The door flew open, and Booth stood before her.
A long exhale escaped his full lips as he looked at her with surprise. “You came.”
“I did.”
Wendy had to duck her head down to enter his room, which was little more than a bed between two slanted eaves of the roof. She looked down at his unmade bed and felt a blush rise to her face. “Booth, I . . .”
“Wait.”
He paced around the room, and she watched the way his long strides made the muscles in his lean shoulders flex with each step. His tweed trousers hugged his lean frame, topped with a clean white button-down shirt and gray suspenders that dotted his shoulders with red tips. He had removed his hat when she came through the door, and his shaggy brown hair was pressed down across his forehead; it took everything within her not to reach out and brush it away from his face, his perfect face. He had full pink lips that stretched into a wide, trusting grin, the kind of endearing smile that let the receiver know that everything was going to be fine. His face was still now, though, as his bright blue eyes bore into her face, his cheeks ruddy. He pulled a chair out from behind his bed, his hands shaking ever so slightly.
“Please sit.”
Wendy sat obediently, her eyes never leaving his face. His mouth opened and poured out a great jumble of words. “I’m guessing that you found the letter tucked into The Woman in White. Before you send me crashing down to earth, please just let me explain. I understand that we are not of the same social standing. Your family is rich, and while my father and I are not extremely poor, I am certainly not a suitable suitor in your parents’ eyes. However, I have a plan.”
Wendy stayed silent, watching Booth pace around the room.
“If you share my affections, I will take an internship at your father’s firm. My father can find someone to help with the store in exchange for food and a warm place to sleep, I’m sure of it. I will take an internship, and in a few years, I will become one of them. I’m sure of it. I’m smart. I’m a fast learner, and I’m good with numbers. I will begin attending Mass with your family. At first they will take me out of pity, but if I work on them long enough, surely I can win your parents over as a man worthy of your hand. My father will eventually leave me the bookstore, but hopefully by then I will be so successful in my own right that I can hire someone to run the store, and perhaps branch out into other stores. Surely owning a number of stores would be quite a legacy for our children, no? That is . . .”
Wendy was trying not to smile now, as she watched Booth, always so collected, tie himself into knots.
“Of course, if you reject this proposal, I will absolutely understand, for God knows that there are some holes that could possibly arise in each projected outcome, but in each plan, if one depends on . . .” Finally, his blue eyes met Wendy’s. “Oh, Wendy, I’m sorry. I haven’t even asked you if you feel, if you share . . .”
Wendy looked at the ground for a moment before raising her eyes to meet his, family and class long forgotten.
“Booth.” She struggled to find the right words. Finally, she let a smile creep across her face. “I feel . . . yes.”
Booth crossed the room in a few steps and knelt in front of her. “Oh, Wendy, my darling . . .” He reached for her hands. She extended them toward him and he grasped them gently, her fingers curling into his, the exact same way they had six years ago, when they had just been children together. Moving very slowly, he began to peel the glove off her left hand first.
“Wendy, the way I feel about you, it’s pure, you must know. I’m not talking about having a secret affair in my attic. I’m talking about a proper, public courtship, because if I may confess, my feelings for you have been suppressed for years, and I refuse to waste those years trying to hide what we’ve known for certain.”
Wendy was having a hard time breathing as Booth pulled the white glove from her hand.
“You must know . . .” he murmured. “That you are a beauty divine, and though the lines of your face have driven this man to madness, that I love you most for what lies inside of you, for you are a good soul, Wendy, a loving sister and kind friend, and you have a wondrous mind.”
“Booth.”
“Shhh . . .” With that murmur, he bent his head and gave her the softest of kisses on her open palm. It was as if her skin had been set on fire. Desire raced through her palm and through her body, so taking her by surprise that she practically leapt up and out of the chair. Booth stepped backward.
“Wendy! Dear, have I offended you? That was too forward. I should have known, I’m sorry. Here, I will help you put your glove back on. I have been presumptuous and improper.”
He didn’t have a chance to finish, because Wendy stepped up in front of him, her heart hammering. The glove fell to the floor. Booth, never a person comfortable with silence, went still, his blue eyes widening as her face came closer to his. Wendy looked at his face, so close now. Then she raised her ungloved hand and traced her fingers over the places that she had so longed to touch, longed to touch for years, her desire unleashed with the kiss of her hand. Her fingertips ran over his lips, over his stubbly cheeks, over the small scar that dotted the side of his mouth, the result of a fall from a bookshelf two years ago. She touched his long black eyelashes, his strong Roman nose, traced his jaw to the curve of his neck. This boy that she knew so well, as close to her heart as her own family, was now a man, and with each beat of her heart, Wendy found herself pulling more and more away from her childhood. Finally, her hand found a place on his shoulder, and she raised her eyes to meet his.
He looked down at her face with amazement before murmuring, “Wendy.” He lowered his lips to hers and with a brush as soft as a feather, dashed them against her own.
It was her first kiss, and he tasted of whipping cream and books.
She sighed.
Booth pulled back from her, his eyes wide with shock, his cheeks flushed.
