His and Hers

by Dawn Calvert

  "It's beautiful," she murmured, following Curran into the garden.

  "It is the place where Mary must next write you and James." He cleared his throat and straightened. "Together."

  Jane walked a slow circle around the bench, and Curran, a finger to her chin. "Yes. This would be a good spot. Especially if there was a full moon shining down. With both the light and the shadows that would bring." She paused to picture it. "Yes, it would be perfect." Of course her mind's eye insisted on Curran as the man with her, instead of James, but that was only natural. Wasn't it?

  He showed no sign of thinking the same thing. "You must sit here." He pointed at the bench. "And just so." Curran sat on the bench and turned sideways, his back rigid, in a less-than-perfect imitation of a woman in a Victorian dress.

  Jane put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. This was serious business. But he looked so comical, trying to be her.

  "And you must tell him that he is the most"—he paused, eyes darting one way and then the other as he apparently gave this thought—"enlightened and charming gentleman whose acquaintance you have made. And extraordinarily pleasing to look at." He nodded. "That would be the thing to say to James. The only danger is that he hears nothing else that follows."

  "Mmm-hmmm." She nodded her head. "Flattery gets you everywhere with James. That much I've figured out."

  "You must be sincere in your words."

  So her true feelings were apparent. "Mary will take care of that." Like it or not.

  "I am not certain I hold the same confidence."

  "Don't worry about me. I can act. When I need to." Jane walked over to join him on the bench. Being so close to him, his knees touching her skirts, awakened a yearning so strong, it was nearly painful. Forget insides that turned squishy. Hers were pure liquid. "Why are you—" He had the most amazing eyes. She could get lost in their depths and not mind never being found again. She tried again. "As long as James goes along, too, everything should be fine."

  He tipped his head back, appearing to choose his words carefully. "Our author sheds tears until she sleeps most nights. She is finding herself unable to convey the man she once knew in the manner she wishes to. And still she longs for him, though she knows his affections are elsewhere."

  Sympathy welled within Jane. "He married someone else."

  "Indeed." Curran nodded. "Another, more handsome woman, with far greater wealth to offer than our author's family."

  Poor Mary. Jane's heart squeezed tight at the idea of the woman crying herself to sleep at night. Second-best in everything to someone else. Her brother was considered the better writer. Her one true love chose someone else. And there was little chance of another man coming around to sweep her off her feet The only redemption she had was in writing this book, and it wasn't going well. How awful.

  Jane would do her part to help. "So you think I need to sit how?" she asked Curran, turning sideways on the bench, as he had.

  He stood up and went around to the back of her. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he pulled them back and up. It was one of the few places on her body not covered in layers of fabric and she could feel every one of his fingers, strong and warm. Much as they had been in her dream. She closed her eyes, reveling in his touch.

  Then he took her hand, arranging it over the other in her lap. He leaned down to say in her ear, "You must have on your face that smile that says you know far more than you will reveal. The one that promises much, but confesses nothing."

  Did she have a smile like that? Frantically, Jane searched her brain, only to find that everything it contained seemed to be short-circuiting from the nearness of Curran, from his touch, from his voice in her ear. "I—uh—" Oh, brilliant. Just brilliant.

  He came around to stand before her. "I have seen that smile many a time."

  He had? If he didn't quit looking at her like that, she was going to melt straightaway into a puddle at his feet, unable to even cry, "I'm mel-lll-ti-nng, I'm mel-lll-ti-nng…"You know, maybe they should just get out of this garden altogether. Right now. But at the thought, her inner voice was joined by a chorus of others, maybe on loan from other frustrated hearts, all shouting, "No-o-o," with a few yells of "Are you crazy?" chiming in.

  Okay, then. Get it together. Get back in the game. You can do this. That had to be coming from her inner trainer, based on the voice of her high school PE teacher/quasi-drill sergeant, Ms. Malone, who made rare appearances in Jane's consciousness. Usually only when she'd gained five pounds, courtesy of ail-American heroes Ben & Jerry.

  Pretend he's a normal guy. Nothing special.

  Yeah. Like that was going to work.

  Jane rose from her seat, instructing her brain and all body parts to pay attention. "How are we going to get Mary to do this, to make this a setting? 1 have a hard enough time getting her to let me say something. She may not even know about this garden." Did her voice sound normal? She hoped so.

  "She does not. So we must make her aware."

  She wanted those arms around her. Now. Instead, she cleared her throat. "How?"

  "Tremendous concentration and effort I shall summon James. He will wait with you here in the garden, both of you intent on one purpose: entreating Mary to write."

  "Sending her a mental message."

  "A writer is seldom able to ignore such a message, when delivered with sufficient force."

  Jane nodded. "It will get her to pick up her pen and when she does, here we are, in a place she hadn't thought of."

  "Exactly. You must commit each detail of the place to memory, in detail, so that she will picture it as well."

  Mary running around in Jane's memory. Not a comfortable thought. Virtually nothing in her head was Victorian, including her current focus on imagining Curran without his clothes. "Yes," she said a little more loudly than necessary as she sought to banish that thought, along with everything she wouldn't want Mary to access.

