Talk Sweetly to Me (Brothers Sinister #4.5)(16)

He was not watching her innocently now.

That was the problem. She knew precisely what was happening to her. She could feel him coaxing her along the path to seduction. He made her forget herself every day she was with him, and one day, she would cross an uncrossable line. So long as he was around her, he would lead her astray.

His lips thinned, but he nodded ever so slightly as if he were accepting her edict.

“You’ll still tell me what you’re doing when we meet on the street,” he said. “And now I’ll understand it better.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I should.”

No; that was too wishy-washy. The clattering of Mrs. Barnstable’s machine was beginning to annoy Rose.

“In fact, I know I mustn’t.”

“Aw, Rose.” He looked into her eyes. “You know I love it when you talk Sweetly to me.”

Her throat seemed to close at those words. She felt hoarse, almost ill. Her heart was pounding and her head seemed light. But this was no illness; she wanted more of it.

Therein lay her problem. He’d told her that her enthusiasm was contagious.

His lack of innocence, then, was a raging plague, and she was infected. The smallest glance in his direction sent her into an internal tizzy—the flash of his eyes, a glimpse of his wrist when one of his cuffs pulled up. The sight of him gave her ideas, and she didn’t need to be having ideas about him.

Once she had it in her head that he might do things to her, she could not help but imagine those things. Kisses, and not just on the lips or the hand, but on her neck, her inner wrist, up her elbow. He might give her caresses, too—slow, languid, full-body caresses. He didn’t have to seduce her; she was doing all the work of seduction on her own.

“Come, Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said briskly. “I’m sure you dream of more important things than listening to me ramble on. I don’t wish to be a way station on your way to bigger and better.” She looked down. “I have enjoyed—rather too much—spending this time with you. But I think I’ll be better off if our time together draws to a close.”

He took this in silence. His lips compressed into an almost angry line, and he looked away.

“Here,” she said. “I’ve set you some…some problems to work. Just a little parallax.” She actually choked as she spoke, as if she might cry over mathematics.

Better that. Better to cry over maths than a man, especially a rogue like this one. He’d scarcely even exerted himself and already she found herself watching his fingers, hoping he might crook one of them at her…and fearing that if he did, she’d come running.

He took the sheet from her and began to work.

“You know,” he said, “I realized last night that you were granting me a signal honor when you let me use your slide rule. Thank you.”

He didn’t sound as if he were making fun of her. She glanced suspiciously at him.

“I don’t dream of bigger and better,” he said, making his first notation on the page. “I told you: I’m appallingly simple. There is no grand design.”

“You’re a novelist. And a columnist. There’s nothing simple about you.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m exceedingly clever and exceedingly outrageous. But that doesn’t make me exceedingly devious.”

“But you must have had some plan in order to ascend the heights so swiftly.”

He smirked. “Here is the extent of my planning. When I was fifteen, I realized I was a poor Irish Catholic in England, a country with an excess of poor Irish Catholics. My only real skill was a talent for outraging others. Either I had to stomp out my only source of genius in order to have a go at making a living in the most menial fashion, or I had to indulge it to the fullest and hope for the best.” He shrugged. “Here I am. For the next few years, I shall be in demand enough to command a thousand pounds per book from my publisher. By the time that’s dried up—and the public’s capacity for any brand of outrage always dries up—I’ll have enough saved that I won’t have to care. See? There is no grand plan. No meteoric dreams. Just a dislike for manual labor and a talent for annoying others.”

She sniffed.

“You, on the other hand…”

She shook her head. “We are not talking of me.”

“You, I wager, do not dream timid dreams. You walk with your head in the clouds.”

“Oh, no. The clouds are in the troposphere. My thoughts lie well beyond the mesosphere.”

“Precisely. So tell me, Miss Sweetly. What is it you see for yourself, after you send me on my way? What is your grand plan?”

Behind them, Mrs. Barnstable changed a page in her typewriter. Rose flushed and looked away. “There is no grand plan. My father is on the board of the African Times. It has been their mission for the last decades to see to the elevation of the race. They’ve sponsored a number of medical students in their work, starting from Africanus Horton.” She couldn’t look him in the eyes. “Patricia—my sister—married one of those students. They met over dinner, took one look at each other…and that was the end of it. Everyone expects that I’ll marry one of the two students arriving in the next year.” Rose traced a trailing vine on her skirt. “I suppose I do, too.”

“And is that what you want?” he asked in a low voice. “To marry a medical student on scholarship? To have his children and to keep his home?”