This Wicked Gift (8 page)

There was nothing to say beyond that, but
he looked so unbearably alone that she reached out and placed her hand atop
his.

He shut his eyes. “Don’t.” His hand
bunched into a fist underneath hers, but he did not pull away. Apparently,
“don’t” was William Q. White for “keep touching me.” Lavinia pressed her hand
against the heat of his knuckles.

“Tell me,” he said presently, “the other
evening when you told the young Mr. Spencer that you had a plan, why did you
not tell him immediately he could not be held accountable?”

It took Lavinia a few seconds to remember
what he was talking about—the moment when James had first presented her with
his idiocy.

“Why would I have told him? I would have
taken care of it. He didn’t need to know any details. It was simply a matter of
deciding upon an approach.”

“You would have done everything yourself?
Without assistance?”

Since her mother had died this year past,
Lavinia had assisted everyone else. She had assisted in the library, until her
father’s illness destroyed all
pretense
that she was a
mere assistant. She had assisted with housekeeping; she had assisted her
younger brother in his lessons, and bailed him out of the sort of scrapes that
younger brothers occasionally got into. She had never begrudged them the time
she spent; she did it because she loved her family.

She wasn’t sure she knew how to let
someone help her instead.

She tightened her hand about his, letting
his warmth seep into her. “Of course I’d have done it alone.”

“Tell me.” His voice dropped even lower,
and she leaned in to listen. “If I had offered that evening—would you have let
me assist you?”

She looked up into his eyes. He watched
her with that expression in his eyes—desire, she realized, and dark despair
that ran so deeply, it was almost outside detection. He wasn’t asking out of an
idle desire to know.

“But you didn’t. You didn’t offer.”

He shut his eyes.

And then the door burst open, and William
snatched his fingers from hers. She pulled her hands away and tucked them
behind her back with alacrity and jumped away.

James darted through the entry, his face a
picture of excitement. But even he was sufficiently observant to see she’d
sprung from William like a guilty child. It was easy to think of him as her
younger brother, as a child. But when he looked from Lavinia to William, his
lips thinning, she realized he was not as young as he’d once been.

“We’re closed,” he said, in a chilly tone
of voice. “And you—whoever you are—you’re leaving.”

Before Lavinia could protest, William had
pulled away and was walking out the door.

James looked her over, his gaze resting
first on her flushed cheeks and then on the telltale way she put her hands
behind her back. Then he cast a glance of pure scorn at William’s back. “I’m
leaving, too,” he announced, and he followed William out the door, into the
cold.

L
AVINIA’S BROTHER,
 
William thought
wryly, was a thin spike of a boy. Attach a sufficient quantity of straw to his
head, and he’d have made a passable broom. In polite society, he might have
served as a chaperone, a place-holder designed to do little more than observe.
But James Spencer, this pale wraith of a child, apparently believed he could
 
protect
 
his sister from someone who threatened
her virtue. He had been alarmingly misled. Standing outside Spencer’s on the
freezing pavement, James folded his arms—a posture that only emphasized the
sharp skin-and-bone of his shoulders.

There was a saying, William supposed,
about guarding the cows after the wolves had already come a-ravening. The adage
seemed rather inappropriate as cows could only be eaten once. He’d promised
himself he’d not importune her again, but one touch of her hand and he’d been ready
to go a-ravening all over again.

James tapped his toe, frowning. “Did you
kiss her?”

Oh, the barren and virtuous imagination of
callow youth.

“Yes,” William said. It was easier than
resorting to explanation.

James peered dubiously at William, as if
trying to ascertain whether there truly was a patch on his coat. “And what are
your prospects?”

“Too dismal to
take a wife.
Even if I chose to do so, which—at
present—I do not.”

Lavinia’s brother gasped. If the boy
thought kissing a woman without wanting to marry her constituted open devilry,
God forbid he ever learn what had really transpired.

“If you’re not going to marry her,” he
said, shocked, “then why’d you kiss her?”

William had long suspected it, but now he
was certain. Lavinia’s younger brother was an idiot.

“Mr. Spencer.” William spoke slowly,
searching for small words that were nonetheless sharp enough to penetrate her
brother’s dim cogitation. “Kissing is a pleasant activity. It is considerably
more pleasant when the woman one is kissing is more than passably pretty. Your
sister happens to be the loveliest lady in all of London. Why do you suppose I
kissed her?”

“My sister?”

“You needn’t pull such a face. It’s not
something to admit in polite company, but we’re both men here.” At least, James
would be one day. “You know it’s the truth.”

“No,” James said incredulously, screwing
up his eyes. “You want to kiss my
 
sister?
 
I
never thought—”

“Well, you’d better start thinking about
it, you little fool.
 
Everyone
 
wants
to kiss your sister. And what are you doing to protect her?
Nothing.”

“I’m protecting her now!”

“You leave her in that shop with nobody to
call for if she needs help except your father, who is too ill to respond. You
send her out to capture your vowels from known ruffians who live near docks
where sailors cavort. Don’t tell me you protect your sister. How many times
have I found her alone in the library? Do you have any idea what I could have
done to her?”

He was angry, William realized. Furious
that he’d been allowed to take from her the most precious thing she could give,
and angrier still that nobody—least of all Lavinia—was willing to castigate him
for it.

