I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

“A picnic! Can I come along?”

Delacorte thought the day at Richmond sounded diverting. He and Hugh had encountered each other very early over breakfast, where they were the first at the table, and which they had enjoyed with the speed and wordless devotion Helga’s cooking deserved. Now in the foyer beneath the chandelier, Delacorte was on his way out the door with his case to visit apothecaries. Hugh awaited Lillias and her parents and the arrival of the Vaughn carriage that would carry them all to Richmond.

“I wish you could come along,” Hugh said, and he meant it. He could think of almost no greater pleasure than watching Delacorte suggest an impotency cure to the Earl of Bankham. “I’m afraid one has to be invited by the host.”

“I don’t know why anyone would want to be an aristocrat,” Delacorte mused.

“I can’t think of a reason, either,” Hugh said.

“How was the ball?”

“Tolerable,” Hugh said, summing up one of the most stunning, complicated evenings of his life in one word. “Lillias and I may have arrived at a plan to free ourselves honorably and gracefully from our hasty engagement.”

Delacorte looked at him quizzically, furry brows drawn together.

Hugh stared back.

“Well, that would be a relief, wouldn’t it?” Delacorte finally said, lightly.

And then Lillias appeared in the foyer in a striped muslin day dress and a straw bonnet featuring a green ribbon tied beneath her ears, and Hugh forgot how to speak.

“Good day! Enjoy your picnic!” Delacorte said, making haste for the door.

Neither of them heard him.

Hugh found his voice.

“Good morning. Seems a fine day for a picnic.” He said this only a little ironically.

“Indeed,” she said. Suddenly seeming a bit shy.

He lowered his voice. “Was your waltz with Giles illuminating?”

She cleared her throat. “I feel it’s accurate to say he is quite shaken by our engagement and is awakened to . . . possibilities.”

“Poor Giles, to be so shaken,” Hugh said, after a moment. “The first time is always the hardest.”

They were studying each other as though it was yet another new light, like the night on the roof or by firelight or in the full light of the garden. This one was a bit like the aftermath of a storm. A good deal had taken place the night before. The air had not yet cleared enough to see how the landscape had changed. But it was of a certainty changed.

“I look forward to shaking him even more,” Hugh said almost lightly.

And then the Earl and Countess of Vaughn appeared, as did their carriage, and they were off to Richmond.

Giles and his father and mother, the Earl and Countess of Bankham, were waiting for them in front of the house in a circular courtyard. They were arrayed about a fountain involving what appeared to be a tangle of frolicking cupids, all spitting water.

Hugh stood back and gazed up at the mythical Heatherfield.

Marbled, gilded, balconied, studded with row upon row of windows glinting like diamonds in the cooperatively brilliant sun, unhampered by clouds today. Against the blue sky it resembled nothing so much as a stone crown sitting on top of the hill. It was built to last forever, intimidate, and overwhelm. It succeeded on every count.

He hated it.

He’d been prepared to out of principle, and he was rather glad to find that he truly did, out of a sense of personal aesthetics.

And as it turned out, he hated the inside, too.

The harmonious, uniform proportion of the rooms called to mind, incongruously, a livery stable. The ceilings were quite high, boxed and painted. The rooms were cavernous and full of fussy things, objects chosen in order to induce awe or envy in other people with lots of money—or in people with hardly any—and to keep a regiment of servants employed in dusting, polishing, sweeping, and laundering. In this Hugh supposed they at least served a purpose. Miles of curtains poured from the tops of enormous windows; satin-backed spindly-legged chairs faced each other before marble fireplaces in which one could have roasted a bull on a spit. All the shiny surfaces reflected the other shiny surfaces, as though the house was in love with itself and couldn’t stop winking and preening. Voices and footsteps echoed and lent the place the ambiance of a dungeon. Although of a certainty it smelled better.

This is what people usually meant when they used the word “grandeur.” He recognized and appreciated the quality of the craftsmanship; he surreptitiously touched the carved banister, imagining the brotherhood of craftsmen who had come together to build it, the pride and care they’d taken.

But that didn’t make it feel like a home.

