Judith Ivory (20 page)

“Shooting,” she said, “is clear police territory—gunfire
brings them faster than anything else. Bobbies came through an alley. They were in a back door within the minute. Zach and I had the good luck to head toward the front—I don’t know why; it was the closest, I suppose. He was half carrying me by the street, the bleeding at my temple was so heavy I couldn’t see. It blinded me.”

She let out a little snort. “Zach used to say that the bullet ricocheted off my hard head. You’ve never seen so much blood though. It soaked my hair, ran into my face, my eye, down my neck into my dress. You wouldn’t believe how messily ears bleed. That was what made Joanna panic, I think, the sight of me.

“Zach and I ran, with everyone else either on the floor or going the wrong direction. She was right with us, then just suddenly stopped. She started screaming. She stood there, just on the other side of the front doors, the same ones that Zach and I had fled through, fully capable of leaving, only she wouldn’t; she didn’t. Down the street, we could hear her crying. It was shocking. The police just waltzed in and took her away.

“When we heard of Joanna’s death—they called it consumption—I couldn’t stop crying for a week. Zach got drunk.” So far as she knew, he was never sober again.

She added, “His sister had been sentenced to ten years hard labor.” She made a feeble laugh. “Joanna, of all people. Who’d never lifted anything heavier than a stranger’s wallet.”

Enough. She felt wrung out. Emma rose to her feet, clapping her legs with the palms of her hands. “Well. The rest can wait till morning. I’m tired.” Let him chase after her, if he wanted anything more out of her.

He apparently did and would. “A poke,” he asked as he rose. “You didn’t explain that part.” He moved leisurely, but he kept his eyes fixed on her; she wasn’t going anywhere he wouldn’t follow.

She’d forgotten how tall he was. He moved past eye level
as he rose, till she found herself staring up at a man a head taller than she was.

“A lady’s purse in this instance,” she said. “We’ll fill it with things designed to convince your uncle I’m authentic.” She began toward the door, wondering if they were going to break out into a dead race for it. He stayed right beside her. “We’ll talk tomorrow about how it works. It’s standard, but nothing’s a set plan. We’ll have to discuss various aspects, and then play it as it comes. Every game involves a certain amount of invention on the spot. So tomorrow—”

She stopped. At the doorway, or just before it, her escorting host put his arm across her path, resting his palm on the doorjamb. A grandfather clock by the door cornered her further. He blocked her way. She could back up into the room or lean against the tall clock.

She chose the latter, anything but retreat. She looked up at him, at a shadowed face that hadn’t the faintest interest in purses, uncles, or pokes—or at least not the sort she was talking about.

He took up the doorway completely. Though not with any particular aggressiveness. He simply did. He was tall and broad through the chest and shoulders, a man who didn’t go anywhere without somehow taking up more space than one could account for.

He leaned on his arm at the doorjamb.

“Don’t start again.” She let out a breath.

“Don’t start what?”

“Oh, for godssake.” She rolled her eyes and looked away.

Stuart collapsed a little, sideways, his shoulder striking the wood doorframe. He leaned there, holding her intentionally trapped between him and the grandfather clock. Her posture said she wasn’t going to fight him, but neither would she cooperate. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do to manipulate me.”

“Manipulation? That’s what it is to you?” When she
didn’t answer, he asked, “What did that drunken husband of yours do?”

She let out a burst of breathy, dry humor, the white-gold curls on top of her head jiggling. When she bent her neck, the distant firelight lit the darker, silvery blond at her nape, making it shine like pewter. “Nothing particularly different. I’m just harder to convince these days. Older and wise, I suppose.”

“Or more frightened.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

He frowned as he tucked his hand into his trouser pocket. “Romance? You want romance?”

“I want love. We don’t love each other.” She laughed at the idea. “We can barely tolerate each other, in fact. Hate.” She laughed again wanly, shaking her head, looking down between them. “There it is, the real explanation: We hate each other.”

“I don’t hate you. I rather like you, in fact.”

She blinked. “Oh.” She reconnoitered. “Well, I hate you. I hate this.” She held out her hand. “I want to go home.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. I mean,
this
, as you call it, is simply how we met. You robbed me. I stopped you. Now you have to pay for it. I can’t see why you won’t be gracious about it.”

