Chapter 13 #2
Blaze slipped a hand into the interior pocket of his coat, and it emerged holding a slender, leather-bound book. He set it on the table between them, and Viveca leaned in to flip open the cover and read its title page—The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet.
She gasped. “This is from the Fourth Folio.” Her gaze lifted. “Where did you find this?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Around.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t pick this up from just anywhere.”
He settled back in the manner she’d come to recognize as distinctly Blaze Jagger—the front feet of the chair lifted off the floor, his long fingers laced behind his head.
“This is a very rare book.” She tapped the title page for emphasis. “You would’ve had to procure it from a specialty bookseller.” And have paid a pretty penny, too, she didn’t say.
“If you must know, Miss Siren, I’ve developed a right old affinity for bookshops these last few weeks.”
“Have you now?”
He didn’t appear to be entirely toying with her.
“I like the smell.”
She nodded, slowly. “That doesn’t explain this book, here.”
“Well, I happened to be in a bookshop I’d heard about, and the description of this one here sounded like a romance, and I thought, Blaze, you know someone who likes romance books. So, here we are—and here it is.”
“I must tell you something about Romeo and Juliet.”
“What about them?”
“They die.”
“Crikes.”
“But,” she was quick to continue, “they speak so many beautiful words to each other before they do.” She couldn’t not add, “I love it.”
The feet of his chair clicked onto the floorboards, and he settled forward, elbows on the table. “Then let’s have some of them words.”
An idea came to her. “Shall we have a lesson?”
Blaze shook his head. “I want to hear you read them.”
A strange sort of shyness came over Viveca.
“Well, the play does have a few famous lines.” It only took a few seconds for her to find a passage.
She placed the book in the center of the table and turned it so he could read along as her finger moved below the text.
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
“Sun,” said Blaze, a smile twitching about his mouth. “Not son.”
A laugh escaped Viveca.
“That Shakespeare had a way with words, no?” He cocked his head. “And Romeo and Juliet die?”
“Star-crossed, they were.”
“What’s your favorite passage?” he asked. “Read that one to me.”
The question held an odd sort of boldness, for it felt like an intimacy asked. Unable not to, she turned to the relevant page and cleared her throat. “My bounty is as endless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”
Quiet settled into the air as two-hundred-year-old words wound their magic between them. To be reading these intimate words of love with Blaze sparked novel feelings alight inside Viveca.
Except these feelings—stirred up feelings—weren’t precisely novel.
And they held a pull.
Perhaps not so dramatically as Romeo and Juliet, but she saw now how those feelings, once stirred up, could get carried away—and carry one away.
After all, hadn’t she proposed marriage to this man?
Wasn’t she, in fact, the one getting carried away?
“Did you go to school to learn all this?”
She shook her head. “Gabriel and Tessa saw that Saskia and I had tutors. In fact,” she continued, smiling at the memory, “our first Shakespeare tutor was given a stern talking to by Tessa over the way she taught us this play.”
Blaze whistled. “I’ve been on the receiving end of a stern Tessa talking-to. It ain’t for the faint of heart.”
“Quite right,” said Viveca, the ground firming beneath her feet again. “You see, the tutor felt inspired to point out how sexual in nature this passage is.”
Blaze’s brow furrowed. “Is it now?”
“When Juliet says, The more I give to thee, the more I have,” she explained. “Well, it sailed right over our young heads, but Tessa caught it.” She smiled at the memory. “But now I know from—” The next word refused to exit her mouth.
Blaze only leaned further forward. “Now you know from…?”
Experience, she didn’t need to say.
They both heard it.
They both knew it.
Three days.
That experience had been with her for only three days, yet she couldn’t remember the person she was before then. Who had she been four days ago, anyway?
She’d gone through her days and nights in the same manner as usual, and with the same routines, but she wasn’t the same.
And never could be again.
“Something I’ve always wondered,” she said and wondered at herself for even having started this sentence.
“What’s that?”
“Can two people truly feel as strongly about each other as what Shakespeare wrote on the page?”
His head cocked subtly to the side. “And are you any closer to an answer?”
She swallowed. The breath lodged in her lungs. Her heart thundered in her chest.
The thing was—and, oh, how unexpected—she might be.
Of a sudden, a cacophonous racket rent the air, and a moment later, Viveca realized it was Blaze’s chair scraping across the floorboards. He shot to a sudden stand. “This wouldn’t be any kind of night of carousing if we didn’t make a proper tavern crawl of it.”
And with that, he was striding toward the door, and she was again scrambling to catch up, hastily tucking the Shakespeare beneath her arm.
As she stepped out onto the quiet street, her heart was no longer in the mood for carousing. She would rather be back inside the tavern they’d just left.
Back inside that quiet moment between them.
Blaze, on the other hand, appeared hell-bent on distancing himself from it and her as he strode down the street with nary a look back.
Well, her heart was no longer of a mind to be around him, either.
So, she pivoted on her heel and started striding in the opposite direction.
She’d gone no more than twenty yards before she heard a shout behind her, “Oi!”
She ignored it, even picked up her pace, for good measure. But soon, heavy, rapid footsteps sounded on the cobbles behind her, then he was by her side. “The carriage is the other direction.”
She exhaled with annoyance. The carriage. Of course, she would need it to haul her out of the East End. She was just about to turn when she heard it—a woman’s voice…singing, the melody drifting into the street, filling the air with sweet melancholy.
