Courtney Milan (30 page)

At the outdoors market, she smelled the sharp, sweet scent of wassail, cinnamon and orange slices wafting from a pot, and she remembered choking down that bitter solution that Parwine had recommended, not knowing what she was doing. She saw a branch of holly decorating a plate of gingerbread, and she remembered her father trying to put a good face on a holiday where Lydia could only huddle in bed, doubled over from the pain.

There was the mistletoe piled on a market table, a poisonous, parasitic reminder that kisses could lie.

She ducked down a side street, but holiday cheer followed her there, too. Bells rang as doors opened; ivy graced shop windows. Bakeries let off clouds of sweet-smelling spice as people ducked in and out for cinnamon bread. She smiled and wished everyone she saw a happy holiday, but Jonas Grantham had been right. Saying Christmas was happy didn’t make it so.

There was only one place that she could find to escape. Down a smaller street, a church waited. Its small, quiet collection of gravestones was the only surcease she found from the unrelenting cheer of the season.

She escaped into the middle of it, and there, with cold stones surrounding her, sat on a bench and wept. For so long, she hadn’t let herself feel anything at all. She’d smiled and laughed and ignored the harm that had been done. But deep inside, she hadn’t stopped wanting, and no matter how she’d tried, no matter what lies she told herself, she had still hurt.

The little churchyard was isolated, fronted only by a quiet residential street. For minutes, nobody passed; when somebody did, he didn’t look her way. She held her breath. No reason for him to look in the yard. No reason for him to look at her at all. He passed the black iron gate in the stone wall.

She caught sight of a black bag, and her breath caught. Any number of gentlemen carried black bags. They were common, and if this one was wider and deeper than usual…

He stopped in his tracks and turned to her.

Oh God, it was Jonas Grantham. She didn’t want him to see her now. She didn’t want to see him
ever.

There was no way to hide the tears tracking down her face. Still, she reached hastily for a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, hoping against hope…

But no; he unlatched the gate and came up the walk. He didn’t approach swiftly. He was advancing with all the care of a predator, walking like a cat on a tightrope, one foot in front of the other. And she was too weary to scurry away.

A part of her even welcomed his approach. Maybe he’d look at her and he’d say something outrageous, something that would drive her tears away, allow her to replace this ache inside her with anger.

But he didn’t say anything. He stopped in front of her. His eyebrows drew down. He leaned down to her—so close, she could smell a hint of bay rum on his collar.

Even now, he turned her upside down.

He didn’t say anything. Of course he didn’t; he was still holding to that stupid wager she’d forced on him. Lydia found herself unable to speak as well. Unable to move away.

His eyes met hers. He smiled—not brilliantly, but almost sweetly.

When had she realized that he was sweet? He hid it so well behind gruff speeches, but she’d seen the evidence of it on those days spent with him. The way he talked to Mrs. Hall, setting forth her options so clearly. The way he’d browbeat Henry Westing into accepting an offer of “employment” when he’d been injured and had no other income. The anguish he felt over his father’s impossible situation.

Even the way he talked to her. It was outrageous. It was blunt. It was impossible. And it was…precisely what she needed, the truth boned and filleted without garnish or flourish, placed in front of her for her decision. He made her wants seem ordinary instead of dark and dangerous.

He stopped in front of her and bent down. Lydia’s breath stopped. He made it seem so uncomplicated to yearn for his touch, so simple to lean into his hand when he set it against her cheek. He ran his thumb under her eye, wiping a tear away before it could slip away. His fingers played against her nose, her mouth. And then, bending just a little further, he touched his lips to hers.

It wasn’t a kiss like the one they’d exchanged a few days past, hot and whole-mouthed. It was lighter than that and yet far deeper, a kiss made more of longing than lust. It was the kind of kiss that never happened in fairytales. This wasn’t the meeting of lips that woke princesses from a sleep of a hundred years. It wouldn’t break enchantments or seduce dark knights from their unholy destinies.

It was the kind of kiss a man might give a princess whose enchantment had been shattered years in the past, a woman who was struggling to understand a world without ensorcellment. His fingers against her cheek acknowledged her deepest hurts, and that made his kiss the subtlest kind of magic.

He straightened, pulling away from her.

“Jonas…” she began.

But he set his finger to his lips in an unmistakable gesture. His eyebrow arched confidently—annoyingly even.

“What are you—”

This time, his hand went over her lips. He smiled at her. And then, he sat next to her and kissed her again, this time harder, his breath hot, melding with hers, his hands taking hold of hers.

Anyone could have seen them there, but she couldn’t have pushed him away. He was warm, and she needed the feel of his hands, his lips so dreadfully.

“He used to call me darling,” she confessed. “Tom Paggett did. Lydia darling, he’d say, Lydia darling, I can’t wait until we marry.” She found herself choking on those words. “I wish I were rational like you, but it is hard for me to bear. To hear anyone say those things. It stirs up old memories that I thought I had put to rest.”

His hands squeezed hers. He leaned against her.

“I didn’t want it to change me. I didn’t want to admit that it had any effect on me at all. But it did. It did, and I can’t deny it any longer. I used to think that so long as I kept smiling, so long as I never admitted that anything was wrong, it couldn’t be. But it was wrong inside me all along.”

It was comforting, in a way, to have him keep silent. He didn’t offer answers or solutions, just warmth. Strength.

“The truth isn’t a gift,” she told him. “It’s a terror. And every time I look at you, I feel it. I heard a few words from you and scampered away in fear. You scare me. You always have. Feeling that passion again. Feeling that I’m losing myself, giving myself over to another person without any thought as to the consequences.”

