No Proper Lady

by Isabel Cooper

  In the polished silver of her knife, she saw her own eyes in what should’ve been a stranger’s face. But change was gradual. She saw nothing alien looking back at her, nothing unfamiliar, not the likely traitor she’d have seen a month earlier. Not that it mattered: this was her world now. There was no point in worrying about who she’d been before.

  “You seem very quiet, Miss MacArthur,” Rosemary said in the sudden silence that happened sometimes in conversation. “I do hope we’re not boring you.”

  “No, not at all,” she said, and the voice came reflexively now. “I was just thinking about…human nature, I guess.”

  Rosemary laughed, but the sound wasn’t an unfriendly one. “Truly? How Papa would like you! Have you figured it out, then?”

  “I’ve only confused myself,” Joan said, and sipped her tea.

  Chapter 17

  Simon had planned on departing London in the late morning, after taking care of a few genuine business affairs, and arriving at Englefield by supper time. His business took longer than he’d thought, however, and then, walking past a row of shops on his way home, he thought of Eleanor and Joan.

  When he did depart, it was after two. He brought with him The Archipelago on Fire for himself, a set of pink-and-blue enameled combs for Ellie, and King Solomon’s Mines for Joan, the last after much frowning deliberation in the bookseller’s. It was a dashed tricky thing to buy presents for women you hadn’t grown up with—for respectable, unrelated women, anyhow.

  Not that Joan would know or care, and not that he hadn’t already supplied her with half a wardrobe full of dresses. But that was different, and he would know. For all that he’d spent his youth racketing around with bohemians and socialists, for all that the lady herself thought nothing of stripping off before a strange man, something in Simon quailed at the idea of approaching her as he might one of the demimonde.

  Well, of course, he told himself, she’s bound to find out about that sort of thing later, if Ellie hasn’t already made her aware. And then she’d question my motives, and it would all be quite awkward. Sensible enough, really.

  Besides, she is practically a stranger. No man of sense would give anything elaborate to a woman he knew so little.

  And she’d probably laugh, anyhow. Such things are dreadfully impractical.

  It was all very logical when he thought about it. Yet perhaps Joan wouldn’t laugh if he brought her something more luxurious. She might be amazed, as she had been when she first saw the flowers.

  He had become used to arousal when he thought of Joan. This other, more affectionate impulse was new. And the way one led into the other was decidedly uncomfortable. Breathless now, Simon closed his eyes. That didn’t help—he could see Joan all the more vividly in his mind now, flushed and eager—and he wasn’t sure that he really wanted it to. If the heat rushing through his body was unsettling, it was also intoxicating, and frustration itself had its own strange appeal.

  But infatuation, he reminded himself, could not be helpful here. There was far too much at stake. Lust was a distraction, though perhaps an inevitable one. Any serious attachment could only cloud his mind further.

  Simon made himself open his eyes and look out the window. When I get back, I will see her for what she really is: human, imperfect, no more compelling than any other woman in the world. I’ll note those flaws that might ruin our plan, and I’ll carry on with removing them.

  She’s only a woman like any other.

  ***

  Simon arrived past ten at night. The rain had become a downpour by that time, and he was glad to see what few lights remained in Englefield’s windows. All were on the lower floors. Here in the country, only the servants would be awake at such an hour.

  Simon hurried inside, handing damp cloak and wrapped parcels off to the appropriate people. He kept The Wisdom of Raguiel in his own arm, though. It would not be for the general library. In part, that was why he sent Peggy back to the servants’ quarters and took the candle himself.

  In part, but not entirely. There was an appeal to walking the dark halls, a sense that he was reclaiming Englefield that he’d never before felt. Perhaps it was that he had just never been there long enough before; perhaps it was that such strong spells as he’d cast upstairs bound him, in some sense, to the place where he’d cast them.

  Or perhaps it was that the world outside was so much less certain now.

