I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

The mood of the day officially changed after that.

A hum of tension seemed to underlie every polite word uttered.

“May we please eat now?” the Earl of Vaughn wanted to know.

The footmen smoothed a blanket over the grass beneath the branches of a huge old oak, and began laying out plates and glasses, cheeses and fruits both fresh and preserved, various tarts and cakes and sliced cold meats, bottles of water and wine, and everyone settled in to feast. Conversation was pleasant and desultory and kept to the safer topics, the ones not likely to upset digestion. This meant dogs and horses, usually, and the weather.

Lillias hadn’t said a word since she’d blown the apple to smithereens.

Nor had she met Hugh’s eyes. She seemed, once again, filled with thoughts.

“It’s been such a joy sharing Heatherfield Park with Lillias and her family over the years. Does the . . . Cassidy . . . family have an ancestral seat, Mr. Cassidy?”

Giles asked this. Hugh almost said, “Have you any more obvious questions? Because I can’t think of one.” He was tempted to point to the nether regions of his pants and say, “All of my ancestors had one, same as yours.”

He supposed this was the sort of posturing Lillias hoped for from him.

He took a sip of some of the ale brought out.

“Not as such. I helped my father build a cabin from the ground up. We chose and felled the timbers. It was our first real home. My brother was born there.” Thusly Hugh provided his autobiography in clipped syllables.

He didn’t mention that his father didn’t know his own father. He was sorely tempted, but he didn’t want to subject Lillias to gasps.

“A . . . cabin?” Giles repeated. As if he wasn’t certain one ought to say that word in polite company. He turned a worried expression toward Lillias.

Lillias gave him a taut, distracted smile.

“A dear little house, Giles,” his mother called from behind them. “Made of sticks. A bit like a bird’s nest, isn’t that so, Mr. Cassidy?”

“No,” Hugh said.

He saw the startled expressions and drew in a breath. Clearly that had emerged a little abruptly. “Perhaps it’s best to think of it as a cabin on a ship. Simple, snug, immeasurably sturdy. One feels safe in it when one sails across the ocean. And since I built it and my father was there with me, I would trust the safety and comfort of anyone I loved to it.

“My mother used to shoot dinner from the porch,” Hugh added.

“Oh. Oh dear,” Lady Bankham muttered.

“A few years later, we built a home with plastered walls and a roof because a woman deserves a proper home. Four rooms and a door and windows, stairs up to the attic room, flowers on the mantel, rugs loomed by my mother . . . it’s still standing, too. Withstood battering storms and heat. That’s where my sister was born. I’d hold it right up to Heatherfield in terms of endurance.”

Judging from the faintly scandalized expressions of the Earl and Lady Bankham, this comparison was sacrilege.

“You’re . . . you’re not going to bring Lillias to live there?” Lady Bankham breathed. She surreptitiously touched Lady Vaughn’s hand in support.

“Of course not. The house I want to build for Lillias will be . . .” He stopped. “Lillias and I will be living in England, of course. I would never want her to live in anything other than the style to which she’s long been accustomed.” He said this to soothe the worried, staring parents.

“They’ll have the Devonshire house for a start,” the earl said to the Bankhams, who nodded, of course, of course, the Devonshire house.

“Oh yes, charming place.”

“And I’ll have Heatherfield, eventually, of course,” Giles said, with an arm sweep to indicate the ground and much deprecation, entirely insincere. “You might find it interesting to know that the marble was imported from—”

“Tell me about the house,” Lillias said.

Her eyes were fixed on Hugh’s face avidly.

“I beg your pardon?” he said.

“The house,” she repeated evenly. “The one you want to build for me in the Hudson River Valley. Tell me about the house.”

Instantly it was as though the two of them were entirely alone.

A blue butterfly took a moment to orbit them in floppy circles.

Giles cleared his throat. “But if the two of you are going to live in England . . .”

