by Merry Farmer
As soon as the thought struck him, something in Elaine’s expression changed. The awakened, womanly desire collapsed suddenly into innocent fear. She wasn’t ready. Almost, but not quite. Not when she’d had her home and the memory of her father wrenched away from her so vilely just minutes before. She had to recover from one cataclysmic change before engaging in the next.
“We’ll get through this,” Basil said, surprised at how calm he sounded, all things considered. “I promise you.”
She was still and silent for several more seconds. Then she blinked. Then she nodded.
The danger of the moment had passed. Basil stood, bringing her to her feet with him. He placed her hand carefully in the crook of his arm, leading her back to the lane, and continuing toward town with her.
Neither of them spoke a word. Basil wasn’t sure either of them were capable of speech. But as they walked on, Elaine leaned her head against his arm. Basil swallowed hard, praying to God that Malcolm Campbell would stay away as long as possible.
Chapter 6
Elaine’s first night in the bookshop flat was long and fitful. Mr. Sudbury had sent word, demanding she go to Windermere, his primary place of business, on Monday to sign documents she had failed to sign when she walked out on him, but that wasn’t the reason for her restlessness. Sleep seemed miles away. She tossed and turned, her legs twisting in the sheets, her head shifting on the pillow, her heart beat refusing to slow.
Because it was Basil’s sheets her legs tangled in, Basil’s pillow she pressed her face into, Basil’s scent all around her. The tiny, neat bedroom was rife with signs and hints of him. The simple but finely-made coverlet on the bed was his favorite shade of blue. The prints of exotic ports that decorated the walls reminded her of stories he’d told—albeit cryptically—of his younger days in the army. And the robe he’d left hanging on a peg beside the door suggested such intimacy between them that she lay awake, staring at it in the slivers of moonlight that cut down through the curtains.
He’d kissed her. Not the way one friend kissed another to console them after a tragedy either. He’d kissed her the way a hot-blooded man kissed a woman he wanted. She’d read enough books to know that ardor like Basil’s wasn’t innocent. He’d kissed her.
And she’d kissed him back. Not because he’d caught her in a vulnerable moment. Not because she’d never been kissed before and was curious about how one did it. Not because she’d been so overcome by the mess with the house that she’d been rendered defenseless. She’d kissed him back because she wanted to, because an urgency that started deep within her gut had wanted nothing more than to be enfolded in his strength, to know him in the biblical sense. That whole, mystifying turn of phrase made perfect sense to her all of a sudden. For it seemed that when two people kissed the way she and Basil had, a certain kind of knowing, an understanding of everything the other was and meant, must arise.
She tossed again, kicking off the covers to cool her overheated body as the first hints of morning light peeked through the curtains. No, the whole thing was ridiculous. Basil was her friend, her best friend. She’d always assumed he considered her too young and frivolous for any serious attachment. But was that really true? She touched her fingertips to her lips, his taste still alive in her memory. Had she truly believed he could never consider her romantically, or had she been lying to herself? Perhaps so that the constant pressure she knew he was under to propose to her could be laughed off as the petty machinations of outsiders who didn’t understand them? Could it be that the busybodies of Brynthwaite had been right all along?
She sat up with a frustrated growl. No, she refused to believe Mr. Crimpley and his lot were right about anything when it came to how she lived her life. She threw her legs over the side of the bed, getting up with a huff and marching to the water-closet. And yet, as she began her morning routine, the ache deep inside of her continued to pulse. If she were married to Basil, she could kiss him whenever she wanted.
She tried not to think about it as she washed and dressed, though it was exceptionally hard to focus on remembering the words to an old song her mother used to sing to her as a girl rather than the way Basil’s hands had felt on her back and her cheek as she sponged herself with lemon-scented water. She attempted to make a list of things she could do with her time, now that she didn’t have a garden to care for or a cottage to maintain, as she ate a simple breakfast of tea and toast, but her thoughts flew across the street to the pub, where Basil was staying, wondering if he was thinking of her. Had he kissed her because he felt sorry for her? As a way to calm her ruffled spirits? Or had he kissed her because he loved her?
