by A. W. Exley
“Whatever you think you have seen between us, I am more concerned by what his actions have displayed. The first kiss I stole from him, and the second was after he had been drinking. Then today he became upset that I gave Old Charlie a chaste kiss. He does not own me. I have enough problems with Jasper being overprotective.” Surely she would know if Grayson truly desired her? She had not been shut away for so long that she had forgotten over a hundred years of experience in the game of desire.
The two women walked along a road as trees arched and met above them, protecting them from the sun and the beady gaze of Samuel’s watcher who followed them.
Marjory made a harrumph in the back of her throat. “A bit of Dutch courage can strip away a man’s inhibitions. Mayhap it allowed him to claim a kiss from you. But you certainly don’t need another brother, you need a good man.”
A good man. Perhaps there was the problem that stretched between them. A human had a tenth of the lifespan of an Elemental. Grayson could give her his entire life, but it would be only a moment to her.
“I don’t know, Marjory. I cannot interpret his actions. It’s as though he were a different species entirely.” Lettie sighed and let her attention wander to the overhead canopy of leaves.
Marjory pulled a leaf from an oak and twirled it between her fingers. “Men are odd creatures. For all their bluff and bluster about ruling the world, they have rather fragile egos according to my observations.”
Lettie stared at the leaf. Men were like that. Hundreds, if not thousands of them, clustered in an area. How was a woman supposed to know which one to pick without something to guide her hand? “What does Grayson’s ego have to do with sorting through this mess?”
The leaf stopped twirling and Marjory stabbed the air with it. “I think he is jealous. Men believe themselves irresistible to all women, but struggle to watch the woman they want be courted by another.”
Lettie had forgotten this aspect of the game; there were false starts, misunderstandings, and subterfuge. All of which wasted time. Why couldn’t people state their wants and desires plainly? “Why doesn’t the silly man say something? I’m an undine, not a mind reader.”
Marjory let the leaf go and it fluttered down to the road, where the wind picked it up and swirled it away in a solo dance. “Remember what I said about fragile egos. I suspect he is protecting himself. You are a beautiful Elemental, free for the first time in decades. He may find it hard to believe you would settle on him when the whole world is laid before you.”
Lettie blew out a sigh. Men. She should have got a dog to fill the void in her heart. “Did you have any of these issues with Hector?”
Marjory laughed a young, lilting sound that almost seemed to be birdsong from the trees. “Oh, yes. For a year or two he pretended we were only flirting and that he wasn’t going to be tied down to one woman. The old trouble and strife, he once called me. That was after we had a Cockney lad among the workers that year.”
It amazed Lettie that Marjory had lived out a life with Hector and she had caught only glimpses of the push and pull between them. “What did you do?”
“Gave him a taste of his own medicine. He made a declaration after he discovered me kissing the Cockney lad.”
Lettie doubted it would be so simple with Grayson. She had kissed someone else, and it hadn’t galvanised him into action. “I kissed Byron Ocram, and it just seemed to make Grayson … I don’t know, somewhat disappointed in me.”
“Perhaps you need to try a more direct approach. If he wants you, what would happen if he got you?” Marjory winked.
Lettie turned the words over. It might work, or it might result in humiliation. Either way at least she would have an answer. If Grayson refused her, there were plenty of other men in the world. Lettie would travel and who knew, she might even bump into her unknown mate as she explored other countries.
Black clouds gathered overhead and they decided it was time to turn around and walk home.
“Another storm is brewing,” Marjory muttered.
“At least this one will be a rainstorm.” A thrum pulsed through Lettie’s body. Soon Ouranus would cry over his lover’s body, and Lettie would embrace his tears and gather them to her. She wondered where the clouds had blown from and what stories the rain would tell.
After a quiet dinner, Lettie retired to her room. She paced the carpet, trying to decide what to do. Grayson had been absent from dinner, staying in his room. No doubt avoiding her. She tried to curl up with a book but couldn’t concentrate.
The storm escalated outside as Gaia and Ouranus fought. Thunder rumbled above. Her element seeped into the air and Lettie unfurled to greet it. As the air dampened, it raised the hairs along her arms. She passed a hand down her arm, but even her own touch seemed charged. Erotic.
Her thoughts turned to Byron. Did the previous dry and windy storm of hot air swirl around the sylph’s body and arouse his senses as a rainstorm did to her?
Thinking of him made her sigh as she remembered his firm kisses and the way he touched her. He stroked her with a calm possession, a man confident in his abilities and that his advances would be welcome. Yet he never touched her mind. Her kisses with Grayson might have been less practiced, but they left her gasping and dizzy.
In her mind she conjured two very different faces. One the cool and handsome Elemental. The other the gentle and steady doctor. The man she kissed on a whim, but who awoke something inside her that the Elemental couldn’t reach. She swatted a hand in the air to chase both images away. Humans were fine as temporary diversions, but their lives were too short to ever be anything else. It hurt too much to spend centuries mourning them.
She was like a hound who had been locked in the kennel for too long and had escaped across fields in pursuit of rabbits. But which one should she pursue? The dog could not chase two at once, and there came a point where it had to decide which to follow.
