This Wicked Gift

by Courtney Milan

  “Not at present? Very well.”

  He was surprised—and perhaps a touch disappointed—at the grace with which she accepted his pronouncement. Silence enfolded them. They walked in darkness. William counted to thirty slowly, one number for every two steps, and then she spoke again.

  “How about now, then?”

  He was staring straight ahead as they walked, the better to ignore her. But there wasn’t much to see on an early, foggy morning. A bakery had just come to life, the light from its windows diffusing gold through the mist. As they passed, the smell of the first baking of cinnamon-and-spice bread wafted out.

  But the scent of those warm ovens was soon left behind, and there was nothing else he could focus on in the swirling fog. He felt a muscle twitch in his jaw.

  “Very well,” Lavinia said. “You don’t need to say anything.”

  That muscle twitched, harder.

  “I shall supply both halves of the conversation. I’m rather good at that, you know.”

  He had to admit, her proclamation came as no great surprise.

  “Besides,” she said slyly, “you’re very handsome when you’re taciturn.”

  Oh, he was not going to feel pleased. He was not going to look toward her. But damn it, he was delighted. And his head twisted toward her—until he caught himself and converted the motion into a shake of his head.

  “That gesture,” Lavinia said, “must be William Q. White for ‘Dear Lord, she’s given me a rabid compliment! Run away before it bites me!’”

  He ruthlessly suppressed a traitorous grin.

  “I shall imagine,” she said, “that what you really meant to say was, ‘Thank you, Lavinia.’”

  William lifted his chin. He set his jaw and looked ahead.

  “And that impassive, stony look,” Lavinia continued, “is William Q. White for ‘I must not smile, or she’ll figure out precisely what I am not saying.’ Really, William, is this silence the best you have to offer me on the way home? You’ve said all there is to say, and you have not one question to put to me?”

  They were almost to her home now. William stopped walking and turned to her. He looked into her eyes—a dire mistake, as she smiled at him, and then his blood refused to do anything so sensible as flow demurely through his veins. It thundered instead, insistent and demanding. He wanted to learn the curve of her jaw, every lash on her lids. He wanted to run his hand down her cheek until he’d committed the feel of her skin to memory.

  “I do have one question, Miss Spencer.”

  He should not have spoken. Her eyes lit with such hope. If he’d remained silent, perhaps she’d have realized he had nothing to give her—nothing but his eighteen pounds a year. And even that was subject to the arbitrary and rather capricious whims of Lord Blakely.

  But instead, her lips curled upward in anticipation. “Ask. Oh, do ask.”

  He ought not. He should not dare. But he did.

  “Why do you call me William Q. White?”

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened in discomfited surprise. Clearly, she’d not been imagining anything along those lines. “Oh,” she said on an inrush of breath. “I know it’s too familiar. You’ve never actually given me permission. I ought to call you Mr. White. But I thought, perhaps, after—you know—the formality seemed somehow wrong, after we—after we—after we—” She paused, took a deep breath as if for courage, and then said the words aloud. “After we shared a bed.”

  Good God. She thought he was objecting to the use of his Christian name? “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I know I sound mad. Completely mad. I can’t help but be a little mad when you’re looking down at me. You make me feel foolish, right to the bottom of my toes.”

  William ruthlessly suppressed the thrill that ran through him at her words.

  “It is not the familiarity I object to,” he said slowly. “I am rather more curious as to why you persist in placing a Q in the middle.”

  “Because I don’t know what the Q stands for. Quincy?”

  He must have looked as baffled as he felt, because she forged bravely onward.

  “Quackenbush? Quintus? Come, you must tell me.”

  Finally he managed to put words to his befuddlement. “What Q?”

  “Your middle initial. What other Q would possibly come between William and White?”

  He blinked at her in continued bewilderment. “But I don’t have a middle initial.”

  “Yes, you do. When you first applied for a subscription, I asked your name, and you told me, William Q. White. I may be a little giddy, and perhaps I might lose my head when you look at me, but I could not have manufactured such a thing out of whole cloth.”

