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For once, Wolfe had every reason to be upset about leaving his brownstone in Manhattan, but he was saving up his complaints. If I knew him -- and, as his Man Friday, I sure did -- that meant a lulu of a lecture was coming when there was more time. Right now, we were both busy escaping from an abandoned wool mill before our abductors found someone who could make a decision involving us and a couple of those guns in the packing crates downstairs.
Having broken out the dirty glass from both big panes, I let go and dropped. My arms were sore, grateful to lose the strain, and the old planks of the floors were broad enough not to creak.
I told Wolfe, "Maybe two stories down from the window to the ground outside. Not bad if I can get a head start on the fall. I don't want any roving sentries catching me with a sprained ankle."
Wolfe's glare of fury around the empty storage room was a treat, but he was still taking off his coat. Mine had already been sacrificed to pad and muffle my vandalism. I almost slipped up and felt sorry for him; this particular dark gray suit of his was nearly new and looked natty even if it had required enough cloth for a restaurant marquee.
Then he frowned. "Will our coats and shirts do, or will you want our trousers as well?"
"That's need, not want, and keep the trousers. Not that I don't cradle to my bosom the notion of your fleeing through the woods of Connecticut while wearing nothing but your shorts, but--"
"Archie." Wolfe had paused in removing his gold cuff-links to grimace. "Even now?"
"When abducted and imprisoned by inept gangsters, it is important to maintain one's normal manner for fear of startling the natives into violence. I read that pearl of wisdom in the etiquette column of last Sunday's New York Daily Mirror."
Wolfe shook his head, a twitch to anyone who didn't know him. "Even now." He started working the buttons on his shirt, hand-tailored from yellow silk just like all of them were. "Past events should have warned me. If hospital beds do not alter your customary demeanor, mere mortal peril will not suffice."
He should talk, but I had delayed, distracting him for as long as I could. I started undoing my own cuff-links.
Nero Wolfe is as observant as you would expect from the best private investigator in Manhattan. Hell, you can throw in the entire East Coast if you want, although our block of Thirty-Fifth Street would have provided enough observation to do the job that afternoon, given how many souvenirs my dancing partner had left me with last night. Even though I had kept on my undershirt, he spotted the marks when I turned away to add my shirt to the growing heap.
His massive face was almost still when I turned back to him to collect his contribution. But at this close range I could see the widening of his pupils and the flutter of his eyelids, and then the tiny compression of his lips, before he handed me his shirt and coat without saying a word.
Believe it or not, he wasn't going to ask, and I wasn't surprised by his restraint. We often discuss more than employer and employee should according to both Hoyle and Emily Post, which requires our leaving some words unsaid. The decorations on my skin fell far within the jurisdiction of my private life, and Wolfe knew it. I was the one who chose to clarify.
"Not Lily Rowan."
The particular grunt in response to those words was a beauty.
"She's too subtle and sophisticated. You said so yourself."
"Miss Rowan is also impulsive and enthusiastic, but you are correct. Scratches I might anticipate, and possibly some bruising, but not the visible vestiges of biting. Although none of your recent companion's efforts seems to have broken the skin."
Since he still hadn't made his last sentence a question, I answered him. "Nope. I paid attention during your lunchtime lecture about Louis Pasteur and the germ theory. And I already had a tetanus shot after the Montagu woman scored with that antique dagger."
"Considering what you might as well expect during the next half hour, I am pleased." Wolfe tilted up his head to give our busted window high on the wall a dirty look.
"Uh-huh. How are your knots? Mine are great, but I was a Boy Scout for three weeks."
Picking up my coat and his shirt, he said, "They should suffice. I have been known to tie knots for needs a great deal more imperative than merit badges."
I managed not to unload the next remark I found was waiting on my tongue. The words would not have come out sounding the way they should have.
All the heavy books and orchid wrangling kept his hands strong, good for knots but too good for other uses. When I was back up on Wolfe's shoulders, as I cleaned out the leftover glass and then tied our rope to the metal bar that halved the frame, his hold on my calves was bruising. His grip was justified, given how much shifting around I had to do while I worked. I was still grateful when the time came to squeeze out through the window, even if I did add more damage to what was already embellishing my hide. Wolfe had been making his own marks lower down, and my reaction to those was both predictably zesty and annoying as hell. I took out my temper on the guards.
"Well, the dances were lovely," I told him once I had unbarred the door, which let him know I was on my own before I came back into our storage room. "However, no refreshments."
He lowered the long shard of glass he had wrapped in his undershirt and stepped away from the wall beside the door jamb. "And now we must chance those woods while half-dressed."
"I know. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed." For once, I wasn't being sarcastic.
That might have been that, if not for the previous night's rainstorm and the puny guards I had cold-cocked with a hunk of factory scrap. Fallen leaves were wet underfoot as we made our way back toward the highway and civilization. I was trying to step quietly while we worked along a steep slope but slid instead, losing my footing and starting a trip that promised a lot of excitement on the way down through a scraggly stand of maple saplings rich with poison ivy. Wolfe got me by the shoulder and yanked back hard. Neither of the guards' shirts had fit me, so his hand landed on bare skin, right on top of one of the juiciest bruises. The noise I made as I staggered into him wasn't caused by the surprise.
First things first. Wolfe didn't relax until he was sure I was done with the leaf skating exhibition. Even then he kept a grip. Beneath his big paw, my shoulder throbbed with the pressure of his fingers: warm, painful, and satisfying. For the third time that afternoon, Wolfe would leave a hell of a set of marks on me, overshadowing the ones I had brought back to the brownstone last night. I knew I would be seeing the results in my bathroom mirror for days to come. And I would be looking at them a lot.
I half-turned. Our eyes met. Although I wouldn't bet about what he saw in my gaze, his could have peeled me like a potato, which should have irritated me but didn't.
After some study, Wolfe lifted his brows at me. "I see. Not strictly pain. That, I would have already noticed."
"Maybe. You might be the chief genius in these woods, but it isn't like getting shot or stabbed is ever much fun. Also, you're not one for poking and prodding." Raising an eyebrow right back at him, I added, "Physically." Then I shrugged in his grip, which also ached satisfyingly. "I haven't bothered figuring the details. It's only a garnish, and not one I'd expect to see at your table."
As much as Wolfe likes giving me his opinion about anything and everything, he knew he couldn't go any farther without violating another of the borders we had set up between us. Instead he let loose and murmured, "Confound it. Reflected arousal and reflexive possessiveness, both serendipitously triggered. I'll be more careful in the future."
I wondered which of us was this shiny, knee-jerk guy of whom he spoke, but now it was my turn not to trespass. So, "Swell. You wouldn't want to bite on more than you could swallow," I told him instead.
That wisecrack both earned me a "Shut up!" and might have gotten me fired if he hadn't been afraid of being stuck alone in the howling wilderness of Southern Connecticut.
When I studied myself in the mirror the next morning, the fingerprints on my shoulder were darkening nicely. Without thinking, I reached up to press on the bruises, and felt about what you would expect. After I had caught my breath, I shook my head at my reflection and got dressed to go down to the kitchen for breakfast.
As for Wolfe, he still doesn't put his mitts where they aren't supposed to go. If now he sometimes eyes my neck when he's under his self-imposed restraint, pulling back his upper lip a fraction of an inch as if he would like to get a good, strong grip with his teeth, that's between him and me. No one else needs to know all the reasons why I might close my eyes and shudder when other, casual company takes a bite.