Chapter 10 #2
“I believe he has already decided,” she said. “Though my belief is of very little consequence.”
Her throat tightened on the last word. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep it from trembling. She would not cry here. Not in front of him.
The bench shifted. She felt rather than saw him turn toward her. A hand touched her shoulder, warm and steady, not urging, only being there.
That alone threatened to undo her. She had expected demands, not this simple, quiet presence.
“You intend to run,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“With your mother.”
“If I can,” she whispered.
“And your brother?”
“William is at school.” She swallowed. “He is safer there than he will be anywhere with us.”
Silence wrapped around them, dense as velvet. Gwen felt as if she had stepped out onto a thin ledge and spoken into a darkness that might or might not answer.
“Look at me,” Victor urged.
She turned slowly. His hand slid from her shoulder to the back of the bench, close but not quite touching her. His eyes were very clear.
“You do not trust me,” he acknowledged. “You have told me so. Yet you ask me to pay for a flight whose end you will not describe. You come to my house at night. You hide in my shadows. And when I ask what hunts you, you turn your head and give me scraps.”
“I have given you more than I have given anyone,” she said, more sharply than she had intended. But then the sharpness broke, revealing the rawness beneath. “Is that not enough for your curiosity?”
“I am no longer curious,” he replied.
The words stole her next breath. For a wild second, she thought he meant to end everything, to declare himself bored and withdraw his aid. Panic clawed at her chest.
He must have seen it, for his gaze softened, grew more intent.
“I am concerned,” he added. “There is a difference.”
Her composure faltered. She gripped the edge of the bench.
“Do not,” she whispered, hardly knowing what she was begging him for.
Do not be kind. Do not make this harder. Do not see me.
He lifted a hand very slowly so that she might refuse if she wished. She did not.
His fingers touched her cheek, a light, questioning stroke. The contact sent a shock through her, hot and startling, as if some long-neglected part of her had just remembered it was alive.
“Gwen,” he murmured, her name quieter this time. “You have been holding yourself as if the world means to strike you. It is allowed to put your weight elsewhere for a moment.”
Tears pricked her eyes, and one escaped before she could stop it. It slid down and landed on his thumb. His face contorted, not in horror, but in something like fierce resolve.
He bent and kissed her.
The first touch of his mouth was careful, almost reverent, as if he feared she might shatter. Her lips parted on a soft, startled breath. Heat flared where they met, then spread in a slow, bewildering tide.
This was not the fleeting, stolen kiss of the garden. This was something that unfolded, that asked for her answer and waited for it.
She gave it.
Her hand rose of its own accord, her fingers curling into the fabric of his coat.
She had not known what to expect. She had not expected the strange rightness of it, the way her body seemed to recognize an intimacy her mind did not yet have the words for.
His mouth moved against hers with measured pressure, coaxing rather than consuming. Every small shift seemed to ask, Is this too much? Is this enough?
When he drew back at last, she felt the absence like a chill.
She searched his face, her breath unsteady. “I should not have allowed that.”
He rose from the bench as if giving her space, as if he sensed she might run if he remained too close. “You did not allow it,” he corrected her. “You participated in it.”
“That is worse,” she muttered.
They remained like that for a moment, separated by the narrow breadth of the instrument, the air thick with everything that had been left unsaid.
Her heart pounded so loudly she was certain he could hear it. She should leave. She should draw herself up, adjust her cloak, remind him of their terms, and walk away with what remained of her senses.
Instead, she found her feet moving.
She rose from the bench. The room seemed smaller now, as if the walls had shifted inward. Victor watched her with a stillness that felt as dangerous as any shout.
“I should go,” she whispered.
“Perhaps,” he said, his voice low. “Do you wish to?”
That was the question, was it not?
She stood within reach of the door and of him. Both led to safety, but his was a very different sort.
“I do not know,” she sighed.
He held her gaze. He did not move toward her; he waited.
Something inside her loosened then. The part of her that had been starved for gentle touch, for being wanted without being owned, took one clear, decisive step.
She went back to him.
Her hands found his coat again, and she rose on her tiptoes, closing the small distance between them. He met her halfway, his mouth capturing hers with greater surety, the question already answered.
The kiss deepened quickly, taking on an urgency that startled her almost as much as it thrilled her.
Heat surged through her and pooled low in her belly, making her tremble. His arms came around her, pulling her in, but not so tight that she could not break away if she chose to. The knowledge that she could made it easier not to.
She leaned back without thinking, seeking something to brace herself against. Her hips met the solid front of the pianoforte. The keys beneath them protested with a dissonant cluster of notes, a startled musical gasp that made her laugh against his mouth.
He laughed too, a low, rough sound that she felt rather than heard.
Eventually, their laughter dissolved into another kiss, more consuming than the first. Her hands slid upward, her fingers brushing the warm curve of his neck where his cravat would normally sit. He had left it looser tonight.
A small, wicked satisfaction bloomed at the thought that she had been the one to disturb his careful order.
His mouth moved with greater urgency now, yet still he checked himself, drawing back for a heartbeat as if to be certain she wished to continue. Her answer was in the way she tipped her chin, in the way her fingers tightened, in the soft, helpless sound that escaped her when he returned to her.
The keys gave another protesting tune as their combined weight pushed the bench closer.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a sensible voice remarked that she was behaving in a way that would give the ton sufficient fodder for a decade. The rest of her did not care. For the first time since her father died, she did not feel small or helpless. She felt chosen.
When at last she tore her mouth from Victor’s, it was because breathing had become a pressing necessity, not because her desire had faded. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, her eyes closed.
