by Nikky Kaye
“There. We’re almost home,” he announced, and settled back into his seat. Clarissa ignored him, turning her face to the window. The damp air soothed her fiery cheeks and mist collected on her eyelashes like tears.
“I hope you’re satisfied.” Her voice trembled with anger and frustration.
Maxmara propped his legs back up and replied caustically, “I will be soon.”
“My lord, it cannot have escaped your notice that I am an unwilling partner in this fraudulent... union.” She grimaced, as though the word left a bitter taste in her mouth. “Most unwilling. Can we not let bygones be bygones and go our separate ways?” Her gaze shifted from the passing shrubbery to his curved lips.
He rested his head against the back of the carriage and closed his eyes lazily. “And ruin your reputation? Think of your father, Miss Templeton. No, it will not do. I am eager to discover those qualities I am sure you possess which I did not articulate to you before.” He tilted his head at her and opened one eye.
His gaze raked insolently over her well-fitting travelling gown and the flush in her cheeks. “Yes, I’m sure you will meet those requirements. You see, Clarissa, you do indeed have the qualities I was searching for in a wife.” He closed his eyes again and smiled. “I was just not aware of what I really wanted.”
Clarissa gaped at him, her heart pounding beneath her pelisse. She was in more dire straits than she had previously thought. She had sold her soul—and her body—to the devil. Wringing her hands in her lap, she jerked her head around to stare blindly out the window.
Where was that sharpened quill when she needed it?
* * *
Sophy stared at the screen and sighed. She was two weeks past her deadline, and Clarissa and the earl still wouldn’t behave. Sophy wondered if perhaps they weren’t meant to be together after all. She snorted and ran a hand absently over the furry lump in her lap.
“You’ve got it made, Herc. You don’t have to worry about women at all.”
Hercules flicked his tail indignantly, as if to remind Sophy that losing his masculinity was not his decision. She was the one who put him in a cage and dragged him to the vet’s office.
Sophy knuckled his ear and sighed again. “You know what? I think maybe Max was right—true love doesn’t exist. It would certainly explain why there are so many lonely, single people in the world.” Of which I am one, she added silently.
She glanced up at the calendar. The giant red X had multiplied, and now every day in the last two weeks and the next two were stained crimson.
Her gaze drifted to today’s date, where something had been scribbled in blue felt pen underneath the mocking red X. Sophy peered at it, realization dawning on her. Today was Max’s lecture. He was going to present his paper on romance novels at the university at three o’clock this afternoon.
Even if she hadn’t written it on the calendar, the email would have reminded her. Appearing before the announcement sent to the whole department, almost as a challenge, was “Aren’t you curious?”
It was Max to a tee—enigmatic, provocative, and totally perplexing. Sophy had shoved the folded piece of paper into her desk drawer, where it lay now like Poe’s ticking heart.
Her body stiffened and Hercules jumped off her lap in protest. Slowly she lowered her head to the desk, thinking. Wondering if she should go. Mentally listing all the reasons why she shouldn’t go. The computer started beeping frantically and she raised her head from the keyboard as if in a daze.
She had to go, if for no other reason than to remind herself that he was a pompous, funny, insensitive, smart, disappointing, kind, romantically-impaired jerk who didn’t understand what she wrote about or what she wanted out of life. Her lips twisted into a grimace as she realized that these days, she wasn’t sure herself. The only thing she was sure of was that she was still in love with him, and going to his lecture would be masochistic.
She sighed. “Damn.” The cat glanced up at her and she sighed again. “The course of true love never does run smooth, does it?”
She was going to go to the lecture. She would probably regret it later, but she was going to go.
She parked on the edge of campus and hurried across the quad to the auditorium. A brisk wind snapped at her hair and a dozen or so students sat on the browning grass between classes, lazing in the autumn sun. Sophy breathed in deeply, the faint smell of burning leaves gritty in the back of her throat. Curling leaves crackled under her feet, strewn across the sidewalk like scraps of burnt paper, as she ducked between two brick buildings pregnant with students.
It had been two months since she had seen Max, and summer had succumbed to Indian summer and then autumn outside the apartment where she had been holing up. Two months and sixteen days, to be exact. Sophy heard the crunch of a twig beneath her boot and smiled in satisfaction. She stopped to grind the broken wood into the concrete, pretending it was Max’s head. Now she was ready for his lecture.
She slipped into the back of the auditorium and the door slammed shut behind her like a gunshot. Dozens of heads swiveled expectantly, at which she shrugged apologetically. She scanned the stage, but Max wasn’t on it; apparently the lecture hadn’t begun yet.
Sophy settled into an aisle seat in the next to last row and shrugged off her denim jacket.
The students around her quieted as Max entered the auditorium from a side door and headed for the stage. He nodded briefly at some people in the front row, and Sophy craned her neck to see Dr. Chapaty and a few other people she remembered seeing at the department “whine” and cheese a million years ago.
Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him approach the podium. He was a little paler than she remembered, his hair darker as it flopped over his creased forehead.
Had he been sleeping as badly as she had for the past two months?
