Dangerous 01 - Dangerous Works

by Caroline Warfield

  My Dear Georgiana, I wish to inform you that I will attend you in person five days hence. I look forward to seeing you again. Baron Ross informs me that you look well, and I wish to see this for myself.

  Your brother, Richard Below his signature he added his formal address: Richard Hayden, Marquess Glenaire Drat the man! A day to prepare the message and another for it to travel left her with just three days. She felt certain he must not have liked the information that Jamie took back to him.

  She adored Richard in spite of his pomposity. She loved him still, in spite of his betrayal eleven years ago. Of all her family, only Richard accorded her any respect or kindness. Normally, she looked forward to his visits. They provided, until recently, the only light in her existence. Not this time.

  His complicity in her separation from Andrew years ago left a raw wound. She needed time to heal and still more time to sort out what had happened with Andrew the previous day.

  She could still feel his kiss. Nothing would ever be the same for her again. She let her mind run through the catalog of sensations. It would take years to sort out each one. Much about yesterday was less obvious. She experienced a profound shift, a life-altering event. She understood now with acute perception that pain and pleasure were remarkably close sensations. Both were life. Their opposite was nothing, the black expanse of nothingness.

  Never again could she fall back on her rank or seriously entertain Andrew Mallet as a teaching authority. She knew she had heard the last of “my lady” from him, but she didn’t know what they were now. They had agreed to be partners, but she was unsure of the nature of their partnership.

  She set aside Richard’s message in an effort to set his interference aside with it. Work was her salvation. She bent once again over the Nossis of Locri texts. Andrew would come tomorrow. They had one more day to work before she had to deal with Richard.

  She attempted to make her work, as always, her sturdy bulwark against the blows of life. This time, the work only added to her emotional vortex. She read the epigrams with new eyes, and what she found there disturbed her. “Erotos” she knew meant love, certainly, and romantic love at that. How should I translate this line? she wondered.

  “‘Nothing is sweeter than love.’”

  “‘Nothing is sweeter than Eros.’” In English the meaning tilted slightly with the change of wording. The next phrase appeared to be about delight or pleasure.

  “Definitely Eros,” she said to the empty room. Whatever it is, Nossis prefers it to honey. Yesterday, Georgiana wouldn’t have understood. Love has a taste; she knew that now. She recalled the feel of Andrew’s mouth on hers, and the taste when he opened and let her explore. The taste was sweeter than honey, indeed. She felt warmth rise again deep within her. Heat colored her neck and pooled deep in her belly.

  The words of Nossis hadn’t changed since yesterday, but Georgiana had. Andrew had kissed her when she was a girl, sweet innocent kisses, not like he had kissed her the day before. The raw pleasure of it opened her eyes to Nossis. She understood nuance and meaning she didn’t see before. What other secrets do they hold? With these distractions, how will I ever finish the translations?

  “‘Nothing is sweeter than desire.’”

  “‘Desire,’ Georgiana?” They had moved on to the poet Nossis of Locri, and to more treacherous ground.

  “‘Erotos’ is very specific,” she said with more confidence than she would have a month ago. “I could translate it as ‘love,’ but each of the five or more Greek words that could be translated as love has a slightly different meaning. I could translate it as ‘eros,’ using the actual word, but in English that is pretentious. ‘Nothing is sweeter than Eros’ doesn’t ring true.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said but withheld comment, allowing her to consider her choices.

  “Isn’t Eros also another name for Cupid?” she asked. At his nod she continued. “That left desire. I think eros or erotos refers to physical love. Am I correct?”

  She had been pale, his Georgie, when he first encountered her weeks ago. Lately she had a sweet rosy glow, but today a bright pink colored her neck and face.

  “Plato understood Eros as the deep longing of one soul for union with another,” he explained. “Could ‘longing’ be your word choice?”

  “‘Nothing is sweeter than longing.’’ Interesting. I’m not sure that conveys the author’s intent in this case.”