“I could have taken a great deal more than
a kiss,” he said.
“Easily.”

James’s face paled. “You wouldn’t. You
couldn’t.”

He had. He
 
would.
 
He wanted to do it again.

It felt good to admit what a blackguard he
was, even if he was hiding his confession behind safely conditional statements.
“Lock the door and anything becomes possible,” William said. “I could have
had—”

James punched him in the stomach. For a
skinny fellow, he struck hard. The blow knocked the wind out of William’s lungs
and he doubled over. That punch was the first real punishment he’d suffered
since he’d had Lavinia. Thank God. He deserved worse.

When he regained his breath and his
balance, he
 
looked up. “Don’t
tell me you protect your sister. You put everything on her—the burden of caring
for your entire family—and give her nothing in exchange. I’ve seen her. I know
what you do.”

James stood over him. “If you’re such a
blackguard, why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’ll go to the devil before
Lavinia kisses a scoundrel worse than me.”

James stopped and cocked his head. In that
instant William saw in the boy’s posture something of Lavinia—a chance
similarity, perhaps, in the way his eyes seemed to penetrate through William’s
skin. William felt suddenly translucent, as if all of his foolish wants, his
wistful longing for Lavinia, were laid out in neat rows for this boy’s
examination. He didn’t want to see those feelings himself. He surely didn’t
want this child sitting in judgment over affections that could never be.

William shook his head. “No.”

Her brother had not said a word, but still
William felt he must deny what had gone unspoken. “Don’t look at me like that.
I can’t care for her, you idiot, so you’d better start.”

James could not have accrued any substance
to his frame in these few minutes. Still, when he lifted his chin, he looked
taller. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly.
“I will.”

L
AVINIA HEARD
 
her brother’s
footsteps fall heavily on the stairs that led to their living quarters. James
had seen her
 
embracing a strange
man. Half an hour ago he’d followed William outside. Now he was coming back,
and she didn’t have answers for any of the questions he might put to her. She
didn’t want to defend her virtue tonight. Instead she stared at the account
books in front of her. Industriousness would ward off any hard questions.

She forced herself to concentrate on the
numbers in front of her.
 
Five plus six plus thirteen made four-and-twenty….

The door squeaked behind James, and then
closed.

Four-and-twenty
plus twelve plus seventeen was fifty-three.

He crossed the room and stood behind her.
She could hear the quiet rush of a resigned exhalation. Still, Lavinia
pretended she couldn’t hear him. Yes, that was it. She was so engrossed in the
books that she didn’t even notice he was breathing down her neck.

Fifty-three and
fifteen made sixty-eight.

“Vinny,” James said quietly. “I don’t
think you should always be the one to slave away over these books. Isn’t it
about time I began to take over?”

No accusations. It would have been easier
if she’d been able to lie to him. Lavinia carefully laid her pen down and
turned to her brother. His eyes were large, not with accusation, but with the
weight of responsibility. She’d wanted to save him from that.

“Oh, James.”
Lavinia arranged the lapels of his damp coat into some semblance of order.
“That’s very sweet of you.”

“I’m not being sweet. It’s necessary. I need
to be able to manage without you.”

Why? I can do it
better.

She caught the words before they came out
of her mouth. How many times had James offered to help, in his awkward way? How
many times had she refused him? She couldn’t even count.

“After all,” he
continued,
his voice slow, “you might marry.”

“I’m not getting married.” Her denial came
too fast; her light tone sounded too forced. He’d
 
seen
 
her with William. And even though he
hadn’t actually caught them kissing, they’d been clasping hands in easy
intimacy. How was she supposed to explain to her younger brother she had
engaged in such conduct with a man she was not marrying?
Best
to talk of something else.

But before she could offer up even the
most ham-handed change of subject, James let out a slow breath.
“Still.
Should I not help?”

What had William said about them? Oh God.
Had he told James the embarrassing details? Lavinia’s hand shook, ever so
slightly, where it rested on her brother’s coat. “You’re right. Maybe I can
assign you some task—something small.”

He frowned and folded his arms. “I should
have thought you would be happy to step down.”

Step down? Step down! That would ruin
 
everything.
 
Her brother had no notion how to argue
with creditors for a favorable repayment schedule; he’d not learned
 
how to account precisely for the
location of every volume in the library. If she left the shop to him, he’d lose
a ha’penny here, a ha’penny there, until the flow of cash dried up. The library
would falter and then fail. Everything she’d worked for would fall to pieces.

James didn’t seem aware he’d just proposed
complete disaster. He continued on, as if he were a reasonable person. “I think
I should be able to handle the work very well. I
 
am
 
almost sixteen years of age.”

“James.” In her ears, her voice sounded
flat and emotionless. “I can’t step down. There are too many things to
remember.”

“So you can tell me what to do at first.”

“I can’t tell you everything! Would you
think to save pennies each day, so we might have a Christmas celebration? Would
you think to bargain with the apothecary, giving him priority on the new
volumes in exchange for a discount on medicines?”

She could see his fine plans crumbling,
his desire to do more faltering. He drew his brows down.
“Would
it be so awful, then, if I made a mistake or two?
I just want to do my
part.”