Private Passions

by Felicia Greene

  ‘Alright.’ He spoke a little more softly, watching the colour on Brenda’s cheeks deepen. ‘I will come to you.’

  Holding the puppy aloft like some sort of offering, ignoring its irritated yaps, he began to swim towards her. He swam very well—his previous spying career had made it necessary to move well in all contexts—and for a glorious minute, Selby was sure that he was making a good impression. Just a little further, another athletic sweep of his arm, and he could stand in the shallow waters of the lake edge like some sort of classical statue, bearing flowers and dogs in the manner of a harvest deity…

  As he reached the shallows, he attempted to stand erect. Unfortunately, with a cry that couldn’t be described as godlike no matter how partial the listener, he slipped in the soft mud with a wild wheeling of his arms.

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ He watched Brenda start forward; as the puppy began slipping from Selby’s grip, he saw Brenda catch the wiggling creature in her gloved hands. She did not attempt to catch Selby, who collapsed into the mud with an inarticulate stream of blasphemy. After spending a moment on his hands and knees, looking down at his ruined breeches, he slowly and clumsily stood up with a sigh.

  ‘Goodness. He is a lively little fellow.’ Brenda was stroking the puppy’s head; Selby watched the creature whine and wiggle with pleasure, wondering if he would do something similar if Brenda caressed his head and ears in the same way. ‘I can see why he led you such a merry dance.’

  ‘It was hardly a difficult chase.’ Selby shrugged; a lily slipped wetly off of his shoulder, falling back into the lake with a small splash. ‘I am at least as active as a hound, especially a small one.’

  ‘Yes.’ Brenda looked down delicately. ‘And about as dressed as the average hound.’

  ‘Oh, goodness.’ Selby remembered, with a swift stab of awareness, that he was practically unclothed. ‘I shall put on my shirt immediately.’

  ‘Well… I suppose.’ Brenda was concentrating intensely on the grass. ‘But really, the harm is already done.’

  Selby had certainly never considered himself a blushing kind of man. After a comment as clumsily brazen as Brenda’s, however, he wondered if the slight burning he felt in his cheeks would ever go away.

  They stood for a moment in fraught, meaningful silence. The puppy’s yaps faded away as he looked from one human to the other, his wide-eyed expression full of foolish enthusiasm.

  ‘Winston.’

  Selby thought he had imagined the word. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Winston. That shall be his name. And seeing as he has already dampened my gloves, I believe that you should take him. He will make an atrocious mess of the flowers in my basket, thinking about it.’ Brenda handed a wriggling Winston back to Selby, who reflexively hugged him to his chest. ‘Please try not to let him jump into the lake again.’

  ‘I did not let him before! Lord knows where he comes from—he looks like a village whelp!’

  ‘Well, now he is your whelp.’ Brenda folded her arms. ‘Winston now belongs to you.’

  ‘I see.’ Selby looked down at Winston, who looked back at him with utter adoration. ‘Now that you have saddled me with a hound and upbraided me as to his keeping, is there anything else you wish to say to me?’

  He rather hoped she had more to say to him. He hoped that she wished to do something to him, whether that was wagging her finger at him or picking a lily petal from his bare shoulder. Or leaning closer to him, taking no notice of the mud and lake-water covering his body, and parting her lips for a long, dizzying kiss…

  ‘No.’ Brenda sounded doubtful; there was room for hope in her tone, and Selby hung tight to it. ‘No, I do not think there is anything else.’

  Selby knew he was moving beyond the bounds of correct conversation, but he found he couldn’t stop himself. It was as if their discourse was slipping into an ancient pattern; something far vaster than the two of them, far grander, was making itself felt. ‘Are you… are you completely sure about that, Miss Hartwell?’

  Brenda paused. Selby watched her lips deepen in colour as she bit them, hoping against hope that parts of his anatomy remembered they were all-but-exposed.

  ‘... Yes.’ She said it with a breathless half-sigh, one that only increased the pain that Selby felt at hearing it. ‘Completely sure.’