  “Perhaps not. ‘Desire’ does come closer,” he said and continued reading her translation, “‘All other delights are lesser.’ Clumsy that. You might invert it, move the negative, and it becomes ‘No other delights come as high’ or ‘are as great.’”

  “That isn’t quite right either.” Her willingness to contradict his suggestions delighted him. He watched her worry her lower lip with her teeth in the adorable way he had come to expect before she went on. “‘All other pleasure takes second place,’ perhaps?”

  It was an excellent suggestion. The teacher in him kept his tone even or he would have overwhelmed her with delight. “Your variation works very well. It will do nicely. ‘Pleasure’ or ‘delight’? Your initial translation was ‘delight.’ Did you consider ‘joy’?”

  “‘Pleasure.’” Her voice was firm, but the delightful rosy color rising up her neck deepened. Knowledge doesn’t always come from books.

  She looked at him without shying away. “‘Pleasure.’ ‘Joy’ can convey a world of meaning, depending on the ear of the listener. I think ‘pleasure’ is more precise and closer to the author’s intent.”

  “‘Pleasure’ it is then. That leaves us with ‘Nothing is sweeter than desire. All other pleasure is second to it.’”

  The air crackled between them. Her feminine scent filled the air and awoke his senses. Lilacs and springtime. Andrew felt his breathing slow until it became labored. He felt rather than heard a catch in his voice. Hoarseness undermined his effort to retain the tones of a teacher.

  “The next line looks the same as before.”

  “There isn’t much you can do with spitting out honey,” Georgiana said. “She just spits it out of her mouth. She says, ‘Even honey I spit from my mouth.’“

  So much for poetic rapture. He couldn’t imagine what else to do with spitting; honey clearly didn’t match up to other delights. He laughed. It was the only possible response.

  “Oh, do be serious. The honey is what it is. We have ‘Nothing is sweeter than desire All other pleasure is second to it.

  Even honey I spit from my mouth.’”

  She paced while she talked, as she always did when agitated, gesticulating broadly. “The part that comes next–Andrew, do pay attention–the next part, about what or who ‘Kypris’ did or didn’t love confuses me. Nossis makes some sort of declaration. She says it outright. ‘Nossis declares … ’ or ‘So says Nossis … ’ or even just ‘Nossis says … ’ Do you see?”

  Andrew struggled to focus on Georgiana’s words and not on the sight of her morning gown stretched across her breast when she moved her arms, but he lost the struggle. He nodded without hearing her. “Go on.”

  “I can’t. I have no idea what to do with Kypris. I thought at first Kypris was a man’s name, but I have never seen it used thus. Does she refer to the Island of Cyprus?”

  “I’m sorry, Georgiana. Cyprus?” He pulled his wandering thoughts back to the words.

  “Kypris. Who is it? Do we have geographical features speaking again? Romance with an island seems unlikely, but Nossis says ‘She whom Kypris hasn’t loved.’“

  Andrew realized her expressive face had altered. She went pale and then flushed. He knew the many uses of the verb “to love.” He wondered if those meanings brought the blush to her face. He wouldn’t sort it out for her. She would have to work it out herself. He wondered what she knew about Greek culture to reconsider whether the person in question was a man.

  The identity of ‘Kypris’ presented an easier topic.

  “It isn’t a man’s name, Georgiana. You correctly ide
ntified it as Cyprus. However, in this case, I don’t believe the island itself is what is meant. Cyprus was the birthplace of Aphrodite, and her son Eros. She refers, I think, to Aphrodite herself. It is a common enough poetic image.”

  “So it is whoever ‘Aphrodite hasn’t loved’ or ‘doesn’t love’ perhaps?” She considered the matter; she worried her lower lip again while she worked out the author’s meaning. He couldn’t look away. He watched a question form in her mind, watched her hesitate, and watched her square her shoulders when she determined to ask it.

  “Could it mean ‘the person who has not been made love to by Aphrodite’? That wording is clumsy, but could that be the sense of it?”

