All or Nothing, page 7
Clement chuckled unhappily. “Oh, I’m more suffocating than you are. I’ll be just like my mother when I’m old, won’t I? Listening to her talk is like looking upon my doom.”
“Of course not!” Simon said feelingly.
“I will. I hardly have the option of being like my father. The man never opened his mouth. I suppose he saw there was no point to it. I’m sorry I dragged you with me to see her. I don’t want to drive off Aloysius, and...”
And he hadn’t wanted to go alone. “I know. That’s all right.”
“And I’ll be nice to Miss da Silva. I promise.”
“Thank you.”
Simon had finished his noon watercolor of the lake and was trying to concentrate on sketches of designs for the folly, but Maggie was asleep again on the blanket beside him in a syllabub of skirts and a cherry-red sash, which he himself had tied in a large bow at her back that morning. Her face was buried in her arms, her hat laid atop her hair to keep off the sun. One calf in a clocked stocking protruded from her petticoats.
He was losing his mind.
The sun was uncomfortably warm; when she slept with such abandon, why shouldn’t he take off his coat?
But he kept it on as the afternoon advanced and the heat worsened. Miss da Silva awoke at last, rolling onto her back. Feeling her sleeve and side where they had rested against the ground and were now soaked in sweat, she wrinkled her nose. “I need a bath. Or at least some more perfume.”
Simon could smell tuberoses even now, faintly. “No more perfume.”
She looked contrite. “I’m sorry, do I use too much? It’s so hard to tell. I mostly stop smelling it myself after an hour or two.”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t what I meant.”
She shrugged and tilted her face up to the sun, shutting her eyes contentedly. “It hasn’t been this warm in years. I think I might go for a swim.”
Simon could feel his eyes turning to saucers.
“Would you like to join me?”
He shook his head.
She frowned at him. “You’re wilting. You should at least take off your coat.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m not a lady, you know. I wouldn’t be offended by the sight of your sleeves.”
“I don’t want to.”
His sharpness took her aback, but she collected herself quickly. “All right,” she said peaceably. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mother you.”
It still startled him, the ease with which she gave in.
Her gown wrapped around and over her, pinned and tied, but she deftly removed it all, starting with the knot he’d made in her sash. Stays, stockings, and shoes rapidly followed, and into the lake she waded. “Ai meu Deus it’s cold,” she gasped. “And I meant to be good and keep my hair dry! Ah well, here goes.” She ducked under, surfacing with a gasp. Simon saw her wet shift plastered to the inward dip of her waist before she dove in again.
She came up in the middle of the lake, her smile exuberantly blinding. Her shift floated around her like a jellyfish. “The water’s lovely! Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”
“I’m working.” He wished it weren’t a lie. He was doodling windows and archways, but mostly he was watching her.
She hesitated a moment, then bobbed onto her back and paddled off, her body unselfconsciously on display. The sun sparkled off the water she threw up as she went.
He didn’t actually need to do anything until his next watercolor at three. It had been a long time since he’d gone for a swim, and he loved it. What was he afraid of? That he would be overwhelmed by desire and ravish her there in the water?
Well, that was certainly part of it.
A sudden, brutal image slammed through him: dragging her to him as she resisted. She was thrashing to get away, but she would have to calm and submit if she didn’t wish to go under. She would cling to him, permitting any liberty— The sun beat down and his pulse raced, his face so hot he felt feverish. His cock ached sharply. It was disgusting. He was disgusting. Being dunked in cold water would do him good.
Why was he so intent on resisting?
He remembered what Maggie had said. If you don’t say no with your mouth, you end up saying it with your heart. The more he looked at that truth, the more it stretched and twisted, curving back on itself like a stone serpent eating its tail on a cathedral wall.
