Chapter 6
Vicky Abbott had a problem, and it wore the shape of a man who smelled faintly of ink and looked indecently handsome in plain wool.
She had no intention of remembering the kiss. She had, in fact, resolved not to. Unfortunately, her lips had taken leave of her authority and kept reminding her—inconveniently, treacherously—each time she spoke, or drank tea, or even breathed: he kissed you—twice now—and you liked it.
This would not do.
She straightened chapbooks with zeal that frightened even the chapbooks, snapped at the bow on the holly posy until it surrendered with a tilt properly rakish, and then scolded the coal grate for crackling impertinently.
The shop smelled of pine and paper and the raisins in Gracie’s morning bun.
It was all very calm, very proper, very determinedly not-thinking-about-Hubert-Stouts’s-mouth.
“Gracie,” Vicky announced at last, flinging herself onto the stool opposite the counter, “I have been assaulted.”
Gracie did not look up from the calm, immaculate marching columns of her ledger. “In the street?”
“In a stationer’s shop,” Vicky said grimly. “By the stationer himself.”
The quill paused mid-stroke. Gracie lifted her gaze over the rims of her spectacles; the look was the nearest she came to gaping. “Ah.”
“That is all you have to say?”
“What would you like?” Gracie asked, setting the quill aside with maddening composure. “ ‘How dreadful’? ‘How delicious’? Or perhaps, ‘Tell me every detail before the ink dries’?”
“I cannot decide,” Vicky said, hands flying up. “I dislike him. Truly. He is stiff, superior, and excessively fond of rules. And yet—” She broke off, scorching, and pressed a palm to her chest as if her heartbeat had decided to misbehave. “And yet my knees appear to have retired from service.”
Gracie’s mouth twitched. For Gracie, this was uproarious laughter. “So you liked it.”
“I am confused,” Vicky said with dignity, which would have sounded better had she not been pink to the ears. “He seized me like a man possessed and kissed me against his counter with all the finesse of a thunderstorm. It was appallingly messy.” She coughed. “And persuasive.”
“Mm,” Gracie said, which in her dialect meant I told you so and you’re doomed in one efficient syllable.
“I shall forget it,” Vicky declared. “By luncheon.”
“Very good,” Gracie said. “I shall set a plate for amnesia.”
Vicky’s retort was forestalled by the bell’s clang. Both women looked up. Hubert Stouts stood on the threshold, tall and grave, hat in hand. His eyes went straight to Vicky—steady, dark, far too aware—and then he inclined his head stiffly to Gracie.
“Miss Abbott,” he said, voice lower than usual, roughened. “Might I have a word? In private.”
Gracie’s brows climbed. “By all means,” she said, positively glowing with discretion. “Take the back room. I shall protect the till from romance.”
Vicky shot her a look promising treachery would be remembered in the will, then swept past Hubert with her chin high. She led him through the narrow door behind the counter into the small office where ledgers, quills, and the faint scent of pine wax reigned.
Hubert closed the door carefully behind him. His presence filled the cramped space at once—broad shoulders, clean wool, the quiet gravity of a man who had learned to carry more than his share. For a heartbeat he said nothing, as if words were a field he must cross without being shot.
“I came,” he began, “to ensure you have arranged additional locks. The watch advised—”
“Oh, do spare me,” Vicky cut in, folding her arms. “You did not march into my shop to speak of bolts.”
His spine stiffened. “Safety is no trivial matter.”
“Hubert,” she said, letting his name slide off her tongue like a challenge, “what did you really come for?”
He faltered. For a moment she thought he would retreat into his fortress of practicality; she saw him reach for it, habit and armor both. Then his hands flexed uselessly at his sides, and he looked at her fully. The guarded mask—so tidy, so tiresome—cracked.
“I came,” he said hoarsely, “to ask if you enjoyed it. The kiss. Or if I only imagined—”
Vicky blinked. He was serious. The terrifyingly proper Hubert Stouts stood in her little office, asking—no, needing—to know. He, who spoke like a rulebook and moved like a metronome, had brought his uncertainty into her keeping and set it on her desk like something breakable.
Silence stretched. She let it, just to watch what it did to him. His jaw tightened; his hands curled into fists as if bracing for a blow. A flush climbed his cheekbones, stubborn as sunrise.
“Well,” she said at last, leaning back against the desk with studied carelessness, “that is a very indelicate question, Mr. Stouts.”
He swallowed. “Perhaps. But I must know.”