  Too amused to hide it, he spoke quickly before she could get her back up at his laughter. “I think that interpretation is possible, but it stretches the meaning of the text. The poet describes someone who isn’t the beloved of Aphrodite, but not necessarily someone who hasn’t been the lover of Aphrodite. Of course, a person who is the beloved of Aphrodite would be aware of the arts of love and the sensual delights. That would be true, in this context, regardless of whether or not the person learned them from Aphrodite herself.”

  He wondered if he had gone too far when her blush deepened. They were on dangerous ground. She swallowed, and—God help him—wet her lips with her tongue.

  “So ‘the one whom Aphrodite does not love’ is best.” She seemed to seek his approval. “I think I understand the words so far, but the final line confuses me completely. When I look at it, I wonder about the entire poem. She talks about flowers and roses.”

  “There is no ambiguity about the literal meaning of the words. They—the ones Aphrodite doesn’t love—’can’t tell what sort of flowers these roses are.’”

  “She doesn’t mean it literally, though, does she? She says, ‘Nossis declares … ’ What does she declare? That ‘anyone who is not the beloved of Aphrodite’—or isn’t Aphrodite’s beloved—‘can’t tell what kind of flowers roses are’? I don’t think she means it as a treatise on gardening.”

  “No, certainly not. Nossis is obviously making a serious declaration about herself.”

  “Is it about her life or her work?”

  “Excellent question, Georgie. What do you think?”

  She glared at him. “Teacher’s trick–putting it back to me. I take it you don’t know either.”

  “Partner. My partner is as capable of reasoning that out as I am.”

  She shot him a scathing look of disapproval but continued her analysis. “If she is making a statement about her work, then the ‘roses’ would be her poems?”

  “Brilliant. Yes, they certainly could be. If you read ‘roses’ as her epigrams, what is she saying?”

  “Unless someone is or has been loved by Aphrodite, they cannot understand what sort of poems she has written.” She frowned thoughtfully, and suddenly he saw her face light up. Georgiana, excited by new insights, captivated him. Her passion enchanted him.

  “The beloved of Aphrodite would understand the arts of love. Unless you—the reader—understand the arts of love, you won’t understand my poems. That’s what she is saying!” She danced around him.

  “Are you sure?” The teacher in him wouldn’t let it rest.

  “What else can the roses be? If it is about her life, perhaps she means her children. ‘You can’t appreciate what sort of beauties my children are … ’ The rest of the poem doesn’t follow then.” She thought about it silently for a while.

  He knew he should offer some ideas, but watching her gave him pleasure; and the direction of his thoughts was extremely improper. His ideas about the epigram and about Georgiana were as erotic as Nossis of Locri probably intended.

  “Perhaps she refers to the ladies of Locri.”

  She shocked him; he couldn’t hide it. It amused her to continue; he could see it in her devilish eyes. “If the ladies of Locri are roses, then no one who is without knowledge of the sensual arts—as someone beloved by Aphrodite would be—could appreciate them or know what sort of ‘flowers’ they are.” She peeped at him impishly. “Have I totally given up all hope of propriety?”

  “Yes.” He schooled his features to disapproval, or at least he tried to.

  She laughed at him.

  “But it is a pagan poem,” he went on. “You wouldn’t expect it to be entirely proper for a sheltered English maiden.”

  “Maiden Aunt, I fear is more accurate,” she said in a huff, “and not so sheltered!”

  He didn’t speak. He thought of all the things she still had to learn and allowed realization to grip her.

  “Could Nossis be referring in some fashion to herself?” Her eyes lit up with awareness.

  The light in them held him fast. Georgie learned quickly. Monday’s lesson in the sensual arts, brief as it was, had already broadened her vision of the poems.

  “She could.” He swallowed before he continued. “What are you suggesting?” He wondered if she could even imagine the imagery that poets used for a woman’s most feminine anatomy. Roses were the least of it.

  “Perhaps she is saying that only someone really loved by Aphrodite would appreciate her own …” She groped for a word. He watched in horrified fascination. She was on her own with this one.

