Judith Ivory (21 page)

Private love. Private feelings. These were by nature so individual, they could not be understood en masse, only one to one. To accept—enjoy—filling the particular needs of another human being, was this love? Was this the union, the exchange, that became too full, too sweet, too tender to abandon? Two people touching each other in this way, simultaneously…rickety, bent hands, reaching toward each other…glaucous gazes, winking, sparkling in rheumy connection…embracing each other flaws and all.

What do you need, Emma? And can I fill it or at least a part of it? What is your burning need?

He came up close enough to murmur in her ear. “Let me kiss you and slide your skirts up your legs right now, till I can touch your skin…curve my hand under your buttocks.” He let out a soft breath, desire, and closed his eyes. “Just that. While I kiss you.” Oh, she was so delicate, would be so delicious to touch. He remembered. He remembered too well at the moment. She was more powerful than a shot of whiskey—he touched her waist, encircled it, and was drunk on her in half a second.

Behind her, he lifted a handful of her skirts, taking them up a foot, just as far as the small of her back, nothing crazy, just to see how she’d handle it. His fist, full of fabric, settled onto the top of her warm buttocks, such round female flesh.

Emma jumped as his hand came to rest on her bum. She reached, too, around, just as he brought himself forward to kiss her again. She tried to grab at her skirts, stop their movement upward. But just as she reached, he leaned, and her arms caught.

As his mouth touched hers, she struggled this time. Stuart didn’t understand. She twisted in his embrace, a squirm of panic.

The next seconds were insane. Emma let loose of fears, huge ones that roiled up out of nowhere. She flailed, swung, thrashed. To keep from being bashed, Stuart caught hold of this unexpected amount of female energy—all focused on the idea of striking him, wounding him. He dodged her leg that would have kneed him if possible.

“Easy,” he said. To save himself, he had to tighten his grip on her—which made her resist like a madwoman for a full minute. God, she was strong for someone so tiny. “Easy,” he kept saying, trying to calm her, make her rational again.

Finally, panting, she grew still, a kind of wiry awareness in his arms that measured his own actions.

“I’m not moving. I’m not doing anything,” he told her. Then, “Look at me.”

Her eyes rose to his. Her face was pale, eyes wide.

She was terrified, he realized. Of him. What the hell? Then her direct regard grew watery, and with a little burst, a kind of mew, she let out a whimper. She began to cry. Good God.

One of her arms was caught behind her, he realized. No, both of them were; he’d pinned her to the clock. He let go, stepping back. The second a space opened in the doorway, she bolted past him, a churn of soft skirts on a dead run.

“Emma.” He caught her by her faded dress and pulled.

She was brought up short as he pivoted in the doorway. He thought, if he didn’t move farther but rather stood to speak now calmly, rationally, he could cut through this—though to do so, he had to hold her there by the skirt—

Emma jerked on her dress, whirling this way, then that, like a rabbit caught in a trap—she’d gnaw her leg off any second. She yanked on her skirts so hard that they ripped before he could let go. What had got into her? Finally, he held his hands up to show her: bare hands, surrender.

“
What
is wrong?’ he asked.

She stared at him accusingly, then backed up all the way to the far wall of the corridor, a full five feet. She was breathing like a steam engine.

“I’m not moving. I’m staying right here,” he told her. “I won’t even approach you. What’s wrong? Me? You’re frightened of me. Why?” He let his shoulder fall into the doorframe, more than a little upset himself.

The degree of her alarm was startling. Then he understood partway at least.

“You thought I was going to—” He broke off with laughter. “What?” he said. “Say it.”

She wouldn’t. He watched her roll her lips inward, wet them.

“Look, I pushed you very hard. I was using every ounce of power I have over you, and you don’t appreciate it, but, Lord—” It didn’t matter what he said.

Oh, sweet, delicious woman. Her sexual interest was pal
pable. He could smell it, taste it; it vibrated in his bones whenever they were near each other. It was as real and solid as the bookcases behind him.

And she was afraid of it. It made her believe things that weren’t true.

He tried to tease her back into reality. He said, smiling, “You thought I was going to force a little game of—what do you call it? Pickle-me-tickle-me? The old bellybump? The matrimonial polka? What’s your name for it, Emma?”