  A memory asserted itself. He’d saved two years to make the initial fee for the subscription. When he’d walked into Spencer’s library on High Holborn, he’d thought of nothing but books and self-improvement. And then he’d seen her, lush and lovely and briskly competent. He had suddenly known—he would be reading a great deal more than he had imagined. He’d been quite stupid that day.

  Well. He’d never really stopped.

  “Ah. I had forgotten. That Q.” He smiled, faintly, and looked away.

  “No, no. You cannot keep silent. You must tell me about the Q. I am all ears.”

  He glanced back at her. “All ears? No. You’re a good proportion mouth.” The grin he gave her slid so easily onto his face. “When I first applied for a subscription you asked my name. And I said, ‘William White.’”

  “No, you—”

  He held up a hand. “Yes, I did. And you didn’t even look up at me. You sat there, nib to paper, and you said, ‘William White. Is that all?’” He folded his arms and gave her a firm nod.

  Now it was her turn to frown in perplexity, as if his explanation were somehow insufficient.

  “So you made up a middle initial rather than simply saying yes.” Lavinia frowned. “The only thing I gather is that I am not mad. You are.”

  “Absolutely.” His voice was low. “Have you any idea what a declaration of war those words are? You’re a lovely woman. You can’t just look at a man and ask, ‘Is that all?’ Any man worth his salt can give only one answer. ‘Is that all?’ ‘No, damn it. There’s more. There’s much more.’”

  She laughed with delight. “Mr. William Q. White,” she said, wagging a finger, “you sly devil. I’ve been wanting to know the more ever since.”

  They were almost to her home, and William could not help but wish he could tease that laughter out of her every day. He held up his hands as if he could ward off their shared happiness.

  “But, Lavinia,” he said, “there will be no more. I can never make it up to you, this debt that lies between us. You have already given me more than I can repay.”

  The smile on her face faded into nothingness. “Is that how you see matters between us, then? As some sort of grim commerce, where the transactions are ones of personal worth and desert?”

  “I took your virginity,” he said baldly. “I took it, believing you had no choice—”

  “Oh!” She reared back and kicked him in the leg.

  He barely felt it—she’d not been aiming to hurt him—but she hopped briefly on one foot as if her own toes stung with the blow.

  “No choice? Even if the promissory note had been real and enforceable, I had a choice. I could have pawned my mother’s wedding ring for the funds. I could have let James take his chances with the magistrate and debtor’s prison. I could have married another man—I’ve had offers, you know, from well-to-do gentlemen who wouldn’t blink at paying ten pounds in pin money. Do not think me such a poor creature as to be confined so easily without choice. I chose you, and I would choose you again and again and again.”

  It was sheer torture to hear those words, to look into those blazing eyes and not take her in his arms.

  “And, as we are speaking of debts,” she said grimly, “what of my debt to you?”

  “What debt?

  “Ten poun
ds. You paid ten pounds to save me from having to choose between those unpalatable options. And do not tell me you did it to force me into your bed—because you and I both know that if I had said no, you would never have enforced the note. I am deeply in your debt.”

  “You’re talking nonsense. It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? Bread with no butter? Tea, persuaded to give up its flavor seven or eight times? Don’t tell me ten pounds means nothing to you, William. I know you better than that. Tell me—with all the uses to which you could have put that windfall, did you even hesitate to dedicate it to my service?”

  “It certainly doesn’t signify,” he continued. “Mere money, in comparison with what you’ve given me.”

  “So it’s nonsense, what I owe you. But what you owe me is a tremendous burden, one that can never be repaid? Love is not about accounting. It’s not lines on a ledger. You cannot store up credit and redeem yourself at some later date, not with gifts or deeds or any number of coins, no matter how carefully you bestow them. You repay love with love, William.”

