Authors: Juliana Gray
“Oh yes. Of course.” She slid to the left and straightened her skirts, absurdly conscious of the easy, athletic swing with which he tucked himself under the steering tiller. His body loomed large and vibrant next to hers; his left arm just grazed her right.
“Now then,” he said. “If we were driving one of those internal combustion engines, like those chaps in Germany are raving about and Delmonico’s busy perfecting, we’d have a complicated business on our hands. You’ve got to set the choke, and turn the crank, and spark the ignition. Bloody awkward business, to say nothing of the danger of breaking your arm on the crankshaft. But the first lovely thing about an electric motor is this.” He reached forward and turned a switch. A low hum vibrated the air. “Easy as can be. And splendidly quiet, as well. That damned motor of Delmonico’s roars like a lion.”
“How clever,” Alexandra managed. A hint of queasiness began to curl in her belly. She hadn’t quite thought through the actual business of driving an automobile. Finn sat next to her, relaxed and easy, his voice purring with confidence, but her own body was beginning to feel rather like a pudding, and a wobbly one at that. “How . . .” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat and began again. “How fast will it go, do you think?”
“Fifteen or twenty, I hope.”
“Yards?”
He laughed. “Miles per hour, Alexandra. Eventually I’d like to achieve something more like forty, but today’s just a trial. And of course I’d never take such a risk with you.” He said it carelessly, as a fact almost too obvious to be said aloud.
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t stand for it anyway.”
She must have sounded shakier than she intended, because he turned his head to look at her. “Nervous?” he asked kindly.
“No, not at all.”
“You don’t have to come, if you’d rather not. I nearly lost my breakfast, the first time I rode in one.”
She straightened her back. “How picturesque. But I’ve a much stronger stomach than
that
, Mr. Burke.”
“Excellent. Have you secured your hat?”
She touched the crown. “Three pins.”
“Off we go, then.” He released the brake lever, and the automobile rolled forward.
Alexandra clutched at her hat with her right hand and at the doorframe with her left. Her breath seized in her throat. The quiet whine of the motor built in pitch, higher and more intense, and the yellow gray dirt ahead disappeared under the automobile’s front with increasing speed, building and building, and the seat beneath her bumped and jolted at the rocks and pits in the road. “Oh!” she gasped out, her knuckles aching with the force of her grip on the doorframe.
“Seven miles an hour!” Finn exclaimed, exultant.
“Splendid!” she croaked. The brim of her hat flapped with excitement.
“In a combustion motor, we’d be shifting gears by now. Ten! Bloody hard work, disengaging the engine each time, moving the new gear in place. Complete nuisance. There we are! Fifteen!”
Her hat brim was waving madly now. The wind pushed against her face, cool and vigorous, sending stray tendrils of her hair tangling across her face. She let go of the doorframe for an instant and pushed the strands aside with her hand. “Fifteen miles an hour! Marvelous!” Her voice strengthened. “Like riding a horse, without all the rocking about.”
“Do you ride much?”
“Oh, constantly. I adore it. But this is splendid!” She raised her hand to catch the draft and felt it stream around her fingers, warmed by the morning sun. The green shawl slipped down her back, exposing the thin line of skin between her hat brim and her dress.
“In one of Delmonico’s machines, we wouldn’t be able to hold this conversation,” Finn was saying. “Incessant racket. Eighteen!”
Both of his hands rested on the steering tiller, gloved in leather, broad and strong. What would he do if she took the one nearest and slipped off its glove and wrapped her hand around it? If she closed her eyes, she could feel its warmth, its firmness, the way his fingers would enclose hers, the way his thumb would brush against her palm. She wanted that hand so much. She hurt with it.
She felt something move against her leg and glanced downward to realize it was his own. It pressed against her from hip to knee in shocking intimacy, the curve of his thigh muscle quite clearly outlined by his woolen trousers.
He was speaking again, talking about his motor, something about horsepower and voltage and cells, which she knew she ought to be memorizing. “So we really should turn about now, you see,” he said, “because I don’t fancy pushing the whole works all the way back, should the battery pack up earlier than expected.”
