“I wish I knew. He comes across as all bluster and charm, but sometimes I catch a glimpse of what he’s hiding beneath the surface of all those smiles and his ridiculous teasing and it makes me wonder if there’s more to him than that.”
“I wish I could be here to offer you advice.”
Jess shook her head. “No, I understand now why you’re going. You were like me - stuck at a fork in the road with your life shrinking around you. Every day I feel more inclined to accept Mr. Morgan’s wager. Even though it goes against my better judgment and all of the ways I’ve tried to protect myself against people like him. Because a part of me feels stuck too.”
“People like him?”
“People like him, especially men, who don’t care in the least about the consequences of their actions. Men like him who act as if they own the world and everyone in it. As if the world was created specifically for their delectation - like an oyster laboring years to produce a perfect pearl.”
“Can’t you treat him the same way?”
“I don’t know if I have that kind of fortitude or determination. If I can withstand the obscene pressure of all of that charm and bluster. He takes up all the air in the room until all I can smell and breathe is him and his presence. It should make me feel invisible - but it does just the opposite. It makes me feel seen. In ways no one has ever seen me. In ways I didn’t even know I wanted to be seen.”
Cece gave her a rueful, commiserating smile. “That’s how it felt with Henry as well. And when I found out he wasn’t ever coming back, that those letters were all I had, I went back to being invisible.”
Jess tangled Cece’s fingers in hers. “You’ve never been invisible.”
“Not to my sisters, no. But I became invisible to the rest of the world. Confined to the shadows and a half-life I never imagined myself living. It’s why I wore black for so long. Because without the black that defined me, I didn’t know who I was. Or how to get back the person I was before Henry or his death.”
“Is that what you think I’ve been doing, living a half-life?” Jess tentatively asked.
“I think that’s part of it,” Cece gently said. “I think mother’s death and father’s neglect conditioned us to expect less. To occupy a smaller space and be grateful for the barest morsel of affection. Arie did everything she could to give us stability and love, but there was always something inside me that hungered for more. I think it’s the same for you.”
“So my attraction to him is some sort of hunger for attention?”
“No. It’s a hunger for affection. And recognition. For someone to look at you and decide you are worthy of more. That you deserve that opportunity when it’s not an obligation or a responsibility for the other person.”
“I don’t know if he's the one who can give me those things. Even if I acknowledge to myself I may be seeking them.”
“My advice is to give yourself the grace to find out. Take the wager and see where it leads. Don’t let him control you or the way things unfold between you.”
Jess squeezed her hand. “Thank you, little sister. You are wise beyond your years.”
“I wish I could give you better counsel.”
“I simply needed someone to confide in. Your counsel has been exactly what I needed to determine my next step,” Jess said as she sat up and gave her sister a hug.
Chapter Two
AfterCadocleftJessamineWainwright standing in her schoolroom, brandishing her chalk like a weapon, he gleefully rubbed his hands together. It had taken every ounce of his willpower not to pin her against her desk. The fierce gaze she’d skewered him with hadn’t boded well and he knew only a scrap of dignity had restrained her from clobbering him with the erasers.
He might have let her get that close so he could twist her up for his kiss. It would have been worth the layer of chalk dust on his clothes and the tickle in his throat.
Cadoc had been orchestrating everything that was happening for months and Jess Wainwright would soon be caught in the snare he’d been carefully constructing since the day she’d turned his world upside down. She’d addressed the school board, and when asked about the design of her curriculum, the explanation was unforgettable.
It was apparent from her explanation that she was a follower of Wollstonecraft and the Suffrage Movement, things Cadocsupported as well. He’d raised four younger sisters and he wanted them to have a say in their lives. But what had struck Cadoc the most was her discussion of rational thought and how important it was to teach her students how to use it. This was the reason Cadoc had spent his life fighting for workers and organizing the mines. Because rational thought demanded that each individual consider their place in the world and their contribution to it.
After that impassioned speech, whenever he’d visited the schoolroom in the context of observation as a board member, his fascination had become more entrenched. He’d taken note of the loving glances she bestowed on her microscope. It was a fine instrument, and he understood her devotion, but the way her slender fingers brushed over it as she was delivering an explanation, set his blood on fire. He dreamt of those slender, agile fingers drifting over his skin and couldn’t breathe.
His first instinct hadn’t been to coerce her, but it was the way he’d always achieved his ends. He didn’t know how to ask her to come to him of her own accord, and he doubted she would. She was too self-contained, too sure of who she was, to come to him. Unless he left her no choice. That’s why he’d stolen her microscope. He knew his mam would be appalled by his manipulation, and that part of him, the one that missed her, was ashamed. But right now, it was only a small part.
He’d instinctively known that pirating the instrument would catch her attention. His nephew Davy had been the one who finally managed to pry the window open and abscond with it while Cad waited in the hedge with his getaway ride. The heist had happened during the last full moon, and it had been exhilarating. He’d felt like a boy again, like the boy he’d never really had the chance to be.
Jess Wainwright’s eventual capitulation would be just as exhilarating. He looked forward to unpinning the ruthlesslycoiled dark brown hair at her nape and sifting it through his fingers. He looked forward to making her soft hazel gaze cloud with desire.
Cadoc wasn’t accustomed to women who intruded on his thoughts like spectres at inopportune moments. He didn’t welcome the intrusion - and he was eager to banish it. He was certain the spell she held him under would disappear the moment she was sprawled, thoroughly debauched, beneath him. He knew he should have softened his approach, but he suspected she’d run roughshod over him if he didn’t take the lead. And he was accustomed to forcing his will on the world because life was too short and too brutal to sit idly by and let things take their natural course.
He grew weary of the distraction she presented. None of the other women of his acquaintance roused him in any way. Not since he started observing the composed schoolteacher. She was like one of the serene swans he’d watched gliding over the lake. Gilded in light and long-necked and graceful. Cadoc blamed it on his knowledge that the harshness of the world was made to beat a man down and break him in half. He’d risen above it, the hard way, and fought for every inch of his peace.
