The Proposition (25 page)

Dancing put him at his zenith. He didn't speak very much. He moved well. He looked marvelous—an uncommonly good imitation of English peerage on the wing. How dare he, she thought, irrationally. How dare he turn her like this: on her ear with his astounding adaptions, so vastly outstripping anything anyone expected of him, so far exceeding merely looking the part. How could she expect to stay stable through such a waltzing, vertiginous reality wherein what she heard and saw breathing before her contradicted what she knew to be true.

A ratcatcher! she told herself. A ratcatcher from the worst streets in London, formerly from the poorest district in Cornwall, with nothing to travel on but a rural education and a cocky, crooked smile.

As she cranked the gramophone for the dozenth time at least, he asked beside her, "Do you want to stop?"

"No," she said too quickly.

"Neither do I. Your face is pink though." He gave her a wry look. Two people having fun in a strained kind of way. With his having a seeming admiration for a face pinked from exertion and a strange stimulation. It made Winnie laugh, despite herself.

Which made Mick laugh too, against his better judgment.

The tension between them broke slightly, though only for the moment. They had been like this for days, so he didn't expect it to go.

Oh, they were getting along like cats and dogs. Him chasing, wanting to grab her by the neck, her spitting and hissing every chance she got. If they didn't sleep together soon, they were going to kill each other. Except he couldn't explain that to her. She wouldn't hear it, even if she understood somewhere inside the truth of it.

Still, to enjoy her smile, even for a moment, was lovely—with its contradiction of shyness and slightly crooked teeth, of faint freckles and eyeglasses and downcast humor. Despite all their pushing and shoving at each other, despite the less than conventionally pretty elements of her person, the total of Winnie Bollash pleased him like no other woman in the longest while. When her mouth drew up into a wide smile, it made her eyes come alive.

Then her spectacles caught the light from the window, reflecting. The lenses blinked at him, obscuring what was behind them. On impulse, he reached and unhooked her eyeglasses, lifting them off.

With her, of course, grabbing and protesting. He won by the length of his arm; he held them overhead. Then, setting them down on the piano, he took hold of her and danced her away from them.

"I can't see." Worse and worse, Winnie thought. Barefoot and blind.

"What's this called?" He let go of her hand—it was like being left out on a limb, twirled in a blur. He touched the lace yoke of her dress at her collarbone before his hand came back to hers to guide her.

"What?"

"The word. Give me the word for it." He stared at her collarbone. With her spectacles off, her whole world was muted, narrow. Her myopic eyes could bring nothing into focus but him.

"Um, ah—lace."

He raised a rueful eyebrow, the way he did when she didn't give him enough credit.

Only that wasn't the problem. It was a matter of trying to think when he put his finger on her collarbone as he waltzed her backward and stared down at her, nothing but a fuzzy room turning behind him.

"No," he said. "The stuff underneath, here"—again he let go, leaving her hand in the air, to point—"that you can hardly see."

She looked down, then missed a step. He put his finger in a hole between lace rosettes.

For a few seconds, she couldn't have told him her own name. Then she let out a light breath.
"Ah-h-h."
A sound that was mostly air. "Tulle," she said. "The lace is crocheted onto silk tulle."

"Silk tulle," he repeated. Perfectly. "Silk tulle the color of flesh." Every sound correct. Then he grinned faintly and added, "Blimey." She blinked. She wanted to hit him. He was having her on, playing with his old accent. While she tried to keep her equilibrium on a dusty floor in her bare feet, blind, with only his arm for balance, and his teasing humor.

"And your dress—" He arched back, his eyes drawing an X on the front of her, tracing where her dress crossed between her breasts. "What's it called when a dress does that? I like it."

"It's, um, ah"—she looked down, trying to think what he meant—"a surplice bodice." She scowled up. "You don't need this much information about ladies' clothes."

He was going to say more, but the gramophone groaned into its slowdown, preparing to stop. "Excuse me," she said.

On the piano, she found her spectacles. She put them on, shaking, angry. It took her two tries to hook the left earpiece back into her hair and over her ear. She tried to calm herself by hunting through her cylinders. Not a word registered. She couldn't read a name on one of them. While behind her, he said, "We dance at the Bull and Tun." Conversationally, he added, "You know, you've never danced till you've danced with someone you like who's kissing your mouth as you go." He added, "Let me know if you want to try it."

She turned to look at him, ready to knock him down.

With narrow eyes, she watched him tap the side of his leg again, standing there in the center of the room as if having a casual dialogue on the various styles of dancing.

Dancing with your mouth on someone's. No, she did not want to try it, thank you. She put the same cylinder on again. They could dance to the same thing over and over.

He waited as she got the music going. Then he took her hand and put his palm at her back as if nothing unusual had been said.

Good enough. She'd ignore it, too. She'd ignore the choler she felt; yes, she didn't doubt her face was red. She told him, "Let's practice the pivots."

They were fast, so he was good at them.

He
was fast, she thought. In every sense.

She didn't like the idea of him dancing with his mouth on some woman. Or some woman's mouth on him. It wasn't proper. It wasn't decent. And she certainly didn't want him to do that to her.

Though she wondered for a second what it would feel like.
Let him know?

She remembered in the carriage house that he'd said she had to tell him if she wanted him to kiss her, that he wasn't going to unless she did. Tell him? She couldn't. Even if she'd wanted him to, which she didn't, she could never have been so bold. For a lady to say something so forward was beyond the pale of decorum.

Besides, wasn't he the one who'd threatened in a hallway to take her "where flirting led"? So why was he making such a to-do over a kiss? Dryly, she told him as they danced, "All this commotion from a man who, at one point, wanted to lead me 'down the path.'"

