Courtney Milan (24 page)

His father’s pulse had returned to normal. His skin was no longer so dangerously flushed. For now, the crisis had been averted. He picked up his spoon and took a bite of soup. “That’s good,” he said. “So tell me about your Miss Charingford. How did you meet?”

L
YDIA SPENT THAT NIGHT IN A DAZE.
She scarcely heard her father and mother speak over dinner. She returned her mother’s queries as to Mrs. Hall’s health with a minimum number of words—there were children; Lydia had given them oranges—and tried not to think about all the things that Doctor Grantham had said.

She was not successful. Men and women couldn’t talk of intercourse like that. If they could, it meant that all the pain she’d suffered out of ignorance had been heartbreakingly preventable. She couldn’t think that.

And angry at him about what had happened? She wasn’t
angry
at him. What a ridiculous idea. She didn’t care about him, not one iota.

She thought that as she sat with her mother after dinner, embroidering. She often sat with her mother of an evening; on nights when he had nothing else to do, her father would join them. Tonight, however, it was just her and her mother, sitting together in companionable silence.

She didn’t care about Grantham. Maybe, every time she saw him, he made her want to look away. But it had nothing to do with what Tom Paggett had done to her all those years ago. It was simply that she disliked his insincere smile, his knowing eyes. His gaze followed her across the room and she could feel it against her skin. He made her belly feel uncertain and fluttery, and she hated that mix of fear and anticipation, that moment where she couldn’t tell if she wanted him to look at her more or never look again.

He made her
feel
naïve—like she had been back in that horrible time when Tom had made a fool of her.

No, she wasn’t angry at him.

But you should be.

No. She couldn’t think of what he’d said next, or she’d think of all the other things he’d told her.

Prussic acid is also known as hydrogen cyanide, and it is one of the deadliest poisons known to man.

She refused to accept that. She had to believe that horrible Christmas Eve was happenstance. She stabbed her needle blindly into the tablecloth she was embroidering. The alternative was too awful to contemplate. She’d been so confused, scarcely able to breathe. Halfway through December, the babe had stopped moving. She’d begun to worry. And then those cramps had come.

She stood and put her hands over her abdomen. “Mother,” she said, “I’m not feeling well. If you’ll let me retire early.”

“Of course.” Her mother frowned in worry. “Do you want me to send anything up for you?”

Lydia shook her head and climbed the stairs to her room.

It couldn’t be true. None of it could be true. This was some sort of scheme on Grantham’s part. She wasn’t angry. She couldn’t be. Why, she didn’t feel a thing. Not one single thing. And what he’d said there at the end—

Once you speak, you have no equal.

It had made her breath catch and her pulse race, reminding her of the worst days with Tom. Back then, she’d hung on his every word, pretending to perfect propriety while others were around. She’d been eager to have him alone again so that he would say those things again and again. He’d made her feel as if he put the sun and the moon in the skies for her sake alone.

Lydia, darling,
he’d moaned as he took her,
Lydia darling, I can’t wait to make you mine.

Lies. All lies. Doctor Grantham would know the medical term for the foolishness that made a woman want to believe a man when all evidence pointed to his insincerity, but Lydia knew what it felt like. It felt like stupidity. It felt like cramps. It was the absolute worst feeling in the world, the feeling of absolute betrayal as you sat at table in shocked silence. She knew what it felt like, and it was never, ever going to happen to her again.

Once you speak, you have no equal.
She could hear his words in her head. She must have imagined that look in his eyes, that quiet strength in his voice. There must have been a hint of sarcastic inflection in his voice, a roll of his eyes that she had missed. He meant it sarcastically.

He had to have meant it that way, or those sparks that built up in her belly would burst into flame, and she was never burning again. Not for any man, no matter what he said.

She got into bed and pulled her pillow over her head.

No. She didn’t think anything at all about Jonas Grantham. And she was absolutely
not
angry at him.

Chapter Seven

S
HE WAS
DEFINITELY
ANGRY AT HIM,
Jonas thought, as Lydia Charingford trooped beside him on the way to see Henry. She had thrust her fists into a muff and refused to meet his eyes. His attempts at conversation had been met with sniffs and a cold rebuff. They’d traveled halfway down Fosse Road, and she’d scarcely said a word.

By the time the park came into view, he was beginning to lose patience. He tried again. “Miss Charingford, might I carry your basket?”

“Was that a social grace on your part?” She stared straight ahead of her. “Doctor Grantham, I am positively amazed. Eventually, you may become fit to be let out in proper company.”

“Only selfishness, my dear Miss Charingford.” He let out an inward sigh. “When you swing it that way, you keep hitting the back of my leg.”

“Oh.” She didn’t say anything else, but she did stop swinging the basket.

Henry did not live far from his father’s house. One had only to cut across the park and walk down a few streets. But that brought Jonas down the dirt path toward the stage on which stood that massive edifice of a tree. It hadn’t been decorated yet, and its branches gleamed like green poison in the midday sun.

Somehow, he’d thought this would be…well, definitely not
easy.
But he’d hoped it would be at least possible. He’d imagined that he would spend time in Lydia’s company. She was always beyond fair-minded with everyone other than him.