“This is indecent,” she whispered.
“Sinfully so,” he agreed, his breath warm against her temple.
She should have stepped away then.
She did not.
They remained like that for a long moment, the only sound their uneven breathing and the soft mutter of the pianoforte’s strings still settling from their abuse.
At last, Victor drew in a slow breath and drew back, just enough to look at her properly.
“Night three,” he murmured. “I had intended it to be an examination.”
She managed a weak smile. “An examination? How unromantic.”
He smiled back. “I am not a romantic man.”
“And now?” she asked, her voice a little husky.
“Now, I find I have mislaid my sense,” he replied. “And I am not certain I wish to find it again this evening.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. She turned slightly so that her hip rested against the instrument rather than his body. The absence of his full warmth made her feel oddly bereft.
“You should not say such things,” she murmured.
“Why?”
“Because I might believe you.”
He considered that. “For tonight, believe that I am capable of being ruled by something other than arithmetic.”
She let out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh. “And what does rule you tonight, Your Grace?”
He regarded her with that steady, unsettling gaze. It seemed to say, You.
The unspoken word landed in the space between them like a pebble in a still pond, sending out ripples she did not know how to contain.
Silence fell again. It had weight, but not the oppressive weight of Howard’s silences. This one felt like a possibility, like the held breath before a curtain rose.
“What did you wish night three to be?” he asked, as if his earlier words did not matter.
She toyed with the edge of one glove, suddenly shy. “I do not know that I am allowed wishes in this arrangement.”
“You are allowed more than you believe,” he murmured. “Tell me.”
She hesitated. There were so many things she wanted that lay forever beyond reach. For tonight, she could not make a huge demand. The night would not bear it.
“I wish,” she said slowly, “that it would last longer.”
His eyebrow rose. “The night?”
“Yes.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “That can be arranged. Time is one resource I command too abundantly.”
“I should go,” she added quickly, as if to balance her confession. “Truly, I should. Martha will worry. My mother might wake. Howard might invent a reason to prowl the corridors.”
“All excellent reasons,” he acknowledged. “And yet you are still here.”
She looked away. “I am greedy. It is unbecoming.”
“Your greed harms no one,” he reasoned. “Mine very nearly does. We will manage the difference.”
She wanted to stay. Every part of her, from her racing pulse to the small, secret ache his kisses had ignited, wanted to stay. Yet the image of Howard’s cold smile, of her mother’s tearful eyes, of the nun’s veil that waited three weeks away, pressed against that wish like a wall.
“I cannot stay,” she whispered. “I can only delay.”
“Then let us delay a little,” he coaxed. “Sit. Breathe. Allow yourself to enjoy the fact that tonight, no one is striking you with any command. Not even me.”
The simple acknowledgment of what her life contained stole the argument from her throat.
She sat again, though this time at the corner of the bench, putting the length of the keyboard between them.
Victor did not press nearer. He began to play once more, something soft and low that did not require her participation, only her listening.
She watched his hands instead of the keys. The long, capable fingers that had traced her cheek, that had steadied her shoulders, now coaxed melody from ivory and wire.
A man who could be ruthless with a merchant could also do this. A man the clubs described as cold could also warm an entire room with the sound he made.
Perhaps the world had been wrong about him.
Perhaps she had been wrong.
Rumors had painted him as a beast under a beautiful face.
Her own had painted him as a tool she could wield for her purpose.
Yet, when she thought of the way he had tied the silk blindfold gently so as not to hurt her, of the way he had watched her tonight with concern rather than hunger, those pictures began to blur.
He glanced up once and caught her staring. But instead of looking away in embarrassment, she held his gaze. Something passed between them, something nameless and bright that made the back of her neck tingle.
When at last she rose to leave, the clock had crept far past the sensible hour. Victor closed the lid of the pianoforte and escorted her back through the dim passages to the garden gate. The air outside bit at her cheeks, sharp and clean.
He did not touch her this time as she pulled up her hood. He only looked at her with that same infuriating, disarming steadiness.
“Be careful,” he urged.
“You are very fond of instructing me,” she teased.
“I’m a gentleman.”
“That is a dreadful admission.”
“It is my only excuse, Gwen.”
She hesitated, her fingers on the gate. “I do not know what will happen,” she muttered. “With my stepfather. With the nunnery. With any of it.”
“I understand,” he said simply.
The words settled over her like a cloak warmer than any wool.
She did not thank him because the gratitude rose too high in her chest and would have choked her. Instead, she nodded once in a small, almost fierce acknowledgment.
“Good night, Your Grace,” she said.
“Good night, Lady Gwendoline.”
She slipped out into the dark, her feet sure on the path. The passage behind the houses took her back the way she had come, the familiar shadows closing around her. She should have been afraid. Instead, she found herself smiling.
The smile surfaced again and again as she moved, unbidden and impossible to suppress.
Perhaps Victor was not the cold, unfeeling wretch the gossips whispered about. Perhaps they just spoke of the mask he wore to keep people from creeping too near.
She knew him to be arrogant, exacting, and cold as everyone did. But she also knew him to be gentle, thoughtful, and unexpectedly patient. It was that contrast that warmed her in a very dangerous way.
She reached the servants’ entrance of Fenwick House and slipped inside. The corridor was dark. No one was lurking nearby. Her heart finally began to calm.
She paused at the foot of the back stairs, one hand on the banister, and let herself think clearly for the first time since his mouth had met her own.
She did not want to stop meeting him.
Whatever lay ahead, whether nunnery or flight, she knew there would be precious little sweetness in it. So, if these nights were the last pleasure she would ever know in this world, she would take them.