This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)

Lavinia lifted her chin, put on her boots and walked. In the few nights before Christmas, a musicians’ company sent men on the streets to play through the darkness of night. There were no players anywhere near her house, of course, but in these quiet hours before dawn, the haunting sound of twin recorders came to her in tiny snatches. The sound wafted through the fog like fairy music. She’d catch a bar, but before the melody resolved itself into a recognizable tune, it slipped away, melting into the fog like the shadow of a Christmas that had not yet come.

As she walked through the engulfing mist, those enchanted notes grew fainter and fainter. By the time she reached Norwich Court, they had disappeared altogether.

When she arrived at his home, she realized she had no key to unlock his door. Surely, his chamber was too distant for him to hear her knock.

A little thing like impossibility had never stopped Lavinia.

She was systematically testing the windows when the creak of a door opening sounded behind her.

“Lavinia?” His voice.

She turned, her stomach churning in anticipation at the sound of her name on his lips. He stood, four feet away from her, his form barely visible through the fog. She jumped down from her uncomfortable perch on the windowsill, and would have run into his arms—but he’d crossed them in a most forbidding manner. Instead, she walked slowly toward him, her heart pounding.

“You must be freezing.” His words reeked of disapproval. “Thank God I couldn’t sleep again. Thank God you didn’t meet anyone on your way over. If you were my—”

She had come close enough that she saw the scowl flit over his face at that. He shut his mouth and turned away, walking into the house.

She followed. “If I were your wife,” she threw at his retreating back, “I wouldn’t need to risk all this fog just to see you on a morning.”

He didn’t respond. But he left the door open, and she went after him. This time, he had not climbed the stairs to his bedchamber. He was headed down a narrow cramped hall into the back of the house. Lavinia sighed and closed the door behind her.

She was not his wife. She was not even anything to him so clean and uncomplicated as his sweetheart. She was the woman who’d made his life miserable. Still, she followed him down the hall. The narrow passage gave way to a tiny kitchen in the back of the house. Without looking at her, he pulled a chair out from under a narrow, wooden table and placed it directly by the hearth. She sat; he stoked the fire and then placed a kettle on the grate.

For a long while he only stared into the orange ribbons that arched away from the flames. The dancing light painted his profile in glimmering yellow. His lips pressed together. His eyes were hooded. Then he shook his head and stabbed the coals with a poker. Bright sparks flew.

“If you were my wife,” he finally said, “this moment would be a luxury—enough coal of a morning to heat the room.”

He shook his head, set the poker down and turned away. William moved about the tiny room with the efficiency of a man used to dealing for himself. He set out a pot and cups, and then turned back to her. “If you were my wife, you’d take your bread without butter. You would mend your gloves three, four, five times over, until the material became more darn than fabric. And when the babes came, we’d have to remove from even these tiny and insupportable quarters into a part of London that is even less safe than this address. We’d have no other way to support a family.”

“When the babes came?” Those words sent a happy thrill through her.

He turned to contemplate the fire again. “I am not such a fool as to imagine they wouldn’t. Lavinia, if you were my wife, the babes would come. And come. And come. I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I pray one is not already on the way.”

It was not her fog-dampened cloak that left her chilled. He spoke of putting his hands on her as if she were one more bitter sip from a cup that was already starkly devoid of happiness.

“It would be worth it,” she said quietly. “The gloves. The bread. It would be worth it to me for the touch of your hands alone.”

“Is that why you came here this morning?” He spoke in tones equally low to hers. “Did you come here so that I would touch you?”

Yes. Or she’d come to touch him—to see if she could salvage the moment when he’d thought himself dishonored. He’d said once he had no notion of love. She’d wanted to show him.

“Did you come thinking I would kiss your lips? That I would undo the ties of your cloak and let my hands slide down your skin?”

Her body heard, and it answered. The heat of the fire flickered against her neck; she imagined its warm touch was his hands. She imagined his hands tracing down her cheek; his hands cupping the curve of her bodice and warming her br**sts; his hands coaxing her ni**les into hard points. She ached in tune with his every word. Her breath grew fast.

He knelt on the floor in front of her, one knee on the ground. With that frozen, almost supercilious expression on his face, his posture seemed a gross parody of a proposal of marriage.