Hugh pondered again the charm of The Grand Palace on the Thames—everything lovingly chosen, refurbished, and arranged in such a way that one felt embraced from the moment one walked through the door. Nothing quite matched and yet for that reason everything did, and that seemed to include all of the people who lived there. And while Hugh did indeed aspire to a certain luxury, and had very specific notions of what that meant, for the rest of his life, when he walked into a room, The Grand Palace on the Thames would forever be the standard he held it to.

The Earl and Countess of Vaughn had gone up the long marble staircase to freshen up after their journey, leaving Hugh, Lillias, and Giles with the Earl and Countess of Bankham at the foot of the stairs, awaiting, they were told, footmen with a picnic hamper.

The Earl and Countess of Bankham had not met Hugh at the ball. They inspected him, and while it was clear he was a surprise and a curiosity and maybe even a bit of an affront, given he was neither English nor titled, it was also clear they struggled to find him truly wanting. Lady Bankham’s eyes lingered on his face, traveled to his shoulders, then back to his face, purely for the pleasure of that journey.

The earl’s eyes were large and brown like his son’s; his jowls were a thing of majesty, like the ruff on an Elizabethan. His wife was petite and dark-eyed; her son owed his symmetrical features to her.

Lillias was standing a little apart from all of them, her expression pensive, as her eyes flitted from one object to another in that grand room.

She looked as though she belonged here. But in a way that troubled him. Softly illuminated by sunlight easing in through partially opened curtains, she might have been a beautiful statue, another ornament meant to contribute to the air of wealth, her personality subsumed by the house.

The thought made Hugh restless again.

And Giles, for his part, was clearly more at ease, relaxed, scrupulously groomed, quite glowingly handsome. It was clear to Hugh that he thought Heatherfield spoke for itself, and that it answered any question of perceived superiority.

They would just see about that.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cassidy,” the Earl of Bankham said to him after introductions and bows. “Congratulations on the extraordinary good fortune of your engagement. Lillias is almost like a daughter to us.”

He noticed that no one was congratulating Lillias on her extraordinary good fortune. This mordantly amused him.

“Thank you, Lord Bankham. I can hardly believe it myself. One of the advantages of recognizing extraordinary good fortune is the opportunity to be grateful for the rest of my life.”

The Earl stood back and eyed him with pleased surprise. “Well said, young man.”

“We understand you’ve been a soldier,” Lady Bankham said, as though she’d been handed a pamphlet about Hugh to review just this morning. “Are you now in . . . trade?” She added this on a delicate hush.

“I’ve long been interested in politics, Lady Bankham. My intent was to run for mayor when I returned to New York, but . . .” He managed to produce a fond smile for Lillias. “Destiny had other plans for me. My interest and investments thus far are in transportation. Canals, lochs, railroads, ships. The swiftest ways to distribute goods and carry people to new destinations, of which there are an infinite number in the United States of America alone.”

Lillias’s expression was interesting. She was watching him, and appeared to be suppressing some sort of emotion he couldn’t quite decipher. He wondered if she was imagining him in the context of this kind of house, and failing.

“In America, it seems a man can be elected to office just like that, Mother.” Giles snapped his fingers.

“Just like that?” Her eyes widened as she studied Hugh. “Doesn’t your family need a parliamentary seat? I know nothing of American politics,” his mother admitted.

“American politics will never be a thing you’ll need to trouble yourself over, dear,” her husband assured her, with a little arm pat.

“Well, in truth one must earn the votes of his constituents by offering intelligent ideas for solving problems or making improvements. I typically rather relish opportunities to improve the daily lives of others. Just as I hope to continue to improve the life of Lillias for the rest of our days.”

It was possible he was overdoing the devotion a little, but it had the desired effect of making Giles shift restively from one leg to the other and everyone else eye him admiringly.

“In America, any sort of person can rise in the world in unfettered leaps and bounds, it seems.” The Earl of Bankham said this quietly to his wife, by way of explaining Hugh. “It’s rather thrilling.”

