“I later emended it to enchantress.”
“Yes, that’s much better. And have I enchanted you?”
She meant it as a joke and was smiling, but he was not smiling when he said, “Yes.”
She was in very great danger of feeling things she shouldn’t, thinking he felt things he couldn’t.
“Oh, goodness.” She stood, yawning. “I must to bed.”
Suddenly, she heard her words as an invitation.Bedwas not an innocent piece of furniture but a place for far more than sleep. She felt herself color.
But he hadn’t heard it that way, at all.
“I will retire also.” He was already on his feet. “All that picnicking and standing up.”
“Yes.”
They lit their candles, and he turned down the lamps. They walked to the staircase. They climbed the stairs, side by side.
At the top, she turned to him to say good night as his room was in a different wing from hers, but he was already moving in the direction of her wing.
He turned around and walked backwards, holding his candlestick up. “I will light your way, Miss Beasley.”
He gave her a grin, and, for a moment, he looked positively boyish.
Thirteen
“You’re drunk,” her king said.
“And you’re beautiful.” The concubine spilled her wine across the table.
“Am I?” he said, amused.
“I could look at you forever,” she said and closed her eyes.
—The Concubine and Her King.Unpublished MS.
They stood outside her bedchamber. She looked at him. He looked at her.
The earl swayed towards her.
For a mere fraction of a second, his eyes widened in alarm. It was as if he had just realized he was standing on the edge of an abyss, about to tumble in. But the moment passed. He retreated, regained his icy equilibrium, squared his admirable shoulders.
He addressed the door behind her, all rigid back and formality now, no hint of the boy about him.
“I am not insensible as to how things might happen between a man and a woman.”
He shifted his gaze from the door to her face.
She wanted all the impossible things. To float in a sea the color of his eyes. To follow him everywhere without his knowing, to become a shield made of shadow. To put her hand to his temple and soothe the pain lurking in the crinkle of an eyelid, to ruffle hairs where silver had overtaken gold.
She might do that last thing. She might touch him. It was not so impossible. He was within reach, a pat on the shoulder or the hand.
No, no, no, never, never, never, don’t, don’t, don’t.She would not make him into a brother. She would not make him into something he was not.
“It has always fallen to my sex to pursue yours,” he said and stopped, but the words hung in the air, incomplete.
“But,” she prompted. She had absolutely no notion what words might come out of his mouth next, and she wanted to hear those words. She could fill her mind with impossibilities later, once she was alone in her bedchamber.
