Chapter 6 #2
When he finally lifted his head, they were both breathing as if they had run. She stared at him, stunned—by him, by herself, by the appalling ease with which the ground had shifted under her feet.
“Well,” she said faintly, summoning what dignity she could find. “That was… educational.”
“Educational?” He looked dazed, undone, and, blast him, endearing. “I suppose I ought to be grateful it wasn’t remedial.”
“Oh, it may yet be,” she murmured, delighting in the way color climbed his cheekbones anew. “If you misbehave.”
His thumb, still at her jaw, stilled. “I am misbehaving now.”
“Yes,” she said. “At last.”
A knock rapped on the other side of the door; Gracie’s voice followed, dry as dust. “If your private conference is to run longer, do either of you require tea? Or a cold basin?”
Vicky pressed her lips together hard enough to ache. Hubert’s hand fell; he straightened, mortification and something rather like laughter warring in his eyes.
“We require,” Vicky called, managing an almost-level tone, “a moment.”
“A very short one,” Gracie returned. “The Earl of Wickham’s clerk waits at the counter, and I doubt he will appreciate romance in his receipts.”
Hubert scrubbed a hand over his face, ruining his hair further. Vicky had not thought it possible to be both flustered and smug, but there she was, alive to new experiences.
“I should go,” he said, not moving.
“You should,” she agreed, not moving either.
They stared at each other like idiots—or saints in very bad paintings—until common sense dragged itself in and unfurled a fainting fan. Vicky stepped back first, because she was marginally crueler and because triumph was best when rationed.
“One thing,” she said, and he froze obligingly. “Concerning yesterday.”
He swallowed. “Yes?”
“I appreciated that you came to ask,” she said, simple as she could make it. “To ensure… I was willing.”
Relief cracked through his composure so fiercely she felt it in her own knees. “I never wish to wrong you,” he said. “Or to imagine myself wanted where I am not.”
She couldn’t help it; she smiled. “You are not wanted,” she said gravely, “in many places. But, unhappily, here—” she touched two fingers to her mouth, light as a secret—“you are.”
His breath left him in a rush. “Vicky.”
“Go,” she said gently, because if he stayed she might climb him like a ladder. “Before Gracie begins invoicing us for impropriety.”
He made no move to kiss her again. He only lifted her hand—hers, ink-smudged and traitorously trembling—and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist with a care that scattered her wits.
Then he left, before she could disgrace herself entirely.
Vicky stood a long moment in the quiet, listening to the thunder of her own heart and the more decorous clink of coin from the shop. The room smelled of pine and something warmer; she fanned herself with the daybook and told her knees to function. They negotiated terms.
When she emerged at last, Gracie was all equanimity, except for the eyes, which sparkled like a miser’s hoard. The Earl’s clerk, an earnest youth drowned in his master’s livery, signed for a parcel. Vicky handed it over and took his coin with an expression she had practiced upon terrifying vicars.
After the clerk left, Gracie shut the ledger with a click. “Well?”
Vicky considered the ceiling. “Educational.”
Gracie’s mouth went prim to prevent laughter. “Shall I mark it as professional development?”
“Do,” Vicky said, and allowed herself one small, scandalous grin. “I am progressing rapidly.”
“Toward what?” Gracie asked, entirely too innocent.
“Ruination,” Vicky said. “But in excellent company.”
Gracie resumed her accounts. “I shall order more ribbon.”
“For the shop?” Vicky asked, too quickly.
“For your downfall,” Gracie said.
“Very prudent,” Vicky murmured, thinking, to her horror and delight, of Hubert’s hands.
Of the way his thumb had stroked her jaw as if learning it by heart.
Of the way his voice had broken on her name.
She busied herself with stacking almanacs because almanacs had never yet kissed a woman senseless.
Toward afternoon, when the winter light grew thin, Vicky drifted—innocently—toward the front window.
She adjusted the holly. She adjusted it again.
One had to be meticulous about bows. Through the wavery pane she could see the stationer’s across the way: door mended, window straight, a single lamp throwing its gold against the gathering dusk.
A tall figure moved behind the counter.
Her breath did something foolish. She decided to ignore it.
She also decided to ignore the perverse gladness curling in her chest because his shadow was there, steady as habit.
He looked up once—only once—and even through the glass she imagined she felt the weight of it, the recognition, the apology and promise both.
Vicky gave the smallest nod, which no one but a man looking for it would have seen. He bowed his head slightly in return, the gesture neat as ever and yet… altered.
Gracie, without glancing up, said, “If you two begin speaking in semaphore I shall put it on the bill.”
Vicky smiled at the glass. “Very good. Charge the Duke.”
“Gladly.”
They worked until the lamps were lit and the street turned to pewter. When the hour came, Vicky turned the sign to Closed and slid the bolt. She banked the fire and wound her scarf and resisted the childish impulse to open the back-room door and see if it still smelled like catastrophe.
“Same time tomorrow?” Gracie asked, pinning her own shawl with a severity that suggested ribbons might attempt rebellion if left unsupervised.
“Earlier,” Vicky said, which was funny for reasons she did not care to explain. “We must be prudent.”
“Of course,” Gracie said. “I will alert prudence it has been invited.”
They parted at the door, each exhaling into the cold. Across the street, a solitary lamp still burned in the stationer’s. The world had the indecency to keep turning. But Vicky felt—ridiculously, wonderfully—as if the axis had tilted a hair, enough to set all the marbles rolling new ways.
She drew her cloak tight and started home, her mouth tingling with treachery and triumph both, and the distant, perilous certainty that memory would not require repetition for long.
Nevertheless—she smiled into the wind—she was very much looking forward to repeating it.