This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)(18)

Lavinia curled her arms around herself. He didn’t hate her. He wasn’t miserable. He was just…momentarily upset?

“One day,” she said softly, “you will understand how idyllic your childhood has been. You have nothing to worry about. That’s what I’ve saved you from.”

She clenched her hands around the account book, the leather binding biting into her palms. Then she opened the book carefully and found the spot where she’d left off adding columns.

Fifty-three and fifteen made sixty-six….

EVERY TIME LAVINIA AWOKE that night, tossing and turning in her narrow bed, she remembered her words to William. You thought you had forced me, and thus you dishonored yourself. She could call to mind the precise curl of his mouth as he’d realized what he’d done, the exact shape of his hands as he grasped the dimensions of his dishonor.

She had wanted to lessen his hurt, but she’d made it worse.

All you have managed to do is make me miserable. Not William’s words, but they seemed to apply all the same.

No, no, no. Lavinia stood and walked to her window. Thick, choking fog filled her vision. It was past midnight, and thus it was now Christmas Eve. But it was not yet near morning. The night fog was so thick it would swallow an entire troupe of players juggling torches. It could easily hide one nineteen-year-old woman who didn’t want to be seen. She would make William feel better. She had to.

Silently she opened her bedroom door. She crept out into the main room and removed her cloak from its peg. She found her boots with her toe, and then bent to pick them up. Slowly she crept down the not-quite-creaking stairs, and across the lending library. And then she was outside, the fog enshrouding her in its cold embrace.

Lavinia lifted her chin, put on her boots and walked. In the few nights before Christmas, a musicians’ company sent men on the streets to play through the darkness of night. There were no players anywhere near her house, of course, but in these quiet hours before dawn, the haunting sound of twin recorders came to her in tiny snatches. The sound wafted through the fog like fairy music. She’d catch a bar, but before the melody resolved itself into a recognizable tune, it slipped away, melting into the fog like the shadow of a Christmas that had not yet come.

As she walked through the engulfing mist, those enchanted notes grew fainter and fainter. By the time she reached Norwich Court, they had disappeared altogether.

When she arrived at his home, she realized she had no key to unlock his door. Surely, his chamber was too distant for him to hear her knock.

A little thing like impossibility had never stopped Lavinia.

She was systematically testing the windows when the creak of a door opening sounded behind her.

“Lavinia?” His voice.

She turned, her stomach churning in anticipation at the sound of her name on his lips. He stood, four feet away from her, his form barely visible through the fog. She jumped down from her uncomfortable perch on the windowsill, and would have run into his arms—but he’d crossed them in a most forbidding manner. Instead, she walked slowly toward him, her heart pounding.

“You must be freezing.” His words reeked of disapproval. “Thank God I couldn’t sleep again. Thank God you didn’t meet anyone on your way over. If you were my—”

She had come close enough that she saw the scowl flit over his face at that. He shut his mouth and turned away, walking into the house.

She followed. “If I were your wife,” she threw at his retreating back, “I wouldn’t need to risk all this fog just to see you on a morning.”

He didn’t respond. But he left the door open, and she went after him. This time, he had not climbed the stairs to his bedchamber. He was headed down a narrow cramped hall into the back of the house. Lavinia sighed and closed the door behind her.

She was not his wife. She was not even anything to him so clean and uncomplicated as his sweetheart. She was the woman who’d made his life miserable. Still, she followed him down the hall. The narrow passage gave way to a tiny kitchen in the back of the house. Without looking at her, he pulled a chair out from under a narrow, wooden table and placed it directly by the hearth. She sat; he stoked the fire and then placed a kettle on the grate.

For a long while he only stared into the orange ribbons that arched away from the flames. The dancing light painted his profile in glimmering yellow. His lips pressed together. His eyes were hooded. Then he shook his head and stabbed the coals with a poker. Bright sparks flew.

“If you were my wife,” he finally said, “this moment would be a luxury—enough coal of a morning to heat the room.”

He shook his head, set the poker down and turned away. William moved about the tiny room with the efficiency of a man used to dealing for himself. He set out a pot and cups, and then turned back to her. “If you were my wife, you’d take your bread without butter. You would mend your gloves three, four, five times over, until the material became more darn than fabric. And when the babes came, we’d have to remove from even these tiny and insupportable quarters into a part of London that is even less safe than this address. We’d have no other way to support a family.”

“When the babes came?” Those words sent a happy thrill through her.

He turned to contemplate the fire again. “I am not such a fool as to imagine they wouldn’t. Lavinia, if you were my wife, the babes would come. And come. And come. I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I pray one is not already on the way.”