Private Research: An Erotic Novella (10 page)

“Yes and no.” I looked at him in surprise. I hadn’t really expected an answer. Sebastian usually avoided anything that delved beneath the surface. Beneath
his
surface; he’d been more than happy to listen to me fall apart earlier in the week. “I have a healthy respect for history. For my family’s history, which no one else in the family seems to have.”

Apparently, the estate had long since been whittled down to the bare bones to pay for debts incurred over the centuries. The current wealth came from Sebastian’s late grandmother, who had been the heiress to a whisky fortune.

“Preservation is essential,” he continued, “and England has its own unique approach to melding its history with the present day.”

A history I was fascinated by, or I wouldn’t have spent my time studying nineteenth-century English literature. Yet, the older I got, the more perspective I had, and maybe even the more I struggled financially, I found myself slightly resentful of the idea of an inherited monarchy in modern times that owned so much of a country’s land.

As if he could read my thoughts, Sebastian continued. “At the same time . . . I think aristocracy as a measure of self-worth is ridiculous. Wealth begets wealth. It is much easier to stay wealthy and privileged than it is to get there from nothing.”

Nothing being where I came from. Nonetheless, I’d never wanted
wealth.
Sure, I’d daydreamed about castles and manors when I was a child, but I just needed enough—enough to not have to worry, to be comfortable. To finish my dissertation and achieve the very academic dream of graduating and finding a university position.

“Wealth also apparently begets depravity. At least in your family,” I teased. “So let’s get down to business.

We found the household estates in the library, where most of the bound family documents were kept. Big leather tomes. Loose items, such as correspondence, were potentially in the attic. Which was not particularly good news as heat rose, and the ravages of time were more likely to be visited upon items stored in a non-air-conditioned space at the top of the house.

“I very much doubt the annual membership was paid out to ‘Harridan House,’ ” I said dryly, one of the books heavy in my lap. “From all the research you’ve done so far, I’d guess whoever collected the funds wanted it to seem as innocuous as possible, so we’re looking for holding companies, trusts, names of solicitors.”

“Which could be hundreds, if not thousands, of entries for each year.”

“Yep. But if we compare that long list from the year your grandfather last frequented the club to the year after, we should find where they no longer overlap. Which should be a much smaller list.”

I handed him the volume for 1942 and 1943, being the one resting on my thighs. Then I retrieved a notebook and pen from my backpack and gave it to him.

“And this would be why I’ve enlisted your services,” he said, taking the items obediently.

I pulled my laptop out and opened it, starting a new document for my list.

I slanted a glance over at him. “I think you just wouldn’t get the same perks and the all-inclusive service if you used a professional researcher.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m fairly persuasive.”

“Ew.”

He laughed. “Contrary to what you believe, I don’t sleep around with every attractive woman I meet.”

I looked at him doubtfully. “I really don’t know how you remained celibate this year. I’ve never known anyone with a sex drive like yours.”

Of course, as far as these next months went, I liked his sex drive. I enjoyed waking up to his mouth between my legs and the way he was ready for rounds two and three the same night. Just thinking about it turned me on, but I ignored the growing heaviness of lust and focused on the task at hand.

We sat in the library, each in a huge, wingback, hunter green chair, for what seemed like hours.

Luckily, the steward of the estate had been extremely detail-oriented. For the most part, it was easy to dismiss the great proportion of business and bills as normal household expenses. Payment for a membership to another gentleman’s club buoyed my spirits that most likely Harridan House was encoded somewhere in here. Or rather, in Sebastian’s volume.

At five, a woman dressed in a black-and-white maid’s uniform popped her head in and asked if we’d like to join Lady Stanton for tea. Sebastian gave our apologies, and instead, the woman, Sara, returned with a heavy tray of tea, scones, and cookies, or rather, biscuits. Except thinking of the cookies as biscuits made me want real biscuits, fluffy buttermilk starch swathed in butter and jam. I moved the books off my lap and settled for a scone with clotted cream and raspberry jam.

