Lord Drake,” he sneered. “At a time that is more convenient. And when you have fewer distractions.”
He walked between the two brutes and out the door. After grunting threateningly, the men followed him. Thomas went quickly to the door and shut it.
Harry doffed the banyan and went to the table with the breakfast tray and drained her cup of coffee, still standing.
“I apologize,” Thomas began, “for the insulting manner—”
Harry waved him off. “So Fermat said he had a proof. He just didn’t have room to write it down. But the proof was never found amongst his papers after he died.”
Thomas was lost. This girl was mad. Mad. But she had scared off Sculthorpe. She had her uses. He crossed to his chair and sat, chuckling to himself softly.
Harry drove her fist into her palm. “But it’s there, Lord Drake, I know it is. Some elegant piece of logic just waiting for me to find it.”
“So you want to find this—what was it? This proof?”
“Yes, I want to beat them all, and you can help me!” Harry put one hand on the arm of his chair and one hand on his thigh and leaned down, close to his face.
Yes, her eyes were very large. And rimmed with very dark, luxurious lashes. And she had a strangely generous mouth, given the meagerness of her body.
“Well,” Thomas laughed nervously, “I’ve always thought I might be good at treasure-hunting, but I don’t think you need to get married to me for that—"
“No!” Harry threw herself back into the chair across from him.
“You misunderstand me, my lord. I am not looking for a piece of paper. I am looking for the proof here.” She pointed to her temple.
“If only I could sit and think and think and sit. It’s a problem that has baffled every mathematician for almost two hundred years. But I know I can solve it.”
Thomas wondered what it would be like to be so sure of something. And then he realized he did know what it was like. I feel that degree of certainty about my love for Sommerleigh. I will not, I cannot let it go.
Harry went on, “I’ll give you my money, you give me peace so I can do the work I’m meant to do.
I just need a few months. It’s a fair exchange, but there are conditions.
First, I won’t have children. I don’t have time.
The doctors have told me I would probably die if I did bear children, but I’m not so worried about that because I think I am going to die fairly soon anyway—”
Thomas began to protest.
“Hear me out, Lord Drake. I don’t think bodies are of much importance, so it’s acceptable to me if I leave this one behind soon, but I must, must, must leave something of worth behind with it.”
“And this proof would be that?”
“Yes! You understand! And you see, ultimately, you would have my money and no wife, and you could do what you want. You could be free too!” Harry’s voice was rising in pitch.
“Does your stepmother know you are here and this is your proposal?”
“Mama Katie?”
Of course. Mama Katie was Catherine.
“Mama Katie thinks I am going to marry some bookish duke and settle down and get fat and have babies.” Harry laughed a trifle hysterically. “What do you say, Lord Drake?”
Thomas said slowly, “Well, it certainly is very interesting—”
“Oh, no.” Suddenly, Harry seemed vanquished. She held her head in her hands. “No, no, it is not interesting. It is one hundred and forty-five thousand pounds.”
If not for the traffic outside the window, the drop of a pin might have been audible.
“I think we’re going to need more coffee,” Thomas said.
“Let’s say we marry, Miss Lovelock.”
“Yes?”
“You would come to the country? To Sommerleigh?”
“Yes. There are too many distractions in London. I mean I’m not distracted, but people like my stepmother and my sister would want to distract me and saying no is exhausting.”
“So you would come and live with me. On my estate. At Sommerleigh.”
“Yes. Is that all right?”
“Well, yes, I mean, we would be husband and wife. That would be quite . . . regular.”
“You could come to town as much as you wanted. And see the friends you usually see here.”
“Ah.”
“I would need a room and a place for all my books and papers. And coffee. You have coffee in the country, don’t you?”
“Yes, it has managed to filter out from the capital to the provinces.” Thomas chuckled a little at his pun.
“You should know I have no humor,” Harry said stonily.
“I see.”
“But I understand your joke. Filter. Coffee. Yes, it’s amusing.”
Thomas smiled. Harry did not. She hesitated and then—
“The night we met, Lord Drake, or the morning . . .”
