Chapter 13 #3
Hetty pressed her back against the cool stone of a terrace column, drawing in long breaths, her bosom rising and falling as though she had run the length of Rotten Row in full evening dress and satin slippers.
Though she knew it was childishly petulant to think so, she could not help but feel the grossest injustice had been visited upon her.
That she should be cast as the architect of such disaster, when all she had ever desired was but a modicum of freedom – and, above all, to be spared the interminable march down the matrimonial path – was, quite frankly, more than she could endure.
Had she set fire to a duck-shaped napkin?
Had she flung wine upon the curtains? Had she collapsed into a trifle like some operatic martyr?
At her side, Theo leant against the balustrade, perfectly untroubled by their unchaperoned state, or indeed by the fact that the evening had descended into unmitigated chaos of familial disgrace.
He was dabbing at a blotch of red wine upon his sleeve with the sort of idleness one might apply to the polishing of a boot or the adjustment of a cravat.
“Do you suppose that my valet shall work some miracle upon this?”
Hetty ignored him and crossed her arms, the night air nipping at her bare shoulders, though her ire burnt warmer still. “Tonight was an unmitigated calamity. Your mother looked as though she had bitten into a lemon and found a wasp inside instead. She was very displeased with me.”
Theo did not glance up from his sleeve. “Oh, when is my mother ever not displeased? But she will forgive. Have you forgotten the treacle tart debacle at Lady Dalton’s garden party?”
“The afternoon Cousin Mortimer lost both his front teeth?”
“And his dignity,” Tho mused. “He attempted to challenge the cook to a duel.”
Hetty let out a breath that might have been a laugh if she weren’t quite so furious. “Lady Langley vowed never to forgive such vulgarity.”
“She did,” Theo agreed, with a mournful shake of his head. “And then forgave him three days hence, upon receipt of an apology rendered entirely in rhymed couplets.”
That won Hetty’s laugh, though she pressed a gloved hand to her mouth. “How is it that you remain so unshaken by all this? Everyone is positively livid, and yet you appear as though it were nothing more than a disarranged bouquet at a country fête.”
“Because it was nothing more than that,” Theo said with a negligent lift of one brow. “A few sentiments bruised, a pudding upended and the merest hint of ruination. Really, I have witnessed worse on a Tuesday.”
“You might at least pretend to be appalled.”
“My dear Miss Tolliver,” he said, settling more comfortably against the column. “I assure you – I have never been more appallingly entertained in all my life.”
Hetty turned her face to the garden, lips pressed tightly, though a smile fought its way through all the same.
“You may treat it as a jest, Theo, but I shall be banished. Mama will pack me off to Wiltshire to live out my days with Papa’s awful sister, Aunt Agnes, and her revolting geese, never to speak my name again except in shame. ”
Theo considered this a moment. “And is that not precisely what you wished for?”
“Well, yes, I suppose,” she said with a huff, folding her arms tightly across her bodice. “But must you be so insufferably correct? Does it bring you great joy, being right at all times?”
“Yes, I daresay it does.”
She huffed again, this time more forcefully, as though it might expel the entire conversation from her chest. “Still… you need not make such light of it. This is not some parlour amusement. It is my life.”
“I am making light of it,” he said, gentler now as he pushed away from the column to stand closer to her. “Because if I do not, I must contend with the rather sobering reality that I am now expected to marry a woman who would sooner shoot me than take my name.”
“I said no such thing. ”
He cocked his head. “I believe the exact phrasing was ‘run through with my sister’s pistol’ which, I must say, left little room for ambiguity.”
“You are misquoting me entirely.”
“Am I? Perhaps it was a gentle bayonetting you intended instead. Or were you merely threatening a graze to the shoulder?”
“I was making a point.”
“Well,” he said lightly, stepping closer still, “I must admit it was most effectively made. I have not felt so thoroughly threatened since Aunt Honoria attempted to teach me the quadrille.”
Had she not been so very vexed, Hetty might have laughed. As it was, she bit the inside of her cheek and resolved to show no mercy at the next opportunity. She let out a long, weary breath. “I truly did not intend for any of this to transpire.”
“I am well aware,” said Theo with a lopsided smile. “You merely sought to scandalise your mama and repel a few tedious suitors. It was a dreadful plan, of course.”
“Disastrous.”
“Abominable.”
“Morally questionable.”
“Oh, indubitably,” Theo agreed, still grinning. “Yet, I confess – I have rather enjoyed myself.”
She looked at him then and was struck cold for reasons entirely unrelated to the chill in the evening air: for all his irreverence and levity, he had remained, unshaken, unmoved, and very much by her side.
He had not fled the drawing room, nor the dining table, nor the blaze of her disgrace.
He had stood beside her through flaming ducks, airborne trifle, and a hail of minted peas, as constant as the North Star, as she always knew he was.
Theo, ever the dramatist, extended his arm with a gallant sweep. “Come, Miss Tolliver. Let us return to the scene of the crime before someone takes it into their head to set the pianoforte alight.”
Hetty hesitated. “Or…”
“Or?”
“Or we might climb the garden wall and make for Scotland.”
He pretended to consider. “A tempting proposal. But I fear your mother would pursue us all the way to Gretna with a special license in one hand and a flaming duck in the other.”
She laughed and then blinked. “I… Good heavens, who said anything about Gretna Green?”
“Did you not – ” Theo stilled. “Well, I thought, when you mentioned Scotland…”
“I meant we might escape,” she said, rather too hastily with a roll of her eyes. “Not elope! Flee the border like a pair of highwaymen. Honestly.”