She blushed. She sniffed.

“Make love to you?” he said softer. “Without your consent? You have rather a bizarre imagination yourself, don’t you, Mrs. Hotchkiss?” Kindly, “No. I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t realize
that
was in your head. If I pushed you too hard, I’m sorry. Don’t cry over my mistake.”

She blinked, not accepting his apology. “You’re the sort of man who can tie a woman’s legs—”

“To keep her from kicking me.”

“Back there, at the hotel—You—you said you could do anything—”

“And I could have. You took a horrible risk. By the time you kissed me back, though, I thought you understood my limits: that you were safe in that regard. My God, I’d never force you.” He had to amend, “Well, not beyond a kiss. I
like
your consent.”

She was shaking her head. “You thought about it; you wanted to. I think you might—”

He became incensed.

He made a face, then once more, he reined himself in. “Emma, you need a man, and you’re looking at one you want.”

“I’m not.” She closed her eyes and turned her head; now she wasn’t for sure.

“I can take care of you in that way. I long to. Let me. Let me touch you the way you want to be touched. Let me show you what I want to do.”

She shook her head, then sniffled again.

He let out a frustrated snort. “You’re insane. But it’s your call entirely. In any event, don’t cry over my misjudgment. I pushed too hard.” He shook his head, still not certain what had happened, where he went wrong. “It’s just, you seem so strong—”

“I
am
strong.”

“Yes. All right.” He nodded. “But no one’s invincible.” He folded his arms across his chest, his fingers into his armpits, and looked down. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “I wish you’d join me. But, no, for your information, I don’t force women. I like power, and I’m good at controlling people with it; but even I, son of a madman, have my limits.”

He glanced up, adding, “For your information, it’s the other game I like. The chair game, where I theoretically hold control, but you are willing as the devil.” He narrowed his eyes in contemplation. “So watch yourself. I’d like to hold you to the bed and do things to you, kiss you, bite you ever so gently, leaving little marks where my mouth has been, before I take you while you’re helpless. I love that, the power in it, the pretense of being a god. And I like other games, some I daresay I haven’t even invented yet. When it comes to sexuality, I’m perfectly adolescent about it. No,” he recanted, “more like an eight-year-old. I play. I have no shame. Only imagination.” He laughed again, a cynical staccato this time.

“You’re demented,” Emma accused him, though her own tears—and his relative self-possession—seemed to undercut her judgment.

He raised a wry eyebrow. “Perhaps.” Then shrugged. “Though I think it’s more that you’re prudish. Why does it matter what category my sexual interests, or yours for that matter, fall into? It’s private, no one’s business but the people involved.”

Then he took a breath and let out the longest, most rapid flow of words she’d ever heard from his mouth:

He said, “I’ve never encountered a woman with such for
titude and resourcefulness, whose trust and respect, both, I want—I don’t know why—to test, know, have, spend? I’m not sure. I only know I have never found such remarkably attractive, single-minded, self-sufficient integrity as I see in you. Which makes me think, fool that I am, that if your damned letting-go is half so magnificent in scope as your holding-on—a full, resounding canyon echo of your will—then your surrender would be a spinning drop into mindless, limitless bliss, and I want to be there to drop with you.” He kept going, building steam as he spoke. “Odd, weird, wrong, bizarre. Yes. Perfect. Drop all those judgments in the face of passion, the uncontrolled moment. I stand here, wide open to anything you might like, to receive it, give it. Surrender to me, trust me in this large way—” He broke off, taking a huge gulp of air from having spoken at length without drawing breath.

Trapped. Emma felt trapped, first literally, then by the man’s upside-down logic, now by his impassioned plea the like of which she’d never heard.

She searched for words, answers. But after all this, all she had to say for herself was, “I’m not prudish.”

And even that, she said to his back, because at the same moment she opened her mouth, he muttered, “Good night,” and turned.

He disappeared around the bend in the hallway, by the music room of his vast house.

Emma was left befuddled, not sure whether to be angry or not. Irritated, robbed. She had seemed to have a great big, perfectly good reason to hate him, yet the substance of it had evaporated. He wasn’t going to force her? He hadn’t been? The imminent sense of her doom had seemed so real for a moment, so frightening.

