Judith Ivory (23 page)

“Peters?”

“Saint Petersburg.”

“Russia,” she said to confirm her poor geography. She knew enough, though, to understand that, culturally, he had put as much distance between himself and England as possible. Curiosity for other places made her ask, “Did you ever meet the tzar?”

“Several times a week. I was something of an English novelty at court whenever I wished.”

With wonder, she asked, “What’s the tzar like?”

He shrugged. “Kind, well-meaning. Unsure. The head of a despotic government tempered by assassination. The court is splendid. The country itself is turbulent, its poverty so widespread and extreme, you can’t begin to imagine from this side of the Baltic Sea.”

“You speak all these languages? Russian, Arabic?”

He snorted. “Yes, besides English, I can stutter my way into Russian, Turkish, Arabic, French, with some Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi, and a bit of Kurdish.” He laughed at himself.

What he liked best about the next was that she didn’t deny it, yet spoke immediately. “I like the rhythm of your speech. It’s interesting.” She blinked, looking sheepishly sincere, then added, “I, um, have to be careful sometimes or I’d find myself imitating it, answering back in the same rhythm, or some facsimile of it.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it as well. But sometimes I know just how you’ll say a sentence, before it’s out, and I want to say it, too, like wanting to dance with you.”

He folded his arms and stared down at her over the top of his own arm, waiting for a disjunction, a qualification, anything that tagged the compliment as something less. Then he had to close his mouth. It had dropped open slightly. She meant it, which left him speechless.

How incredibly good her words struck him: that she should admire a flaw that not everyone even kindly tolerated. He smiled for a second, then looked down at his folded arms, not sure he wished for her to see how foolishly pleased he was by such a small matter.

“You’ve traveled a lot.”

“Indeed.” He looked back at the photos. He had walls of them. His photographs of the East and Near East drew him still. He pointed to another photo, part of the next set down the wall, at a picture of white trees and a long line of white bench tops sitting quietly before wide, neoclassic columns: the Kazan Cathedral, glittery white fresh from a snowstorm. “In Russia,” he recalled pleasantly, “high society went to Moscow for the cold months. Not myself. I loved Petersburg best when the tzar and court emptied out of it.” He smiled at the thought. “I loved the bright cold days. Nothing so serene, I say, as kicking up knee-high snow as you walk through the city, so alone it all but belongs to you.”

She threw him a tentative look of agreement. “Petersburg?” Then a dismayed click, tongue to teeth, an apology for not being sure: “The Russian capital, yes? Is it very far north? Colder than here?”

“Yes to all. It’s on the Gulf of Finland—Denmark is southerly by comparison.” He said, “The only thing farther north in Russia is tundra, sections of which I’ve also crossed.”

“Tundra,” she repeated. Her face had no idea what he was talking about.

He smiled faintly, then looked away, sure he’d lost her completely. “I’m boring you.”

“No,” she said quickly, “not at all.” She arched, then twisted, reaching back to hike her blanket back up about her shoulders, all the while staring at his photographs, one to the other. As she settled, she said, “I can’t imagine living somewhere else. I like hearing about it.”

“A glutton for punishment,” he told her, laughing. But he was delighted by her interest. “The tundra is a kind of ice plain, arctic. The ground would be a morass from rainfall and river flow, except the cold keeps it frozen to a depth of no-one-knows how many feet. Ice as solid as land. White in all directions, as far as the eye can see.”

She was contemplating him, he realized, not the tundra. “Why?” she asked. “Why did—do?—these places appeal to you?”

He said immediately, “They’re not English.” He snorted, “They aren’t even Continental, though Petersburg was a nice compromise. Other. I’m sure it had to do with their being as far from my English father and responsibilities as I could remove myself.” He snorted, self-deprecating. “Too far, as it turned out. I was hunting bear near Caucasia, a long trek even from my home in Petersburg, when the news of my father’s death found me. The old devil had only been fifty-seven. I would have thought that a man as mean as Donovan Aysgarth would live to a hundred—too vile even for Death to approach, except cautiously.

“Leave it to my father to take matters into his own hands and have even Death on his own terms.”

Her face looked blank. She wasn’t conversant with this detail, either, with regard to his father.

He clarified. “He shot himself.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “Yes, I think I remember reading in the newspaper. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He did us all a favor.”