  "So you will bring James here." She had to kick into project-management mode or she would never be able to pull this off. "At what time?" She glanced at her wrist, only to realize she had nothing resembling a watch to check.

  "Now." His dark eyes burned into hers. "Have you any other questions?"

  A million of them. Most specifically why he had to be the villain, instead of the hero. Why Mary couldn't have seen that he had far more redeeming qualities than James did and have chosen to do Curran justice instead of worrying about the peacock that had thrown her over for someone with more money.

  But Jane couldn't ask those questions.

  Instead, she drew herself up tall and said, "So I am to tell James that he is… enlightened and… um…" She frowned, searching for the other qualities.

  "Charming," Curran offered.

  "Oh. Right."

  "And… ?" he prompted.

  "Good-looking," she replied, exaggerating the syllables for emphasis. "Or, I mean pleasing to look at."

  "Yes." He nodded. "We are understood."

  She saw regret in his eyes that seemed to match her own. She took a step toward him. "And what should James be saying to me?"

  Curran looked down at her. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  Jane could hear her breath, hear his. And nothing else.

  "He should say that you are endlessly fascinating," he said, voice rumbling like tires on a gravelly road. "That you are at once beautiful and fragile, strong and fearless."

  "Oh." The single word caught in her throat.

  "That while some trouble of the past has clearly wounded your spirit, you are unafraid to allow your most vulnerable side to emerge."

  How did he know that? Even worse, how did she deal with him knowing that, knowing her like no one else had ever bothered to?

  He moved closer, until his breath tickled her nose. "That you are a grown woman who will laugh and enjoy the pursuits of childhood, with an irresistibility a man would do well to—" He broke off.

  Whaa-aat? Embrace? Resist? Grab hold of? She could swear neither one of them was
breathing. And her heart was going to hammer itself out of her chest any minute and leap into his hands. For safekeeping or to be tossed away. He held it. That much was clear.

  "That you are unlike anyone else whose acquaintance I—he has ever made."

  "And, um…" She struggled to speak. "You think— he'll be able to say all that?"

  Curran blinked, hard. And took a step back, breaking the spell. "I shall speak with him on the matter. When I have finished he shall understand the importance."

  Jane closed the gap between them, unwilling to let the moment go. She might never get another like it.

  She took a deep breath, and a chance she knew she shouldn't. "He won't be able to say it like you just did. Won't be able to—" Her breath caught. "Mean it."

  A long, agonizing silence. "He must," Curran said at last.

  Chapter 19

  Jane gulped. She had a wild, really weird idea, but then with the circumstances surrounding her, that could be a given. Why would she think of anything rational while stuck in the pages of a book? "Curran. Can you arrange for me to be able to talk with Mary? Like you and James do?"

  He didn't answer for a minute. Then, "We do not talk with her."

  "You communicate with her somehow. You always seem to know when she's writing, getting ready to write, is frustrated."

  "It is not through words." He took in a sharp breath, furrowing his brow, as though trying to figure out how to explain it. "Rather it is pictures, thoughts, that pass from her mind through mine. James's experience would be the same."

  "Do you push pictures and thoughts back to her?"

  He shook his head. "It would not be wise."

  Jane absorbed this information. "Did you get that from Mary?"

  "An author shares with her characters only what she deems suitable."

  "A lot of one-way communication going on," Jane mused. Spotting Curran's puzzled look, she reached out to grip his arras. "Please. Show me how. I know we've been thrown in the lire once already and this would be taking a very big chance, but I have to try it, for all of us. I have to."

  Curran gazed upon her earnest face and felt himself quite willing to succumb to any request Jane might choose to make of him. Surely there could be few things more dangerous than a woman whose passionate heart spoke through green eyes that held him captive in their gaze.

  Yet the more characters Mary spoke through and the more that attempted to speak with her, the increasingly untenable the situation could become. Especially given the author's fragile state and faint heart with regard to the tale.

  He closed his eyes, steeling himself to the task. "Jane," he said, shaking his head. "It is not possible."

  "Please, Curran," she asked softly.

  His eyes opened and his resolve weakened. "On the next occasion, it may be the rubbish pile, rather than the fire."

  "Smellier, but not as hot," Jane answered playfully, but there was a resolve in her voice that matched his own. He would have expected as much.

  As he prepared to answer, she added, "Just tell me how. And then trust me."

  She knew not what she asked of him. His trust did not come easily. Or, for that matter, at all. Survival came at a cost. He had paid its price long ago, as a boy brought to a place where he was not wanted. He knew no other way, nor would he have it so.

  Trust her, Jane said. Trust her.

  "Come with me." He began to walk.

  Jane easily fell into step at his side, once he had adjusted his longer stride.

  "Where are we going?" she asked.

  "I shall take you as far as I am able." Farther than he should.

  Perhaps respecting the gravity of the situation, she said nothing. They wound their way through halls and into another wing, where he stopped just before the dining room. "There." He pointed at a painting on the wall, framed in gold.

  Jane followed his hand to the rendering of Mary Bellingham.