  She curtseyed. Before Selby could think of a way to detain her further, she was tramping resolutely back to the lawns. Winston yapped excitedly at her retreating back, as if shouting at her to stay; Selby, looking down at the puppy with new admiration, felt rather envious of the animal.

  ‘She even stroked your ears.’ He said it with a touch of mild jealousy, stroking the puppy’s head. ‘Aren’t you a lucky little horror.’

  One of the firmest resolutions that Brenda had made, when deciding to be a person more worthy of friendship, was not to mope. She had been much given to moping before, believing that gentlemen of a certain calibre required sighing and swooning over at intervals throughout the day. Not only love, imagined or true, had been an excuse for delicately languid reflection—Brenda recalled with some embarrassment than any number of small setbacks, from a torn petticoat to a cloudy day, had led to tearful afternoons spent in front of a mirror or sprawled elegantly on the lawns of her country seat.

  Now, alas, moping was not allowed. It had been replaced with the idea of being useful; a somewhat uncomfortable idea, and a dispiriting one when viewed from midday onwards. But Brenda, sitting awkwardly in her bedroom as evening slid slowly into night, already felt too dispirited to do anything else… and as she caught sight of her furrowed brow in her mirror, she realised with a shiver of horror that moping was on the horizon.

  ‘No.’ She murmured distractedly to herself as she stood, almost knocking her hairbrush onto the floor. She had already begun to undress; the maid had unlaced a quarter of her bodice before Brenda had sent her away, unaccountably irritated at the cheerfulness of the young woman’s manner. As she looked around her room, noting with a pained expression that there was nothing to tidy, mend or fold, she wondered how on earth she was meant to be of any use to anyone.

  You were terribly useful yesterday morning. Her inner voice had been more powerful than usual lately; Brenda could almost imagine how it looked, spiky and judgemental, one finger wagging. You helped James Selby out of the lake with an unhealthy amount of eagerness.

  ‘Stop this.’ Brenda’s murmur to herself was sharper than usual. ‘Be useful. Think of something useful to do.’

  Why? Now the voice was positively irritating. Because otherwise you are going to moon and mope over James Selby?

  ‘No.’ Brenda smoothed down her skirts, her mouth twisted into a grim line. ‘Because there is always, always, some way to be of use.’

  The declaration sounded better in the supportive privacy of her bedroom than the dark, silent corridor, where even the strongest resolutions seemed to lack courage. Brenda, holding her candle high as she made her way down the stairs, found herself whispering the words in the manner of a prayer.

  ‘There will be some way to be of use.’ She tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs, wondering vaguely where she should go. Kitchens were always busy places, even at the dead of night; there would be overlooked crumbs to clear away, or a piece of cheese to eat. Brenda wasn’t entirely sure how eating a large quantity of cheese would be useful, exactly, but she was willing to begin the process in order to make discoveries.

  The alternative was going to a particularly atmospheric room; the library, for example, or perhaps even the gardens. Walking out onto the moonlit lawns, candle in hand, and… and considering destiny.

  Destiny was a powerful word. Brenda couldn’t in all honesty describe the vast majority of her life’s encounters as destined; despite all of her best efforts, most of the gentlemen she had met appeared to have arrived quite by chance. Whereas James Selby… James Selby, naked to the waist, standing in a lake like some ancient river god…

  ‘Be useful.’ Brenda pinched her upper arm with a slight wi
nce, the candle flame wavering. ‘Sooner rather than later.’

  She hadn’t spoken to anyone about the encounter. That was unusual in itself. She had convinced herself that she hadn’t wished to involve Isabella, Poppy, Ellen and Matilda in such a foolish bit of nonsense, but… but here, in the darkness of the sleeping house, it was quite difficult to convince herself of anything so silly.

  A door lay half-open a little way ahead of her. Brenda furrowed her brow, trying to remember what the room was said to be; the tour at the beginning of her stay had been rather long, and she had been much more interested in the kitchens. Perhaps it was a storeroom, or the room where they kept the billiard table—or, thinking about it, a bedroom.

  Whose bedroom? Her inner voice could be decidedly unpleasant when it wanted. Brenda, deciding that no-one would be sleeping with the door ajar on a night as unexpectedly chilly as this, pushed the door fully open as she held her breath.

