I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

She pulled away and strode swiftly ahead of him along a path of flagstones, lit up by the high, bright moon.

And then she stopped, suddenly. Whatever emotion had driven her had been spent.

Hugh saw deeper into the garden the paler outlines of stone benches, and what appeared to be a little spire of a gazebo.

“This way,” he said quietly. “Go left.”

His voice was taut. He didn’t touch her. She followed him, resignedly.

The gazebo was tucked in amid shrubbery that needed a good trimming. It was lined with stone benches, and moonlight poured down through its latticed roof.

He stopped. He gestured at one of the benches.

“Sit down, Lillias.”

“Masterful,” she said, faintly, sardonically. But she sank down onto the bench as though whoever held her strings had cut them.

He lowered himself down next to her, a genteel distance apart.

They sat in silence, staring straight ahead. He wondered how to begin.

“I’ve eyes, you know,” he said finally, carefully.

“I’ve seen them,” she said shortly. “There they are, right above your nose.”

He contemplated whether he ought to be delicate, but he was no coward. Life was short. To know what sort of life he could expect from this day on, he needed to be blunt.

“How long have you been in love with Bankham?”

Her head whipped toward him.

Her head pivoted back again and she stared stonily into the dark.

“What . . . what utter rot,” she muttered.

He sat quietly. He studied her profile, turned stubbornly away from him.

What did he feel? A thousand things, pelting him lightly like leaves in a storm. He had not expected this at all, and the knot in his stomach told him he hadn’t any idea what to do about it.

“Let me guess,” he mused. “Since you fell into the pond, and then he tried to fish you out, and then he fell in, and you kicked—”

“Forever,” she said bluntly. “Or, more specifically, two years.”

He took this in.

Blew out a breath.

“Something’s unclear to me. Why the devil are we in the mess we’re in?”

She hiked her chin a little. Took a breath, and then another, and released it in a sigh. “Well you see, the trouble is . . . and I’m certain this will come as a great shock to you . . . it seems he is not in love with me.”

He frowned, faintly recalling the man’s white face, the way his smile had frozen into something like a rictus at the word “fiancé,” his luminous pleasure at the very sight of Lillias, though this seemed a reasonable reaction to how she looked in that rose-colored dress tonight. She was a gift to the sense of sight.

“How did you come to that conclusion? Did he outright tell you that?”

This seemed stunningly unlikely based on what he’d just witnessed. But men were often stupider than they appeared.

She sighed. The squared shoulders slumped again.

“A few months ago, at another picnic at Heatherfield . . . he said his parents felt it was time to get married now that Lady Harriette was of age. Apparently it’s a long, happy family tradition for the Bankhams and Dervalls to marry, when possible. And apparently it was decided practically from birth. It was absolutely the first I’d heard of it, and our families have been friends for nearly a lifetime.”

“And he said this with no apparent sign of . . . er . . . inner torment?” Hugh felt ridiculous saying it aloud. He was struggling altogether with the scenario now unfolding.

“He said it . . .” She cleared her throat. “It was as though he were commenting on the weather. Perhaps he saw it as part of the natural sequence of life events, like coming into his majority. In that case, why would he mention it? He might as well mention that he was breathing. He said I would meet Harriette at the Landover Ball.”

How she must have suffered in anticipation of this ball. Hugh thought again of her stillness in the parlor, the absorption, her restless distraction. Her grief over the destruction of all her drawings of Heatherfield.

She’d been wretched. He’d half sensed it. And yet.

And despite himself, his gut went cold. He was sardonically amused at himself that the notion of the woman he was engaged to marry suffering over the man she loved should arouse any kind of sympathy or a sense of protectiveness. But there it was.

He looked at her, currently refusing to look at him, at her long throat and the elegant straight nose and the stubborn chin aloft and those soft, soft lips and thought it inconceivable that a man could look at her and not be assailed by something powerful, whether it was emotional or physical.

“I will never understand the aristocracy,” he said, almost to himself. “What did you say to him at the time?”

“There wasn’t an opportunity to say anything at all. What do you imagine I would have said or done? Thrown myself upon his feet? If he’s known me his entire life and a proposal hadn’t entered his head, what’s to be done?”