She frowned: a look of concern for a man who loathed his own father.

Though, if she had only understood, such a look would have been reserved for the man who didn’t. “He was a horrible person.”

Horrible
didn’t sum up Donovan Aysgarth, either. Too mild. While Stuart was afraid of another round of explicitness for fear of putting her off—his father’s blood flowed in his own veins.

“Well,” he said, pivoting. He headed for the desk again. “That shortens your spoon more than necessary.” He referenced her Scottish expression from the first night here.

She didn’t comprehend, then did, giving him more of her lovely, light laughter.

The sound always caught him aback. And the sight of her tonight. Did she grow prettier by the day? Was that possible? Lord, she was a vision tonight: looser, more relaxed.

“Well,” she said. “Thank you for the brief world tour. I like your photographs.”

He was reluctant to part company from her, when the atmosphere between them was so unusually pleasant, yet that was where she was headed.

The clock in the corner arrested them both as it struck the half hour. It was three-thirty. The long, low
bong
reminded him, sourly, of her rebuff that first night, of her fear and her tears and his part in it. One of the most resilient women he’d ever met, he hadn’t allowed for her to have a tender place, a vulnerability—a mistake he would make less quickly at least, given a second chance.

He picked up the deck of cards, then—a brainstorm—offered them out. “A game of cards,” he suggested, “since neither one of us can sleep?”

He raised a challenging eyebrow toward a woman who could deal—and cheat—with the sangfroid of a croupier.

“Poker?” he asked. “Three card draw, nothing wild. We can bet these”—he reached into his desk drawer, then dropped a box of roulette tiles on the desktop—“with a prize for the winner, just to make the game interesting.”

She was slightly taken aback, but the cards, the tiles held her. As she looked at them, he caught a twinkle in her eye: She thought she could beat him.

“What would you want for a prize?” she asked.

He teased. “Oh, if I win, I get to tie you to a chair.” He widened his eyes, mock anticipation.

“Oh, please.”

“No. Really. I do.”

She laughed.

Still smiling at her, he wiggled his eyebrows, feeling triumphant. “Oh, wait, you
like
the idea. All right, I’ve changed my mind. If
you
win, I get to tie you to a chair.” He laughed outright.

“Stop.” She shook her head, though her smile hadn’t completely evaporated. Traces of it remained around the corners of her mouth.

“For five minutes,” he said, as if truly naming terms. “During which time I get to do whatever I wish.”

She settled a look of forbearance on him—though her expression hinted at required indignity, the prescribed, in the face of such childishness. “You know I won’t allow that. What would you truly want?”

Emma felt warm and comfortable, able to discuss their odd first hour together somehow now in the middle of the night, tease about it, which was a release of sorts. For the first time, it didn’t feel embarrassing. It struck her as funny, in fact. Who could imagine such a thing? If she tried to explain to someone those two minutes on the chair in Hayward-on-Ames, not a soul wouldn’t buy it. It didn’t seem possible. Yet the two of them knew, understood; they were baffled by it to
gether. And their togetherness suddenly seemed to breed an odd rapport.

“I just told you what I’d
truly
want,” he insisted.

She sniffed. “You are so bizarre.”

“So you keep saying.” Behind his desk, he stretched, unfazed by names and judgments. “Perhaps I am, perhaps not,” he said as he arched, raising his shoulders as he spread his arms, making a kind of far-reaching shrug.

She watched, more attentive than she liked: Her gaze covered him—his wide chest, his shoulders, the full reach of his outstretched arm—as he released tension from his muscles. For her benefit, she suspected. Yet still she couldn’t look away. She stood there by the fire, fiddling with the ends of the blanket, holding it up, while watching a man—bizarre, power-hungry, manipulative, perfectly open about it—who attracted her despite herself.

He reversed his stretching and wrapped his arms about his chest, loosening his back. In this position, he tilted his head, a faint smile on his lips. “I enjoy tormenting you with the idea that you’re at the mercy of a lunatic, I promise you that.” He relaxed and pulled out his desk chair. “Though not to the point of making you cry. I’ve felt quite sorry for that.” As he sat, he resumed his teasing with his not entirely nice laugh as he shook his head. “If you ask me, though, it’s you: You are
so
constrained, Emma, all the while congratulating yourself that you aren’t.
That
is bizarre.”

