“Mother,” Lottie said, her cheeks hot. “Don’t be crass.”
“The truth is never crass.” She took a healthy swallow of her wine.
Mrs. Heald smiled graciously. “I’m rather fond of Sir Ian as well. I do love to hear of his various misdeeds.”
“Don’t be silly, Mother. You know we’ve never heard a whisper of Ian doing wrong.” Henrietta smiled at her brother. “Every story that comes to us proves he’s of the highest caliber.”
It was more than obvious that she adored him. As well she should. He was moving heaven and earth to ensure her life stayed as smooth as it ought to be. It wasn’t only the expense that Ian was going to in order to line up a presentable Season at the last minute. His involvement and nearness itself was remarkable.
Lottie had no idea what that must be like, to have someone support her in every possible way. She found herself rather envious of the black-haired, blue-eyed woman. With her unthreatening prettiness, Ian’s money and the support of Victoria’s mother, she’d want for little when it came to Society’s approval. Henrietta wouldn’t be forced into fancy verbal tricks to hide her family’s dirty secret in plain sight.
Lottie drifted toward the window, leaving her mother chattering with Mrs. Hayworth and Henrietta. She twisted her fingers in the curtains. On the street outside a few carriages clattered by in the darkening twilight, but the hand-painted wallpaper distracted Lottie. Lady Vale had spent hours locked in this room only the month before last, turning the striped walls into subtle magic with hand-painted birds.
She knew Ian was behind her before he spoke. The hairs along the back of her neck tingled. “Your sister will do well.”
“I’d hoped as much.”
He didn’t stand too close. He couldn’t. There were too many rules between them, as well as his odd silences. She’d caught him looking at her in the past two weeks whenever he thought she wouldn’t notice.
She thought he’d want to talk about the things that had happened in the intimate spaces between them. Her heart stuttered as she anticipated.
“I had a note from Patricia. At least I assume it was her.”
Part of her wanted to accept the reprieve. “Demanding money?”
“Indeed.” He didn’t touch her. The absence hurt more than she’d expected. “I sent her a fraction of what she’d asked for. Enough to keep her dangling on in hope of more.”
“Yet not enough that she’d be satiated,” she said, filling in the blanks. “No hope of tracking where it went?”
“Unfortunately, no. I paid a couple of Fletcher’s men to watch the inn where she instructed it be left. An urchin picked up the packet, then the men lost him in Seven Dials.”
She nodded. “Not Fletcher’s territory. His men would be more easily lost.”
Behind her, fabric shifted with Ian’s impatience. “Anything from Finna?”
“Patricia hasn’t been back, of course. But she remembered that Patricia had been ill lately. It might be what’s prompted her to such actions.” She didn’t want to ask. The question curled and coiled in her throat before slithering out like a snake. “Are you upset with me?”
He jerked to look at her, the change of subject obviously startling him. “Why would I be upset?”
She shrugged, feeling like something small and mean. Jealous, maybe. Of Henrietta and every other girl who had it so easy. She hadn’t made half the mistake Henrietta had, but because Lottie’s mother was notorious, she bore twice the weight. “What I said about never intending to have children. It’s unnatural.”
“It’s your choice. Therefore it can’t possibly be unnatural.” His voice looped around her like the touch she craved. “I won’t hear you say such things again.”
“Do you believe me, though? That I can’t ever risk having children?” Her sweaty palm clenched on the curtain, but the brocade would be fine. “Do you understand?”
“Have you been to doctors? Investigated the science behind it?”
“They’re as lost as I am.” She shrugged and thought she might shatter for the tiny gesture. “But there’s Mother, and her mother before her. She filled her skirts with rocks and walked into a pond two miles from the manor house. Mama had a sister, as well. She married well but ran away with a traveling busker.”
For a long moment, the silence around them was punctuated only by her mother’s beautiful laughter. Then he touched her, lightly and still properly. His fingers smoothed around the curve of her upper arm, above her elbow. She felt it anyway—the meaning with which he imbued every centimeter of quiet touch. “I understand.”