Grayson.
The gentle doctor touched more than her body. He aroused her mind and soul.
Lightning flashed outside the window as the storm broke and rain pounded the house. Lettie opened her balcony doors and watched the droplets plummeting to the ground. The rain was so intense it fell in sheets, as though cascades of sheer silk tumbled from the sky and covered the ground below.
Did Byron see the rain and think of her? Putting aside he was a Soarer and they stood on different sides of a divide, why couldn’t he be the one? He awoke desire in her body, and she had no doubt he would satisfy it. He was elegant, educated, and an Elemental.
He was also arrogant, an enemy, and involved in the death of Dawn’s parents.
Lettie scratched her palm. The spot where her Cor-vitis seed had germinated long ago itched but nothing appeared. Was she feeling a phantom response, the way those who lost a limb could still feel a stroke on a foot long removed?
She had abandoned the idea of finding an enduring love, and it now seemed more storybook than real. Yet there was an ache deep in her soul that she couldn’t soothe. Forty years alone and untouched left her craving a connection with another person. To give and receive pleasure as naked bodies entwined. To touch someone physically as well as emotionally. She may never have a mate, but she could have love on a more temporary scale.
Marjory had posed the question that now ran through Lettie’s mind. If Grayson wanted her, what would happen if he got her?
The rain would help her decide what to do. Just as some people were night owls or morning larks, undines had their own watery preferences. Lettie especially adored the rain. She held out a hand, and it was soon covered in dancing droplets. Each tiny, transparent orb whispered against her skin of what it had seen, touched, or heard on its journey.
In larger bodies like the lake, she could draw memories and visions from all the water had brushed against or passed over and through. Slivers of sound or flashes of an image could be pieced together to make a mosaic. When rain fell heavily over a concentrated area, there was another skill some undines could wield.
They could use the blanket of water to see across distances. It was difficult work and would take all her concentration, but before Lettie offered herself to Grayson, she would first know what Byron did this evening.
She pulled off her nightgown and stepped naked out onto the balcony. Her element kissed her skin, and she delighted in the slither of rivulets over her body. She closed her eyes and raised her arms, letting the rain have access to every part of her.
Lettie reached out with her mind and touched first the drops playing over her body, and then moved outward. Her consciousness became a jumping raindrop. She connected with the other drops that fell around her, and then she moved between them. Dancing from one to another, her mind journeyed outward on a watery road toward the Ocram mansion.
She raced with the torrential rain toward the hill where the looming mansion sat. Lightning flashed over the roof and illuminated the jagged shape of the house against the sky. Water ran down the sides, poured from overflowing gutters, and sheeted down the dark stone. Lettie moved with the water. She flowed over the building, looking, searching for Byron’s suite.
She imagined Byron would have a room near the top of the building, surrounded by air. Sylphs hated anything at ground level and needed to be elevated. Several raindrops echoed with a familiar deep, throaty laugh. She concentrated on where the noise came from and then poured her mind into that part of the storm.
A room shimmered before her. Lettie merged with the rain trickling down a thick glass pane. She jumped from droplet to droplet to maintain her place at the window.
Within, light blazed from an overhead chandelier and several lit wall sconces. The room was light and airy, the walls and furnishings were white with the palest splash of blue, as though the occupant dwelt in a cloud. A large bed dominated the room. Gauzy white curtains spiralled around end posts. White silk sheets covered the mattress. The sheets were tossed back and rumpled, as though the occupant had a restless night.
Byron laughed as he crossed the room. He walked naked as light caressed his body and turned him into a golden statue. The ache bloomed anew in Lettie’s physical form as her hungry gaze devoured the shift of muscles in his back. Unconsciously she reached out a hand to caress a buttock, only to pass her hand through a veil of rain.
Another voice laughed, lighter and higher in pitch. Lettie peered through the water. Another person was in the room. They rose from the bed. It was a woman with long blonde hair falling down her back. She stood before Byron, offering herself to him. Her hands caressed up her body until she cupped her breasts, awaiting his acceptance.
The sylph reached out and pulled her to him. The woman sighed as he claimed her mouth. He kissed her, devouring her, then he released her mouth and pushed her down to her knees. His head fell back, his eyes closed as his hands fisted in the woman’s hair and held her head in place.
It would seem Byron did not pine for Lettie’s company.
She flowed back through the storm, jumping from one clump of heavy rain to another until she worked her way back to the Warder’s house. Lettie opened her eyes once she was back on the balcony. A chill worked its way over her flesh, one that came from inside her soul and not from the rain.
She rubbed at her arms and walked back into her room. She closed the doors on the storm and picked up a towel, needing the rub of the soft cotton to dispel the chill. Once dry, she slipped on her silk robe.
Tears moistened her eyes and she chewed her bottom lip to stop them from falling. Need coursed through her, heightened by contact with the rain and seeing Byron embrace the other woman. Heat flared through her limbs as she imagined all that the other two were doing this evening.
She needed someone to hold her and remind her she wasn’t alone, if only for a little while.
Lettie tightened the knot on her robe and stood a little taller as she made a decision. It was time to find out how Grayson perceived her.
