“Elswyth, please listen. You cannot marry Gall,” Silas croaked.
Elswyth scoffed. “You’re like everyone else, then. Telling me I must marry but never happy with my choices.”
“Will you be happy, Elswyth?” Silas said, struggling against the vines. “Will you really be happy with Gall?”
“Surely you are not so concerned with my happiness, Silas. Otherwise, you would leave me alone.”
“I know of the deal he offered you. A marriage of the minds. But wouldn’t you want children, Elswyth? A family?”
“Why should I want a family?” Elswyth said. She almost laughed. “Look at what my own has done to me. What is the point of having daughters? Servants birthing servants, and the cycle goes on and on. Let someone else’s progeny suffer through it.”
“Your bloodline—”
“I do not care about my bloodline, Silas. I care about my work. And with Gall’s support, I will be able to continue it. That shall be my legacy. That is what shall remain when I am gone.”
Silas paused for a moment. He stretched his neck away from her creeping vines. “And love?”
“What?”
“Love. Will you be content with a loveless marriage?”
Elswyth watched him. She kept her mind in the vines, kept them crawling over him. Why did she feel such rage toward him? She wanted to crush him, to entangle him. Swallow him whole.
She turned away, hiding her scar in the shadow. “What man could love someone who looks like me?”
Silas paused. He swallowed. “Let me go,” he said slowly, “and I will show you.”
Elswyth’s heart pulsed. Her throat tightened.
“What?” The word was like the tremble of leaves.
“You want to know what sort of man could love you,” Silas said. “Let me go, and I will show you.”
Elswyth’s mind raced, but her body betrayed her. Her vitæ retreated from the vines, which slithered back to their roosts in the trees. Silas dropped to his feet, rubbing his throat. And then he was free. Their eyes locked, and he stepped toward her.
He found her in the half-dark. The heat of his body was even more than the heat of the air, and his breath mingled with the steam surrounding them. He slid his hand along the small of herback, and pulled her into him, firm but gentle all the same, the sweat on the bodice of her dress sticking to the sweat on his shirt. Nothing separated them now save for a few thin pieces of fabric. Beneath that, she could feel him pulsing. Heat. Muscle. Skin. The amber glow of his vitæ. All the parts of a living thing.
He looked down at her, sweat making threads of his hair stick to his face. His right hand left her lower back and traveled upward, tracing her waist, her breast, then her face and her scar. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear before taking her cheeks in his hands. He lifted her chin so that she looked into his eyes, and the softness there swallowed her.
“Silas…” she said.
“Do you want me to stop?” he said. His lips grazed her cheek, each touch stinging like poison. She could feel the vitæ moving between them, snapping like electricity.
She knew she should push away—should run to the party, to the man and the future waiting for her—but instead she shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
His lip traced along hers, only a hint of moisture, an echo of pleasure.
She couldn’t bear it any longer. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down and their lips crashed together like waves. She trembled at the pleasure of it, the pleasure of heat and water, of the prickle of his shaved face, of the taste of salt and sweat.
It became too much. The heat built within her and without, and she pulled away. His lips found her neck, nibbling there, kissing the beads of sweat as they rolled down. His hands wandered over her like crawling vines, up from her waist, to her breasts, to her neck. There was hunger there, a wild hunger. And then her hands were on him, under his suit jacket, running along the muscles ofhis stomach. She could see the lines of his abdomen beneath his sweat-soaked shirt.
She peeled off his coat, forcing it over his shoulders. He accepted this gratefully, pulling the sweaty jacket off and throwing it into the dirt. His hands found the clasps on the back of her gown and undid them, deft fingers moving, until her bodice was loose and she was sliding out of it, grateful to be free, to feel the air on her sweating skin.
He started on the corset, fumbling with the laces until he gave up and stuck his hands into the crease and ripped. He cast it aside, and then she was standing there in only her shift, her breasts spilling out, pressing against the sweat-soaked fabric, barely obscured.
His hands found the hem. Then, slowly, with great care, he lifted the shift above her knee, her thigh, her waist—
Panic struck her. She grabbed his hands, stopping him.
