Twenty-one
Words didn’t come easily just then.Thoughtdidn’t come easily just then. One minute Mina was writhing below Stephen, all her consciousness reduced to the feeling of his body against hers, his mouth on her neck, his hand—and then all of that was gone and he was halfway across the room, saying things that had no meaning at first.
Forgive him? For what? Why?
Then the air was cool against her exposed skin, and rationality began at least to come within her grasp. All the same, the answer that she first thought was:Forstopping? Never.
Mina thought of the multiplication tables. Around five, though she still desperately wanted to pick up where she and Stephen had left off, she was able to push those impulses aside and speak almost normally.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “It was my doing as much as yours.”
“It’s kind of you to say,” Stephen replied. He stood facing one of the bookshelves, his face turned away from her and his hands clasped behind his back.
Avoiding temptation, Mina thought. With his example to prompt her, she pulled her skirts back down and tugged her dress back into order. She watched her hands while she rearranged herself. Her hands were safe and familiar.
During the process, a sense of duty crept up upon her, even as she winced away. She didn’twantto say what came next. She wanted to avoid that conversation almost as much as she’d wanted to feel Stephen’s hand between her thighs or his lips on her breast.
The comparison only made the conversation more necessary.
“I don’t think we can ignore this”—she waved a hand, unsure of what to call the situation and unwilling to put it into more specific words—“any longer.”
“I’d not have said we were ignoring it just now,” Stephen said. “But aye, you’re right. Though I’m not at all sure what else is to be done about it.”
“You could lock me in my room, couldn’t you?” Mina couldn’t help saying it, or laughing as she did—and the whole state of affairswasfunny, really. “Or I could lock myself in, but that wouldn’t be half as dramatic.”
“No. If we’re going to overreact, we’d best not do it by halves. I’d have to find a dungeon somewhere.”
“There’s always the wine cellar.”
“Baldwin would never forgive me. Besides,” Stephen said, and glanced back over his shoulder, “I’d not want to be hunting Ward without your help, not if I had a choice in it.”
“Go on with you,” said Mina. A spot of warmth started up in her chest, though, and she smiled despite herself. He’d come to tell her about the thieves, too. Another man might have kept it from her, worried about feminine nerves.
Stephen smiled. “Truly. It’s a hard enough business as it is. Going it alone would be even worse.”
“Could be the problem,” she said. “Us being alone in this, I mean. Except for Professor Carter, and he doesn’t live here, and he doesn’t know what you really are. Maybe we’ve been…impulsive…because neither of us exactly has another, um—”
“Outlet?” She couldn’t hear anything in Stephen’s voice but polite contribution. He’d turned his head and was looking at the bookcase again.
“Right. Especially you. I mean, we both know I’m not exactly the sort of…of person you’d associate with normally.” She would press on ruthlessly, though saying the words out loud made her hurt in a dull and foolish way, but she couldn’t make herself saywoman, orkiss, or anything of the sort. “Under normal circumstances. And certainly not the kind who’d know anything secret about you.”
“Outside my family,” Stephen said, still in that politely remote voice, “I can count on one hand those who know my other form. You’re the only full human among them—the only one living, at least.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mina. She looked up from her hands at the straight line of his back, at his squared shoulders. “Our lives must go by pretty quickly, for you.”
“Very quickly. If—” he started to say, and then shook his head. “One grows accustomed.”
The air between them felt heavy with the things Mina didn’t ask. She settled on a relatively safe question, one that didn’t bring up the sort of people who did know Stephen well, or the identity of anyone in particular he might have lost. “You still have friends, though, don’t you?”
“Friends, aye. Some.”
“Oh. Well. That’s what I was saying, really,” she said. Stopping to think about the implications of being the only mortal to know his secret—or to wonder if he thought of her as some sort of more intelligent and more, er,eligiblepet—would have been a disaster, so Mina pressed on, heedless of whether one sentence really led into another.
“You don’t really get to see your friends right now. Or your own sort. And I’m about the place, being helpful, and I already know a few things, so—well, so it makes sense that you’d, um, turn to me.”
His dark head moved, the merest suggestion of a nod. “I suppose that would be an explanation. And for you?”
Just as well that Stephen was facing the other way. Mina was blushing before she’d even begun to answer. “I’m not exactly at home myself, am I? Nobody else here knows what’s going on. Until the servants got used to me, I didn’t talk much with anyone but you, and even now I can’t tell them everything we’re doing. I’m out of my depth by half, and you’re a handsome man.”