“Oh my. Unfettered. How startling.” Lady Bankham’s fan did what her eyelashes wished to do, which was flutter at Hugh.

Hugh offered her a smile, as if including her in a joke between just the two of them.

She blushed like a girl.

Giles’s square jaw was set like granite. Hugh expected it was a matter of moments before a little muscle began ticking in his jaw.

“Speaking of leaping, Giles leaped a drainage ditch on his new hunter the other day,” Lady Bankham offered. “Prettiest thing you ever did see, soaring through the air like that.”

Hugh gave Giles a bright smile, as if any efforts Giles might make toward being manly ought to be affirmed. “Well, if the drainage ditch is going to be in the way of things, it’s a very good thing you knew how to jump it, I suppose,” he encouraged him.

Giles’s mouth made a valiant attempt at a curve, and only achieved a grimace.

Lillias so far had been merely observing. He wondered if it was uncomfortable to watch Giles gently flayed with strategic condescension.

“Lillias rides very well, too,” said the countess. “I imagine it would be a useful skill when it comes to fleeing Indians, Mr. Cassidy.”

“They don’t shoot at you if you don’t shoot at them,” Lillias said, sounding a little bored. “And there are many different kinds of tribes. One doesn’t just call them Indians. The Lenape Indians are part of the Algonquin tribe, for instance.”

Hugh turned slowly to look at her in amazement.

Lillias lifted and let fall one shoulder, with a secret little smile.

Lady Bankham swiftly gripped her husband’s arm, alarmed at this very specific thing Lillias seemed to know.

“I imagine you’re quite the horseman, Cassidy,” Giles said pleasantly. “One would need to be in order to outrun wolves and bears and the local tribes who might mistake you for a deer. And then, of course, one must be prepared to ride for hours to get to anywhere civilized.”

“I am quite the horseman,” Giles agreed. “And civilization is a matter of perception, though we’ve every comfort a human could desire within an easy walk or ride. But we’re going to live here in England.”

“Gilly won the Sussex Marksmanship Trophy one year,” Lillias said. “He shoots very well.”

“Oh, is that a great incentive to shoot well, then? A trophy?” Hugh pretended to be puzzled.

Giles paused. “I don’t suppose you have a Manton’s or anything of the sort in New York.” Giles was all tender pity. “Where one could truly hone one’s skill.”

“If I didn’t hit my target I wouldn’t eat. Or I or someone I love might die. I always hit my target.”

“Oh, my,” Lady Bankham breathed.

Her husband eyed her balefully.

Giles studied Hugh. “Shall we do a little target shooting? We’ll have a pair of Baker’s brought out.”

Hugh had loaded and shot Baker’s more times than he preferred.

“Must we shoot things today?” the countess wondered, with a sigh.

“I’d rather like to shoot something,” Lillias said suddenly.

“Have you ever done that, dear?” the countess wanted to know. “It isn’t quite the done thing, but . . .” She stopped herself from adding, “. . . neither are American fiancés.”

“I haven’t,” Lillias said firmly. “And I should like to.”

The countess looked as though she intended to say something else. Then she paused and changed her conversational tack. “Well. We’re so looking forward to spending the day with you and your Mr. Cassidy, Lillias, whether or not any shooting takes place. We’d so hoped Lady Harriette—she’s the Marquess of Dervall’s daughter—would have safely arrived by now but we’ve had a message this morning—they’ve been detained a week or more. I do believe it was stained with a little tear. I was quite moved.” She placed a hand over her heart. “She’s a dear thing—so petite and pretty and docile, you know, and hasn’t yet surprised anyone.”

Lillias knew this little criticism for what it was. She leaned forward and patted the countess’s arm. “There’s still time,” she said, with great, feigned sympathy.

Finally Lillias’s parents appeared at the top of the marble staircase and made their way down, and moments later two blue-liveried, bewigged footmen appeared with a hamper. Giles had a word with another footman about getting the groundskeeper to ready the rifle targets.

And then they all set out.