  The candle cast dancing shadows ahead of Simon. He caught sight of his reflection as he passed a mirror, wavering and alien in the dim light. Half-remembered children’s tales came to mind, none of them pleasant. He looked away quickly.

  A line of light caught his eye then: dim light, not much more than his own candle, coming from under the library door. Eleanor, he thought, and shook his head. It was too late for her to be awake, even if she had been in town. If she’d been having trouble sleeping and had told neither him nor her maid, that was not a good sign. Simon straightened his back, assumed his sternest look, and opened the library door.

  He had only a moment to see the woman at his desk, to observe that she was bent forward with her face in her hands, to catch sight of red-gold hair in the candlelight and know that he’d been very much mistaken. Only a moment.

  Then Joan sprang from her chair and whipped around to face the door, grabbing at the desk. She raised her hand, and the letter opener gleamed in it.

  They’d done their best, Simon thought, he and Eleanor. On the surface, they’d even succeeded. Below that, they’d made no impression at all. Joan’s eyes were narrow, her teeth bared, and her body poised to strike. The ivory dressing gown didn’t matter. She was every inch the savage he’d met in the circle of stones. But she was beautiful now.

  Simon thought, in a stunned second, that a month of good food and a few civilized clothes couldn’t make that much difference. Not really. If I saw her in leather and blood now, I’d still want her.

  Even as the realization shook him, she was relaxing. “Sorry.” She lowered the letter opener and flashed a smile nearly as sharp and thin. “Jumpy, I guess. But the servants knock, and—anyhow, I’m sorry. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “Not at all. I saw the light and was curious. I hope I haven’t intruded.”

  Joan shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.”

  A candle sat on the table, but even that and the one Simon held revealed only a little redness around Joan’s eyes, a slight flush on her cheeks. If he hadn’t seen that one unguarded moment, he might never have known that anything was wrong.

  It might be best to pretend he didn’t. Joan would never mention the incident; quite probably she would rather he didn’t. Or at least, Simon thought, she would be embarrassed if he did. Not quite the same thing. Perhaps thinking that it was had led, in part, to all his earlier trouble with Ellie.

  Simon thought of the moment before Joan had known he was there, of the way she’d looked in that small patch of candlelight. Sad, yes, but more importantly, alone.

  “Joan,” he said, stepping forward, “tell me what’s wrong.”

  She hesitated for only a second. “What? Nothing. Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “No, please,” Simon insisted. “I must know. Is something wrong here? Has anyone been uncivil to you—were the girls—”

  Improbable—impossible—for Joan to be crying over what a bunch of village chits thought or said or did. He knew that even before Joan shook her head. “No. It’s nothing you did. Nothing anyone here did. I just—”

  She stopped and looked up at Simon, then swiftly away again at the desk and the opened book on it. A flush crept up her neck and over her face. “What the hell,” she said in a tight voice he’d never heard from her before. “If I’m going to act like a six-year-old anyhow, I want my mother. And my dad and my friends and the world I knew. It was a shitty world, but it was mine, and everyone I love is there. Was there.”

  At the last, her voice cracked. Joan spun around to face the bookshelves, but Simon saw her face before she did,
stripped of control at last, a study in weariness and fear and stark bleeding grief. The pain there made his own look like a stubbed toe. “Oh,” he said, sounding awkward and insufficient to his own ears. “But—won’t you see them again?”

  “No.”

  It was just the one word, as flat and uncompromising as a funeral bell. There was no room for but if, no possibility of bargaining, no holding out for one last chance. Just knowledge, cold and dark as the night outside.

  “There were rituals,” Joan said. “I’m cut loose from time. That’s how I could come back, and I guess it lets me survive any changes I make by being here. But that’s just me. If I succeed…there’ll be a different world two hundred years from now. Mine won’t be there any more.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “Then everyone I knew dies. Horribly.” She shrugged, quickly and almost mechanically. “At the end—just before I came—the Dark Ones had broken in. My people might have fought them back that time, but…we were losing.”