“This, I could live with,” I said after the first heavenly bite. “As long as I also had access to your gym.”

Sebastian laughed. “The cook is one thing I am jealous about, actually. Trevor’s been with the family for at least as long as I’ve been alive. I always had a growth spurt after summer.”

I snacked over the next two hours, unable to stop myself from reaching for the tray again and again, even as I made progress through the accounts. By dinnertime, I wasn’t hungry at all, but when we sat down with Sebastian’s aunt and uncle at that same long dining table, the John Dory cooked in butter enticed me anyway. It was as if, after four months of barely subsisting on the cheapest food available, I’d been presented with a feast.

Like Sebastian, his uncle was tall, a trait I assumed ran in the family. Unlike his wife, he didn’t spend more than a minute inquiring about our afternoon activities, and despite his alleged lack of interest in the history of the estate, he certainly sounded invested in its future. He was passionate about green initiatives and active in promoting local developments in energy efficiency and sustainability.

“Worth investing in,” he said pointedly to Sebastian.

“I don’t work at the energy trading desk,” Sebastian replied noncommittally.

Of course, that segued into a conversation about investments and what Sebastian did actually do, which generally had to do with creating proprietary models for determining prices and managing risk.

It was funny to think of his uncle, who downed glass after glass of wine with his meal until his face was almost alarmingly pink, as a viscount. Until that day, the aristocracy, people who held titles, seemed so much more the stuff of history and literature. Yet, here I was sitting at a table with Lord and Lady Stanton, the whole situation somewhat surreal.

When the meal was over, Sebastian suggested a walk. His uncle waved us on as if he was much happier to not actually have to entertain anyone for a moment more.

It was chilly outside, much cooler than London. Despite my sweater, I shivered as I followed Sebastian outside into a night sky that was the royal blue of just past sunset. We strolled along a path on which solar garden lights illuminated our way.

To a wall of hedge that was draped with twinkle lights.

“They have a maze.” It was like a cliché of what an Anglophile such as myself would have wanted in a dream home.

“Indeed,” Sebastian said with a hint of humor. He took my hand, and there was something so tender in the way he held me that I clung to him as I followed. “Most of the acreage has long since been sold off, but the gardens and some of the woodland remain. I’ll show you tomorrow before we leave.”

Despite the near dark, he seemed to know his way, making each turn decisively. With his warm hand holding mine and the twinkle lights and scent of evergreen fragrant in the air, it was an utterly romantic moment. One that could lull me into believing I was there under different circumstances, in a relationship or maybe even in love, and that the future held promise.

The hedges opened into a wider space that enclosed a fountain and a bench. We sat, and I shivered again when the cold stone cut through my jeans. Sebastian noticed and pulled me close to him. I glanced up and melted under the look in his eyes. Almost—

I looked away.

“Your aunt and uncle seem nice,” I said, staring at the fountain, a very neoclassical sculpture of a woman draped in diaphanous clothes. I tried to find identifying features that would reveal if she were a nymph or a goddess or some other mythological entity, but time had worn away at the cheeks, hands, and feet.

He laughed. “
Nice
isn’t exactly the word I’d use for them.
Entitled,
perhaps.
Self-absorbed.
”

“Damning words.”

“Truthful words.”

“And you’re not?” I challenged. Although, as much as
entitled
seemed somewhat accurate for Sebastian,
self-absorbed
did not.

“I am,” he admitted with a shrug.

“So are you ‘not nice’ either?” I pushed further, not certain why I was needling him, but sitting here, in the fresh air, under the ridiculously romantic night sky, I wanted more from him. I wanted what he hinted at when he’d clasped my hand within his or when he looked at me as he had only a moment ago. Maybe I even wanted the charming, self-effacing grad student I’d crushed on. “I still remember when you told me how fast you wanted to make your millions.”

He laughed. “But at least I want to
make
the millions and not inherit them.”

