Chapter 1 #2
Saskia opened her journal and held her pencil ready. “Is there anything else you could tell me about him?”
The barman turned to the serving maid who was presently grabbing an impressive four mugs of ale by their handles. “Now, Molly, didn’t you have dealings with Cassidy when he was laid up?”
Dealings…
Well.
But Liam Cassidy’s dealings with the comely, dark-eyed Molly were nothing she could ask about, so Saskia skipped to the next most relevant question. “Laid up?”
“Four…five years ago, it were,” said Molly, expertly lifting the mugs brimming with a thin layer of foam, not a drop spilled. “Broken leg.”
“Other parts of him were not broken.” The barman winked at Molly.
“That would be kissin’ and tellin’, now wouldn’t it?” The glint of fire in Molly’s dark eyes looked ready to catch. “And me man, Jim, don’t need to be hearin’ those tales, now does he?”
The barman, chastened, said, “Fair play.”
With a toss of her head, Molly and her ales rushed away.
Saskia might’ve needed to peel her eyebrows off the ceiling.
But what had she expected?
A man like Liam Cassidy wouldn’t be short on dalliances.
“Anyhow,” said the barman with a jut of his square, dimpled chin, “you can ask him for yourself.”
And Saskia felt it—a charge whizzing through the air…elements transfiguring.
And she knew.
Liam Cassidy had arrived.
Slowly, as if not to disturb newly altered air, she turned. The atmosphere of the taproom had shifted. It wasn’t her imagination. Every patron tossed a smile his way, and he threw smiles right back in that easy manner of his.
Criminy, but he was handsome.
Somehow, it struck her anew every time she saw him. When she wasn’t looking at him, his handsomeness fell into the category of memory, which could be unreliable. But when she was directly beholding him, she could take no such shelter from the truth.
With his sun-streaked auburn hair…his straight nose and sharp cheekbones…
his lean, rangy form…his easy smile, he was that handsome.
And that smile of his, which provoked smiles from others, could’ve been the smile of a politician.
But it wasn’t. His eyes held qualities which no politician possessed—warmth… playfulness…sincerity.
All wonderful qualities in a person, to be sure.
However, those wonderful qualities struck to the heart of a secret, slightly shameful truth she harbored.
In her capacity as a novelist, she’d written numerous heroes.
Some dark and olive-complected…others light and pale.
Some with eyes black as midnight…others blue as a crystalline sky…
yet others gray as the sea on a cloudy day…
some green as the moss beside a bubbling Highland stream.
Some heroes had wide, muscular shoulders…
others lean and rangy. She could write any man on the page and outfit him with any number of handsome features.
But ’twas a single man inspired the depth of feeling she needed to access so she could write those other men—Liam Cassidy.
He was—secretly…slightly shamefully—her Platonic ideal of a hero.
No matter how the hero was described to the reader on the page—short…tall…blond…dark—in her mind’s eye, he was always Liam Cassidy.
She’d made her peace with it.
And, really, where was the harm?
He wasn’t truly in her orbit.
He was wealthy and famous; she was a bookseller-publisher-author.
When one thought about it, she’d come to a perfect arrangement of artist and muse.
Still, she thought as she pushed away from the bar and edged along the periphery of the taproom toward her discreet corner, it would be for the greater good if she legged it out of here.
Tomorrow was when she was to meet Liam Cassidy.
Not tonight.
She needed an uninterrupted, restorative sleep between now and then.
At her table, she grabbed her satchel and began shoving her writing materials inside, her heart a thundering stone in her chest, even as the possibility occurred to her that she was being overly dramatic.
In all the years they’d been orbiting the same circles of society, he’d never noticed her once.
What made her think tonight would be any different?
Luck, that was what. Bad luck.
She secured her satchel beneath her arm, then noticed a haze in the taproom—except the air was clear. It was her spectacles. In her haste, she must’ve smudged the glass. She set her bag down, pulled a soft cloth from its depths, and set to wiping the lenses.
Which was how she lost track of Liam Cassidy.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” came a masculine voice at her back.