Simon had lied and said no to a lot of things he’d wanted. Once he’d given Clement an inch, Simon had never had the strength to keep him from taking a mile—so eventually he’d started withholding the inches too. Had he forgotten how to say yes? He could barely hear his heart speaking anymore; he only remembered that he couldn’t trust it. It was an organ as perverse, overeager, and contrary as his cock.
But he did know he wanted to get into that water. It didn’t have to be all or nothing. He didn’t have to fuck her just because he went for a swim. And, he realized with a deep sense of relief, Maggie wouldn’t press him to.
He turned away as he stripped down to his shirt—he had unfortunately omitted small-clothes to preserve the line of his pantaloons—but he heard her whoop of triumph and realized he was grinning. He plunged into the water with an enthusiasm he’d forgotten, momentarily startled by how the water slowed him down and he had to struggle to walk forward. He gave up the struggle and dove under.
Maggie caught her breath when Simon came up out of the water laughing, slicking his hair out of his eyes. Wet, it was black as jet, and clung glittering to his scalp. She could almost see the color of his skin through his wet shirt. His shoulders and arms were beautiful, like something carved in marble by a sculptor who loved his model.
Lust fizzed like champagne in her throat, purely happy even though she knew she couldn’t have him. She was alive and it was summer, the sun on the lake was beautiful and he was beautiful. She splashed water at him with her cupped hand and he splashed back, looking happy too, as if his fine clothes had trapped him and now he was free.
She had missed this weightless liberty so much, legs and arms flailing, water slipping and sliding against her skin, ducking under the surface and coming up for a great breath of fresh air. She wanted so much to take her shift off too and swim naked.
Simon ducked under the water and grabbed her ankle. She shrieked, accidentally kicking him in the shoulder, and they both laughed and splashed and raced each other back and forth across the lake. And even though she was flushed with wanting him, she hadn’t felt so pure in a long time, so at one with the world and free of calculation or design. She ought to spend more time out-of-doors in the sun. She ought to leave the city more.
The thought ruined the innocence of the moment. Her own meaning was so transparent: Simon worked out-of-doors, and was rich enough to travel and stay at friends’ palaces with grounds bigger than Hyde Park. She felt greedy, and disloyal to Meyer, who took her out of the city whenever they could afford it. How was Meyer? Was he sad right now, and missing his father? Was he missing her?
What if he wasn’t missing her? What if right now he was thinking, I ought to leave England more?
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m getting cold, that’s all. I’d better go in.”
Even during the hottest summer in years, it wasn’t warm enough in England to let the shift dry on her body. She took it off and wrung it out, sluicing water from her skin with the flat of her hand. She didn’t look to see if Simon was watching her.
Slipping her dry petticoat over her head, she spread the shift on the grass and let down her hair to dry. Then she pulled a pencil and paper from her satchel and wrote a letter to Meyer.
“Who are you writing to?”
She looked up with a start, relieved to have been focused enough on her letter that she hadn’t heard him coming. But relief fled at the sight of Simon buttoning his pantaloons. She caught a glimmer of skin and a few dark curly hairs in the gaps between buttons before he pulled up the flap. And just as she dragged her eyes unwillingly upward, he pulled his sodden shirt over his head.
She tried and failed to swallow, making a sound like a beached fish. His chest was pale but beautiful, with a spray of freckles on his left shoulder above his collarbone. She could see the hair under his arms, and the smattering of dark hair in the center of his chest.
Maggie smothered a laugh at that; she and Meyer were wont to mock hairless Englishmen. But suddenly there was something raw and sweet in that unprotected expanse of chest, his dark pink nipples standing out like...
She couldn’t think clearly enough to finish the sentence. She wanted with single-minded ferocity to take his nipple in her mouth. She wanted to push him back on the blanket and touch and bite and lick and kiss every inch of exposed skin while he laughed and pretended to push her away.
He spread his shirt by her shift and dropped onto the blanket. “Who are you writing to?” he asked again. The color was high in his cheeks, but his voice made a convincing show of nonchalance about their current mutual state of undress.