“Wendy . . . I . . .” She stepped back from him, raising both hands to her face. She was suddenly so ashamed. What if he hadn’t wanted to kiss her? What if his opinion of her had suddenly changed? What if he thought she was of loose moral character? What—
Booth pulled her close and pressed his lips against hers for the second time. They fell hard against the bookshelf behind Wendy, and a shower of loose notebooks fell around them. His lips traced the corners of her mouth.
“My light soul . . .”
With each kiss, Wendy was falling deeper into him, realizing that she would never again be able to live without his touch. She traced her fingers through his messy hair, and he smiled, tugging carefully on the light blue ribbon in her hair.
“We mustn’t go much further, otherwise, I’m not sure . . .”
“We couldn’t stop,” Wendy whispered.
“Exactly.” Booth turned away from her then and sat on the corner of his bed, pushing aside a pile of clean laundry to make room for her beside him. They both sat in silence for a moment, Booth wrapping his hand around her own.
“What do we do now?” she asked. Booth squinted in the dusty attic, his eyes trained on the ceiling. She could see that he was thinking, calculating.
“We should tell your parents that I would like to court you.”
Wendy shook her head. “No. Booth, they will never let us be together.”
“What other option do we have?”
She struggled to find a solution that wouldn’t involve her mother screaming and wailing, tugging at her own hair until Wendy acquiesced. She suddenly saw herself climbing into a black carriage, a suitcase at her side.
“Booth, they would send me away. To a boarding school. We can’t tell them. Even John said that they never would allow it.”
“John knows?”
She turned her head away from him. “John knows everything.”
“That nosy little prat.”
Booth stood and crouched in front of her, his hands resting gently on her knees.
“Wendy, even if they won’t allow it,
I feel the right thing would be to tell your parents. I am fond of your family, and I will not sneak around behind their backs. That would be dishonest. I want ours to be a public love, not something we hide in the shadows.” Wendy buried her face in her hands. In her mind, she saw her mother’s reaction to Booth’s advances, the disappointment in her father’s face as he realized that his second-favorite child would fall from her rightful social status. It couldn’t happen, not now. Not until she could figure out a way to raise Booth from his status as a bookseller’s son . . .
“I can see the wheels in your head turning, Wendy. But there is no other way if we want to be together now.”
Wendy found her voice, which had been pressed back against her throat. “Booth, if we can just wait, wait until you become an accountant, wait until you have the chance to . . .”
He stood up. “To what, Wendy? How long should I wait for you? Until I am thirty and you have been betrothed to one of your father’s older colleagues? Or perhaps until you get sent off to a girls’ college? Perhaps I can climb a vine up to your window . . .”
His voice had turned cold. Wendy stood up and reached for him. He pulled her against his warm chest, and Wendy felt herself curling into him, fading into the smell of him, the intoxication of the bookseller’s son being so near. His lips traced her brow.
“I can’t wait that long for you, Wendy. You are going to have to be brave. Can you do that for me?”
Her lips opened just slightly. “I need time, Booth.”
A door slammed from below the attic, and they leapt apart from each other, Booth’s feet skittering on an empty lantern. He looked up at Wendy, annoyed.
“This is what we have to look forward to if we decide not to tell your parents.”
“Booth?” The shopkeeper’s voice echoed sharply up through the attic. “Booth, what are you doing up there? I need you to carry some books for Miss Rochester!”
Booth leapt up, snapping his suspenders and pulling on his pageboy cap. He spun back toward Wendy, putting his hands over her warm cheeks.
“Let me look at you, just as you are now, so that later I can remember the moment you became mine.” Time seemed to slow as she fixed her eyes on his perfect face, golden fragments of dust circling around it, the face that she longed to see above all others. Booth leaned his cheek against hers, and Wendy closed her long eyelashes, taking in the feel and the smell of him. A peace she had hardly known in her life welled up inside of her.
“I will remember always,” she promised. “I will remember for both of us.”
Booth’s blue eyes met hers. “We will finish this conversation later.”
And then he was gone, and she was left alone in his bedroom, her mind a whirling storm, filled with both passion and dread. She brushed off her dress and spent a few minutes straightening her hair bow and her tights and pushing back the stray hairs that had crept forward. Even when picking the woolly lint specks off her tights, Wendy could not keep the smile off her face. Finally satisfied that she looked completely like nothing had happened in Booth’s bedroom, Wendy stepped out from behind his door and made her way to the ladder and back down to the store. Her hands wrapping around the wood, so warped by Booth’s hands that it was smooth, she climbed down, mindful of her dress with each chaste step. She had almost reached the bottom when she heard her name screeched, a sound that made her hairs stand on end.
“Wendy Darling?” Mrs. Tatterley, her mother’s favorite gossip partner, was standing at the register, where Mr. Whitfield was dutifully ringing up cookbooks. She bounced over to Wendy, her large bosom traveling first, followed by the swaying of a dozen pearl necklaces, all real. Wendy knew this because Mrs. Tatterley always made it a point to tell others about her wealth. A buttoned-up silk gray dress flared out in double layers around her feet, and the collar stretched wide over her pink corseted bodice. On her head sat an enormous hat of peach silk roses, greenery, and a black and white striped bow.