"Ah"—he laughed, taking her through a smooth turn—"so that's what you're hoping for. Not just kisses."

"I didn't say that—"

"No. You said
I
wanted it. But that's the way your mind works, isn't it,
Miss
Bollash?"

She hated when he said her name like that. She said, "Don't be vulgar—"

"Why? That's what you like so much about me. If I were a real gentleman, you couldn't blame me as easily. Hooligan Mick. Low-class Mick. Who has the poor taste to make you feel what you don't want to think about."

"Damn you!" She stomped her foot, which ended their dance. They came to halt.
Damn.
She never cursed. She was horrified to hear it come out of her mouth.

They stood there at the far edge of the floor, the tinny music across it continuing on without them.

He laughed, surprised by her cursing and thoroughly pleased with himself. "Nice," he said, with chuckling, wicked approval. "Congratulations, Win—"

She slapped him. Without thinking. Not once, but twice. She whacked the air with all her might and caught his cheek, a sharp smack. It was no accident. She meant to get it. Then, just because the contact felt so
damn
satisfying, she did it again. She would have hit him a third time, but he stopped her. He grabbed her arm.

He stood above her, for a second as angry as she was, both of them engrossed in one another in this unholy way.

He slowly lowered her arm, then let go, though the air was charged. They neither would let the other break his or her eyes away. Until Winnie happened to see out the corner of hers a red splotch on his cheek. The place where she'd struck him began to glow, more intense by the moment. She watched her own angry handprint, the spread of fingers, the impression of palm, appear vividly on the side of his face.

"Oh," she said as she watched it get redder and redder. "Oh," with dismay. What had she done? She had never hit anyone in her life. Why Mick? Why him? "Oh, Lord, does it hurt?"

She frowned and winced and put her hand to his cheek. The handprint was hot. She caressed it, running her fingertips over the frightful mark she'd made on him. She put her other hand up and caressed his face, both palms.

He jerked as she embraced his jaw, but then let her touch him freely. Once her hands were there, they wouldn't stop.

His cheeks were smooth with the faint grit of a shave that was half a day old. His jawbone was hard, angular; his eyes, the regard in their greenish depth, as fervid as the imprint she'd put on his skin. Her fingers fluttered over this face, her palms smoothing and cupping the topography of it, the planes and hollows. Regretfully, she retraced the livid red blotch up a cheek that had high, perfect bones. She drew the pads of her fingers down the cartilage of a narrow, straight nose, then along a mouth that—

He captured one hand and pressed it to his mouth, breathing into her palm, his hand clasping the back of hers. Then, licking a warmth into the center of her palm, he kissed the inside of her hand. As he had her mouth so many days before.

Winnie was speechless. She wouldn't have thought it were possible—he kissed her hand with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, with the push of his tongue, as he groaned and closed his eyes.

Goose bumps
…
chills
…
the hair at the back of her neck, up her arms lifted. Her belly rolled. The room did a slow rotation around them, while Winnie stood still.

Paralyzed. She wanted to take her hand away, but it wouldn't respond to her own volition, as if it didn't belong to her. When he raised his head, she made a fist, and he kissed her knuckles. She closed her eyes. Lord help her.

She used her other hand to reach and take her arm away from him. "I'm—" She could barely speak. "I'm not—not going"—her murmur broke again before she could finish—"down your path."

"Too late," he whispered. "You're already on it." He added in a tone that sounded more resigned than happy about it, "Too late for both of us."

The voice of the gramophone grew slow and low again, then rasped to a stop with her standing there, staring up at him.

Then, clutching her tingling hand to her chest, she walked across the floor in her bare, stockinged feet. At the piano, she cranked the gramophone, round and round and round briskly. She wound it too tightly. The music started again at a high pitch, a crazy tempo.

She walked back to Mick, into position, then had to stand there in front of him, both of them waiting for the machine's music to gain some semblance of sanity.

The odd thing was, once it did, she couldn't. She was reluctant to put her arm on him, to reach up and touch him at all. The music played. Nothing happened. Until he slipped his hand under her arm, as if to begin dancing.

But his hand instead ran lightly down her back, the hollow of her spine, and he said, "Let's have your skirts up again, Win."

She couldn't have heard right. She let out a quick, nervous laugh when he actually took hold of a handful.

When she stopped him, he shook his head in reprimand. He said, "Be good, Win. Do what I say."

She let go, a reflex.

Good. She'd been good all her life. A good girl who felt muscles tense in the pit of her stomach when he invited her to be good his way.

He whispered, "So what did they tell you when you were bad, Winnie?"

"What?" She looked up at him, blinking. Her heart began to thud at the base of her throat.

As if he knew, with the edge of his thumb he touched her there, then traced her neck up the tendon to behind her ear.

She shivered and murmured, "Give me your hand. Put your hand at my back where it belongs. We're supposed to be dancing."

"Tell me about 'supposed to be,'" he whispered. "When you didn't do what you were supposed to, what did they tell you?" His face came closer. "What happened when you did what
you
wanted? What do I need to say to let you do what you'd like?" He changed tack. He said, "What I'd like is to kiss you. I would. But I'd like you to want it. Do you?"

"N-n—" She got that far, then stopped. She didn't know. She was reeling again, caught in the strange energy of him. She wet her lips. No, she didn't want
it.

The music played behind them, its own little world, getting away from them. While he waited. Then touched her collarbone again, tracing it with his fingertip. She let him. The touch of his finger, so light, up then down her neck, was unearthly. Sublime.

She bit her lip, closed her eyes.

Then heard him say, "Fine," very softly, as he'd said once before. "When you can say what you want, you can have it."