Nell felt her heart hammering against her ribs. “We are not as we once were.”
Beckett shook his head. “We are not.”
“What has changed?”
Beckett looked at her in a way that she believed could be anything from pity to sadness to confusion. Would she tell herself the truth? That she found this dark-haired, stormy man attractive? That she valued his companionship more than anyone else’s?
“You know what has changed,” Beckett said.
Her mouth went dry. “Do I?”
He licked his chapped lips, and suddenly she could do nothing but stare at them. This was unprecedented. She’d never felt this way. Suddenly thinking a kiss would be nice? She looked down, breaking the magic of his hold on her.
“I plan on attending the dinner with you. If you want.”
She looked up at him again, surprised. “Yes.”
“Excellent.”
“Yes,” she said. They stared at each other. She should retreat farther. Into her house, but her feet were frozen to the spot. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
His expression changed yet again, and she wasn’t sure what this one meant either. But there was an instinct in her, saying that it was his interest in her. That he wanted to kiss her too, but wouldn’t. “Of course.”
And then he spun on his heel and left her on the sidewalk, reeling from unspoken words and undercurrents she didn’t understand. She felt like gasping for air, even though she could breathe perfectly well. She was dizzy and moved unsteadily into her home. This was new. She didn’t know how to cope with any of it.
What did other women do in the face of a suitor? A new dress would be a good idea, of course. Something not gray orlavender. Fatima would be the best choice for helping choose an appropriate dinner dress. She had an eye for color that neither Chastity, being Quaker, nor Jane, who was too skewed by the latest fad, possessed.
She wrote a note to Fatima, asking for her help, and then went about her correspondence work. There were several letters she had fallen behind on responses, including her chess match conducted via post. She updated her opponent’s move on her board and tried to think about her counter, but found she was merely staring at the checkered wood, not thinking about the pieces. Her mind was on Beckett. The way his hair looked today, tousled by the wind as his hat was blown back, and he’d had to reseat it. The twitch to his mouth when he said he’d accept the invitation.
Her mind was normally a loud, cacophonous place full of competing ideas, which ranged in concern for her household budget, the nonlinear progress of political thought, and how different art movements had thus progressed, and, when taking in the influences of music and literature, what the art world might next anticipate.
But now, all that prodigious brain power centered on Beckett, tearing him apart like a swarm of buzzards picking over his bones. “Enough!” she told herself aloud, getting to her feet.
This was the first time her mind hovered over a person. Certainly, in the past she’d whipped herself into a frenzy over Monsieur Cobb, and then Mrs. Dove-Lyon, when she awaited word of her decision. But this was something altogether different, as she analyzed the detail of his eyelashes (two crossed over themselves on his left lower lid, creating a pleasing diamond shape), to his earlobes (detached, which was her preference for beauty standards), to the strange, almost leonine tilt of his upper lip. She could not say why it seemed to resemble a lion, only that the pinkish hue of his mouth, and the abrupttilt of it somehow made it so. Though her experience of lions was from a visit to the Royal Menagerie at the Tower, and illustrations from books that held very little resemblance to the actual animal.
An impish thought took her: She could abandon her work today and spend her afternoon indulging in thoughts of him. It was a strange notion—giving up her correspondence? Especially when she felt that gnaw of anxiety that she was not keeping up with her typical rigorous response. But how delicious it seemed—more than any teacake he could have brought her to accompany their tasting. And so she did. She sanded the ink on what pages she had, forewent a chess move, and put away her writing utensils and stationery as quickly as she could.
She curled up on her bed, shoes off, but stockings and all remained in situ. It wasn’t as if she were napping. And should anyone need her, she wanted to be able to bounce up and respond. But how lovely to feel her body bend around itself, cocooning her tender heart and appropriated mind.
That night, Becketttook himself in hand for the first time in months. He had never been a man overpowered by carnal needs, but he found himself aching. And the vision that he called up was so banal, he didn’t understand how it brought him off, but it did—the vision of Mrs. Reid, looking at him so squarely in the eye, reaching out to touch his face, and asking him to call her by name. Letting him into her, not just in body, but in totality, so that it was never unclear that she belonged to him alone.
The next morning, he was stiff again, like a bare-faced youth, and feeling embarrassed at his own vigor, he splashed cold water on his face and neck until the ache subsided. He couldn’t verywell bring himself off thinking of her and then meeting up with her within the hour. It seemed wrong, somehow.
Even so, when he met her at the Hyde Park entrance on the dark, blustery morning, the tension and ache in his loins was palpable, which seemed impossible in the cold temperatures. But she made so many impossible things work, why should she not influence him in this way as well? They strode in companionable silence, or at least, what had once been companionable until he took to liking her more than he ought.
It struck him as odd though, since he was a grown man, of title and agency and power, that he felt he was trespassing some taboo for being attracted to her. She was a widow, and he had no intention of giving up his bachelorhood. It was a common for a man to woo a widow—they were called Merry Widows for a reason. Especially one as young as Mrs. Reid. But there was something about her, like those frogs he’d read about in the vibrant green jungles on the banks of the Amazon, brightly colored like jewels, conspicuous only to warn predators.
She’d made her unavailability clear, had she not? Or maybe, rather, he’d only thought it because he’d felt that way about himself? But the frisson between them, surely that was real for her as it was for him?
A crow cawed in the tree they approached, as if telling him to stop being such a rotter, and then flew off. It reminded him that, as a sworn bachelor, it was rather bad taste to lead a lady into believing he was interested in a romantic relationship. Mrs. Reid was not a flirt, and not a woman who would consent to being a long-term mistress. At least, he didn’t think so. And he wasn’t the sort to engage in that lifestyle either. He had never had a mistress, and while most of his colleagues believed him to be most discreet, only Timothy knew the truth of his preferred celibacy.
If she was not the sort to be a mistress, and he wasn’t the sort to keep a mistress, why shouldn’t he marry her?
Because he’d determined long ago that he wouldn’t marry at all, that’s why. And what had been his reasoning? He pondered that, reaching back across decades, trying to remember exactly what it was that had made him foreswear the institution. It wasn’t marriage itself; it was the whole soulless business of raising an unloved child solely to pass along an inheritance. To be with a woman for dynastic purposes, to birth a child for history—not for the child themselves, or even as the accidental product of desire. It felt not immoral, but surely unethical.
His own childhood hadn’t been that bad, but it certainly hadn’t been good. He didn’t want another to have to trifle through such an existence. And since much of his life had not been optional for him but rather thrust upon him by the accident of his birth, he wanted to control that part. The heirs part. To counteract the idea that family was about the control of wealth.
Settling the responsibility onto his sister’s shoulder seemed grand. She had wanted children and seemed to like her spouse. As much as he’d ever asked, anyway. Giving her sons the path to fortune divested himself of some of his burden, never believing he would ever change his mind about marriage and heirs. Given the sort of high-bred ladies he crossed paths with, his surly, misanthropic manner was not found endearing, let alone endurable.
