by Darcy Burke
“Yes. I don’t mind reading books when I know the ending.” He shrugged. “Easter is a well-known ending and yet we continue to re-read the bible.”
They shared a smirk, her eyes sparkling. His heart beat so hard in his chest that he was sure it would be visible even through his shirt, waistcoat and frock coat.
“She’s a bigamist.” Her face was serious again. “That’s her secret. She thinks her husband is dead, but he isn’t. When she marries the man she really loves, she’s not married to him at all.” She pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear.
He watched that curl, and her fingers. After a moment he came to, recognizing that he ought to reply. A moral man ought to condemn such a thing, even in literature. “But she thought he was dead?”
“Yes.” She licked her lips.
He watched, entranced, as she picked up her fork and took a piece of meat to her lips. Her mouth was a perfect bow and she was so dainty. He was staring. He looked down at his food.
“Well. It wasn’t Aurora’s fault then. Not fully.” Why was this book different for Lydia now? “Did she love her first husband?” Though curious about Lydia’s husband, he restrained himself from raising another topic painful to her. He couldn’t ask that, so he was listening to her answers about the books she loved, trying to hear a beat under the main tune, the rhythm of what she meant as opposed to the outward appearance she cultivated.
“No.” Her mouth twisted and wobbled momentarily, so briefly a passing observer would have missed it. “She didn’t love her first husband. She was infatuated. She never should have married the man. He was nasty, but her... Impulses overtook her.”
“Maybe she thought it would work out.” Had Lydia not loved her husband?
“She was a reckless, foolish girl.” Her fingers clenched around her fork and her voice had a hard edge.
“Or was she taken in by a man who used her for his own selfish lust,” he contradicted her gently.
She nodded slowly, like that was unlikely or she had difficulty accepting it.
“Perhaps he coerced her.” He had no idea what they were really discussing. Maybe it was the book, maybe it was Lydia.
She tilted her head as she considered. “You think it wasn’t her fault?”
“I think if someone does what feels honest and correct at the time, to themselves and their heart, that’s enough.” Their gazes tangled.
She raised her eyebrows. “You’re a very odd man.”
“Am I?” His heart sank. Odd was not the adjective any man wished to be described with. Stimulating, maybe. Or charismatic. He’d accept kind, though he’d prefer alluring. “I spend all my time with children. Maybe that’s why I’m odd.”
“What do you like to read?”
From the abrupt change in conversation, he understood that Lydia didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. If that was what they’d been discussing.
“I loved A Pair of Blue Eyes.” The serial had concluded just after he’d moved to Elmswell.
Lydia’s shoulders had hunched, and she shifted in her chair. A chill went through him. He’d made her uncomfortable. Blue eyes. Ah. That was the title of the book, but perhaps he ought to have mentioned The Old Curiosity Shop instead.
“By Thomas Hardy,” he added, as if that would improve things. “I liked Far from the Madding Crowd by him, too.” That sounded desperate, but she seemed to accept his tacit apology for his mistake.
“I haven’t read it.” A sly grin played around her mouth. “But the concept is promising.”
Laughter burst out of him. “You’d like it. It’s romantic.”
“Hmm. I don’t know about romance anymore.”
Something had changed for her and he had to gamble and find out what.
“What was Captain Taylor like? Romantic?” Was that why she’d given up on romance? Had her late husband treated her as well as he ought? Was there any chance of replacing him in her heart?
“He was...” Her voice tapered off. “He was handsome.”
Wonderful. Handsome and a fancy uniform. That explained why she hadn’t married again. “Was he a good husband?”
Her bark of laughter was cynical. “No. Not especially.”
He’d wanted to find a flaw with her dead husband, but now he had, he felt sick. He’d take all her pain, covered by that amusement, into himself if he could. As if her experience with Captain Taylor was merely a dirty chicken house he could clean for her.
“But you loved him?” It was ridiculous to try to bring back her positive opinion of her late husband. It was hostile to his purpose and yet her bitterness was worse.
