CHAPTER TWO
LAVINIA WOKE TO A CLOUD of thick, choking smoke. Her first panicked thought was that the books downstairs had somehow caught fire, that their livelihood, half owned by creditors, was going up in flames. But then her conscious mind caught up to her racing fears and she correctly cataloged the smell.
It was the more mundane—and rather more unpleasant—scent of burning porridge.
Frowning, Lavinia pulled a wrapper over her nightdress and padded out into the front room.
James, his hands blackened with soot, was juggling a pot. The vessel let off billows of gray smoke, its sides streaked black.
“Ah,” he said essaying a weak smile. “Lavinia! I made breakfast for you.”
She didn’t dare respond, not even with so little as a raised eyebrow.
He peered into the pot, frowning. “There’s still some white bits in here. Isn’t it odd that porridge turns yellow when it burns? I’d have thought it would go directly to black.” He prodded the mass with a spoon, then shrugged and looked up. “Want some?”
Over fifteen years, Lavinia had become quite fluent in the foreign tongue known as Younger Brother. It was a tricky language, mostly because it employed words and phrases that sounded, deceptively, as if they were proper English.
For instance, the average woman off the street would have thought that James had just offered her burned porridge. Lavinia knew better. What James had actually said was, “Sorry I stole your money. I made you breakfast by way of apology. Forgive me?”
Lavinia sighed and waved her hand. “Give me a bowl.”
That was Younger Brother for: “Your porridge is disgusting, but I love you nonetheless.”
By unspoken consensus, as they prepared a tray to bring to their father in bed, James cut a slice of bread and Lavinia slipped it on a toasting fork. Ill as their father was, there was no need to punish him with either the details of James’s transgression or an indigestible breakfast.
And perhaps, Lavinia thought as she choked down the nauseating glutinous mass, that was the essence of love. Love wasn’t about reasons. It wasn’t about admiring fine qualities. Love was a language all on its own, composed of gestures that seemed incomprehensible, perhaps even pointless, to the outside observer.
Speaking of the inarticulate language of love, what had Mr. William Q. White meant by his outrageous behavior last night? Come find me, he’d said. His words had seemed to come straight from her imagination.
But surely he hadn’t meant for her to look up the address he’d given when he applied for a subscription? Surely he didn’t mean she should pay him a visit? A woman who intended to keep her virtue did not visit a man, even if he did have lovely eyes and a voice that spoke of dark seduction. Especially if he had those features. Lavinia had gone nineteen years without making any errors at all on that front.
As it happens, I prefer Lavinia. Come find me.
She didn’t need to remember the heat of his gaze as he looked at her to know he hadn’t asked her to pay an innocent little morning call.
And yet what had her streak of perfection gotten her? Months and months of painstaking tallies had done her no good. Her coins were gone and the very thought of the barren holiday that awaited her family made her palms grow cold.
This somewhat dubious rationale brought Lavinia to the dark, imposing door of 12 Norwich Court. It was not quite an hour after noon, but a dark gray cloud hovered over the tall, bulky houses and blocked all hint of the feeble sun. A wild wind whipped down the street, carrying with it the last few tired leaves from some faraway square and the earthy scent of winter mold. Lavinia pulled her cloak about her in the gloom.
This residential street—little more than a dingy alley, really—was occupied at present only by an orange cat. The animal was a solitary spot of color against the gray-streaked buildings. In the next hour, Lavinia’s life could change. Completely. Before she could reconsider, she rapped the knocker firmly against the door. She could feel the blood pounding in her wrists.
And then she waited. She’d almost convinced herself there was nothing unsafe or untoward about this visit. According to the subscription card, Mr. William Q. White had a room on the second floor of a house owned by Mrs. Jane Entwhistle—a cheerful, elderly widow who sometimes visited the lending library in search of gothic novels. Mrs. Entwhistle would doubtless be willing to play chaperone at Lavinia’s request. She might even be kindhearted enough to look the other way.
The door opened.
“Oh, Mrs. Entwhistle,” Lavinia started. And then she stopped.
It was not the bustling widow who’d opened the door, nor Mary Lee Evans, the scullery maid who was the object of Mrs. Entwhistle’s complaints.
Behind the threshold, Mr. William Q. White stood in his shirtsleeves. He was in a shocking state of dishabille. Beneath that single layer of rough white linen, Lavinia could make out the broad line of his shoulders, and the sleek curve of muscles. His cuffs had been folded up, and she could see fine lines of hair at his wrist. She peeped behind him. Surely the respectable Mrs. Entwhistle wouldn’t countenance such laxity of dress.
The widow was nowhere to be seen.
She glanced down the street. The cat sat, licking its paws, on a step three houses down.
“Mrs. Entwhistle is gone for the week to celebrate Christmas with her granddaughter.” He raised his gaze to her. It ought to have been cold; his every word came out in a puff of white in the chilled air. But his eyes were hot, and suddenly, so was Lavinia.
“Mary Lee?” she asked in a squeak.
“Given the week off. Come in before you catch your death.”
Her imagination gave those words a wicked quality—as if he’d asked her to catch something else instead. It was that accent again, that lilt in his voice that she just couldn’t place. It made her think of unspeakable things, no matter how innocent his intentions.