“Where is the part about your killing my lamb?”

“We aren’t even certain I did. Besides, you have the fifty-six pounds.”

His logic seemed to stymie her for a second. She stood there blinking before she could say, “That doesn’t entitle you to sleep with me.”

Brave girl. She’d gone directly for the crux.

She said nothing, just her restrained, slightly indignant, feminine watching, wide blue eyes shadowed by a tall clock, looking up at him, daring him, ever so faintly pleading.

He didn’t know what to do for several seconds.

He knew her to be affected by him, truly affected, though for the life of him couldn’t figure out how to get around all her equally strong resistance. In a murmur, more breath than voice, he confided, “I hope this doesn’t ruin your wild opinion of me, but this morning was the most exciting, most erotic thing that’s ever arrived in my life. Please don’t ask me to pretend it didn’t happen.”

When she didn’t respond, he added, “You want to bury what happened. I want to award us medals for it. Emma, it was amazing. But neither of us did it on our own. It was a combined, cooperative will, which took us by surprise once, so don’t pretend it couldn’t happen again.”

Medals? He was insane. Emma could feel the clock’s
tick
, then
tock
at her buttocks, at her palms, her shoulders, her head, at every place she pressed against the wood behind her. The soft movement of the clock vibrated, as if the brass pendulum were swinging, hitting something inside her. The man before her didn’t move. Her own chest rose and fell, the largest movement between them, and she realized. He was in every breath of air she took, his body, his clothes, his hair like the scented candles of his house: warm, expensive, subtle, aromatic, rising up in waves of heat, filling her nostrils, her eyes, settling into her skin, into her clothes.

She swam in a heady attraction that had nothing to do with good judgment.

Happened.
This morning hadn’t “happened.” He’d done it. He’d tied her up and—She stammered, “It—it—I—I won’t let—”

He shook his head, laughing. “You wouldn’t have ‘let it’ the first time. But your heart beats out a military drumroll every time you think about it.”

Milli-tree drumroll
. Emma heard the words, and they added to her fluster. Where was his damn stutter now in this perfect, public-school accent? Nothing seemed to slow him down. No pausing. He could say some of the most surprising, ghastly things, and do so with perfect, beautiful enunciation.

Milli-tree drumroll
indeed. Her heart was certainly beating one at the moment. Resentfully, she said, “I thought it was my decision. Upstairs, you said—”

“And so it is. Though, if you remember, I like to influence your decisions, when I don’t agree with them.”

She jumped when he touched her hair at her temple.

“Where?” he asked in a murmur. His fingers separated her hair at her hairline, looking for a bullet wound. “Ah,” he said, the sound of surprise, sympathy. In a murmur, he exclaimed, “You had stitches!” His light touch slid into her hair as he leaned to examine.

Then apparently he wanted to smell the bullet wound, too, because a moment later his nose pressed to the same spot. She heard the intake of breath, felt the mass of his body as he drew as close as a man could get without laying his full weight against her. Their clothes brushed. His foot stepped between hers. Sandalwood, cloves, citrus. He was steeped in these oddly mystical smells. His soap, she decided. His hair smelled clean and good.

In fact, that was fairly much how he affected her senses: clean, good, potent, rising in waving heat all around her. Her heart began that stupid rhythm it did whenever he was this close.

He invited her into collusion against herself. “Pretend you’ll go to jail if you don’t,” he suggested.

“You wouldn’t send me to jail, because I wouldn’t sleep with you.”

He backed up inches, slouching till their eyes were almost at an equal level. “All right, probably not.” He smiled faintly. “If you were tactful about refusing.”

She pressed her lips together, resentful a moment, then said, “No, thank you.”

“Mm-m.” He frowned. “No,” he said, shaking his head. His face came toward her again. “Not quite tactful enough, I don’t think.”

Emma did the only thing she had room to do; she turned
her head. His mouth found her cheek. He put the side of his thumb to her face and turned her toward him again. For a moment, there he was in all directions, his mouth one way, waiting, his palm settling against her in the other, holding her there. The sensation was fearsome—addling, blast him—her face caught between his hand and mouth, her body wedged into the corner.

