I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

“A package has come for you, Mr. Cassidy. It was brought by a messenger.”

Hugh had come down the stairs not more than an hour after Lillias left, though he wasn’t certain why. He was vaguely aware that he was a little hungry. It could be Armageddon—and of a certainty, the morning after saying goodbye to Lillias felt like it—and he was fairly certain his appetite wouldn’t leave him.

He was met in the foyer by Dot. The only maid who’d forgiven him for becoming engaged, and who had let Lillias into The Grand Palace on the Thames last night and likely knew precisely where she had gone and what they’d gotten up to, held the package out to him, eyeing him with a combination of pity and reproach, which was only what he deserved.

It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. There was no indication who it might be from.

He took it from her.

Just as Delilah briskly strode across the foyer.

She glanced at Hugh and then her head whipped back for another longer look and she stopped abruptly.

They regarded each other.

He dully.

Her with alarm.

“Dot, bring Mr. Cassidy another pot of strong coffee and an extra scone, please. At once.”

“I must look desperate, indeed.” He was surprised to hear his voice emerging raw and tattered.

Everyone knew, and likely about everything. Not just about his uncle. About Lillias being in his room all night.

And they’d know soon enough about the end of his engagement.

His face must have reflected all of it.

He supposed the reception room was for grieving, because Delilah took him by the arm and steered him into it and urged him gently down until he sat on the pink settee where the king had once allegedly sat. The sun was pouring a gentle light through the parted curtains.

It was usually empty during the day—Delacorte, Hardy, and Bolt were all down at the docks. Mrs. Pariseau, thoroughly enjoying her widowhood, was usually out gallivanting with one of her many friends.

He pulled the knife from his boot and cut the string on the package. Delilah, married to a former blockade captain who never went anywhere without a gun, didn’t even blink.

He parted the paper on the package and lifted out . . .

. . . a sketchbook.

He frowned.

And then his breath hitched. On the cover, in an elegant, tidy hand, was written:

But why had it been sent to him? And who had sent it?

Delilah peered down and saw the cover.

She said, delicately, “Mr. Cassidy . . . will you be all right if I leave you here?”

He nodded absently, scarcely hearing her.

Breath held, he turned to the first page, as if he’d been given the key to a treasure chest.

In pastels and watercolors and charcoal he found drawings that were accomplished and bursting with vivid character, and clearly quickly done.

A girl in a night rail, sailing over a darkened London, her hair like a dark cloud, her smile slight and dreamy, and below, a man in a billowing shirt who had hold of the string wrapped loosely around her wrist.

On the next page a man descended a ladder, strong sinewy arms reaching up to grip the rungs, his bare-to-the-waist torso illuminated in sunlight. A girl watched him, her face peeping around the corner of a doorway.

On another page was a woman standing on the porch of a cabin, aiming a rifle. His mother.

And then on the page following, in front of the same imagined cabin, a woman arranging tiny scraps of cloth on a rail, while a little hummingbird hovered nearby, eager to make her choice from among them.

His hands were shaking now as he turned pages.

And then there it was.

He huffed out a shocked breath. All the little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood erect.

The Hudson River Valley. There was a sunset, spread out just as he’d described, with trees like great spired cathedrals, the hills undulating in overlapping purple and slate, on to forever.

On the next page: there it was at sunrise, the sky mother of pearl, the sun just kissing the tops of the hills.

Overlooking this view was a man on a brown horse, very tiny in comparison to all of the splendor.

And next to him was a tiny hound.

She’d given him a hound.

Tears were now burning behind his eyelids.

His heart was beating with anticipation as he turned the next page.

He did, and stopped breathing.

Oh God. The house.

Serene as a temple, the white bathed in amber afternoon sun. There were the pillars, the pediment, the carved pilasters, the balustrade. The windows above were arrayed toward the sun, and each one glinted. A path paved in stone led up to a wide generous porch, as welcoming as open arms.

On the balcony a man and woman stood. Their faces were indistinct, but their arms were about each other. And was that . . . there was a dog and a cat. No, two cats! One had stripes, and was waltzing along the balustrade rail, tail curved like a question mark. The other was gray and white, sleeping in a crescent on a chair.

He closed his eyes, and murmured, “Oh, my God.”

She must have done this at Heatherfield. While he was awake agonizing over five words that would be the last he’d write to her until the dawn broke.

He turned to the last page.

He covered his eyes with his hand, then brought it down again.

He saw himself. His face, not yet thirty years old. The deep hollows and strong bones. He looked tired, and handsome, and she’d captured the faint lines about his eyes and the little scar at the corner of his mouth. And his eyes as she must have seen them. Burning with longing, with hope, with humor.