But no, it was not just her imagination. It was a terribly wicked notion to enter a home alone with a young, attractive—very attractive—partially clothed man. Why, he might take liberties. He might take lots of them.
He smiled at her, a mischievous grin that unfolded across his face. Maybe it was her imagination again, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“I can’t come in. It wouldn’t be proper.”
“I give you my word,” he said carefully, “that I shall not do anything to you without your permission.”
As reassurances went, this lacked some basic quality of…assurance.
“Your word as a gentleman?”
His lip curled slightly. “I’m hardly that.”
Well, then. “What do you mean, without my permission? I could easily give permission to—”
She stopped herself before she could complete the sentence. Not only because she was embarrassed by her unintended admission, but because if she started cataloging the things she might let him do, given the proper persuasion, she would never stop with a mere peck on the cheek. He was a mere twelve inches from her, on the threshold. She could see him complete her sentence. His pupils dilated. His gaze slipped down her body, a caress that was almost palpable. His Adam’s apple bobbed, once.
Still he didn’t say anything. It was one thing to have him look the other way when she wished him a merry Christmas, or asked him what he’d thought of the Adam Smith he returned. It was quite another to admit she wanted a kiss, and to have him remain silent.
“Say something,” Lavinia begged. “Say anything.”
He moved closer. “Come inside with me.” His voice enfolded her like warm velvet. And still he looked at her, those dark eyes boring into her, then settling against her lips like a caress.
No. She was past the point of fooling herself. Whatever Mr. William Q. White had done with the address, she had little doubt that if she followed him inside, she would likely be kissed quite thoroughly indeed. She’d known it all along. Perhaps, even, that was why she’d come. And this time he’d said aloud what she’d always imagined. Come inside with me.
She untied her bonnet strings and followed him inside.
The entry was cold and dark and empty, and Mr. White didn’t even stop to take her things. Instead, he hustled her up two flights of stairs. The halls of the second landing lacked the soft, feminine furnishings that Mrs. Entwhistle employed downstairs. Instead, they had a Spartan, military look. The walls were the stark yellow of age-faded whitewash.
Mr. White glanced at her, his lips pressed together, and then turned down a silent hall into a back room. The furniture was austere wood. From ceiling to baseboard, there was not even a hint of color on the unadorned walls. A white washstand bore a white pitcher and—a sign that she was in territory that was undeniably masculine—a black-handled razor. A single window looked out over a desolate, gray yard. A solitary tree, stripped to its bare branches by winter, huddled sullenly in the center.
And Lavinia was looking everywhere but in the corner, where there was a bed. It was as cold and forbidding as the rest of the room, made perfectly, without the smallest wrinkle in the white linens.
Abed. This visit was becoming most improper indeed.
Mr. White pulled up a chair—the lone chair in the room, a straight-backed wooden affair—for Lavinia. She sat.
He walked over to a small table and picked up a piece of paper.
“I’ve purchased your brother’s promissory note,” he said stiffly.
She hadn’t quite known what to expect. “I hope you didn’t pay the full ten pounds for it,” she said. “Why would you do such a thing?”
He sat on the bed and fiddled with his rolled-up cuffs. She could see the blue lines of veins in his wrist. His fingers were quite long, and Lavinia could imagine them touching her cheek, a gentle tap-tap, in tune with the ditty he beat on his palm now. She wondered whether Mrs. Entwhistle often visited relatives, and if so, whether Mr. White regularly entertained women in his quarters.
But no. He was far too ill at ease. A practiced seducer would have plied her with brandy. He would have made her laugh. Certainly he would not have made her sit in this hard and uncomfortable chair. And he would not have said so little.
“Why do you suppose,” he said, “I’ve asked to talk with you rather than your brother?”
“Because I’m more reasonable than him?”
“Because,” he said uneasily, not quite meeting her eyes, “you—or rather, your body—is the only currency that can persuade me to part with that note.”
It took her a second to unravel his meaning. He wasn’t hoping for a kiss given out of gratitude. He wasn’t even going to attempt a somewhat awkward seduction. Instead, he was trying to coerce her. There had been something magical about the looks he’d given her, occluded as they’d been with his two-word greetings. She’d felt as if they were uncovering a mutual secret—a world where Lavinia could forget the strain of trying to hold her family together. She could pretend for just one instant that nothing mattered but that she was a young woman, desired by an attractive young man.
But her own wishes were of no importance to him. If he was trying to force her in this ridiculous fashion, he saw nothing mutual at all about their desire. She had the sudden feeling of vertigo, as if the room were spinning about her, the floor very far away. As if she’d added all the lines in the ledger between them, and found that her tally did not match his coins.
Lavinia folded her arms about her for warmth.
“Mr. William Q. White,” she said calmly. “You are a despicable blackguard.”
WILLIAM KNEW HE WAS a despicable blackguard. Only the worst of fellows would have tried to claim a woman he could not marry. But he wanted her enough that he almost didn’t care.
“I suppose you think I should forgive your brother’s debt,” William heard himself say.
“I do.”
