I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

Hugh hesitated on the threshold of the sitting room at The Grand Palace on the Thames, feet planted firmly on the marble of the foyer, postponing his entrance the way he would any rare pleasure, taking in the view. Mrs. Pariseau was emoting from a book fanned open in her hands. He counted four other shining heads bent over knitting and embroidery—Delilah, Angelique, the Countess of Vaughn, and a girl of about fifteen with red-gold hair who must be Lady Claire, all leaning into the story like it was a quenching rain. Mr. Delacorte, who’d been teaching Dot how to play chess, was sitting across from her at a little table, chin in his hands, looking ever so slightly martyred, which was inevitable when facing off against Dot in anything, really.

Against the mantel leaned a tall young man in exquisitely tailored clothes, dark hair swept artfully back from a fine, high forehead. His sole occupation appeared to be insouciance.

And then Hugh saw her.

She was sitting alone at one of the little tables placed about the room. One hand propped up her chin as she gazed toward the curtained window as though she could see right through it. She was still, but not inert. He imagined a queen of yore might adopt the same posture—patient, absorbed, at peace with her blue-blooded birthright—while her ladies in waiting settled ermine capes about her shoulders and a crown on her head. She was wearing a dress the approximate shade of new leaves, and the firelight in fact had given her something of a flaming coronet. Her hair was precisely as he recalled: a half-dozen shades of mahogany, the color of good, old, gleaming wood.

She turned slowly, her brow furrowed slightly, as if she’d caught a snatch of elusive music.

She saw him, of course.

Sparks ought to have arced from the collision of their gazes.

Slowly he stepped over the threshold into the room.

And . . . well, he recalled hearing that Sir Galahad had been speechless when he’d first clapped eyes on the grail. It was a bit like that. Words seemed both pointless and impossible.

But Galahad had allegedly been pure of heart, and that’s where the comparison ended.

Hugh’s thoughts were anything but.

Taking refuge in manners, he bowed. A little sardonically.

“Good evening, Mr. Cassidy,” she said, when he was upright again. “I see you’ve returned. I was just thinking that the only thing missing from this cozy evening was a moral arbiter. The epithet jar’s presence notwithstanding.”

Her voice was just as he remembered—all velvet superiority.

“Good evening, Lady Lillias. I’m surprised you could bring yourself to say my name, as it doesn’t begin with ‘Lord.’”

Having each thrown an initial blow and established how they meant to go on, they assessed each other for weakness or injuries. Neither of them blinked.

“It’s the very Americanness of ‘Cassidy,’ perhaps,” she said thoughtfully. “You look as though your best friend might be a bear.”

“Lillias,” her mother said reprovingly from over in the corner, and somewhat doubtfully, as if perhaps there was nothing at all wrong with having a bear for a best friend. As if one never knew with Americans.

Hugh didn’t reply. Instead he found himself slowly peeling his gloves from his hands, as though he were preparing for a bare-knuckle fight, or demonstrating how he would undress a woman whose body he intended to thoroughly savor.

Lillias’s gaze flickered.

And then dropped.

And she watched, transfixed, until Hugh’s hands were entirely bare.

A shade of deep rose moved into her cheeks. He knew triumph when her shoulders rose just a little as she pulled in a subtle steadying breath.

She returned her eyes to his with evident effort.

He didn’t smile.

“He did once spring upon a bear!” Delacorte said hopefully.

“It was the other way around,” Hugh said evenly.

This sentence naturally caused a startled silence in the room. Knitting needles went still.

Delacorte sucked in a breath to speak. “Tell the sto—”

“Another time, perhaps.”

Never had a silent conversation been louder than the one he was conducting with Lady Lillias Vaughn.

No one seemed to notice anything amiss. The ladies took up their knitting again, and Mrs. Pariseau gave her throat a clearing before she continued.

“Speaking of moral arbiters, surely a lady of your refined nature appreciates the care taken to maintain a civilized environment, Lady Lillias.” Hugh gestured at the epithet jar. “Not to mention protect your virgin ears from the stinging trauma of epithets.” He imbued every one of these deliberately chosen words with tender condescension.