  She watched him expectantly. All he had to do was move forward into the space she claimed. His hands would find hers; her lips would naturally lift to his. And she would be his. His partner—but in this game of better or worse, and sickness or health, all he could offer her was poorer and poorer and yet poorer again.

  If she’d built an unstable house around the two of them out of romantic notions, it was best to kick it to twigs quickly.

  “It’s nonsense,” he said. “It’s nonsense because I don’t love you.” He forced himself to look in her eyes, to take in the hurt spread across her face. Her pain, her rejection of him, would be his just reward. But better to hurt her once than to drag her into joint misery with him.

  But she did not flinch away. Her eyes did not cloud with tears. Instead, she shook her head, very slowly. A shiver ran down William’s spine. She stretched up on tiptoes and set her hands on his forearms. Her warm mouth pursed a finger’s breadth from his. It would take her only an instant to place those soft lips against his. And if she did—if she kissed him now—she’d recognize his words for the obvious lies they were.

  “William,” she said softly. Her breath was the sweetest cinnamon against his lips. “Do you think me such a goose as to believe your idiotic assertions, after all this?”

  “Oh?” The word was all he could manage—one syllable, trying to breathe a world of distance between them.

  “Oh,” she said with great finality. “You are hopelessly in love with me.”

  He’d tried to run. He’d tried to keep himself from that realization. But she pronounced sentence upon him as a matter of fact, as if she were reading the price of cotton from the morning paper. And she was right. He could not admit it, not aloud. Instead, he leaned down and rested his forehead against hers in tacit acknowledgment. Yes. I am hopelessly in love with you.

  It didn’t change anything.

  She stepped back and let go of his arms. He felt her departure like a palpable blow to his gut.

  “As it turns out,” she said quietly, “I haven’t any use for hopelessness.”

  He couldn’t have her. Still, her rejection felt as if she’d kicked him not on the leg, but rather higher.

  “Lavinia, I dare not—”

  “Dare,” she said, her voice shaking. “That’s a command, William. Dare. Hope. If you won’t accept my gift, I won’t accept yours. And you really, really, do not want to know what I shall have to do to come up with ten pounds.”

  And with that, she turned and walked into her family’s circulating library.

  EVEN THOUGH IT FELT as if three days had passed, it was still early morning when Lavinia came quietly up the stairs. She came as she’d left, her quilted half boots in her hand. But when she reached the top landing, she discovered she was not alone. James sat, awake and dressed, at the kitchen table. He watched her come into the room, watched as she hung her cloak on a peg and set her footgear on the floor. He didn’t ask where she’d been. He did not accuse her of anything. He didn’t need to; she accused herself.

  She felt adrift. Her gaze skittered across the room and fell on the books where she’d kept the family accounts. How many times had she stared at those figures? How many times had she wanted to make them right, hoped that if they were correct, that everything would come out?

  She’d imagined herself saving enough pennies so she could pick out a scarf for James—something soft and warm. She’d wanted to swaddle him up and keep him safe. But she’d held him so tightly he’d never learned to do for himself.

  Instead of giving him safety, she’d handed him powerlessness. Instead of gifting him with stability, she’d robbed him of the capacity to survive in rough seas. She’d smothered him with competent, loving efficiency.

  Lavinia swallowed a lump in her throat and walked across the room, away from James. She’d left the account books open on the desk last night. Careful entries on the page looked up at her. Hadn’t she just said it?

  Love is not lines on a ledger. You repay love with love.

  She shut the books gently and placed the smaller atop the larger. Even now, it bothered her that the two ledgers were of slightly different sizes, and so could not be aligned properly. She gathered them in her arms, uneven though the stack was, and walked across the room to where James sat.

  He didn’t say anything. She sat down next to him and placed the heavy volumes on the table.

  Still he didn’t open his mouth.

  Finally, Lavinia let go of the doubts bedeviling her heart and pushed the books across the table toward him. “Here,” she said abruptly.

  It turned out, her brother was not the only one who spoke a foreign tongue. A stranger off the street might have thought she was giving her brother so much bound paper. But she knew without even asking that James had understood precisely what she’d just said.