“Oh, naturally.” Disappointment tinged her. The machine began to slow, the splendid breeze quieting across her ears and her skin, the brim of her hat subduing its exuberant flutter. His leg moved against hers, pressing on the brake lever, bringing them to a stop in the middle of the dirt track, where the warm sun settled onto her shoulders and the nape of her neck and trapped itself in the wool of her shawl.
“There we are! A solid mile, I believe, and without a hitch. By damn, I’m relieved. I beg your pardon.”
“Oh, not at all.” She injected a note of cheerfulness into her voice. “You warned me in the beginning about your language, remember?”
“Yes, but that was before . . .” His words trailed off. He dropped his left hand from the steering tiller and rested it on his leg.
“In any case,” she went on, “that was splendid. Perfectly splendid. An entire mile! I’m quite amazed. It was all just a . . . a collection of parts, only yesterday.” She wanted to move her leg, but quarters were too tight; they were both pressed against their respective doorframes. Another few inches and she would be in his lap.
This was beginning to prove a bad idea indeed.
She spoke up with determined cheer. “Could we have gone forty, do you think?”
“Not yet. I plan to expand the battery, add a couple of cells, which should increase my horsepower considerably. This was just to test the efficiency of the new design.”
“And it worked?”
“Exactly as I’d hoped. Absolutely revolutionary.” His voice sounded curiously flat, as if he’d lost all interest in automotive revolutions.
She took a deep breath. “Tell me all about it. I want to know every detail.”
He laughed. “Good God. Not just now, in the middle of the road. I’ll sketch it out for you, if you like, when we get back.”
“That would be perfect.” She looked back down at their legs, pressed together.
“In the meantime,” he said, straightening, “I suppose we should turn around.” His feet shifted against the floor, against the pedals springing up from the boards below, and the automobile curved forward to the right, and then went backward, and then pushed forward again, until the full force of the midmorning sun hit their faces. Alexandra tipped her hat brim down to shade her eyes.
“Well, go on,” she said.
His fingers tapped against the tiller. “Tell me. Would you like to drive her?”
“Me?” she gasped. She turned toward him and found his face looking down on her with a curious expression, his left eyebrow raised in question.
“Yes, of course. There’s nothing to it, really, not like your combustion engines. Simply press the forward pedal when you want to go, and the brake lever to stop. The steering, you’ll find, is almost automatic.”
“Automatic?”
“I mean it’s a sort of reflex. You don’t need to think about it.” He smiled, warm and encouraging. “Come along, then. Try it. I’ll be right here next to you. Jump in and take over at a second’s notice.”
“I don’t know . . . I . . .”
“Come now.” His smile broadened, and his head tilted challengingly. “Surely the indomitable Lady Morley isn’t afraid of a mere machine?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “Remove yourself, if you please, Mr. Burke.”
He laughed and ducked out under the steering column and into the road. Around the edge of his tweed cap, his hair glinted fire from the morning sun, and the little dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose seemed almost to dance.
She slid across the seat and positioned herself once again in front of the steering tiller. He’d made it to fit himself, of course, and since he outmeasured her by a good ten inches, her feet had to stretch to reach the pedals.
He leaned over the doorframe. “That’s it. You’ll have to sit forward a bit, with those short legs of yours.”
“My legs are not short,” she said indignantly.
“Like a crocodile’s.”
She rapped his gloved knuckles.
“Like a gazelle’s,” he amended, “only rather a short gazelle. A lovely, graceful, proportionately long legged, but rather short gazelle.”
“I’m not short at all. I’ve got sixty-six and a half inches, which is more than sufficient. It’s only because you’re a damned monstrous giraffe, yourself, so everybody else seems like a pygmy. Now where are these pedals of yours?”
He chuckled. “Right there. That’s your forward pedal, and that’s the reverse. Not that you’ll need it, of course. And the brake lever. Most important.”
“Yes, I know the brake lever.” She gripped the steering tiller tightly, hoping it would keep her hands from shaking.