They’d passed the giant fountain featuring spitting cupids, heading out into an orderly avenue of sorts outlined by low green shrubs and tidily trimmed flowers that reminded Hugh of nothing so much as a labyrinth one could never escape. If they should inadvertently arrive at a minotaur, he was certain it would be the small tasteful English variety that spoke in cutting words.

Giles had flanked Lillias at once. Hugh took up her other side.

The earls and countesses fell back a little and let the younger people stroll ahead.

“Lilly knows nearly every inch of this house as well as I do, no doubt,” Giles began. “Do you remember sliding across the foyer in your stocking feet? How your governess scolded you. You told her that day you were going to live here so what did it matter what you did?”

Lillias laughed. “She was a bit of a harridan, Mrs. Cuthbert. One just wanted to bait her.”

“You were forever asking her questions she couldn’t quite answer and she was infuriated by her inadequacy.”

“I imagine inadequacy would be infuriating,” Hugh said with abstracted sympathy, to Giles. He made it sound as though this was something Delacorte might have a pill to address.

Giles’s determined confidence stuttered a little. But he ventured on. “And Lilly, do you remember the day you slid down the banister—”

She gave a shout of laughter. “—and you were at the foot of the stairs with a jam tart . . .” Lillias interjected.

“. . . and when you flew off your face went right into it!”

They laughed together, delightedly.

For Hugh, it was the oddest sensation to feel elevated by her joy and yet oppressed by the source of it.

“I love to hear stories of when Lillias was a child,” Hugh said. “How thoughtful of you to share them, Giles.”

He said it because it was clear Giles was going to do his best to exclude him.

“How shocked everyone in the ton would be if they knew you were like that once, Lillias,” Giles said. “You’re such a fine lady now.”

Her smile faded. “I suppose so.”

Once again, Hugh knew that odd sensation of a belt tightened about his ribs on her behalf.

“The color you wore last night was about the color of the stain left behind. A pale rose. Your dress was quite ruined. We cut it up into rags and St. John wrapped it around his shin and pretended to be a bloodstained, wounded pirate.” Giles laughed.

Lillias didn’t. She was at once abruptly silent.

She didn’t look at him.

But Hugh knew she was thinking about that scar on his torso, and gunshot wounds, and the loss of his family members. And how he’d been alone in a hospital and imagined Amelia Woodley in order to have something to live for.

She looked up into his face, swiftly. Then away to Giles, who had never done anything so unseemly as kill or nearly be killed.

“It doesn’t pay to just wound a pirate,” Hugh said finally. “If you don’t kill one outright, you’re as good as dead. A bit the way you would an attacking puma. It’s best to aim right for the heart. Or maybe throat.”

This resulted in uniformly dumbstruck silence. Not one person knew how to respond to this unprecedented bit of information.

But it did put Giles in the untenable position of needing to ask Hugh how he knew how to kill pirates, which was both a gauche thing to mention and an inarguably, hopelessly manly thing to do.

“Mr. Cassidy knows a lot of very specific things,” Lillias said. Her tone was indecipherable. She glanced at Giles worriedly, which Hugh found both touching and a trifle infuriating.

Giles refrained from taking up the topic and elected to brood a little.

“Everywhere I look there’s a memory,” Lillias said, absently. “That tree . . . the one with the knots on it that look like an old man’s face?”

“We were there the day our new hound puppy Poppin jumped up and put muddy paws all over your dress?”

“A bear once nearly killed Hugh and his hound,” Lillias said idly.

“The hound survived,” Hugh said comfortably.

Giles, perhaps understandably, went completely silent.

“Things are often trying to kill you, Mr. Cassidy. I do wonder why,” he said, finally.

This made Hugh smile slowly.

“My dear Mr. Cassidy, you must be relieved to be on English shores now and far away from so many terrible dangers.” This came from behind them. Lady Bankham had promoted him to her “dear,” which he supposed was flattering.

“Well, the primary danger to Americans in recent years has been the English,” Hugh said, but with a mischievous sidelong glance at Lillias.

It was a statement that could be taken a number of ways, and was calculated to make all of the aristocrats both charmed and uneasy, and it succeeded.

They emerged from the hedge maze onto a vast swath of green surrounded by a low stone wall.