She didn’t reply. She actually raised a hand slightly.

Hugh ignored him.

And her eyes compelled him.

He took a breath and released it. And suddenly he knew how to begin.

“Have you ever seen a beautiful woman wearing a diamond and think . . . while the stone is lovely, it’s superfluous? Nothing could improve upon her beauty?”

He addressed everyone.

But he didn’t take his eyes from Lillias’s face.

Not one of the men present had ever had such a thought but they all wanted to be thought of as someone who had, so they nodded sagely. Which pleased two wives.

“I mention that because . . . that was my inspiration. I should also say—because this is relevant, too—that it’s a little odd for me to hear you call her Lilly, Giles—if I may call you Giles—though of course it arises from long association, and it’s a pleasure to know that others hold Lillias in affection.” He smiled here. He’d chosen that mild little word—“affection”—deliberately. “But ‘Lillias’ sounded to me from the first like the name of a goddess. It suited her utterly. And that’s what inspired the house.”

The objective of his campaign had diverged from their original plan. It had, in fact, been heading in this direction from the moment he’d met her, and he was only now realizing it.

And he was a ruthless campaigner.

Inspiration unspooled, as if this was a story he’d told for lifetimes. As surely as it was a myth. “First I ought to tell all of you—Lillias knows—that the trees in America are like the spires of the grandest English churches. In the morning, the tops of them are often wreathed in mist, like they’re all wearing halos, and the rising sun turns the cloud and mist into nacre and opal. The sunsets . . . colors you’ve never imagined hang up in the sky like bunting and feathers and the satin of ladies’ dresses at a ball. Flame and purple and rose and gold, they change every moment and the shadows change, too. The smell is . . .” He took a long breath, trying to fit words to the things he felt. “Green and brown, ancient and dying, new and budding. And when you lay your feet down on the forest floor, a bit of that perfume rises up with every step. A place like that . . . it shows you who you are. I can’t imagine Olympus holds a candle to it.”

His audience was absolutely riveted.

But the only person who mattered was the one wearing the bonnet with the green ribbon, which fluttered loosely beneath her chin. She was rapt. Her eyes glittered with something close to fury in its intensity. Her features were taut.

The only sounds were birds trilling and the tiny leaves on the tidy shrubbery shivering in a breeze. He looked briefly away, across the smooth acres of green. The image came to him as clearly as a myth told for hundreds of years.

“Everywhere you look on my land, at every time of day . . . it’s like living among a treasure chest full of jewels. And so I knew the house for her should both belong to the land and be a setting in which a woman like her can shine in all her true beauty. And it should look like something you’d stumble across if you should find yourself on Mt. Olympus. And in the Grecian style . . . a bit like a temple. Glowing in the sun, gold in the morning and bronze as the sun begins to fall. Clean-lined, majestic, elegant, serene. Ionic columns. A pediment, with a window, perhaps stained glass, that would catch the light. We’d welcome our guests onto a porch as generous as open arms. Over a sort of infinity of blue sky, mountains and trees and lakes like sapphires . . . we’d look out to . . . eternity.”

Lord and Lady Vaughn exchanged glances.

No one said a word.

“Inside the house we’d have the finest materials . . . nothing shiny or spindly—I’m not petite, and the children—we’d want them to feel free to run around. Solid, elegant, comfortable, and lush. The rooms are filled with light and we’ve more wood than marble because good wood will give back light like gold does. It would be made to last forever. But mainly for us, and for two boys and two girls and cats and dogs.”

He paused.

Lillias swallowed. Her jaw was set. Oddly, she looked very nearly furious. Or in the throes of some other fierce emotion.

He knew he was tormenting her. But he had an objective.

“Well, the sort of banisters one could slide down, of course. Lillias might want to get from one floor to another quickly.” He smiled at that.

A little hush fell.

Lillias remained absolutely motionless. She didn’t say a word. She was irrationally afraid that if she blinked, or breathed, the image Hugh had just conjured would disappear.