“Right-ho, then.” He swung around the front of the car to settle his long limbs in the seat next to her. His leg, she could have sworn, pressed against hers with even greater insistence than before.
“You’re trembling,” he said.
“How absurd. I’m not trembling.”
“Alexandra, the seat is positively shaking.”
She tightened her fingers even further around the steering tiller. “It’s only your dodgy motor. Are you ready?”
“You don’t have to drive if you’d rather not . . .”
In answer, she released the brake lever and pressed down firmly on the forward pedal. Or at least she thought it was the forward pedal.
The automobile jerked backward and bumped down the track.
“The brake!” exclaimed Finn.
Flustered, she pressed the forward pedal instead of the brake. A horrible confused whirr rose up from the engine. The automobile ground to a stop, and then, mercifully, began to edge forward.
“I daresay she’s all right,” Finn said, after a moment.
“It sounds so,” said Alexandra humbly. She tested the pedal, very gently. The automobile eased its way down the road, into the sunshine.
Finn made a coughing noise. “Perhaps you might venture a little more speed?”
“I have already.”
“Then, if you don’t mind, I believe I’ll just slip out and walk alongside. For the exercise, you see.”
“How droll you are.” She pressed down firmly on the pedal. The car leapt ahead, like a greyhound from its traces, shocking her for an instant before the familiar breeze caught in her hat and swirled past her face, sweet and invigorating.
“There you are! Ten miles an hour!” came Finn’s jubilant voice, next to her. “Just keep her on the road. She steers beautifully.”
It did steer beautifully. Finn was right: She hardly needed to think about steering at all; the machine simply went where she wanted it, down the long, straight track and into the sun. A laugh rose in her throat at the sheer magic of it, the speed building beneath her, the power flooding through her from the motor. The great, shimmering strength of the man sitting next to her, his leg pressed into hers.
“Fifteen! Excellent! You’re doing splendidly. A natural.” His arm lay along the back of the seat, nearly touching her shoulders. Its warmth reached into her skin.
“Thank you,” she said. She was beginning to feel a little giddy. Or perhaps dizzy. It was rather hard to sort through all the sensations at the moment.
He tilted his head to speak into her ear. “Dashing Lady Morley. Do you know, you look particularly beautiful driving an automobile. It brings a lovely flush to your complexion. Perhaps I should build you one of your own.”
“This one is quite sufficient, thank you. In any case, I should much prefer a new hunter.”
He laughed. “Are you quite sure? I find the automobile’s seating accommodation far more convenient.”
She shouldn’t ask. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew exactly what his answer would be.
But she couldn’t help herself.
“Convenient for what?” she asked, as innocently as possible.
He laughed again, as if he’d read her thoughts and knew what she was after. “Convenient for this.” With one hand he lifted the brim of her hat and kissed the tender skin at the nape of her neck.
“Stop that,” she said, angling her head to give him better access.
“Can’t.” His warm lips trailed around her throat; she could feel his nose brush against her hair. “You’re so delicious . . .”
The road bent a few degrees, bringing the sun directly into her face. Her eyelids sagged, unable to withstand the drugging warmth of the sunlight and the narcotic sensation of Finn, this new and amorous Finn, teasing her neglected flesh with such hunger. What had happened to the old Finn? The cold and scientific Finn, the ambitious genius with no regard for frivolous women, who had cracked walnuts between his fingers and examined her with such arctic reserve?
He hadn’t been aloof at all, had he? He had only been . . . shy.
Shy.
His lips moved upward to caress the curve of her ear, not shy at all now. Quite in command, in fact, and drawing her inexorably under his spell, into the palm of his hand, while her heart thundered against her ribs in fear and joy and anticipation.
Her half-lidded eyes caught the flash of color at the last second.
“Oh damn! A cart!” she exclaimed, and jerked the tiller to the right. Finn’s automobile flew obediently off the road and into the grass.
FOURTEEN
I
t was entirely your fault.” Alexandra flashed her eyes at him in her haughtiest Lady Morley expression.
He straightened from his examination of the automobile’s right front tire and looked down contritely at her face. “Entirely my fault. I accept full responsibility.”