He gave her another smile, this one wry. He looked upward, briefly, and then shrugged.

“It was an utterly terrible thing for me to do to you. Your father—you must be hurting, wondering what to do about him. Do you know what hurt the most afterward? Not the memories that you brought up, but remembering the look in your eyes as I left. That terrible, cold, lonely look. How could you ever forgive me?”

If he could speak, she suspected he would say something awful right now, something awful and wrong. She suspected he would make her laugh. As it was, her shudders had faded. There was nothing to her world but the warmth of his hands, the way he stroked her shoulder.

“I wish I knew why you were doing this. Being so kind to me.”

Without saying a word, he opened his black bag and took out a book. It was labeled carefully on the front:
Visits, 3 September 1863 to…
The end date was blank. He opened it to the middle and then dipped his hand in his bag and came up with a small pair of scissors. This he used to slice a page carefully from the center. He withdrew a pencil and wrote something on the paper, and then, just as carefully, he folded it into a perfect square with crisp edges.

Then he stood. He took her hand, and in perfect silence, slid the paper into it. He closed her fist around it. The corners dug into her palm as he kissed the tips of her fingers. He didn’t say anything, not even at that point. He simply turned, picked up his bag, and walked away, leaving Lydia to stare after him, dumbfounded.

It was only after he’d disappeared that she unfolded the page he’d taken from his book.

I only said I would stop talking to you,
he’d written.
I never promised to stop loving you.

She stared at those words, strong and steady, unmoving. It was a strange feeling, accepting that—that she hadn’t destroyed everything, that despite everything she’d done, he cared for her still.

It scared her, the truth. The truth was… She liked him. The truth was, ever since the beginning, she’d looked at him and felt that shower of sparks in her belly. He made her feel so carnally
aware
, and so she’d pushed him away as hard as she could.

She sat on the bench for a half-hour, this time recalling everything she knew of him. The straightforward way he’d described prophylactics, not flinching at using words like penis or cervix.

As if carnal exercise and sexual longing were just…things. Regular things, functions of the body, and no cause for embarrassment. As if desire, like the truth, could be a gift and not just a source of shame and terror.

Lydia had told him once that she could let herself see both the good and the bad about a situation. Here was the bad: Maybe she was irretrievably damaged, unable to love normally, unable to accept the regard of a good man because of what had happened in her past.

Or maybe…maybe she was on the brink of love, if only she could let herself accept it.

She remembered the conversation she’d overheard between Jonas and her father.
Your daughter is stronger than you think,
he’d said.

She’d been wrong about him. Apparently, he could hope for the best, too.

Maybe he was right. Maybe she was stronger than she’d thought.

Chapter Twelve

“S
O,”
L
UCAS
G
RANTHAM SAID, SITTING UP AND COUGHING.
“What do you think? Another few weeks until I’m well again?”

Jonas wiped off his stethoscope and stored it in his bag. He’d told his father the truth all too many times over the last year, and not once had the man listened. The truth no longer fit inside his father’s brain.

“Father,” he said quietly, “I was hoping you would come home with me.”

Lucas Grantham’s jaw jutted out and he glowered. “Don’t want to be a burden. Never going to be a burden to you.”

This was the man who had made him go back to school, even when the other boys teased. His father had taken good care of him, cajoling him and treasuring him in turns. And now…now it was his turn.

“You won’t be a burden,” Jonas whispered. He looked up and away. He thought of the flesh on his father’s legs, pitted with edema, feeling more and more like firm clay as fluid collected there. Evidence of a large heart slowly coming to a halt. He could hear his father’s breath, shallower, more rasping now than it had been even a week ago.

“I’m going to ask Miss Charingford to marry me,” he said simply. “Next year, I’ll spend Christmas with her.” God, he hoped he would. “These days, everyone is interested in the new customs, but you taught me about the old. About how to spend Christmas Day without spending a great deal of money. I want to make sure that I have that with her. So I thought that maybe, this Christmas…maybe you could come stay with me for a space of time.”

His father frowned and considered this.

“There are so many things I don’t remember. You’ll have to tell me them all. I don’t want to do this wrong. Stay for a few weeks. Just until you’re well again.” His voice caught at that, and he forced himself to look over at the wall. A few weeks until his father was well. If he had any luck, it would be more than a few weeks—and his father wouldn’t notice the passing of those months any more than he saw the time passing now.

“But my things,” Lucas Grantham said, looking about him. “If I go, who will watch my things?”

“I’ll send over a locksmith. He can make another lock for the door, so you’ll know that your things will be safe until you’re well again. I promise I won’t move a single box. We’ll leave a note on the door, for people who come around with things to sell, letting them know that you’ll be back soon.”

This was met with a frown. “Just for a little while?”

Jonas smiled sadly. “Just for a little while. Only until you’re better.”

His father looked around the room blankly, searching for a reason to stay, looking for something to hold to in this rubbish-filled room.

“Please,” Jonas said. “Father. I need you to do this for me. I need you to do this more than I’ve ever needed you to do anything.”

His throat felt sore and scratchy.

Senility had robbed his father of most of his mind, almost all his dignity. But there was one thing that hadn’t yet been taken.

“You…you need me to be with you?” his father asked, his voice wavering.

“I do.”

The man who had bought those beautiful leather-bound encyclopedias looked around him. The man who had sold an entire business to give his son a future hadn’t disappeared entirely. He leaned over the edge of the bed and picked up the handle of a pan. He frowned at it, shook his head, and then looked up.