Dumbly, I nodded.
“And that last time,” he said gently, hand beneath my chin now, making me look at him, “after the party, when I came to visit you. You were crying that night, too, weren’t you?”
Again I nodded.
“Why, Charlotte? Why were you so sad? Why are you so sad?”
The words came out of me in an unbidden rush.
“Because you are to be married!” I said. “And when you are married, it will change everything!”
“Yes—” he smiled in the dark, carefully drawing out the word as though it might contain more than one syllable “—I hope to be married one day, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. But how will that change everything?”
I could not let him see my real thoughts.
“Because Annette will be sent to boarding school!” I said, unable to stifle a sob from escaping me, not even thinking of him now but thinking of the real pain, the other pain, that being separated from Annette would cause me.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said. “I had only thought of the marriage. Of course, I would have to give the matter grave consideration, if that is what my bride wishes.”
“Of course that is what your bride wishes!”
“It is?”
He seemed surprised.
“Yes!” I said. I couldn’t seem to help myself from making every statement I uttered an exclamation. I was exclaiming all over the place. And now my anger had replaced sadness. “Of course it is! I heard her say it with my own ears! You were there, too—you heard her say it!”
“Charlotte, if I may be so bold as to ask, just what in the world are you talking about?”
“Bebe Iversdottir, your bride,” I spat the words out, “wants to send Annette away!”
“What?” he said. “Bebe is not—”
But I no longer could hear him. The words were tumbling out of my mouth, as though my brain, my heart, were pushing them out into the air.
“The two of you are to be married and Annette will finally have the mother she has always wanted, but then you will send Annette away because that is what Bebe wants you to do and then I will never see Annette again!” I shouted. “And I will never see you again,” I added, almost in a whisper.
At last, I had stopped exclaiming.
He grabbed my hands, surprising me.
“You’re freezing,” he said. “Come inside.”
“No,” I said obstinately.
“Then let me give you my jacket,” he said, moving to remove it.
“No,” I insisted. “Then you will be cold.”
“Then let me get you a jacket. Will you at least let me get you a jacket, Charlotte?”
I reverted to type. “I guess,” I allowed.
He descended the stairs. The night was so silent, so few cars left out now, I heard his every step downward, heard him open my wardrobe door. A moment later, he was back up again, a dark blue jacket draped over his arm.
“Funny,” he said, “I found this crumpled in the bottom of your closet.”
He held it up. I knew what it was, of course: his favorite blue blazer, the one I’d used to beat out the sparks around his bed. It was still scorched in spots.
“How do you think it got there?” he asked, an amused smile on his face. “And in such condition?”
He held it out for me and I slid my arms into the too-long sleeves. I was sure I looked ridiculous, but I had finally started to feel the cold and the jacket was at least some protection.
“I always knew I should have just let you burn,” I said, recovering some of my spirit. “If you’re going to whine about the ruin of a measly jacket—”
“Do you hear me whining, Charlotte? I’m not whining.”
“Okay, complaining then. If you’re going to—”
“I’m not complaining, either. I think you look rather nice in my jacket, burn marks and all. I think you should keep it.”
“Thank you,” I said sarcastically. “You are far too generous.”
“Where were we,” he asked, “before I went downstairs to get you a jacket, a jacket you have accepted with precious little gratitude?”
“I—”
“That’s quite all right. I understand it’s hard for you to accept gifts. I seem to recall you telling me you had not much experience of them. Hopefully, in time and with practice, not to mention incredible patience on the part of the giver, you will learn to accept them more cheerfully.” “Ha!” I said, surprising myself.
“It’s not what I’d call much of a present,” I said. “A used jacket, the wrong size, burnt, that no one would ever want to wear again.”
“You’re welcome,” he said cheerfully.
“Thanks,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Now, then, you still haven’t told me—where were we?”
“I. Don’t. Remember.”
“And. I. Don’t. Believe. You.”
“Whatever,” I said, feeling reckless now.
“That’s okay,” he said, “because I do remember.”
Oh.
“You had just finished informing me that I was going to marry Miss Iversdottir, that I was going to send Annette away, that you were never going to see Annette again if that happened, that you were never going to see me again.”
“I suppose I might have said something like that,” I admitted.
“Would that be so awful?” he asked.
“I would miss Annette greatly,” I said.
“Would it be so awful never seeing me again?”
“Yes.” I admitted that, too.
“Why?”
I wouldn’t tell him that. I told myself he couldn’t make me.
“Say it, Charlotte.”
“Because I love you.”
There. It was finally out there in the world. There was no taking it back now.
I braced myself to hear him laugh at me.
“That’s very good to hear, Charlotte,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve asked myself over and over, when did I first fall in love with you? Was it when you woke me amidst the near flames by throwing toothbrush glassfuls of water at me? Was it that very first day when you fell off the horse? I have no answer for it. Sometimes, it seems like it must have been from the moment I first heard your name. Surely, when Mrs. Fairly told me you’d been in an accident involving the car, I knew I was in love with you then.”