  The theatre! Of course. She sagged with relief, taking in the charm of the red velvet curtains; it was an odd conceit, having a small theatre in a private residence, but apparently the previous custodians of the Harding estate were more dramatic than the current duke. Brenda approached the stage, breathing in the traces of wood and greasepaint that seemed to accompany any place where plays were held, a small smile already on her face.

  There were many ways to be useful in a theatre. Even an empty one, one as well-kept as this, would have little jobs that needed doing by anonymous hands. Scraps of costume fabric that needed clearing away, sheet music that needed weighing down with something heavy, cobwebbed corners that required a strong shoulder and a lot of elbow grease…

  Brenda climbed onto the stage with more than a little clumsiness. Moving one of the curtains to one side, trying to avoid the thick tangles of rope that either weighted down or kept suspended a large portion of the whole structure, she looked up with the focused, determined expression of a hunter tracking prey.

  There was a thick, undisturbed layer of dust on one of the rafters. Brenda stared at it with a slightly wider smile, her general urge to be useful suddenly, happily focused onto one small point.

  That rafter couldn’t be very hard to reach, surely? Yes, no maid had apparently ever managed it—but the house was vast, and they were the first guests in quite some time, and none of the household staff would be quite so astonishingly willing to distract themselves as she, Brenda Hartwell, was. She would clean the rafter, clean it with the hem of her dress, and lose all of her distressing thoughts with each stroke.

  All she had to do was reach the rafter. Brenda, biting her lip, nodded happily to herself as she looked at one of the thick coils of rope hanging down from the distant ceiling. Climbing a rope was no difficult task—it would have been almost impossible in one of her old, restrictive garments, but a half-unlaced dress was almost as good as nakedness when it came to freedom of movement. She would need to wrap the rope quite tightly around her palm, of course, to make sure it would take her weight, but after that it would be little more than the most basic—

  The rope, already securely wrapped in her fist, went taut. Brenda heard a distant thump; a weight, something heavy, had fallen from the rafters. A weight attached to the rope—and if she remembered what little she had learned of scientific principles, if something came down…

  … Something had to go up.

  ‘Oh!’ A terrified cry escaped Brenda as her feet left the floor. She had to let go of the rope, but her palm was far too tightly coiled. Dropping her candle, hearing the sizzle and hiss as it extinguished itself, she reached out to another rope as she flew higher. Gripping it with all her might, Brenda was horrified to feel a knot loosen and then tighten around two of her fingers as she frantically clawed at it.

  She was trapped. Trapped in mid-air, to be precise, her hands raised high above her head. Trapped in a dark, sleeping house, with no staff awake and ready to cut down the most stupid woman alive.

  ‘Help!’ Why, when she needed a strident scream, could she summon up little more than a whimper? ‘Help! Please, help!’

  She had to be louder, or she would be hanging here until Christmas. Brenda, breathing deeply as panic threatened to unsettle her entirely, let out an embarrassing sob of relief as she heard footsteps in the corridor.

  Thank the Lord. Someone else was awake. Someone who would kindly, and discreetly, cut her down without waking half the house. It would be Isabella’s husband, perhaps; Victor Bale, who was rather shy, or perhaps even Ellen’s husband. Someone who would take this embarrassing secret to the grave, and very possibly beyond it.

  Really? Her inner voice chimed in, uncannily precise. Are those the most likely candidates? Who have you met unexpectedly in recent days, my dear?

  ‘No.’ The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. ‘No, no, no…’

  ‘Hello?’ Oh, Lord, his voice. James Selby’s voice. ‘Is someone… Oh.’

  Brenda stared, silent, as Selby looked at her from across the room.

  There was no possible way to exit this situation with any kind of elegance. The most she could hope for was a kind of residual dignity; the kind afforded to a very old woman, or a foolish child. She would, of course, be completely unable to speak to James Selby after this episode—hopefully he would do the decent thing and simply leave the estate. Possibly the country.

  Brenda swallowed. Quite why Selby had to look so damnably handsome when he discovered her like this, she really didn’t know. They way circumstances had presented themselves, well, it was…

  … It was almost like destiny.