She pressed her lips together and tilted her head, sympathetically. “Have you need of civilizing then, Mr. Cassidy? I suppose recognizing one’s deficiencies is the first step toward correcting them.” Her eyebrows met in concern.

He gave a little nod. “All Americans are feral. I thought you would know that, given your obvious knowledge of our habits, friends, and accents.”

“Cassidy is always a perfect gentleman,” Delacorte, who was listening, maintained loyally. “He is always very polite to the ladies in pubs who try to sit in his lap.”

Midway through this sentence Delilah had gracefully risen to pretend to adjust the ribbon in Lady Claire’s hair, and in so doing happened to casually slide her hands down to cover her ears. It clearly wasn’t the first time she’d needed to do that since the Vaughns had arrived.

She resumed her seat just as gracefully and took up her needles again, and Mrs. Pariseau cleared her throat and read on.

He was sorely tempted to laugh, but he didn’t want to miss a single twitch of Lady Lillias’s reaction. He kept her pinned in the beam of his gaze.

“How devastating it must be to be mistaken for furniture, Mr. Cassidy,” she said finally, on a grave hush, her eyebrows still canted sympathetically.

“On the contrary,” he said with silken matching gravity. “What’s a man’s body for if not to ensure a lady’s comfort and ease and safety? It’s in fact my honor and privilege to do so.”

A screen of caution moved over Lillias’s features.

He was aware of playing fast and loose with the line between impropriety and innuendo. That the ruthlessness he felt was perhaps out of proportion to the circumstance. He wanted to win, whatever that meant. Though it was clear that he might as well attempt to prove to a riptide that it had no pull at all.

“Well, the epithet jar is clearly having the intended civilizing effect upon you, Mr. Cassidy, if you’ve progressed so far as to put the comfort of . . . ladies . . . first,” she said ironically.

Was this a rebuke? He didn’t care. “How astute of you to notice. And you’ll be gratified to know that should anyone inadvertently utter an epithet in your presence, I’m certain Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand could provide smelling salts. Or should something stronger seem necessary, I understand tobacco can be vivifying.”

This occasion marked the first time in his life he’d said the word “vivifying” out loud. He’d said it primarily in the hopes that she would stare at him fixedly and with animosity, as he suspected she would.

And she did.

Every angle of her was alarmingly interesting and good. Her eyes were pale silvery blue and her lashes were black. Losing his breath had never been so delicious.

“I’ve something in my case what will wake the dead, if it’s a good strong smell you’re after,” Delacorte volunteered brightly over his shoulder.

Lillias looked at him curiously. Then gave him a polite little smile.

Delacorte’s smile faded and he pivoted away again.

“Mama, may I smell what’s in Mr. Delacorte’s case?” Claire asked.

“Certainly not, Claire,” the countess said absently and rather shortly. She was absorbed in Mrs. Pariseau’s story.

Claire shrugged with one shoulder, clearly accustomed to hearing, “Certainly not,” a good deal. She shot a quick little smile at her sister, who flashed the tiniest smile back.

The unexpected, fleeting sweetness of this exchange stopped his breath with a jolt of homesickness: for his sister, Maeve, for New York, for people he’d lost, for things that would never be the same, for the simple pleasure of sharing sly mischievous smiles with people who knew and loved him.

It left him briefly winded.

He wondered if she’d noticed.

“Interestingly, the epithet jar didn’t prevent Mr. Delacorte from sharing a new word with all of us,” Lillias said suddenly.

“Oh? What did you say, Delacorte?” Hugh turned to him.

“Oh, I said boll . . . ha. I’m not falling for that again, Cassidy.”

Hugh laughed. “I’ll take responsibility for the first syllable.” He flipped a half pence into the jar with such accurate vigor that Lillias gave a little jump. It clinked loudly, because it landed on a little metallic bed of already present pence.