She gasped, almost choking on the last of her tea. Basil loved her. And she…. Her hands trembled as she set her teacup on the table. Dear heavens, did she love him in return? Had she always loved him?
The bell over the shop door jangled downstairs, and Elaine jumped. She touched her lips, holding her breath as she listened to the footsteps that made their way across the main part of the shop below. The steps were too heavy to be Basil, but she pushed her chair back and ran to the stairs all the same.
The stairs curved down into the heart of the bookshop. The calming scents of paper and binding glue did little to settle Elaine’s nerves, though. “Mr. Wall?” she called out in a high, squeaky voice.
“No, just me,” Andrew answered from the desk in the back corner of the shop’s main room. “Good morning, Miss Bond.”
Elaine let out a sigh of relief…that felt far more like disappointment than it should. She returned Andrew’s friendly smile. “Good morning, Mr. Noble. What are you doing here?”
Andrew shrugged his broad shoulders. “I come in at this time most Sundays to do the accounting, since the shop isn’t open.”
“Oh?” Now that the danger of Basil appearing while she was in the middle of a romantic crisis had passed, Elaine let her shoulders drop. She wandered toward the desk, glancing at the books she knew so well on the crowded shelves. “You do the accounting for Mr. Wall?”
“I have as of late,” Andrew answered, taking a seat behind the desk. “He’s had other things on his mind.”
Elaine felt heat rise to her face in spite of herself. Was Basil preoccupied with her? Had he given Andrew responsibility so that he could assist with her problems? Because he loved her.
Another shiver passed through her at the thought. She was out of her depth and she knew it. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the sudden realization that her closest friend loved her with a man’s strength. She paused in the middle of the shop, chewing her lip and glancing around at the books.
“Is there something I could do for you, Miss Bond?” Andrew asked as he laid out a ledger and reached for a pen in the cup sitting on the edge of the desk.
“No,” Elaine said with as much cheer as she could pretend. “I think I’ll just read.”
That seemed like the best way to solve her current dilemma. Surely, in a shop filled with books, there had to be something that would instruct her on what to do when friendship deepened to something else entirely.
She drew in a steadying breath and squared her shoulders, marching to the philosophy section. But after half an hour of leafing through pages of Aristotle, Bentham, and Kant, all she had was a slight headache. With a sigh, she abandoned the philosophy section to scan through books of poetry in the corner of the shop she’d had Basil outfit with a sofa, chairs, and side tables covered with Indian shawls. But while Lord Byron and William Shakespeare had many beautiful words about love, they only served to enhance the tumult in her body and soul rather than giving her answers about what to do with those feelings.
The morning sun shone merrily through the shop’s front windows and a few people walked past the front of the bookshop on their way to church as the morning wore toward afternoon. She hadn’t felt the need to attend for herself for over a year, not considering the distinct lack of Christian charity with which the people of Brynthwaite had treated her. Though that only added to t
heir frustration with her non-conformity. Lack of conformity was seen as egregiously immoral in the eyes of Brynthwaite, and the rest of England, but Elaine didn’t care. What she did care about was where she might find the answers to her burning questions. That and where Basil could be. She hadn’t seen so much of a glimpse of him all day. It wasn’t like him to keep himself hidden from—
She gasped and bounded up from where she’d been lounging on the sofa, perusing a copy of The Devils, by Dostoyevsky. Hidden. Hidden questions and hidden books. She’d spent her morning looking for the answers to the wrong questions. Friendship and philosophy wasn’t her problem, feelings were. Feelings she didn’t know anything about. Sensual feelings. Special, secret books were needed for special, secret feelings. It all came clear to her. The answers to her questions must be in the books that Basil had taken away from her while he was unpacking them two weeks ago. Scandalous books.