Ian understood. He did. Such a history was difficult to overcome, and he was no doctor. He was no god with perfect comprehension to be able to gainsay men of learning.
That also meant as a mortal man he had no words for the uncomfortable, niggling feeling that slipped and slid through his emotions as Lady Vale called them into dinner. Lottie proceeded on his arm. He felt her there, beyond the fingers that rested in the crook of his elbow. The goodness that lay under her flash and sparkle as she turned her head back to chat with Henrietta.
How could he be the only one who saw her underneath the gilt? How was it that no one else seemed to appreciate her loving core and shining happiness?
That she wouldn’t raise children seemed all the more a shame. Lottie understood what it meant to keep small souls safe. After all, she did it for her mother. She would also know how to help any children grow into their best selves and have fun while they did it.
It made Ian sad—actually, truly sad in a way no other word would do, to realize that this meant there would be no Lottie in his future either.
His whole world and his whole life had been about hauling his family out of the lower ranks of the landed gentry and pulling them upward. He had never thought he harbored delusions about rising toward the upper ranks, but somehow that wasn’t the same thing as ending the family line. There were no convenient cousins, no younger brothers. Ian was it. If he didn’t have children, wouldn’t his father’s work be for naught? All his own work?
He’d never been a man who worked for the joy of it. Look at the past few weeks. When given the opportunity to throw it over for focus on family and his sister’s problems, he’d done so immediately. His managers were competent, and they would keep the tin mines going forward, but that wasn’t the same thing as all the energy he’d poured into them over the last ten years.
He’d always known he’d have a small but close family in the home where he’d grown up, and his sister’s would probably be in the same shire.
If he didn’t have that life, what was he left?
The table they were seated at was small in order to match their intimate party. Yet the center had inexplicably been set with large vases filled with feathers and twisted greenery so that Ian couldn’t see across to his mother or Lady Vale. He and Lottie had been seated together and Henrietta at her far side as well.
As the first course was served, Lottie kept her gaze forward. White tendons traced down her neck, she was holding herself so tight.
She flinched when Henrietta leaned toward them. “Thank you for having me, Miss Vale.”
Lottie’s prettiest smile made an instant appearance. “Think nothing of it, Miss Heald. My mother is always pleased to have such congenial company. She hasn’t much opportunity for indulging.”
Etta poked at her fish. Ian knew she had never been particularly fond of the course, but she wouldn’t ever be so rude as to say it. “I’ve heard that Lady Vale once used to be quite the entertainer.”
“Indeed.” Lottie put down her fork and leaned back in her chair, a glass of white wine cradled in one hand. “She was. I cannot count how many parties and events I watched from the second floor landing as a young girl. My nurse was forever despairing of keeping me contained.”
“I can picture that.” Ian looked at Lottie, imagining a much smaller version of her face pressed between the railing slats. She’d have had such a pout. “I bet you’d ha
ve made it all the way downstairs.”
“I did. On many occasions.” Though she was looking through the table decorations and likely unable to see through them, she seemed to be smiling at her mother. “Mama always let me have a few minutes. When I was particularly small, she’d carry me about on her hip for a while before giving me a plate of biscuits and trifles and sending me off.”
“How wonderfully indulgent of her,” Etta agreed.
As if on time, a peal of laughter echoed from around the decorations, followed immediately by the slightly breathier chuckle of Ian and Etta’s mother. Lottie leaned toward Ian, close enough that he could smell roses and sugar, the layered sweetness that was Lottie. Concern was written between her brows in a decided wrinkle.
“They’re fine,” he said in as quiet a voice as he could manage.
Etta must have heard him anyway. “Indeed they are. I haven’t heard Mother laugh quite that way in years.”
“Mama has a way about her,” Lottie said dryly. She took a long sip of the white wine, but then set it down firmly. “She always has. In the coming weeks, it will come in quite handy for you, Miss Heald.”
