The Bound Heart (17 page)

As they made their way up the narrow steps, a racket burst from one of the apartments and the door flew open. The room was full of transient workers, too many for them to sleep lying flat on the floor. A couple of men pushed past and knocked her off balance.

“Bloody cripple girl, found a few bob for the night. Desperate are you, mate?” The man poked Jamie in the chest.

In a few moves, the man was on his back. In pain.

“Apologize to the lady,” Jamie growled at him.

Olive pressed herself against the far wall her heart pounding,

“Be careful, Jamie!”

“She ain’t no lady,” the man said. Then he screamed.

Jamie growled something and the man screamed again. Her head was light. Horror and pleasure mixed at Jamie’s actions.

“Sorry, miss, my mistake.”

The men left mumbling obscenities.

Jamie motioned her on.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

Jamie looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“Let’s get to your room.” Was all he said.

As they climbed higher, the dank smell of the building increased. People were sleeping in the corners of the landings.

Her embarrassment grew.

They got to her door.

Olive pulled out a key.

She turned. “Goodnight.”

He scowled.

“Open the door, Olive.”

Her brows drew down.

He shook his head. “Don’t begin to fight me Olive; I can knock that door open in seconds.

The look on his face told her he was serious.

“This really isn’t needed. I grew up here, I know how to take care of myself and this isn’t much but I am putting money aside for other things.”

Her embroidery. She needed to have expensive threads and cloths to sell at good stores.

Door open she stepped into the darkness. There was no lighting so she had to head over to the side table and light a candle. The room was fractionally cheaper for lack of light.

She kept the room clean and tidy, but the wear and tear couldn’t be hidden. Water stains ran down the walls, the plaster had fallen off a section of the ceiling. The one concession was the window. It cost her but she needed good light to sew, If, she couldn’t do that at night she did it by the day.

Seeing it through his eyes as he stood there, heat moved up her face. This was her life, what she could afford. A man like him, in his fine house, seeing this he must wonder what he was doing with a woman from Whitechapel.

“Pack your things,” Jamie’s voice was soft and firm.

“This is where I live. How I live. How we all live down here, Jamie. I could do worse.”

He strode into the room. “I find that hard to imagine at the moment.

He found her sachel placed it on the small pallet that was her bed.

“You can’t stay here.”

“There is nowhere else. I’m paid up for the week.”

“Pack. You’re coming back with me till we can find you something better.”

“I will not be able to afford something better. I have plans, I need to save.”

“If you need to save you should have stayed with your sister.”

Olive put her hands on her hips. “Who are you to tell that?”

He ignored her and started to pulled clothes he found into the satchel. “Pack Olive.”

“No! This is my life. I’m happy to have this room. Happy to step out on my own.”

The truth was she didn’t have a choice. Her sisters had started to bring a man home, a man they liked and said she should hook up with. They’d all drunk late one night and there had been a rattle on her door. ‘Olive,’-he’d called-‘your sisters said I could stay the night, said you wouldn’t mind. open up luv.’ It had all gone quite badly from there.

But Jamie wasn’t listening. He was packing her meager possessions.

In under ten minutes, they were both back in the cab. Her heart beating hard as she fought her anger, her excitement, her hope and her embarrassment.

They didn’t say anything on the way home. He just put his hand on her knee to stop her from tapping her brace nervously on the backboard of the seat.

As the cab came to a stop outside his house, he turned to her.

“Try to fit in as best you can. We’ll work out something for you in a few days. Just one thing, Olive. Don’t speak of my private life to anyone, your sister, or Evie, or whoever.”

It seemed that Evie already knew quite a bit about his private life; in fact, he was famous for it, the rope, and his tastes. However, if he wanted her to keep what happened between them quiet, then she would.

“Of course.”

Strange, some of the tension was gone from earlier. He was less stiff somehow.

Jamie grabbed hold of her bag and stepped out then helped her down after she grabbed her purse and a smaller bag off the carriage bench.

Inside the house, he didn’t take her upstairs where they’d been, but down the ground floor corridor and through the large, black glossy door. The large black door that not even Edgar had been asked to come through.

Her hands were tight balls around her bags as she clutched at them.

It was hard to know what this meant. Surely, he could have left her at the boarding house. He would know that was what life had to offer the likes of her. That was what it would be like after he lost interest in her and stepped away.

The Black door open, on the other side was a fabric door hanging in indigo blue.

“You need to remove your shoes.”

“My brace.”

“You can take it with you.”

There was a seat to the side. Olive sat down, and the heat in her face burned her cheeks.

Jamie kneeled down in front of her and started to lift her skirt. She held the fabric down. He looked up and gave a lopsided smile, which did strange things to her belly.

The first day in the workshop…

“I can take it off.” Her voice was breathy.

His lopsided smile turned into a full grin and the soft Jamie was coming back.

“Can I have a look at your brace? Just a quick look, would help me no end Olive…”

She scoffed at him. He was making fun of her gullibility now.

