THE PROPOSITION

by Judith Ivory

  She stared at him. A second later—one heart-stopping second later—she realized he was having her on, teasing her. His mouth drew up in that lopsided way it had, a full, toothsome smile that dimpled only one cheek.

  Edwina didn't know whether to be offended or not. She could hardly credit it. Normally, she hated to be tormented. Yet she didn't feel hurt now. It made her feel … warm … foolish but not unpleasant. He'd somehow managed the miracle of turning her upside down, just for fun, without making her feel bad about it.

  He grinned wider, then took her deeper into confusion. "You ain't never known a man, I know that. Not even kissed many."

  What an outrageous— "One," she said, "you," then wished she hadn't. It called attention to the fact that no one else had ever wanted to, not even for the silliest, most lighthearted of reasons.

  But that wasn't how he took it.

  Mr. Tremor's expression changed. It became genuinely taken aback. He dropped his teasing mien and looked straight at her. Very seriously, he said with amazement in his voice, "Well, beggar me. That be just plain sweet, Miss Bollash. I feel right proud you let me."

  She was too surprised to give his words the horselaugh they deserved. She sat there for several stupefied seconds before she found the refuge she knew best: speech. "Now, you see, Mr. Tremore," she said, "it would be better if you didn't say beggar me anymore."

  He tilted his head, frowning slightly. "Wha'd'you want me to say?"

  "Try: 'I'm astonished.'"

  He laughed, though at the end, still smiling, he raised one brow—a look that certainly could have passed for ironic amusement—and said, "All right: I'm astonished."

  He repeated the words exactly as she'd said them, so naturally and perfectly she was without response for a second. "Yes." She blinked and looked down. "Yes, that's right."

  Then he really took her breath away. He murmured, "You astonish me."

  Edwina looked up, frowning, squinting like a woman trying to understand the mechanism of a trick, a sleight of hand. Well-dressed, sitting there with his white-sleeved arm folded across his dark-vested chest, Mick Tremore looked so much the part: the English lord. With his sounding the part, too, well—he stopped her in her tracks. As if all this talk about catching rats and Cornwall were the false part, the real part being what sat before her: a confident, well-dressed fellow whom she'd managed to astonish.

  Oh, this was awful. It was painful. She couldn't keep doing it. And it was only the beginning. She had to find a way to make him stay who he was, for herself to see him properly and stop catching glimpses of this other man, this ghostly … what? viscount? who could inhabit his skin.

  Her mouth went dry. Her skin grew hot. For several seconds Edwina looked at an English lord with graceful hands, one finger of which he used to stroke an unusually thick mustache in what was coming to be a characteristic gesture. Sometimes he did it with the back of his knuckle, sometimes with the inside of his finger as now. In either event, it always made him look pensive. Pensive and faintly wicked. She remembered how surprising it felt, soft and coarse, both, when it touched her mouth.

  Oh, dear. Edwina lowered her eyes and put her hand to her throat, her palm circling her own neck, her collar, where her fingers found tiny steel beads on tulle over silk. An old dress. A dress made as stylish as possible again. A dress bought when the idea of courting was still a ridiculous possibility. When she'd had money and consequently had the interest of suitors.

  What had she been saying? She couldn't remember. It was no use. There was no getting back to what they'd been talking about before all this, no getting back to whatever it was she'd been trying to accomplish. She sat there staring at a tuning fork on the table. Inside, she felt like that, as if someone had lightly struck her and now she resonated from the contact, vibrating with something she didn't understand, that wasn't visible, yet that worked on her from the inside out while she fiddled with the beads on her collar.

  Beyond the windows of the room, it had grown quite dark. The night, opaque at the glass, reflected the room back on itself. Only a distant street lamp indicated anything existed outside her laboratory. It was late. She didn't usually work so long. A bad idea. Time to call an end to it. They'd do better tomorrow.

  "Well," she said. "That's enough, I think." She stood shakily. Her knees felt weak. "I think we should go to bed now."