He was struggling to absorb this. “It must have been a terrible shock for you,” he said almost gently. He was absorbing something of a terrible shock of his own.

She didn’t reply. He could hear her breathing. Hard breaths, as if through pain.

“Does anyone else know? Your family?”

“You’re the first I’ve told. I don’t think it crossed their minds, either. I just . . . and this might sound ridiculous . . . I should hate for them to suffer on my behalf. And then there’s the pesky thing called pride.”

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all,” he said carefully, after a moment. “And I, believe it or not, understand what you mean.”

She turned her head then to look at him as if she’d detected an echo of something in his words. A hint of something she could not decipher.

“You’re careful of your own,” she said. “Of all of your feelings.”

He made a little sound. She did rather see him clearly, and had from the very first. He didn’t know why this observation should surprise him. Nor did he know why he didn’t mind it.

“But Lillias . . . Bankham is not yet engaged. He in fact made a point of saying it once he heard about your . . . our . . . engagement.”

“I suppose he did,” she said, absently.

Hugh was still baffled. “So he’s marrying this Harriette to please his parents? Out of duty? The vaunted aristocratic appreciation for tradition?”

“So it would seem.”

He gave a short laugh. “I suppose there’s something to be said for that. If either of us were more dutiful we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

She just made a soft snorting sound. Not quite a laugh.

“Or it’s a singular lack of imagination,” he suggested.

She lifted one hand a little, let it drop, as if it hardly mattered anymore.

“He seems to esteem you, Lillias.”

“Ah, yes. What every girl yearns for. Esteem. Didn’t Byron write a poem about esteem?”

“I haven’t a clue. But I’m certain Gilly would.”

“Oh, he would, all right,” she said darkly.

“Maybe poetry is what aristocrats do instead of passion. The words do it all for them.”

“Ha,” she said. Although the “ha” sounded a little uncertain. It wasn’t the most implausible theory.

“So you’ve been wretched,” he said slowly. “And you’ve been dreading this ball.”

“Ever since then, it has felt as though my heart is being carved out with one of those little spoons we use to put sugar in our tea. A bit at a time. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.”

He made a soft sound, half amazed laugh, half rueful empathy.

“The pain is ghastly and quite surprising,” she said with a certain dull, ironic wonderment. “I’m quite amazed and ashamed. And not a soul has noticed. They would all be astonished to learn I’m sentimental at all. So there’s something to be said about being raised English, Mr. Cassidy.”

The silence was such that the very stars above seemed to ring.

There was a certain relief between them. The relief was new, and this newness, both awkward and peaceful. He looked at his beautiful tormentor, this haunter of his nights. The sheer scale of feelings she’d stirred—the size of an American tree—somehow restored dimension to his life. It wasn’t at all comfortable. But then neither had been waking up from a fever in a hospital, shot but alive.

And all of the things she felt when she was near him . . . did she feel them for Giles? His masculine pride told him definitively “no.” This thing between them was its own singular natural force, like a hurricane. He knew that much.

But maybe that was Giles’s appeal. He was patently not a hurricane. He was patently of her world.

“Lillias?”

“Yes?”

He hesitated. But the curiosity compelled him. He needed to know.

He tried to keep the words inflectionless. “Why do you love him?”

She gave a short, stunned laugh.

And for a time it seemed she intended to ignore the question. Or perhaps berate him for daring to ask it.

And then she sighed, and from her reticule withdrew something. “Hold out your hand, palm up.”

He obeyed. Into it she deposited a little stone.

Puzzled, he held it up and angled it so that the silvery, pale moonlight would illuminate it. The elements—water, storms, who knew what else—had etched little tiers and facets on one side, smooth on the other, a sort of creamy bronze shade, with speckles. A typical, humble little river rock.

He wasn’t quite certain what to do with it.

“Nice little stone,” he approved. “I could probably skip this three, maybe four times across the pond back home. In winter, you can make the ice sing notes by just skipping a stone.”

“What on . . . that’s not . . . that can’t be true.” She was watching him intently.

