This Wicked Gift (3 page)

He set his hand deliberately atop hers.

Oh, she knew she should pull away. Pull
away, and slap him for taking liberties with her person. But her brother had left
her so cold—and his hand was so warm—and by all that was holy, after a year of
encouraging Mr. William Q. White to do more than just look at her, she was not
about to raise objections to a little liberty.

“I know what
 
Vinny
 
is short for. As it happens, I prefer
 
Lavinia.”
 
He leaned over her.

He said it as if he preferred
 
her
,
not just her name. Lavinia’s lungs seized. She could smell the starch of his
cravat.
 
He’s
going to kiss me
, she thought. Her nipples pressed, painfully
peaked, against her stays. His thumb ran along her wrist, down the curve of her
fingers. Lavinia felt her lips part. She might even have arched
 
up toward him, just a little. She
focused on the pink of his mouth, so close to hers.

He’s going to kiss
me, and I am going to let him.

Instead, he released her hand. She could
still feel the imprint of his fingers against hers as he stepped away.

“Miss Spencer, I do believe we’ll talk
tomorrow.” He smiled. Before she could point out that tomorrow was Sunday, and
the lending library would therefore be closed, he tipped his hat at her and set
it on his head. “Come find me at one.”

And then Mr. William Q. White strode away,
the tails of his coat flapping at her. The bell jingled. The door shut. Lavinia
raised her burning hand to her unkissed lips and looked down.

It was only then she realized he hadn’t
been angling for a kiss at all.

He’d taken the slip of foolscap containing
the address of the man who’d cheated James.

L
AVINIA WOKE TO A CLOUD
 
of thick, choking
smoke. Her first panicked thought was that the books downstairs had somehow
caught fire, that their livelihood, half owned by creditors, was going up in
flames. But then her conscious mind caught up to her racing fears and she
correctly cataloged the smell.

It was the more mundane—and rather more
unpleasant—scent of burning porridge.

Frowning, Lavinia pulled a wrapper over
her nightdress and padded out into the front room.

James, his hands blackened with soot, was
juggling a pot. The vessel let off billows of gray smoke, its sides streaked
black.

“Ah,” he said essaying a weak smile.
“Lavinia!
I made breakfast for you.”

She didn’t dare respond, not even with so
little as a raised eyebrow.

He peered into the pot, frowning. “
There’s
still some white bits in here. Isn’t it odd that
porridge turns
 
yellow
 
when
it burns? I’d have thought it would go directly to
 
black.” He prodded the mass with a
spoon, then shrugged and looked up. “Want some?”

Over fifteen years, Lavinia had become
quite fluent in the foreign tongue known as Younger Brother. It was a tricky
language, mostly because it employed words and phrases that sounded,
deceptively, as if they were proper English.

For instance, the average woman off the
street would have thought that James had just offered her burned porridge.
Lavinia knew better. What James had
 
actually
 
said
was, “Sorry I stole your money. I made you breakfast by way of apology. Forgive
me?”

Lavinia sighed and waved her hand. “Give
me a bowl.”

That
 
was Younger Brother for: “Your porridge is
disgusting, but I love you nonetheless.”

By unspoken consensus, as they prepared a
tray to bring to their father in bed, James cut a slice of bread and Lavinia
slipped it on a toasting fork. Ill as their father was, there was no need to
punish him with either the details of James’s transgression or an indigestible
breakfast.

And perhaps, Lavinia thought as she choked
down the nauseating glutinous mass, that was the essence of love. Love wasn’t
about reasons. It wasn’t about admiring fine qualities. Love was a language all
on its own, composed of gestures that seemed incomprehensible, perhaps even
pointless, to the outside observer.

Speaking of the inarticulate language of
love, what had Mr. William Q. White meant by his outrageous
 
behavior last night?
 
Come find me,
 
he’d said. His words had seemed to
come straight from her imagination.

But surely he hadn’t meant for her to look
up the address he’d given when he applied for a subscription? Surely he didn’t
mean she should pay him a visit? A woman who intended to keep her virtue did
not visit a man, even if he did have lovely eyes and a voice that spoke of dark
seduction.
 
Especially
 
if
he had those features.
Lavinia had gone nineteen years without making
any errors at all on that front.

As it happens, I prefer
 
Lavinia.
 
Come find me.

She didn’t need to remember the heat of
his gaze as he looked at her to know he hadn’t asked her to pay an innocent
little morning call.

And yet what had her streak of perfection
gotten her? Months and months of painstaking tallies had done her no good. Her
coins were gone and the very thought of the barren holiday that awaited her
family made her palms grow cold.

This somewhat dubious rationale brought
Lavinia to the dark, imposing door of 12 Norwich Court. It was not quite an
hour after noon, but a dark gray cloud hovered over the tall, bulky houses and
blocked all hint of the feeble sun. A wild wind whipped down the street,
carrying with it the last few tired leaves from some faraway square and the
earthy scent of winter mold. Lavinia pulled her cloak about her in the gloom.

This residential street—little more than a
dingy alley, really—was occupied at present only by an
 
orange cat. The animal was a solitary
spot of color against the gray-streaked buildings. In the next hour, Lavinia’s
life could change.
Completely.
Before she could
reconsider, she rapped the knocker firmly against the door. She could feel the
blood pounding in her wrists.

