Page 60 of The Time for Love
As she’d thought, it was a legal instrument of some kind, specifying something about Carmichael Steelworks. Beyond that, the legalese obscured its purpose. “What is this?” She looked up at the man.
He frowned and shrugged. “Don’t know. And I don’t care.”
She regarded him steadily and arched her brows. “Then why are we here?”
He shot her a don’t-be-stupid look. “Because your signature on that paper is what the gaffer wants, ain’t it?”
“Your gaffer?” That normally meant a superior.
“The man what hired me and m’boys.” He nodded at the document. “He wants you to sign, so you’ll sign the blessed thing, hand it to me, then you two and us can go our separate ways.”
She considered stating that she wouldn’t sign, but that might not buy her—and more importantly, Martin—sufficient time for him to recover, and there was another tack she could pursue that was more likely to drag things out.
She heaved a sigh, rose from the stool, and moved to sit in the chair on her side of the table. She laid the document on the scarred wooden surface and pretended to read it through.
After several minutes of flicking pages back and forth, she frowned and shook her head. Then she glanced up at the waiting man. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a lady. I never sign any legal papers without first having my solicitor read them and explain to me what they mean—what will happen if I sign.” She pushed the document to the middle of the table. “No sane lady would simply sign a document without understanding what it says. I certainly wouldn’t. I can’t make head or tail of this, so unless you can…?”
The man looked stumped. He met her gaze and shook his head.
She hid a smile and continued with her earnest explanation, “Then you can’t possibly expect me to sign it.” Inspired, she added, “Indeed, no one would believe it if I did, not without first consulting someone who could explain it to me. In such circumstances, I could claim I’d been forced to sign under duress, which would make the document, signed or not, not worth the paper it’s written on.”
Her captor’s expression grew thoroughly confused.
Good.
Eventually, after a full minute of apparently painful cogitation resulting in an increasingly black scowl, he shifted his gaze to Martin, still lying immobile on the bed. “Well, we don’t happen to have any fancy solicitor skulking about the place but”—he tipped his head Martin’s way—“Sleeping Beauty there will wake up soon, and he looks the sort to understand documents like that well enough. You can get him to explain it to you.”
Sophy looked at Martin. He still appeared to be unconscious, but was that a gleam of a caramel eye beneath the thick fringe of his lashes?
Her heart leapt, and she quickly turned to their captor, drawing his gaze back to her. She waved at the bed. “Obviously, we’ll have to wait for him to recover enough to read anything.”
And whether he could read or not couldn’t be judged by anyone else.
She expected the man to argue—to say that they could pretend that Martin had read and explained the document and she should sign it immediately—but to her surprise, the man’s scowl evaporated, and he nodded. “You can have an hour or two.” He glanced at the open doorway. “I have somewhere I need to go, people I need to see. But”—he looked at her, and his features hardened into a pugnacious mask—“when I get back, I’ll expect you to sign on the dotted line.”
She arched her brows. “And if I won’t?” At that point, there was no reason not to ask.
The pugnacious expression transformed into a nasty smile. “Then we’ll just keep you here until you do. No food, no water, no help for the gent.” His gaze shifted to Martin. “Who knows? He might even suffer another accident. Or two or three.” The man looked at her, and his eyes narrowed. “Or perhaps there’ll be another accident at the steelworks.”
Sophy’s thoughts stilled. She studied the man’s knowing smirk. “You’re the one responsible for the accidents at the steelworks.” A statement, not a question.
He grinned—actually grinned. “Easiest money I’ve ever made. All I had to do was send in m’boys to fiddle with things. They’ve all spent time on the floor at one or other works, so they know how to cause a nice amount of havoc.” Satisfaction glowed in his expression. “Worked, too, didn’t it?”
She refused to be deflected. “You had a key to the works. Where, I wonder, did you get that?”
“From the gaffer what hired us, o’course.” He nodded at the document. “Now, just be a good girl and sign that, and with luck, you’ll be back home before anyone knows you’ve been taken. No need to have your reputation besmirched, is there? I’m told that sort of thing matters to ladies like you, or so the gaffer said.”
Sophy stared at him while her mind raced, but she couldn’t think of anything more to ask. She reached for the document, drew it toward her, then picked it up and flapped it. “This is pages long. We’ll need time to go through it”—she glanced at Martin—“once he wakes up and can think.”
Their captor snorted. “Like I said, you can have an hour or so. Once I get back after talking with the rest of my men, you’d better be ready to sign.”
She made no reply, just sat and watched as the man turned and walked out. The door swung shut, and a second later, the sound of the bar rattling into place reached her.
She strained her ears and heard the rumble of male voices, too low for her to make out what was said.
Then she looked at Martin and gazed into his very-much-open eyes.
Her heart soared, but he held a warning finger to his lips. Then, moving slowly, he sat up.
