I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

It felt odd to do something as ordinary—in her life, that was—as waltzing with Mr. Cassidy, given that she’d only been on the roof, on the stage, and in a sitting room at the boarding house by the docks with him.

One of his hands gently held hers; the other rested at her waist.

And on that first rotation around the ballroom they didn’t speak. He danced well. He smiled down at her. More of a speculative tilt of the corner of his mouth, really.

Something about that smile made her feel precisely the way she had when he’d touched her nipples.

She, who never stumbled, nearly stumbled.

The smile grew, and he righted her with a mere flex of his hand.

It seemed an unfair amount of power for one man to possess. To raise blushes—and nipples—with just a smile.

“I ought to have mentioned earlier . . .” he said offhandedly, “but you look like a Hudson River Valley sunrise in that dress.”

“Thank you. I might need a little more context.”

“Once you see one, you’ll never forget it,” he said. “They steal your breath.”

Which is exactly what that sentence did.

“Oh,” she said finally, on an exhale.

Even his compliments disarmed with their potency.

He noticed. He was smiling, now—for her sake and for the sake of anyone watching in abject fascination, no doubt—but his gaze was rather fixed and was it . . . puzzled?

Perhaps not precisely. But the faintest of frowns had settled between his eyes. He was looking at her somberly.

Probably similar to the way she was looking at him.

An assessment. A reassessment. They were new to each other. Revealed.

She felt unaccountably shy. A little raw.

But she also understood something: when the shock of engagement was new, when it was settling over her, she’d thought of him as a stranger. The notion seemed outlandish now.

Out of the corners of her eyes, gowns and jewels flashed by like exotic birds.

“Has he kissed you?”

She blinked. She wasn’t coy and didn’t ask, “Who?”

“Not as such.”

“Not as such,” he repeated thoughtfully, slowly. His eyes glinted, amused. “I think that’s aristocrat for ‘no.’”

“My hand and my cheek, he has,” she said, irritably. “He’s certainly capable of it.”

He smiled at that again.

Her blush renewed itself.

For heaven’s sake, she’d never been a blusher before.

“Are there any other kisses you want to mention?” he tried.

“Not unless you want to mention all of yours.”

He grinned at this, crookedly.

And this, for some perverse reason, this made her smile.

She frankly didn’t want to spend any time wondering how he’d gotten so good at kissing. Talent, experience, and the fact that he liked it a good deal, she supposed. All the reasons she was good at watercolors.

Although it always helped to have a muse to really surpass oneself.

“Since there will be two waltzes tonight, and he hasn’t given it away, I wonder if perhaps you ought to dance with Giles to get a sense of how he’s feeling in the wake of your momentous news. And while you do that, I’d like to spend a little time in the library with your father and his friends.”

“Very well. A sound plan. Why the library?”

“Because I like your father and he ought to be able to face his friends over his daughter’s sudden engagement to a previously unknown American. And by that, I mean I’d like him to be proud to be associated with me. And also . . . because many of his friends are wealthy and influential and could conceivably become my friends, which is splendid, because it’s wonderful to have friends, and could potentially be useful one day.”

He smiled at her widened eyes.

“I meant it when I’d said I’d have an empire, Lillias. Not just for my sake. But for the sake of the family I raise. For generations of Cassidys to come. My family will never want for anything, and we will never take anything that isn’t our due.”

There was an unaccountable quiet thrill in hearing him speak this way. He sounded deadly serious.

Who would be “the Cassidys” if their plan to arouse Giles’s spirit of competition succeeded?

She felt a strange sense of restlessness, almost panic, at the notion that she would never know.

She didn’t doubt he’d charm all the viscounts, barons, earls, and heirs who managed to crowd into the library. “Everything is valuable,” he’d said. How rich and different and interesting, somehow, the whole world seemed when viewed through that lens. She wanted to sort through everything she knew and assess it in that light.

“And if I do make a good impression, it will inspire the spirit of competition in Giles should he hear of it, which he no doubt will, gossip being what it is.”

“Well, I commend you for your strategic thinking, Mr. Cassidy.”

“That means everything to me.”

She gave a little laugh. Oddly, she wasn’t entirely certain he was joking.

After another little silence, during which Hugh continued studying her with that intent little frown between his eyes, she said, “Did you plan to marry Amelia when you return with her to America?”

For nearly an entire rotation of a ballroom he didn’t answer the question. “She was what I envisioned when I imagined the kind of wife I’d have.”

“I think that’s ‘Hugh Cassidy’ for ‘yes.’”

He laughed shortly. Not entirely amused.

She was reluctant to press him. She certainly had the right to do it. But strangely, she wanted to protect him. She sensed he’d been gravely hurt, and that his vulnerability was even more guarded than her own, and possibly equivalent to his strength. And as she’d told him that night on the roof, the notion of him hurting for any reason was distasteful.