“Will your mother be attending events with us?”
“We only let her out for the most special occasions. And you most certainly count.” She looked at Ian. He was missing something she wished him to know or hear or say.
He didn’t understand. She was too complicated. Maybe too complicated and delicately wrought for him to ever understand.
Didn’t matter. He wanted her, wanted to know her. Like having a lightning bug caught in his hands, he wanted to peek in and see that spark. Then he’d have to let her go again, or risk extinguishing that shine.
If he were really honest with himself, he’d know that he should stay away from her. It would be kinder, both to her and to himself. Otherwise he risked falling entirely in love with her.
His fork clattered to his plate somewhere in the middle of the beef course, sending a delicate spray of sauce across the wide porcelain edge.
Lottie lifted an eyebrow. “Are you all right?”
He wasn’t. He was stunned. Poleaxed. A great doddering idiot who wanted to simply stare down at his meal in stupefaction. He wouldn’t have thought he was quite the man to indulge in introspection in the first place, much less while stabbing beef with a fork.
Yet here he was.
“I’m well.” He nodded slowly.
She was so lovely. The mischievous twinkle of her green eyes and the graceful arch of her cheekbones. Her mouth was wide, with a common curve that seemed always pleasant. But it was more than the accumulation of her features. Her devotion to her mother and her school shone over her. She had constant intention to see the best in the world. She might force herself into smiling so often that it hurt, but that came from the desire to be a better person in a better place. She was crass and reckless, and underneath all that she was good.
Even her intention to never have children came from soul-deep sweetness. From not wanting to inflict what she’d been through on anyone else. How could anyone fault her for that?
Yet how could anyone fault him for running away before it was too late? If he were only halfway in love with her, he could still escape and save himself difficulty. It wasn’t much to want both love and his dreams of a family.
“Are you sure?” Her head tilted toward him. Her lush mouth drew into something tighter. He wanted to touch her lips and feel the keen edge of her teeth, the sharpness inside her vulnerability.
He picked up the heavy silver fork again, and the cool metal gave him something solid to hold. “I am well, I promise.” He made himself smile. “If I weren’t, would you soothe my brow with a lavender cloth?”
She snorted, a tiny and indelicate laugh that she smothered behind her fingertips. Her gaze darted over to Etta, who’d bent far to her side to speak to their mother. Across the table, Lottie’s own mother might as well have been in the wilds of South America.
Lottie leaned back toward him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his. She looked at the table between them, but he knew it was from no sense of modesty. Teasing, playing. Turning him inside out. Because she knew that if she added the strength of her eyes to the words she was about to say, he’d be completely undone.
“No,” she said in a soft coo laced with humor and sexuality. “But if you’re unwell, I wouldn’t tell you about how I plan to leave the back door unlocked. Or how any certain person who knew how to get to my bedroom would find that door unlocked as well. Then that certain person might find me in bed after the midnight hour. Unclothed.”
His body responded before his mind did. He clinched tight. His hand fisted around the fork handle. Not cool anymore, the metal blazed hot with his own temperature.
Then his mind caught up, hearing the implication in her words and, more than that, becoming aware of how desperately he hungered for her.
He was damned. Gleefully so.
Chapter Eighteen
Lottie knew this had to be one of the most foolish things she’d ever done. Not only to issue such a scandalous invitation, but to do so at the dinner table with her mother? With his mother as well?
The final moments of dinner could not come quickly enough. Lottie rolled and reveled in the excitement that shortened her breathing and made her palms tingle. Gooseflesh chased up her forearms. Her toes curled inside her slippers every time Ian looked at her. She knew the weight and touch and promise of his gaze on her skin. She anticipated every one. Breathed deeper and let her pulse surge. How wonderful this all felt.