I didn’t know exactly how much he made now, but I did know that he worked long hours, and in the evenings he often spent his “free” time working on algorithms and reading about neurology, psychology, and artificial intelligence, casting a wide, interdisciplinary net for his pet projects. His obsessions. He was driven. There was something admirable about that pursuit.

And yet . . .

“In finance . . . aren’t positions like yours, companies like the one you work for, a big reason for the lingering recession and financial instability in Europe and the US? Banks getting bailed out again and again simply because they are ‘too big to fail’ and then ruining things for the rest of us?” I was pushing him, at the edge of my limited understanding of the early-twenty-first-century financial crisis, of the impact of quantitative analysis on Wall Street and on the rest of us. Hardworking people like my father, whose retirement funds had suffered a drastic setback through no fault of his own.

“I’m not going to argue the morality of it all, whether our actions cause instability or stability in the market,” Sebastian said softly. “But I enjoy the mystery and the challenge. I like finding solutions to mathematical questions, developing new ways to model behavior. However, one of the biggest problems is that people make the same mistake over and over again. They forget to take into account freak situations, extreme moves. They forget the power of human fear. But when we learn from the past . . .”

He didn’t need to finish. I knew the old adage:
Those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it.

“And people aren’t making those same mistakes now?”

“I’m not,” Sebastian said decisively. But he said nothing about the others. The great swath of investment bankers and hedge-fund managers. Of all the people like him who played with risk, all in the pursuit of money.

I shivered. He pulled me into his lap, wrapped me up in his arms, where I rested my head against his chest and listened to the constant trickle of water from the fountain. To the muted beating of his heart.

“No,” he said after a long while. “I’m not nice either.”

I
DIDN’T SPEND
the night in the pink guest room. Instead, I spent it wrapped in Sebastian’s arms in the big four-poster bed in which he’d spent so many summers since childhood. But naked and entwined, we weren’t children.

I woke up before he did and lay still, listening to his deep, even breathing and the sounds of a strange house rousing on a Sunday morning. I had no idea what time it was, but I was eager to get to work, to peek into the attic and take a first survey of all the family correspondence. Since Seb had work in the morning, and we had to drive the several hours back to London, we only had a few hours to make progress.

“Wake up,” I whispered, lifting my hand to stroke his cheek, feeling the roughness of the stubble there. I leaned forward and pressed a kiss where my hand had been.

He shifted, his eyelashes fluttering slightly.

“Time to wake up,” I repeated, trailing my fingers down his neck. His hand caught mine, stilling its progress, and his eyes were open, or somewhat cracked open, as he squinted at me. Then he pulled my hand lower, under the covers, his lips curved in a smile. I shook my head at him as my fingers wrapped around his morning hard-on. “Uh-uh,” I said, even as I stroked him. “We don’t have time for this.” I released him and rolled away, slipping from the bed before he could grab me.

He made some sort of grunt, then I heard the flop of his arms as they fell back against the pillows above his head. I ignored him, gathered my shirt and jeans from the night before, and crossed through the restroom that connected my room to his. My backpack was in the pink room, and I’d need to go there to change into fresh clothing.

I was washing my face when he joined me in the restroom, dressed but sleepy-eyed. He stood behind me and pressed his hips against mine. He was still hard and desire flooded through me. He cupped my breasts through my shirt. To steady myself, I lowered my hands and rested them on the countertop, even as water dripped from my face down into the sink. But when the water trickled down my neck and chest, making my shirt damp, I reached for the towel, slapping his hands away.

He released me with a sigh and reached for his toothbrush.

I was happy with the progress we’d made the day before. When we arrived back in London, I would take the lists of unaccounted-for vendors and expenses and compare them with each other in the hopes that I’d find Harridan House listed under some alias. While there was more we most likely could look through in the library, now that I knew what sort of information was available there, I wanted to start cataloging the papers in the attic before we headed back to London. That way I’d know if it made sense either to take anything back with us or to return the following weekend for more. If the ledger strategy I’d suggested didn’t work, then it would make sense to look through the older records.