by Brown, T. J.
Now, as a tug-of-war over the event’s location began anew, Rowena managed to slip away with the promise that she’d meet up with her aunt in time for supper.
The fact that she could escape at will was a wonderful luxury, especially considering the note she had received just that morning.
R,
In town with D. Meet me at the needle at 2?
J
March had turned balmy and the sky gleamed blue above the Grosvenor Gardens as she walked to the Victoria Embankment.
Rowena wondered how Jon had talked Douglas into a London trip. She and Jon kept in touch through letters sent to his mother. If she thought it strange they didn’t write to each other directly, she said nothing about it, and Cristobel was always delighted to see her when she dropped by to collect the newest message from her beloved. George, on the other hand, would skulk around, glowering until his mother ordered him off, apologizing for her eldest son’s behavior. Sometimes Rowena wondered whether George was completely in his right mind.
She walked diagonally across the Cathedral Piazza, banishing George from her thoughts. She loved being back in London. Summerset was in her blood and she loved it there, but London was home. She had spent most of her life in the city with her father, Victoria, and, of course, Prudence. Her heart gave a funny little pang as it always did when she thought of her father or Prudence—two family members she had irrevocably lost. She wondered what Prudence was doing and whether she was happy. Victoria said she seemed happy when Victoria had seen her last, but Rowena wished she could see for herself. Could explain that everything had just gotten so out of control . . .
Rowena took a deep breath. She would not be unhappy today. She would not let the grayness of those lost months overcome her again. Not ever again.
Instead she forced herself to think of Jon. It had been almost three weeks since she had last been in his arms and almost four since the last exhilarating flying lesson—he had finally given her some control, allowing her to drive the plane all over the field. Her pulse kicked up a notch as she remembered the excitement of sitting in the pilot’s seat. He had called her a natural.
Next time he was going to sit as her passenger. Then she would be able to fly on her own. Completely solo.
She smelled the river before she saw it, an odd combination of tar and rot. When she spotted the needle, she stopped the next man she saw with a watch chain draped across his waistcoat. “Excuse me, could you tell me the time, please?”
He took the watch out of his pocket and peered at it with the squint of the nearsighted. “Half past one, miss.”
“Thank you.”
She found a bench near the needle and sat, letting the sun warm her back. Pigeons cooed around her feet until they realized she had nothing to feed them and went off in search of greener fields. People crowded the square, taking advantage of the sun after a long winter—pale, squinting babies in severe black prams, equally pale children, unruly with unexpected freedom, and distinguished gentlemen taking an extralong lunch to enjoy the weather.
Her whole body crackled with excitement at the thought of seeing Jon. The last time she’d seen him, he’d kissed her behind the Martinsyde S.1 until she grew dizzy. Her eyes shut, remembering.
She swatted at a tickling feeling on the back of her neck, which quickly turned into the feeling of lips being pressed against the very top of her spine. She stopped swatting and shivered. “I certainly hope that’s my Jon scandalizing the nannies,” she said, leaning her head back.
“Who do you think?” he whispered in her ear, and she shivered again.
“Oh, Jon!” She stood as he leapt around the bench and took her into his arms.
He pressed his lips against hers until she broke away, gasping. “Stop! We’re going to be arrested for such a public display.”
“Not by any red-blooded bobby, I’ll tell you that. They would all be too jealous of me to care.”
His blue eyes twinkled and blazed at her all at the same time and she laughed out of sheer happiness. He sat with her then, one arm holding her close. Her pulse raced as the heat of his leg pressed against hers.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said, leaning close and rubbing her index finger against his jaw. “However did you talk Douglas into it?”
Jon caught her finger with his free hand. “I can’t think when you do that.” He grinned down at her. “Actually, I didn’t have to. Douglas was called into meetings with some high-up muckety-mucks in the government who want to give us a contract for the Flying Alices.”
“Oh, I knew she was a good one!” Rowena exclaimed.
He squeezed her fingers. “I did, too.”
They sat in silence, their fingers intertwining over and over. She yearned toward him, wanting more than she even knew how to ask for. Her throat thickened with emotion and she could scarcely breathe for the wanting.
His fingers tightened around hers. “Douglas is in meetings for the rest of the day. We’re staying at the Parkrose, a few blocks that way.”
His blue eyes flickered over her and then away and she caught his meaning immediately. Her chest grew tight. She could be alone with him . . . if she dared. “Is it a comfortable hotel?”
He grew still. “Comfortable enough, I believe.”
Rowena’s heart pounded and she drew even closer, and her cheeks heated with how brazenly she was behaving. “Hmm. Well, perhaps I should take a look myself. Just to make sure you’re being well taken care of there.”
He turned to her then, his eyes drinking her in. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice husky. She wanted to run her hands through his long hair and pull him close. Her breath caught.
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my entire life. Well,” she amended, her lips curving. “Well, other than the moment when I told you I wanted to become a pilot.”