Viveca’s feet stuttered to a stop.
She was instantly transfixed by the most heavenly voice she’d ever heard.
Without permission, her feet started moving in its direction.
Masculine fingers wrapped lightly around her upper arm. “Let’s go.”
Her head whipped around. “Like you said, one more tavern to make it proper.”
“I know of one you’ll like back the other way.”
“Why not the—” She read the sign above the door where the heavenly singing was issuing from. “The Crimson Dove?”
Blaze stood, unmoving. He didn’t look inclined to relent.
She felt her brow crinkle. “Do you owe this establishment money?”
He snorted. “I don’t owe anybody anything in this world. It’s the other way ’round.”
Her head canted. “Then why can’t we go inside The Crimson Dove?”
Blaze’s jaw tensed and released—and tensed again.
She had him.
When she stepped inside the tavern, she was transported alongside every other patron, whose gazes were pointed in a single direction—toward the back of the establishment where a woman stood on a raised platform, her eyes closed as she sang her song.
With her long black hair that hung straight down to her knees and her elegant, lissome figure that spoke of youth—though she must’ve been more than a couple of years beyond her fortieth—the woman was a singular beauty.
Viveca stood just inside the doorway and listened to the woman’s song—one of those tunes that trod the line between bright and sad—not caring that all Blaze wanted was to be away from this place.
Too soon, the song came to an end, but not the rapt silence of the taproom.
The singer’s eyes opened, and Viveca nearly gasped. Her eyes were of a striking blue that one couldn’t look away from. Then the woman’s gaze shifted and hesitated on a point just beyond Viveca’s shoulder, and her entire face transformed into pure joy.
Blaze.
The woman was fixed on Blaze as she rushed across the room and past Viveca to take him into a long, fierce embrace.
Blaze himself returned the hug with a smile.
What was happening here?
Once the woman released Blaze, he said, “Lady Viveca, may I introduce Miss Lorna Jagger to you?”
Somehow, the introduction came across as both ironic and earnest.
“Jagger?”
“Me mam.”
Oh.
His…mam.
Of course, he had a mam.
Did she think him descended from wolves?
She dipped into a curtsy. “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Jagger.”
Miss Jagger giggled but didn’t, otherwise, return the greeting.
Blaze cleared his throat. “Mam doesn’t speak, as such.”
On impulse, Viveca reached for Miss Jagger’s hands and gave them a squeeze. “Well, you must save your voice for your lovely songs, mustn’t you?”
Blaze’s mam giggled again.
“It’s how the good Lord saw fit to make her,” came a deep, male voice behind her.
Viveca turned to find she was being addressed by the old barkeep for whom she’d spared only a cursory glance when she’d entered the tavern.
A man of considerable bulk—a boon in his occupation, to be sure—he possessed the kind of eye that took one in at a single glance and knew everything he needed to know.
“And who am I to question the Almighty’s motives?” he continued. “Besides, Blaze has enough words for the lot of us.”
“And this is me granddad,” said Blaze. “Granddad, this is Lady Viveca.”
She noticed something. She wasn’t Miss Siren to Blaze’s family.
It was that code she’d noticed about him.
He wouldn’t lie to his family.
“I’m so pleased to meet you, Mr. Jagger.” She shook his hand and glanced around. “Am I correct in thinking The Crimson Dove is your fine establishment?”
“These last forty years after I bought it off old Mr. Bunty.”
Blaze shifted, one foot already out the door. “Now, that we’ve made all the family introductions—”
Viveca’s feet had other ideas. They remained rooted firmly in place. “Oh, but I’ve only just said hello to your family.”
“And now you can say goodbye.”
His eyes remained most serious.
“But what about your father?” she asked. “I suppose he’s around here, too?”
“Oh, he’s around,” said Blaze. “But not here.”
Viveca could’ve slapped her forehead for her stupidity. Blaze’s mother was Miss Jagger. She didn’t have a husband.
Still, Viveca did have some good manners she could rely on in moments of stupidity… “I am so pleased to meet you Mr. and Miss Jagger. I hope to see you again.” She found herself to be most sincere.
Blaze didn’t release her arm until he’d marched her out of his granddad’s tavern and to his waiting carriage.
“This isn’t where we left it,” said Viveca, disoriented by…everything.
“Stanley knows I’ll always end up here.”
Blaze opened the door, and Viveca clambered inside. Seated upon lush leather squabs, she lowered the window. “Thank you,” she said. “For the night.”
He snorted.
She held up the Shakespeare. “Do you want Romeo and Juliet back?”
“Naw, it’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“You know, a gift, like.”
Without thought or hesitation, she stretched out her hand and touched the side of his face in a light caress. His eyes drifted shut for the split of a second before he grabbed her hand and pressed his mouth to her palm.
The breath caught in her lungs.
He moved her hand to the nape of his neck and drew close, tucking his thumb beneath her chin, his breath whispering across her lips in the moment before he pressed his mouth to hers. It started soft, even sweet, but in the next second, gained momentum and urgency…passion.
Not just passion.
Longing…ache.
Then, as suddenly as begun, he pulled away and broke the kiss.
Viveca could only watch, as from afar, when he called instructions up to Stanley and rapped the side of the carriage.
As she rolled away, she craned her head out the window, her cheeks flaming, her heart racing, keeping Blaze in sight for as long as possible, wondering, too late, if that scorcher of a kiss had been a kiss of goodbye.