How had she seen that? By what sorcery had she captured him so perfectly?

She’d seen him so fully.

As fully as he’d seen her.

And she must have drawn him from memory, little by little.

But the biggest surprise awaiting him were the two sheets of foolscap tucked into the back of the sketchbook.

One was the five-word letter he’d left for her. The word “happiness” was smudged, as if a tear had fallen on it.

That smudge seared his heart. He couldn’t breathe.

The other letter was addressed to him.

Mr. Cassidy,

Lillias inadvertently left this sketchbook behind at Heatherfield—one of the maids found it beside the bed. I thought you should see it.

Giles, Lord Bankham

Hugh exhaled roughly, stunned.

He covered his face with his hands. Then dragged them down and closed his eyes and threw his head back.

He sat for a moment. He took two long, deep, somewhat unsteady breaths, as something soft and golden filtered through the fissures in his being made by grief and exhaustion, knitting them, healing them. It was a peace unlike any he’d known before.

He closed his eyes to be alone, for the first time, with the certainty that he loved and was loved.

Was it enough?

Was it selfish to do what his heart now compelled him to do?

Perhaps.

He just knew that he had to do it anyway.

Seconds later it seemed—but the warmth and direction of the sun told him it was more like an hour—he jerked awake.

He apparently hadn’t opened his eyes after he closed them. He’d dozed. He stirred, and stretched, and then turned his body.

And then froze.

Sitting on the opposite settee, staring at him, was a woman with flaxen hair spiraling from her ribbons.

Holy Mother of God.

“Amelia?” he whispered.

It had been just before dawn when their family’s townhouse came into view, and the street was quiet and empty. Her parents would have been awake all night, and, as Hugh said, were likely worried sick. She was trying to decide whether attempting to go in through the servants’ entrance or the front door was more advisable. There was really no way to avoid facing them.

She’d spent her time in the hack rearranging her hair as best she could without a mirror. That, and sobbing.

And then she saw a man slinking toward the servants’ entrance of the townhouse, keeping to the shadows. He was carrying a hat and overcoat and walking stick. She thumped the roof of the hack hard, and it stopped.

There was no mistaking who it was.

She leaped out of the hack. “St. John!” she half hissed, half whispered.

St. John froze almost comically midstep. Then whirled.

And stared, agog, at the apparition that was his sister emerging from a hack just before dawn. Slightly disheveled, definitely probably still rosy in the cheeks and lips, eyes probably a little swollen. She’d done her weeping in the hack and that was the last place, she told herself, she’d do it. Although she wouldn’t hold herself to that.

He clearly wasn’t drunk, or if he was, not very. St. John’s face reflected a dozen emotions and suspicions, but no doubt he’d come to some of the right conclusions. He wasn’t a fool.

“Listen,” she whispered, slowly, and said carefully, “I leaped out of our carriage when we were stopped on the bridge, because I suddenly needed to use the bourdaloue, so I ran back to The Grand Palace on the Thames, where I encountered you, because you’d stopped in to say goodbye to Mr. Delacorte and arrange for more chess lessons. We waited until morning and then took a hack home together, because it was safer to travel in the morning and the roads were clearer.”

St. John’s face was quite the kaleidoscope for a fleeting moment. Alarm, concern, hilarity, curiosity scudded by as she watched. It concluded on sympathy.

That was the one that hurt.

He looked as though he wanted to say a lot of things.

Instead, he just reached out and straightened her bonnet.

“Got it,” he said gently.

He looped his arm through hers, and they went up the front stairs together.

“How did you know I went to say goodbye to Mr. Delacorte?” he whispered just as he was about to turn the key.

She almost laughed.

“Good morning, Hugh.” Amelia Woodley offered a little smile.

He stared at her. He was aware that he was frowning, but couldn’t quite help it.

“What the . . . for God’s sake . . . am I . . . dead? Are you?”

Perhaps he wasn’t fully awake. He pivoted his head. Everything looked very much the same, but then it didn’t seem unreasonable for heaven to look a bit like The Grand Palace on the Thames.

“Well, by now everyone knows I’m not precisely an angel, so this isn’t heaven. You’re alive. For a moment I wasn’t certain, however.” Her wobbly smile showed she was uncertain about the joke, too. “The maid called Dot made me tiptoe in. She said you needed your rest.”

He hadn’t even heard the knock on the door.

He stared at her, amazed. Waiting to feel . . . something. Perhaps he’d felt too many things in the past several days, or the pitch of his emotions had been such that any smaller emotions simply didn’t register.

