Gagged & Bound Read Online Free

discuss your options. Would that help?’
    ‘It would be wonderful ,’ Beatrice said, winding the messy handkerchief round and round between her fingers. ‘But I
couldn’t afford you. Antony only saw me today as a favour. I haven’t any money for legal bills.’
    ‘So you said. But don’t worry. We can put this down to friendship, too.’
    Everyone in chambers did a bit of pro bono work here and there, and this wasn’t really even work: just a few hours of reading and a phone call. Trish owed Antony a lot more than that. Without his support, she might still have been pigging away on the dreariest of commercial cases, earning peanuts and fighting to convince her clerk that she could hold her own in court when it mattered.
    ‘While I’m at it,’ she said, ‘I’ll find out who’s really good at defamation, so that if the case does go ahead, I can recommend someone who knows what they’re doing and won’t cost you more than they should. How would that be?’
    ‘It would be incredibly kind. I don’t understand why you’re taking so much trouble for me.’
    ‘I’m intrigued by the whole story,’ Trish said with the reassuring smile she used to offer her youngest clients in the days when she’d practised family law. ‘And I think you’ve had a rotten deal.’
    Beatrice smiled back. She was looking a little more like the distinguished writer and pundit she was. But there were still black streaks around her eyes.
    ‘Shall I show you the washroom before I go and tell the great man it’s safe to come back?’ Trish said.
     
    She found him drinking her latte and watching Nessa, who was getting on with her work as though she was quite alone. Good for her, Trish thought, remembering how easily the strongest could be reduced to dancing, flirting acolytes in his presence. She said his name and watched his expression change to a grin that showed he knew more or less what she was thinking.
    ‘Have you sorted Beatrice?’ he said.
    ‘Only for the moment. If she’s in this much of a state now, I don’t know how she’ll cope with the next few months. Whatever her publishers decide to do, the tension’s going to get a lot higher. D’you think she’ll hack it?’
    ‘God knows. She’s had a lot of practice at dealing with disaster: hellish family background; husband with MS; slightly hopeless son; dry rot in the roof timbers; unmarried daughter with a baby; huge debts. That sort of thing. And she’s the only real earner in the whole outfit. This could be just one more thing she manages to bear, or the last straw. It all depends.’
    ‘If she’s that badly off, no one’s going to expect her to pay vast damages. Why on earth is this man Tick going after her at all?’
    ‘If I could see into the minds of people who go to law, I’d be …’
    ‘Even richer than you already are?’
    He laughed. ‘How did you leave things with her?’
    ‘I said I’d read the book.’ Trish waved it at him. ‘Then be available tomorrow if she wants to talk about whatever her publishers say in this meeting. Will that be enough to keep you … what was it you said? Loving me for ever?’
    His brooding expression broke into another vivid smile. ‘If you can get her off my back and my conscience, it will be. I’m completely swamped with work at the moment. If I’d realised how much reassurance she was going to need, I’d never have offered to see her in the first place. Weeping women have never been my thing. But I know you’ll cope, Trish. You always do.’
    ‘I wish I had a tape recorder running to replay that the next time you savage me for letting you down.’
    ‘Would I?’ Self-conscious amusement lightened his expression. He was probably remembering some of the insults he’d thrown at her in past moments of great stress. ‘Oh, well, maybe I would. By the way, how were the Caymans? I’ve hardly seen you since you got back.’
    ‘Great. I thought I might take David and George there next winter. The beaches are