A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1)(29)

[page]Her green eyes flickered with surprise at his uncharacteristically amenable greeting. He gave a small smile, trying to appear blasé. On the inside, Carter wanted nothing more than to hightail it out of the room like a *. He was sure she could hear his heart pounding painfully in his chest.


She pulled up a chair. “We’re going to do exactly what the class has been doing so you don’t fall behind.”

He kept his eyes on her, taking all of her in. He watched her movements and the expressions rippling over her face, trying to see the young girl he remembered like a crumpled photograph in the depths of his memory. Jesus. After sixteen years, she was sitting across from him, oblivious to their connection. Nevertheless, he knew she could feel his stare. He wondered if she felt the same way he did when she looked at him.

“This is the poem we’ll be looking at.” She placed a piece of paper in front of him.

He sat forward reading the title on the top of the page. “ ‘Tichborne’s Elegy’?”

“Yes,” Peaches said. “What of it?”

“Do those idiots in that class of yours even know who Chidiock Tichborne is?”

“They do now,” she answered evenly while she pulled the lid off her pen. “And what do you know about him or his poetry?”

Carter heard the challenge in her voice. He focused on that and not the sensation of the heat coming from her knee near his, under the table.

“I know enough,” he replied, crossing his arms.

“Please,” she offered with an open palm, “regale me.”

“Regale you?” he mocked. He rubbed his chin. “He was born in Southampton, England, in 1558,” he started. “In 1586 he took part in the Babington Plot to murder Queen Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. But they were shit out of luck. He was arrested and eventually hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

Stifling a laugh at her shock, he said, “This poem is the one he wrote while he was awaiting his execution. Kind of inappropriate to be studying this in a prison, don’t you think, Miss Lane?”

“You like history.”

Carter shrugged. “It’s okay. I prefer English literature.” He allowed his loaded answer to settle between them.

She wet her lips. “So, tell me about the poem.”

“He uses paradox and antithesis.” He trailed his finger across the page in front of him. “Opposites and contradictions. He does it to highlight the tragedy of what he’s going through, which, when you think about it, is pretty stupid.”

“Why would you say that?”

Carter laughed. “He made his mistakes, so he has to pay the price. His debt.”

“You sound like you know something about that.”

Carter raised his eyebrows and glanced around the room with large, obvious eyes.

“I know you’re paying for your mistakes. But he was so young, too young to die. Don’t you sympathize with Tichborne in some way?”

“Sympathize? No,” he answered firmly. “Envy? Yes.”

“Why do you envy him?”

Carter kept his eyes on the table between them. “The fact he’s about to die,” he muttered. “He begins to see things much more clearly. He has focus, clarity. I envy him that.”

“You want clarity?”

Carter smiled. “Wanting and needing are two very different things, Miss Lane,” he answered. “I need clarity. I need focus.”

Then he stared at her, because Jesus if there was anything else he could do or say at that moment. Carter knew that finding out who she was was the first step to him having any kind of focus in his life for years. And even though he spoke about Tichborne like he knew what the f*ck he was talking about, it was only with his Peaches sitting in front of him that he truly understood his own need for it.