  As the words left her mouth, and Edwina heard them, she thought, No, I didn't say that. Not aloud. Mr. Tremore lowered his eyes. Or she thought he did; his eyes fell into the shadow of his deep, jutting brow. "I think we should go to bed, too," he said.

  She blinked, frowned, swallowed. She wanted to snap at him, chastise him—for what? For saying exactly what she had just said. Only he didn't mean it as she had. He was being—

  What?

  She'd assume he wasn't. Pretend he wasn't. Excuse yourself, Winnie. Go to bed.

  Only, for the life of her, she couldn't. Her arms, her legs wouldn't move. Instead, heat rose up into her face as if the door to a furnace had opened. Her cheeks, neck, shoulders grew hot from an embarrassment she couldn't contain. She'd said something risqué. Accidentally.

  Mr. Tremore said nothing. He remained quiet. She was now, presumably, supposed to be grateful for his silence.

  Fine. She attempted to speak. "W-well, yes, we may, um, could—" She swallowed wrong, choked. Her eyes teared instantly. Edwina found herself caught in mortified coughs and stammers, then was further obliged to feel, grudgingly, out-and-out indebted as Mr. Tremore took over, making excuses for her.

  "A slip of the tongue, loov. It can embarrass the best of us. It's all right. I know what you meant."

  Their eyes met, held. How odd. His angular brow or perhaps her own discomfort in meeting his eyes for very long had kept the color of his eyes a secret till this moment. She'd known they were fair, but they were more than fair. They were green. Not a hazel, but a true, fair beryllium green, steel-gray green around a black pupil, the iris ringed in a thin line of dark, vivid mossy green. Stunning eyes. Another detail she would just as soon not be aware of.

  She was developing a schoolgirl infatuation for a ratcatcher.

  Well, she simply wouldn't allow it. Though her body demonstrated that some things could not be controlled: The bright embarrassment in her face spread down her arms, her body. Everywhere. She must have looked apoplectic, because the object of her discomposure reached across the table and patted her hand, then gently squeezed the backs of her fingers—his were strong and warm, sure of themselves.

  He said, "Go on to bed now, loovey. I won't even walk up with you. You be doin' all right, Winnie. A good girl. Just a little shook up. It'll be okay in the mornin'. When you come down, I'll be sittin' at breakfast nice as you please—no dancin' with Molly Reed this time."

  Molly Reed? Was this Mrs. Reed's first name? If so, Edwina had never heard it till this moment.

  She felt momentarily disoriented. As if he were unearthing startling objects, dropping them before her, out of familiar terrain, terrain that was her own.

  Oh, enough, she thought. She was about to take what was offered, a clean exit.

  But Milton interrupted. He came to the door. "Is everything all right, m'lady?"

  "Yes." She frowned around at him, a plea for rescue.

  As if nothing were amiss, he went on. "I took Mrs. Reed home. Her son's horse threw a shoe. I've locked up. Is there anything else you need?"

  She shook her head. If there was, she couldn't define it well enough to ask for it.

  "Oh," Milton added, "and the dresses from the seamstress arrived early this evening. I put the box on the table in your sitting room."

  She nodded. What dresses? Oh, yes.

  As if in echo, across from her a voice asked, "What dresses?"

  "What?" She looked down.

  Mr. Tremore's smile was gone, replaced by a strange, quizzical look. "New dresses?"

  "No, old ones." She shook her head; it was of no consequence. "Brought up to date."
>
  "Where?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "Where did you have 'em fixed?" It was apparently of consequence to him.

  She frowned, wet her lips. "The seamstress's, Milly-something, off Queen's Gate." She remembered he knew at least the shop assistant there and couldn't resist asking, "How well do you know the ladies of that shop? Are they friends of yours?" Until yesterday, she wanted to add.

  He didn't say yea or nay, though, only sitting back in his chair to stare at her, his attention so unwavering it could only be called rude.

