“Just for a kiss?”
“Just one little kiss, Olive. A tiny Christmas miracle. What do you say?”
Olive had never kissed anyone on the lips. Her heart was striking her ribs, maybe twice every second, panicked and thrilled. Her fingers were cold. She thought, If he tastes like he smells, it can’t be so bad. Brandy and mincemeat and adoration.
“Well, Olive? Kiss me?”
She placed one brave hand against his shirtfront.
“I guess you’ve earned it,” she whispered, and his lips sank against hers, so much softer than she had imagined.
Olive wasn’t an only child, but her two brothers and a sister had all died before her. The usual scourges of childhood, and a little bad luck besides. Arabella, her sister, had had a weak heart, and it gave out during a scarlet fever epidemic when Olive was three. Olive had woken up one morning and found herself alone, and ever since—because she had been almost too small to remember Arabella at all, really, except as a kind of shadow, smelling of sugar cookies—ever since, she had always wondered what it would be like to have siblings. To have someone to share your troubles, to have someone who knew you intimately. You would quarrel and make up, and you would lie side by side on the attic floor on rainy days, sharing your dreams, sharing the silent space between them. And the missing piece of your heart—Olive had imagined it so many times—would simply fall into place, making you whole.
Well, maybe she’d had it all wrong about siblings, but lying on the cushions with Harry seemed a lot like she used to imagine, except more: more pulse, more life, more fullness in your chest until you almost couldn’t breathe, this beautiful warm burstiness that crowded everything else out. Her lips still tingled from his kisses, and her right hand was tucked in his left. His jacket had been tossed on the floor somewhere, and his waistcoat lay open, and it was all so natural and perfect, so exactly as they were meant to be.
Except they were not. Except there was that portfolio downstairs, marked VAN ALAN.
But she pushed the portfolio away, because it was Christmas, and because she could still taste Harry’s kisses and smell Harry’s breath, and the warmth of Harry’s shoulder merged into hers.
“We’ll be like two new people,” he was saying. “The real Harry and the real Olive. I can just see us, waking up in the sunshine. Not having to pretend anymore, not having to be nice to people you despise. There’s this fellow I know there, an old professor who moved to Fiesole last year. He’ll help us get started, I’m sure.”
“It sounds wonderful,” said Olive, wondering what Fiesole was.
Harry turned his head. “Does it, Olive? Do you really want it? Not just because I do, I mean, but because you want it for yourself.”
“I do. I do want it.” It was the truth. She thought about lying next to Harry’s warm body in a sunlit Italian attic, and her whole chest ached, her limbs pulled with longing. And then her practical mind whispered: What about marriage? What about children? He hadn’t mentioned those. But children would surely follow, wouldn’t they, and how would Harry feel about a squalling baby interrupting his artistic paradise? Would he still admire his darling nymph when her belly was swollen with child?
But that was why she loved him, wasn’t it? His dreams, his beautiful ideals, soaring so far away from what was real and possible. If she tried, she could hold him carefully moored to earth, just close enough that he didn’t fly away entirely. She squeezed his hand and said again: “I do want it. I want it so much, Harry.”
He lifted himself up on his elbow and grinned down at her. “Take off your clothes.”
“What?” (For the second time that evening.)
“I’m going to draw you, right now.”
“In the—in the—” She couldn’t say nude.
“Yes, all bare and true. With a sheet draped over you, of course.” Harry sprang to his feet. “Go on. I’ll avert my eyes, I promise. For now, anyway.”
She couldn’t be certain, but she thought he leered. She sat up and looked down at her black dress, her white pinafore apron, the ruffles now crushed and guilty. But it’s Christmas, she thought recklessly. It’s Christmas, and in two weeks, I’ll never have the chance again.
She rose and went behind the screen to take off her pinafore and her dress, her corset and petticoat and stockings. “Everything?” she called, over the screen.
“Everything.”
“You won’t look?”
“Of course I’ll look, Olive. That can’t be avoided, even if I wanted to.” (She imagined he was grinning.) “But I’ll drape you with a sheet, and I promise to be a gentleman.”
She pulled her chemise over her head, and her skin crawled and tingled against the air, as if she could distinguish the delicate rub of each molecule. “Oh, the same way you were a gentleman just now?”