The heads of the knitting ladies came up abruptly at the sound.

“You might be curious to learn, Mr. Cassidy, that a half pence is the exact cost of a scone,” Mrs. Hardy said very sweetly, yet significantly.

Hugh looked toward her sharply. She could be making that up on the spot, though one never knew—but then, Angelique and Delilah knew their budgets down to the last pence. She was clearly making a point, and he suspected what it was.

“Well, that is interesting information, indeed. The scones are worth their weight in gold, of course,” he said carefully. “Suppose a man had innocently eaten more than his fair share of scones and wished to compensate for . . . ah . . . succumbing to their divine qualities?”

There was a little pause while she studied him.

“Innocently?” She wrinkled her nose skeptically.

Hugh grinned.

“The man in question could assist with completing the construction of the stage in the Annex as the crew, and be paid with scones and gratitude,” she said briskly.

“He’d be willing to do that.” He’d actually love to do the work; he loathed having nothing constructive to do while he waited for letters that might never arrive. “I wonder what became of the men doing the work?”

“So do we,” Angelique said darkly.

“It’s so difficult to get good help,” the countess said brightly, as though delivering a line in a play.

Dot had gotten hold of her knight and was making little clopping sounds against the roof of her mouth as she pretended to gallop it across the board. She claimed this helped her concentrate.

Delacorte lifted pleading, deeply regretful eyes to Delilah and Angelique. He was as sturdy as a Welsh pony and his hair tended to tuft out above his ears when it got a little long, which made him look a bit like a squirrel. And his eyes were lovely. Large and misty blue, the eyes of a dreamer.

They shrugged and smiled back at him with limpid, impish gratitude. The truth was, thanks to him, Dot already played a creditable, if unorthodox, game of chess. One day Dot was going to win a game. With somebody. Most likely with herself.

“I should say it’s so lovely to have you back, Mr. Cassidy, as we’re reading stories about gods and goddesses,” Mrs. Pariseau, a dashing, worldly widow whose dark hair was streaked in striking white and whose sense of humor was bawdy, said. “Would you like to take a turn with the voices? You’ve such a fine baritone you ought to be on stage. I should think you’d make a wonderful Hades.”

Mrs. Pariseau thought everyone who possessed a gift she appreciated ought to share it with the world via the stage.

She patted an empty chair near her. Hugh, contentedly, pulled it out and settled. He rather savored knowing Lady Lillias couldn’t help but note that he, and his fine baritone and carpentry skills, was so welcome and appreciated.

“Tell me, Mrs. Pariseau . . .” All the ladies turned abruptly, eyes wide, when Lillias spoke, as it was the first time she’d voluntarily addressed them in the little sitting room since she’d arrived. “Isn’t the myth of Hades and Persephone about a woman compelled to be, or shall we say, trapped, where she doesn’t want to be? Thanks to the perfidy of a man?”

Her innocence was entirely feigned.

Hugh leaned back in his chair. “If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Pariseau, to address the question?” he asked politely. Mrs. Pariseau gave a magnanimous nod. “Your interpretation is interesting, Lady Lillias. I confess I’ve always thought of it as a story of a woman who was searching for an excuse to succumb to temptation. Because confronting her true desires would have scandalized not only her parents, but the entire world. Imagine wanting to be with a man who is literally beneath her. So she ate a pomegranate seed and blamed her desires upon it.”

The pretty flush in her cheeks seemed to begin at Lillias’s collarbone.

A startled, rather impressed silence fell upon the room.

“Demeter and Zeus,” Mrs. Pariseau contributed helpfully. “Those were her parents.” She sounded fascinated. “Do go on.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Pariseau,” Lillias said pleasantly. “I do think it’s rather distressing to imagine that there Persephone was, minding her business, innocently picking flowers, when Hades just decided it would be wonderful to . . . take her.”

She fixed him with an unblinking gaze.

Well, that was surprisingly well done.

Take her take her take her. The words echoed through his mind, accompanied by swift, flickering scenes and carnal little prepositions and possibilities: backwards, forwards, sideways, behind. He dug a fingernail into his palm to stop them.