He did not laugh or jest, as she half-expected and wholly hoped he might. Scandal, after all, was infinitely easier to entertain than sincerity. Instead, he looked at her with an expression she could not easily read.
“Miss Tolliver,” he said, his voice low, “might I be permitted to ask a very foolish question?”
Her heart was beating rather wildly. “I suppose that depends upon the question and how very foolish it is. ”
His eyes dropped to her mouth. “Do you still wish only for scandal?”
“I…” She could not seem to finish the sentence.
Theo stepped nearer – a mere inch, though it felt a perilous distance.
He was not supposed to look at her in such a way: not as a childhood friend, nor an accomplice in mischief, nor even as a convenient almost-fiancé.
He looked at her as a man might look at a woman he meant to kiss for no reason but the desire to do so, and as though he had been waiting for her to realise it.
He did not move at first. He only watched her, and then, with exquisite slowness, he bent his head.
“I ought not,” she breathed, though she made no effort to retreat.
“I rather hope you will,” he murmured.
When her lips finally met his, it was not with scandal in mind.
It was not performed for Society’s eyes, nor to provoke whispers in drawing rooms. It was honest and immediate and disarmingly tender.
He tasted of wine and warm laughter and something sweeter still.
Her hands, as if with mind of their own, found the front of his coat and curled into the lapels.
The kiss deepened, his mouth moving unhurried and intentional against hers, his tongue darting out to part her lips.
When his hand came to rest at the narrow of her waist, she felt – beyond all doubt – that this was no kiss of pretence or continuation of their farcical engagement, nor any calculated scheme for ruin.
This was real, and that truth unsettled her more profoundly than any impropriety ever could .
When at last they parted, Theo’s voice came hoarse and a touch unsteady. “Well, that was decidedly foolish of us.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Quite.”
“Shall we do it again?”
She ought to have said something sharp and practical or, at the very least, properly dissuasive, but instead, Hetty lifted her face to his with a breathless smile and murmured, “Yes, I rather think we shall.”
Theo kissed her again, this time with a boldness that stole the breath from her lungs.
He slanted his mouth over hers, warm and sure, and she yielded to him without hesitation.
He drew her closer still, until the heat of his form pressed wholly along hers, and she felt, with thrilling clarity, the strength that lay beneath his faultless tailoring.
“Theodore,” she whispered.
“No one calls me that,” he murmured into her ear.
“I know.”
He pulled back, though not any great distance, with eyes alight –blue and shining in the moonlight. “Then by all means, Hetty, say it again – preferably whilst engaged in precisely what you were doing just a moment ago.”
Hetty’s cheeks flushed crimson, but she did not avert her gaze.
She scarcely knew herself in that moment – this version of Hetty Tolliver who longed, quite indecently, to kiss him over and over, who took delight in the pressure of his hands, the warmth of his breath, the scandalous pleasure of his mouth speaking her name.
But whoever she had become, she was certain of one thing: she did not wish to stop.
When he bent once more to claim her lips, it was with a slower purpose.
One hand spanned her back, while the other cradled her cheek with such studied reverence that it undid her entirely.
She parted her lips without thought or fear.
She was not thinking at all, only feeling, and what a dangerous abundance of feeling there was.
When at last his mouth left hers, it was only to wander down the fragile line of her throat, where he pressed a kiss just beneath her ear, then lower still, to the sweep of her neck and the rise of her collarbone.
He dragged his teeth wickedly against her skin, nipping before chasing the sting away with the soothing brush of his tongue.
A sound escaped her then, and he answered in kind, a deep and wordless growl that reverberated not just in his chest but through her entire frame.
“You are not helping, Theodore,” she breathed, entirely without conviction.
He smiled against her skin. “Was I meant to?”
She laughed breathlessly and tilted her head to give him better access. Hetty could feel the dangerous pull towards folly – how terribly easy it would be to surrender and allow herself to be kissed into ruin beneath the stars.
Alas, the Tollivers were never long without calamity. A sharp bang echoed from the house behind them, followed by a screech of “Nell! Put down the poker this instant!” and the crash of what sounded very much like a pianoforte bench being upended in protest.
Hetty flinched. Theo sighed, removing his lips from where they were dangerously close to the curve of her breasts .
“We truly ought to stop,” she said, glancing towards the glow of the drawing room windows, “before someone sets the draperies alight.”
Theo nodded, though she made no move to let go. “Yes. We most certainly ought.”
“Or…”
“Or?”
She tilted her chin up with an expression of purest innocence. “Or we might continue. Strictly for appearances, of course. We are to be married in a week, are we not? It would be quite improper, I think, to enter matrimony without the requisite degree of… familiarity.”
His mouth twitched. “A most compelling argument. One would not wish to arrive at the altar entirely unprepared. It might even be negligent.”
“Precisely,” she said, nodding solemnly. “A dereliction of one’s matrimonial duties.”
“And so this would be…” He drew closer again, as though the matter required serious contemplation. “A rehearsal?”
“A civic duty,” she returned at once. “For the good of the household. The parish. Possibly the Empire.”
“I daresay you’re rather good at your civic duty.”
“Oh, I am,” she replied with modest pride, “though I may require additional tutoring.”
He bent down to kiss her deeply, with the enthusiasm of a man wholly committed to his supposed assignment.
“Nothing is meant by it,” she whispered against his mouth.
“God forbid. That would be highly inappropriate. ”
“Scandalous,” she agreed, as his lips trailed down her throat.
“This is utterly without sentiment.”
“Entirely.”