And then she waited. She’d almost
convinced herself there was nothing unsafe or untoward about this visit.
According to the subscription card, Mr. William Q. White had a room on the
second floor of a house owned by Mrs. Jane Entwhistle—a cheerful, elderly widow
who sometimes visited the lending library in search of gothic novels. Mrs.
Entwhistle would doubtless be willing to play chaperone at Lavinia’s request.
She might even be kindhearted enough to look the other way.

The door opened.

“Oh, Mrs. Entwhistle,” Lavinia started.
And then she stopped.

It was not the bustling widow who’d opened
the door, nor Mary Lee Evans, the scullery maid who was the object of Mrs.
Entwhistle’s complaints.

Behind the threshold, Mr. William Q. White
stood in his shirtsleeves. He was in a shocking state of dishabille. Beneath
that single layer of rough white linen, Lavinia could make out the broad line
of his shoulders, and the sleek curve of muscles. His cuffs had been folded up,
and she could see fine lines of hair at his wrist. She peeped behind him.
Surely the respectable Mrs. Entwhistle wouldn’t countenance such laxity of
dress.

The widow was nowhere to be seen.

She glanced down the street. The cat sat,
licking its paws, on a step three houses down.

“Mrs. Entwhistle is gone for the week to
celebrate Christmas with her granddaughter.” He raised his gaze to her. It
ought to have been cold; his every word came out in a puff of white in the
chilled air. But his eyes were hot, and suddenly, so was Lavinia.

“Mary Lee?” she asked in a squeak.

“Given the week off.
Come in
before you catch your death.”

Her imagination gave those words a wicked
quality—as if he’d asked her to catch something else instead. It was that
accent again, that lilt in his voice that she just couldn’t place. It made her
think of unspeakable things, no matter how innocent his intentions.

But no, it was not just her imagination.
It was a terribly wicked notion to enter a home alone with a young,
attractive—very attractive—partially clothed man. Why, he might take liberties.
He might take lots of them.

He smiled at her, a mischievous grin that
unfolded across his face. Maybe it was her imagination again, but the smile
didn’t reach his eyes.

“I can’t come in. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“I give you my word,” he said carefully,
“that I shall not do anything to you without your permission.”

As reassurances went, this lacked some
basic quality of…assurance.

“Your word as a gentleman?”

His lip curled slightly. “I’m hardly
that.”

Well, then. “What do you mean, without my
permission? I could easily give permission to—”

She stopped herself before she could
complete the sentence. Not only because she was embarrassed by her unintended
admission, but because if she started cataloging the things she might let him
do, given the proper persuasion,
she would
never stop
with a mere peck on the cheek. He was a mere twelve inches from her, on the
threshold. She could see him complete her sentence. His pupils dilated. His
gaze slipped down her body, a caress that was almost palpable. His Adam’s apple
bobbed, once.

Still he didn’t say anything. It was one
thing to have him look the other way when she wished him a merry Christmas, or
asked him what he’d thought of the Adam Smith he returned. It was quite another
to admit she wanted a kiss, and to have him remain silent.

“Say something,” Lavinia begged. “Say
anything.”

He moved closer. “Come inside with me.”
His voice enfolded her like warm velvet. And still he looked at her, those dark
eyes boring into her,
then
settling against her lips
like a caress.

No. She was past the point of fooling
herself. Whatever Mr. William Q. White had done with the address, she had
little doubt that if she followed him inside, she would likely be kissed quite
thoroughly indeed. She’d known it all along. Perhaps, even, that
 
was why she’d come. And this time he’d
said aloud what she’d always imagined.
 
Come inside with me
.

He was going to kiss her. There was nobody
about to see her lapse. Even the cat had disappeared. It was nearly Christmas,
and Lavinia didn’t suppose she would get any other gift this year. She was
cold, and his breath was warm.

She untied her bonnet strings and followed
him inside.

The entry was cold and dark and empty, and
Mr. White didn’t even stop to take her things. Instead, he hustled her up two
flights of stairs. The halls of the second landing lacked the soft, feminine
furnishings that Mrs. Entwhistle employed downstairs. Instead, they had a
Spartan, military look. The walls were the stark yellow of age-faded whitewash.

Mr. White glanced at her, his lips pressed
together, and then turned down a silent hall into a back room. The furniture
was austere wood. From ceiling to baseboard, there was not even a hint of color
on the unadorned walls. A white washstand bore a white pitcher and—a sign that
she was in territory that was undeniably masculine—a black-handled razor. A
single window looked out over a desolate, gray yard. A solitary tree, stripped
to its bare branches by winter, huddled sullenly in the center.

And Lavinia was looking everywhere but in
the corner, where there was a bed. It was as cold and forbidding as the rest of
the room, made perfectly, without the smallest wrinkle in the white linens.

Abed.
This visit was becoming most improper
indeed.

Mr. White pulled up a chair—the lone chair
in the room, a straight-backed wooden affair—for Lavinia. She sat.

He walked over to a small table and picked
up a piece of paper.

“I’ve purchased your brother’s promissory
note,” he said stiffly.

She hadn’t quite known what to expect. “I
hope you didn’t pay the full ten pounds for it,” she said. “Why would you do
such a thing?”

He sat on the bed and fiddled with his
rolled-up cuffs. She could see the blue lines of veins in his wrist. His
fingers were quite long, and Lavinia could imagine them touching her cheek, a
gentle tap-tap, in tune with the ditty he beat on his palm now. She wondered
whether Mrs. Entwhistle often visited relatives, and if so, whether Mr. White
regularly entertained women in his quarters.