  I was wrong. You were right. I’m sorry. I trust you.

  She’d once heard a Scotsman boast that up north, they had a hundred words for rain. Mizzle clung to coats in wet, foggy mists; rain dribbled down. On dismal, dreich days water fell in plowtery showers. When liquid falling from the sky was all the weather you had, you manufactured a lot of words to capture its nuance.

  Maybe there was no language of Younger Brother or Older Sister. There was only a language of families, a tongue woven from a lifetime of shared experiences. Its vocabulary consisted of gestures and curt sentences, incomprehensible to all outsiders. Inside, it wasn’t difficult to translate at all.

  I love you.

  James didn’t say a word in response. Instead, he put his arm around her and pulled her close. She ruffled his hair. A hundred awkward and unwieldy words, all coming down to the same thing after all: I love you.

  WILLIAM HAD THOUGHT he’d made up his mind to refuse Mr. Sherrod’s solicitor. But Lavinia had dared him to hope. If she was willing to forgive a black stain on his honor, ought he not be prepared to swallow a little oiliness in exchange?

  He’d met the man at first light, early on Christmas Eve. They’d had an appointment in a dingy upstairs office, just off Fleet Street. The solicitor had dressed for their morning appointment with sartorial stupidity. He wore a ghastly waistcoat of red-striped purple—or was it purple-striped red?—paired with a jacket and trousers in a cheap, shiny blue fabric. An ostentatious gold-headed cane leaned against his chair.

  “Right,” the solicitor said, shuffling a pile of papers on his desk. His tone was all brisk business. “I assume we’ve come to an understanding, then. You’ll file for relief in Chancery, contesting Mr. Sherrod’s will on the grounds of insanity. I will protest, saying that the foibles of his mind were precisely what one might expect in a man of his age.”

  “And then I’ll get the money?” Two weeks ago, five thousand pounds might have meant surcease from drudgery, an escape from his cold world. It would have meant hot fires and fresh meat and large, comfortable rooms. Today, he could think of only one thing he wanted. Fiv
e thousand pounds meant Lavinia. It meant he could ask her to marry him, selfish idiot that he was. He could lift his eyes to her face. He could offer her everything she deserved—riches and wealth, without any hint of privation. She would have everything of the best.

  No. Not everything. The man that came with it would not be up to her standards.

  “Well,” the solicitor hedged, “you might not get the money immediately. You might have to wait until after Chancery has sorted matters out, after it has conducted a hearing or…or two on the matter. But surely then, you’ll have his fortune.”

  She would want him to grasp at any chance for her. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she want a man who was able to hope?

  William swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. “What would I have to tell the courts?”

  “Simple. Tell them Mr. Sherrod was mad. Manufacture stories, explaining that he saw things that were not present, that he spoke to pixies. Find folk who would attest to such tales. It would be a simple matter, if you paid—ahem, I mean, if you found enough of them.”

  “You expect me to lie, then.”

  “Goodness. I would never suborn perjury. I want you to tell the truth.” This supercilious speech was somewhat weakened by a wink. “The truth, and nothing but the truth. A hint of embroidery, though, would not be amiss. Think of a court case like a woman’s frock—you hide the parts of the figure that are not so flattering, and frame the bosom so that everyone can look at the enticing bits.” The solicitor made a gesture in the direction of his own chest. “Just enough embellishment to convince the court of your claim, hmm?”

  No matter what this greasy lawyer told him, William was fairly certain he had nothing but a tiny chance at success. He might not find people to testify. The court might not believe them. Sherrod’s widow would undoubtedly claim otherwise. Still, a tiny chance was a chance nonetheless.

  Was this hope that he felt, this grim determination to see the task through? Was it hope that wrapped around his throat, choking him like a noose? Was that morass, sinking like a stone in his stomach as he gritted his teeth and prepared to do business with this oily man, what he needed to accept?