“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Lia nervously twirled her ring. “I would always tell myself I was doing it to protect the ladies. If I were handling the money and the appointments and vetting the men—thanks to my parents I know almost every toff in the country—they’d be a lot safer than meeting total strangers. And they were safer, and they did make more money, and nobody ever got hurt. But, if I’m honest, I do it because it’s fun, it makes me feel important...and it’s definitely not boring.” Lia smiled at that. She’d had a good run, that’s for certain.
“And now David Bell knows?” August asked.
“He knows,” Lia said. “My guess is he heard a rumor from a friend, hired a detective or something to verify it. I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s probably been looking for something to hold over me for four years. And I handed it to him on a silver platter.”
“He’d go that far? Really?”
“When I sent him packing, he had to cancel a lot of commissions. A million pounds’ worth. I called him, after he left that note, and he said I’d have to pay him the money by Friday or he’d call the police and the papers on me. So yes, he’d go that far.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the police. At most they’ll get you on evading tax.”
“I’m no shirker. I would never evade tax,” she said with pride.
“Really? What do you put down as your source of income?”
Lia pointed at her loom. “Selling tapestries.”
“Ah...shrewd as Penelope.” He applauded.
“If I were shrewd as Penelope, I wouldn’t have gotten caught by David,” she said. “Daddy’s titled and rich as Croesus. He’s even related to the queen—distantly but still... There’s no way it won’t be the scandal heard round the world. Jane’s family might kill her. Georgy’s family might kill me. Rani wants to be a barrister. This could ruin their lives, too. Not just mine. My parents are rich. I can fly away and start over somewhere. They can’t. God, August, it’ll be a nightmare. I’m so stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid.” August spoke firmly, sounding almost angry at the very idea. “And I won’t let that arseface ruin anyone’s life. If I have to put an arrow through his liver, I will. Two arrows.”
“One for me and one for Mum.”
“One for you. And another one for you.”
He feigned shooting an arrow. Lia felt a sudden knot in her throat. How did August always know exactly the right thing to say to her?
“Now I get it,” he said, meeting her eyes again.
“What?”
“Andromeda...accidentally betrayed by her mother.”
“It’s not my mother’s fault,” Lia said, though there was a time—a humiliating time—when she had blamed her mother. But now she knew better. “Women always—always, August—they always pay the price when men act like bastards. David used her just as much as he used me, and I’d rather die than let her find out.”
“You’re a very noble soul, Lia. I still think you should tell your parents, but I admire you for wanting to protect her.”
“Even if I told Mum and Daddy, what can they do? Other than shoot David, hide his corpse in the cellar, what is there to do? He had sex with me when I was seventeen. So what? It’s not illegal here. And then I blackmailed him—and that is illegal. ‘Leave the country or my father will destroy your art career’? That’s bad.”
“You were a heartbroken teenager, too hurt to know any better.”
“I was a coward,” Lia said. “I wasn’t kicking him out of the country because I thought it was a just and fair punishment for his crime. I was kicking him out because I couldn’t bear the thought of ever seeing him again. And if I didn’t kick him out, he would go on his merry way, living under our roof, eating our food—”
“Shagging your mother.”
“Yes, thank you for putting it so delicately.”
August took her hand in his and kissed it.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Bed? My bed?”
“Your bed. Us. In it. Now.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Many good reasons,” she said. “Starting with...no.”
She’d given him way too much of herself tonight. If he stayed another minute, she’d be weeping in his arms. Not a chance.
“Good reason.” August stood up off the floor and bowed at the waist to her. “I’ll see you tomorrow at nine?”
“You will,” she said. “If I don’t come to my senses first.”
He walked to her door.
“August?”
He turned on his heel, eager as a puppy.
“Why did you come here tonight?” she asked. “You could have called.”
“I had to return your knickers.”
“I could have got them tomorrow night.”
“We needed to talk about what happened.”
“Again, something that could have been done over the phone.”
He stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets, shrugged.
“Something odd happened tonight,” he said.
“You think?”
“No, I mean...when I woke up, you were already gone.”
“I’m allowed to leave, right? No rule against it?”
“No rule against it. It’s just...I wanted you there. I came to, and you were gone. I didn’t want you here,” he said, pointing at the floor. “I wanted you there.” He pointed in the general direction of London. “And you weren’t, so now I am here.”
“You barely know me.” She smiled.
“True, but as soon as I saw you were gone, I drove over here to see you again.”
Lia got out of her chair and walked over to him.
“I’m going. I’m going,” he assured.
“You don’t steal the covers, do you?” she asked. “You seem like blanket thief.”
He grinned hugely. “I’ve never stolen so much as a pillowcase. Only a sheet once and that was for a toga party. Or as they were called in Ancient Greece—a party.”
“Fine, then.” She waved her hand toward her bedroom door.
“I can stay the night?” he asked.