He adjusted the microphone on the podium and reached inside his briefcase for some papers. After shuffling them a few times, he took a sip from a glass of water sitting on a nearby table and looked out at the audience.
As his gaze pierced through the throng of students and interested faculty members, Sophy was overcome with the sudden urge to hide. She slumped down in her seat and stared blindly at the wad of greenish gray gum stuck to the underside of the desk. Perhaps she could just listen to the lecture; watching him was too dangerous. She was desperately afraid he would see her and get the wrong idea.
She wasn’t still in love with him; she just had a professional interest in his paper. That’s all.
She sighed, blowing her bangs off her face and rubbed her aching neck. Her back started to cramp up and a red-haired girl three seats over stared at her. Realizing that she couldn’t stay on the floor for the whole lecture, Sophy straightened, keeping her head down and trying to remain inconspicuous.
Max cleared his throat and began. “Ladies and gentlemen.” He tilted his head towards the front row. “Colleagues. I began this study several months ago in the hopes of exploring some important issues in the effects of genre literature on women and their lives. Specifically, I was curious to see what impact the consumption of the modern romance novel had on women’s expectations of love, marriage, and sex.” He took another sip of water. “I was surprised by the results of this investigation.”
Sophy’s head snapped up and she watched Max carefully.
He glanced down at his papers and continued. “I initially expected to find that romance novels degrade and anesthetize women, fostering unrealistic expectations of heteronormative relationships. Perhaps this is true to a certain extent, but I also found it to be a genre of empowerment and political subversion.”
The students around Sophy whipped open their notebooks and started writing quickly. She glanced around and found several smug expressions on the faces of female students, and a few shocked male faces.
Max started explaining his research methods, but Sophy wasn’t listening. Her brain whirred and hummed at his astonishing about-face.
* * *
No
t a bad turnout, Max thought to himself. He wasn’t sure if the popularity of this lecture was a good thing or a bad thing. If the paper went over well, then at least his chair was there to see it. And if he fell flat on his face, well... that was a prospect he was hoping to avoid.
But after spending the last three weeks sitting at his computer for eighteen hours a day, he wasn’t sure what the response was going to be. The truth was that after the second week he wasn’t even sure what he was writing anymore.
He felt a strange pricking sensation in his palms and shuffled his papers to get rid of it. Frowning, he realized that the last time he had felt that sensation was when he walked into that church a little over two months ago.
“The existence of true love,” he continued, “is yet to be scientifically proven. There have, of course, been several clinical studies involving human pheremones and their place in the phenomenon of mutual attraction. But while the academic concept of true love is shaky, we can evaluate its... predecessor, romance, more accurately.” He cleared his throat noisily and his gaze swept over the auditorium.
“These books are about romance. They are about—” he broke off as his gaze met Sophy’s.
Sophy. She came.
His eyes widened, then narrowed and she flushed. He should have known; the prickling in his palms should have told him. Max’s gaze slid over her reddened cheeks and he wondered what she was up to.
His gaze dropped to the papers on the podium and he cleared his throat again. “Excuse me.” He took a sip of water and re-focused his attention on the audience in front of him. “These books are about passion and lust, but more than that, they are about the pursuit of love. And that is what romance really is—the path to a perceived goal. True love, if you will.”
He looked out over the audience, careful to avoid Sophy’s questioning expression. His collar felt tight suddenly and he wondered if there was more water nearby.
“A mythical, canonical love which allows a woman to...” he trailed off, losing his place as he accidentally met her gaze again.
She stared at him, eyes bright with curiosity and something else he couldn’t identify. Anger, perhaps. Disappointment? Probably. He glanced down at his notes and blinked a few times.
“Uh, which allows a woman to change a man. Some scholars have referred to it as ‘taming,’ in fact.” He blinked again, his throat suddenly tight with bitter realization. “Convincing him of the therapeutic powers of love.”
It doesn’t feel very therapeutic right now, he thought to himself.
Slowly, he raised his gaze from his notes to meet Sophy’s stunned expression and something inside of him clenched and burst.
Either he was in love with her, or he was having an aneurysm. After a few eternal seconds, Max had not lost consciousness, so decided it was the former affliction. It would have been easier if he were having an aneurysm.
I’m in love with her.
The revelation astonished him. He was in love with her. With her romantic delusions and her stubborn idealism. With the twisted curls of her not quite blonde hair and the flashes in her not quite green eyes. Sophy had a warmth and innocence and a passion that Trisha had never possessed, not even when she hurled a two-carat diamond at his car. It was intoxicating.
He ignored his notes and stared at Sophy, his voice echoing hollowly over the speaker system. “Passion is true love... in these books.” Their silent connection was broken as Sophy blinked suddenly and looked away.
She thrust her arms into her jacket and climbed over several indignant students to get to the aisle. Her tote bag smacked someone in the head and she reddened. Murmuring something to the student rubbing his forehead, she made it to the aisle and practically ran to the back door. She only turned once, as she pushed open the door. Her expression was unreadable.
“True love is passion,” Max said flatly, and she disappeared into the autumn afternoon.
The rest of the talk was a blur. He barely remembered the polite applause and banal follow up questions. The image of Sophy’s sad eyes was stamped on his brain, and Max had never felt so lost in his life. He had really screwed up this time.
