The Heart of Christmas

by Nicola Cornick; Courtney Milan Mary Balogh

  She was warm against his palms, and oh, it had been so long since he touched another human being. He leaned in and kissed the back of her neck. She tasted of lemon soap. His arms wrapped around her, drawing her against his body. She nestled against his erection, and by God, she did what he’d asked. She didn’t flinch. Instead, she sighed and leaned back into his arms, as if she enjoyed the feel of his touch.

  “Miss Spencer,” he murmured in her ear.

  “You’d better call me Lavinia.”

  His fingers found the ties of her dress and unraveled them carefully. Then he slid the dress off her shoulders. Long muslin sleeves fell away to reveal creamy shoulders, milk-white arms. When the gown hit the floor, she turned in his arms. She was wearing nothing but stays and a chemise. Her skin was warm against his hands and she arched up toward him. Her lips parted. Her eyes shone at him, as if he were her lover instead of the man who’d forced her into this. She’d looked at him that way, just last night in the library. Surely, then, she hadn’t meant to invite a kiss.

  He was not such a fool as to turn down that invitation twice. He kissed her, hard, savoring the feel of her lips against his. She tasted as sweet as a glass of water after a hard day’s labor, felt as welcome as sunshine in the darkness of winter. He pulled her into his embrace roughly. She twitched in surprise when his tongue touched her lips, but she opened her mouth with an eagerness that made up for any apparent inexperience.

  He had to remind himself that she’d not chosen this, that he’d ordered her not to flinch from his advances. It was not real, the way she nestled in his arms. It was not real, the way her hands pressed against his back, pulling his thighs against hers. It was not real, the way she opened up to him. It was all a fraud, obtained through coercion.

  He was impoverished enough that he’d take her caresses anyway.

  She pulled away from him, but only to unlace her stays. As she lifted her arms above her head, a stray shaft of light came through the window and illuminated the outline of her legs through her chemise. She let her stays drop to the ground. She didn’t look up—no doubt suddenly ashamed, aware that William could make out the dusky purple of her areolae through her chemise. A shaft of heat rippled through William, and he could wait no longer.

  Without thinking, he walked forward. His hands slid up her waist. She was separated from him by the thinnest layer of cloth. She shivered as he drew her toward him. And then he leaned forward and closed his mouth around the dusky tip of her nipple. Even through her chemise, he could feel it contract, pebbling under his tongue.

  “Oh!” Her hand clutched his arm spontaneously.

  He licked that hard tip, as if somehow, her response would count as real acquiescence. Maybe, if he was good enough to her, if he brought her to the most trembling peak of pleasure, she would forgive him. Maybe he could give a hint of truth to this lie. He set his leg between hers as he tasted her body, and she ground her hips against him. She was either an incredible actress, determined not to flinch, or she truly wanted him.

  He let one hand skim down her body to the edge of her chemise. He pulled it up, up, until his fingers slipped between her thighs.

  She was not acting. She was silky wet. There was no space in his mind to encompass the wonder of her desire. He was lost, sliding his fingers through her curls until he found the spot that made her arch her back even more. He pinned her against the wall, pressing, tasting, touching, until she trembled, her breathing ragged. And then he sent her spinning over the edge.

  She made a high, keening noise as she came.

  A small sense of intelligence returned as she looked up at him. She was breathing heavily. Her skin glowed. Her chemise was rucked up to her waist. Her body pressed into his. He could feel her heart beat against his chest, feel her ribs expand with her every breath.

  He was still dressed. His member was hard; his body screamed to sheathe himself deep inside her.

  “William?”

  No. He couldn’t fool himself any longer. This was not some delicate virgin, submitting to his coarse lusts out of an excess of familial feeling. This was Lavinia. She was robust, and unbreakable. And for some unknown reason, she was not acting. She wanted him.

  And he shouldn’t take her. Not like this.