She nodded, her eyes hooded.
“I’m sorry he died. And I’m sorry he wasn’t a better husband to you in life.”
Desolation swept across her face, gone as soon as he recognized it. “We receive what we’re given, not what we want.” It cleared and was replaced by inquisitiveness. “I imagine being a teacher in a tiny village wasn’t your first choice.”
“I wanted to have my own school,” he confessed.
“And what would your school do differently?” The question had awe in it, as though she’d never before thought of him beyond his life in this village, or his role as teacher.
“If I had a school, it would be outside of any religion,” he started tentatively. Unlike almost every school in the country, as they were nearly all associated with a church. “A school that just catered to children of talent, regardless of their finances.”
She narrowed her eyes with interest. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“A little,” he lied and his cheeks heated.
“Go on.” She made a circular motion with her hand.
“It would teach them to question, think, and make plans. There would be music, dance, and sports to bring them together.” To teach boys to be men who had an appropriate outlet for their emotions. To teach girls to be women who knew their own worth.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I imagine you’d be good at that.”
“It would start early, with practical lessons where all the children helped with the practicalities of life, be it cooking, cleaning, or growing food,” he continued, unable to help himself spilling out all his ambitions. He rarely talked about this dream. The children would come to him with their problems and he, in this fictional world, could solve them. They’d send the most talented on to study at Cambridge.
“I could help,” she said when he’d poured out all his ideas. “I wasn’t the most diligent pupil to my governess. But I used to play the piano forte well.”
“Did you?” The grin that spread across his face was ridiculous. Piano playing didn’t make her any more suitable as his wife. It didn’t sort out the issue of money. His heart leaped. They’d share the little bench, him playing one half of the keys, her the other. Their fingers would touch and sleeves brush as they played the notes close together. Her side would be pressed to his. They would teach children music together, lifting their voices as one.
“But are there enough children in the area to justify it?” Her lashes covered her eyes. “You’d need funding for books and premises.”
His mouth twisted in acknowledgement. “I’d want it to be a public school, open to anyone. It would need to find funding and advertise far and wide to gain a reputation of excellence. Such an undertaking would be expensive, especially to provide scholarships for children unable to pay.” He hadn’t looked into the practical details because of an indistinct fear that his ambition wasn’t worthwhile.
In the distance, bells tolled. Lydia’s gaze flicked to the ceiling. To Annie, upstairs. She sighed deeply and looked conflicted.
“Go back to your daughter,” he told her. “I’ve kept you away from her for too long already.”
It was time this sweet dream ended. The shadow of her late husband was still long. Alfred would not found a school or ask Lydia to marry him. There was no money to allow either. He was deluding himself with these fantasies.
Chapter 8
Lydia had received what she deserved. She was damned.
Annie was worse. Yesterday, Lydia had been so convinced Annie was improving she’d allowed herself to sit downstairs with Mr. Lowe, passing the time of day as though it were a tea party. They’d laughed and shared confidences and stories. She’d felt worth something. Today, that illusion had been smashed, leaving a messy aftermath like a magpie’s raid on chicken eggs. All that potential, all that life, broken and stained with blood.
Lydia paced Annie’s room, unable to decide on the best course of action. One moment she snapped at Elizabeth to desist moving Annie’s legs, as the priority, nay the only thing, was whether Annie would live through the disease at all. The next she would shout that Annie needed her legs and must be moving.
It was irrational, even she could recognize that. It was also inevitable. She was exhausted. Last night she’d repeatedly dipped the cloth in water, wrung it, mopped away the sweat from Annie’s brow, then dipped again. When Annie wasn’t coughing, that was. The coughing was every few seconds, sometimes with blood that made Lydia’s heart freeze. Lydia hadn’t slept, terrified her daughter would be snatched away.
When the knock came at the front door, quiet but audible in the room where only Annie’s rasping breaths altered the silence, she knew she’d been waiting for it. She’d tell him today not to call again. It was bad for him to associate with someone like her.