  ‘Your Grace.’ She looked at him as haughtily as she could, swinging gently on the end of the rope as her hands began to redden. ‘Were you looking for me?’

  As a matter of fact, Selby had been looking for brandy. Looking for any sort of strong drink, up to and including the hideous grog that the groomsmen drank when the horses had been given their mash. Anything, anything at all, to help him sleep—to help him drown out his thoughts, which had become more and more unhelpful ever since the incident at the lake.

  He also needed to find some sort of rag for Winston. The puppy, which had ended up occupying the foot of his bed with a self-possession that was very admirable, kept chewing on his feet. Selby had finally given up, depositing Winston into a fluffy pile of clean sheets in an open drawer, and escaped the bedroom as the puppy began to snore.

  Perhaps if Winston were chewing on something that wasn’t flesh, and he were reasonably drunk, he would be able to stop thinking. Thinking in very specific terms about Brenda Hartwell; namely Brenda swimming in the lake, swimming to him, her dress clinging to her curves with brazen tightness as she smilingly curled into his arms… and every word he had ever exchanged with Brenda Hartwell, every ballroom conversation or tea room observation, now full of a new appreciation of just how fascinating the woman was to talk to.

  ‘Stop thinking.’ Lord knows he had never spoken aloud to himself during his working life; spies who expressed their innermost thoughts to the open air met swift and unpleasant ends. The words had slipped from him as he had walked down the corridor, searching for escape, searching for something…

  And now, in a completely unexpected turn of events, he had found Brenda Hartwell. Brenda Hartwell, hanging from the rafters of the theatre, her dress slipping low on her shoulders, her face an utterly quixotic mixture of terror and embarrassment.

  Were you looking for me? Selby realised, in that exact moment, that he had been.

  Brenda sighed. ‘You are going to say something insufferable. I just know it.’

  ‘Entirely incorrect. I am going to say plenty of insufferable things.’ Selby couldn’t help smiling at Brenda’s aggrieved air—how could anyone resist teasing someone so deliciously ripe for teasing? ‘I have a whole basket of them, ready to use at the least provocation.’

  ‘If you are going to behave in such a manner, sir, then leave me for someone else to discover. Grancourt, or Harding—yes. Harding.’ Brenda looked down at him
triumphantly, the effect somewhat spoiled by her bound wrists and untidy hair. ‘He can be counted upon to behave correctly.’

  ‘It is clear you no longer read scandal sheets, Miss Hartwell. The consensus is that after his wildly romantic marriage, Harding should be treated as a man incapable of reason.’ Selby raised an eyebrow, slightly offended at being so casually dismissed by a woman in such clear need of rescue. ‘And with all due respect to my friend, he lacks the strength in his upper body to achieve an effective rescue.’

  ‘Why?’ Brenda frowned. ‘Are you suggesting that I am too heavy for rescue?’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Of course not!’ Selby wondered how the situation had run so far beyond his control, considering one of the conversationalists was tied and suspended. ‘Oh, for—look. Just hold still.’

  With a short sigh, he made his way to the coiled rope that lay at the side of the curtains. Throwing his jacket carelessly to the floor, wrapping a spare scrap of cloth around his palms, he began climbing up the weighted rope that had catapulted Brenda into the rafters.

  As he climbed closer to Brenda, her scent washed over him again; her new scent, that determinedly soapy, starched scent which meant she was looking to attract absolutely no-one. Unfortunately, although Selby’s mind understood such a concept extremely well, his body had not received the message. She smelled fresh, fresh and clean and… and edible. Or rather, lickable.

  Certainly kissable. Just as kissable as she had been by the lake, in fact.

  Yes. Kissable. That was the adjective Selby wrestled with as he climbed the rope, his shoulders aching. Brenda Hartwell had become eminently kissable—or perhaps she had always been kissable, always, and without the artifice of flirtation her kissable qualities were much more easy to see. The absence of flirtation, the gentle, clean scent that clung to her, the… the fact that she was tied at the hands, the curves of her body fully displayed as she breathlessly waited for him, presented to him like the most delicious form of gift…