by Rose Lerner
He gave a surprised laugh. “That’s fair.” They watched each other for a minute or two, and then he said, “I did mean it, though.”
Lydia’s intimate muscles contracted instinctively. “Have you…have you done that often?”
He grinned. “Not recently, but yes. I can’t wait to see if you smell as flowery down there as you do everywhere else.”
She bit her lip. “Probably not.”
“Good.” He made the word a suggestion all its own. “Not that I don’t love how flowery you smell. It’s a little strange, but I like strange. Lavender for your clothes, roses for your lips, orange blossom for your skin, jasmine for your hair. I learned those smells stealing perfume bottles, as a boy.”
She’d learned those smells in the garden and the hothouse, and in the housekeeper’s room making sachets for wardrobes and drawers. She tried to imagine not seeing flowers every day. “We have a rose garden. Some of them should be blooming by the time your six months are up.” She wished immediately she hadn’t mentioned that he was leaving, even if it was true, and foolish to want for a moment to forget it. But she was glad she wouldn’t have to let him go until summertime, when it would be warm and sunny and she would miss her father a little less. Jamie would be home in the summer.
“Of course you do. Do you have a greenhouse with orange trees too?”
“Yes.”
His eyes took on a faraway look. “Won’t you miss all that, when you move to the Dower House?”
“I imagine most people miss their home when they leave it. But as for oranges and lemons, Jamie will let our cook take what she needs.”
He smiled. “Our cook. I’ve never had a cook before.”
She smiled back, thinking how much fun it would be to play the role of besotted bride, eager to make the perfect home for her new husband. “You must tell me all your favorite foods.”
He hesitated. “Duck,” he said finally. “Roast chicken, pheasant…er. Fowls generally, as you see. Anything with cooked fruit or raisins. Potatoes and cabbage. Tipsy cake. I don’t like rosemary.”
“You don’t?”
“It’s a very English herb. I never had it growing up. I thought it sounded lovely in the song, but when I had it—well, it was a nasty surprise. I don’t like too much cinnamon, either, which I did have growing up.”
“Do you like mutton?”
“It’s all right.”
She smiled. “Father loved it. I put it on the menu three times a week, and I hate the stuff. I even hate the way it smells.”
“Did you ever tell him that?” He sounded like he already knew the answer, though. She shook her head, and he smiled at her, a crooked smile that said I know you and We’re the same, and for a moment she imagined what it would be like to leave everything, to walk off with him in the clothes on her back and go across England lying and stealing.
She would hate it if she actually did it, and probably he wouldn’t have her, anyway. But it was lovely to think about, like giving Lady Tassell a real piece of her mind. Why had she never felt this way about a man of her own class? Did she only like him because he was dangerous? Or was it as he said, and she knew so little about him that she was making up a story that would inevitably please her?
Was there something common in her blood? She’d assumed other ladies hid the same urges she did, that they were all playing the game, but maybe…maybe there was something wrong with her, and when she was old she’d be one of those dreadful dowagers who slavered over the grooms and the village blacksmith.
“Do you only desire me because I’m rich?” she asked, and knew herself for a coward. “No, I’m sorry. Don’t answer that, please.”
He sucked part of his lower lip into his mouth, considering his answer. “It’s hard, isn’t it? The human heart is like a big mess of embroidery silks, and the more you pull, the more they tangle. The thing is, the threads have only got one end, if that. You can’t sort them all out into colors. You just have to pick the ones you want and hold on to them as best you can. I’d have desired you if you were poor. But I wouldn’t have acted on it, because I wouldn’t have had anything to gain.” He watched her, to see if she’d be angry or hurt.
She didn’t know how she felt. “Have you—have you made up to a lot of rich women before?”
“Some.”
Which could mean anything. He looked rueful, probably because he knew it would appeal to her. Well, he didn’t owe her the truth. Did she even want it? She wanted her money, and she wanted a little fun. She had no right to ask for more, when she had nothing more to give him. She’d told him that one little thing about Jamie, for everything he’d told her.