But her hand lifted, and he raised her skirt. Jamie slipped her shoe off her good leg. The brace was not attached to her shoe, but a metal stirrup that went under the shoe and sat against the heel. He unbuckled her brace. The soft touches of his fingers as he worked were so much like the touches of him working the rope on her.

Then the brace came off, and her heart lurched even though she was prepared. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the bench.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small section of rope, and tied it around her leg; immediately, the tension eased again. He did it without hesitation.

He slipped off her other shoe.

“Do you always have a spare piece of rope in your pocket?”

He didn’t answer, just smiled. “I’m an optimist.”

Olive tucked her worn stockinged feet back under her skirt as he turned her shoes over in his hands.

“You wear down one faster than the other. The one on your injured leg also has no platform to even your hips.

“Custom shoes are expensive.”

“Hips are irreplaceable.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

The indigo curtain opened and out came the oriental woman.

“Kom-ban-wa.” The woman’s gaze moved between them and embarrassment pinked Olive’s cheeks again.

The woman would know why she was in the house, what they had done.

“Olive, this is my tenant and housekeeper, Mrs. Okazaki.”

Olive stood and extended her hand. “A pleasure to meet you.”

Instead of taking her hand, Mrs. Okazaki did a small bow that looked like she had a back as straight as a floorboard.

Jamie then started to talk oriental. Mrs. Okazaki shook her head no, and Jamie pointed behind them where the back of the house would be. Mrs. Okazaki was silent.

“You will stay down here with Mrs. Okazaki. She will show you around.”

Jamie turned and left with her shoes in hand.

Olive stood there.

Mrs. Okazaki stood there and looked her over very thoroughly then nodded.

“Come in.” She reached out and took Olive’s things. “It’s late. Bath and bed.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble.”

They moved past the kitchen and some white paper walls, out past the laundry and through the back door where there were outdoor slippers for her to slip into.

The block was long.

At the far end was a wooden structure that didn’t look English. The gardens also looked different; but with very little light, it was hard to tell.

To the left between the back of the house and the little house at the rear of the garden was another structure with light streaming out of it.

Mrs. Okazaki took her there. She slid the wooden doors open and ushered Olive in. The air was damp. A bench sat against the wall. Hooks were fastened to the wall in a line above the bench.

“Take off your cloths,” Mrs. Okazaki said then slid another door open and inside was a large wooden tub. She moved in, lifted a wooded lip off the tub, and placed it behind the bath and the wall.

“I’m an old lady. You wash, then we sleep.”

Olive self-consciously took off her clothes. It meant she had to take the rope off her leg to remove her stocking. Mrs. Okazaki’s sideward glance took in the rope, her leg as it shook before the rope came back on and stilled.

Normally if she was alone, like to wash or sleep, strangely she could be without the brace but with others around her body wasn’t able to still the waves that rushed through her or the tightness of breath. The ribbon and small rope were a key to freedom and as it turned out coming to Jamie’s house a necessity with all this shoe removal.

Olive stood, wrapped a towel around herself, and walked towards the bath.

Mrs. Okazaki looked on, her forehead creased as she limped to the bath then stopped her.

“No, no, Japanese style. Wash first, bath later.”

Then proceeded the most through scrubbing Olive had in her life. Her hair was washed and warm buckets of water with a soft fragrance ran through it.

After she washed herself, Mrs. Okazaki took the soap and did her back. Handed her a scrub brush and instructed her to do her nails, hands, and feet.

When she couldn’t possibly be any cleaner, Mrs. Okazaki said, “In,” pointing to the bath.

It was a little awkward to step into the wooden bath that was as big as three beer barrels lying side to side and one upright high.

The water was scented with the soft fragrance that was used in her hair. Nothing strong, nothing you’d call perfume, but something that made you think of spring flowers floating on the night air.

As she sank down, the water came right up to her chin, and her hands, shoulders, legs, and feet were all comfortably under water.

Olive leaned back and closed her eyes.

Was there ever a time when her body was this relaxed. The constant ache of her hip was soothed and the dull awareness of where Jamie had been softened as well.

The wooden door to the small bathroom closed, and she was left alone to soak.

‘
Rule number two, No Stay-overs
.’

Had he broken a rule for her?

It wasn’t as though she was sleeping with him, but it wasn’t as if she wasn’t either. She was through the black door and would wake up and see him at breakfast. That was pretty close to a stay-over in her book.

Jamie sat on the walled edge of the roof overlooking the back garden. The sounds below of Olive and Okazaki in the bathhouse floated up to him. The murmur of their voices. The splash of water. The shafts of light escaping through the crack of the bathhouse window and the effervescent steam dancing out along with it.

He couldn’t make out how he felt about her being here.

Yet when he’d told her to pack her things at the boarding house, a part of him knew that bringing her back had been his intention all along, a tug on his mind that he consciously refused to look at.