She made herself look at his face. That turned out to be worse, all that bare skin blurred at the edges of her vision. “Meyer. Do you think Lord Throckmorton would frank the letter for me?”
Simon blinked. “I’d forgotten, Clement can frank letters now.” He smiled with grudging but unmistakable affection. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to demonstrate his new privilege.”
Maggie felt a pang of jealousy. Folding up the letter, she put it in her satchel to finish later. “I’m to send it to his father’s office so his mother doesn’t see it.” She sighed. “She’s probably throwing brides at him as we speak.” She could picture them, pretty demure girls with gold in their hair and ears, whose mothers had taught them to make perfect puffy gemberboles and say the prayers on Shabbat and probably play the pianoforte.
“Would it upset you if he married?”
“I think it would, yes.” She huffed a laugh. “Even though I don’t want to marry him myself. What’s that expression—dog in the manger?”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” He lay back on the blanket, knotting his fingers together behind his head. She wanted to lie down and listen to his heartbeat. “I knew Clement was jealous of me. He doesn’t like that you’re here; I dread one day having to tell him I love someone else. But until this morning, I didn’t really admit that I’m jealous of him too. I hate Aloysius Darling.”
“I don’t think that’s only jealousy. Aloysius Darling is an ass.”
To her surprise, he reached up and curled a loose lock of her hair around his finger. “Where did you learn to swim?”
She held herself very still so his hand wouldn’t brush her breast. If it did, he’d pull back. “In Lisbon as a little girl. And Meyer and I have gone down to Brighton a few times. He can visit the Peerless Pool in summer, but of course mere women are not allowed.”
“People do swim in the Thames, I believe,” he offered dubiously.
“I can see by your face you wouldn’t risk swallowing that water either.”
To her regret, he dropped her hair. “Do you miss Lisbon?”
“Yes, though I wouldn’t want to go back. The sunlight is yellow and the water’s nearly turquoise. Unless colors are always brighter in memories of childhood, I don’t know. I was only six when my mother brought me here. I know the beaches in Lisbon are soft sand, not like the hard pebbles at Brighton that hurt your feet.” She dug her bare toes into the grass, remembering. “I don’t have many memories of my father, but I remember holding onto him in the waves and knowing he’d keep my head above the water.” Absently, she brushed a bit of her hair across her mouth—and then realized she’d taken up the same tress he’d been toying with.
She flushed, hoping he hadn’t noticed, and made herself keep talking. “A lot of soldiers wrote home about Portugal during the war. Everyone was talking all over town about the awful food, the garlic, the sardines...it made me dreadfully homesick. When we went to the beach, my father would buy us sardinhas assadas and pieces of torrão de Alicante.”
“What’s that?”
“A sweet made of almonds and egg whites. I buy it in the East End sometimes, but either they don’t make it the same, or I’ve forgotten what it really tasted like.” She looked at him. “What do they eat in Yorkshire? Other than Yorkshire pudding.”
He laughed that distinctive, endearing laugh. “I admit I do love Yorkshire pudding. At home it’s often a first or last course, not a remove like in the south. Our nurse used to smother it with jam and powdered sugar. I wish I had some right now.”
Beads of water still shimmered in his navel and collected in the hollows of his chest, the dip at the center of his ribcage. “And around Whitsuntide, the dairy-man always tithed leftover curds for cheese tarts, another Yorkshire delicacy. When one was baking you could smell rosewater and clove-pepper—that’s what we call allspice up there—all over the house. I used to beg to eat it as it came out of the oven puffed up like a cloud, but with the wisdom of age I can see it would be runny and burn my mouth...”
Eventually the sun dried them, and their clothes. Her shift billowed slightly as if to blow away every time a breeze came across the lake and ran through the grass, but neither of them made any move to dress. Somehow over an hour passed, only in describing food and sharing the food that was in their basket. They talked on while he painted the lake twice more (moving on to favorite holidays, fables, and performers at Astley’s Amphitheater; amusing family squabbles; and other equally vital topics).