“Yes, Miss Lovelock?”
“When I left and closed the door, you started laughing. Why was that? Was it a delayed pain reaction to my contusing your nose with my skull? Or had I said something funny? People do laugh frequently at things I say, and I almost never know why.”
Thomas thought for a moment. Why had he laughed? Oh, yes, it was . . . how was he going to explain this?
“I don’t know how much you know about men, Miss Lovelock.”
Harry raised her eyebrows and shrugged and poured another cup of coffee.
“We have an organ in our laps that we use in the act of pleasure.”
Thomas checked Harry’s reaction. She seemed interested. She did not seem shocked.
“You may have seen it, perhaps on ancient statues—”
“Yes, yes, I have seen it on statues in the museums,” Harry said. “It’s for urination, too, isn’t it? It’s how the tinkers can urinate standing up against a wall in the alley. Yes. I know what you are speaking of. The phallus, right? From the Greek.”
“Yes, well, the phallus can change size. Frequently, it enlarges in preparation for . . . fornication.”
Harry had a frown on her face.
“So,” Thomas went on, “the enlarging tumor you wanted me to get examined by a surgeon—”
“—was your phallus?”
“Yes.”
“You were planning to fornicate with me?”
Thomas hastened to explain. “No, it’s almost always hard in the morning, and in that case it is just a reaction, not arousal. For most men, I think. Well, young men. Any friction or pressure might lead to a response.”
“It must be blood flow that makes it swell,” Harry said thoughtfully. “Like a goose egg. Does it hurt?”
“Hurt? No, not unless something is done to it . . . to hurt it. The skin is elastic and accommodates the swelling.”
Silence.
Harry cleared her throat. “I realize now I have not made my terms perfectly clear. You should know that when I said no children, I meant no fucking.”
There was a whistling sound, and Thomas realized it had come from him.
He had gasped. He had never heard that word pass the lips of a lady.
He himself did not use the word, thinking it unspeakably crude.
And unarousing. It was the word Hugh Drake had used in Manchester when he had told Thomas what he wanted him to do with the whores.
“I mean no fucking for me,” Harry explained. “You can do anything you want with your friends. Paid or otherwise.”
Thomas put his coffee cup down. “Miss Lovelock, before we go any further in our discussion, can we agree we will not use that word but perhaps instead fornication or coupling or coitus or, even better, congress?”
Harry stared at him. “The rake dictates the vocabulary of the virgin.”
Thomas pressed his lips together tightly. “I am, like most people, a hypocrite.”
“Fine.” Harry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. As long as we are clear on the point.”
“Yes, we are.”
“And no kissing, in particular. Mouths,” she made a grimace, “so wet and disgusting. How can you breathe when you are kissing?”
One hundred and forty-five thousand pounds.
The solution to all of Sommerleigh’s financial woes.
And it was most fortuitous this gawky innocent wanted no part of a marriage bed and had explicitly said he could continue whoring.
All she wanted from him was a room and peace. He would be a fool not to agree.
He cleared his throat. “Fine, no kissing, no congress, nothing between us.”
“It’s easy for you to agree to these terms, of course, because I am singularly unattractive.
” Here Thomas attempted to object, but Harry spoke over him.
“No, this is not a matter of opinion, it is empiric. And I want you to know I know I am ugly, I am skinny, I am sallow, I am stooped, I am sickly. There is no need for polite contradiction. I have no false ideas of beauty. I have mirrors, and I have ears.”
Thomas felt quite sorry for her at that moment.
Harry continued, “Therefore, it is useful I also have one hundred and forty-five thousand pounds. I have been thinking this would be quite a good agreement between us since we both will get something we want.”
“Yes.”
“With very little trouble to ourselves.”
“Yes.”
“Since we will both just continue to do what we have always done.”
Thomas was silent, but Harry went on to explain, “I will be a mathematician, and you will be a whoremaster.”
With that comparison hanging in the air, Thomas felt a great deal less sympathy for Harry in that moment.
Still, when she thrust out her hand, meaning to make a contract with him, he took her thin hand in his own and shook it.