Lilac

by Louisa Trent

  His words, though pretty, lacked something essential. A key element.

  Love. Words of love.

  So what? A voice inside her asked. He was a man of action, a tough man, not a poet. He had proven his love by coming here, by admitting he missed her. She was nothing. A nobody. People, everyone, looked right through her. Even now, when customers came into her shop, they admired her hats without seeing her. No one remembered her. Tegan hats, yes. But not the woman who made those hats. She was just a laborer in a millinery store, not an artiste. She had always faded into the background. Who was she to want more than that from him?

  In a newfound woman’s wisdom, she let his lack of love words go. In love, a mature woman’s love, not a silly girl’s romantic notion of what love should be, she accepted him for what he was and took a tentative step toward him.

  And he was there, sweeping her into his arms. The man she loved smelled of cold, fresh mountain air with a hint of an early snow, and she kissed him, with an open mouth, an open mind, an open heart. She kissed him in the trust that he did love her, without saying the words.

  She hinted against his lips. “I sleep beyond the curtain.”

  They kissed their way there.

  She dropped her gown just inside the drapery and the rest of her clothing scattered every which way. Nude, she faced him.

  “Beautiful,” he said softly and pulled the pins from her hair as she backed up toward the bed. “So beautiful.”

  Beauty is as beauty does. Thus far, she had only done him ugly.

  Why hold out for words when she had him?

  She reclined on her back and held open her arms.

  Though his shaft looked more than seduced, he held back. “We should talk first, sweetheart.”

  She asked in absolute dejection, “Now? You want to talk now?”

  “Yes. Now. Back then, that night you decided to stay on with me—”

  “You mean, when I awakened after your heroic rescue of me in the storm and I propositioned you. That night? Because that is my recollection of what happened after I regained consciousness.”

  “My point is—I have thought back to that night many times since you left me, and it occurred to me much too late, that I never let you speak. In fact, I put words in your mouth to slant your motivation in the direction that suited me. Please, tell me now, in your own words, why you ran from me that night in the rain.”

  “I never ran from you.” She sighed. “I ran from myself.”

  “Explain.” Leaning toward her—so eminently gratifying that he could not stay away—he dropped a kiss on the tip of her bare breast.

  She allowed her legs to fall open, revealing her body to him as she revealed her mind. “I was certain I knew what I was getting myself into when I arrived at your doorstep. But you turned my assumptions upside down.”

  His hand moved between her splayed legs, his mouth soon followed.

  He looked up eventually. “In what way?”

  “You were not quite the depraved libertine I had expected. So disappointing.” She arched her back as his tongue teasingly circled, then found her molten core. “Oh.” She breathed out in a gusty whoosh. “We can finish this conversation later.”

  “We finish it now. Quit stalling. No more oral pleasuring until you tell me the rest.”

  “That is blatant extortion!”

  “Not so blatant. This is blatant.”

  Dear heavens! He licked her clit.

  The rest of her confession came out on a rush. “My original plan was to go to the town physician. But I decided against that course of action after we fucked.”

  “Made love. Not fucked. I never fucked you. And I have no intention of fucking you now.”

  “Killjoy.”

  “Go on, Tegan,” he said with the masterful edge she so adored.

  “And so I ran. I felt like I was letting everyone down. My father’s memory. The miners. Their families.”

  “So, you lied. You were not running from me to ruin me. You never did think the end justified the means.”

  “Oh, yes, I did. In the beginning. In the beginning, I hated my perception of you.”

  “And then what happened?”

  She took a deep breath and said the words, those important romantic words that, for whatever reason, he may never be able to say to her. She said them first, and she would mean them always. “What happened is, I ended up falling in love with the real you.”

  “Love?” he repeated. “You fell in love with me?”

  “Yes. Had I any honor, I would have carried through my mission regardless of my feelings for you. So, no destination in mind, I ran from you, out into the pouring rain. I felt so weak with love, you see.”

  “Let me get this straight, you felt dishonorable because you changed your mind about destroying my name?”

  “Exactly! What a relief, your understanding of how my mind works.”

  “An impossibility, that.”

  She shot him a blistering look, which dissolved into a look of something else when he kissed the tip of her breast.

  “My turn to come clean,” he said.

  “About what?” She came up her elbows to listen to his explanation.

  “Only this—I fell in love with you at first sight, from the moment I first saw you.”

  “At the orgy, you mean?”

  “No. That was not the first I ever saw you.” He grinned. “I saw you long before then. I saw you for the first time when I went to investigate working conditions at Central Mine.”

  “You came here?” she asked, astounded. “Here, to Pennsylvania?”

  “Yep. I saw you in the company store. You were lovingly stroking a bolt of lilac cotton. I knew that had to be your favorite color, the way your hand was caressing the yard goods. I never forgot you. You made quite the impression on me. I remember thinking I would die a happy man if you just once touched me with the same regard, the same look of longing, as that lilac cloth. Do you recall that day, so long ago?”

  “I do.”

  “I waited for you to come to my doorstep. After reading about you, after seeing you in that shop, I knew that you would.”

  His underhandedness was so much worse than she ever could have imagined. His deviousness went beyond the pale. So, the color of the gown he had tempted her with at Griffith House had been no coincidence.

  His deviousness was just so incredibly romantic. His declaration of love was better than any she had ever read in a book.

  There went her heart, leaping—no, flying—from her chest. The man could pen a romance, he was that good with words.

  “Tegan—just so you know—I had already put in place some of the changes your father proposed before your arrival in New York.”

  “Why withhold that information from me? Had you told me at the outset, none of the rest would have happened.”

  “Precisely. And I would never have gotten to know you. How could I lose the only chance with you I might have had? You were so adorable. Hissing and spitting one minute. Hugging and sucking me off the next. You made my head spin. I wanted you to stay with me, but I knew as a respectable miss you never would. When you proposed an illicit arrangement, I leaped at the opportunity to make you less respectable.”

  “All I can say to all that is”—she pulled him close, until they touched skin on skin—“make me more less respectable, sir.”

  THE END

  Louisa Trent

  I am a writer raised in a family of storytellers. My earliest and fondest memory is of my Irish Nana relating a mystical story of a man looking in a window upon a beautiful lady whose long silvery hair swept the floor as she walked. With a simple telling, my grandmother drew me into her tale. A man. A woman. A forbidden love that wouldn’t die. From opening word to shivery conclusion, I lived that story with her. Many years later, I’m still awed by the spell of the fantasy world she created with only the dip and swell of her voice.

  There’s power in words. Hope in love stories. Joy in a happy ending. I’m
proud to carry on my family’s storytelling tradition.

  Visit Louisa on the Web at www.louisatrent.com.