Season For Desire

by Theresa Romain

  “You do not advocate well for your skill.”

  He smiled, and a bit of the terrible tension eased. “No? Well, I’m not trying to.” He lowered their linked hands between their bodies. Side by side, like chess pieces put away in a box. “I have arthritis, Audrina. It came on while I was at university, while my mother was dying each day from the pain of it. For now it’s in my wrists and hands, but one day it’ll spread.”

  Her hand clasped his more tightly. “Are you certain?”

  “Certain as I can be. I’ve been lucky so far. It hasn’t gotten worse for a while, but it’s only a matter of time.” His own future had vanished with the terrible knowledge: The pain that racked his mother would one day lay him to waste, too. Better, then, to save himself any other pain. Anything else that might one day be lost. “So you see, there’s no point in my having dreams or stars or whatever we called them. There’s no purpose to pleasure.”

  Her thumb stroked his. “What about pleasure for its own sake?”

  “It’s done too soon, and it brings too much pain with it.”

  “You really are not advocating well for your skill.”

  “I’m not talking about sex. But thank you. Very kind.” Almost impossible not to kiss her again at such a moment, for making him smile. “While I’m able, I’m trying to help my family with their dreams instead. And if I meet any beautiful princesses along the way, I’ll be as good to them as I can.”

  “How nice for you to know what to do.” She looked away. “I’m sorry. About your mother. About your hands. I—hope it’s not true.”

  “I wish it weren’t.” He sat up and shook out his wrists. “I’m not looking for pity. If you try to give me pity, I’m taking my coat right back and I don’t care how cold you get.”

  Her smile was watery, but she snatched at the discarded coat as he’d hoped she would. “You can try to take it back, but I will pit my weak little feminine wrists against yours.”

  “If it helps,” Giles added, “I am physically uncomfortable and hate every scruple and better feeling that is telling me I mustn’t keep touching you.”

  “It probably should not help, but it does.” She paused. “Why did you kiss me, then, if you are so set against pleasure?”

  “Why did you kiss me first?”

  “Why did you kiss me back?”

  They eyed each other. “We could do this all night,” Giles said. I wish. “Answer on the count of three,” he suggested. “One—two—three—”

  “I wanted to,” they both said at once.

  Giles scrubbed a hand over his face. Stubble abraded his palm; he hoped it had not scraped her face. Throat. Collarbone. The hollow at the top of her breasts, just before the firm line of her chest went soft and rounded and . . . “Princess. Good God. If I could be paid according to how much I want to kiss you, I would have a fortune and my father and I would be able to leave England right away.”

  She sat up to face him. In her lap, she held his coat in tight-clamped fists. “I know you will leave. But if I want you to kiss me before you go, why will you not?”

  Her eyes were fathomless. Giles had stared into the bottomless blue-green ocean during his Atlantic crossing, but he could not remember feeling this sense of sinking into unknown depths.

  “Because I wouldn’t—I don’t—want to stop at just a kiss. And anything more would be . . .” Too much to want. Too much to take. He cleared his throat. “Done for the wrong reasons. Rightly, an ocean and about three hundred ranks of society belong between us.”

  She clutched his coat like a shield. “That might be a slight exaggeration. Remember, I am ruined. What is the value of a ruined earl’s daughter? Is she worth more or less than an obedient commoner?”

  “She’s worth precisely one human being, just as an obedient commoner is. And neither of them should be talked about as if they are disposable.” His shoulders felt bare under only the light fabric of his shirt. “Audrina, I don’t grant much weight to your father’s earldom or those three hundred ranks between us, or however many there are. But I know that people in England do. And I can imagine what I look like from your viewpoint: a foreign-born commoner with a few skills I never use, a modest income, and a brick wall of a body and face. Even before you subtract a pair of reliable hands from the equation, I don’t amount to much for an earl’s daughter.”

  Her hands fluttered on the collar of his coat, then let it fall to her lap. “Are we to have an argument about who is worth less?”