Elaine tip-toed over to the counter, where Andrew had moved to finish up his work, and schooled her expression to innocence as she asked, “Do you know where Mr. Wall is keeping the naughty books?”
Rather than jumping to help, Andrew chuckled and crossed his arms. “I’m under strict orders not to tell you where they are.”
Elaine snapped straight in surprise, convinced by Andrew’s reaction that she was right. “Did Mr. Wall put you up to that?”
“Of course, he did.” Andrew’s smile grew.
For a half second, Elaine felt as though all were right with the world again. Even though he wasn’t there, Basil was acting as himself again, and she had exactly the reaction she would have expected to his shenanigans. All of which restored her thinking to just the kind of cunning she would need to skirt her way around Basil’s ridiculous restrictions on her reading material.
“Very well then, Mr. Noble. If I can’t discover the information I’m looking for in a book, I shall ask you,” she said.
“Me, Miss Bond?” In spite of the darkness of his skin, Andrew blushed. He tugged at his collar. “What information could you possibly want from me instead of one of those books?”
“I want to know about love, Mr. Noble,” Elaine insisted. “Have you ever been in love?”
“Um….” The reddish stain on Andrew’s cheeks seemed to spread to his neck. “I’m not really the one to ask about those things.”
“Then tell me where Mr. Wall is hiding those books,” she said as firmly as she could.
“I can’t, Miss Bond.”
“If you can’t, then answer my question. Have you ever been in love?”
Andrew gulped. “Yes, I have,” he said.
“And what did it feel like?” Elaine pressed on. “Were you friends with the woman first? How did you know when friendship changed to love? Did you kiss her? Did you want to do more?”
Andrew blinked and took a step back at her barrage of questions. If Elaine had pulled a knife on him, he couldn’t have looked more alarmed. He held up his hands. “I’m really not the person to give you answers to these questions, Miss Bond. Perhaps…perhaps you have a woman friend who would have more appropriate answers than anything I could give?”
A rush of inspiration hit Elaine. “Yes, in fact, I do. Rose.” She broke into a wide smile. “Thank you, Mr. Noble. I shall seek out Rose Newsome right away.”
Without hesitating, Elaine whirled around and shot through the bookshop and out into the street with renewed excitement. Rose would have answers for her, both as a friend and as a woman who had once entertained men scandalously as a way to make a living. No one in Brynthwaite but Elaine and Rose’s husband knew about her past, but that didn’t mean Elaine couldn’t broach the subject if the two of them were in private.
“Rose!” she announced herself with a triumphant cry as she let herself into the modest house where her friend and Dr. Newsome lived. “I need to know all about love.”
“Ssh!” Rose hushed her from the parlor at the back of the house as Elaine marched through the more formal front parlor. “I’ve just about gotten Alberta to sleep.”
“Oh,” Elaine whispered, tip-toeing the last few steps into the parlor where Rose sat with Alberta in her arms. “I’m terribly sorry. It’s just that the most exciting thing has happened, and I’m trying to make sense of it all.”
“Exciting?” Rose blinked up at her as Alberta squirmed and fussed in her arms.
Elaine rushed to the sofa, sitting by Rose’s side. “Mr. Wall kissed me yesterday.”
Rose froze mid-rock. She gaped at Elaine, then burst into a smile. “That’s wonderful,” she said, resuming her attempts to comfort Alberta. “It’s about time.”
“What do you mean?” Elaine asked, encouraged that the conversation was already heading in the direction she’d intended to steer it.
“The man’s been besotted with you for ages,” Rose said. She fixed Elaine with a knowing stare. “I know you haven’t been ignorant of the fact.”
Elaine flopped against the back of the sofa. “I suppose to one degree I have known.” She picked at the flowing fabric of her skirt. “But then he kissed me and….” She glanced guiltily to her friend. “I think…I think I might…that is to say, I’m not entirely sure that I do see him as just a friend after all.”
Rose laughed. “And the heavens all rejoiced,” she said. “We never thought we’d see this day.”
