“Kiss me,” he murmured.
At first the words puzzled her. Was not that what they had just been doing—kissing? But then she remembered what he had said this morning aboutherkissinghim. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, and his eyes followed the gesture.
Oh, this was not what she had wanted of this hour—this standing here with him, just inside her front door, his hands cupping her cheeks, hers spread over his chest, her fingers nestled among the crisp folds of his neckcloth. Not touching him anywhere else, though she could feel the heat of him with every part of her body. She could smell the subtle musk of his shaving soap or cologne.
Kiss me.
She slid her hands upward to his shoulders, broad and firm beneath her grip, leaned closer, and kissed him. His lips were soft and warm, still slightly parted. Terribly masculine. So was the rest of him. For, in moving her hands and stepping closer, she had brought her bosom to his chest and the rest of her body against his. She could feel the muscled hardness of his body against the length of hers and the strength of his thighs through the light wool of her dress. A sharp stabbing of sheer raw desire sliced through her, and she pushed back from him, breathless and a bit panicked.
He looked back at her, his hands on either side of her waist, and said nothing.
“Harry,” she said, and wished her voice were not quite so breathless. “I must apologize. For what I asked you when you walked me home from the Cornings’ house, for what I then went on to say and imply, for inviting you in last evening, for letting you come to chop my wood this morning, for agreeing to your coming again this evening. It must end. Now. It cannot continue. We would only be courting disaster.”
His eyes were smiling even if the rest of his face was not. He had removed his hands from her waist and clasped them at his back.
“You are right,” he said. “I have been telling myself all day long—allweeklong—that it would be madness.”
And how totallyillogicalof her to feel disappointed, to know that now, within the next minute or so, he would be gone and the loneliness that sometimes needled at her would come slamming back like a blow to the stomach.
She smiled back at him.
“You look very different without your cap,” he said. “Very beautiful.”
The compliment warmed her even though it was a gross exaggeration. Her cheeks were still hot. Her heart was still hammering. “Thank you,” she said. “Harry, I amsosorry. But Iwillknit you your scarf.”
His smile reached his lips. “You are upset,” he said. “There is no need to be. You owe me nothing, not even a scarf. It was my idea and my pleasure to chop your wood. Sometimes one likes to feel manly, and what is more manly than hefting an axe, especially when one knows a woman is looking on?” His eyes were actually laughing now.
“Oh,” she said, stung. “What makes you believe I was watching you? I wasbaking, if you will remember.”
“My vanity made me think it,” he said. “You will do horrible things to my conceit if you now tell me you did not look even once.”
“Well,” she said, “I would hate to deflate your image of yourself as a man. Maybe I peepedonce.”
“Thank you.” He laughed softly. “Shall we agree to forget about the kisses and part friends?”
Ah, but how could one forget …
“There are some biscuits left from this morning,” she said. “And the kettle is always close to boiling. Let me make some tea—”
“No tea. Or biscuits, even ginger ones. I came here straight from the dinner table,” he said. “But I think it would be a good idea for us to sit down together for a while. For surely wearefriends, Lydia, and ought to remain so. We will inevitably keep on running into each other, after all. Those meetings ought not to be embarrassing for us, ought they?”
She turned in to the living room and plumped up the cushions on the back of the sofa even though she had done it earlier.
He came and sat on the sofa, where he had sat last evening, and she took her place beside him again instead of going to sit on her chair, as she probably ought to have done. Snowball looked from one to the other of them before curling up on the hearth before the fire Lydia had lit earlier.
“Isaiah did not like me to be seen without a cap,” she said for something to say. “He thought it unseemly for the vicar’s wife to be bareheaded in public.”
“But you are not the vicar’s wife now,” he said. “Nor are you in public.”
“No.” No, they werenotin public and therefore ought not to be sitting here together. But it was such areliefthat they were going to have this final hour after all. She liked talking with him. For he did not treat her merely as a listener to his monologues. He encouraged her to talk too, and he listened to her when she did. And looked at her.
“Lydia,” he said, immediately proving her point, “tell me why you have hidden for so many years and still do hide outside your own home.”
“Why I have hidden?” She frowned.
“When you asked me if I was ever lonely,” he said, “I understood you to be admitting that you are. And I felt guilty over the fact that in all the time you have been in Fairfield, first with your husband as the vicar’s wife and more recently as his widow, I had scarcely noticed you. I did not know you and had never made any effort to get to know you. I was deeply ashamed of myself. Until, that was, it occurred to me that perhaps you wanted it that way. It struck me that perhaps you deliberately hid yourself from notice even if you were not literally a hermit. I set out to watch for it at Mr. Solway’s party last night, and it soon became clear to me that I was right. You constantly effaced yourself, even when you might have shone for a few moments as the maker of his birthday cake.”
“That was really nothing to boast about,” she said. “I enjoy baking, though I do not pretend to be an expert. Besides, it was abirthdaycake. Everyone’s attention needed to be upon Mr. Solway, not upon me.”