The groundskeeper, a patient-looking man with a mop of wiry gray hair and a face grooved in interesting lines, was waiting for them.

“Ah, look, the targets are set up for shooting.” Giles sounded relieved. He was confident in his prowess.

“We’ll just be over here covering our ears, dear,” said the Countess of Bankham, speaking on behalf of all of the parents. “Do hurry, as the cheese will sweat if we don’t eat it soon.”

The groundskeeper had brought out a pair of fine Baker rifles, along with powder and cartridges. Gleaming on the low stone wall were two apples. He’d come equipped with a few others, should there be a call for it.

Hugh inspected the rifle he’d been handed.

It was inhale/exhale, to Hugh. Loading and shooting. Instinct. His hands were a deft, deadly blur of cartridge and powder. A half second of lining the apple up in his sights.

Then aiming.

And he fired.

The apple exploded.

He turned.

Giles went still. He was still ramming his powder.

“WELL DONE, MR. CASSIDY,” enthused a temporarily deafened Earl of Vaughn.

“The cheese is about to sweat, Giles,” Hugh said calmly.

And while Giles raised the rifle to his shoulder, Hugh reloaded his.

“FIRE!” the groundskeeper bellowed.

Giles did just that, adeptly turning the apple into smaller chunks of apple.

“We’ll call it a tie,” Hugh said generously.

Giles was silent. His mouth was a thin line. “Shall we have our picnic now?” he said, finally.

“I thought perhaps Lillias would like a go,” Hugh said.

“I would like to have a go,” she said firmly.

“Lillias, do you really think you ought to . . .” This was her mother, fretfully.

“I thought you were jesting, Lillias,” Giles said.

“No,” Lillias said into the silence. “I was serious. I’d like to shoot.”

This was greeted by a nonplussed quiet.

Hugh glanced up at the groundskeeper, who understood it as a signal. He gamely jogged out to the wall and placed another apple, then jogged back.

Hugh was matter-of-factly showing Lillias how to hold the rifle.

“How do you aim?”

“Hold it up to your shoulder like so.”

Hugh stood behind her to steady her arms on the rifle. She was slim but remarkably sturdy; he could feel her stubborn strength of will vibrating through her straight spine. Pride and contrariness probably had a bit to do with it, too.

“Once I have the target in my sights,” he said, close to her ear, “I think of what I love most in the world. What will happen if I miss? Will they be harmed? Will they go hungry? Will I see them again?” He paused at length. “Because I’ve learned that once you know what truly matters in life, and once you know who and what you truly love, then you know who you are . . . and your aim will always be true.”

She met his eyes across the rifle. Her own flickered with something he couldn’t quite read. So intent was her gaze, so suddenly narrowed, for that instant, he felt as though she was frisking his soul. Or her own.

He stood back. “And that’s when I pull the trigger,” he said softly. “In case any of that was helpful, I’ll be right behind you. But brace yourself. It has a kick.”

He gestured to the group behind them and their hands went up over ears.

She took a moment. He would have given a fortune to know what she was thinking as she got the apple in her sights.

“Fire,” he said quietly.

She pulled the trigger.

She staggered back into him and the apple exploded. He gently righted her.

They all stood back in silent awe.

“Well,” she said. Sounding both satisfied and abstracted.

For a long moment they simply looked at each other.

“I never had any doubts,” he said evenly.

She turned abruptly away from him. She lowered the rifle, staring at the place where the apple had shattered. Pensive.

The groundskeeper walked over to take it from her hands.

And then came an odd silence.

“When I shoot, Lillias,” Giles said deliberately, “I think about how blessed I am that I and my family are wealthy enough to never go hungry even if I never shoot a thing. About how fortunate we are to never know a danger other than the odd storm or two. That we have a full staff of servants to cook for us in our enormous comfortable house with grounds large enough for game to roam . . . and yet I can still shoot for the simple pleasure of it.”

He offered her a little smile.

She gave him one of her own, out of habit. It vanished swiftly, however.

“When the stakes are low, everything is a game,” Hugh said politely to Giles.