Talk Sweetly to Me (Brothers Sinister #4.5)(21)

He’d never stood so close to her. He could smell the sweet fragrance of rosewater, of something else he couldn’t identify, something enticing and lovely. Her shoulder brushed his. If he turned to her now…

He’d distract her, and she’d never forgive him. “How long will this last?”

“Until the sun sets just after four or the clouds intervene.”

“Well. Then maybe we can take turns.” He gestured her back to the telescope.

She took her place once more. But after a few moments of staring into the eyepiece, she spoke again. “However did you convince Father Wineheart to let you set this whole thing up?”

“He likes me,” Stephen said. “Even though he hears my confessions—which I must admit are shocking—he likes me.”

“That’s not what I meant. Why did he agree?”

“The same reason that Barnstable did. I told him I was writing a book about an astronomer, that I needed a little experience.” Stephen shrugged.

She straightened and glanced at him. “When are you going to tell him that you were using that as an excuse to try and seduce a woman? I would not think that a man of the cloth, no matter what his denomination, would acquiesce in such a scheme.” Her words were severe, but her tone was light and teasing.

“I told you already. I’m not trying to seduce you.” But he couldn’t help but smile. “If it happens, it will be a happy side-effect.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“But he’ll find out when he hears my next confession.”

She shook her head, and leaned down once more. “I can’t do what you do, you know.”

“What do I do?”

She waved a hand—a very general hand-motion that he decoded as I don’t want to say, and I’d be obliged if you inferred it without any more effort on my part.

“Do you mean that you couldn’t write novels?”

She snorted.

“That you couldn’t write my columns? You’re right, Miss Sweetly. I think you’re a little too earnest for them.”

“No. You know that’s not what I mean. I mean, how do you…do the things you do with women and not fall in love?”

“Ah.”

He pushed away from her and looked out the window. The sun was a dusky gold; with his naked eye, he could see no hint that anything extraordinary was taking place.

“That’s easy enough to answer. The first time, I did.”

She did look up from the telescope at that.

“I was nineteen, which according to some, is rather late to start on such matters. But I’d been concentrating on my studies, and, well…” He shrugged. “I had just started writing for the Women’s Free Press, and there was some gala event that I was invited to. I met this woman. She was ten years my elder, widowed, and absolutely lovely. I was charmed, delighted, seduced, and I promptly fell head over ears in love.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I think it took me a week to propose marriage. She kissed me on the cheek and laughed at me. You see, I was not the sort of man that a woman like her would marry. And she told me why in great detail. I hadn’t any money, any station. I was Irish and Catholic. I was too young and far too radical. Women would adore me, she said—and I could offer them a great deal—but I shouldn’t expect to marry them.”

She did not look up from the telescope. “Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said slowly, “that sounds suspiciously like a hidden depth.”

He let out a gasp. “You’re right. It is!” She wasn’t looking at him, but still he played it for all it was worth, setting a hand over his breast. “I do have a secret trauma—my many prior love affairs. There can be no sharper pain then to make love to a vast number of women—but I have masterfully accepted it as my due. I soldier on under the burden.”

She shook her head. “Are you ever serious?”

“I suppose some other man might have been wounded by that. But I’m like a cashmere jumper: comfortable, soft, and as fabric goes, not much given to wrinkling.”

“No wrinkles? Not over even one of them?”

“Aside from the obvious, it was all to my advantage. If one wishes to be a grand, outrageous name in society, one must do a few grand, outrageous things. Absinthe is too dangerous; gambling is too expensive. Opium is a dreadful habit—one has only to look at those in an opium den to know the effect. No; if I was going to be an outrage, I wanted the safest, least expensive vice I could find. So women it was.”

Rose inhaled. “Are you telling me that you seduce women as a calculation?”

“It’s been mutual. And I don’t seduce women—at least not the way you mean it. The Countess of Howder wanted an affair with me to let everyone know she was out of mourning and didn’t intend to be a pattern card of propriety. I’m an outrage, and the women who are so placed as to wish to be outrageous, well…” He shrugged. “And besides, I like women. I like them a great deal.”

She straightened. But instead of upbraiding him, as he’d expected, she gestured to the telescope. “Come take a look.”

He did. It was unnerving to not be able to see her—not after what he’d confessed. The dark spot had begun to traverse the sun’s disc.

“Aren’t there dangers in using women that way?”