“I wouldn’t lie to you about singing ice,” he said somberly.

She smiled a little. “Gilly gave it to me two years ago. It was then that . . . well, I’ve always been fond of him. I knew he was fond of me. It was all very lovely, easy, and I thought our fondness for each other was apparent to everyone. Our families spent a good deal of time together; we’ve been friends for simply always. Anyhow, two years ago we were with our families on a bit of a jaunt down at Heatherfield and he found and gave it to me and he said, ‘Lillias, this reminds me of you.’”

She stopped, as though this was explanation enough.

“You remind him of a rock,” Hugh said slowly.

She sighed. “He said, ‘One side shines brightly and it would catch anyone’s eye. Anyone would look at it; it’s why I noticed it. But they wouldn’t turn it over to see the subtle shading and little freckles on the other side.’”

Damn that aristocrat. It was a rather lovely thing to say.

And he thought he understood why she’d craved hearing something like that. They decided who I am, she’d said in anguish.

His stomach contracted again.

“And just like that, you fell in love.”

“He’s also a nice person.”

“Nice! Well, that tears it. I’m half in love with him now, too.”

She gave a short, pained laugh. “He remembers things. Servants’ names. Birthdays. If you’ve a favorite color, that I like jam with my scones but not cream. He thinks I’m clever and it doesn’t upset him and as we’ve discussed before, some men struggle with the notion that a woman might be clever. He listens when I speak and doesn’t yammer on the way so many young men do because they think they’re fascinating and they are usually quite wrong.”

“You’ll get no argument from me there.”

“He can be witty. He thinks I’m witty. We’ve had the same kinds of upbringings and we have the same values and memories and know all of the same people and places and we’ve the same friends. We love the country and going riding and picnics and such. And we love our families. He’s a gentleman.”

That was her list?

“You left out ‘and he’s obedient,’” he said rather ironically.

She was silent.

He was dumbstruck by the surprisingly gentle, mundane things that this prickly, intelligent, beautiful, sensual female who possessed a rather unorthodox sense of risk claimed to cherish in a person.

Things that had resulted in her quiet devastation. A devastation that made him restless. He wanted to undo it, even as he felt a little frayed. And perhaps betrayed.

She turned to look at him. He couldn’t quite read her expression in the shadows. It wasn’t the loneliest he’d ever felt, sitting here in the dark of a far too tame garden with a woman who, even as she confessed her love for another man, he would gladly lay back on the grass and ravish.

A woman, he half suspected, who would, despite her professed love for another man, welcome it.

But it was lonely.

And then one of her shoulders went up and then down.

“Why does anyone love anyone?” she said.

He shifted on the bench and blew out a breath.

“I don’t know. I know it’s the only thing that makes life bearable. And it’s the only thing that makes life unbearable.”

She turned then to him. Their eyes met. He felt that gaze everywhere in his body. The way she listened, the way she absorbed things. It was such a rare pleasure, he realized, with some surprise, to speak to her.

“Are you astonished to learn that I even have a heart?” she asked. Somewhat ironically.

But her voice cracked a little on that last word.

“I’ve always known you have a heart, Lillias,” he said gently. “But I’ll tell you something. Beyond doing what they’re supposed to do, which is bump along and send blood through our veins, hearts are an encumbrance.”

He looked away then, back toward the sky where the moon hung like a portal to another, shining world.

“What is her name?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said smoothly.

She waited.

His sense of fair play, and honor, told him that he would have to give her an answer. And yet it was another moment before he could speak.

“Amelia.” He said it quietly.

He hadn’t said her name aloud in so long that it felt like a new word he’d just learned.

“Amelia Woodley.”

The name hung there in the dark for an instant.

“Is she in America, this Amelia?”

He breathed in deeply and sighed it out. “She was, in fact, last seen boarding a ship from New York bound for Liverpool. Her father, an employer and now friend, has entrusted me with finding her and bringing her home.”

If she wanted more information, she was going to have to pull it from him.

“I gather her departure for English shores was unexpected and not sanctioned by her family?”

“You gathered correctly.”

“Well. Another disobedient woman, Mr. Cassidy. You seem to have a predilection for them.”