“I’ll speak to him.” Lydia rose and waved to Elizabeth to stay with Annie.
When she opened the door, his head was tilted to one side and loose strands of hair fell over his forehead. His eyes were soft and kind. Lydia wanted nothing more than to fall into them.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Then a tiny squeak escaped her. No. Not now. Her chest constricted; her eyes stung. She blinked hard, but that only caused tears to leak, then flood from her eyes. She was immobile.
“Go—” She couldn’t complete the sentence. She’d meant to tell him not to visit anymore, but instead she couldn’t say anything.
“Please,” he began.
Spinning around, she left him on the doorstep, shutting the door in his face. But it wouldn’t close. There was something in the way. Quick as a fox, he’d jammed his foot into the gap. He was wrong to visit her. She flattened her back against the door. He pushed it open, managing somehow to catch her as she mis-balanced forward and shut the door behind them.
That was when it happened. When she most needed to be strong and righteous, the tiny thought she’d been keeping at bay slithered into her. As he held her from the side, his chest against her shoulder, she could feel his heat and the vigor and she wanted to wrap herself in it.
She wanted the relief he’d given her, but her base instincts wanted him as a man. She’d lost everything. She was wrong, but this man hadn’t left her. She could drag him down with her, in a blaze of pleasure.
Reaching up to grab his lapels, she turned and crushed her mouth to his. She pressed her eyes closed to deny the inevitable revulsion that would cross his face. Momentarily his lips were hard with surprise, then he was kissing her back, hands coming up to hold the back of her head and tilt her lips to the perfect angle. His tongue was in her mouth before she was ready, caressing the sensitized inner rim of her lips, and she opened for him.
For a very good man, he knew how to kiss very wickedly. Hot and demanding, he shifted so his hips pressed against hers and they backed against the front door. She’d wanted to be covered by him to overwhelm her grief and fear, but now his large body was next to hers, she desperately needed air. She also wanted to continue kissing him. She was a paradox, a stupid, impossible girl.
She focused herself on the wild kiss, on the indulgence. A kiss that was better than another breath. The feel of him was tonic and toxic; she needed him to soothe her soul, but it damned her further. She let her hands explore his chest and upper arms, lean and tactile. The linen of his shirt was a little rough on her fingers, but the firm muscles of his arms were the anchor she needed.
When he made a hungry, low noise in the back of his throat and pressed her closer, she clung onto him. His mouth was greedy, taking and taking. The stubble on his jawline scraped her cheek as he pressed kisses across her face and down her neck, before returning to her mouth and thrusting his tongue onto hers. It was unbearably erotic. The feel of his fingers in her hair, stroking her scalp, pulling her closer to him. She moaned. The feeling was all encompassing.
She’d brought this on herself, she wanted it, and it was too much. Overwhelming. As the thought went through her, his lips stilled on hers. Then he carefully extricated his fingers from her hair and moved away. A whoosh of cold air came between them and Lydia couldn’t tell if she was glad or bereft.
“I’m so very sorry.” He stared at the floor. “That was not appropriate. I beg your forgiveness.”
Did he mean the kiss she had initiated? Or his response? She’d imposed on him wrongdoing and a share in her fall from grace. After a small taste, he’d courteously turned away. He was too flawless to look at someone like her, but too kind not to hold her when she needed it.
“Entirely my fault, I assure you,” she whispered. “Please let us forget this incident ever happened.”
“No.” He reached for her hand.
“Thank you for your visit, Mr. Lowe.” She pulled her hands behind her back. “As you can see, it was quite unnecessary.” She ducked into the kitchen. She was weak for wanting him and being so ridiculous about his unsurprising rejection of her.
“It was entirely necessary,” he said in an undertone, following her into the kitchen. “Mrs. Taylor—”
“No,” she snapped. “I am not—”. She caught herself before she said anything even more stupid than the actions she’d already taken this evening. Her name was Lydia Dalby and a vicious part of her wanted him to say it and know her for the shattered thing she was.