“If you don’t mind sharing a bedroom with a snoring deerhound.”
“After the cloud I slept with, a deerhound is nothing.”
“You said it was a fog.” She took him by the hand and led him to her bedroom.
“Upon further reflection,” he said, “it might have been a stiff breeze.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lia led August into her bedroom. She had a feeling she would regret letting him sleep over, but the truth was—not that she’d tell him this—she wanted him to spend the night with her.
“Where did you go?” he asked. “After you left me. I know it wasn’t straight home. I was here half an hour before you made it back.”
“Testing myself,” she said. “Went by the Attic Gallery. Don’t know why. Guess I just needed a practice run for Friday when I have to face David again.”
“How did it go?”
“Huge poster of him in the window.” Lia turned on her bedside lamp. “I flipped him the V and walked off. Didn’t cry. We’ll call that progress.”
Gogo lay diagonally across her covers. He lifted his head and barked a happy greeting.
“Get in your bed, silly boy, not mine,” Lia said as she reached out and gently tugged her dog’s ear. Gogo reluctantly returned to his own bed as August stripped out of his T-shirt. He had such a long, lean, lovely body, and yet with muscles in his arms that made her wonder what he did when he wasn’t busy shagging half the kingdom.
He caught her looking at him and reached for her. Once she felt the heat of his body through the fabric of her dress, she knew she wanted more of it. She leaned against his chest and wrapped her arms around his
back. August drew her close and held her tightly. Her head fit so perfectly against his bare shoulder she felt like she’d been made to rest against it.
Out of nowhere, Lia began to cry.
At first she tried to cry in silence, but a whimper betrayed her. August must have heard her, because he kissed the top of her head and held her even tighter against him.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
“My heart died when he did that to me. It just...it died. I loved him. God, I loved him so stupid much. I can’t believe how stupid I was.”
“You’re not stupid. He was handsome, older, and he made you feel good about yourself. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to fall in love under those circumstances.”
“He’d pinch my nose when he saw me. Isn’t that the stupidest thing you ever heard? Daughter of a rich earl, and he’s this nobody American painter with seventeen dollars to his name, and he pinches my nose and I fall for it like he put a spell on me. What’s wrong with me?”
“Falling in love is brave and dangerous,” August said. “Like climbing a mountain or going to war. Foolish, too, just like climbing a mountain and going to war. You shouldn’t hate yourself for doing something brave and dangerous.”
“He told me I was ugly and stupid, shite in bed, and he wanted my mother more than me.”
August stroked her hair. “When a girl doesn’t worship a man the way he feels entitled to be worshipped, it unleashes the beast inside him. Beasts are at their most dangerous when wounded and cornered. You’d wounded him, and you had him cornered. That’s why he lashed out so viciously. He didn’t mean what he said. You aren’t ugly—obviously. You’re stunningly beautiful. You aren’t stupid. You graduated with honors from King’s. You’re talented, artistic. Your cunt is tight as a rosebud, and I’d happily spend the rest of my life balls-deep in you.”
“Thank you? I think?”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“There is absolutely no reason for you to like me,” she said, though she still clung to him tightly with her arms even as she tried to push him away with her words.
“Why not?”
“I’m surly.”
“You’re charmingly surly.”
“I’m bitter.”
“Not bitter. Just tart.”
“I have a heart of ice.”
“A heart of ice cream,” he said. “You’re like a kitten with a switchblade.”
“A kitten with a switchblade?”
“Give a switchblade to a kitten and the kitten somehow gets cuter, and also, even the switchblade becomes cute. That’s you.”
She didn’t have a switchblade so she stabbed at his rib cage with her finger. August’s chest moved under her head when he laughed. She loved feeling his laugh as she heard it. She turned her head to him and kissed the center of his chest. He heaved a little breath. He lowered his head and kissed her mouth.
She would have let him kiss her all night, but her face was soaked with tears and itched. She pulled away and started to dry her face, but he stopped her, picked up his T-shirt and used it to wipe her tears.
Then he held it to her nose and said, “Blow.”
Lia grabbed the T-shirt, swatted his arse with it and tossed it to Gogo, who immediately sank his teeth into it and trotted off with it to his dog bed.
“I deserved that,” August said as he unbuttoned his jeans.
“Are you planning on sleeping naked?” she asked.
“What other option is there?”
Lia sighed. He dropped his jeans and kicked them off.
“I have seen so much of your penis today,” she said. “So much.”
“I should take a shower. I’m covered in dog kisses.”
“Bathroom’s over there.”
“Aren’t you going to order me washed and brought to your tent?”
She glared at him.
“I’ll be in the shower if you need me,” he said.
When she heard the water turn on, Lia went to work. First things first—she stripped the covers off the bed and replaced them with fresh pink sheets, a clean white quilt. No dog hair. She dug through her chest of drawers, looking for a nightdress that was both cute but covered all her bits, and found a pink cotton nightie that would do.