He didn’t take this little challenge up, primarily because he was beginning to worry that it was true.

“She can’t have gone alone.”

“According to the letter she left behind for her father, she departed with a family by the name of Clay who was visiting New York, and with whom the Woodleys had become friendly.”

“Was there a man involved?”

“I don’t think so. But I don’t know for certain.”

The spoon Lillias described: scrape, scrape, scrape. That’s what the thought of Amelia had done to him ever since.

Funny that at the moment he still could not quite recall her features distinctly. It was like peering through a scratched lens.

The first reel had begun. The ghostly strains of it reached them in the garden.

It seemed quite some time before either of them spoke again. The silence was oddly not uncomfortable. Both had laid down burdens. There was relief in that.

He realized she was studying him. He couldn’t quite interpret her expression.

“And . . . you love her?” She said it tentatively. Almost reluctantly.

They both, after all, apparently belonged to the Order of the Brokenhearted.

Did he love Amelia? Had he loved her? What did he feel now?

There was a moment last spring, outside the Woodleys’ home. They’d been walking in opposite directions along the path and had stopped to bid each other good day. He saw distinctly Amelia’s soft blue eyes looking up into his, one hand pushing her pale hair from her face. The breeze had tugged it loose from its ribbon, and she had laughed in delight. Her face was like the sun.

And he’d thought later: that is what love felt like. Simplicity. Peace. Beauty. Joy. The gift of just being, crystallized in a moment.

“I had reason to believe our regard was mutual,” was all he said, finally. Hesitantly.

He anticipated the next question. Still, it was a while in coming.

Lillias had the right to it. But he had no idea what to answer.

“Why?” She whispered this intently. “Why did you love her?”

He didn’t have a vocabulary for this sort of thing. He hadn’t been raised on poetry read in cozy parlors for entertainment. He would rather simply be. What he felt and thought he hoped he embodied in actions. But how could he know for sure?

He didn’t know what to say. But his sense of fair play made him want to try.

“All I know . . . when I was near death in the hospital at Williamsville from a bullet wound . . . hers was the face I pictured. And I wanted to live.”

He felt her eyes on him, searching his face the way he’d searched hers.

She turned away again. Her hands went up to her face and she sighed at length. And then she brought them down again.

“I’ve gone and ruined your life, haven’t I, Mr. Cassidy?”

“Yes. I am the poor, innocent victim in this affair.”

She gave a wry, bleak little laugh.

He pictured the face of that man in the ballroom lighting up at the very sight of her and almost closed his eyes. If he did, he knew he could clearly see the days she described—the warmth, the river stones beneath bare feet, the friends, the family, the picnics, the laughter. Because he’d had those memories, too. He could have happily and forever lived out his days like that; he understood their pull.

But most of the people who’d populated those memories were gone now.

Sitting in the moonlit dark next to Lillias, he could not quite bring the things he felt into focus; they were like bright fish beneath the surface of dark water, moving too quickly to catch or inspect. They flickered through him, jealousy and possession, lust and awe, betrayal, mordant amusement. But the water, the thing that held all of these and sustained them, was deeper and less easy to name.

All he knew now was that he wanted to give Lillias what she wanted. And he thought he knew how.

“Well. I believe I can impart some wisdom.”

She gave a short laugh. “Perhaps Amelia fled because of your tendency for imparting wisdom.”

It was a risky joke, but he liked it. “It’s this. I don’t believe in giving up. And I don’t believe that life—even when it appears to lie in a smoking heap—is ever ruined. It’s all in what you do with the wreckage. I built an entire stage from scrap wood, the wreckage of something else. And do you know how long an American forest stays dead from a fire? It’s emerald and growing again nearly within weeks. New and sprouting green everywhere. It needs fire to renew itself.”

“And how does this wisdom relate to the subject at hand?”

“What if we could persuade Bankham—Gilly—to be . . . disobedient?”

She frowned. Then her face cleared as she caught on. “You mean not marry Lady Harriette? But . . . how?”