“And what would I stand to gain by that?”
She dropped her eyes. “He is not yet twenty-one, you see.”
As if such a fact would have swayed him. Her brother was older than fourteen, and at that age William had first become responsible for his own care. Since then, he’d labored for every scrap of comfort. He’d had nothing handed to him—not a penny, not a kind word and certainly not a sister who shielded him from every discomfort.
“You will soon learn,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended, “that everything has a cost.” Coal and blankets in grim lodging houses cost pennies. The eye-straining labor of his apprenticeship had cost him his youth. For years, he’d spent his late nights reading business and agriculture by the dim red glow of the fire, not for pleasure or enjoyment, but to keep alive the futile dream that one day he would be asked to take his place managing funds that might have belonged to him. Mr. Sherrod’s will had just stolen that dream from him, too. Oh, yes, William knew everything about cost.
Her color heightened. If he were the sort to engage in self-delusion, he’d imagine that the pink flush on her cheeks was desire. But the breaths that lifted her bosom had to be fear. Fear at his proximity. Fear that a man, intent and closeted alone with her, was looking down at her with such intensity.
But she did not shrink back, not even when he stood and walked toward her. She didn’t falter when he stopped inches from her. She did not quail when he towered over her and peered into the pure blue of her eyes.
Instead, she huffed. “You have not taken my meaning. It is surely in your best interests to collect on the debt owed over time. After all…”
Her voice was husky. Her breath whispered against his lips. He inhaled. Her scent coiled in his veins and joined the throbbing pulse of blood through his body.
“My interest?” His voice was quiet. “I assure you, my only interest is in your body.”
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. And that long, smooth column of throat contracted in a swallow.
And then, inexplicable woman that she was, Lavinia smiled. “You’re not very good at this, are you? It works better if you give your villainy at least a thin veneer of pleasantry.”
He might have been a blackguard, but he had no intention of being a liar. “Nothing really worth having is free. If the cost of having you is your hatred, I’ll pay it.”
She didn’t shrink from him. Instead, she tilted her head, as if seeing him at an angle would change his requirements. The pulse in her throat beat rapidly—one, two, three, he counted, all the way up to twenty-two, before she raised her chin.
“Am I worth having, then? At this cost to yourself?”
“You’re worth ten pounds.” It was heresy to say those words, heresy to place so low a value on her. It was heresy even to think of someone as low as him touching a woman as incomparable as her. But he was going to be in hell all his life. He wanted one memory, one dream to keep with him in the years of drudgery that would surely follow. He’d have traded his soul to the devil to have her. A little heresy would hardly signify.
She stood. On her feet, she was mere inches from him. “You believe,” she said, her voice unsteady, “that you must purchase the best things in life. With bank notes.”
“I have no other currency to barter with.”
She met his eyes. “Is there anything you want in addition to my body? That is—will once be enough, or will this turn into a…a regular occurrence?”
A regular occurrence. His body tensed at the thought. He wanted everything about her. Her smile, when she saw him; her sudden laughter, breaking like a sunrise in the night of his life. He wanted her, over and over, body and soul and spirit. But that was all well out of his price range. And so he asked for the one thing he thought he might get.
“I want one other thing,” he said. “When I touch you, I want you not to flinch.”
She frowned in puzzlement at this proclamation. As she bit her lip, she reached for the catch of her cloa
k. She fumbled with the ties, and then removed the wool from her shoulders, folding the cloth into a careful square. The dress underneath was a faded rose, the fabric old enough that it had shaped itself to the curves of her hips. He’d seen her in the gown before, but never while he stood close enough to touch.
She tugged on her left glove, loosening each finger before rolling the material down her arm. He noted, with some distraction, that there was a tiny hole in the index finger. Her fingers seemed impossibly slender.
“Very well,” she said. “I agree.”
He hadn’t really believed it would happen. He had passed last night, after he’d retrieved her brother’s note of promise, in a delirium of dazzled lust. But up until this moment, he’d expected her to walk away, snatched from him like all his other dreams. She removed her second glove, as slowly as she’d taken off the first, and aligned the two precisely before setting them atop her cloak. He swallowed. When she slid the pins from her hair, letting that coiled mass of cinnamon spill down her back, he realized he was really going to have her. Somehow, this impossible plan had worked.
If he were a gentleman, he’d stop now and send her on her way.
She turned her back to him—not, he realized, to hide her face. No, Lavinia didn’t shrink from him. Instead, she lifted the mass of her hair so that he could unlace her dress.
The gesture gave him a perfect view of the back of her neck. It was slim and long. He could make out the delicate swells of her spine. Up until this point, nothing truly untoward had happened, except in William’s mind. But once he touched her—once he unlaced that gown—it would be too late for them both. If he had any strength of character at all, he’d leave her untouched. But all his strength had turned into pounding blood, thundering through his veins. And if he had any will at all, it was directed toward this—this moment of heaven, stolen from the angel who had haunted his dreams for a year.
He would never find forgiveness if he took her, but then he’d been damned for a decade. All he would ever know of paradise was Lavinia. And so he laid his hands on her waist and claimed his damnation.
The Heart of Christmas Page 20