Words poured out of them as they finally dressed, walked back to the house, and ate dinner. Maggie was conscious that they were being rude and ignoring the rest of the party, and that Lord Throckmorton looked more unhappy every time Simon laughed, despite the other guests’ efforts to cheer him—but she couldn’t stop talking. After dinner they escaped upstairs without port or tea and talked on their bed about nothing of consequence until nearly two in the morning, exclaiming with delight at every point of agreement or coincidence, and with almost equal delight when disagreement offered an opportunity for debate.
It was that particular species of conversation that was colored through and through by showing off, by knowing the other person thought you pretty and witty and generally splendid, and loving that he thought it because he was the best thing you’d ever seen. The kind of conversation that made you feel slightly foxed. Discovering they’d both watched the sham naval battle on the Serpentine when the Tsar was in London felt like...fate.
It was, Maggie admitted to herself, the kind of conversation you had with someone when you were about to fall in love and you just couldn’t wait for it to happen.
Chapter 5
Simon had come to Throckmorton to work. He’d brought Maggie here so he could work. And now for the third day in a row he was accomplishing nothing, because he would rather be talking to her than doing anything else on earth. He bubbled over with things to say to her.
He sat dutifully at a library table with his books spread around him, and he’d been staring at the same illustrated plate of archways for the last twenty minutes.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way. Well, he could remember the last time he hadn’t been able to concentrate on work—that happened all the time. But this happiness...
No, he did remember: Clement, years ago. Deep down, he’d been afraid he’d never feel this way again. That at five-and-twenty, he’d had his chance at a great love and ruined it. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? He was only five-and-twenty, and England was full of people.
Just now, England seemed very full of Maggie, in the best way possible.
He looked up—raised his eyes the merest fraction—and there she was, curled up on a sofa and frowning slightly over her letter. That dip of her brow in profile was a lovely thing. He copied it in miniature with his pencil, on his fourth try satisfied that he had done it justice. And then he was drawing her. The graceful line of her profile, the curve of her ear, the upsweep of her hair disappearing under a smooth bandeau with a few ringlets tumbling over, the slope of her neck and shoulders. He supposed by her loose posture that she wore her short stays today.
Easy familiarity with another person’s underthings was an intimacy he hadn’t had in a long time. Yes, his thwarted arousal at being surrounded by her scent and linens was annoying, but he had missed sharing quarters with someone other than a valet.
As he mused, his hand added the surrounding architecture without conscious direction: bas-relief wooden columns, delicate gilt ironwork on the spiral staircases and the balustrades of the second story of bookshelves, the portrait of Clement’s grandmother that hung between the windows.
It was a neat little drawing, but his favorite thing in it was still that first curve of her eyebrow.
“Do you think white plaster or red brick would look better reflected in the lake?” he asked, more to start a conversation than because the question preoccupied him overmuch at the moment.
She glanced up, mouth working pensively. “I think red brick would look best at noon,” she said at last, “but white would show more at all hours of the day.”
“Then we’re of one mind.” He was inordinately pleased by their agreement, and by the aptness of her observation. “I—”
“I beg your pardon,” she said apologetically, “but I want to finish this letter to my mother, and my spelling in Portuguese isn’t good enough to allow for distractions.”
Her tone was conciliatory, her smile charming, but his heart sank. Every part of him sank; the high ceiling appeared suddenly further away. “Turnabout is fair play,” he said, striving to sound unaffected and wishing he’d kept silent instead. “You’ve been distracting me all morning.”
She was flattered by the admission, at least. She ducked her head and bit her lip to hide her smile. “Have I really? I’m sorry, I know you brought me so you could do more work, not less. Here, I’ll remove us both from the path of temptation.” And gathering her things from the sofa just on the other side of his writing desk, she took herself to another at the far end of the library.