From nowhere, the idea came: She was not in favor of passion. She did not aspire to love. Either, both, were too painful.

E
MMA
lay tossing and turning that night in a huge, gentleman’s nightshirt, the heavy fabric slipping and sliding against her as she tried to find sleep. Alas, the nightshirt was too lovely, plain and simple: warm as butter when she lay in a spot a few minutes, cool as a winter lake wherever she found a new position. Under her head, the plump, downy pillows were no less affecting. First one cheek, then the other lay on the fresh pillowcase, her nose pushed against fabric made steamy-smooth with lilac-scented linen water. Luxuries. Particular to Stuart. While, equally daunting, they seemed like mileposts back into an old and dangerous life. Seductions.

Ultimately, she sat up in the bed amidst a heap of pillows and covers—higher than she was in some places, piles of encased down and eiderdown, soft and warm and light as air. It was hopeless.

Quietly, carefully, she slipped from bed. The clock on the mantel of her sitting room said it was just after four in the morning. Wrapped in a blanket, wearing Aminah’s slippers,
she wandered downstairs, looking for God knew what. A place that felt safe perhaps, more like home.

She found herself aimlessly peering into rooms, opening door after door, room after room, not sure what she was hoping to see in the dark. Most smelled of construction, their shadows monuments to halfway-ness: half-cleaned, half-reorganized, half-finished in renovation. She ended up back in the only room that felt familiar, Stuart’s library, his walls of books, where for amusement and curiosity, she lit the lamp, then went through his desk drawers.

He didn’t keep anything of interest in them: plain white paper, a basket of ink, a blotter, a box of calling cards—clean, embossed with his name, plus a collection of cards from others carelessly tossed into the back of a half-empty box—bookplates, a ledger (on paper his estates yielded a handsome income, what would tally into five figures, though bank account after account had “hold” or “limited” with probable release dates noted at the side, some within days). Nothing revealing at all, which was a disappointment. She wanted some juicy bit.

The best she got, though, in the way of entertainment was, in a bottom side drawer, a dozen decks of cards. They lay with scoring pads, card trays—refugees from his game room under major reconstruction. She took out a deck, pulled up Stuart’s desk chair, and cleared off a little space for a quick game of solitaire.

The cards felt good, slick and new, as she cut them, then mixed them. Comforting somehow. And, ah, the old fingers. After only a shuffle or two, the cards fluttered through her hands effortlessly. She laid a game of solitaire out, slapping cards down, and played for ten minutes.

As she played her mind wandered. What might the wickedest man she’d ever known—or at least the wickedest for whom she’d ever felt any attraction—do, if she’d let him continue this past night? What was Stuart like, naked and set loose on a woman? With more than two minutes to spare?

What happened inside her, when he was around, was so bizarre, so extreme. As if the man could dislocate gravity, negate what she’d experienced thus far in life as fact. No rules. She half wished she could have a do-over of this evening, like a child’s game—a secret, private do-over that wouldn’t count, where she’d surrender just to see what happened next. Whatever you want to do to me, Stuart. I’m yours.

The king of hearts. If the king of hearts had been two cards sooner, she’d have won. She stared at the last nine cards in her hand, knowing the order well enough she could have called it out.

She compressed her mouth, frowning at the cards, then passed her palm over the king, and, voilà, it wasn’t the next card, then not the next either. Then, lo, there it was. She played it on a queen, and all the rest of what remained of the deck fell into place. Her hands were empty of cards.

She stared at the desk, at the neat stacks, yet felt unconsoled somewhere.

Once, she had taken comfort in her own dexterity and resourcefulness: so much more dependable than luck. She’d thought, once, that being able to take care of oneself was always better than depending on fate. Or, God forbid, another human being. Tonight, though, she didn’t take much comfort in her manipulations.

“Congratulations,” she told herself sarcastically. Then she got up and went back to the lilac sheets slipping against silky nightclothes.

Where she slept for minutes, or it seemed so. Dawn brought the house alive again with the will of Mount Villiars, the viscount of the district in residence. The sound of steps outside her rooms woke her, then wouldn’t let her go back to sleep: people jumping to please his lordship, vying to do more, quicker, cheaper, make him happier, court his favor.

