This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)(16)
James darted through the entry, his face a picture of excitement. But even he was sufficiently observant to see she’d sprung from William like a guilty child. It was easy to think of him as her younger brother, as a child. But when he looked from Lavinia to William, his lips thinning, she realized he was not as young as he’d once been.
“We’re closed,” he said, in a chilly tone of voice. “And you—whoever you are—you’re leaving.”
Before Lavinia could protest, William had pulled away and was walking out the door.
James looked her over, his gaze resting first on her flushed cheeks and then on the telltale way she put her hands behind her back. Then he cast a glance of pure scorn at William’s back. “I’m leaving, too,” he announced, and he followed William out the door, into the cold.
CHAPTER FOUR
LAVINIA’S BROTHER, William thought wryly, was a thin spike of a boy. Attach a sufficient quantity of straw to his head, and he’d have made a passable broom. In polite society, he might have served as a chaperone, a place-holder designed to do little more than observe. But James Spencer, this pale wraith of a child, apparently believed he could protect his sister from someone who threatened her virtue. He had been alarmingly misled. Standing outside Spencer’s on the freezing pavement, James folded his arms—a posture that only emphasized the sharp skin-and-bone of his shoulders.
There was a saying, William supposed, about guarding the cows after the wolves had already come a-ravening. The adage seemed rather inappropriate as cows could only be eaten once. He’d promised himself he’d not importune her again, but one touch of her hand and he’d been ready to go a-ravening all over again.
James tapped his toe, frowning. “Did you kiss her?”
Oh, the barren and virtuous imagination of callow youth.
“Yes,” William said. It was easier than resorting to explanation.
James peered dubiously at William, as if trying to ascertain whether there truly was a patch on his coat. “And what are your prospects?”
“Too dismal to take a wife. Even if I chose to do so, which—at present—I do not.”
Lavinia’s brother gasped. If the boy thought kissing a woman without wanting to marry her constituted open devilry, God forbid he ever learn what had really transpired.
“If you’re not going to marry her,” he said, shocked, “then why’d you kiss her?”
William had long suspected it, but now he was certain. Lavinia’s younger brother was an idiot.
“Mr. Spencer.” William spoke slowly, searching for small words that were nonetheless sharp enough to penetrate her brother’s dim cogitation. “Kissing is a pleasant activity. It is considerably more pleasant when the woman one is kissing is more than passably pretty. Your sister happens to be the loveliest lady in all of London. Why do you suppose I kissed her?”
“My sister?”
“You needn’t pull such a face. It’s not something to admit in polite company, but we’re both men here.” At least, James would be one day. “You know it’s the truth.”
“No,” James said incredulously, screwing up his eyes. “You want to kiss my sister? I never thought—”
“Well, you’d better start thinking about it, you little fool. Everyone wants to kiss your sister. And what are you doing to protect her? Nothing.”
“I’m protecting her now!”
“You leave her in that shop with nobody to call for if she needs help except your father, who is too ill to respond. You send her out to capture your vowels from known ruffians who live near docks where sailors cavort. Don’t tell me you protect your sister. How many times have I found her alone in the library? Do you have any idea what I could have done to her?”
He was angry, William realized. Furious that he’d been allowed to take from her the most precious thing she could give, and angrier still that nobody—least of all Lavinia—was willing to castigate him for it.
“I could have taken a great deal more than a kiss,” he said. “Easily.”
James’s face paled. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.”
He had. He would. He wanted to do it again.
It felt good to admit what a blackguard he was, even if he was hiding his confession behind safely conditional statements. “Lock the door and anything becomes possible,” William said. “I could have had—”
James punched him in the stomach. For a skinny fellow, he struck hard. The blow knocked the wind out of William’s lungs and he doubled over. That punch was the first real punishment he’d suffered since he’d had Lavinia. Thank God. He deserved worse.
When he regained his breath and his balance, he looked up. “Don’t tell me you protect your sister. You put everything on her—the burden of caring for your entire family—and give her nothing in exchange. I’ve seen her. I know what you do.”
James stood over him. “If you’re such a blackguard, why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’ll go to the devil before Lavinia kisses a scoundrel worse than me.”
James stopped and cocked his head. In that instant William saw in the boy’s posture something of Lavinia—a chance similarity, perhaps, in the way his eyes seemed to penetrate through William’s skin. William felt suddenly translucent, as if all of his foolish wants, his wistful longing for Lavinia, were laid out in neat rows for this boy’s examination. He didn’t want to see those feelings himself. He surely didn’t want this child sitting in judgment over affections that could never be.