  Joan laughed humorlessly. “I’m not a priest or a philosopher. I don’t know what the difference is between dying and never existing at all except that dying probably hurts more. The kind of death they were facing? There’s no question.”

  Simon remembered the cerberus’s teeth and pictures he’d seen in books and shuddered.

  “So you see?” Joan scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, quickly and roughly. “I’m doing them a favor. And it’s—it’s not like they’ll miss me.”

  Perhaps, somewhere, Simon thought, but he couldn’t say it. It might be true—he thought that the soul persisted, in some shape or other—but he didn’t know, Joan wouldn’t believe him, and it didn’t matter in the end. Whatever might survive outside of time, it wouldn’t be her world or her people.

  There was nothing he could say. He stood and looked at her instead. The cream silk of her dressing gown was the brightest thing in the shadowed room. Her shoulders were stiff, her posture military.

  It would be good to take her in his arms. It would also be highly improper, and Joan wasn’t one to cry on a man’s shoulder in any case. Still, he ached to touch her. To offer something when words had failed. Simon jammed his fists into his pockets.

  Joan took another rough swipe at her face and then took a deep breath. “Anyhow, I didn’t mean to disturb you. Couldn’t sleep—came down to read for a little while.” She gestured to the open book.

  Simon, following her gaze, recognized the title on the spine. “The Greeks? Eleanor has been an influence.”

  “She’s got good taste.” Joan shrugged again and cleared her throat. “I knew some of the stories. The details changed, but my dad used to tell me the one about Icarus.”

  Quite a story for a child, Simon thought, but he held his tongue.

  “I think that was humanity, for him. We’d had all the warnings. We ignored them, and we fell. My father wasn’t a very optimistic guy. But he was proud when I volunteered to go, like maybe I could change the old stories. Reading that book, I could hear his voice.”

  She swallowed hard. “It’s late. You’ve had a long day, and none of this is really your problem, is it? I didn’t mean to throw it all on you.”

  It’s not your business, Simon heard in her voice at first, and it was that he first responded to. “No, not at all,” he muttered, and took a step backward, hesitating. Hesitating because there’d been something else in her voice, just as there’d been in her face earlier. And if he was fumbling in the dark again, perhaps there was no other way to find a light. “I hope—”

  Again she turned to face him, almost as fast as she’d done when he first opened the door. Her eyes were fierce, all the more so because they shone with unshed tears. “This is just a moment. I’ll get over it. I’m not falling apart. Don’t think any less of me.”

  What remained of Simon’s self-control vanished on the spot. “Think less of you? I—” Before either of them knew what he was doing, he’d taken her by the shoulders. “Most men I know would be mad in your shoes. Gibbering. Think less of you?”

  Touching her had been a bad idea. There was perhaps half an inch between their bodies now. Simon was quite aware of that and of how little she was wearing. It was quite an improper position to be in. It was quite an exciting position to be in. It was a position in which no gentleman would remain for very long, not with a woman he wasn’t paying. But he couldn’t move.

  If Joan had spoken or pulled away herself, the spell might have broken. But Simon’s words seemed to have caught her as off guard as hers had him, and she was silent. Her shoulders were warm beneath his hands, and her hair fell over them. Simon’s desire was almost blinding, a sweet hot ache not just in his groin but, it seemed, all through his body, as if his skin itself hungered for the woman in front of him.

  I should move away, he thought.

  He had only a second to think it.

  Then Joan slid her arms around his neck. Simon thought he’d never felt anything so arousing. “You’re a good guy,” she said. “I hope you know that.”

  She leaned upward just a little but enough to close the rest of the distance between them, to press her body against Simon’s from shoulder to knee. Her lips pressed against his, hot and sweet. Then they parted, and Simon lost himself.

  Chapter 18

  Simon didn’t kiss like Joan had thought he would. She’d imagined it a lot over a week of hot evenings, sliding her hand between her legs and thinking that she was just scratching an itch only to have it come back over and over again. In all of those fantasies, he’d been graceful like he’d been when he danced and rode. Careless, even.