Shortly thereafter, there was a knock on her door, and a kitchen maid entered, carting a breakfast tray, then humming as she opened window curtains.

Emma put her pillow over her head, hearing through the layer of down: “The seamstresses have arrived from Leeds, ma’am. The’ be downstairs with bolts and bolts a’ be-yootiful stuff. Looks like ye’ll be gittin’ new dresses, t’day. Aren’cha a lucky lass now?”

Emma could only groan.

The next three days were busy ones—and ones wherein Stuart found himself sent on a great many errands. All of them appeared to be necessary, yet he was also fairly certain Emma had devised her list of what had to be done in a way that kept him out of the house and out of the way. And in a manner that left her inaccessible. When he spoke to her, it was usually over the heads of seamstresses, with Emma’s arms outstretched.

They remained cautious of each other after that evening in the library. Cautious and artificially polite. He hated it.

He took solace in the company of Aminah and Hiyam, who stayed for a day and a night more, then returned to London. They checked on him, he realized, and was amused. Two women, who had been so dependent on him at one time, had adjusted well to England, better than he perhaps. Both had friends, a developing life that suited them; Hiyam had a gentleman who called on her. Both women, like relatives who had a stake in any new arrival who might become permanent, were curious about Emma, but accepted when he said that she’d be gone again in two weeks.

Two weeks. Less than that now. He had to say, the time seemed well spent: the most interesting project he’d found in England to date. He rather liked watching Emma’s becoming an elegant London “art expert.” His neighboring sheep farmer was more and more a surprise. As she picked fabrics and put colors together for a small, efficient wardrobe his help, other than paying (or promising to), proved completely unnecessary. She listened to the seamstresses as to what was up-to-date, then made her own decisions; she knew the ins
and outs of society style. In fact, she seemed to have a rather lovely feminine flare, uniquely hers, from dresses to gloves and hats and handkerchiefs. Moreover, she knew the etiquette and protocols. If he had ever doubted her ability to pass herself off in the upper class, his doubt relaxed. He began to feel even a little pleased with himself as tangible proof mounted—Emma could fulfill or exceed what he’d hoped for.

There was a matter-of-fact quality to her competence, an ease, as she manufactured the details of Leonard’s undoing, and this made the whole enterprise take on an edge of anticipation. The game itself, quite aside from the lovely Mrs. Hotchkiss, was going to be fun.

None of this hit home so directly as on the third afternoon, when he arrived home early from a trip to the telegraph office. As he entered the house, he could hear Emma and two of the seamstresses working in the direction of his front parlor. When he came into the doorway, there the three of them were: A Mrs. Hobbly at the sewing machine set up by the front window, her daughter Louise in front of Emma, pinning something at her shoulder.

The room was a lovely, feminine mess: bolts of fabric partially unrolled across the sofa, buttons laid out on the writing table next to a tin. The floor had seemingly miles of lace and ruffled trim stretched out on it; the women appeared to be sorting and choosing next to a blue wool. The seat of his favorite parlor chair was taken up by measuring tapes, pincushions, and spindles of threads of various colors. All this to the snip of scissors, the clapping of sewing machine foot pedals pumping up and down, its wheels clacketing faster, then slower as blue wool rolled out from beneath its needle. And the sounds of the women themselves murmuring, two of them with pins in their mouths, as Emma’s wardrobe came together: On a rack by the fireplace hung three dresses very near completion.

“How are things coming?” he asked from the doorway.

The nearest seamstress turned and pulled a pin from her
mouth—and opened up a clear line of vision to Emma herself, and Stuart felt something in his chest lurch.

Often, now, he had daydreamed what she might look like naked. Round, female, curving, inviting to touch. But never dressed, God help him. And there she was: far lovelier than he would have dared presume in his imagination. In a striped silk blouse and tailored, tiered skirt, she looked like a kind of cross between Bo Peep and the biblical Delilah just before she’d leveled Samson. A soft, small woman with a latent cleverness that somehow showed in the cut of her clothes.

Stuart found himself removing his hat, combing his fingers through his cold hair—his ears, his face, his fingers were nearly numb. The weather outside was windy and frigid; all that was missing was sleet to make it as ghastly as Yorkshire ever knew. He stood there unbuttoning his coat, unwrapping his scarf, and marveling: Emma Hotchkiss was a sweet, petite vision.