Mid-wipe, she froze.
A low, resonant voice.
The very same voice all her heroes happened to possess.
“I sincerely doubt it,” she tossed over her shoulder, the glimpse she caught of the speaker confirming what she already knew.
Liam Cassidy, seated at the table next to hers, addressing…her.
“Are you sure?” came his next question.
“I’m sure,” she returned, her voice thankfully devoid of a wobble, the edge of her eye noting the cock of his head that hadn’t been there before.
As if she’d piqued his interest.
Criminy.
And she felt them.
His eyes on her back, waiting.
She would have to turn and directly address him, even if it was a simple parting, “Good evening.”
So, breath steeled in her lungs, she pivoted to find him sprawled on a bench, elbows propped on the table behind him, fully facing her. She opened her mouth to bid him that farewell—and he smiled.
His smile… She’d observed it from afar, but had never once been its recipient.
She’d described this smile in every book she’d written, but without one detail she only now noticed. In the instant before the smile curved his mouth, it lit within his eyes.
The farewell she’d meant to speak retreated in her mouth.
“It’s just that”—his smile went knickers-meltingly lopsided—“I never forget a pretty face.”
Her lungs forgot how to breathe.
It was a line—the practiced line of a handsome man accustomed to getting anywhere he wanted with any woman he wanted.
She knew this, for he hadn’t seen her face until two seconds ago.
It is a line, she repeated to herself.
Yet that line’s effect on her was…enlivening.
It was absolutely sobering, the enlivening effect that line was having on her.
“I’m Liam.”
His confidence struck her.
But it wasn’t simply his confidence in himself.
It was his confidence in her.
That in the face of his easy smile, indisputable handsomeness, and sparkling charm, she would, of course, give over.
She nodded.
Expectancy, along with a dollop of humor, entered his eyes. “And you are?”
“I’m…” A name made its way to her mouth, and when she spoke it, she found it wasn’t her own. “Arabella.”
“Arabella,” he said as if testing each syllable on his tongue. “Can’t say I’ve ever met an Arabella.”
Well, neither had Saskia.
The essence of his smile shifted, and he angled forward. They were entering a conspiracy together, this smile said. “I like firsts.”
He was a sportsman.
He would like firsts.
Yet she sensed another meaning weaving between the spaces of his words.
A provocative, stirring meaning.
The appropriate response would’ve been a blush, except Arabella didn’t seem the blushing sort—a trait she and Saskia shared in common.
She found herself faced with a palmful of choices. The most obvious would’ve been to reveal herself as Lady Saskia Calthorp, tell him she’d been having him on, that she would see him on the morrow for their interview, and leave.
Another choice would’ve been to let him keep believing she was Arabella tonight—and also leave. Tomorrow, she would tell him she’d been playing a jape on him.
Yet it was a third choice that pricked and pulled at her.
She could let him believe she was Arabella and…stay.
A tempting choice, this third one.
More than temptation, it was opportunity, for wasn’t Arabella a character of her own creation? She was quite skilled at fashioning characters, which wasn’t her blowing her own trumpet. Members of Sirens had said as much, unknowingly within earshot of Harriet LaPlume.
Really, when viewed from that perspective, Arabella would be research.
Except Saskia had only ever created characters on the page; never had she done so in real life. She’d never even acted out scenes from Shakespeare or Sophocles with Viveca, choosing instead to direct the performance while her sister played each role.
And though these ideas, choices, opportunities, and temptations came to her in the snap of a second, she knew it was already too late.
For the rest of this evening, she was Arabella.
And here was something Saskia already knew about the character of Arabella: she wouldn’t be the heroine in one of Harriet LaPlume’s novels.
No, Arabella was too worldly for virtuous heroine status.
Arabella would smile indiscriminately and flirt audaciously.
Lady Saskia Calthorp, on the other hand, would never.
So, here, within reach, for just one night, was experience of the empirical variety.
Experience she could use in her writing.
Experience that would serve to deepen her writing.
When viewed thus, wasn’t it necessary experience?