Her expression softened. “Good, then.”
“I’ve learned my lesson, never fear.”
“Excellent. I quite agree. No more of this rubbish about kissing . . .”
“. . . until the automobile has come to a full stop,” he finished. He glanced back down at his patented pneumatic tire, which settled into the tough meadow grass in a long, flat line.
“That isn’t at all what I meant.”
“I’m afraid the tire’s quite flat, however. I ought to have thought to bring my mending kit.” He glanced back at her and winked. “I suppose I was carried away.”
“You’re impossible.” She lifted her hand to shade her eyes and looked down the track. The cart’s astonished driver had been dispatched at last, after a badly executed Italian explanation, and now continued on his way, already a small, distant figure against the dun-colored dirt.
Shy men make the best lovers.
Where had she heard that? Lady Pembroke, probably. Her ladyship spoke with authority on such matters, having an extensive frame of reference.
Your inexperienced young matron always falls in love with the arrogant ones
, she’d told Alexandra once, over tea in the conservatory, her starched white sleeves buttoned to the wrists and her starched white collar buttoned to the neck.
All very well if you’d like to be sorted out and on your way in twenty minutes. But the shy, quiet fellow takes his time, Alexandra. Remember that. He has imagination. And underneath his trousers, he’s invariably a tiger.
A sip of tea, a gleam in her eye.
Give me the shy fellow, every time.
Alexandra had sipped her own tea and smiled knowingly and gone home to dear Lord Morley and his gout and his monthly heave-ho over her nightgown-clad body. She hadn’t minded. Lord Morley smelled pleasantly of sherry and wool, kissed her breasts with touching enthusiasm, and plainly adored her. He didn’t take long, and never removed his nightshirt, and complimented her afterward on her beauty and vigor. There were times, early on, before gout had made him too irascible, when the sound of his brisk knock on her bedroom door had even excited her. Perhaps it had been the thrill of having such power over a powerful man—Lord Morley had had the ear of the Queen, for a time—or perhaps it was just the notion of the act itself, the intimate friction, the sense of some glittering prize lying just out of reach.
Shy men make the best lovers.
She’d never had a lover. She’d never wanted one. Why risk everything, one’s reputation and one’s independence and one’s peace of mind, for a few moments of physical pleasure?
Finn—Mr. Burke—knelt in the grass again, considering his tire. He’d left his smock back in the workshop, and a brown tweed jacket now stretched across the breadth of his shoulders. On the side of his face visible to her, brightened by the sun, she could see his narrowed eye and his furrowed brow. He reached out his right hand and ran it along the side of the tire, blunt-tipped fingers smudged with oil.
What sort of lover was he?
She knew the answer. Hadn’t he kissed her already, caressed her already? He was the clever, patient sort, who took his time and had imagination. In bed, he would be a tiger. He would stalk her, subdue her, deliver her that glittering prize and drop it into her lap. He would gather her in his arms and keep her safe.
“Mr. Burke”—what was she saying, what was she doing?—“Finn.”
He looked up at her and smiled.
Her blood thudded drunkenly in her veins. She couldn’t speak.
“I know it’s a nuisance,” he said. “I’ll just dash back to the workshop for my mending kit. It won’t take a minute. You can sit here in the sunshine and listen to the bees.”
“I’m afraid of bees,” she lied. “I believe I’ll come with you instead.”
* * *
I
magine that,” he said, to fill the awkward silence as he fumbled the key into the workshop door. The significance of opening a locked door into a private room, with Lady Morley by his side, had just crashed down about his ears. “Eighteen miles an hour on the first go! By God, I’m thrilled.”
“Why on earth do you keep your workshop locked?” she asked. Her voice held an odd note. Quiet, almost subdued.
He turned the knob and slipped the key back into his jacket pocket. “We motor enthusiasts are a competitive lot, after all,” he said, motioning her through the door before him. “There’s a great deal at stake. It’s one of the reasons I picked this spot.”
“And the other?” She didn’t turn toward him, only drew the pins from her large straw hat, one by one, and set them on the table.