“There is a thrill to it,” he said. “Like holding antique porcelain in someone else’s house, that I could never afford to own. But I’m sorry if I made you feel like a China dish. I’ll try not to.”
It thrilled her too, that he was forbidden. So long as she didn’t make him feel like a slavered-over groom, perhaps that was all right—and if it was something wrong in her, something twisted, then it was wrong in him too. “Do you know the proverb, ‘Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant’?”
He nodded. “But isn’t that said by a woman who knoweth nothing to a man who wanteth understanding?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But it always—it always felt true to me.”
“That’s because it is.”
If he wanted a China-dish thrill, she could give him one. She spent the rest of the ride telling him about the time her grandfather was treating the voters and ran out of port, so he opened up a cask of his best claret—and the voters went over to the Tassells in retribution for his being so cheeseparing as to fob them off with sour port.
He was still laughing when the carriage pulled up in front of the house. Lydia looked at her watch. Still an hour and a half to dinner. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, ignoring a qualm at sending him to wait alone in a room full of expensive knickknacks, some of which could fit into his pocket, and went upstairs.
Dot Wrenn, her maid, was waiting for her, quiet and watchful.
Lydia wanted to ask Wrenn to make her look pretty and rich. But in the end she was too self-conscious. “I’m sorry, Wrenn. I would have told you last night that I was getting married, only I hadn’t told my aunt yet, and I should have told you this morning, only I wanted to consult with Mr. Cahill about something first.”
It was a lie. She had put it off because she had known this would be a tricky conversation. Wrenn was lazy in a very particular way that meant she prized efficiency above all else. She was very, very good at her job, because she liked things to be done properly and because it allowed her the greatest possible time and indulgence for herself. Lydia wanted her for a housekeeper, but the additional responsibility would be a stumbling block.
Wrenn smiled, still watchful. “I wish you joy, madam.”
“Thank you. I’m afraid our income will not support a lady’s maid in my new household.” She let that sink in while Wrenn unbuttoned her walking dress and helped her out of it—long enough for Wrenn to think about all the work involved in finding a new position, but not long enough for it to seem deliberate. “I would be honored if you’d consent to be my housekeeper. I know the Dower House will be a much smaller establishment, with less scope for your talents. If you’d rather look for a new position as a lady’s maid, of course I’ll give you an excellent character. It has meant so much to me to be able to rely on you all these years.”
“Thank you, madam.” Wrenn helped her into her evening gown. Lydia couldn’t get a good view of her face in the mirror. “It’s very good of you to ask me.”
“Naturally you must think it over. But I do need to know soon. The housekeeper will engage the rest of the staff, and it really wouldn’t be fair to give Mrs. Jenner less than a fortnight’s notice of whom she is to lose, particularly in the kitche
n.”
Wrenn’s hands stilled in the act of pulling pins out of Lydia’s hair. “You’d want me to choose the other servants, madam?”
This was the great lure Lydia had been counting on. “I know everyone who works at Wheatcroft. I wouldn’t object to any of them, and you know better than I do who’d be suited to such a situation. We’ll need a cook, of course, and four or five others.”
Wrenn took her time combing out the morning’s rolls and twists. “Perhaps we might do something special with your hair, madam? For your gentleman?” She pulled out the velvet box containing Lydia’s gold combs.
Wrenn wanted to butter her up, then. Was that a good sign? “Please do. No new curls, though. I don’t want to keep him waiting too long.”
Wrenn slept in Lydia’s dressing room, and she had been sneaking out nearly every night for the last six months. Lydia did not know, but was morally certain, that she had made a match of it with her bosom friend Abigail Gower, the second undercook. The prospect of presiding over a small, hand-picked household with Gower might be tempting enough to offset the added work, but if Lydia hinted too broadly, it would make Wrenn nervous. So she waited, and watched her hair rise slowly but surely into a masterpiece. Mr. Cahill would like it.