  "This is our author," Curran explained. It seemed to him that he should have made the introduction with greater reluctance, but perhaps it was entirely fitting. Jane was the heroine of the tale.

  She took a step toward the painting, searching it intently. He, in the meantime, watched Jane, her soft, light-colored hair glowing in the gaslight of the hall, her face anxiously taking in all the details in the painting. Then she turned to him. "I like her," she said simply, honestly. With an earnestness that pulled tight at his heart. "I will do my best to help her book succeed."

  "As you should," he answered crisply. Then he spun on his heel to walk away before she could see—that, despite an iron resolve and his best intentions…

  He trusted her.

  Curran's abrupt departure left Jane feeling confused and disappointed. She'd hoped he would tell her more about the author whose likeness she saw displayed before her. Curran knew her, she suspected, better than James did. Curran, after all, didn't have the same filter of self-centeredness that James held on to so tightly.

  Not that it was the only reason Jane had hoped Curran would stay.

  But he had chosen to leave, she reminded herself, drawing up her shoulders. And she had her own mission to concentrate on. Get through to Mary Bellingham One woman to another.

  Jane closely examined the painting, determined to memorize each detail of the woman's face. If she couldn't see her, she would have to rely on the artist's impression of Mary.

  James had called her "plain of feature." True, Mary's face was a bit too square, her nose too broad and her lips too thin to be called beautiful. Her hair looked as though it could not bear to curl, even though that was the style of the day. Someone had tried, it seemed, without a lot of success. One tendril in the group held a curl, while the others had gone limp in seeming defeat, leaving an assortment of straight, curled and wavy hair framing her face.

  Mary had a fully upright, almost regal bearing, as though she defied those who might criticize, and her expression appeared quick and sharp. Jane suspected she could see a little of that less-than-pious nature in the curve of Mary's lips. As though there might be a joke only she was in on, but if you asked, she'd let you join in.

  Her dress was properly overwhelming and subdued, revealing little about the figure underneath. And her hands were folded obediently in her lap. She looked directly at the painter with eyes that would seem to miss nothing.

  But she had. She'd missed so much. Seeing only the things about James that she had admired, for all of the wrong reasons. Seeing only what she wanted to believe about Curran. The man he was based on may well have broken the couple up to save Mary from a life of disaster. It may have been the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  The woman in the painting, whose gaze would say she saw everything, hadn't seen her hero for what he really was. And wasn't. Wouldn't be the first, or the last, woman to do that. And now Jane, hardly the champion of putting things right, had to make sure she did.

  As a full moon shined its eerie light downward, Curran, true to his word, delivered his brother to the garden and left after aiming a razor-sharp dagger of a look straight at him. Though Jane's eyes never left Curran, he did not once look at her. She understood. He was determined to make this work. She could only do the same.

  "Hello, James," she said quietly, hands behind her back.

  "Jane." His tone held slightly more warmth than it had previously, but was still light-years removed from a passion that would not be denied.

  Great. This was going to require performances worthy of the Oscars, from both of them. And they wouldn't even get a red carpet out of it.

  No time to waste. "Let's get started," she said.

  "Yes." He nodded, sweeping one gallant hand at the bench. She sat down, arranging herself sideways as Curran had requested, though she thought she knew a little more than he did about how a woman should sit when bent on seduction. A pang of jealousy went through her as she wondered who he had based his perception on. Some woman who had made him crazy with the way she sat? She discarded the thought as quickly as i
t had lodged in her brain. Enough things were making her crazy already. No room for any more.

  She arranged her hands in her lap and glanced up at James. He seemed to be having some trouble with where he would stand, his face agitated as he took a step, then back and then forward again. "Right there, James," she instructed. "That's good."

  He narrowed his gaze and took a step to the right.

  Jane moved her hands from her lap to behind her, on the edge of the bench. Then she drew up her shoulders and arched her back. Not too much, but just enough to make James's eyes widen. When she saw that they had, she gave him a smile. So much for Curran knowing everything.

  If only it were his eyes opening wide.

  "We need to focus now on the garden, right?" Jane asked. "So much that Mary will want to write this scene." Just for fun, she stretched her neck while re-arching her back and ran her tongue slowly over her bottom lip.

  James reacted immediately, taking another step forward.

  Jane put up her palm. "Stay right there, James," she said softly. "And concentrate. Hard."

  This time he did as she asked, closing his eyes and then opening them again.

  Focus, Jane. Focus. The flowers with their wild colors in shadows, stalks bending and lifting as though they could not be contained. The cool stone of the bench beneath her and the privacy of the wall that enclosed them. The crisp, clear full moon against a black night. Jane took it all in, committing it to memory and focusing on a setting so made for romance, Mary would have to write it. She wouldn't be able to resist imagining herself in it. With James.

  James stood as still as Jane sat, apparently practicing his own brand of concentration, though she saw his eyes sweep her from head to toe, lingering in the area of her breasts, which she was doing her level best to show to good advantage.

  Come on, Mary, she pleaded. You can unite this. If I can do it, you can write it.

  All remained still and quiet in the garden as she and James waited. And concentrated.