Chapter Thirty-Three
Jasper paced for a bit. He muttered to himself. He shook off his jacket and waistcoat and cravat and socks.
He did not like waiting.
He had always been a poor sport for being still.
And what man could be still with the promise of the robe and turban lingering on the horizon? Honestly, the waiting was so exhausting that part of him considered trying to sleep, just because it was the direct opposite of the fretting.
He suspected she was drawing out how long it took deliberately. He suspected she had slowed time itself.
And finally he collapsed onto the bed, his head hitting the goose-down pillow and its satin pillowcase with the kind of resigned self-judgment that one can only find in the aftermath of realizing one had pointlessly withheld something so good from oneself for such a very long time.
And bizarrely, for a time, he did nod off.
It was as though for a moment, the colors and lights of the world dimmed. His anticipation of watching the door faded and blurred. The sounds of the shore beyond the window and the wind and the creaking of shedding trees blended and diffused into static.
And then she was there, curled against his side with a twine-bound booklet open in front of her nose as a lantern burned down on the bedside table.
His arm was around her.
He didn’t recall doing that, but as soon as he was aware of it, he drew her nearer, tightening his muscles and flexing his fingers, breathing in the feeling of her weight, soft and warm, against his body.
She paused, dropping the little booklet on her chest with a flap of paper, and turned her head up toward him.
“Good book?” he asked, his voice thin and ragged.
“It’s a libretto,” she said, shrugging. “They’re never very well written. Just summaries really.”
“‘Summaries’?”
“Of operas,” she said, flipping the cover toward him so he could read the inky scrawl on the cover.
Za?re (Voltaire, 1732)
“I don’t know it,” he told her. “Is it a sad one?”
“Yes,” she answered, frowning. “And no. Infuriating is probably a better word. I’ll read it to you some other night. Honestly, after Romeo and Juliet and all their nonsense, I think I need to put on a comedy for my own sanity.”
“More Shakespeare?” he asked, raising his brows.
“Probably,” she answered with a sigh, tossing the libretto onto the table next to the lantern and rolling her body against him, hand braced against his chest. “Malcolm was right about public interest, especially in the off season. Damn him.”
“You said you didn’t mind it if it was in service of Titania,” he reminded her. “So why not do that one next? You can even keep Rhys while it’s cold out.”
“‘Rhys’?” she said, laughing. “As Lysander? Theseus?”
“Lib,” he said, flat and firm. “Puck. Obviously.”
She blinked at him, her eyes widening. “Oh, my God,” she breathed. “You’re right. That’s perfect. Do you think he’ll do it?”
“Yes,” said Jasper. “As long as you assure him up front that he doesn’t die this time.”
“Oh, that.” She chuckled, her body shaking with amusement against his. “He loves dying now that he’s done it a few times. It’s his favorite scene. Or second-favorite, after watching Tybalt get his just desserts.”
“‘Desserts,’” Jasper repeated with a groan. “He ate that damned pie. Did you see?”
She shook her head but giggled, anyway. “I try not to pay attention to him, to be honest with you.”
“‘Honest’?” he repeated, running his fingers over her waist, pulling her closer. “I like honest. Be honest again.”
She narrowed her eyes, pressing the flat of her hand over his heart and tilting her head up to meet his gaze. “All right,” she said, licking her lips, like she was considering how best to make him regret asking for this. “I would have been very irritated if you had eaten that pie.”
He blinked.
That wasn’t what he had expected. “Why?”
“Because another woman made it for you,” she snapped, her fingers twisting in his shirt. “One you considered courting. One who certainly was making the first overture toward allowing it by baking said pie.”
He stared down at her, his cheeks heating. “Right,” he said. “That makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she returned, frowning. “I don’t get jealous. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“It does,” he assured her. “If you love me.”
She sighed, dropping her head into the crook of his neck and releasing her grip on his shirt. “Oh, only that, is it?”
“Only that,” he replied. “I say that as a man who has been plenty jealous over the course of our most recent caper. Paul bloody Rath. You knew what you were doing.”