  After a moment, he shook his head, smiling slightly, shook his head some more, then looked down. He seemed almost embarrassed. Well, there was a change. He looked discomposed. One strange outcome for certain: He tried to speak, then couldn't. The man who loved talk was completely without words.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  Mick spent the better part of the next week gawking at Winnie Bollash's skirts, half-hoping his stares would burn a hole through them. God knew, for all that was going through his head—while he ogled the way the fabric of her skirts moved when she crossed her legs or when she stood or sat or stretched her long self out—hell, if a man's hot thoughts and stares counted for anything, her skirts should've bloody well been on fire by now.

  They sat side by side today in her laboratory. He was going through a drill of vowels—she'd given him a pencil to point down the page, so he could follow along, sound at a time, with what she'd written out. He was supposed to mark the sounds he thought he was ready to record for the stupid gramophone.

  Lessons. They'd been going at all kinds of tricks Winnie Bollash knew to make a man talk different, ten and twelve hours a day for a week. They'd had things in his mouth. Her taking notes. Him saying sounds that weren't even words. Or sitting alone much of the time repeating exercises for so long, that were so boring, even Magic got up and left.

  They worked at a table together now, her to his right, to his left a tall window that looked out onto the front street of her fine London neighborhood. For eight days, he'd woke up in the same bed, each day surprised to find himself there, each day amazed anew to get up and walk around a house where, from any window a man looked, he could see tall houses made of brick, clean glass blinking at their windows, flower boxes, trees neatly shaped, hedges, iron gates. He didn't feel like he belonged here, that he deserved this life—who did? he wondered—but he was happy that, for a change, the injustice of life was working for him, not against him.

  He tapped the pencil on the page, looking at the sounds he was supposed to be saying to himself. He should've mentioned they were written out in a way that didn't make much sense to him. He was bored. He'd spent the morning on is's, am's, and are's, was's, and were's. Yesterday, ing's and th's. He couldn't keep them all straight. He was ready for some amusement to break up the dreariness.

  Winnie looked at him, at his hand tapping the pencil. His heart gave a little leap. She was going to talk to him. He loved to talk to her. He liked the sound of her, the way her voice was soft and classy, smooth and fine. He liked the words she used and how she used them.

  The words she used this time though, as she glanced over the tops of her eyeglasses, were: "You should really shave your mustache, Mr. Tremore. It doesn't have the refined air we are trying to cultivate for you."

  He rolled his eyes, but she didn't see. She went back to writing. Bloody hell. She had only told him a dozen times to take a razor to the fine growth of hair on his lip. "I like it," he muttered.

  He watched her touch the tip of her pen to her tongue to make the ink flow better. Without looking at him, she said, "It's not stylish."

  "It's thick. Not many men can grow a mustache like it."

  "Not many men would want to."

  "Oh, I don't know about that." He touched the hair that grew under his nose. "It's funny, though, you think you got the right to get rid of it, like you can reach over and tweak my lip. Kind of brassy of you, when you think about it."

  She looked up from her writing, her pen stopped over the page. "Brassy?"

  "Full of yourself. Cocky, you know?"

  She squinched up her face like she could, then laughed not unkindly, which made him feel a little bad. "I'm not the least bit"—she paused—"brassy, as you put it."

  He was being testy, he knew, but he just felt … itchy or something lately. "Well, no," he conceded. "You're a nice woman. Gentle-like. You mean well. But you sure think you run everything."

  "Ha." She put the pen down and looked at him. "I don't think anything of a sort. If I run anything, it's my own legs. I'm usually running as fast as I can, figuratively at least. I'm scared most of the time." She made another face, sheepish, like she wished she hadn't admitted it. He liked her face, its funny features that could move so many ways, bend. She had a thousand expressions.

  But one predominant state of mind. He said, "Scared 'cause the world ain't working to your plan. Scared someone's gonna find out and blame you for it."

  "That's not true. And it's isn't."

  "What?"

  "Pardon?"

  "Oh." She was fixing him again. Isn't. Right. He said, "Scared we all isn't falling into your line."

  "Aren't."

  Mick stopped talking, finding a back tooth to push his tongue against, twisting his mouth. Twisting his mustache at her. Stupid. All these different words for the same thing.

  He pitched the pencil onto the sheets of paper in front of him. It tapped end over end once, making a light mark, then clattered still. He sighed. "All I can say, loov, is it must be hell running the whole blooming place. Especially when so much of it depends on things that are about as dependable as, oh, just one damn roll of the craps after another."