Two boys and two girls. It was what she’d always wanted, too.

She turned toward the group on the picnic blanket. The people she’d known her entire life suddenly seemed slightly unreal. A trifle distorted, as if she were viewing them through a window. She looked back toward Heatherfield; she could have sworn she saw a creamy white house fronted with pillars with a pediment window that caught the light. A terrible longing pierced her dead center. Fleeting, frightening, painfully beautiful.

All the things Hugh loved. All the things he could not have if he stayed here with her.

“It’s so very American to want to build something entirely new,” Giles said politely. “I suppose it’s a country founded by those who’ve run away from tradition.”

Hugh went rigid.

And the way he turned toward Giles slowly made Lillias’s hands go cold with trepidation.

“No American has ever run away from anything. We’ve been fighting for our way of life since the country was born.”

“You didn’t quite win that last war, did you?” Giles furrowed his brow as if his memory indeed required refreshing. When of course knowing about that war was unavoidable for any English person who read.

What the devil was wrong with him? Hugh could probably break him in half if he wanted to. And yet wasn’t this the sort of thing she’d thought she’d wanted—this outright competition?

“Giles,” she said softly. An admonishment. A gentle plea.

He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Well, the British gave up,” Hugh said easily.

Well. That certainly caused everyone to suck their breath in.

“Hugh,” she said, very quietly.

But she might as well have been a ghost for how heard she was.

“A bit hard to keep two wars going for the British, of course,” Hugh continued reasonably. “And arguably, I would describe the cessation of impressments of American sailors and the signing of a treaty as winning. But I’m certain they would have fared better if you’d had a commission, Giles. The commanders no doubt would have benefited from your military prowess. You could have shown them your Sussex Marksmanship Trophy.”

The silence was more surprised than outraged. In fact, Giles’s parents weren’t even certain they’d heard correctly. Who on earth would have the temerity to say such a thing to a Bankham?

Lillias was suddenly a wishbone, violently pulled from opposite directions. She couldn’t quite get a good breath.

“They probably would have, Giles, dear,” his mother said stoutly. “How lovely it is that you’ll never have to fight a day in your life.”

“Yes, how lovely, Giles, that you won’t have to fight. For anything. Or anyone,” Hugh agreed pleasantly.

There was really no way to charitably interpret this sentence.

Suddenly it was as if Hugh was the wolf set free among them and they’d only just noticed.

Nobody said a word, but the impulse to move back a few inches was almost comically palpable.

She realized now that Hugh’s patience had been little by little abrading all afternoon. His quiet, confident contempt for their way of life, the things they loved, that she loved—was scarcely veiled now. Hugh had declared war. Whatever grip he’d had on patience and civility was lost, and what was worse, she couldn’t blame him. And she knew that when he decided to fight, he went all in.

And yet. She’d begun to shake with something like anger. How dare he make all of these people seem frivolous in her eyes? Seem somehow less real than he was?

Everythingseemed less real than he was.

“Mr. Cassidy lost his father and his brother in that war,” Lillias’s father said quietly.

Hugh still refused to meet Lillias’s eyes.

It seemed almost a breach of etiquette to bring up their deaths on a sunny day on the flawlessly manicured lawn unfurling like a great carpet toward the huge home. But what was war if not death? Britain had paid its own terrible price in Europe.

No matter. It was as though Hugh hadn’t heard. He still had Giles in his sights.

“A country only officially born in 1776, a country about as old as Lillias’s father, has twice beaten back a nation with about nine centuries of conquering experience. Twice. I’ll bet you your ancestral seat against mine, Bankham, that England won’t make a third attempt. No empire remains an empire forever. Just ask the Romans.”

Giles was white about the mouth now. The right scathing rejoinder was clearly eluding him, but then, one couldn’t practice scathing rejoinders at Mantons. He was so naturally amiable. So usually gentle. He might know how to shoot brilliantly, but he didn’t quite know what it was to fight.