“Lydia.” The word was like a sweet caress, all solicitude and concern.
She gripped the kitchen table. Her lower jaw began to shake with the effort of not throwing herself into his arms and telling him everything, just for the hope that he might hold her. Even though she didn’t know if she could bear to be held.
His hand lightly touched her shoulder, the smallest of pressures exerted to persuade her to turn and face him.
“Please leave.” The tremor in her voice cracked into a squeak.
He withdrew his hand. The silence was as dense and uncomfortable as the cheap bread from the baker that added chalk to the flour.
“These are for you,” he said at last. There was a soft bump as he put something onto the table. “I will return tomorrow.”
Only when she heard his footsteps fade down the street, did the muscles in her lower back and shoulders relax. She had escaped... Something she wanted and couldn’t have.
She looked over, moving as if she was covered with brittle shell. Two books lay on the table. The top one was Hostages to Fortune, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. She picked it up and smoothed her thumb over the dust jacket. She’d never heard of it; presumably it was recently published. Underneath was Eight Cousins, by Louisa May Alcott. He’d found the latest books published by her favorite authors. A book for her and another suitable for Annie. New books were expensive.
She’d taken a kiss and he’d left books.
If there could be anyone more conflicted than a teacher without the means to marry, who’d had to step away from the woman he wanted when she’d been kissing him from sheer passionate fear, Alfred didn’t know who they could be. He told himself he was a fool with every step on his way home. The maid had left him out a late supper of bread and butter with sliced boiled ham and mustard. As he ate, he reminded himself that people in distress did all sorts of irrational things. They didn’t mean anything, and he ought not to pin every hope in his heart to the impossible idea of Lydia Taylor.
But still, when he was lying in bed later, he relived every moment. The feel of her hands, holding him. The sen
sation of her lips and the warm heat of her mouth. His fingers tingled with the memory of her. The softness of her hair, more supple than he’d expected.
His hand had crept down to his straining cock and he had to use a physical effort to move it away. It wouldn’t be right to stroke himself, thinking of her. Not when he’d seen her just hours before. She was so tangible now. He could remember her features perfectly. Her eyes were so pale a blue they were like the sky next to the mist at dawn. Her lips were probably too wide for her face, generous and full.
He usually tried not to touch himself, as the guilt of baseness that coated his skin afterwards wouldn’t wash off, however hard he scrubbed with cold water and coal tar soap. But now he was struggling to stop.
The swell of the shape of her breasts was a painting on his eyelids. When he’d held her in his arms she’d been curvier and softer than he’d thought she would be. Well, than he’d imagined any woman, since he’d never been with a woman. Covert lip presses with girls when he was a youth were not the same as the kiss he’d had with Lydia. She’d had her arms wrapped around him like she never wanted to stop.
His right hand was cupped over the hard stem of his cock, rubbing up and down. He wasn’t grasping his cock between fingers and thumb as he usually would if he needed immediate relief. He was pretending that his hand had just rested there, on top of his cock, and was quite coincidentally moving across the tip, sliding his foreskin up and down as it did.
He turned over onto his front. He really had to get a handle on this desire for Lydia. No. That was too literal. He had to control himself. This was not behavior fitting of a schoolteacher.
He put his hands to his sides. But that felt ridiculous, so he swept them up to his shoulders, his elbows bent. He couldn’t touch himself from here.
He’d go to sleep.
When they’d kissed, her lips had been yielding and paradoxically demanding. There was a myriad of ways the situation could have developed differently. He could have lifted her skirts, stroked his hand up over her leg, and slipped between her thighs. She’d have been slick, just waiting for him. She would have parted her legs, her bottom fitting in his hands perfectly as he drew her onto him. Her ice-blue eyes would have urged him on, her hands making mischief between them, stroking at her nub as he thrust into her.