“Exactly. Because . . . well, here’s what I noticed. When you introduced me as your fiancé, he blinked rapidly.” He demonstrated. “As though the news had been something dashed into his eyes. And only a man who’s been startled and badly knocked off his game blinks like that, or lets another man see him blink like that. We don’t show weakness to each other, especially in front of beautiful women.”

“How burdensome to be a man.”

“It’s not a picnic at Heatherfield, that’s for sure, being a man. In other words, it was clear to me he’d suffered a shock. He straightened up to his full height, which, I might add, is something a bear would do in order to frighten a man off. Or many animals would, to frighten off a predator. And then he stared at me for nearly the duration of our conversation and didn’t blink once. I daresay the thoughts he was thinking were not very . . . nice. At all. In fact he likely, for a not nice moment or two, wished me dead. Because most men, apart from perhaps Delacorte, are not generally nice, regardless of what you might think. The epithet jar and the brown smoking room are the thin veneer between us and savagery.”

Lillias was quiet.

And then she said: “It’s brown? The smoking room?”

He grinned fleetingly. “It’s brown. So in a word, Lord Bankham was jealous. And if he was a woman, even now a concerned friend would be urging him to sit down before he faints. I suspect this friend, assuming he has friends, got a look at his face and is pressing a whiskey on him. Perhaps his life is passing before his eyes. All because of the sudden, shocking appearance of your fiancé, an eventuality he probably had not considered, given that his life has heretofore been so very predictable and you were always about.”

Her lips parted as if to say something. She closed them again. Sat a moment.

And then finally she swiftly pivoted her entire body toward him.

“How did you notice all of that?”

It wasn’t the question he expected. “Habit of a lifetime. It often means the difference between life or death, the difference between hearing a yes or no, the difference between winning a hand or losing one. If you are not born with a title and a heap of money and a map to your future, you learn to pay attention to everything, because everything—everything—can be useful if you know what to do with it. It’s instinct. Exactly like an animal, Lady Vaughn.”

Something in her intent expression made his heart contract. And then her face was faceted by shadows; a wispy shawl of a cloud had wrapped itself around the moon.

Hoots of inebriated laughter floated to them from the balcony. They’d need to return to the ballroom soon to avoid additional layers of scandal.

“So . . .” She cleared her throat, and said almost lightly, “Do you think he . . . he cares for me?”

He was quiet a moment. Then gave a soft laugh.

“Yes,” he said, quietly. “I think he does.”

And if this answered more than one question, one spoken and one not, neither of them acknowledged it.

“How do you envision this ‘persuasion’ taking place, as you call it?”

He drew in a breath. Sighed it out. “Oh . . . I believe the trick would be to arouse his spirit of competition. If together we can persuade Giles that life without you is unthinkable, if I can honorably release you from your obligation to me and he can . . .” he was awfully tempted to say, “be a man,” because it struck him as simply the truth “. . . make the decision to be happy rather than merely content.”

“He’d have to be a simpleton for that to work.”

He laughed. “Well, he’s a man. It seems we’re all simpletons when it comes to women.”

“Surely not you, with all that wisdom you have to impart.”

“Probably more simple than simpleton. But I have my moments. Look at me here, in my not quite right evening coat, and consigned to English shores forever, because you, Lillias, are . . .” He shook his head slowly.

She smiled.

This moment of ease and accord with Lillias Vaughn was yet another of the strangest moments in his life.

She cleared her throat. “It occurs to me that I haven’t thanked you for . . . rising to the occasion on the stage, Hugh.”

“No need to thank me. What else would I do?”

“Run in the opposite direction at a great clip.”

He gave a soft laugh. “Firstly, I would never leave any woman to face that alone. It never occurred to me to do anything else. Not that I’ve ever been in that position before. And secondly . . . Lillias, I cannot imagine ever running in the opposite direction from you.”

She looked up at him, eyes widening. Then she smiled wistfully, and sighed.

“It’s just . . . I so very much wanted to feel something that wasn’t . . . what I was already feeling. Which was a bit empty, and lost, and miserable. And all I do when I’m with you . . . Hugh . . . all I do is feel things with my body that are so loud that everything else is muted.”

The words were like a blow to the head, as if lust was delivered the way whiskey was. He half laughed, half groaned.