He listened to her little hiccup of breath and felt her lips curve against the bare skin of his throat. “I did,” she confessed, in little more than a squeak. “And I liked it.”
“I expect I should not say I like it as well? Knowing you were misbehaving solely for me, that you are not above such petty emotions as jealousy?” he said, lifting a hand to toy with the soft folds of that silky turban. “I assume I am not to enjoy your pie-based rage?”
“Ah, very clever,” she said, peeking up at him. “I always knew I’d fall in love with an intelligent man.”
He held his breath for a moment, looking down at her face like this, haloed in lantern light. He ran the pad of his thumb over the three beauty marks on her cheek. “You love me,” he said, softly and with no small amount of wonder.
She gave him a tiny shrug and a sheepish smile. “You love me too.”
He nodded.
And he kissed her.
Carefully and sweetly, like it was the first time. The first real time.
Her fingers came up to trace lightly over his jaw, over the lines of his face and the edges of his hair. She was just as careful. Just as sweet.
“So,” she said when they broke apart, foreheads touching and breath mingling on the pillow. “Marriage? Or simply living in sin?”
“Marriage,” he said immediately. “Your name?”
“Will stay the same on stage,” she answered, toying with the ends of his hair. “But can change legally, once again. Names are like that, you know. They change when you do.”
“Mine never has,” he pointed out.
“Hm,” she replied. “Not yet.”
It made him laugh. He pulled back slightly to look down at her, relaxed and half-lidded and smiling. “I don’t know how to get married,” he admitted. “I never actually thought I would. What do I do? Go ask old Ulysses for his blessing?”
She snorted, dark eyes rolling. “Certainly not,” she said with amusement. “Ask Malcolm. And maybe Hattie.”
“All right.” He leaned down to kiss her again, unable to resist the temptation of it, the fact that he could, so easily and without preamble. “I’ll ask the whole of Brighton if I must. Shall I start with your troupe?”
“Oh, my troupe,” she said, blinking in realization.
“I do have to tell them. Not that I’m getting married.
That’s none of their bloody business. But that we are not going to return to London at the end of the bequeathment year.
They will each need to decide if they wish to stay in Brighton or not.
Forever is quite a different ask than a year. ”
“If you want to travel between Brighton and London,” he said carefully, “you could. I do not want to shrink your world, Lib.”
“If I wanted to, I’d appreciate that,” she told him. “I don’t think I do. Or at least not for a very long time. Why? Do you want to go to London?”
He smiled at her. “No.”
“No,” she agreed. “This is home.”
“This is home,” he echoed.
And this time, when he drifted off to sleep, he did so with intention.
*
Libba awoke three times in the night.
The first, she was overly warm and simply wanted to shrug off her dressing gown.
The second, she was thirsty and had to put the thing back on to escape into the house at large to retrieve a carafe and cups to keep in the room.
Hattie was awake, sitting in the parlor with a triple slice of rhubarb hazelnut cake, a glass of milk, and her little pig. She gave a lazy wave when Libba passed and did not comment about the direction from which she’d come.
When Libba walked past again, returning to the guest wing, she saw that Elias had joined his wife, and they were whispering quietly to each other over the crumbs of the now-decimated cake.
It stirred something in her. Something she could not quite name.
But that was what had woken her up the third time.
She was quenched. She was temperate.
But she was stirred, even so, at this late hour.
And to her surprise, when she opened her eyes, she found Jasper’s were open too.
And that he was watching her, lit in murky, cloud-filtered moonlight, next to him on the bed.
His breathing was steady. His hands were folded on his ribs.
And his head was turned toward her, his expression gentle and perhaps a little resigned.
She imagined hers was much the same.
“What?” she whispered, watching his expression shift, his mouth curving, his eyes finding a twinkle.
“I was just wondering if you’d changed your mind,” he whispered back.
“What about?”
His teeth flashed in the dark. “Benvolio. The best mate is obviously the most attractive man in the play. Don’t you see that yet?”
She blinked at him, then scoffed and shook her head.