  Whatever he was trying to tell her, Edwina didn't understand it. Though she knew, when he made a faint grin and lifted his eyebrows at her, he was trying to jolly her out of any offense.

  He picked up his pencil again, flipping it over in his hand, playing with it, then beat on the edge of the table. Tap tap tap tap… He kept the rhythm going lightly as he said, "'Course the chanciness is damn exciting, you gotta admit." He threw her an unaccountable smile. "Like now. Either of us could do anything in the next second."

  It was involuntary; she drew back. More of the capricious philosophies of Mr. Mick Tremore. She was always dodging them.

  She might or might not, she thought, have him speaking and acting like a viscount by the end of next month, yet she had come to believe quite firmly that Mr. Tremore could grab hold of the lapels of a Regius professor of philosophy on the street, expound in his face on one amusing topic after another, then let the fellow go, dizzy with his own sense of unoriginality when it came to words and theories on life.

  "Speak for yourself," she said. "I couldn't do anything"—she paused, then used his word for it—"chancy."

  "Yes, you could."

  "Well, I could, but I won't."

  He laughed. "Well, you might surprise yourself one day."

  His sureness of himself irked her. Like the mustache that he twitched slightly. He knew she didn't like it; he used it to tease her.

  Fine. What a pointless conversation. She picked up her pen, going back to the task of writing out his progress for the morning. Out the corner of her eye, though, she could see him.

  He'd leaned back on the rear legs of his chair, lifting the front ones off the floor. He rocked there beside her as he bent his head sideways, tilting it, looking under the table. He'd been doing this all week, making her nervous with it. As if there were a mouse or worse, something under there that she should be aware of. It was never anything though. Or nothing he wanted to mention; she'd asked already more than once.

  She phrased the question differently today. "What are you doing?"

  Illogically, he came back with, "I bet you have the longest, prettiest legs."

  "Limbs," she corrected. "A gentleman refers to that part of a lady as her limbs, her lower limbs, though it is rather po
or form to speak of them at all. You shouldn't."

  He laughed. "Limbs? Like a bloody tree?" His pencil continued to tap lightly, an annoying tattoo of ticks. "No, you got legs under there. Long ones. And I'd give just about anything to see 'em."

  Goodness. She was without words again, nothing readily available to say to yet another of his impertinent comments.

  And he knew it was impertinent. He was tormenting her. That much knowledge she had gained of him. He liked to torture her for amusement, like a child pulling legs off a bug. Though something about him today felt at more extreme loose ends, more bored than usual, capable of "chancy" mischief.

  He tipped back further on the rear legs of his chair, giving the waving front leg a quick double tap of the pencil, ta-tick, on his way to dropping his arm down, out of sight. His position was quite precarious, she was thinking—

  She felt the tickle up her ankle before she understood what it was. His pencil. He ran the tip of it, quick as you please, up her anklebone along the leather of her shoe. It flipped the hem of her dress up.

  She brushed it down. "Stop that."

  He bounced the pencil once off the leg of the table, tick ta-tick, then puffed his top lip out, squelching air between lip and teeth to make a strange little rude sound; it bristled his mustache. Oh, that mustache. Then she caught the word: anything?

  To see her legs? Her legs were nothing. Two sticks that bent so she could walk on them. He wanted to see these?

  For anything?

  She wouldn't let him see them, of course. But she wasn't past provoking him in return: pointing out that, while some people wanted to see what they shouldn't, others were forced to look at what they'd certainly like to be rid of. "Well, there is a solution here then, Mr. Tremore. You can see my legs, when you shave your mustache."

  She meant it as a kind of joke. A taunt to get back at him.

  Joke or not, though, his pencil not only stopped, it dropped. There was a tiny clatter on the floor, a faint sound of rolling, then silence—as, along with the pencil, Mr. Tremore's entire body came to a motionless standstill. He was caught in that awful, boyishly crude pose, leaning back on the legs of his chair, a recalcitrant look on his face.