Love was turning out to be even more complicated than passion, he realized.
* * *
After the auditorium had emptied, Max headed back to his office. His chair creaked as he leaned back in it, his fingers linked behind his head. His gaze wandered over to the old tweed blazer hanging from the coatrack and his mouth twitched at the memory of the long ago wine and cheese, and that ridiculous Regency costume.
He remembered the sound of Sophy’s laughter and the admiration shining in her eyes as she had sat in front of him on the empty stage. She had looked at him as though he were really her hero, in the flesh.
The chair screeched violently in protest as Max shot forward and slapped his hands on his desk. That was it! She wanted a hero; she always had. He could be a hero, if that was what it took.
When Trisha had wanted him to join her father’s investment firm, he had balked. When his parents had wanted him to go to medical school, he had refused, and disappointed them all.
He was through disappointing people. If Sophy wanted him to be a hero, he would be a hero. Or die trying.
* * *
The next day, Max was reconsidering his romantic flight of fancy.
“This here’s the gentlest mount we got.”
A wiry man with a bulbous nose and granite jaw tugged at a button on his dusty denim shirt and eyed Max nervously. His lips quivered and his nostrils flared in tandem with the horse’s as Max stepped into the box.
“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
The horse was enormous, and even though it was placidly chewing hay right now, Max knew that it could squash him like a bug within seconds, given the chance.
The man rocked back and forth on his boots and grinned broadly. “He’s a she. Name’s Pansy.”
“Pansy?” Was he kidding?
“Yep.” The boards creaked under the man’s boots as his toe and then his heel rapped rhythmically against the wood. Then he stilled and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “You’ll be wanting an English saddle, I guess,” he remarked, his lips twitching uncontrollably.
Max tensed, feeling heat rush up his face.
The snug Regency-style coat didn’t allow for slouching, holding his back straight, and he felt completely exposed in the skintight breeches. His cravat had come undone from the haphazard knot he had attempted and had the irritating habit of flapping up against his chin whenever the brisk autumn breeze changed direction, as it did now. He reached up and shoved the piece of silk back down into his linen shirt and, for the first time, wished that Sophy wrote contemporary romance.
The stable’s owner peered at him curiously. “Have you ever ridden English-style?”
“No,” Max said, and stepped carefully around a pile of manure. His boots, along with the rest of his costume, were on loan from the university’s drama department, and he had promised the wardrobe mistress he wouldn’t damage them. The well-placed rip in the last pair of breeches had been difficult enough to live down; he wasn’t about to return this pair covered in crud.
“Have you ever ridden at all?”
Max was losing his patience. He only had this get-up for three hours, and it would take at least two of those hours to convince Sophy he hadn’t completely lost his marbles.
“Yes,” he hissed. “I’ve ridden before.”
He tried to sound affronted, and hoped the stable owner wouldn’t guess that the last time he sat on a horse was at the county fair as a kid. The only thing he had been jockeying for the last ten years was a desk chair. And desk chairs didn’t move of their own accord, at least not in his experience.
The man eyed him warily, then relaxed. “Uh huh. Well, I’ll get you set up. Why don’t you go over to the office and fill out the paperwork? Pansy’s yours for the next three hours.”
“Fantastic,” Max said tonelessly.
Twenty minutes
later Pansy was ready to go. Max was somewhat less prepared. The stable owner helped him mount the beast, and much to Max’s relief, his breeches didn’t split in the process. He could feel the warmth of the animal between his legs and clutched the reins as the horse lurched forward.
“Whoa there.” The stable owner reached up and held the bridle as Max adjusted himself in the heavy leather saddle. “Sure you’ll be okay?”
“Positive,” Max promised, trying to sound more confident than he felt. He slipped his boots into the stirrups and tugged on the reins carefully, turning the horse around in the direction of Sophy’s apartment. Thankfully it was only a dozen blocks away; the stable was housed in a city park.
“You’re sure you’ll be okay?” Pansy’s owner was looking less than thrilled.
Max nodded. “Fine.” He looped the reins around his wrists and clucked softly to the mare.
She bolted into a canter and covered almost a block before Max could slow her down to a trot and stop his teeth from rattling.
By the time they got to Sophy’s place, Max was sure that every vertebra in his spine had been displaced and sweat was trickling down his back. But somehow he had managed to stay on the beast. He was starting to develop a tremendous respect for Sophy’s fictional heroes, and he thanked heaven she didn’t write pirate romances. It would have been a lot harder to commandeer a ship.
And it was much easier to appear heroic with snorting and pawing horseflesh beneath him than with a parrot clawing at his shoulder and threatening to stain his jacket.
He reined Pansy in ten feet away from Sophy’s apartment building. Her car was parked out front and the windows of her second floor suite were open. Max could make out some smoky jazz drifting out and a flash of a dark blonde head. After a quick survey and pep talk, he realized that the street was empty—it was now or never.
“Sophy!”
He couldn’t detect any movement inside, but the music suddenly stopped. He called out her name again and within seconds her head poked out one of the windows.
