“No, that’s my given name,” he said. “I thought—well—since we’ve already progressed beyond dog attacks and border disputes, perhaps we could simply use first names.” Like most Friends his age, Sydney adopted a fairly flexible approach: he used titles when he had to, usually with shareholders in the railway who needed to be cosseted and cajoled, and he hated it every time. Otherwise, when speaking with a person with whom he wasn’t intimate enough to use a first name, he used their full name. Or, as in this case, he could presume a little and skip right to using given names.
Besides, it was true that he didn’t want to use Mrs. or Miss or—heaven forbid—Lady, with this woman. Every time he used a title it felt like a lie, a denial of a belief he held close to his heart. Perhaps being at Pelham Hall made him want to fight tooth and nail against hierarchy. Perhaps he sensed that he was forging something like a friendship with her and didn’t want to start off with the taste of a title in his mouth.
“I see,” she said lightly. “You wait until you very nearly have me on a mountaintop to tell me that you refuse to call me by my proper name. How shocking.” A smile lurked behind the edges of her words, as if she were trying and failing to suppress a smile.
“It was part of my dastardly plan. Also I’m a Friend—a Quaker—and I don’t use titles if I can help it.”
“Well, my name is Amelia.” They had reached a clearing and she sat on a fallen tree. “I haven’t so much as a husk of bread with me today. I all but fled my house.”
“Oh, I see. You wait until you have me on a mountaintop to deliver the killing blow.” He was rewarded for this, his second attempt at humor in as many years, by hearing her huff of laughter. He knelt beside her. “No matter. I have bread and cheese and ale enough for us both.”
She regarded him for a moment and he felt the back of his neck heat in awareness. “Sydney, you aren’t surveying anything at the moment. I meant to ask you about that last time. You don’t have tools.”
This, Sydney knew, was where he ought to tell the truth, explain that he wasn’t in Derbyshire on surveying business at all. “I already did that part of the job,” he said instead. “Why did you flee your house this afternoon?” he asked in an attempt to change the topic. “It must have been dire for you not to even pause for cake.”
“It’s too tedious to go into. If I complain about having received a parcel of gowns I don’t want or need, and resenting the prospect of attending parties with the great and good of the land, I’ll sound perfectly spoiled, which is neither more nor less than the truth.”
Sydney would certainly consider superfluous gowns and costly entertainments to be just the sort of indulgence he might expect from a person in Amelia’s station in life. But he also saw the tightness around her eyes when she spoke of these gowns and parties. “On the contrary,” he said. “I’ve never wanted to attend a social gathering in my life and would heartily resent being obligated to do so. Besides,” he said, not knowing whether this would be going too far, “you’ve said that you have a hard time with people.” He did not know what that meant or what it entailed, but supposed he did not need to. “In that case, gowns and invitations are precisely designed to discompose one’s mind.”
“Yes,” she said, looking so grateful that Sydney wanted to bask in her approval. “That’s exactly it.” She chafed her arm with the palm of one hand, then abruptly stopped and tucked her hands behind her back. “The fact is that I have too many friends and connections, and I care too much about what they think to properly divorce myself from expectations.”
She seemed nervy and distressed, and Sydney did not know what to do. He remembered how she had reacted when he had been in low spirits. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re making a terribly poor fist of being a recluse.” He hoped to God that his clumsy attempt at humor carried itself off. “Extremely low quality reclusivity,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Friends, spoken of in the plural, no less.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye for any sign his joke had misfired. To his immense relief, she smiled.
“You have no idea. I have a mother, two sisters, two half brothers, my brothers’ spouses, and a couple of other people I acquired without even the excuse of family ties.”
There was not, he noticed, a husband on that long list. “I fear that you ought to have done some cursory research into the bare minimum requirements of being a recluse before attempting such a thing.”
She waved this away. “Even if I lived in the Outer Hebrides or the surface of the moon, my mother and friends would figure out a way to send me letters. Which, I realize, is something I ought to be grateful for. And I am! But one wants to make one’s friends happy, and one doesn’t know how to go about doing it. Meanwhile they want to make you happy, and they manifestly don’t know how to do so. The result is that everyone dances around one another pretending to be quite satisfied with everyone else and secretly wanting to tear one’s hair out.”
“I suppose actually talking about one’s needs with one’s friends is out of the question.”
“Of course it is,” she said in tones of exaggerated outrage. “Don’t be absurd. Sometimes the problem is that you don’t even quite know what you need yourself.”
“And sometimes the problem is that one’s friends give one ulcers from the worry,” Sydney added, thinking of Lex.
“Most definitely,” she said.
They sat for some time in the shade, chatting in this idle and inconsequential manner. Sydney thought he should not be nearly as entertained as he was. They were only interrupted when a gust of wind whipped through the clearing, blowing Amelia’s shawl off her shoulders.
“Oh no!” she cried, leaping to her feet and running after it. He was behind her in an instant, watching the wisp of fabric flutter through the air before landing on a branch about five yards from the ground. “Rats,” she said. “I liked that shawl.”
He laid down his satchel and took off his coat. “Stand back in case any branches fall.”