  But when he pulled away, she followed. When he hesitated, she set her hands under his shirt. Her fingers slid up his abdomen, over his ribs. Any good intentions that might have entered his mind flared up in smoke, illuminating William’s path to hell. He pulled off his shirt. The air was cold against his bare skin, but Lavinia was warm, and she was caressing him. Her hands slid to his waist. Her mouth found his again, and he could think of nothing but having her skin against his, her flesh pressed naked under his. He pulled his breeches off and pushed her onto the bed.

  She landed and looked up at him. And then—time seemed so slow—she lifted off her chemise. Every fantasy he’d ever had compressed into this one moment. Lavinia Spencer was naked in his bed, lips parted, eyes shining. He spread her knees with his hands and leaned over her. He had a thousand fantasies, but only this one chance. He positioned his member against her hot, wet cleft.

  He should not have been able to think of anything except the pleasure to come, but she looked into his eyes. Her look was so clear, so devoid of guile, that he stopped, arrested on the edge of consummation.

  You don’t have to do this.

  He didn’t know where the thought came from—perhaps some long-atrophied sense of right and wrong had exerted itself. The tip of his penis was wet with her juices. Her nipples had contracted into hard, rose-colored nubs and she lay beneath him, legs spread.

  The next step would be so easy.

  It was not just her innocence he would take. Lavinia’s beauty was not a mere accident that arose from the fall of hair against shoulder, the curves of her breasts, the petals of her sex. No, even now, spread before him like an offering, she glowed with an inner light. Her appeal had as much to do with the innate trust she placed in those around her, in the way she smiled and greeted everyone as if they were worthy of her attention. If he took her, like this, he’d shatter her trust in the world. He would show her that men were fiends at heart, that there was no forgiveness in the world for sins committed by others.

  You don’t have to do this.

  But men were fiends. And there was no forgiveness. He had never been granted any forgiveness.

  He didn’t have to do it, but he did it anyway. He slid into her in one firm thrust, and it was every bit as awful—and as good—as he’d imagined. It was wonderful, because she was sweet and hot and tight about him. It was wonderful, because she was his, now, in the most primal sense. But it was terrible, because he knew what he destroyed with that single thrust. Her hands came involuntarily between them, and he tensed and stopped.

  “William.” She touched his shoulders tentatively, as if he were the one who needed comfort. As if even his vile penetration could not shake her absurd trust in the world. And so he took her, thrusting into her. She clenched around him, the walls of her passage tight around his erection. She brought her hips up to his. And by God, that heat, that pulsing heat that wrapped around him, that cry she gave—it couldn’t have been. She could not have come. But she had, and then he was pumping into her, loosing his seed into her womb and crying out himself, hoarsely.

  As his orgasm faded and his mind cleared of lust, he realized what a despicable man he was. He’d taken her like an animal. Oh, she’d let him—but what choice had he left her? He should have stopped. He should have let her go. Instead, he’d been so intent on himself that he hadn’t cared what she wanted at all. He was as sorry a specimen as had ever been seen.

  He pulled out of her and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her.

  The mattress sagged as she rearranged her weight. “William,” she said.

  He could not bring himself to turn around and see what he’d done. Would her eyes reflect the betrayal of trust?

  “William,” she said. “You
must look at me. I have something to tell you.”

  He knew already what a despicable blackguard he was. He’d taken her virginity, and damn, he’d enjoyed it. But everything had a price, and the price of William’s physical enjoyment would be this: her cold censure, and a speech that he hoped would cut him to ribbons. He deserved worse. And so he turned.

  There was no judgment in her eyes—just a quiet, unfathomable serenity.

  “When I told you my brother was not yet one-and-twenty,” she said, “I did not intend to engage your sympathies. I was trying to point out that he is legally an infant. He is incapable of forming a contract. That promissory note is unenforceable.”

  William’s mind went blank. Instead of thoughts, his head seemed to fill with water from the bottom of a lake—chilled liquid, dwelling where light could not filter.

  “You had nothing to coerce me with,” she continued. “You could not have done. No magistrate would have compelled my brother to pay the debt.”