  “ … charms,” she said at last. “Her beauty? Her body?” She looked at him, challenge in her eyes and vulnerability in every line of her face and posture.

  Andrew found reasons to study his fingers. He spoke very carefully. “Exactly how do you propose to convey that in English?”

  “I don’t.”

  Her wicked grin was as unexpected as her answer.

  She sobered and continued. “It is impossible to tell from the context which interpretation is correct. Nor could we express my suggestion about the ladies of Locri without the risk of communicating ideas that are mine and not hers. It is likely that the roses are poems, but I refuse to say ‘poems.’ I think in this case we will call a rose a rose and let the reader draw her own conclusions.”

  “Our readers are to be ladies, are they?” He noticed she no longer doubted there could be readers.

  “And why not? Perhaps married ladies will see one meaning and young girls another. Our choice of ‘desire’ for line one would undoubtedly set up a variety of interpretations.”

  “Young girls?” He gasped. “Yesterday you didn’t believe our work would be printed. Today you think it will invade the school rooms of young girls. How likely is that?”

  “Not very. Far more likely this work will never see the light of day in English. The more we go on, the more I wonder if that isn’t the safest result.”

  “Are you losing your nerve?” Still wavering, Georgiana?

  “Certainly not! Don’t look so hopeful. The works are what they are. These voices may not be respectable English voices, but they deserve to be heard as much as Sophocles and Euripides.”

  “What about the folks who find any translation of the ancients dangerous to women?” He couldn’t resist provoking her. Georgiana, ready to do battle, her eyes blazing with determination, stirred him as nothing else ever had.

  “Fools, every one of them. Foolish old men afraid of anyone smarter than they, anyone they can’t control.” She paced, a fury of movement propelling her across the room. Ten years of indignities spilled out of Georgiana in a flood, and desire raged through him like a pillaging horde.

  “Men listened to Korinna in her lifetime, but scholars buried her work. Nossis, Anyte, all of them were pushed aside. Buried!” Anger gave way to anguish. Andrew’s eyes prickled, and his throat constricted. From the day he left her, Georgiana was pushed aside. “Buried!” she repeated, and he had no doubt that was how she felt. “Buried alive.” Her voice faded on a sob.

  Rampaging desire laid siege to his common sense and set fire to his heart. He could only reach out, take her hand, and pull her close.

  “We will finish it, Georgie. We will give them a voice.” He rasped out. He rubbed her palm with his thumb a
nd drank in the blue of her eyes. Dangerous electricity filled the air of the workroom.

  “Andrew,” she whispered. “I can’t bear it alone. I can’t bear it any longer.”

  He froze at the sound of his name in her mouth. Her eyes were on his lips, and her own parted as if in anticipation. She wanted him. He could take one taste, one soft gentle brush of her lips. All other delights would come second to that.

  He lowered his head and felt her sweet breath on his face. The lilac scent of her filled him.

  She swayed toward him, almost touching. He released her fingers and ran his hand up her arm to cup her cheek.

  “Door,” she breathed, voice husky.

  The unexpected word confused him. “Door?” he repeated without taking his eyes from her mouth.

  “It isn’t locked.” She turned her head to point it out. That small gesture broke the cord holding them. The door stood slightly ajar.

  Dear God! A house full of servants loyal to the Duke of Sudbury and Andrew was ready to seduce his daughter on her Axminster carpet. Good sense flooded back into him, and he released her.

  “Excellent idea, Lady Georgiana,” he said with unnatural force loud enough to be heard beyond the door. “If we’re to bring this project into a whole piece,” he continued in a voice so gruff it was as if the words were torn from his throat, “we had best continue.”

  Andrew limped over to the table and put it and distance between them. He looked up to find Georgiana staring back, hurt vivid on her face. He turned away, but he could still feel her eyes on the back of his head.

  “Record your proposed translation, my lady, and make notes for the commentary.” His words sounded harsher than he intended. He feared what she might say if he gave her the opportunity to speak.