There Will Be Phlogiston (9 page)

She dismounted, looping the reins over an
overhanging branch. Xanthos nuzzled at her with a rough,
metal-bridged nose, and Rosamond stroked her, murmuring rather
self-consciously about what a fine horse she was, so fast and
strong and lovely. No matter what anyone else might think.

Then embarrassment got the better of her, and she
headed a little way upstream, looking for somewhere she would watch
the waterfall and wait for Anstruther Jones. She realised she was
glad she had never tried to paint this. Its beauty was in its
motion, its transience, the fact that every moment belonged only to
itself, and then was gone forever.

She found a rocky ledge that was not too damp or
dirty, and sat down on it, folding her skirts over her arm and
tucking up her feet so that her boots didn’t get splashed. She was
thinking about Jones and how strange it was to be liked for being
unlikeable. For all the things she wasn’t supposed to be.

It made rather a nonsense of her entire life.

But, on the other hand, it felt so wickedly good,
she could hardly resent it. And she wanted to be kissed again. For
being Rosamond. By the uncouth, vulgar, horrible commoner who saw
her.

It was a good twenty minutes before Jones joined her
on the rock. What she nearly said was
I would like to be kissed
now
. But she just about managed to be rude instead. “You took
your time.”

“If it’s my pride or my neck, my neck is going to
win every time. Enjoy your run?”

Rudeness faltered in the face of undeniable
gratitude. “Oh yes. She’s perfect. The best of horses. Thank you
for . . . for . . . saving her. I can’t . . . That is . . . Thank
you.”

Good heavens,
now
she was blushing? How
insanely infuriating. It was the last thing she wanted.

Jones shrugged. “I did it for you. She’s yours.”

“Sir, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Don’t you want her?”

Yes
. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“Why not?”

“A lady not does accept gifts from a gentleman who
is not her husband or a member of her family. People would think I
was your mistress.”

He made the oddest sound, almost a laugh, but too
sad. “Not you as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither. People keep saying that to me.”

She didn’t like the sound of that
at all
.
“Why?” she asked, coldly. “Are you in the habit of giving
inappropriate gifts to other ladies?”

“No. No gifts.” Jones stared at the water, his eyes
full of its reflections. “He was a friend.”

Rosamond’s mind whirled. He? A friend?

Then:
Arkady told me
.

Memory snapped into place. Images in a fresh
context. The way Lord Mercury’s eyes rarely strayed from Jones. The
way they stood together, moved together, unspoken intimacy in all
the spaces between them. Touching in all their nontouching.

So why the fuck had he kissed her?

She swallowed fury. Bitterness. Betrayal she surely
had no right to feel.

“Well.” She was proud of the steadiness of her
voice. “You are one of those men who prefer men.”

“Not prefer, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means up in the blue you don’t turn away love.
However it comes.”

“Even if it is wrong?”

“How can love be wrong?”

“Perhaps,” she snapped, “if one was kissing one
person when one had already given one’s heart to another.”

There was a long silence. Jones picked up a pebble
and skimmed it across the stream: one, two, three,
plop
.
“Arkady has never wanted my heart.”

Rosamond scowled. She had intended to be very cross
with him, and now she didn’t want to be. Couldn’t be. Not when he
sounded so very . . . hurt. “Why ever not?”

“He doesn’t believe a man can feel for a man the way
a man can feel for a woman.” He glanced at her and grinned. “And
don’t sound so surprised, sweet Ros. You don’t want my heart
either.”

“Lady Rosamond, if you please. And
I
have a
sensible reason.”

“What’s that, then?”

“Well, there’s the fact you’re a commoner, and I am
a lady. There’s my duty to my family. There’s . . . there’s . . .
other things that are very important.”

“And happiness?”

“I’m sure I shall be terribly happy when I am a
marchioness.”

“I hope so. But I still think you’re making a
mistake.”

She stiffened. “Why is that?”

“Because if you married me, you’d also get a
carnivorous horse.”

The mingling of their laughter felt strangely
intimate. As natural as the splash of water over stone.