“That’s not necessary, Mr.—Sydney.”
“It’s no trouble.” At some point he was going to think long and hard about why he was performing acts of gallantry for this woman. But for now, he swung himself onto the lowest branch, thanked the Creator that it was solid enough to hold his substantial weight, and then began to climb. An advantage to height was that he didn’t have far to go before he was within reach of the shawl. It was a flimsy, silky thing; worldly nonsense, he told himself. Still, he took his time unpicking it from the branch, trying not to let it snag. It smelled of rosewater. When he got it loose, he leaned against the trunk of the tree and folded it into a neat triangle, then tossed it down to her.
“Thank you,” she called.
When he landed on the ground, he brushed some leaves and moss off his sleeves.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said, indicating his shoulders. “No, not there. Hold still.” She deftly flicked the debris from his shirt. There was nothing coy or sensual about her touch—she was only sparing his shirt damage, just as he had spared her shawl. Her hands didn’t linger, she didn’t stand too near, and still his heart raced at her touch. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and saw that she was biting her lip in concentration. He drew in a sharp breath at the surge of ill-timed desire that raced through him.
“There you go,” she said, stepping back.
“Thank you.” His voice sounded strange. “Now I believe I promised you bread and cheese.”
“And ale,” she said. “Watching you perform feats of strength is thirsty work.” She opened her eyes wide for the merest instant, as if realizing that she had made an arguably personal remark and thinking better of it. But just as soon, her expression returned to its usual steadiness.
He opened his satchel and handed her the flask, then placed the bread and cheese on a flat part of the log. “Thank you,” she said, handing the flask back as she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. The wind picked up again and she clutche
d at her shawl.
“Come here,” he said. “The way you have that thing, it’s a wonder it hasn’t blown away yet.”
“This is my fourth shawl this year,” she admitted. “I daresay the previous three are being used to line songbird nests.”
Later on he would be sure to reflect on how wasteful that was, just as he would reflect on how the levity of her manner was surely a sign of poor character, a sign of precisely the sort of carelessness and irresponsibility he expected from people of her class. For now, he wrapped the shawl around her shoulders, careful not to touch her. “Arms up and turn around,” he said. He knotted the tails of the shawl at the small of her back, the way his mother had always done. “There. That’ll stay put.”
“Thank you,” she said, turning back around to face him. They were very close now, but she made no move to step away. Instead she looked at his lips, then back up to his eyes, then to his lips again.
His thoughts stuttered to a halt. There was no mistaking what she had done and what it meant. She was letting him see this, letting him know that she was—attracted? Interested in something more? She usually kept her expression so neutral, so composed, but she was choosing to let him see this. He could turn away, pretend none of this was happening. That would be safe. That was what he ought to do.
Instead he hitched an eyebrow. A corner of her mouth quirked up in acknowledgment.
He stood there a moment, not moving, neither touching her nor stepping away, but letting himself sit with the knowledge that he could ask to press his lips to that asymmetrical smile, that he could maybe rest his hand on the nip of her waist. Sydney really hadn’t expected to get seduced in a woodland clearing this afternoon. Not that he was opposed on principle, not to the location or the act. But neither was he looking for an anonymous tumble in the grass. “Amelia,” he said, pitching his voice low. “I think I’d better tell you about steam engines.”
She let out that gurgle of laughter that made him think of bells and running streams and everything bright and clean in the world. “Sydney,” she said, leaning in fractionally, “it would be my pleasure.”
Amelia was fairly certain that nothing could be less relevant than physical attraction. The world was filled with people for whom she had vague longings to drag into dimly lit passageways and do regrettable things with and upon. But as she had never met someone for whom she was willing to endure the sad tedium of afterwards, her amorous experiments had not yet progressed beyond kissing. She had kissed Richard Davenheim at the Grantham Ball and Justine Broissard everywhere and every time she had an opportunity for the duration of an entire season. She had found both Mr. Davenheim and Miss Broissard pleasant to look at and enjoyable to talk to; miracle of miracles, they seemed to return the compliment; so she had kissed them. Those kisses had been pleasant, and she could have imagined things progressing. But it had never seemed worth the bother.
Kissing Sydney seemed like it would be very much worth any bother she could name. To start, there was his beard. He had plainly not shaved at any point since she had first encountered him, and now his jaw was covered in stubble. Then there was his accent. It was, she supposed, a perfectly straightforward northern accent, but his voice was so low and rumbly that it sent shivers down her spine. Those qualities she could have disregarded, perhaps. What she could not disregard was the way his cheeks reddened at the slightest provocation. He didn’t even seem aware he was doing it. She caught herself trying to coax a blush out of him. His eyebrows might be grim slashes across his forehead; his mouth might set itself into a grim and stern line; but when he blushed he seemed . . . sweet.
For his part, he did not seem averse to kissing her. She saw the way he looked at her mouth, the way he leaned close before startling himself back to a safe distance.
Some would argue that Amelia had been raised according to no principles whatsoever, given the fact that she was even considering kissing strange men. But the truth was that Amelia’s mother had tried to balance the pragmatic need for maidenly innocence with the utter demystification of everything to do with sex. The result was that Amelia was not under the impression that going to bed with a lover was either blissful or depraved. It was merely a thing that most people did, for varying reasons and with varying results.