What had he expected? He hoped his surprise didn’t show on his face: He’d thought her pretty, if a little short, a bit stocky. Raw-edged perhaps. A woman who cared more for smelly sheep than a long lady’s toilette. Indeed, though, in a skirt that fit, she looked more a little doll with her tiny waist and full curves. Her blond hair was neat and swept back in shining ringlets, as demure as a princess royal. And her eyes…her face…good God. He was simply speechless for several seconds.

If the season had been in full swing, she would have set the gossips of London going. She could not go unnoticed, and her present clothes said she didn’t intend to.

“Ah,” she said, when she saw him, and smiled shyly. “Not bad, hmm?” She even made a kind of sly flutter of her lashes, the vamp.

“Beautiful.” He laughed. “You look like—” He broke off. “Well, like a lady, as elegant a lady as I’ve ever seen,” then he added, because it was true, “only prettier: a lady I would like to know better.”

Which brought her mixed reaction again. His attention pleased her; it made her uncertain. She let her smile expand a little, deciding to have the compliment as it was meant. Then shook her head, pursed her lips, and looked down. He could never tell how much of her reaction was honest, how much was part of the charade. Sometimes her actions so lined up with an innocence, a sweetness of spirit, he couldn’t help but believe in it. Yet the next moment, she would be so cynical and knowing, he would end berating himself for having ever been taken in.

He stood in the doorway for several long minutes, trying to invent a further purpose for remaining, simply to stare at her. From behind him, his butler took his coat, then cleared his throat.

“Your lordship,” the man said. In a murmur, Stuart heard vaguely that his mail was on the mantel, that there was a problem in the stable with a horse, that one of the underbutlers was ill and needed a leave of absence. The landscape architect’s plans required his signature. One of the beams for the game room had arrived split down the center. These matters and more awaited his attention. Distractedly, he turned and went about his business.

But the sight of this Emma Hotchkiss, emerging as from a cocoon of old, ill-fitting clothes, affected him enough that he dreamed about her that night: himself escorting her to various gatherings, the fun of fooling his most pompous friends as he introduced her—his and her private joke. “This is my Yorkshire neighbor, a landowner with a fine sheep enterprise.” It wasn’t a lie, but the rich look of her belied the truth.

Or the other way around, he thought when he awoke. A sheep farmer, a landowner in Yorkshire, was perhaps a finer thing to be than he’d first considered.

Her fourth day at Dunord began for Emma fairly much as the last several: She was up by dawn, sipping coffee with one hand while she held the other out, so two women could alter
a seam from her waist to her armpit. She ate a meat pie for lunch with half a dress pinned to her, then stood most of the afternoon and into the evening in various pieces of clothing that formed around her. By supper, the last stitch was in, the last ribbon tacked down. She had five dresses, with the promise of two nightgowns to be sent on to London, a lady’s wool coat, and—having arrived the evening before under Stuart’s arm—a pair of pretty blue kid lace-up boots along with a rather gorgeous pair of evening slippers. Hair ribbons, jewelry—fake but still lovely to her eye—more of Stuart’s doing. Scarves, kid gloves, a hat.

And a beaded silk purse. She’d given her new confidence partner a list of what it should contain. He’d disappeared till after dark, till after dinner in fact—he was quite late.

From her bedroom, she heard the front door open—when there was nothing to unload, the coachman deposited the master of the house at the front door, then took the carriage around to the carriage house. She came out onto the landing and looked over the balcony.

“Were you able to get it all?” she asked.

He strode, all but about to pass under the balcony of his wide staircase, handing off his hat, coat, gloves in the offhand way he had of continuing to walk as his servants vied to catch items as he dropped them. She bent over the railing, looking down.

Her words stopped him. “I made a dent in the list. It was the best I could do.”

“The ladies left after dinner. And your uncle?”

“He telegrammed. He expects to see me in London, though not till Sunday. He’s in Hampshire till then.”

Four days, she thought. They’d start in four days.

Then the heart-stopping words. Stuart said, “I think we’ve done as much as possible here. We’re ready. Let’s head toward London tomorrow. We’ll pack in the morning.”