No wonder people tried to keep young women under wraps. Having once learned how good Ian could make her feel, Lottie didn’t want to give it up. She wanted more of him. Everything she could grab with grasping, greedy hands.
Maybe then she wouldn’t think about the tinge of pity she’d seen in his eyes earlier.
Mama stood, popping up over the decorations like a jack-in-the-box. She clapped her hands together. Animation and color washed through her cheeks. “We’ll do without separation, don’t you think, Sir Ian? All of us to continue to the parlor? I’ll permit you to have an entire bottle of port if you like, so long as you promise not to abandon us.”
Ian inclined his head. From the side, his profile was boldly hawkish, with a great and fierce nose. She wanted his shelter. “I shouldn’t like to sit by myself anyhow, Lady Vale.”
“Of course not.” Then she gave Lottie one of those little wink and nods she was particularly good at before shifting to include Henrietta as well. “Come along, everyone. We’ve revelry to indulge in.”
Mrs. Heald giggled and tittered as she and Mama left the room. Henrietta followed along directly behind them.
Lottie...lingered. There was no two ways about it. She lingered far enough behind that she could feel like she was alone with Ian. Because she rather liked being alone with him, though she carefully laced her fingers together before her waist and didn’t risk touching him.
“You shouldn’t be so bold.”
A sharp spike of fear made her lungs clench. His chin up, his expression was kept grave...but for the tiny quirk of a smile that pulled in the corner of his mouth.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I might. I should, rather.” A sudden wash of bafflement clouded his features. “I really should. There’re rules to the world, and they’re there for a reason.”
“Sometimes it seems as if those reasons are arbitrary.” Her steps were muffled on the soft carpet runner that ran down the middle of the wide hallway, so there was no auditory proof when she slowed. “And then sometimes as if they’re meant only as a means of controlling women at large.”
His hand came to rest at the small of her back. She didn’t feel like she was being herded. More like he hadn’t been able to resist touching her a moment longer. She held down her smile by pure force of will.
His fingers traced a simple pattern over her dress. “There’s only one method of control that should be attempted
on a woman like you. I’m not even claiming that it would work. Only that it should be great fun in the process.”
They were rapidly coming up to the open door of the parlor. From inside she heard pealing giggles. The ladies were having quite the good time.
Lottie held Ian’s strong wrist. He was all cruel bones and firm tendons. Her thumb slipped under the cuff of his shirt and found crisp hair. She rubbed. “You can’t say such things and not tell me.”
“I shouldn’t. You’ll only take it as a challenge.” He backed her against the wall. They were getting too reckless, a little too wild.
She curled her hands in the lapels of his evening coat. No way was she letting him get away. If this time was what they got, she wanted all of it, every possible experience. “I do love a good challenge.”
He kissed her then, though so lightly she could almost think she’d imagined it. He tasted like dry wine. Tempting enough that she traced her tongue over his top lip, trying to entice him back. How quickly their air mixed and their breathing turned into something raucous and animalistic.
Ian’s voice was rough. “Pleasure. A woman as complicated and amazing and wonderful as you should only be constrained with pleasure. And not the threat of its removal, but as enticement. As promise. Fulfillment, as it were.”
She grinned against his mouth. “You think you’re as good as that?”
He had her caged in, one of his hands flat on the wooden wall next to her head, the other resting at the small of her back. As if he’d sweep her away and they’d begin to dance. Maybe they already were.
“You tell me,” he said, so quiet and low she could have filled in the words herself. Made him the puppet for whatever she wanted to hear. “How did you feel after our night?”
She’d felt sated. Happy inside her own body, as if she’d finally put all her pieces into the right order by taking what she wanted. “You’re that good.”
“There.” He straightened, though he left that one magical hand at the small of her back. “Now, let’s go in before we’re missed.” His next words he must have timed for when they stepped over the threshold of the room, because he waited five steps to say them. At least he had the circumspection to whisper quietly enough that only Lottie heard. “Try not to look like you’re thinking of the ways I made you come.”
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