“Fewer distractions.” He thought she would laugh at that, her ironic, musical laugh, but she didn’t. She only pulled her hat away from her head and set it down on the table, next to the pins.
“I suppose I should feel lucky you allowed me in here at all,” she said, still turned away. The morning sun hadn’t quite reached the window yet, and in the diffuse light the skin of her cheek seemed to glow from within. “You must trust me a great deal.”
“Of course I do.” He watched her as she stood, motionless, her hair loosened slightly by the hat’s removal. One hand rested on the table, next to her hat and pins, and the other hung next to her side. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, quite,” she whispered.
“Have I offended you? It was rather a long night, and with all the excitement . . . succeeding at last . . .”
“No. No, you haven’t offended me at all.” Her voice came more firmly now. She turned to him at last, her hands gripping the edge of the table behind her. “Not at all,” she said, meeting his gaze with large, round eyes, looking rather like a prisoner left at the scaffolding to perform her own execution.
His mouth opened and closed. What the devil had come over her? “I’ll just . . . I’ll just gather my mending kit, then, shall I? We’ll head back down to the road and . . .”
“No!” The word burst from her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No. Let’s . . . let’s stay here a moment.” She swallowed heavily. “Please. Please, Finn.”
He watched her a second or two longer before understanding dawned. “I see,” he said. His head was still heavy from the sleepless night, and his muscles drained from the effort of moving and installing the immense battery and pushing the automobile to the road. Altogether it was much the same as the poleaxed feeling of having drunk the better part of a Scots distillery the night before.
“Please,” she said again, in a whisper, and the heavy feeling in his head dropped into his groin, and his muscles, much like his battery the night before, flooded with new energy.
He stepped toward her, watching her eyes widen and gleam as he came close. He removed his peaked cap and his gloves and tossed them into the chair, next to her skirt-covered legs.
The scent of her seemed to reach out and wrap around them. He leaned his head down next to her ear and breathed it in. “Tell me. Is it your soap or your perfume?”
“What?” she asked breathlessly.
“Lilies. You smell like lilies.”
“My soap, I think,” she said, with a little gurgle of a laugh.
“Bloody reckless of you.” He liked that he could drop words like that around her, that she wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t even notice. He lifted one hand around the back of her head and began to pull out her hairpins, letting the heavy swags tumble about her shoulders. “Have you any idea what your lilies do to a man?”
“No, I don’t.” She tilted her head, exposing the long column of her throat.
He removed the last pin and set it down on the table, next to her hat and hatpins. Her eyes were closed, the lids pressed down tightly, as if she were afraid of opening them. He brought his hands into her hair and spread it about her shoulders, long and thick and shining in the floating late-morning light, smelling of fresh air and sunshine. “They give him ideas, Alexandra. Improper ideas. May I confess something?”
“I hope you will. I adore confessions. The more shocking, the better.”
“I’ve been consumed with improper thoughts for you from almost the first moment of our meeting.” He lifted her hair with one hand and kissed the side of her neck.
“
Almost
the first?” Her voice wavered.
“You
were
rather ungracious.”
“I’m so terribly sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Yes, you will.” He straightened and gazed down at her face, at her closed eyes and her wide, ripe mouth. “Look at me, darling.”
“Don’t, please. I can’t.” Her arms came up, wrapping around his neck, pulling his head into hers. “Just kiss me.”
The words sent fire racing across his exhausted brain. He sank his lips into hers and felt her instant response, her gasp of shock, her fingers digging into his neck. God! Her mouth was so sweet, so eager. Her velvet tongue met his, tentative and then ardent, returning each stroke, drawing him deeper, as if she couldn’t get enough of him. He could hardly think from the lust billowing up inside him, months and months of control and frustration, and now came this passionate woman into his arms, this astonishing and beautiful Alexandra, her mouth open and hungry under his, as desperate as he was.
His hand slid downward, along the curve of her back, anchoring finally at her waist, his thumb rubbing between two long whalebone stays, searching for the flesh underneath. “Please,” she said, into his kiss, “oh please.” Her hand slipped down from his neck to the buttons of his jacket, fumbled between their locked bodies, slipped out the top button and the next, and then she slid her fingers underneath the thick woolen tweed to burn through the cotton weave of his shirt and into his chest, finding the buttons.