At which point, having her face where he wanted it, he kissed her with a kind of precision, his mouth squarely over hers.

She jerked back, her head clonking on the carved wood just as the clock struck.
Bong Bong
. He kissed her at—
bong—
3
A.M.
of what had to be the longest day of her life. And the awful part was, a part of her wanted to be trapped just as she was, no other choice.

She let herself kiss him back. He groaned, shifted. She kissed the same mouth from this morning’s insane two minutes. Two minutes. She put her hands to his chest—happily free, this time—and pushed against the warm knit jersey, against the very solid man beneath, all the while her lips lingering at his, absorbing the warmth. So much ambivalence. Indeed, a part of her wanted not just to be trapped but to be thrown over his shoulder, carried upstairs, for him to make love to her so fiercely and so long, she couldn’t stand to feet. Oh, yes. Take the choice away. Don’t make me think about it.

While Stuart could feel physically exactly where he stood: So long as he held her face, kept her pinned there, she’d let him kiss her. She didn’t even try to hide that she enjoyed it. So he restrained her, very much enjoying it himself—she opened her mouth to him, let his tongue dip into her, deep, warm, wet, delicious. Lord. The second he removed his arm, though, she moved. Or tried to. He caught her back, pushed her against the clock again.

She said quickly in a murmur, “This is going to work against you in London. Once your uncle is present, you can’t behave this way.”

She was trembling. He couldn’t decide if this was good or bad. Good, he hoped. He could feel her heart pounding in the veins of the arm he held. “We’re not in London yet,” he said. He slowly released her arm, putting his on either side, by her shoulders, one on the doorframe, one on the side of the clock. He asked, “So what am I supposed to do? Tie you down?” He laughed dryly. “I’ve imagined wilder things.”

Her eyes widened. One thing he understood: Emma loved her autonomy. She loved it the way most women craved security. She resented already his weight upon her, holding her here to their agreement. If he released the pressure, she’d fly. If he increased it, she’d fight, he was fairly certain. Which left him trying to find his balance, quiet, patient, though this didn’t yield him what he wanted either.

Moreover, he wasn’t even sure what he wanted. More sexual congress, yes, for certain. But more than that. He could have that, take it; there wasn’t much she could have done about it. He wanted willingness. More than willingness. Eagerness. This morning. Her blind, unthinking panic to let him in.

She accused him, “You’re calculating. You’ve done this before. You seduce women. Into awful things. Dark things.”

He laughed. “The devil himself.” Then he looked down. Emma realized he was amused, making fun—though whether of himself again or her, she couldn’t tell. He said more seriously, “Not as much as you’d think. But, yes, I understand it: First, I figure out what you want. I seduce you with that. Then, there is the harder job of figuring out what you need—and the two are almost never the same thing. The need goes much further. And here is the challenge: to give you what you don’t know to want, Emma, yet what you need so badly that, when presented with it, no matter how embarrassing or naughty, you can do nothing but surrender to it. The burning need. What is it? What do you need, Emma Hotchkiss, from a man such as I?”

She took him in, openmouthed at such a declaration. Then
asked, “W-why would you even—” She couldn’t form a complete sentence. “Ah, what do you get—”

“Aah.” He smiled. “I affect you. We already know that. I look at you, and you blush. One might conclude from there that, if I did things considerably more intimate, I could make your knees drop out from under you. And, if I could, well, what a feeling. It would make me so high—no, so hard, well—” He let out a little breath, an embarrassed laugh. He’d actually gone over the top, said something that made him color.

Good. He deserved a little taste of it. Emma stared, then said, “Sexual. It’s all sexual.”

“No. The trust involved is deeply intimate. Confidence.” He laughed again at the irony of using the word. “There is a large play of emotion in what I’m discussing. We’re already connected in a way that feels rare, a confiding, murmuring intimacy between us that, frankly, leaves me a little surprised and circumspect—I don’t understand it.”

Love. The word sprang to Stuart’s mind. Is that what they were discussing? And, for no more reason than this, the Stunnels suddenly leaped to mind. Remembering the old couple, it occurred to him that perhaps the intimacy he described wasn’t so dark and dirty as it sounded. That was just his own fear and embarrassment overlaying it, coloring it.