“No matter what she’s done or where she’s been?”

“I promised I would ensure that she is returned safely home to her father, who is a good man, a good friend, and ill with worry.”

It wasn’t an answer to her question.

Perhaps he didn’t know.

“What does she look like?”

“Exactly like Queen Elizabeth the First.”

She laughed.

He grinned down at her. “You wound me with your laughter, Lady Lillias. Perhaps it’s her stellar character I’m drawn to.”

Her smile vanished.

“Is it?” And suddenly there was a little knot in her stomach.

Hugh didn’t answer for a time. He watched her face, as if it were a spyglass aimed directly at her heart.

“Lillias . . . have you ever stepped outside just before a thunderstorm?”

“Yes.”

“So you know how the air is fresh and wild and charged. You can’t wait for the show. And you know the storm will clear the air and nurture things and be dazzlingly beautiful, even as it might destroy them, too. But even the destruction could be all to the good. You’re prepared, and eager, for what will happen.”

She stared at him.

“That’s your character, Lillias.”

She was stunned.

For an instant, the air in the ballroom felt exactly as he’d just described. The next sharp breath she took felt just as charged.

So did the next.

It was neither gentle nor particularly flattering, but truthful because he was truthful. A storm was beautiful both in how it was experienced and as a consequence of its character.

For an entire rotation of the dance floor, they neither looked directly at nor spoke to each other. She studied his cravat and the buttons of his waistcoat instead. If she reached over and slowly unbuttoned them, one at a time, she’d reveal golden skin and scars.

“Have you kissed her?” she asked quietly. She’d been dying to ask it and finally succumbed.

“No.”

“Because she’s a saint?” She’d meant it to emerge lightly. It didn’t, quite. Of a certainty, it could not be said that his ability to resist temptation was weak. But in truth, she was seeking an answer to a question she wasn’t certain she knew how to formulate.

“If the perfect moment had arisen, I might have had a go, men being what they are.” He said this matter-of-factly. He paused. “We went for walks,” he said gruffly.

With an odd pang, she wondered what it would be like to merely go for a walk with Hugh. He’d probably cherished those walks.

And then suddenly her heart took up a strange, hard, swift beat when she asked the other question she’d been afraid to ask, because she realized any answer to it would unnerve her. “But it wasn’t like . . .”

“Nothing is like us, Lillias,” he said shortly.

Particularly that one.

The music ended.

They bowed and curtsied, deeply and prettily, in part to please the audience of watchers, some of them overt and others pretending they were doing something other than watching them.

Giles hadn’t yet given his waltz away.

In fact, when he saw Hugh repairing to the library alongside the Earl of Vaughn, he made what could only be described as a beeline for Lillias.

Her heart skipped like . . . a tiny stone across singing ice . . . when he approached.

It was familiar and pleasant. Not as dramatic as the violent lurching it underwent in the presence of Hugh. He splashed about in there like a bear in a birdbath.

“The next waltz . . . would you dance it with me?” Giles said at once, long friendship excusing the lack of formalities.

“Of course, Giles.”

Giles seemed sober, which rather put paid to Hugh’s theory about one of his friends forcing whiskey upon him. He had not, however, recovered all of his color and his eyes remained a trifle haunted. He looked a bit the way the heroine of The Ghost in the Attic allegedly looked after she’d returned from the attic. At least according to the description.

It was yet another moment in a series of moments of adjustments, a few minutes suspended between the past and the future. Bittersweet, serrated with hope and fear.

She’d waltzed with Giles before. They were well-matched, both tall and long-legged, and they’d danced together countless times, from the time they’d learned their first reels when they were very small.

“I have seldom seen you looking so lovely,” he began. This was a little effusive for Giles, but it was practically a customary way to begin conversations during waltzes, so she didn’t think it could immediately be interpreted as some sort of impassioned declaration. Especially since it was delivered so politely.

“Thank you, Giles. That is indeed a compliment, as you’ve seen me hundreds of times before. Or perhaps it’s a gentle hint I ought to have improved my fashion sense before now?” she teased him.

“No,” he said. “It was the first. You are always in the first stare of fashion.”

She wasn’t certain what to say. This was true. Although she didn’t know why that should be the reason she always looked lovely.

“Lillias, I had no idea you were . . . that is . . . good heavens . . . an engagement.”

As this was neither a question nor a statement, it was difficult to know how to respond. He stopped, clearly realizing the sentence had been butchered and there was really no way to repair it.

“Neither did I,” she said, truthfully. “It just . . . happened,” she said even more truthfully.

She managed to produce a gentle beatific smile, which made him frown.