His breath drew sharply into his lungs. With one hand he trapped her fingers against him, stilling her movement. Her face tilted upward, eyes open now, searching his own with a pleading gleam. “What is it? Don’t you . . .”
“Yes.” He exhaled. “God, yes. But darling, you’re . . . Are you quite sure?” His brain spun dizzily. Every nerve seemed to have gathered underneath the sensation of her fingers against his chest.
Stop
, said a distant voice, through the maze in his head.
Stop. Wait. It’s too soon. Not yet.
“Are you quite sure?” he repeated, both to her and to himself.
Her other hand, her free hand, came up to rest against his cheek. “Finn, it’s all right. I want this. I want it . . . oh, you can’t imagine how much. Don’t draw away. Please. I’m a disaster for you, I really am, but I’m selfish and lonely and I . . . oh!” Her head dropped into his chest. “Oh, you damned noble brute. I shouldn’t. You deserve better. You deserve some sweet young thing, some noble girl . . .” She shook against him, clutched her hands around his waist.
“Shh.” He laid his chin gently atop her hair, feeling the silken strands tickle his jaw. Her hands dropped back to circle his waist. “Alexandra, listen. You’ve got it all wrong. My mother . . . you ought to know this . . . before you . . . before we . . .”
She went still against him, the gentle rise and fall of her breath steady beneath his hands.
“She’s . . . you may have heard of her . . . her name is Marianne. Marianne Burke.” The name sounded strange and foreign on his lips.
“Marianne Burke? What . . .” Her breath caught. “Oh!”
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”
“Oh. I see.” She turned her head against his shirt and stared at the window, absorbing it all. She would have heard of his mother, of course. Everyone had. No one became the acknowledged mistress of the Prince of Wales at the tender age of seventeen without acquiring the patina of legend. “Richmond, of course. The little cottage. My God! And you’re her son!” She drew back and searched his face with wide, astonished eyes.
“The hair, of course. And her eyes, though mine are a shade lighter, I’m told.”
She nodded, eyes still round. “I’ve heard she’s quite striking. As one would expect, I suppose. Was she . . . is she very tall?”
“Not particularly. I’ve that from my father.”
“Your fa . . .” She checked herself, covering her tactless curiosity with a nervous laugh. “I never imagined . . . It’s a common name, Burke, I suppose . . .”
“Yes. So you see, as far as my being noble, it’s quite the opposite. It’s I who belong to a world beneath yours.” He took her gently by the arms, set her away, and looked down in her face. “I thought you should know, that you had a right to know, before you decide. Before you say anything, before we do anything, that might . . .”
“Finn,” she whispered, “I’ve already decided. It doesn’t matter about your mother. Who will know, after all?”
“Everyone. Your friends. They’ll find out eventually.”
“No, they won’t. We’ll be discreet. Not even Wallingford . . .”
“I mean eventually. When we’re back in England.”
She stared at him a moment, without speaking. Her lips parted, and then closed again.
A leaden weight settled down around his heart. “Ah,” he said. “I see. You’d rather keep things unofficial.” A lock of hair swung down across her face. He reached out with one hand and brushed it away, tucking it behind her ear.
“Don’t,” she said brokenly. “Don’t. Don’t spoil it.”
“Spoil what, my dear?”
Her hands grasped the lapels of his jacket. “You see? This is what I meant. Vain and frivolous.
This
is what I am, Finn.” She spoke defiantly, eyes blazing. “If you want me, you’ll have to take me as I am. You’ll have to
accept
what I am.”
She stood just apart from him, her dress grazing his jacket, the corners of her eyes tilted upward in that catlike way of hers. Watching her, he was reminded of a fox he’d once seen caught in a trap long ago, on one of his many solitary childhood rambles through the woods near his mother’s cottage, before he’d been sent off to boarding school at the age of eight. The fox had looked up at him with that same expression, brazen and fearful both at once, daring him to get close enough to free her.