He eyed her warily.

Did she understand the full implications of what she’d just said? Or was he just inclined to sift everything she said through an innuendo filter? Doubtless she’d learned that men were just that easily distracted.

“But was it . . . innocent?” He furrowed his brow. “Persephone’s actions? Or was she doing something she oughtn’t be doing out of sheer boredom, courting an outcome she was entirely unprepared for, as she had no real notion of the dangers or consequences? It strikes me as a situation in which she would never . . . possibly . . . win.”

Their eyes locked in deadly, silent combat.

Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand each sported slightly puzzled furrows in their brows. Mrs. Pariseau was now frantically scanning the pages of the book for anything that might support his hypothesis.

Lillias’s head tilted sympathetically. “Poor Hades,” said softly. “How weak he must have been to do such a thing. How very savage and desperate it must have felt to be at the mercy of a need he couldn’t ever . . . dream . . . of satisfying.”

His jaw tightened.

“Oh my goodness,” Mrs. Pariseau breathed. She touched her fingertips to her collarbone. “What a powerful and unique interpretation, Lady Lillias.”

Everyone else looked rather puzzled.

She lifted slightly and let fall one shoulder with a little self-satisfied smile.

Hugh took pains to make his own faint smile pitying. An intimation that, while her goad was amusing, she hadn’t a clue who she was up against.

Her satisfied expression flickered a bit.

Hugh rubbed his chin pensively. “Well, it certainly relieved her of the need to make that decision for herself, didn’t it? Perhaps being swiftly taken by someone so uncivilized was a dream she’d never, ever admit to . . . given that she was so above him.”

He had the pleasure of actually seeing her breath hitch.

“Then again, at least he’s the lord of the underworld,” he added. “I’m sure that eventually brought her a good deal of comfort.”

Mrs. Pariseau was now madly flipping through the book. “What a stimulating discussion,” she enthused. “I didn’t know you were a scholar of mythology, Mr. Cassidy. I must say I’m impressed with your conjectures. I’m eager to hear your thoughts on Odysseus. The poor fellow lashed himself to a mast in order to avoid being lured to his death by sirens.”

“Odysseus was weak,” Hugh said idly. “Resistance is child’s play.”

Lady Lillias seemed a trifle subdued. She turned her head and resumed gazing toward the curtains.

It was in all likelihood merely a tactical retreat.

He studied the back of her head. He suddenly imagined putting his lips against the pale inch of skin just above the lace of her collar. Blood rushed to his head.

“So what you’re all saying is that Hades snatched her and took her to live in, er . . . Hades?” Lady Claire said suddenly. She’d been listening to all of this raptly, and evidently was both thrilled and scandalized. “The Hades? Where the devil lives?”

The countess looked up uncertainly, belatedly realizing that the classics were essentially full of moral pitfalls. “Er, doubtless she was quite comfortable there for the duration, Claire, dear,” her mother soothed. “It was a palace and she was the queen, after all. And she would have been waited on hand and foot. We would have all been quite comfortable there, I’m certain, if we went.”

Lillias turned toward Claire, her eyes lit with suppressed laughter, and Hugh was briefly dazzled.

“Are you advocating for all of us to go to the devil, Mother?” Lillias said innocently.

Claire bit her lip on a laugh.

Delacorte’s head shot up at this. It pivoted beseechingly this way and that to note reactions. Surely this warranted a trip to the epithet jar for the young lady.

“Did you hear . . . what she . . . what she said . . .” he prompted weakly. Chagrined at his lack of chivalry, itching for a little justice. And perhaps a little revenge.

It could not be denied that Lillias had said “go to the devil.” One simply did not say that in proper company any more than one ought to say “bollocks.” It could not be construed as anything other than naughty.

A slightly uneasy silence settled over the room.

It was a conundrum.