With any luck, the good doctor would have exactly the cure she sought.
21
Lettie crept down the hallway on bare feet and then rapped softly on a closed door. The itch in her palm returned as she waited, and she rubbed at the spot with her thumb.
“Come in,” a muffled voice replied.
Lettie pushed into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
“What can I do for you, Lettie?” Grayson glanced up from a desk in front of the window.
The room was enclosed in twilight. A lamp with a green glass shade was the moon and cast a gentle illumination from its spot on one corner of the desk. The desk surface was strewn with open books. Grayson held a pen and had been scribbling notes on a sheet of paper.
“I thought you might have been avoiding me.” She leaned back against the door. If he rejected her now, she hadn’t ventured too far and could dart back into the hallway and scurry back to her room like a frightened mouse.
“Never. I could not bear to be without the sight of your face or sound of your voice for longer than a few hours.” His voice was soft and almost drowned out by the rain outside.
“You were missed at dinner.” By me, she wanted to add, but she still wasn’t sure of the ground under her feet. The storm continued to unburden the clouds above them, and the pound of rain on the roof became a steady thrum through her body. She pulsed with the storm, but had no way to expend the energy it created within her.
Grayson pushed his chair back and held out an inviting hand to her. He was in a comfortable state of undress. His feet were bare. Both jacket and waistcoat were discarded over a dress stand, and the first few buttons of his linen shirt were undone. Even his hair seemed more dishevelled than usual, as though he had been running his hands through it.
She walked over and sat on his knee, to see what he studied. Her left arm went around his neck. There was an easy camaraderie between them, and it was natural for her to both want to touch and be touched by him. “What are you working on?”
Grayson wrapped an arm around her and tapped a colour drawing on a large tome. “The ship workers have different injuries than the agricultural workers and mill employees back home. I see more impact injuries from falls. I am studying how bones break to see if I need to adapt how I am treating them.”
He took his role in their deception seriously. They might only be in County Durham for a short time, but his patients would still have his full attention.
“The Ocrams are fortunate to have you dressing the wounds of their workers,” Lettie said. The warmth from his closeness drove the last chill from her skin.
His hand moved around her side, sliding the silk robe over her skin beneath. “It is the oath I took, to do all I can to heal others.”
She peered at his notes. Blotches of different thickness crawled across the page, and it looked more like hieroglyphics than English. “How can a man with such a well-groomed moustache have such appalling handwriting?”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Because my moustache doesn’t do the writing. At college the professors spoke so rapidly in class that you learned to scrawl your notes to keep up, then it becomes a habit that is difficult to break.”
“I wonder that you passed your exams amid trying to decipher your own study notes.” She tried to imagine him as a student, studying long into the night. Did he have the moustache then or did he grow it later? She tried to remember if he had it when he replaced his father as her physician, but time blurred in her mind and events ran together like a painting left out in the rain.
Jasper had said Grayson passed his exams top of his class. None shone brighter, Jasper once said. Yet the doctor chose to bury himself in Alysblud to tend her. Was there a hidden meaning in that, or was it merely a sense of obligation since Jasper paid for his education?
Lettie dropped her head to Grayson’s shoulder and breathed him in. He was warmth and the rich odour of the earth after a summer rain. Just being in his arms and letting his presence wash over her calmed her. She needed to finish healing, and to do that she needed his help. More than that, she wanted
the man, not the doctor.
“I need you, Grayson,” she whispered against his skin. Her lips tasted him as she spoke.
His hand rested on her thigh, and his fingers curled for a moment in the delicate fabric of her gown before he relaxed them again.
“To do what?” The words were casual but his tone was rough. Tendrils of tension wound around them. The charade of being brother and sister was set aside. The rain became a drum beat sounding the advance of the attraction building between them.
She wondered how best to proceed as she fought her own internal battle. She valued his friendship, adored him even, but would she lose his regard by throwing herself at him?
“I have been isolated and alone for so long. I spent decades starved of any attention or the touch of a man. Now I have awoken and it … hurts.” Kissing first Byron and then Grayson reminded her of what it meant to be alive.
Each night she tossed and turned in her bed as unsatisfied desire kept sleep at bay. Like how the fresh, yeasty smell of a bakery made your stomach growl in hunger, the stolen kisses had heated her blood. She had a ravenous appetite and no way of satisfying it.
Like all Elementals, Lettie enjoyed pleasure. It was something to share and to be enjoyed without any sense of shame. She certainly didn’t have the current time’s puritanical view of sex. Perhaps it helped that she was born in a different time and came to maturity under the hedonistic excess of Charles II. Longing burned through her limbs, and she wanted someone she trusted to fill the void within her.
But her need ran deeper than physical contact. She yearned to touch Grayson’s mind and soul. To know him as no other could. She wanted to be the name that whispered across his lips as he slept. Ava stole her ability to find the one person selected by Gaia to be her perfect match. Lettie had no choice in that, but she had a choice in this. She chose Grayson, but would he accept her?
Grayson’s breathing changed, each breath shallower and indrawn quicker. His gaze darkened as he pushed the books away and rested his hands on her waist. “Lettie—”