He pulled her to her feet and pressed his lips against her cheek. Rowena knew it was a promise of things to come. He walked slowly, perhaps giving her the space to change her mind. But it wasn’t necessary. The heat of his hand on her lower back took her breath away. She would never feel this way about anyone again. If she didn’t spend this time with him now, she knew in her heart she would always regret it, no matter what might happen after.
Rowena would never remember whether they spoke or not. She couldn’t even remember how they got into his room. Had they gone up in a lift? Had the concierge watched them go? These details were gone forever.
What she remembered was the clean scent of his skin. The softness of his hair beneath her fingers. She didn’t remember the pain, but she would never forget the smoothness of the sheets as they wrapped around their legs or the roughness of his cheeks against her neck. Impressions that would last a lifetime, so vivid, all she had to do was close her eyes and the sensory memories would come flooding back, filling her with equal parts joy and pain.
“I love you,” he told her after.
“I know,” she told him. He hit her with a pillow and she collapsed, laughing, against his chest. Who knew, she thought as she pressed her lips in the location of his heart, who knew that a man’s chest would have hair and would be so delightful to lie against. “No wonder people keep young women in the dark,” she murmured. “We would all be doing this all the time if we knew.”
“It’s for your own good,” he told her, his mouth against her hair. “You are supposed to wait for the right man.”
She raised her head. “What about men?”
He snorted. “Imagine if neither party knew what they were doing.”
She laid her head back down. “I don’t know. I think we could have figured it out.” She frowned, jealousy gnawing at her stomach. “Did the first woman you were with know what she was doing?”
“Yes. She was an older woman, a maid, actually.”
Rowena shuddered, thinking about her lecherous grandfather, who never got over his desire for maids, and of Prudence’s mother, who had to bear the burden of that lust.
; “But”—he pulled her around to face him—“there has never been anyone in my heart but you.”
She searched his eyes for a moment, trying to sort out her thoughts. “And my world was meaningless until I met you. I know that sounds dramatic and I don’t mean to be, but it’s true. I didn’t know what my purpose in life was until I went flying with you. I had given up on finding a passion . . . on finding passion, even. I only ever felt half-alive.”
His arm tightened around her and she laid her head back down on his chest. His heartbeat sounded in her ear and she could feel hers aligning with his.
“What are we going to do?” he asked quietly.
For the first time, real fear entered her heart. How could she ever let him go? She couldn’t. “We will just have to figure out a way to tell them all,” she said simply. “Your family loves me now. Well, those who really know me, in spite of my surname, so perhaps my family will accept you.”
He stiffened. “That’s just it,” he said slowly. “I don’t want your family to accept me, because I will never be able to forgive your uncle for what he did.”
She sat up and held the sheet in front of her chest. “So my family doesn’t matter then?”
He sat up, too, and already she regretted the distance between them, which seemed so much more than just a few inches. “If your father were alive, it would be different,” he told her. “I’m sure he probably knew nothing about what your uncle was doing to my family.”
“Of course he didn’t!” she cried. “He wouldn’t have done anything like that.”
“And of course, I won’t mind meeting your sister, but I have to draw the line there. In honor of my father, I draw the line there.”
She searched the hard planes of his face. She recognized the truth when she heard it and gave him a nod. “I understand,” she said.
But as she got dressed, she had to wonder about her sacrifice. She would be giving up her aunt and uncle, her cousins, and Summerset. And what if her uncle disagreed with her choice? Would she be giving up her inheritance, as well? She would have to speak with her solicitor.
His arms suddenly slipped around her. “I’ll make it up to you,” he whispered, and she smiled, everything except the feeling of his lips against her neck forgotten.
“You already have,” she whispered.
* * *
Kit was worried. Kit never worried. And, like everything else upside down, backward, and crazy in his life, it had everything to do with Victoria, that lovely, painful thorn in his side.
At least breakfast at his mother’s house in London was hot, plentiful, and never too early. His mother had given up their country home when his father had died to live year-round in London. Personally, Kit wondered how his father had been able to talk his mother into going to the country as often as she did. In her younger days, his mother had been considered scandalous. As she grew older, she had turned into an eccentric. Though his parents had bought themselves into the right social circles, that didn’t necessarily mean that either of them actually enjoyed it. As he grew, Kit often wondered why they bothered. He had been brought up to be a gentleman, as idle and useless as any of the real gentlemen who ran in his get. It only recently began to dawn on him that the only women who had ever remotely interested him sneered at such idleness and preferred men who were, as Victoria so maddeningly called it, industrious.
He speared a sausage savagely.
“Someone is in a bad mood,” his mother said from behind him. She kissed the top of his head. “How’s your arm this morning, darling?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re being nice. Why are you being nice?”
“I’m always nice,” she said, her voice mild.
She moved to the ornate mahogany buffet and helped herself to a plate of eggs and ham, and a bowl of strawberries swimming in cream and sugar. Taking a seat across from him, she poured herself a cup of strong coffee, which she far preferred to tea.
His mother was wearing one of her Oriental morning dresses, as she called them, a gauzy, incredibly expensive dress made like a caftan, with a tie under her ample bosom. It showed off her assets, without showing off her equally ample waist.