  “Not worth less. Worth—different.” Twisting around, he retrieved a sheet of the gridded paper and the pencil that Audrina had laid on the telescope table. It was a stall, a distraction to give them both time to think. “Unless I’ve misinterpreted your hints—and if I have, let me apologize right now—you were implying that you’d give yourself to me.”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Yourself? Your true, whole self? Or some part of yourself that you think isn’t worth anything because someone told you it wasn’t?”

  “My virtue was worth everything, or so I have been told.” Her tone was lusterless. “Without it, I have little value.”

  Frustration boiled up within Giles. “Oh. So you’re offering to give me something you don’t care about? Or something you don’t have anymore? I’m confused.” The pencil skated over the paper, a dark slash of graphite. “Are you using me, or asking me to use you?”

  He thought she might be offended by this question. He wanted her to be offended. But she only stared at him with those fathomless eyes. “Does the answer make a difference?”

  Her voice was quiet, defeated, like the fall of a dry leaf. It abraded him; it wrung him. Frustration vanished, and all he could think of was how much he wanted her not to say the things she was saying. Not to feel the emotions that threaded tightly through her words. Yet it was done; she said and she felt, and the pain behind her words sounded like a lifelong bruise.

  “It makes a difference to me.” He dropped the paper and pencil between them. Gingerly, he settled back again onto the shawl, taking care to keep his weight from his wrists. “If we choose to stop, surely that’s worth something. Surely that means we’re not using each other at all, if we stop because we think it’s right. Because we both deserve better than being used. We both deserve better than something meaningless.”

  He wasn’t explaining himself well to his own ears—because never, never, had a kiss felt like it held more meaning. Never had a kiss felt like it mattered more.

  It mattered too much. He had meant what he’d told her: With numbered days, he could not allow himself that sort of pleasure.

  “Is that what you think?” Her question was quiet.

  “That’s what I think, yes, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that you have to live with people who are preoccupied by rank and reputation, and you have to know and obey all the rules that go along with that.” He laughed, a low sound of disbelief. “You had to memorize the entire peerage, Audrina. You are an earl’s daughter. We both live in the world we were born to. We’re not better or worse, but we’re . . . different.”

  Something about the night-quiet room unlocked this honesty. The usual rules had gone dark. The usual barriers were invisible.

  All except the ones they carried within.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Audrina fold his jacket, then reach forward. Grabbing the paper and pencil, evidently, because the soft graphite began to shush over one of the gridded sheets. “So for you, honor is a test of control?”

  “Hardly. I’d never test myself on purpose. What are the chances I’d pass? No, you’re the one who brought up honor, princess. I’m guessing it means something to you.”

  The pencil stopped its movement. “I do not know what it means to me.”

  “Maybe. But you must know what sort of behavior it’s not.”

  “Yes.” Her reply was faint. “Does reputation not matter to Americans?”

  “Of course it matters. We’re not heathens.” He chose his word
s carefully, keeping his gaze fixed on the painted ceiling. “But a woman’s good reputation doesn’t come from not being alone with a man. All that does is tell me she’s solitary. It doesn’t tell me anything about what sort of person she is.”

  “What do you require to think well of—someone?”

  “Would it be too imprecise to say I know it when it happens? Yes? Well—pluck, I guess. Courage. I admire courage.”

  “Oh.” The pencil began shushing furiously over the paper again. “That is not unique. Everyone admires courage.”

  “Are you sure about that? Do you think the illustrious David Llewellyn does?”

  “Ugh. No, I suppose he does not. He begged me for a gift, then scorned me when I granted it to him.” She gave a harsh laugh. “I wonder how he and my father are getting on. The subject of my shortcomings as a proper English female might well occupy them halfway to London.”

  “Then they’ll be repeating themselves a lot.”

  “Flatterer.”