And there was no denying the truth of everything Hugh had just said.

But she also realized that no one else could see it because they were layered in privilege as shiny and slick as silver. Everything reflected. Everything slid right off.

“We love our country every bit as much as you love yours, Mr. Cassidy,” the Earl of Bankham said quietly. It sounded a bit like a gentle warning. And now all eyes were on him.

Lillias wanted to tell them to leave Hugh alone; he’d had enough pain. She wanted to tell him he didn’t need to fight with anyone anymore; the war was over.

But she also knew he would always fight for what he cared about.

A strange pressure welled, filling her chest, her head. Her heart felt twined with thorny vines. She could not quite grasp an end of them to unravel it and get at the purest truth. Her own truth.

“Clearly,” Hugh said gently. “There would indeed be no America without Britain. Remarkable, extraordinary Britain. I’m honored to call it home from now on. And there would of course be no Lillias without it, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is its finest accomplishment.”

Lillias found herself propelled to her feet. She stood, rather blindly for a moment.

And then she turned and began walking. And walking. Toward the oak forest. She distantly heard her name. It was like so much wind in the trees.

And once in the trees, the walk became a trot, and then she was running like her life depended on it.

She knew Heatherfield; she knew all the trees, the knots in their trunks, the patterns of light that fell between them; they whipped by out of the corners of her eyes, and they might as well have been a ballroom full of people standing. It was all a blur now, all of her life, her past. All the same. She furiously ran as though if she just got far enough she’d come upon the Lillias she once was. The one who’d been so certain of what she wanted and how her life would be.

“Lillias.”

Hugh was fast. He was already upon her.

She stopped abruptly and turned.

They stared at each other.

The wind ruffled his hair and tossed his coat out behind him.

“How dare you?” she said finally. Coldly. She was breathing hard.

“Care to elaborate?” he said calmly.

“You’re barely disguising your scorn for people I care about. And what gives you the right to scorn what I want? After all, it’s exactly what you want.”

He barked an astonished laugh. “I want to be married to Lord Milquetoast and live in an echoing mausoleum and do the same things, day after day, year after year, and let my family’s ancient money feed me like a fatted lamb. That’s what you’ve gleaned from our association so far?”

“You want everything to stay the same. For all your talk of building things and newness, you want things to be exactly as you’ve always had them. You want the same woman you’ve always imagined you wanted in the same place you’ve always lived, and the only reason you think differently is because almost everyone is gone. You’ve no history to uphold. No family to please. So spare. Me. Your. Scorn.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

Because his face went whiter and whiter and she felt like a murderer.

She never loathed herself so much. She’d never known she could fight so filthily, could reach for someone’s most vulnerable places and insert her sword. It was possible she’d never understood anyone else well enough to do that.

She wanted to apologize but only for inflicting pain. She wasn’t going to apologize for telling her truth. Because she was right.

“It matters to me, Hugh. They matter to me.” She said it desperately. Her voice cracked.

As though she was trying to convince herself.

And still it seemed he couldn’t speak.

“Well. I suppose it’s a good thing our plan is working a treat, don’t you? Can’t you sense Lord Bankham’s first ever insurrection on the horizon, future Lady Bankham?”

He said it without rancor, but with much irony.

Why did it feel like a slap?

She drew in a breath. “Well. And then you can go,” she said quietly.

“You left out ‘to the devil.’”

“While that is quite true, I never used to have those kinds of thoughts before I met you.”

He hesitated.

“I imagine you didn’t feel a lot of things before you met me.”

The words weren’t snide or accusatory. He said them evenly. They were, perhaps, almost a question.

Her eyes began to burn. Furious tears tightened her throat, and she was damned if she’d let him see them.

She turned around swiftly, prepared to run back the way she’d come. In all likelihood she could have done it with her eyes closed. Weaving through the trees that were so familiar. Treading the paths worn over centuries.