“You’re never nice, unless you want something,” Kit said.
“See. I knew you were in a bad mood. A mother knows these things.”
He stared as she took a bite of her eggs and she returned his look, her large, dark eyes giving away nothing. For a moment their eyes clashed and then she smiled. “Oh, fine. I’m simply waiting for you to tell me about Victoria.”
“Aha!”
She shrugged. “Other mothers wouldn’t have to stoop to such tactics to find out things.”
He snorted. “I have the only mother in the kingdom to whom being nice to her child is considered a tactic.”
“But other mothers are so boringly predictable. At least your mother isn’t boring.”
“True,” he conceded.
“Now about the girl?” she wheedled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, concentrating on his sausage. His mother always could read him like a book. But then again, men were her specialty. Secrecy was his only weapon against her.
“That’s not what Colin said when he dropped by to see you yesterday. You were out somewhere, but he looked in need of nourishment.”
Kit closed his eyes briefly. He could see it now. Colin would be putty in his mother’s hands. Most men were. Even though the years had added bulk to his mother’s already curvaceous figure, she still had an exotic air that most men found irresistible. Whether it was the straight, black hair cut in a slashing fringe on her forehead or the almond-shaped eyes that were more an accident of birth than a story about her background, men seemed to believe his mother far more exciting than she actually was. Colin would be no match for her years of experience.
“His young cousin, I believe? It’s odd. I never saw you with a woman that young.”
He snorted again.
“What?” she asked, her eyes wide.
He sighed. He might as well give in. God knew what she already got from Colin. “Victoria isn’t young. I mean, she doesn’t act young. Most of the time. She’s . . . ” He paused, searching for the right word. “Complicated.”
His mother raised an eyebrow. “Complicated? How interesting.”
“See, you don’t mean that. You say you want to know about her, but then you act like that.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry, darling, you’re right. I just find other women’s complications boring. Could you get me one of those pastries next to the sausage? And was your sausage good? Go ahead and bring me one of those, too. Thank you, darling. Now go ahead. I’ll be good. I promise.”
Kit brought her the food and took a couple more sausages for himself. Oddly, he found himself wanting to talk to his mother about Victoria, which just showed how truly upside down things were. He never wanted to talk to his mother about anything.
“What is she like? Colin said he guessed she was pretty.”
He thought about it for a moment. “She isn’t really pretty. Pretty is too conventional to describe Victoria. She’s small and rather delicate and her face is rather the shape of a heart and her eyes are blue.”
“Don’t tell me you fell for a blue-eyed blonde? How common.” His mother’s lips curled and he glared. “Sorry, sorry.”
“She’s not like anyone else. She’s tremendously smart and keeps me on my toes. And she’s bold enough to say what everyone else merely thinks about saying. And we’re just friends.”
“Men and women can’t be just friends,” his mother said with a dismissive wave.
“That’s what I told her, but I really think we are.”
She shook her head. “No, because one of them always falls in love. If they are lucky, both of them do, but it’s usually just one of them.” She looked at him and Kit thought he saw sympathy in her dark eyes.
“And you think it’s just me?” His voice came out more belligerent than he’d
intended.
They ate in silence for several moments before he mused, “She has always said she never wanted to marry.”
“Well, I suppose you will just have to change her mind and then marry her,” his mother told him matter-of-factly.
He looked at her in astonishment. “Married? Who said anything about getting married?”
“Oh, my dear, stupid, boy,” his mother said, shaking her head. “You’ve been talking of nothing else.”
He stood. “Why do I even try to have a conversation with you? You’re quite crazy, do you know that?”
His mother nodded and popped the last of her pastry into her mouth. “But I have never been as crazy in love as you are right now.”
Kit left the room, the sound of his mother’s laughter following him.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Prudence looked at the silver fish with distaste. It stared back at her with one smoky eye. “I don’t even like bloaters,” she whined to Muriel and Susie, who were both busy getting other ingredients together. “Why do I have to know how to prepare them? Why can’t we have lessons on how to prepare haddock or sturgeon?”
“Because bloaters are cheap,” Muriel told her bluntly. “Sometimes the only meat a family can afford is bloaters, so you want to be able to prepare them in different ways.”
Susie, pounding a horseradish root, ceased long enough to nod. “Plus, they can be good. I like them in a paste and spread on toast or Suffolk rusks.”
Muriel smacked her lips. “I like them poached in milk. By lunch, you’ll be a bloater expert.”
Prudence wrinkled her nose. “I can hardly wait.”
“Good. Then fill that pan about halfway up with water and put it on the stove. Bloaters have been lightly smoked and are kind of hard. You have to soften them first.”
Susie had been there for several days and Prudence kept waiting for a confrontation regarding her tales of city glamour, but to her surprise, Susie said nothing. Suddenly it dawned on Prudence that Susie thought her flat lovely and her furniture from the Mayfair house quite fashionable. Still, Prudence had trouble brushing aside the shame she felt at lying—falsely boasting, even—to such a kind friend. Susie did, however, take Prudence to task over her lack of servants.