By the time August returned from his shower, she was tucked up in bed, propped up on her pillows and hard at work on a drawing in her sketchbook. August, now naked and damp, stood in the doorway of her bedroom, toweling his brown hair, which had turned black from the water.
“What are you drawing?” he asked.
Lia smiled and turned the picture around to him—a tiny cat clutching a knife in one paw.
“Kitten with a switchblade,” he said, grinning. “You’re good.”
“At least I got something out of my art lessons with David. Other than a broken heart.” She quickly sketched a heart with an arrow through it. She added a few drops of blood. Then more blood. Then more. Total bloodbath.
August crawled into bed next to her.
“May I see?” he asked, holding out his hand for her sketchbook.
“There’s nothing interesting in there,” she said, handing over the book. “Just outlines for tapestries.”
August took the book from her and turned through every single page slowly, examining each sketch with an appraiser’s eye. He said little except to name the myths she’d been toying with as possible new subjects.
In one drawing, a girl lay on a bed, naked, as thick drops of rain fell from the ceiling.
“Zeus and Danaë,” August said. “The original golden shower.”
In the next drawing, a woman knelt in a nighttime temple as a man too massive to be human loomed over her from behind.
“Poseidon,” he said. “And that’s... Aethra?”
“Right,” she said. “Mother of Theseus.” In that myth, Aethra was summoned to the temple on her wedding night where she was impregnated by Poseidon.
“Penelope and Odysseus,” he said, turning a page to a drawing of a woman’s hand clinging to a bedpost—except the bedpost was not a bedpost but the slim trunk of a tree. “When Athena held back the dawn so they could have more time together in bed getting reacquainted.”
August laughed softly.
“What?” Lia demanded. “You don’t like them?”
“I love them. All your subjects are erotic.”
Lia blushed pink.
“Not all of them,” she said. “There’s this one.”
She turned a page to another sketch.
In it a girl slept on her side in a woodland glade. A shadow fell over her, the shadow of a man. Or was it a man?
“Ariadne,” Lia explained. “After Theseus rejected her and left her abandoned on the island of Naxos.”
“Ah,” August said. “The most famous unexplained breakup in all of Greek mythology.”
“Theseus just dumped her,” Lia said. “Discarded her completely. And that was after she gave him the thread and helped him through the labyrinth, saved his life when he killed the Minotaur... Why take her away from her home and family and then leave her alone on some random island? And he didn’t even have the decency to break up with her properly. He sailed off while she slept.”
“She’s you.”
“She is not,” Lia said.
“They’re all you. Briseis, so beautiful she’s taken captive. Andromeda, betrayed by her mother. Ariadne, betrayed by her lover. You weave your heartache and longing onto your loom.”
“My mother didn’t betray me,” she insisted. “She had no idea about me and him.”
“But it felt like betrayal, didn’t it?”
“I’m over it.” Lia closed the sketchbook and put it back in the drawer of her nightstand.
She switched off the lamp and settled down into the sheets. August pulled her
to him, her back to his chest. Lia sighed as August lifted her hair and pressed a hundred kisses onto her neck and shoulders.
“Are you trying to shag me?” Lia asked.
“I’m kissing. Just kissing.”
“You have an erection, and I can feel it. It’s poking me.”
“Just because someone knocks on your door, doesn’t mean you have to answer.”
August kissed her gently on the lips.
“Go to sleep, you wicked kitten, before I force myself on you like Achilles. And then Patroclus. And then Achilles again. And then Patroclus again. And then Achilles after that...”
“Yes, I remember it, August. Thank you for reminding me what a massive whore I am.”
“Wasn’t it so much fun?” he asked, grinning in the dark so that it seemed that the darkness itself smiled at her.
Lia flipped onto her side and returned the grin.
“It really was,” she said. “The most fun. Ever.”
“Ah...” August ran a fingertip over her lips. “There it is.”
“What?”
“That smile—that’s why I do this job. This...” He tapped her cheek. “This is a happy girl.”
Lia touched his smile in return. “You are very good at your job.”
“But you don’t want me to make love to you?” he asked.
“Why do you always call it that?”
“What? As opposed to fucking, shagging, screwing, banging?”
“Right. It’s very...old-fashioned. You don’t seem old-fashioned.”
“Greek has multiple words for ‘love.’ Philia is love between friends, as you should know, O-phelia. Agape is unconditional love, like the love of a parent to a child or a god to a worshipper. And eros is sexual love.”
“Lust?”
“Not the same. Lust is a destructive force. Like cheating, obsession, unhealthy infatuation. There’s no English equivalent to ‘eros.’ English-speakers like to separate love from sex. I don’t. That’s why I call it making love instead of something violent like ‘banging.’ Not there’s anything wrong with a good headboard banging.”
The Rose Page 16
