A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

“Dirt,” he said, looking down at the mess. “Get out of bed and take off your clothes.”

“Before coffee?” I laughed.

“We’re going for a swim,” he informed me.

“Is there a heated pool on this rock?”

“Don’t be absurd—we’re on an island surrounded by water. We’re going for a dip in the bay.”

“Pardon me, but I’ve recently checked my almanac, and discovered it’s Christmas Day. Maybe you’re going for a dip in the bay—but I’m not about to die of overexposure!”

“You’ll never feel more alive,” he assured me. “I swim in the north Atlantic every Christmas morning. Even with all that fog of yours outside, this seems like a tropical paradise to me.”

He yanked the covers away and pulled me out by the feet, kicking and protesting. Tossing me over his shoulder, he sprinted out the door and downstairs, and jogged across the lawn to the pier where our boat was tied. He leaped off the end with me in his arms and we hit the water.

When the water enveloped me, I thought my entire system would crash. The shock of cold knocked the breath from me, filled my blood with ice, and drew my stomach into a knot. Tor was holding me in the lapping waves, to make sure I didn’t sink.

“Breathe deeply—in and out very slowly,” he counseled me. “Let your body relax—that’s it. It seems a violent way to enter the water, but it’s soon over and far more gentle. How do you feel now?”

“Sadist,” I gasped, flopping over onto my belly in the waves. “Your mind is sick—this is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.” I felt I’d come down with lockjaw, my teeth were clenched so tightly.

“You’re still too tense,” he said. “Loosen up, and you’ll love it.”

“I hope you die of pneumonia,” I croaked.

“If you’d swim a bit, you’d warm up faster,” he said.

“Thanks for the advice. May your—” But he put his hand on my head and dunked me, so the cold seemed to penetrate even my brain. I came up sputtering, but at once realized that I felt suffused with warmth.

“Gee, what happened?” I asked. “I feel warm and glowing, all of a sudden.”

“Hypothermia,” he told me. “The first stage of shock—just before you freeze to death.”

“Very funny.”

“Truly—we mustn’t stay long, and must swim a bit, or it might be so. This water’s less than forty degrees.”

We swam a lap around the little island. Then freezing all over—our wet nightclothes stuck to our bodies—we clambered up the rocky shore and fled across the lawn to the house.

“Come in here,” said Tor, grabbing my arm as we went down the hall to the room. He dragged me through a door, and I then understood what all the racket had been about earlier.

It was another bedroom—larger than mine—with a seating area and a vast bed built into the window bay beyond. On the back wall, facing the windows, was a huge fireplace with a roaring fire already crackling away, a giant log at center. Tor must have been up at the break of dawn and used superhuman effort to drag that thing up the stairs.

He stripped off his dripping pajamas and threw them in a soggy pile on the floor. Then, picking me up in my tattered wet gown, he carried me to the bath, where a hot tub of bubbles was waiting, and lowered me in. My skin tingled and burned. Tor climbed in after me.

The tub was a deep enameled affair, with lion’s claws for feet. The water went up to my nose when I sank down.

“Did you enjoy that?” he asked with a smile.

“I loved it,” I admitted. I held my nose and dunked to rinse the rubble from my hair. When I surfaced, I said, “But now I’m starving.”

“I’ll make you some food—this place is fully stocked, as I arranged it to be when I phoned from New York. The owners offered to cook all our meals as part of the plan. But I was hoping to have some time alone with you to talk.”

“I’m still recovering from last night’s little chat,” I told him with a grin.

“I’m serious,” he assured me. “I was unprepared for the adventure you sprang on me the moment I walked in your door—and for what followed between us, too—though I confess that’s crossed my mind more than once in the last twelve years. I came here, in truth, to ask for your help. Did Lelia tell you what she’d done?”

“She said you and Georgian were angry with her. She didn’t say why,” I replied.

“Then I’d better explain. She took the bonds to Europe—but she didn’t establish the lines of credit I wanted—she took money out in the form of loans instead.”

“It’s nearly the same,” I pointed out.

“Except for the interest,” he agreed. “But we’re not yet ready to invest the money, and thanks to Lelia we have to start making payments now. That’s not all—she got lousy terms as well. With collateral worth two hundred cents on the dollar, we should have secured great rates. But Lelia signed contracts with prepayment penalties, too!”

It looked pretty bad, I had to admit. With this kind of deal, he couldn’t give the money back and say it was all a mistake—nor could he repay the loans early, even if he wound up making a pile on his investments. If he tried to do either, he’d have hefty fines to pay.

“What I don’t understand,” he was saying as he lathered his chest with soap, “is why she did it. She wouldn’t give me an answer. She kept saying ‘That will show them, that will show them’—as if she were trying to prove a point.”

“Oh,” I said, blowing bubbles from my hand and sinking further down in the tub.

“Oh?” said Tor. “Please fill me in—I assure you, nothing would surprise me at this point.”

“It’s the Rothschilds, I think,” I told him. “Remember how angry she got when you spoke of them that night? Not the Rothschilds themselves—but German bankers—all bankers,