“Must you?” She tilted her head, allowing a wicked little smile to tempt fate. “How very immodest, to assume I gave it any thought.”
Color rose higher. “I assumed nothing. I—” He broke off, visibly editing himself. “I only wondered.”
“That I was swept away?” she supplied helpfully. “Overborne by passion? Fainting in your arms like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines?”
A muscle leapt in his cheek. “I did not say that.”
“No,” she said, pushing off the desk to prowl a slow circle round him, “but you thought it. Men always imagine the heroine faints. It makes them feel… corrective.”
He turned with her, trying to keep her in view, like a soldier beset by a very small, very smug cavalry. “I have never imagined correcting you, Miss Abbott.”
She arched a brow. “No? You do an admirable impression.”
“I imagined—” He stopped, exhaled, began again more quietly. “I imagined I might have wronged you. That you did not… that you were not… willing.” The last word sounded dragged through thorns.
She stopped. He hadn’t come to gloat. He had come to make certain he had not harmed her.
It ought to have disarmed her entirely; it nearly did.
For one ruinous second she saw him as he was beneath the starch: responsible to a fault, precariously earnest, a man who had spent a lifetime being the brace that held the shelf.
Teasing would be unkind, then.
Well—perhaps only slightly unkind.
“The truth is,” she said, tapping a finger against her mouth with mock thoughtfulness, “memory is unreliable. It was all rather sudden. Heat of the moment. I was terribly distracted by the state of your hair.”
“My—hair?”
“Yes,” she said gravely. “Mussed beyond redemption. Positively rakish. Quite scandalous. One could hardly be expected to take accurate notes.”
His ears went a little red. It was absurdly gratifying.
“I suppose,” she went on, letting her gaze drift over that regrettably excellent jaw and those regrettably capable hands, “there was a kiss in there somewhere. But if one wanted certainty, one would have to… repeat the experiment.”
He stared. For a long, taut moment he didn’t move, as if her words had frozen him where he stood. Then, with visible effort—as if he were breaking a habit of a decade—he stepped closer.
“Vicky,” he murmured, and the way he said her name loosened every bolt she’d ever set.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She wanted to see what he would do when he wanted something more than control.
He lifted his hand—hesitated a fraction, seeking permission without speaking—then tipped her chin up with careful fingers.
The touch was reverent, maddeningly gentle, as though she were fragile crystal instead of an inconvenient woman who tied rakish bows out of spite.
His eyes searched hers, dark with hunger and restraint both.
“Prove your case,” she whispered.
He bent. This kiss was nothing like the first. No fury, no collision, no desperate tumble.
He touched his mouth to hers lightly at first, coaxing rather than claiming, a brush of warmth that asked without assuming.
Her breath hitched. He tried again, a hairsbreadth deeper, shaping the question with his lips: may I?
She answered with the smallest tilt forward, a yes dressed as a sigh.
Then restraint sighed and let go its end of the rope.
He kissed her properly—slowly, thoroughly, the kind of kiss that had its own gravity.
One hand remained at her jaw, thumb tracing the line to her ear in steady, devastating strokes; the other found the small of her back, guiding her nearer.
She curled her fingers in his lapels, the wool warm under her palms, and let herself be gathered.
Heat unfurled, not the wild blaze of yesterday but a steady, consuming tide that climbed and climbed until breathing felt like a rumor.
The little office disappeared: no shelves, no ledgers, no guillotine of propriety waiting outside the door.
There was only the slide of his mouth learning hers, the unfair strength in his hands, the quiet sound in his throat when she dared open for him and taste his restraint break.
He broke away at last, only far enough to breathe. His forehead rested against hers; it felt like surrender. “Not nearly enough,” he said, the words low and wrecked.
“Conclusive,” she managed, trying to find her spine and failing cheerfully. “But yes. We are approaching the neighborhood of ‘enough.’”
He huffed something like a laugh, warm against her lips. “If I continue, Miss Abbott, there will be nothing left of me but paper and regret.”
“Regret?” she echoed, smiling despite the tremor in her knees. “You overestimate your scruples and underestimate my appetite.”
He made a sound—half groan, half prayer—and kissed her again.
It was worse this time, or better: confidence had joined tenderness and the combination unmade her.
She rose onto her toes; he caught her waist, steadying, and she felt the breadth of his shoulders under her hands, the leashed power in his arms, the whole infuriating, exquisite reality of him.
The kiss slowed, then deepened, then slowed again, as if he intended to memorize the shape of her mouth one patient inch at a time.