A friend had once told him that he was like bitter coffee—positively habit-forming, once one acquired a taste for the beverage, but off-putting on the first few sips. So he’d harbored no illusions that she would love him instantly. But she might have moved from hatred to approbation, and from there, he’d hoped that she wouldn’t grimace too much at the thought of him.

Now, anything other than the dislike she heaped on his head seemed inconceivable.

“So,” he tried again as they approached the tree, “your father read me another lecture today when I came by for you. If he thinks so ill of me, I’m surprised that he lets you out at all.”

Little spots of pink blossomed on her cheek. “Don’t you talk about my father,” she said in a low voice. “And how dare you imply that about me? There’s nothing objectionable in walking in public with a man, even if he insists that he’s a doctor and not a gentleman.”

He looked up to the sky, which answered only with clouds. “I only said—”

“I know perfectly well what you meant, Doctor Grantham. You think that after my indiscretion, he should have locked me away, never allowing me to be in the company of another man.”

“I do
not
think that.” He bit out those words. “I have never said that. I never will.”

She wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

“It would make no sense to think that, as I enjoy being in your company.”

“Stop,” she said, shaking her head. “Please stop.”

So Jonas did. He stopped walking in front of the stage, the dark green branches of the tree looming over him like a menacing creature made of holiday cheer.

“Listen to me, Lydia,” he snapped. “If you’re going to despise me, do me the favor of hating me for the things I’ve said, rather than the ones you’ve imagined.”

“I’m imagining things?” A wild light came into her eyes. “You think I’m imagining that you look at me like I’m a mistake that should have been put away? You think I’m imagining the way you weigh me on your scale of moral superiority and find me lacking? I know precisely what you think of me.”

He actually heard himself growl at her. “I don’t have a scale of moral superiority. You know this is all balderdash. You can tell yourself that I’m thinking myself superior to you all you like, but it has no relation to the truth. You see the good in all the world—all the world, Lydia, except me. Why do you think that is?”

“Because you—”

“You don’t want to know what I really think of you. It’s easier for you to set me up as a whipping boy for all your aggressions—”

She made an outraged sound and swung the basket she carried at his black bag. She aimed it at him as if she were a fencer, and their respective bags their swords. He was so surprised that he scarcely had time to step out of the way.

“Careful!”

“Go ahead. Tell me it isn’t ladylike to resort to violence. Tell me that it confirms what you believe of me—that I’m impulsive, hotheaded, and foolish.”

“Hit my person all you want,” he replied, “but by God, Lydia, if you jostle my bag, you could break the bottle of laudanum. It will get all over my stethoscope, and I will be up all night cleaning it. Do you have any idea how many little parts and tubes there are to a binaural stethoscope?”

Not to mention the mess it would make of his record book. That was three months of visits, symptoms carefully recorded and pored over of an evening, trying to ferret out cause and effect. Plus, the bag had impossible-to-clean corners and seams. It would be sticky for
months
afterward.

He shuddered and set his bag carefully on the stage. “Punch me, but leave my medicine out of it.”

“I’m not going to strike you in public,” she said scornfully.

He jumped up on the stage, and then, before she could protest, hauled her up to stand beside him. The tree was fat and tall, but there were a few feet of space behind it, shielded from public view by the needled branches.

He held up his hands, palms facing toward her. “Go ahead,” he said, and this time, he let a note of mocking infect his tone. “Hit me. Or do you think you’re too weak to cause damage?”

She balled her fist and hit his hand. The shock of the strike traveled up his arm, clear to his elbow. She packed a surprising power for her size, along with better follow-through than he’d expected.

While he was still blinking in surprise, she hit his other hand, her teeth clenched. “God damn you, Doctor Grantham.”

“He probably will.” He was doing it right now, presenting her before him, her hair slipping from her coiffure, those curls dangling at her cheeks, asking to be brushed away.

She swung at him again, a little more wildly. “I hate you.”

“I’m sure you do.”

She glared at him. “I am not—I repeat—I am
absolutely not
—angry at you.” This was punctuated by another blow. If she’d actually been trying to hurt him, he suspected he’d be in pain. But she concentrated on his hands, striking them with all the force of her fury.

The scent of pine surrounded them; branches tickled his lower back. She shifted her stance, and the tree vibrated as her skirts brushed its needles.

“Far be it from me to contradict you, but you appear to be quite angry with me.”

She looked up into his eyes. “I can’t be angry with you,” she snarled. “You haven’t done anything wrong, and if I were angry with you, it would be
irrational.”

“Not irrational. Just not very fair.”

“If I were angry, it would mean that I still hurt, that I still cared about what happened to me. It would mean that I hadn’t put it all behind me. And I have.”

Her eyes dropped and she looked at her fists, as if just realizing that she had been hitting him. Her hands flexed. Her face turned up to his, stricken, as she recalled what she had just said. “I have,” she repeated. “I don’t think about it all.”

He couldn’t say anything.

“Do you know what I hate most about your eyes?” Her voice had fallen to a whisper, and he couldn’t make himself look away. “When I look into them,” she said, “I see my own reflection in them. Mirroring back all the things—” She choked.