But as it turned out this was overoptimistic because she still managed to trip on a little branch that had recently fallen.

She saw the ground rushing up to meet her.

She never got there.

She gasped when she was yanked back swiftly and tucked into the hard shelter of his body.

Hugh’s arms were around her waist.

He turned her around, his hands holding her fast, reviewing her for damage.

She went still.

“Well? Are you going to kick me, like you kicked Gilly when you fell into the pond?”

“Bastard.” She said it quietly.

“You didn’t learn that word from me or from The Grand Palace on the Thames.”

“If you’d just let go and give me a little room to do it, I’ll kick you much harder than I ever kicked Gilly.”

They stared fiercely at each other. He was a fearsome man—he could crush her if he chose. Perhaps he already had. In the way that petals release their truest scent when crushed. Like the forest floor exhales its layers when trod upon.

Don’t let go.

The heretical thought lodged in her mind.

And that was just it: she somehow knew that no matter what, he would catch her. He would not let her get away with anything. He would make her say what she thought and he would be equal to hearing anything she said. He would know what she needed. He would know how she felt.

They remained rooted just like that, his hands resting at her waist. Lightly. Warm. She could feel the strength of him, like a tree or a ship or a little lath and plaster house that stood up to battering storms.

Never, never did he hurt her, except by the very fact of his existence, which could not be helped. He had cracked her open in ways she had not expected and did not welcome, and all the things she truly was were emerging. If she were honest, she knew the cracks had begun before he’d even arrived.

The wind soughed through the trees above them, and fallen leaves danced in a mad little circle, then lay still.

“Do you want me to let you go?” He said it quietly.

Why did he always leave the choice to her?

His features were taut. All that emotion he refused to show her, all that emotion he’d long schooled himself to hide because he was so strong and manly, all safely dammed up behind his beautiful features. But she could still see in his eyes how he saw her—the humor and longing, the sympathy, the vulnerability. The desire.

Suddenly it seemed wildly unfair that he should be so protected when she felt so laid bare. All she could think was that his eyes were surely the color of the ocean between England and America, and she had never seen anything so beautiful and so dangerously full of promise. She was as dizzy as if she were looking down and guessing the depths of the sea.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t pull away.

And he didn’t release her.

Somewhere a bird called to another bird. Two plaintive trills exchanged. Then silence.

They were still away from the crowd.

She was aware, suddenly, that her cheek was moving softly as though against the sea. Lifting and falling. Somehow she’d eased up against him, as easily and unconsciously as a ship knows its part. She leaned against his chest. Slowly she uncurled her fingers from their clench, until they lay flat against him. She felt the soft heat of his hand right at the small of her back, hovering, then coming to rest there, where it seemed to belong.

Why should safety feel so infinitely perilous? Why did she suddenly want to weep from a grief she could not define, when the moment felt like a hosanna?

“Lillias . . .” Her name like a whispered “Amen” at the end of a secret prayer. It had a break in it. “Do you want me to let you go?”

She heard the hint of a plea. The crack in all of those words.

But there was no mercy for either of them.

She dragged her hands down and down until she found the gap between his waist and trouser and slid her hand inside his shirt. The jump of muscles beneath her bare palm, his hot skin smoothed taut over his stomach. It was brazen and a hunger ignited so swiftly she was shaking.

She exhaled in pure surrender. She turned her face up for his kiss.

He cupped her face in his hand, and she turned it gently as his lips found her ear, her throat, her lips.

At any time the group could come upon them.

He pivoted her up against the tree. And if there was something desperate and maybe sordid in the speed of what happened next, and in the deliberate hiding, the terrible, terrible risk, she didn’t care and so be it. It would be the last time. That was the danger and the dark, exquisite miracle of it. This would be the last time. They both knew that.

