Chapter 6 #3
She worked in silence for some time after that.
He had learned the shape of the treatment over three evenings.
Learned to recognize the sequence of it.
The deep work and the lighter strokes that followed and the gradual quieting of the muscle as the tension yielded by degrees.
He knew, approximately, when she was finishing.
She was not finishing.
She had gone still. Not pausing to adjust her approach, but a different stillness. The stillness of a woman considering her options.
He did not move.
She was studying his leg with the expression he associated with her deepest attention. An expression that meant she had been thinking about something, had thought it through, was now in possession of the conclusion, and was deciding what to do with it.
Then she looked up at him.
He was already looking at her.
She leaned forward and kissed him.
It was not the kiss from the bedchamber at Grimsfell.
That one had been his. Impulsive and testing, taken because he had an opportunity and moved on it without extensive consideration.
This one was hers. Entirely and completely hers.
It was brief and warm and intentional in the way that everything she did was intentional.
Considered and decided upon and then committed to without half-measures.
Because she had no half-measures in her.
Her lips were soft, the pressure gentle and certain, and for approximately four seconds, it was all that existed in the world.
He felt a pressure above his sternum shift in the manner of something that has been fixed in one position for a very long time and has just discovered that movement is possible. His heart?
She was not experienced. He understood that in the first second.
But dear God, she was something else entirely.
Something that the word experienced did not begin to reach.
Because she brought to this what she brought to everything, which was the whole of her attention.
The whole of her attention was, he was discovering, one of the most extraordinary things he had ever been the object of.
He felt the earth move. Quietly and without announcement, the way the most significant events happened.
Then she pulled back.
The color came up from her jaw to her hairline in a single, complete movement.
A deep and total pink that he had not seen on her face before.
Not the quick flush of provocation but more vulnerable.
The blush of a woman who has done something she had not entirely planned.
Whose body has understood the significance of it before her mind has had the opportunity to compose a response.
Her spectacles had slipped their perch entirely. They hung from the ribbon at her collarbone, the scarlet vivid against the white of her wrapper.
She stood. The low chair scraped back with the abrupt energy of it.
She set the liniment jar on the table with meticulous placement, as if she was holding herself together by paying attention to small physical acts.
She straightened. She gazed at him from a standing distance, performing composure at the absolute outer limit of its available range.
“Goodnight, Mr. Scott,” she said.
The voice was level. He credited her for that. It had cost her, and he could see exactly what, in the set of her chin and the spectacles hanging against her collarbone and the color that had not yet finished its work on her face.
“Nick,” he said.
She stopped.
She had been turning toward the door, and she stopped and turned back to him. Her face moved through several emotions in quick succession before arriving at one he could not name and did not try to.
“Millie,” she said.
Then she went through the door and closed it behind her with the exquisite quietness of someone engaged in a significant act of self-containment.
Nicholas continued sitting in the chair by the fire.
He sat there for a considerable time, the fire burning down by degrees.
He did not reach for the poker. He stared at the door and then at the fire and then at the door again and then at nothing in particular, where he remained for the better part of an hour.
Sitting with the warmth of her hands still in his leg and the warmth of that brief, considered, entirely hers kiss still against his mouth.
He should have found his resolution. He was acutely aware that he should have found it. That the resolution was rational and necessary. Clean and clear and entirely reasonable. He searched for it now with dutiful attention, knowing where he had put it yet surprised to find it had gone missing.
He did not search very hard.
He tried her name instead. Quietly. In the privacy of his own head. The way he had been picturing her since the bedchamber at Grimsfell when she had woken him up and the scarlet ribbon had caught the candlelight.
Millie.
He finally knew her name.
Millie.
The fire finished settling. The room was very quiet. His leg was entirely at peace and had been for some time and was therefore, for once, of no assistance whatsoever as a distraction.
He rose and extinguished the candle before getting into his bed. And there, in the dark, he lay and thought about … Millie.