  Not now. He held back for a second, surprised, shocked, or maybe trying to resist as Joan had done for all those long nights. But it was only a second.

  Then Simon’s lips were hot against hers and his open mouth was urgent. Desperate, even. Hard enough to bruise, but hell, Joan wasn’t complaining. Not at all. Simon’s grace and control had been exciting because they were new. Violence wasn’t. Neither was hunger. Joan knew them both very well, and neither was less exciting because of it. The ache between her legs bore that out.

  She pressed up against Simon, crushing her breasts against his chest. If she had been less turned on, the pressure might have hurt but now it only made her groan into his mouth. He made his own muffled, incoherent noise, low in his throat. Even that little, intangible thing sent heat running through Joan’s body. When he twined one hand in her hair, pulling her mouth up to his, there was only heat. She cried out sharply.

  And Simon stopped for just a second. He thinks something’s wrong, Joan realized, a dim thought half buried in the red haze of lust. Better convince him otherwise.

  Before Simon could disentangle his hand from her hair or raise his head to ask a question, Joan slid her tongue into his mouth. Simon groaned again. His hand clenched in her hair once more, and his other hand, at the base of Joan’s spine, tightened as well, pressing her against him. She went willingly, parting her legs a little so his hard-on could rub between them.

  Bright Powers, it was so good that he was tall. And big in other ways as well, Joan noticed. She circled her hips, rubbing against him, and moisture soaked the ludicrous things they wore for underwear in that time.

  Simon cried out this time. His hand slid lower, cupping her buttocks and then squeezing hard. Joan arched into him in response. Her fingers were probably digging divots in his shoulders, but he didn’t seem to care, any more than she cared about the bruises she’d have on her ass tomorrow.

  When Simon lifted his mouth from hers, Joan almost protested, but then his lips were on her neck. He kissed her hard and then bit, and she was writhing against him, hips pumping, oblivious to anything but the desperate hunger of her body. Want.

  Joan sought his neck with her mouth, trying to return the favor—or just desperate to taste him—and found only cloth. They wore too damn many clothes in this time. She couldn’t even wrap a leg around him properly; the damn nightgown was in th
e way. Joan snarled in frustration.

  When Simon slid his hand down out of her hair to cup one of her breasts, she snarled again. Not in frustration, though. At least not entirely. The world was made of white heat, of warm hands and a warmer mouth, and if she didn’t feel more of both soon, she would scream.

  Somewhere around here was a desk. That would work. She just had to remember where it was.

  Simon flicked his thumb over her stiff nipple. Once, then again—then he took it between finger and thumb and pinched lightly.

  To hell with the desk. There was a floor. There was a wall. Either would do fine.

  Joan dropped her hands. One went to Simon’s chest, pushing him away just a little. She hated to do it, but she needed the space. Her other hand went downward, brushing past Simon’s waistband and over the hard bulge of his cock. Unable to resist temptation, Joan closed her hand for a moment, very gently.

  “Ah, God.” Simon sounded like he was as close to howling as she was. Felt like it too. His cock had fairly leapt in her hand.

  Good. Very good. Now—buttons. Joan tugged at the first of them with clumsy fingers and then yanked.

  Simon closed his hand over hers. “Wait. Stop.”

  The teachings of her childhood rose up through her arousal. Do you know how much those things cost? You have been here too long if you’ve stopped noticing. Joan shook her head. “Sorry. You do it, then.”

  When Simon shook his head, it was like a sign in an alien language, a gesture that might have meant anything from “I come in peace” to “I spit on your mother.” Because it couldn’t mean what it usually meant. Not the way he’d just been touching her.

  Simon took both her hands in his and stepped back. He was panting and flushed, and his eyes were dark with passion, but he shook his head again. “I’m sorry. I fear I’m no gentleman at all—but I’ll do what I can, at least.”