His manners drove him to his feet. “Amelia . . . I’m glad to see you. Are you sound?”

“Please don’t get up, Hugh. I’m sound. And you? Are you well?”

At that, he slowly sat again.

And finally a distinct feeling penetrated his shock: the absurd banality of this exchange made him angry.

His gaze became one of rank disbelief.

She nervously looked away and tucked a spiral of her hair behind her ear.

He said nothing.

“The Clays told me you were looking for me. Hugh, I want to go home. And I don’t know how to get there. I had only enough money to pay for this lark, you see.” Her voice trembled.

He stared at her.

“Lark,” he repeated carefully. After a pause.

She knotted her hands in her lap and then studied them. He inspected her swiftly. Her blue dress was rumpled. She did indeed look a trifle hard done by.

“Six weeks’ passage across the ocean, Amelia. Months in England. Not a word to anyone since. Your father is worried unto death. He would have given you the moon, had you asked.”

His words emerged clipped and scalding.

He, who had lost so many, was nearly dizzy with disbelief she would put anyone she allegedly loved through such torment for a . . . lark.

“But he never would have let me go without him, and when would that have ever happened? Kathryn Clay said I was pretty enough and rich enough to catch an English lord who lived near her and he never would have consented to me going for that reason.”

He gave a short laugh.

“Well? Were you? Pretty enough?” he said sardonically.

Through his disbelief wound a thread of utterly mordant humor. Apparently Amelia Woodley had harbored ambitions beyond Hugh Cassidy. Here was someone else who’d learned that life was equal parts dreams and disillusionment. He couldn’t fault her for dreaming, really.

She flinched. But didn’t reply.

“And did you?”

After a moment, she shook her head, shamefaced. Mutely. She returned her gaze to her clasped hands.

“Did one catch you?”

“Hugh!” She gasped. She’d taken his meaning, all right.

He wasn’t sorry. He was too tired to be sorry or polite. “You’ve no right to any indignation, Amelia. If we’re to find a way to get you home, I shall need to know if you’re with child, and if that’s the reason you’ve finally surfaced. We’ll need to make accommodations accordingly.”

She was wide-eyed and scarlet now. This was not the deferential Hugh Cassidy she recalled. “No, Hugh. I’m not. I just want to go home. I want to go home. And I am . . . so sorry for everything.”

Sorry! Hugh was reminded once again of the inadequacies of the English language.

Amelia began to weep then, prettily but copiously. She was a fool, and she was exhausted. And he was immensely relieved she was alive and unharmed. Despite it all, his heart squeezed. He sighed, found a handkerchief in his pocket and handed it over, and while she buried her face in it, he sat for a moment in reflection.

The corn silk hair that spiraled around her jaw, the sweet round face and dark brows . . . she was indeed lovely. But he understood fully now that just as she’d never really known him, he’d never really known her. How could he? He hadn’t fully known himself, until Lillias turned him inside out.

But he was grateful to Amelia for being a grace note in his life when he’d sorely needed one. She’d been hope, when he’d had none, and nothing else to cling to. And for being the reason he was in England, where he had learned what it really meant to be in love.

By that definition, he supposed Amelia Woodley really was an angel.

“We’ll see about finding accommodation for you here and a chaperone for your crossing when we’re able to buy passage for you on a ship. Your father has provided me with enough funds to make sure you get safely home,” he said gently.

Relief animated her at once. And then uncertainty flickered.

“But you . . . won’t you be going home to America now, too?”

“Yes.” He stood up. “But not with you.”

He had a quick private word with Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand, explaining in as few words as possible who Amelia was and why she was here, something he’d long kept private for Amelia’s sake. Stalwart women that they were, they didn’t even blink. They assured him they would find accommodations for her at the top of the stairs, give her some small bit of distracting work to do, and not let her out of their sight.

Mrs. Durand in particular had some experience with the foolish decisions young girls are inclined to make about men.

She could tell Amelia that her life wasn’t over. That life was full of second and third and thousandth chances, that gambles and choices in fact happened every minute. That luck and faith were all most people had in the end, and that one day, after a number of twists and turns, she might end up happily running a boarding house by the docks with the most unlikely best friend, married to the last person on earth she’d ever thought she’d marry.

But she didn’t tell her any of that. Not yet. They fed her a scone and gave her potatoes to slice so that she could be surrounded by the soothing, feminine camaraderie of the kitchen.

While Hugh shaved, got into his coat, grabbed his hat.

And operating on faith, he went out to take the biggest gamble of his life.