“In love?” I asked. “Are you crazy?”
“Perhaps…” He shrugged. “But you’re the real crazy one, if you think for a second I would ever choose that insipid Bebe Iversdottir over you.”
“Ambassador—”
“Edgar.” He stopped me. “Don’t you think it’s time you called me Edgar?”
“Edgar.” It took great deliberation for me to make myself say it. “You told me you were to be married.”
“Yes,” he said.
“To Bebe Iversdottir.”
“No.” He shook his head. “To you.”
I closed the space between us, hesitantly raised my fingers to his lips. It was like touching a dream.
Then I kissed him, like I’d never kissed anyone in my life.
And, wonder of wonders, he kissed me back.
After an eternity, he was the one to break the spell.
“Don’t you think we should go inside where it’s warmer?” he suggested.
“I’m not cold,” I said, going on tiptoe to kiss him again. I was that hungry for him.
“Well, I am,” he laughed. “Come on, Charlotte,” he invited. “Come inside.”
Feeling the need to be obedient for once—and, it really was freezing outside—I followed him back down the stairs, hopped off the chair, watched as he sealed up the trapdoor.
Now I felt awkward, in a way I hadn’t when I was still outside.
“Come back, Charlotte,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Don’t run away from me now.”
A part of me, a big part, the part that was ruled b
y both instinct and common sense, said that running away would be the wisest thing I could do.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Okay,” I said, moving closer to him, “Edgar. If you insist on being crazy, then I guess I’ll be crazy, too.”
I kissed him again, hard, like I’d never get another chance.
He seemed taken aback by the strength of that kiss. Was he surprised? Had he been expecting some kind of meek I’ll-follow-your-lead subservience in keeping with our positions in the household?
Whatever Edgar Rawlings had been expecting from Charlotte Bell, the nanny, I’d wager my wages I wasn’t it. But, having waited so long to be with someone I truly chose to be with—for now it did not seem as if I had ever really chosen Buster, but rather, had somehow been entrapped by him into a slow fall from life’s grace—I didn’t want to waste any more time. Why waste time, when it was so obvious that he wanted what I wanted, too?
“You’re…aggressive,” he observed as I pulled off my jacket, formerly his jacket, and pulled off the jacket he was wearing.
“Is that bad?” I asked, creatively using my teeth to remove his tie. It was an Oxford rep tie, red and navy stripes on the diagonal. It probably hadn’t been designed for such a removal. Oh, well. If he was going to have to replace his favorite blue blazer, he might as well replace the tie at the same time.
The way I figured it, in this instantaneous rush of confidence I was feeling, if he didn’t want me the way I was, the way I wanted to be, then he didn’t properly want me at all.
“Not at all,” he said, tilting his head backward, the better to let me kiss his neck. “I rather like it.”
Off went his shirt.
His chest was rather hairy; I should have expected that from the dark hair on his head, the generous amount of hair I’d glimpsed on his lower arms whenever his sleeve had ridden up. His chest was broad, his stomach well muscled; I should have expected this from his riding ability.
But I hadn’t expected it. Never once allowing myself to believe that this moment would ever come, I had never expected anything.
Open went his belt.
Odd, you would think that this geisha-like activity of undressing another person would feel servile, but it didn’t. It felt powerful. It felt like for the first time, in being with a man, I was in control of the situation.
He stayed my hand as my fingers found the top of his pants.
“Do you think,” he asked, pushing back the hair from my neck and lowering his head to place his lips on that spot, “I might have a turn?”
“Oh, all right,” I conceded with ill grace. “If you insist.”
Oh…oh! That was nice…
It was nice to feel so thoroughly taken care of and it was nice when he slipped my white nightgown over my head. It was nice right up until…
“What’s this?” he asked.
He was looking at my panties. They were the ones that my mother, if I’d had a mother, would have warned me never to wear in case I suddenly had to have my clothes cut away by an emergency-rescue worker.
I blushed. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
They were my comfort panties, the ones I wore if I was expecting my period or if I was feeling fat and depressed.
“Hey,” I said, feeling bolder, “if I’d known you were coming, I’d have worn the ones with a cake.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, laughing. “They’re somehow…you.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said.
“And they’re charming,” he said. “Really.”
He really was crazy.
But that was okay. It was more than okay. It was perfect.
I continued what I’d started earlier, removing his pants. The way I figured it, the quicker I got us both out of our clothes, the quicker I could kick my panties under the bed and then hopefully the hideous things could be forgotten.
I pulled his shorts down, silk boxers, black with a tiny gold heraldic pattern on them, for those who keep track of these kinds of things. What was inside the shorts proved to be, well, impressive.
“Do you need a separate diplomatic passport for that thing?” I joked nervously.
