Page 10 of Seductive Reprise
Thatset Hartley off. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth formed a hard line. Just as Yusef had intended.
“Come now, Hartley. Surely you have ambitions beyond beating yourself senseless against the political tides?”
If he did, even Yusef could not puzzle out what they might be. The man seemingly had no interests beyond government. Hartley wandered over to the wall of paintings, each one nolarger than a sheet of paper. He set his glass down and crossed his arms, studying them.
“Lovely collection, this.”
Yusef followed, biding his time even as he itched for the news Hartley must have arrived with. Still, he waited.
“They appear to all be done by the same hand, are they not?” Hartley was obviously going to make him work for it, a fancy that Yusef would continue to oblige. Up to a point.
Yusef suppressed a sigh. “Of course they are.”
Hartley turned and studied him as he thought. Yusef stared back, his face empty. Surely the man was angling for a more sizable cheque, a contribution that would all but go up in flames as he pushed forth his radical, Liberal party agenda.
“I must admit, I’m not quite sure what to make of all this,” Hartley said as he swung an arm to the wall before them. “Of you… expressing a personal interest in, well,” he rubbed his chin, “anything.”
Yusef lowered himself into a studded back leather armchair, annoyed. He took another swig of his drink, but said nothing.
Hartley turned back to the artwork, still holding his chin, one finger tapping along his jaw. “Or is this a bizarre stratagem of some sort? If it is, I can hardly guess what exactly that would be. A business matter? Launching a gallery, possibly? Something political? Does our Miss Verdier have some scurrilous personal connections in high places?”
Irritation constricted Yusef’s throat as he considered how to impart upon Hartley that he would do well to not speculate such things. Outwardly, Yusef remained still, not even arching an eyebrow. Inside, however, his gut instinctively clenched just hearing her name in such a sentence. Controlling his temper, he made a show of adjusting a cufflink. They were a very finely crafted pair of serpentine forms, each twisted into a figure eightwith a diamond set in one loop and an emerald in the other. A gift from his father. Disdain spread through him at the thought.
He decided to poke Hartley just a little.
“How is your cousin? Mrs. Rickard?”
Hartley frowned and slowly crossed his arms, then moved to sit in the matching armchair across from Yusef. “She is well, thank you,” he replied cagily.
“Is she?” Yusef looked back up, his eyes boring into Hartley’s. “I hear congratulations to her and Mr. Rickard are soon to be in order.”
Hartley’s brows knit in confusion, and he leaned forward in his chair. “Who told—how did you know? We’ve not told anyone outside the family.” A moment later, though, he sat back again, easing some of the tension apparent in his body. “Ah well, I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s what you do, after all, isn’t it? Ferret out information? How did you find out, anyway?”
Yusef raised his glass. “You know, I can’t recall. Perhaps your mother spoke of it.” He breathed in the pleasant smokiness of the scotch before taking a sip. He did not relish forcing Hartley into a state of unease, but he would not allow Rose’s reputation to be dragged through the mud. That familiar pang stabbed at his heart.
Hartley, for his part, seemed to have moved on, a look of wry amusement now on his face.
“Now, speaking of my mother…” He purposely paused, fiddling with his glass on the table next to him. Yusef noticed he’d barely touched the liquor, despite it being finer than anything the man kept for himself in his mean household. “I do believe she’s engaged your artist.”
Yusef raised his jaw ever so slightly, ready to take the hit squarely on his chin, whatever the sum. He could afford it—if not from his own plentiful coffers, then from the sizable amount the estate his father had gifted him brought in annually. Thenotion of funding the Liberal wing of government with what was tantamount to his father’s own purse was a very satisfying one indeed.
“You asked me to inform you of the sitting appointments,” Hartley reached inside his jacket’s breast pocket to produce a folded slip of paper, “which I have here.” He held it between his middle and forefingers, so tantalizingly close.
“How kind of you,” Yusef drawled. Christ, he wanted to lean forward and snatch it from him. But he would never. So he waited for the backbencher to name his price.
“I’ve mentioned the Smoke Regulation Act before, haven’t I?”
“How could I forget?” Yusef remarked dryly. The bulk of their last meeting was spent with Mr. Hartley expounding on the subject at length, even though Yusef had specifically been there to discuss the temperance movement.
“Well, I could do with some allies from the other chamber.”
“Meaning?” Yusef said, a little sharpish.
“Your father, I believe, would be—”
“No.”
Hartley lifted his eyebrows, surprised at the immediacy of the refusal. “Come now,” he said, with a bit of a chuckle. “Your family can’t be worse than mine.”