  Her words skipped like stones over the surface of his thoughts. Hadn’t he coerced her? He was sure he’d forced her into his bed. He deserved her condemnation. Damn it, he wanted it.

  Instead, he was as empty as the wick of a candle that had just been extinguished. “Oh,” he said. That one bare word didn’t seem enough, so he added another. “Well.” Other thoughts flitted through his mind, but they were also single syllables, and rather the sort that could not be uttered in front of a member of the gentler sex. Even if he had treated her in a most ungentle manner.

  There was a vital difference between lust and love. It had been lust—desperate lust for her body—that had brought him to this point. Lust did not care about the loss of a woman’s virtue. Lust did not care if a woman’s feelings were wounded. Lust howled, and it wanted slaking. It didn’t give a fig as to how the deed was accomplished. Lust was a beast, and one he’d nurtured well with a decade of resentment.

  William thought of his four pounds ten a quarter—eighteen pounds per year of drudgery—and of the many years ahead of him while he garnered the recognition and the recommendations he would need so that he could one day become a man who earned…what, twenty-three pounds a year? He thought of the hole in Lavinia’s glove, and her brother asking when she’d last had a new dress.

  “Lavinia,” he said carefully, “I don’t deserve such a gift.”

  “Nobody gets gifts because he deserves them.” She stood up and shook out her wrinkled chemise. “You get gifts because the giver wants to give them.”

  She wasn’t arguing. She wasn’t throwing herself at him. She wasn’t weeping and carrying on. If she had done any of those things, he could have borne it. But she exuded a calm, cool competence that lay entirely outside William’s understanding.

  “I can’t support a wife,” he continued. “And even if I could, I’m not the man for you, Lavinia.”

  She reached for her dress. “I knew that the minute you tried to coerce me into your bed.”

  He shifted and fixed his gaze past her on the blighted tree outside his narrow window. “Then why did you agree to it? You had no need.”

  She had not trembled when he’d threatened her, when he’d made his horrible proposition. She had not shivered, not even when he’d claimed her body. But her hands betrayed the tiniest of tremors as she fastened her dress and reached for her cloak.

  “No need? You said that everything worthwhile had a price. You were wrong. You are absolutely and without question the most completely misinformed man in all of creation. Everything really worth having,” she said, “is free.”

  “Free?”

  “Given,” she said, “without expectation of return.” And she looked up at him, a fierce light in her eyes. “I wanted to show you.”

  That clear trust in her eyes was unbroken yet. He’d taken her virginity. How had she managed to keep her innocence?

  “I have no notion what love is,” he told her, almost in a panic. “None at all.”

  She picked up her cloak and shook it out. It flared about her shoulders and then fell, obscuring in thick wool the figure he had seen in such heartbreaking detail mere minutes before. “Well,” she said. “Perhaps one day you’ll figure it out.”

  And like that, she slipped past him. He listened, unmoving, as she stepped down the stairs and out of his life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Lavinia slowly climbed the stairs to the family rooms above the lending library. She ached all over, a vital, restless throb that twinged in every muscle.

  “Lavinia?” Her father’s weak call came from across the way. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Papa.” She took off her cloak and hung it on a peg by the door. Half boots followed. “I went out on a…constitutional after service. I’ll freshen up and join you shortly.”

  She ducked into her own room.

  As far as the basics went, her small chamber was not so different from William’s. The walls were whitewashed, the furniture plain and simple, and almost identical to his: washstand, bed, chair and a chest of drawers. Lavinia crossed to the other side of the room and poured water from a pitcher into the basin. As she washed, she examined her reflection in the mirror.

  She knew what she was supposed to see. This was the face of a girl who’d been ruined. A woman of easy virtue.

  The face that peeked back at her looked exactly the same as the one she’d seen in the mirror this morning. There was no giant proclamation writ across her forehead, denouncing her as unchaste. Her eyes did not glow a diabolical red. They weren’t even demonically pink. And her body still felt as though it belonged to her—sore, yes, and tingling in ways that she’d never before experienced—but still hers. Perhaps more so.