He leaned back in the chair and raised his eyebrow, a trademark at this point, then asked, “Don’t you ever do
anything
Mama and Papa might not approve of?”

Why, yes, she did. Every day. “I ran away to
London
when I was only thirteen.” Then immediately the “daftest” adventure of her life was tame for having told it to a man who
lived
in London, who’d run away to Russia. She looked at the cards on the desktop. “If we played and I won, what I’d like
is my freedom. I’d like to walk out of here, without worry that a sheriff would be at my door tomorrow.”

“Ah. Well.” He snorted. “Since we’re both asking for the impossible.”

For a moment, she felt angry. He’d won too much already. And now he believed he’d simply sidle up; they’d be friends. When they weren’t. She looked for a harsh thing, a mean name, anything that would be indicative of her absolute authority over herself. “I’m not here for your entertainment,” she told him. “I’m here to get myself out of trouble. I certainly don’t intend to compound my problems by playing kissing games with you in the night.” A phrase she remembered from London rose into her mouth: “If you don’t like that”—she folded her arms—“you can saw it off.”

Stuart jerked, blinked.

Yes, precisely, she thought. Exactly the reaction she wanted. He should jolly well be taken aback. Don’t fool with Emma Hotchkiss.

He was annoyed one moment, then he tilted his head, frowning as if somehow skeptical. He narrowed his eyes, though not with the undiluted anger for which she had hoped. In fact, he almost seemed to smile. What was happening? What was changing? Why was she losing his sense of outrage before she’d even claimed it again? She’d insulted him, hadn’t she? She’s just said the most disparaging thing she knew.

“‘Sod off,’ do you mean?” he asked.

“Sawed off?” she repeated. Was that it? She furrowed her brow, compressing her lips till she held them between her teeth. Yes, she was missing something.
Saw it off
wasn’t quite right, was it? Though how could she be sure? She’d only heard the expression once, and that was outside a men’s club years ago. “Yes, sawed off,” she corrected. That sounded a fraction more like it, though it made less sense.

He snorted, smiling now. “It has nothing to do with saw
ing.” He eyed her as if looking for confirmation, a hint that she understood.

“Not ‘sawed off’?” She blinked. Was there a trick in here somewhere? Then it occurred to her. “Sod?” she asked, her eyes going wide all on their own, cool to the air. “Like sodomy?” She was suddenly breathless.

“Yes.”

She opened her mouth, couldn’t close it. She’d horrified herself.

By then, though, Stuart had burst out laughing, uncontrollable. “Though ‘saw it off’ sounds fairly dreadful.’”

“I thought so.” Still, sodomy was much worse. She blushed. She bowed her head. Her cheeks heated till they seemed as hot as the glowing logs of the fire. She didn’t know where to look.

While Stuart truly got going, laughing so hard he held his palm to his abdomen. He nearly fell out of his chair.

Always, he was eye-popping handsome, but when Stuart Aysgarth smiled—God, when he laughed—he became approachable, human, lavishly appealing. The most attractive human male she had ever encountered. His eyes crinkled. His mouth widened into creases and a flashy display of teeth. And the sound was carried in that smooth, deep voice of his: If a smooth-bowed cello could laugh on its lowest strings, Stuart’s laughter was what it would sound like.

After a moment, her mistake was simply too good. She found herself laughing also. Oh, Emma. Oh. “Saw it off,” she repeated.

The two of them sat there laughing for five minutes, till embarrassment mixed with mirth to such high degree that tears were streaming down Emma’s face.

He said then, “You are the best, do you know that? You are the best woman I’ve ever met.”

“Daft,” she said, gleeful, yet wanting to temper his praise with reality. Praised for getting something wrong. Wrong and obscene. How like Stuart to enjoy her for that.

“Exciting,” he said. “Daft like a fox. Adventurous. Fearless. Unpretentious. You are something, Emma.”

I am something
. She lifted her chin and beamed.

Their laughter slowly calmed till they stared, eye to eye, and still they did not break eye contact. The air seemed dense with affection, palpable, buoyant with it. She floated upon it, as if there were not a harsh surface anywhere, as if she were a feather aloft on the sweetest, warmest breeze.