When that brute said what he’d said, when she had accepted it as if that was her lot, no scenario would allow her to stay there another night.

The door to the bathhouse opened and Okazaki walked out then disappeared from sight as she came into the main house below him. If he knew Okazaki, and if his induction into the house was anything to go by, very little of Olive’s clothing would be left for her tomorrow, and what was left would be washed and pressed into the cleanest it had been since it came off the factory floor where it was made.

At the death of Mr. Hiro Kobayashi, his ‘sensei’ a year ago, his mentor, a father regardless of the biology, he’d become a man of some means. Not wealthy by his neighbors standards but he had contracts that would generate substantial income over the next few years and a very solid base of assets with this house.

Before the wealth Kobayashi-sensei had left him, Jamie had built some assets of his own under Sensei’s guidance, private collectors pay a good sum for what he did.

Over the years, he’d created bindings on the most beautiful women of London’s demimonde and theater set. Many were photographed for the sex-shop in the basement, which sold exotic fantasies to men and women with minds and tastes like his. And that was a surprising number. What hot-blooded male didn’t want to see the vision of their imagination immobilized for their pleasure?

“Jamie-sama.”

Jamie turned around; Okazaki held the doorframe and caught her breath.

“I can come down, no need for you to be up here or in the cold.”

“It’s all right.” She said in Japanese.

He moved over and pulled out the chair used when he did extensive pruning on the bonsai that were on the roof. That wasn’t really his interest, but Sensei had loved them. Sensei looked at the metal guiding ties around the miniature trees’ trunks and branches, and saw another world for rope.

Okazaki, sat down. He went back to leaning against the low wall.

“She is not of a good class.” She said in Japanese.

“Neither was I.” he replied also in Japanese.

“She is wounded; she will not be a useful model.”

Okazaki had been Sensei’s muse. She had won his heart; and despite having to step back from the ropes when the demand of the audiences was for a younger model, she had held him as fast to her heart as the tight knots they both loved.

“The rope loves her.”

“Just the rope?”

“Just the rope. I’ll seek out a place she can live that’s safer than she had and that will be the end of it.”

Okazaki rose.

“She is a soft one, not hard and hungry like Madeline. Hope covers her like feathers on a bird.”

“I know.”

Okazaki was right, he’d seen the look in her eyes. Even as they travelled in the world of his pleasures, the hope she placed in him beamed out of her. She was worldly enough to know sex wasn’t a guarantee of his affection; but her heart was pinned, as usual, on her altogether too alluring chest beating out a desire for a happily-ever-after that he was not in a positon to give anyone.

“Be kind.”

“I am.”

Ten minutes later, Okazaki came out the back door of the house and walked to her small wooden house at the back of the block. It was built by Kobayashi-sensei especially for her. She had never embraced the western aesthetic as he had; and this world Sensei had created, a western house and a Japanese secret world at the back of it, in a way said that he hadn’t been able to let go of the beauty of his culture either.

Kobayashi had taken him to Japan twice. The world he ran in was underground. Tattoos and rope were sensei’s craft. He’d been brought over by The Collectors, a layer of men rich enough to have eccentric tastes and to ignore the law. He was one of their tattoo artist for the Painted Sisters. Women tattooed and sold as living art into the global world of The Collectors.

The other thing Kobayashi-sensei was renowned for was his rope-work. That was what Jamie had apprenticed with him as, a rope master, a Rigger. When Sensei had sat next to him that first day in the courtyard of the Split Tart as he waited for his friend, he’d been playing with rope. One knot, tied, untied and then another. Beautiful knots. He’d handed Jamie a small section of rope and showed him a knot to master. That’s how it went each week until the day Sensei took him home.

Now years later Jamie had won his own notoriety and was earning through The Collectors under Sensei’s old rope contract. If it continued, he would be able to give the photo plates that he sold to The Velvet Basement away as he had the bookbinding and he would simply be able to focus on his rope art. But for now, he still needed to make and sell images.

Jamie looked down at the bathhouse.

He never brought anyone into this part of his life, even Madeline and Edgar, the two people he had worked with the longest had only ever seen this world through the back window in the attic workshop. They’d hinted and he’d ignored it.

Bringing Olive back was a big break in his protocol.

But he knew what it was… he wanted to use her for Paris.

He’d hoped her relationship with the rope would be good. Instead he’d found the potential for an epic love affair between her and the rope, build stamina for some of the holds and inevitable discomfort as they got more complex.

With her lack of experience there would be some limitations. She needed to get stronger and more flexible for the longer suspension. Learn how rope work flowed, learn how to read him and the rope.

Jamie stood from the small stone wall at the edge of the roof and picked up the hose, then set about watering the bonsai.

The water added a dampness to the air as it rained out in big droplets over the stunted plants. The roof tops around him a quiet silhouette.

Tomorrow or the day after, he would set things in motion to find a better place for Olive, help her find a decent job that would give her a better chance to find a good life. Unless they started work together for Paris.