“You’ll just have to take care of her for me.”

“I will,” he said, grave again.

They were quiet awhile, Rosamond tossing stones idly
into the pool. After a moment or two, Jones passed her a handful of
smooth, flat pebbles and showed her how to make them fly across the
water. It was childish sport, but she found it satisfying and grew
rather accomplished at it. Her greatest attainment was seven
consecutive bounces, though Jones maintained it was six because the
final one barely arced at all.

“Why aren’t you frightened of anything?” It was
something she had often privately wondered as she watched him (not
that she watched him, most certainly she did not), but she had
never imagined she might have the opportunity to discover his
secret. She rather hoped it might be something simple. Something
she could use herself.

“Only madmen and monsters aren’t frightened of
anything.”

“But you don’t care what other people think.”

“I care what some people think.” He glanced her way,
eyes holding hers for a moment, unflinching. “I don’t want to be
alone.”

So she flinched for him. It was such a blunt, naked
thing to say. “What do you mean?”

“There hasn’t been much room in my life for
companionship. I want to know what home feels like again.”

Rosamond’s time had been spent mainly in Gaslight
and a little bit at finishing school. “Does it feel like
anything?”

Jones nodded. “Yes. You always know.”

She thought of her father’s house. Grandeur and the
scent of roses. A library where nobody read now that her half
brother had fled. “What’s it like?”

“It’s been a long time. Not since I was a nipper,
back when my mothers were still alive.”

“Your
mothers
?”

“Aye, whores both of them. Raised me right though.
Never doubted love or happiness or what family meant till the
dustlung took them.”

Rosamond didn’t know what to say. All she could
think of was, “I’m sorry,” but it seemed so hideously banal she
barely saw the point of uttering it. The reality of his life was
very distant just then, whoever and whatever had made him who he
was, this man who had come from nowhere and made a fortune from the
sky. It was hard to imagine he had ever been young or uncertain.
Harder still to understand the things that drove him, must have
driven him still: ambition, loss, poverty. Things she had never
known.

She climbed off the rock and walked slowly away from
the waterfall. The leaves turned under her feet, cracking like
carapaces, fresh red flashing from beneath their dull-gold
backs.

She didn’t want to go home.

Anstruther Jones fell into step beside her, hands in
his pockets. “Did I do it after all?” he asked. “Make you think
less of me?”

She stopped, turned, closed the sliver of distance
between them until she was flush to his body. Gazed into eyes
softened by sunlight. “You should kiss me now.”

“I should, eh?”

“Yes, and also remove your coat.”

His laugh was a little shaky. “Why?”

“You should kiss me because I want you to kiss me,
and you should remove your coat because I wish to see you in your
shirtsleeves again.” Her lips felt a little dry, so she moistened
them. “You have very pleasing arms.”

The coat landed on the leaves with a
flump.
And his arms were even better than she had remembered, all the more
so because she could admire them at her leisure, without fear of
censure. Touch them even. She ran her fingers up to the crook of
his elbow. The linen was soft, his forearms tough and sinewy
beneath. She wondered what his skin would be like. Smooth, perhaps,
on this side of his arm. Rough, hair-stippled on the other. “Will
you kiss me after I am wed?”

His eyes had closed beneath her touch. “I . . . I
don’t know.”

“Lots of married women have
affaires
.” She
spanned her hands across his biceps, enjoying the reflexive
tightening of muscle beneath her palms.

“Aye, but—”

“What? Or do you think I will belong to my husband
then?”

“I think you belong to nobody but you, and that I’ll
want to kiss you until the day you die.”

“Then why do you hesitate?”

“Because I think it could hurt me, love. Because I
think I’d want more than your kisses.”

“If you are as skilled at other matters as you are
at kissing, I would be willing to give you all that you
wanted.”

“Not your self, or your unstolen time.”