“Lillias, you’ve described seduction right there.” He picked up her hand, lightly, in jest. “Sometimes I think that’s the entire point of it. It’s why it works at all. It mutes everything else.”

He’d meant to release her hand at once.

He couldn’t seem to.

Instead, he drew his thumb across her palm, musingly, gently. A caress. Tentative. As if seeing how she felt to him now that he knew what he knew, and now that she knew what she knew.

It was the strangest, most confounding thing. He might as well have lit a fuse. That little touch burned through his body and now he was alight with a restless need and he could feel hers thrumming in her, too.

“Like this,” he said softly.

“Like this,” she agreed, her voice lulled. “It isn’t gentle. It isn’t easy. It isn’t safe.”

“No.”

“It isn’t love.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t love. But it is . . . it has been . . . forgetting.”

“Is it wrong?” she whispered. Her voice was lulled, as his fingers trailed up the satin road of her forearm. He wanted to thank her for the rare pleasure of touching her. For the triumph and thrill of hearing her breath shorten, feeling her body soften, and knowing his touch had brought her that pleasure.

“I can’t imagine . . .” his voice sounded drugged, too “. . . why we were given these senses if we aren’t to use them. It seems a sin to squander that gift.”

“That’s precisely what I would say if I intended to seduce someone,” she said wryly.

He laughed, very softly. “And who are we hurting right now in this moment?”

It was as good a criterion as any.

“I wonder,” she said, her words lulled, “what it would feel like to lie with my bare back against the grass, and stare up at the stars.”

He closed his eyes. The image was glorious.

She wondered so many things. How many of them would she ever experience?

“There are more stars in America than there are here. I daresay naked, on a meadow of dark grass, beneath the stars, you would glow like the moon.”

She gave a stunned laugh.

His fingers traced the crease of her elbow, gently. Followed the road of the pale vein in her arm. Dragged, so lightly, just above the velvet ribbon trimming her bodice, scarcely softer than the skin above it. They snagged in the little valley between her breasts, hovered there, where her heart beat. She sighed softly, accepting the pleasure.

“I’ve always wondered how night air would feel on the parts of my skin that . . . never feel the night air.”

His fingers were on her laces, and light-fingered as a pickpocket, he had them undone.

“Lillias,” he said softly, and it was all he needed to say. The longing in it, the promise, was like a call she had no choice but to heed.

She turned her head. He dragged his lips across her forehead. He kissed her brows. He claimed her lips. The kiss was gentle, almost tentative. Because this was new, too.

And it was at once intoxicating.

Her trust and surrender did him in. He’d been careful of it for so long, for the sake of her honor and his. Mindful of the danger.

Now, for some reason, it seemed unnervingly precious.

And as he kissed her, he spread the laces of her dress gently and slowly, slowly dragged the delicate little fairy-wing sleeves of her dress down, down, until more of her back was bare to the night, so that she could feel the air, the breeze on her skin. His fingers played at the little short hairs at the nape of her neck, traced the little bumps of her spine as though they were prayer beads, and felt beneath them the quickening tempo of her breath, the shuddering rise and fall of it. And into the gap of her loosened dress he stealthily slipped his hands and grazed, with just his fingertips, the silky curve of her breasts.

She sighed and stirred and arched. Her body instinctively asking for more.

His cock was already hard. And growing harder.

And then, with the same featherlight touch, he grazed the hard beads of her nipples. Just so she would know.

Her head fell back on a gasp.

The sound cleaved him; he felt savage in a way that tightened every muscle in his body.

And the game and the test were this: up to the edge and no further.

And if all went according to hopes and plans, there would never be any further.

But he still could not resist whispering perhaps the wickedest, wickedest thing of all to her. It felt at the moment the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he slid his hands away from her soft breasts. “And yet there’s so much more, Lillias.”

And while she closed her eyes, and breathed in an attempt to congregate her scattered senses, as deftly as he’d undone her laces, he did them back up again.

In silence, collecting themselves once more, they sat.

“And now . . . we’re going inside to dance,” he said. “Our campaign begins tonight.”