Angelique, the former governess, finally spoke. “Well, you pose an interesting question, Mr. Delacorte. I think perhaps it’s a bit of a technicality, as her reference in this instance was to Hades, the place. Perhaps it would warrant a trip to the jar if she had requested that one of us go to . . .” she lowered her voice delicately “. . . go to where she said we ought to go.”

“May I choose which person should go?” Lillias said gravely.

“Lillias,” her mother said exasperatedly.

“If Hades has comfortable knitted pillows and Helga’s scones I’d willingly go,” Hugh said, as if Lillias hadn’t been talking about him all along, “but something tells me Persephone isn’t the type to condescend to see to a man’s comforts.” He paused, pretending to mull. “Might I suggest that in instances where the intent was not so clear—where indeed the speaker might be attempting to, oh, get away with something he or she ought not—we ought to take a vote? It would be a useful precedent going forward.”

Lillias made a small indignant sound in her throat.

“I do like voting!” Dot enthused.

“Well, what sort of ambiguous circumstances do you anticipate, Mr. Cassidy?” Mrs. Hardy wondered.

He gave it some thought. “For instance, what if I told Mr. Delacorte that I was looking for a place to store my cricket balls, and I had a fine wooden box to put them in. But wanted to prevent thieves from opening the box. What would I need?”

“Why ball locks, of course,” Delacorte said at once, with a satisfied smile.

Which flipped upside down with horror when he realized what he’d said.

“In this circumstance,” Hugh said, “I would say that Delacorte ought to be exempt from the penalty.”

“I should say so!” Delacorte agreed, indignantly. “Entrapment!”

“Well, that sounds like a fair solution.” Delilah could sense some sort of mischief was afoot but couldn’t really see a good reason to stop it.

“Ha,” Mr. Delacorte said under his breath.

Lillias shot him a glare that had him ducking his head into his shoulders again. Her glares were powerful indeed.

All of this was for Delacorte’s sake, really, Hugh told himself. She was enjoying herself just a little too much at his expense.

“The rules are the rules, Lady Lillias,” Hugh said, sorrowfully.

Even her withering gazes were worth withstanding. Although . . . there was something lurking at the corner of her mouth that might—might—have been reluctant amusement.

He shrugged one shoulder, pityingly.

“We shall recuse ourselves from the vote, as we are your hostesses, and we will abide by your decision,” Angelique said. Delilah and Angelique lowered their knitting to their laps.

Mr. Cassidy spoke. “All those in favor of Lady Lillias putting a pence in the jar, raise your hand.”

And up went Hugh’s hand immediately. “I think it’s for the best,” he said sadly. “When one wants civilizing, the epithet jar is there to help.”

Up went Delacorte’s hand boldly. He didn’t offer an explanation apart from righteously raised brows.

Predictably, up went St. John’s and Lady Claire’s hands, as did the corners of their mouths. Siblings being siblings.

And then, in an interesting twist of plot, up went the countess’s hand.

Lillias’s stared at her balefully. “Et tu, Mama?”

“I voted in favor because you ought to stand and move about the room, dear. For heaven’s sake. You’re not doing a thing but sitting.”

Lillias sighed heavily.

Hugh noticed that Mrs. Pariseau had not raised her hand.

“Mrs. Pariseau?”

“I feel a lady ought to utter an epithet now and again, if only to experience the feeling,” Mrs. Pariseau said, quite modernly.

Lady Vaughn’s eyes widened.

“Is it a good feeling, Mrs. Pariseau?” Claire asked somberly. She darted another glance at Lillias.

“Don’t worry, Mother, Mrs. Pariseau is just discoursing spiritedly, as per the rules,” Lillias said tautly. “Very well, then. If I put a pound in the jar, may I buy one hundred epithets?”

“Lillias,” her mother warned again.

“I’m bound to learn one hundred new ones by the time we leave here,” she said, quite pointedly. “It seems a wise investment.”

Delacorte aimed a somewhat pleading look at Hugh.

“One pence is the penalty,” Hugh said firmly as a magistrate. “The people have spoken. The penalty is now due.”