Then, not waiting for a reply, in my haste to get us both unclothed as quickly as possible, I started to yank down my own wretched panties.
“What’s the rush?” he asked, stopping my hands. “Is there another fire?”
I blushed again at the reference.
Then I watched as he slowly, using great care, slid my panties down over my hips and down my legs, gently lifting each foot in turn to help me step out of them. I stood stunned as he folded them, once again with great care, as if perhaps they were Agent Provocateur, rather than Sears’ finest.
“You don’t have to…” I started to say as his tongue found the inside of my knee, trailing a path upward to the cleft between my legs.
But then I stopped myself.
Why stop him, when his tongue was doing that…and that?
As he licked, teased, kissed, sucked on the swollen nub between my legs, his hands reached upward, making contact with my hardened nipples.
I was tempted to make a joke—it was so much easier to make jokes than to say something real—like perhaps asking him if he’d needed to show such dexterity when seeking approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
But I became so caught up in the wonder of sensation, the wonder and surprise, that I forgot all about being the kind of person who habitually uses the defense mechanism of humor as a brick and a barrier between herself and the rest of the world.
His mouth was already on the places on my breasts where his hands had been a moment before, his mouth was on my neck again, it was on my mouth, the taste of myself on his tongue.
“Okay, Bosco,” I said, unable to bear the seriousness of it all a moment longer.
“Bosco?”
“Yes, Bosco,” I said, placing my hands hard against his chest, turning him around so that his back was to the bed and pushing him down on it. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to object?” he asked as I reversed the order in which he had done things, starting by kissing his mouth, then his neck, snaking my tongue down his body. “Because if you’re expecting me to object,” he said hard on the heels of a gasp, “then I don’t think I’ll be able to accommodate you.”
“I don’t expect anything,” I said. And in that moment, I didn’t. “Honest.”
He sat up, reached toward me and touched the side of my face.
Everything after that was pure heaven.
We fell asleep in each other’s arms afterward, but he awoke an hour later, looked at the clock, jumped out of bed, hunted around for his shorts, pulled them on and found his pants.
“Not another fire?” I asked, half-asleep.
“I just don’t want Annette to wake early and find me here. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, coming more fully awake. And I did. I didn’t want Annette upset by anything, either.
Now he was searching for his shirt, his tie. He turned back to me, knelt beside the bed, still speaking in a rush.
“But everything I said last night, on the roof, I meant it. You’ll marry me, Charlotte?”
I hadn’t been planning on holding him to that. But:
“Of course,” I said simply.
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s really good. But we can’t tell anyone yet, okay?”
“What?”
“It’ll be our little secret.” He kissed my hands. “For Annette. Don’t you think it would be a bit too abrupt for her if, one day you’re her governess and the next day you’re her mother-to-be?”
“Well, when you put it like that, it does sound—”
“Promise me, Charlotte, promise me you’ll wait. We’ll just let everything go on as normal around here until the time is right to tell everybody.”
“I promise,” I said.
“That’s wonderful,�
� he said, kissing my hand one last time. “You’re wonderful.” Then he rose, grabbed his jacket.
His hand was on the door when he turned.
“I love you, Charlotte,” he said. “I swear to God I do.”
I believed him.
Whatever else, he was telling the truth about that.
“I love—”
But he was already gone.
It wasn’t until a full five minutes after he left, as I lay there staring up at the ceiling reliving the last few hours, that I heard the sound I hadn’t heard in a long time: that eerie laughing noise.
It must have just been the wind.
chapter 10
Ihad not planned on falling in love with him.
But what are plans?
They say that man plans and God laughs, but sometimes I think it must be God just laughing at Charlotte’s plans.
Life continued as normal, or rather, what was the new normal for me. My days were still filled, as they had been for months now, with Annette: her schooling, her playing, taking her to church sometimes on Sundays, even if neither of us could ever understand the services.
Only now there was a new feeling to it.
Before, I had loved her, most definitely that, but I had dealt with her from the stance of a governess, albeit a loving one, armed with the sad knowledge that even if Bebe Iversdottir did not part us with boarding school in the short term, something else would in the long. But now I saw into a future for us, one in which I might be allotted the luxury of time granted to a mother. It colored my feelings for her, made everything brighter, permitted me to take a deeper joy in her.
The one difference in my days was the driving lessons. Lars Aquavit was still intent that I should learn. The car had been repaired and returned, but I had yet to make it successfully out of the driveway. I tried to tell him that some people are just not cut out for driving, that some of us are not cut out for a lot of things: horseback riding, really anything that involved coordination with any kind of vehicle, geography. But he took it as an affront to his skills as a teacher that I would not, could not learn, and renewed his efforts. While doing so, he did however remark on the recent changes in me.
“You are…different now, Charlotte.”
See?
How Nancy Drew Saved My Life Page 19