“Wendy Darling! I didn’t know you would be here! Is your dear mother here?”
“Mama is not here today. She had a ladies’ meeting after Mass.”
Mrs. Tatterley bustled around her. “Oh, of course, of course, she mentioned that last week. A meeting about the new parchments for the altar, is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Tatterley bent over Wendy and squinted. “Good Lord, child, your cheeks are so flushed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so red. Are you sure you are not feverish?” Wendy politely sidestepped her touch, not wanting this woman’s perfume-drenched hands to touch anywhere Booth had kissed. Her mother’s friend eyed the ladder. “Did you come from upstairs? Why on earth would you want to go into that musty attic? I’ve told Mr. Whitfield here several times that if he wants to continue getting my business that he will clean up this store to a more sanitary level! He can’t expect people of our stature to shop amongst such dust. And some of the books he carries! Did you know that I saw a copy of Ibsen’s Ghosts in the back the other day? Obviously someone had been reading it! The filth of that novel! Good Christians truly should not even shop here.”
Wendy knew she should bite her tongue, and yet her defensiveness over Booth and his father rose up instead. “Then why do you?”
Mrs. Tatterley’s mouth dropped open. “Wendy Darling! Well, I never. Wait until your mother hears of how rude you have been! That is no way to talk to an adult. And for your information, we come to Whitfield’s because it is the only bookstore within walking distance of our home. You know that. I never . . .” She turned and walked back to the register, grabbing the books roughly from Mr. Whitfield. “That will be all. Thank you,” she snapped. With a toss of her head and a whiff of overpowering freesia, she exited the store, the bells clanking loudly after her. Wendy turned back to Mr. Whitfield.
“You shouldn’t have angered her,” he said quietly.
“She was insulting! Also, she’ll forgive me. She comes over every week to eat all of Liza’s pound cake. I’ll apologize then.”
Mr. Whitfield shook his head. “You have no idea what you are doing, do you?”
Wendy bent over to pick up some of the books that Mrs. Tatterley’s large behind had knocked over. “I don’t know what you are speaking of, sir.”
“Don’t think I don’t know,” he said coldly, the first time she had ever heard that tone come out of his mouth. “You could ruin him, my son.”
Wendy jerked her head up. “Ruin? How?”
“Your family could ruin our business.”
“My family would never—”
“They would. The Darlings and the Tatterleys and the Muchsens and the Browns, if they ever found out that one of their precious daughters was in love with the bookseller’s son . . .”
“I’m not in love with Booth!” she protested weakly, trying to hide the blush rising in her cheeks. “Booth is my friend.”
His voice softened. “I know that you care dearly for Booth, and for me. Wendy, you are like my own daughter. But if you truly love my family, you will stay away from my son. Think of what your parents would say. Think of what they would do. To us. Booth has everything to lose, while you only risk your heart.” The bookseller shook his head. “I should have seen this coming a long time ago. I indulged you both for too long. The Mrs. Tatterleys of the world do not look lightly upon adoration between the classes.”
Wendy felt her world unraveling, thread by tiny thread. “Mr. Whitfield . . .”
“Away with you now. Your face is already breaking my heart as it is. I’ll tell Booth that you went home. Please don’t forget the books for your brothers.”
Her movements stiff and mechanical, Wendy picked up the pile of books from the table, one of them slipping out of the twine binding and hitting the floor with a loud thud. “Tell Booth that I . . .” She tried to maintain control over her voice, which was cracking, her lower lip trembling. Mr. Whitfield looked away from her with red eyes behind his glasses.
“Wendy, I’m sorry for this misfortun
e. It isn’t fair. But please think about Booth’s future before you consider your own needs. Good day, child.” He waved his arm toward the door. Wendy moved toward it, unsteadily gathering her shawl and stepping outside onto the dusty street. Her skin, still warmed by Booth’s touch, seemed to steam in the cool London air, and the world suddenly seemed strange and unfriendly.
CHAPTER THREE
WENDY DIDN’T REMEMBER THE WALK HOME, only that she had been numb, her hands wrapped tightly around her books, her heart strangely empty and sad. People moved around her in a blur: men with black hats, boys in wool shorts, babies pushed in their prams with bright red cheeks and curious eyes. She stepped into Number 14, and before she even had a chance to breathe, Liza was on her, fussing about her missing gloves.
“Miss Wendy! Why are you so pale? Where are your gloves?”
Wendy looked down at her hands, remembering Booth’s lips on her palm. “Sorry, I must have lost them.”
Liza sighed. “Those were expensive, child! A gift from your mama! Are you feeling okay?” She was pressing her hands against Wendy’s cheeks now, feeling her forehead and lips. “You feel clammy. Go put on your nightgown and lie down. I’ll be up with some tea in a few minutes for you. Tell those boys to vacate the nursery so that you may rest.” She tsk-tsked. “Between you and your brothers, I get no rest . . .”
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