“What day?” Elaine crossed her arms, feeling distinctly as though she were being made fun of.
“The day you realized that you’re as in love with Basil Wall as he is with you.”
Elaine caught her breath, and her heart seemed to skip a beat. “Am I?” she said, her gaze losing focus. “I’ve been thinking I might be, but how is one to know the difference between the devotion of a friend and the throes of love?” She glanced to Rose. “I spent all morning looking through every book I could think of for the answer, and I didn’t find a thing.”
Rose continued to chuckle with delight, which didn’t calm the fussing Alberta at all. “Trust me. You love him.”
“I’ve always loved him as a friend, but—”
“When he kissed you, where did you feel it?”
Elaine’s whole body flushed with heat at the memory of how the kiss had stirred things in her in places she most certainly wasn’t used to talking about.
“Exactly,” Rose said as though she’d answered aloud. “In all honestly, there have been times when the rest of us have been driven to distraction just by being in proximity to the two of you.”
“Now you’re just making fun of me,” Elaine pouted. “And I came to you for help.”
If she had any sympathy at all, Rose wasn’t showing it. She continued to giggle as though she had just been told the most amusing story. “I’m sorry, dear. But we’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”
“Then have you been storing up advice to give me in my time of need?”
“What advice could you possibly need from me?” Rose asked.
“What to do,” Elaine pleaded with sudden urgency, leaning toward her friend. “What do I say to him now? How should I behave around him? What am I supposed to do if he tries to kiss me again?”
“Kiss him back,” Rose answered as though it were obvious.
“Just like that?” Elaine’s eyes went wide.
“Of course. Although I would be discreet about it.”
“And what should I do if he wants more than a kiss?”
“Don’t tell Mrs. Crimpley I said this,” Rose grinned, “but do whatever you want to do.”
“I want….” Elaine began, but no words followed. She stared at the fire snapping cheerfully in the hearth at the other end of the room. She wanted to feel Basil’s arms around her again, that much was certain. She wanted to taste the ardor of his kiss a second time to see if it was as delightful as the first. And she wanted other things, things she couldn’t quite name or describe. That was the information she was missing, the things she was certain everyone was hiding from her.
But no, they weren’t hidi
ng it from her. Everyone was pushing her toward it.
“Oh,” she said in a frustrated huff. “It simply isn’t fair that I suddenly find myself wanting to do the very thing that everyone has been attempting to force me to do for so long now.”
Rose burst into another peel of laughter. “Some of us do have your best interests at heart.”
Elaine sent her a pointed sideways look.
“And I’m more than certain that Mr. Wall will propose the very next time he sees you,” Rose went on. “Then the two of you can marry and spend every second of every day making the beast with two backs, for all anyone will care.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Elaine asked, eyes narrowed. “The beast with two backs?”
Rose raised her eyebrows, her mouth hanging open. “You can’t possibly tell me you don’t know. At your age?”
“No one will let me know.” She crossed her arms again, trying not to look and feel like a pouting child, and failing.
Rose burst into another round of giggles. “All right, I’ll tell you. But I won’t be held responsible for anything that you do with the information.”
“Of course not,” Elaine said, sitting straighter. She folded her hands in her lap and assumed a studious demeanor. “I’m ready for your instruction.”
Rose laughed and shook her head, leaving Elaine wondering if she would ever be the same after her lesson.
He wasn’t a coward. Really, he wasn’t. The only reason Basil sat at a table in The Fox and the Lion pub reading the latest edition of The Times on a Sunday afternoon instead of doing his job at the bookshop was because Ted Folley was remarkably good company. Not because he was avoiding Elaine. Not because even the thought of seeing her after knowing she’d slept in his bed, washed with his soap, and eaten out of his dishes left him with a cockstand so pronounced that if he stood up the world would know just what was going on between the two of them. Definitely not that.
“You could probably sneak back over there now,” Ted told him with a grin from behind the counter where he stood, cleaning and arranging pint glasses.