“I think Jeanie and Jenny would like a smaller establishment,” Wrenn said at last.
Lydia grinned at her. “You don’t think having housemaids named Jeanie and Jenny will be too confusing?”
“We’re clever women,” Wrenn said dryly, her amused eyes meeting Lydia’s in the mirror. “We can rise to the challenge.”
They discussed grooms and gardeners for a minute or two, and then Wrenn said, as if it was an afterthought, “For the kitchen, what do you think of Abby Gower? You’ve complimented her pastry, I believe, madam.”
Lydia pretended to consider. “She’s only the second undercook. Would Polly Turvill think it a slight not to be asked first?”
“Turvill wouldn’t work anywhere smaller than here. If she has five minutes to stand still, she’s unhappy.” Her tone said this was a mystery to her.
“In that case, anyone who can turn a pastry like that is welcome in my establishment. Does all this mean you’ll come?”
Wrenn hesitated.
“I’ll raise your salary ten pounds per annum.”
Wrenn chewed her lower lip, then grinned at her. “Fifteen.”
“Done. If Cook can spare her, perhaps you and Abby might go to the Dower House a week early, to put it all to rights.” She turned her head from side to side, examining the careless tumble of combs and pearls and thick shining loops and pretending not to notice Wrenn’s weighing glance.
Perhaps she should just say, I know, and I’m happy for you. She didn’t know how to do that, though. She knew tactful silence, and how to disguise generosity as no trouble at all. “It looks splendid, Wrenn, thank you. Will you still condescend to help with my hair when you’re my housekeeper?”
“Of course, madam. It’s a pleasure to dress you. I hope I don’t seem ungrateful. I couldn’t ask for a better mistress.”
Their eyes met in the mirror, and Lydia thought that whatever of politic falsehood there was in this moment, there was some truth too. She worked hard to be a good mistress. Why shouldn’t she accept a deserved compliment? She thanked Wrenn, and after a few emotion-choked moments, added a casual afterthought of her own. “Fetch my cloak, would you, Wrenn? Mr. Cahill wants to see the greenhouse, and I think we have time before dinner.”
Left to himself, Ash would have sat by the fire until dinner, but he had no objection to a tour of the greenhouse instead. Mentally saying farewell to the shilling he would have to pay the inn’s boy to clean his flimsy evening pumps—he supposed gentlemen wore them a-purpose to show off that they could afford to be driven about—he followed Miss Reeve and her clinking pattens out the door and down a gravel path.
The greenhouse was a long, tall, narrow building of the same stone as the house, with tall, arched sash-windows and even taller arched double doors that nearly brushed the roof. Miss Reeve passed them by, unlocking a small door in the sidewall. “Quickly. We mustn’t let in the cold air.” She shut the door behind them and slipped her pattens off.
In the dim light, the smell hit Ash first: earth and green things. But not green like the English forest—this was an exotic greenness, rich and delicate and foreign. The lantern’s light glinted strangely off the glossy orange trees that marched up and down the stone floor in wooden tubs, flashes of green and gold where fruit of various ripeness hung together.
Around the edges of the room, small-leaved shrubs and delicate vines grew out of pots and up the whitewashed wall, and there—Ash stared. A short line of shiny trees were in flower. Flowering in December!
He went to look more closely. The flowers were white, round, many-petaled, and peculiarly regular in shape. They looked phosphorescent in the darkness. He put his nose to one—a very faint, slightly sharp smell, like honeysuckle without the honey.
“Those are our camellias,” said Miss Reeve with proprietary pride. Really, there was nothing money couldn’t buy. Ash turned to thank her, to apologize for having wanted to stay by the fire, and realized she hadn’t brought him here to show him the greenhouse at all. She watched him with banked hunger, biding her time.
For a brief moment he resisted, wanting to explore, and then he thought about kissing her in the warm, fragrant darkness, surrounded by orange trees, and it was the most luxurious thought he’d ever had. It was exactly how he’d imagined a nobleman’s life, as a lust-addled adolescent.