“You think you’re a Benvolio, do you?” she said wryly.
“Jasper, there has never been a more Romeo-built man in all of Brighton than you with your impulses and infatuations and schemes. Malcolm is the Benvolio. So, the answer is no. He remains a sexless, boring husk to me, and I shall not repent or consider otherwise.”
“Romeo, eh?” he said, chuckling and flopping onto his back. “Well, that’s not so bad, is it? Even if the woman who falls for me is … What did you call her? ‘A half-wit’?”
“‘A half-wit child,’” Libba confirmed, amusement tugging at her cheeks despite herself. “Yes, and damn you very much for making me sympathize with her.”
“Did I? We should tell the papers,” he returned, smug as could be. “You’d look very well on a balcony at night.”
“Of course I would.” She sniffed. “I’ve got a little balcony now, don’t I? In my flat?”
“You do,” he agreed, grinning. “You do, indeed. Though our downstairs neighbors might take issue with me rhapsodizing at it from the ground level.”
“You let me worry about the neighbors, Romeo,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “What about you, then? Did you change your mind?”
He exhaled, and even his breath sounded like it was smiling. “What about, my love?”
“About this robe and turban,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “I believe you told me that if you saw them on me again, you’d lose your bloody mind.”
He blinked. He turned his head, his eyes skimming down over her in just that ensemble. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“You did,” she confirmed.
“Well,” he told her, tugging her toward him as he rolled atop her, pinning her against the mattress, “I’ve resolved to start seeing things through properly. I suppose I’d better start here.”
“Yes,” she said, swallowing with effort as he reached down to tug the sash loose around her waist. “You had better.”
“It might take some practice,” he cautioned her, separating the fabric and pushing the well-worn pink textile aside to reveal the thin shift she wore beneath it. “New habits often do.”
“I suppose I could endure that,” she replied, slipping one arm and then the other free of the robe. “For the sake of your improvement, of course.”
“Aren’t you curious?” he asked, leaning down to taste her throat, to kiss the line of her jaw, “if it will feel different now? Now that everything is out in the open?”
She sighed, trailing her nails down the back of his neck and dipping into the collar of his shirt to tug it forward.
“Jasper,” she said to him softly, suddenly worried her voice might carry.
“I’m curious if I remember what your chest looks like correctly, actually.
I don’t think I’ve quite memorized every freckle, every curl of hidden hair … ”
“Oh, well, that’s unacceptable,” he agreed, lifting up just a touch to remove the offending garment from between them. “Now that you mention it, my memory is a bit fuzzy as well.”
She grinned, pulling him back to her mouth as her legs wrapped around his hips.
They laughed together, fumbling at the clothing that remained, gasping in satisfaction at the warm collision of their skin as each layer was set aside in favor of discovery and memorization.
Her hands slid down the bare shape of his chest, pushing down below his waistband. Her eyes studied his face, flattened to silvers and rich, charcoal gray in the dark embrace of the room. She listened to the way she made his breath catch when she touched him, when she opened herself to him.
He kicked his trousers away, rolling onto his back with her astride him, her hands braced on his shoulders, her hair escaping the silver wrap in coils and curls.
She shushed him, her fingers pressed over his lips like latticework, their gasps colliding as he found his way inside her. It was slow and careful and quieter than it would have been if they had been anywhere else.
Quieter, but still real.
Still happening.
She pulsed slowly, she filled herself with him, and she closed her eyes as though her earlier attestations of a desire to memorize every fiber of him were true. They must have been, she realized, because that was exactly what she was doing.
“You love me,” she said to him, her breath caught in her throat, pleasure gripping her fast and hot and without preamble. “You love me.”
“Yes,” he agreed, watching her like a penitent at a shrine. “I love you.”
She lost herself to the sound of it. To the confirmation of it.
She collapsed forward onto him, her knees locked around his thighs, and felt him lose himself too, pushing up into her collapsed, surrendered body with a rush of devotion.
And for a while, they just clung to each other. Warm and a little sticky, battling yawns.
“You love me too,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I love you too.”