  “Not one of my skills, sadly. If I’ve said anything flattering since entering this room, I can’t remember it. Maybe not since entering England.”

  A cloud passed before the moon, and he took that as a sign to sit up again. She folded her paper, then handed back his coat.

  “Do we have to pretend this never happened?” she asked as he stood and struggled back into the snug-fitting coat.

  “I’m not that good at pretending.” He held out a hand to help her up; her fingers brushed his only for a pale instant. “I’ll probably think about it all the time, even when I shouldn’t. Like when you’re being showered with dry evergreen needles, or when you’re eating soup at dinner—”

  “Or when you gnaw on your lip as you glare at the puzzle box,” she added.

  “Do I do that?”

  With a nod, she looked up into his face. “We will think about it. But we will also remember that it will not happen again.” The twist of her mouth was almost like a real smile.

  She left the library first. Reputation, for God’s sake. Reputation.

  He admired courage, he’d said, and that she possessed in great amount. She had a regimented place in the world, and she didn’t know whether she fell into step with it anymore. Yet she gave the appearance of marching along for the sake of the militant around her. Better to protect her winged heart than let others stone it.

  How had Giles lost his? When had it fallen so heavy and low? He’d given up his hopes in exchange for his father’s dream of gold and jewels. To protect his siblings; to live through them since he had no idea what his own life would be like.

  The pain in his wrists had ebbed again, and he bent to retrieve the forgotten pencil from the floor. He folded Sophy’s shawl, too, and placed it over the back of her chair before dousing the lamp and the candles.

  It was only a matter of time before the pain came back. Yet in the meantime—ah, Audrina had tilted and shaken the world. She made him want to forget his dying hands. To have the right to hope, when all he should be thinking about was cracking open that gilded himitsu-bako and getting the hell back to Philadelphia.

  It was too late for him to follow a star, but she made him want to forget that, too.

  Chapter Eleven

  Wherein a Drawing of Indeterminate Nature Is Created

  For the next three days, the world felt like a caught breath. Outside, the sky dithered between grayness and rain, sleet and more rain. And within, Audrina waited—because now that something had changed, it seemed inevitable that more change would follow.

  But for the next three days, nothing did. Long hours were spent in the drawing room, where fires were built up high and Giles sat at a tiny table pretending to work at the puzzle box. Audrina had stopped taking notes on his attempts, because by tacit agreement, his attempts had stopped being serious.

  Because once he opened the box—whether it proved empty or not—there would be no reason for them to remain here.

  It was just as well that she and Giles had not vowed to ignore their nighttime interlude. Though some of their conversation that night had been awkward, even abrasive, the parts that were not conversation had been very pleasant indeed.

  But it was the conversation, especially, that Audrina could not forget.

  Maybe it was this that caused the feeling of air still before a storm. Now that Audrina had skipped like a stone over the rings of Saturn, now that she knew Jupiter had moons and that stars came in different shades, England seemed small. London, longed-for London, was too close in some ways: Llewellyn and her father had probably finished their journey by now.

  Richard Rutherford and Lady Irving had wreathed nearly everything that could be adorned with festive trimmings; Lady Dudley had fastened a sleigh bell about the neck of each dog. It was impossible not to be aware of Christmas, hurtling closer with evergreen and hummed snippets of carols and the notion of hunting for a star.

  And that meant the time was drawing nearer for Llewellyn to ruin something: the Earl of Alleyneham’s fortunes, Audrina’s reputation, her sister Charissa’s wedding to the Duke of Walpole.

  Maybe all three.

  Llewellyn must get money or he would cause a scandal: this, she knew. And she also knew that His Grace the Duke of Walpole would not tolerate such a humiliation. Not when he was stickler enough to ask Audrina to sit in as a chaperone during his every teatime call to his future wife.

  But she knew one more thing: Charissa, dutiful daughter that she was, really loved the duke.