Then he remembered Rafe. The dead moths in his ribcage fluttered and twitched. He had meant this life for Rafe.
Or had he planned to take it all along? He couldn’t forget how this town and this house had given him itchy fingers. This giddy, glorious emotion properly belonged to Rafe, and Ash had stolen it. Thief that he was, he hadn’t been able to help himself.
Where was Rafe? How much money did he have left? Was he warm? Ash knew his brother was a grown man, who could find work and feed himself. But he’d promised himself Rafe would never want for anything, had sworn it over and over. He’d wanted Rafe to have this plenty, this excess of everything—and not on a six-month loan, but forever.
Her beautiful forehead creased. “Are you well?”
Ash knew better than to tell a woman that he’d planned to give her to his brother as a gift. He had her now, and he might as well enjoy her. He let go of the tightness in his face and chest. For a moment he couldn’t understand why that didn’t feel like enough, and then he remembered to inhale. “I love your hair,” he said. “It looks like a braided loaf.” He came closer to her and ran a finger along a strand of pearls that danced through the smooth loops, wondering if they were real and how they would feel between his teeth. He was tempted to bury his nose and mouth in her hair and find out. The jasmine scent must come from this greenhouse.
“Thank you,” she said. “I think. May I kiss you?”
There it was again, the simple pleasure of being asked for permission. “Yes.” With the word, everything in him rushed out to meet her.
She wrapped her gloved fingers firmly around the back of his neck, lifted up on her toes, and gave him an open-mouthed, undemanding kiss that he felt everywhere, as if she’d got hold of all those silken thread-ends poking out of his heart and given them a gentle tug. She herded him firmly until his back hit the wall.
The wall was hot—not like a stovetop, but like a flat rock on a late summer morning, or pan-warmed sheets. “Mmm,” he moaned, surprised, and she smiled smugly against his mouth.
He kissed her smile, feeling drugged and lazy, until she stepped away. “May I?”
Might she what? He blinked and saw that her ungloved hand was extended towards the front of his trousers in clear inquiry. He gave her a dazzled smile, unable to believe his luck. “I’d take it as a kindness.
”
Her mouth curled up. He watched her fingers on his buttons, and then she pushed aside his flannel drawers and pulled out his cock. He felt a moment’s self-consciousness. Male equipment never looked more foolish than when peering out of evening dress. Besides, when not called upon to act, his own had always rather resembled him, short and squat and a little rumpled. But she curled her fingers round it and gave a firm, experimental tug, and his head knocked against the wall. “Unh.”
“It’s growing,” she said, startled.
He laughed. “It does that.”
“I thought they just…stiffened.”
“It depends on the man. Mine grows.”
Frowning at it, she tugged again. He made a strangled sound. She met his eyes and smiled, as if pleasantly reminded that the strange thing in her hand was attached to him. Running her thumb in a circle over the head, she gave another few tugs.
Unable to believe how good it felt, he watched and reveled in the simple luxury of this moment, of not having to do anything to get what he wanted.
“Is this right?” she asked, dubious.
“When I do it myself, I go a bit faster and harder. But I’m in no hurry.”
Her mouth curved. “We do need to be back in time for dinner.” And she squeezed tighter and sped up.
She liked making him feel good, he thought. She was used to taking care of people. Ash usually said to women like that, Tonight, let me take care of you. It was extremely effective.
But this was so nice, and it would tie her to him anyway with the warm glow of successful generosity. So he let heat seep into his bones and made small, contented noises, and it was all so dreamlike that he almost expected to wake up before he spent.
His pleasure peaked all at once. Miss Reeve jumped when seed spurted onto her hand, and he realized he should have warned her. But all he could say was, “Please.” The word staggered drunk and laughing off his tongue. This felt unlikely, mythological, a sensation too intense to ever duplicate, like biting into a hot rich pie when you hadn’t eaten in days. He trembled and gasped and wanted it never, ever to be over.