Shockingly, with a deftness that didn’t bear thinking about, he lowered her bodice to free her breasts and filled his hands with them. “Oh, dear God . . .” he sighed. “Lillias . . .”

He dragged his thumbs hard over her nipples, teasing and chafing, and her low animal moan shocked her; the pleasure was a revelation. How did anyone withstand it? She drew up hot jagged breaths.

He furled up her dress and lifted her up, slipped his hands beneath her arse, and pulled her against his groin, his cock hard behind the fall of his trousers, and moved against her.

“Hugh . . .” It was a plea. An exhale. She hardly dared hope he’d heard.

“Beg me . . .” His voice was a staccato rasp. He ground his hips against her again.

“More . . . quickly . . . Hugh . . . I want . . .”

And that was the trouble. More was the crux of everything. He’d known that from the beginning.

Somehow with one hand he’d unbuttoned his trousers, which suggested it was far from the first time he’d done that. His cock sprang free. It was long and thick and looked pulsingly alive, an impressive shock. It perhaps ought to have shocked her even more than it did. It was a measure of the madness of lust that all she wanted was to feel it between her legs. At once.

Her wish was fulfilled.

He furled up her dress and held it in one fist and he slid his cock against her cleft. A sob of pleasure caught in her throat.

He held her hips and moved against her again, and she rose up to meet him.

“Oh God . . .” His breath was hoarse against her neck.

Together they rocked in a swift, hard, desperate rhythm. It was a race toward something glorious. Then her head fell helplessly back and she was writhing as something extraordinary and inexorable came upon her from everywhere at once.

He slipped his fingers into her soft, slick heat and stroked hard and swiftly and she came apart. He pressed her head against his chest and held her fast, because he knew she’d been launched. Knew she wanted to scream in primal joy and triumph.

It was perhaps the closest to flight she’d ever come. She felt her consciousness sifting down, down, down, in glittering fragments.

She held on to him as his body shook hard with his own release.

He held her as their breathing settled.

But there was no time to savor. Dazed and flushed, he fished out his handkerchief and dabbed at her thigh to clean where he’d spilled. And then gently stood her upright, straightened her bodice, helped her smooth her skirts.

The world still spun, forever changed, and yet not changed enough.

He studied her, then with a faint, rueful smile produced a knife from somewhere in his boot, and she used the clean blade of it as a mirror to adjust the pins in her hair.

She would warrant anything Gilly would never pull a big knife from his boot to use as a mirror.

But she could imagine him sitting with her father at White’s for years to come. She could imagine picnics on drowsy summer days. She had, in fact, imagined precisely that, for years now.

And then . . .

Suddenly, alarmingly, she could now imagine nothing beyond that.

It was as if those were the only things she could fit in the confines of a picnic hamper.

She looked back at Hugh. He’d put a good ten feet of distance between them, as though she were a fire burning, shooting off too many sparks. With alacrity, he was putting himself back together, smoothing hands over his hair, tucking his shirt in again. She could see his shoulders still moving as he caught his breath.

That was humbling, the somewhat ridiculous aftermath of passion, she supposed. Everything blown into disarrayed bliss must be reassembled again.

The sounds of voices were just audible now.

Fate had shown mercy this time, and she would not be caught with her breasts out. Blessings ought to be counted.

They had a few seconds still. Alone.

“I’ll speak with Giles tonight,” Hugh said quietly. “And if all goes well, I’ll be gone before dawn.”

She knew what he meant.

Still dazed, her body still singing whatever note it was he’d struck from her, she gazed back at him. The sun behind him picked out all the red in his hair, gave him a fiery halo. If this is what Persephone saw before Hades took her under, she must have willingly gone.

She knew definitively it was she who had to let him go.

She heard herself say softly: “Very well.”

He hesitated. Nodded once, shortly.

Then turned and strode off deeper into the little wood.

She watched him go.

Slowly, slowly she turned toward the cheerful voices of the people she’d known all her life.