Even though she knew it so well, she found herself searching Giles’s face for landmarks. Some equivalent to a bite from a bear, for instance. She supposed he wore his comfortable history in the flawless clean lines of his face, a face echoed in variations across the ancestors framed and hung on walls all over Heatherfield. Giles, like her brother, took for granted a degree of female adulation simply because he looked the way he looked, but he’d never used it as a reason to be a cad. He was far too well-bred and decent for that.

“Perhaps when you mentioned you were ready to be wed to Lady Dervall, my mind went to the notion of engagements. After all, we are of age and it’s inevitable.”

His eyes flared in something like alarm.

“Oh. Yes. Quite. Well, the notion is bound to arise when one comes of age. One can’t play in creeks or gallivant across ballrooms forever, I suppose.”

“Alas,” she agreed.

“Your Mr. Cassidy seems an unusual sort.”

“Oh, he is,” she said earnestly. “That is, he is in some ways. And in other ways he isn’t.”

“I didn’t know you would be drawn to an unusual sort.” He paused. “Although . . .”

“Well, one must meet them first before one is drawn to them, I suppose, and that has happened only recently. Although what?”

“You’ve always been a little . . . well, more . . . than most girls.” He said this with something like rueful affection.

“More? More what? More how?”

“More willing to wade in the water, for instance, and risk falling in . . .”

“Like in the creek.”

“Or to get a little dirty . . .”

“Like the time I fell in the ditch we were trying to leap at our house in Dover?”

“Exactly. Or to try something new to eat. Remember the frog’s legs? Or to ride a difficult horse. More clever. More full of thoughts. More willing to kick me.” He smiled here. “More surprising, I suppose.” He sounded rueful again. “More . . . er, beautiful.”

He had never quite said this last aloud to her, and he sounded as though he were trying it on. His cheeks went a little rosy.

She took this in, her own cheeks warming.

She had never thought of herself this way. And it was in fact a revelation that Giles thought of her this way.

“Even your watercolors are a little more than everyone else’s. More accomplished, more vivid, more singular. I’m so sorry your drawings of Heatherfield were ruined.”

“I was heartbroken.”

“I can imagine. And isn’t it a little unusual that Mr. Cassidy would allow you to waltz with another man?”

“Don’t be silly. Firstly, Mr. Cassidy is not ‘allowing’ me to do anything. He knows that you and I have been dear friends since childhood and he thought I might enjoy the time with you, which was thoughtful of him. I told him that you never indicated an interest in me otherwise. He laughed.”

“He . . . laughed?” Giles’s hand stiffened in hers.

Clearly not one bit of this sat well with Giles. He’d just been neutered in one sentence by a man he’d just met who—inconceivably—didn’t view him at all as a rival.

“Well, to be fair, he thought it was madness. But then, he is very biased, and doubtless you look upon me as a comfortable old shoe.”

“No,” Giles said hoarsely. With genuine astonishment. “How could . . . no. There isn’t a man in the world who would view you as a shoe!”

Her heartbeat accelerated as she maneuvered toward her next question.

“As . . . perhaps you see me as a little rock instead, then?” she said, almost shyly.

He smiled, amused. “I beg your pardon?”

She didn’t stumble.

But for an instant, her mind blanked in shock and her heart contracted as if it had taken yet another blow.

Was it possible that something she’d cherished, a memento of a moment limned in meaning and promise, had simply been another of the many, many pleasant moments in his life? There had been as many of those pleasant moments in Giles’s life as there were pebbles sprinkled over the banks of the Ouse.

For a moment she couldn’t speak. And perhaps it was just that Giles had said what she’d yearned to hear in that moment. Perhaps he saw every moment with her as special, which is why remembering a specific one was elusive.

Still, she found she hadn’t the nerve to explain.

“There are no other men like Mr. Cassidy in the ton,” she finally said quietly.

“Well, there are certainly no other coats like Mr. Cassidy’s in the ton.”

“His coat is a coat, Giles, and he looks very fine in it.” An unfamiliar irritation arose. Because once coats had indeed mattered to her. In this peculiar instant, she could not remember why.

“It’s just . . . you never seemed particularly partial to any of the young men of our acquaintance. You seemed to like all of them more or less the same amount.”

Was he mad? Hadn’t he eyes or ears?

“Well, perhaps that’s because they’ve all treated me more or less the same, and I’ve decent manners,” she said almost curtly.

But it stung to know he believed she’d had no preference at all. How on earth could someone who knew her so well not notice this?

She took a breath. “I sometimes think it’s Mr. Cassidy’s uniquely American attributes, perhaps, that make him so appealing,” she said thoughtfully.

“What are those unique qualities?”

“He is very ambitious, for one.”

“Ambition is for people who are not gentlemen, Lillias,” Giles explained kindly. As if guiding her to the realization that this was not an exciting attribute but a flaw in the design. “Ambition is what you have if you’ve no money. Where is the virtue in striving if you don’t have to?”