As Sydney crouched in the grass, using sticks to show her the path of a railway, Amelia watched the fabric of his trousers strain across his thighs, watched the muscles of his arms and shoulders move under the thin linen of his shirt.
She was very aware of wanting to touch him. But she also had the sense that he was a safe person to be around. Maybe it was that he had tied her shawl around her without so much as touching her, maybe it was that he had acted like her dog’s attack was a matter of course.
Now he added a few stones to the railway map he was laying out before her. “This here, Amelia, is a bog—a pit that leads straight to hell—” He looked up at her with wide brown eyes. “I beg your pardon.”
“I’ve heard worse,” she assured him. “In any event, pits that lead straight to hell don’t sound like solid foundations for pylons or what have you.”
“Exactly,” he said, pointing triumphantly at her with a stick. When he talked about railways and engines and bottomless bogs, his expression transformed from stern dismay or reluctant amusement to radiant delight. “The problem is that routing the railway around the bog increases the cost by nearly twenty percent. And they won’t hire me on as head of engineering without some way of getting over that bog.”
Sydney looked up and scrubbed his hands across his jaw. Something about his beard made his lips look especially soft. She wanted to run her thumb across them, an urge she was quite certain she had never felt before. “And you really want that post, do you?”
“I do.” His voice was gravelly and low. “I’ve worked on other railway projects but this would be mine. It would be a chance to make sure things got done right.” He passed a hand over his jaw. “The railway is going to be built one way or another, you see? But it might be a small, inconsequential operation. Or it could change everything.” He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling, his hands moving animatedly as he spoke. “Imagine how different life would be if we could move things—and people!—around cheaply and safely. People could purchase goods for fair prices, or could seek work and experiences that suits them. People could see one another.” He swallowed, and she could see his throat work above the collar of his hastily tied neck cloth. “I apologize for boring you.”
“You’re not boring me,” she said, and her voice came out higher and more breathless than she had intended. “Far from it.” She cleared her throat. Amelia was a lot of things, but bashful wasn’t one of them. “Are you married, Sydney? Or promised to anyone?”
He looked at her for a long moment, and she knew he understood what she really was asking. “No, I’m free. And you, Amelia?”
“Decidedly unattached.” She crossed her legs at the ankle and saw his gaze flicker to the hem of her skirt. Good. “Very well, then.”
“But nor am I looking for a dalliance.” He spoke softly, with the hint of a rueful smile, and Amelia was left uncertain about whether she had been rejected or asked to make her intentions clear.
Maybe it hadn’t been either. Maybe he had just spoken the truth, without hidden layers of nuance or misdirection. That possibility was one of the reasons he was a relief to be around.
He went back to telling her about railways, and she watched his big hands and listened to his rumbling northern voice, and reveled in the feeling of having an entire afternoon of conversation without feeling like she needed to claw her way out of her own skin.
Chapter Four
Driven by sheer boredom and restlessness, Sydney began exploring Pelham Hall, seeing how deep the damage ran. At first it was just prodding a bruise, deliberately stirring up grief and regret. But then he started to see the building not as a ruin but as a thing to be fixed. He was increasingly certain that the roof was solid, the structure sound. He hau
led out debris, found tools, bought lumber and nails, and set about repairing a handful of rooms. The east wing would need to be taken down, but the west wing could be preserved. He told himself he did not care about the structure of Pelham Hall except insofar as he could not resist poking about at the inner workings of things, seeing how they were broken and how they might be made whole again. It didn’t matter: all he knew was that he was no good at sitting idle, and pulling down rotten woodwork and measuring window openings kept his mind and his body busy. He gave up his room at the inn, instead bedding down before a smoking fire.
During a trip up the rickety attic steps, his arms laden with mousetraps, his foot plunged through a rotten floorboard, and he cursed himself for not having tested the stairs. This was the sort of thing he had used to scold Andrew for doing: testing staircases by climbing them, figuring out whether a bog was solid or quicksand by means of attempting to walk across it. Andrew had always taken the risks, charmed the investors, and figured how to explain their plans and inventions in a way that made people care. Sydney had been the voice of reason and caution, the one who made sure every measurement was correct to the last decimal point and that the survey had been checked and rechecked to a certainty. Maybe after years of trying and failing to embody both halves of the partnership, something of Andrew’s influence had finally penetrated Sydney’s skull. Naturally it would result in his boot being stuck in the attic steps and not, say, actually becoming likable.
He dropped the mousetraps, listening to them clatter down the steps. Then, extricating his boot, he gingerly climbed the rest of the way up and surveyed the attic. At the top of the steps he took out his handkerchief and wiped the dust off a small, circular window that was placed in such a way as to throw light on the attic. It was badly situated, Sydney could not help but notice; given his druthers, he would put in a skylight and a strategically placed mirror. There was no reason on earth why he couldn’t hire a carpenter and a glazier and do precisely that. He could kit the whole place out in logically arranged windows and sensible lighting arrangements.
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