  He didn’t love her.

  Well. So? The reckless infatuation she’d felt hours before had been transmuted into something far more complex and…and cobwebby. She wasn’t sure if the emotion that lodged deep in her gut was love. It felt more like longing. Maybe it had always been longing. In the year since he’d first started coming to their library, he’d looked at her. Until recently, however, he’d always looked away.

  It had been an unpleasant surprise when he’d put his proposition to her so baldly—and so badly. But it hadn’t taken her long to understand why he’d chosen to approach her in such a fundamentally uncouth manner. She’d realized with an unbearable certainty that he was deeply unhappy.

  In generalities, her room was not so different from William’s. But the specifics…There were nineteen years of memories stored in this room. A blue knit shawl, a gift from her father, draped over one side of her chest of drawers. A lopsided painting of daisies, a present James had given her two years ago, hung next to the mirror. A pine box on her nightstand contained all of Lavinia’s jewelry—a gold chain and her late mother’s wedding ring. These were not mere things, of course; they were memories, physical embodiments of the nineteen years that Lavinia had lived. They were proof that people loved her. Her brother had similar items in his room—a stone he’d picked up years ago on the beach in Brighton, the pearl pendant he’d inherited from his mother, to one day give his wife, and the penknife Lavinia had scrimped to buy him.

  Where did William keep his memories? There had been nothing—not so much as a pressed flower—in his quarters. Not a single physical item indicated that he passed through life in contact with others. He must hold his memories entirely inside him.

  It seemed a dreadfully lonesome place to keep them.

  Things had emotional heft. Lavinia did not imagine a man avoided all mementos because he had been blessed with an inordinate number of good memories. That William had felt compelled to resort to blackmail, when she’d been so giddily inclined to him, said rather more about the light in which he saw himself than how he saw her. For all the harshness of his words, he’d touched her as if he worshipped her. He’d caressed her and held her and brought her to a pleasure that still had her limbs trembling. He might claim to have had no notion of love, but he’d not
approached her as if her touches were credits on a balance sheet.

  “Vinny?” James swung her door open without so much as a knock.

  Luckily, the same absorption that led James to ignore Lavinia’s privacy meant he did not notice her dress was overwrinkled. He did not look in her eyes and see the telltale glow that lit them.

  “Vinny,” he said again, “have you taken care of my note yet? Because I could—I mean, I should help.”

  And how could she answer? She hadn’t taken care of his note. But James wouldn’t have to worry about the matter ever again. As for William…

  Lavinia pasted a false smile across her lips. “You have nothing to worry about,” she said. “It’s all taken care of. He’s all taken care of.”

  Or he will be, soon.

  IT SEEMED INCONCEIVABLE to William that life should continue on as usual the morning after he’d damned himself. The night passed nonetheless. The London streets a few blocks over awoke and rumbled as a hundred sellers prepared for market. Not only did the clock continue on schedule, but—as if fate itself were laughing up its sleeve at him—they marched inexorably on to Monday morning.

  Monday. After he’d betrayed all finer points of civilization, nothing so trivial as a Monday morning should have been allowed to exist. And yet Monday persisted.

  When William stepped on the streets, he shrank into the shoulders of his coat and pulled his hat over his eyes. But as he walked down Peter Street, nobody raised the hue and cry. No cries of “Stop! Despoiler of women!” followed his steps. Yesterday he’d snared an innocent woman in his bed by the foulest of means. Today nobody even gave him a second glance.

  Up until the moment when William arrived at the gray Portland stone building where he worked, just opposite Chancery Lane, the day seemed a Monday much like every other Monday that had come before: gray, dreary and unfortunately necessary. But as soon as William opened the door to the office, he knew that this was not going to be an ordinary Monday.

  It was going to be worse. Everyone, from Mr. Dunning, the manager, to Jimmy, the courier boy, sat stiffly. There were no jokes, no exchanged conversations. David Holder, one of William’s fellow clerks, inclined his head ever so slightly to the left.