It was a difficult argument to refute. Perhaps it was the ceaseless internal churn of his plans and the things he knew how to do that made Hugh seem more vivid than the other men around him. A bit like a whirlpool in a calm, privileged sea.

Or it could be just that he wanted things more. Valued things more.

Perhaps loved things harder.

And that was the value in striving, she suddenly realized. Everything is useful, he’d said. But then everything won becomes also more precious.

She could not imagine saying this aloud to Giles.

“But it’s thrilling to hear how someone hopes to shape the future of their country, isn’t it? And to want to create things using his own unique tastes and talents? It’s a bit God-like, that sort of creation. I am full of admiration for it.”

“Did you see the silly item in the broadsheets where I was compared to a god?” Giles said idly. “Adonis, I think it was. Ha. If you can imagine.”

“Oh. Indeed. I read that.” She hadn’t read it, actually. It had been read to her by poor Dot. That was the one she’d burned. “They do like their hyperbole, the broadsheets.”

“You know, an MP shapes the future of the country, as you put it. My family of course, like yours, has a parliamentary seat and we have for centuries.”

“In a country where things are done the way they’ve always been, over and over, and where people can’t always choose their representation, because someone has inherited it.”

“Right!” Giles said brightly, with satisfaction. As though she’d stated something delightful.

Anything else she said after that might have sounded seditious. She could not recall ever having seditious thoughts before.

“And he’s . . .” She dropped her eyes briefly. “Oh, I am a bit abashed to say it.”

“You can tell me anything,” he said. “Haven’t we usually confided in each other?”

Did he truly believe this? Perhaps they had, after a fashion.

“I think he’s so very handsome.” She lowered her voice. “Very.”

Giles looked like he’d swallowed a fly. “He looks like the offspring of a tree and a cliff.”

“Exactly,” Lillias said dreamily.

It was admittedly gratifying to see that Giles had lost his grip on gallantry.

“Did you see Lady Flaxmont reach for her smelling salts when he walked through? He has made quite an impression.”

“Perhaps she was frightened by his coat.”

“Giles, that is very unkind. And his eyes are an unusual shade of blue. Quite extraordinary, really.” It was odd to say this out loud to someone who wasn’t Hugh, when it was something she’d thought from the moment she’d seen him.

“No doubt because he is the result of quite an unusual mix of ancestors. Many of them completely unknown.”

This was also probably true. And clearly an argument in favor of having an unusual mix of ancestors. It was also meant to be insulting, but it was time to get to the crux of the matter.

“Giles . . . is aught amiss?”

Her heart began to pound when he was quiet.

“I cannot truthfully say,” he said carefully, finally, “that while I would indeed suffer if you were unhappy, and your contentment has always been of concern to me, I would not grieve a little any circumstance that altered the consistent joy we have taken in each other’s company.”

Her heart twinged. It was such a lovely, lovely speech, and very convoluted and oblique and English in that it might contain an enormous amount of emotion and one would never know it.

“I shouldn’t like you to ever grieve, Gilly. Or suffer.” Even now, his apparent suffering was causing her heart to ache. He had a tender heart. Even if—how had Hugh put it?—he wouldn’t have minded seeing Hugh dead.

“Lillias . . . I thought . . . I never thought . . .” Giles drew in a breath.

Then think, Giles.

Hope surged painfully. Perhaps Hugh was right. All Giles had needed all along was a little incentive. A reason to try in a life that had contained so very little need to try, when his life thus far had essentially amounted to a groaning buffet at a party. How much more of a prize she would seem then, if she was won away from a worthy competitor? Giles had won the Sussex Marksmanship Trophy one year, and he’d been chuffed about that. He liked competing.

She said very, very carefully, “I will admit to feeling a similar sentiment when you spoke to me of Lady Harriette two months ago.”

He frowned, puzzled. “I was certain I’d made mention of her well before that. Surely you know of the Dervall family.”

“Of course I know of them. But no, you hadn’t mentioned it. Giles . . . I would have remembered if you had.”

Perhaps it was her tone.

But his expression changed subtly.

She could almost see the moment when he was awakened to both ramifications and possibilities.

He was silent. Thoughtful.

“I do hope you and Mr. Cassidy are able to join us at Heatherfield for a picnic.”

“As he mentioned, Mr. Cassidy must away to Portsmouth on a bit of business very early in the morning the day after tomorrow. But I’m certain he would enjoy a picnic in Richmond, and my parents would be delighted to join us, too, I’m sure. Shall we arrive in the morning?”

“By eleven o’clock. We’ll have a memorable day, like so many other days we’ve shared.”

She smiled. “I’m certain it will be.”