  There was no denying that Charissa loved London society, too. She wanted to be a duchess and have noble babies and raise them to responsibility and fashion. But during a nighttime sisterly conversation a month ago, Charissa had admitted how she felt about Walpole himself.

  “He never does anything wrong.” Wearing her nightdress, she flopped across Audrina’s bed, stretching out her limbs. “He’s incorruptible. He’s good.”

  Audrina thought he was a prig, personally. “I do not doubt that he will make you a faithful husband.” Which was true.

  “I know he will,” Charissa breathed. “A duke. To think a duke should choose me.”

  She sat up, her long red-brown hair a floating tangle. Audrina fetched a hairbrush from her dressing table and began to draw it through her older sister’s hair. “I am happy for you.” Brush brush. “But you are quite good enough the way you are. He is lucky to be marrying you.”

  “Pfft. He could have anyone. There are far more earl’s daughters than there are dukes.”

  “True, but only one of those earl’s daughters is Lady Charissa Bradleigh. He’s fortunate that you chose him.”

  Audrina tried to twist her sister’s hair into a loose braid, but Charissa turned to stare at her over one shoulder. “Who would not? What is there not to admire about the Duke of Walpole?”

  At the time, Charissa had been satisfied with Audrina’s noncommittal gesture and a turn of the subject to her bride clothes.

  But Audrina had an answer now. If he had a sense of humor, I would admire him more. If he ever said what he ought not, but what was on everyone’s mind, I would think him braver.

  If he kissed me, then stopped because he thought I deserved better—I would . . .

  She would not know what to think. At the time, she had felt insulted; then ashamed. Unwanted. But this feeling had faded, and now she was less certain she had tried to do the right thing, or Giles the wrong one.

  The household had fallen into a simple carousel of steps in their short time at Castle Parr. The Dudleys shuttled between the drawing room and the yellow parlor. Lady Irving and Richard Rutherford had become oddly fond of a passageway full of severed statue heads, though they popped into the drawing room at intervals for tea.

  And Sophy remained in the library. Usually alone, though Audrina wondered if she wanted to be. She had been willing to share her telescope; eager for them to see what she saw, and to understand it.

  Were it not for Audrina’s dread, her feeling of helpless distance from h
er sister, she would enjoy the slow dribbling of these days. She liked the space of York, the high ceilings and the open land. The eager wind that knocked at the windows and the fires that seemed all the warmer for the cold outside. The dogs that roamed the house, toenails clattering across the finest marble floors.

  In London, she was so used to carrying chaos about with her that she forgot what it might be like to set it down; to scrub her fingers through the wiry fur of a brindled hound, then laugh when it bounded off to join its friends.

  The fourth day was a slow Sunday. Freezing rain had prevented the party from attending church. Giles and Audrina had taken their seats at the tea table in the drawing room, the puzzle box between them like a talisman.

  She wanted to shatter that caught-breath feeling, to make the world around her hitch and heave. As she extracted a wood-cased pencil and several sheets of Sophy’s gridded paper from a pocket, her voice was bland. “Just so you are aware, Giles, I am not planning to kiss you today. And I certainly will not permit you to kiss me.”

  His hands went still. She could not help but think of them as harbingers of ill health now—though they seemed flexible and fit enough.

  Were she to allow herself to remember, she’d think them much more than that. Those hands had covered her with a coat. Had spread a shawl on the floor for her. They had cradled her face, skated over her clothing, and caressed her breasts.

  “As a matter of fact, princess”—those same hands tightened about the puzzle box—“I wouldn’t even try. Don’t think about kisses, because it’s not going to happen.”

  The pencil slipped from Audrina’s fingers to clatter on the table, sending a chip of precious graphite flying.

  “I’m telling you,” he added, “don’t think about me kissing you. Or you kissing me. Or both of us wanting to kiss each other so much that we argue over who gets to kiss whom first and wind up falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Kissing, naturally.”

  By the time he finished this speech, she was biting her lip so as not to laugh aloud.