Before she could answer, he tugged her chin up so
her eyes met his and her mouth was vulnerable, and kissed her so
fiercely that her hat fell off and half her pins sprang free. They
tumbled to the forest floor, and she didn’t care, because
Anstruther Jones had his mouth on her mouth, and his leg between
her legs, and his fingers in her tangling hair. His breath was
ragged, and his heart was thundering, and his body—revealed to her
like this—felt like some extraordinarily intimate miracle, all fire
and power and motion.

They broke away, gasping and wide-eyed, and she put
her fingers to his lips, wanting still to claim him. They felt a
little damp, a little swollen from her attention. From her savagery
and his.

“I think,” she said, “I think you should remove the
rest of your garments.”

His kiss-touched mouth turned up at the corners.
“And why do you think I should do that?”

“Because I want to see an unclad man.” Lies.
“Because I want to see you.”

“It’s a little cold, Ros.”

“I shall keep you warm.”

His tie followed his coat. His waistcoat followed
his tie. His shirt. His boots. His trousers. His underthings. Until
he wore only skin and sunlight.

Magnificent. A piece of the world’s wildness.

“Turn for me.” It was not entirely a request.

Laughing softly, Jones obliged, revealing himself to
her: all his physical strength set into hard lines and masculine
angles. His spine tempted her down to the tantalisingly muscular
curve of his haunches, and the burn scars that ridged the skin
there. She wondered if she should have been shocked by them, or
found them ugly, but they were simply there, simply part of him.
And, in truth, she almost envied him his lived-in flesh. She had
experienced nothing that had marked her.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry, it’s probably
not what you’re used to.”

“Naked men? I should think not. I have been
delicately raised.”

“I meant—”

“Your form is quite pleasing. And you may complete
your revolution. Although,” she added sourly as she was confronted
by the rest of him, “I have been led sorely astray by the Elgin
Marbles. I was anticipating something altogether less
imposing.”

He glanced down at the point of contention. “Blame
your kisses.”

She rather liked that idea. It made her feel giddy
and invincible and bold. She closed her hand around . . . around
it
. His member. And was shocked and excited by the heat of
it, the way it was hard and tender at the same time, pulsing softly
against her palm as though it possessed a heart of its own. “Then
that makes it mine.”

He might have laughed, but she tightened her grip
and he moaned instead—such a private sound, needy and harsh and
entirely ungentlemanly. Presumably all his sex reacted so when they
were touched, but she couldn’t quite imagine it. And she didn’t
want to. The marquess was surely handsome, but her mind recoiled
from the prospect of his nakedness. She knew instinctively he would
never do this for her. Be like this with her.

And she didn’t want it. Not from him.

She wanted Anstruther Jones. Not just his kisses and
his body and his money, but the man. His rough ways, and his soft
words, and the way she felt when she was with him.

And the realisation was unexpectedly
frightening.

She had wanted to fulfil her duty to her family,
secure a proper match, make her father proud. But she had never
really dared to want anything for herself. She had always assumed
there would be time for that . . . after . . . well, after.
Whatever happened after you were married. If you didn’t become like
her mother, of course.

But suddenly there was a
now
. A forest and a
waterfall and a horse and a man who had made himself naked for
her.

“Are you all right?” Jones brushed her cheek with
callused fingers.

Was she? No. And yes, oh yes, yes.

She nodded, took his hands, and pulled him to the
ground. He came with her easily, no struggle, no hesitation,
sprawled out across the leaves like some fallen god—Ares,
perhaps—fearless and unconquered, the curves and hollows of his
flesh brushed here and there with gold. She settled over him,
soaking up skin, heat, the intensity of this physical closeness,
wishing she could shed her heavy skirts, her corset, and feel
nothing but him. But if she got out of her clothes, she doubted
very much her ability to get back into them, and so she told
herself this was enough.

This was not enough.

Her body was sticky-hot, cocooned in steel and
starch and wool and chamois leather, almost entirely lost to her.
She could have been a spirit, hollow, untouchable, except she
wanted, she desired. She was alive with it, incandescent with it.
She curled her fingers into the hair on his chest, half-expecting
it to be rough, but it was soft, so soft, silky little curls that
stirred beneath her touch.