The Proposition (36 page)

She wanted an emotional corollary to what she'd done physically with Mick in the alley. She wanted the afternoon on the dance-room floor, only more and without fear. Trust. She wanted to trust him with all of herself, her body, her spirit, her emotions, her mind, right down to the most delicate, sensitive places of her human existence. She wanted to turn it over into his hands and see what he did with it. And she wanted something similar from him. She wanted to know him and touch him and have him believe in her generosity toward him.

She began to talk to him, trying to draw him out. There was no reason to be jealous. She thought it was as simple as that. She wanted closeness.

While Mick withdrew. He felt a distance coming between them with the speed of a whistling wind.

He stung from his encounter with the idiot-lord, an idiot who nonetheless was authentically what he himself only pretended to be. For all his bravado, Mick felt like a forgery. Like the money he and Rezzo had made downstairs in the Bull and Tun's cellar. Almost as good, yet no matter who accepted the tender it was still something to hide, to fight doing again, to worry over: not real.

He'd felt tonight like a king to be among his friends, like a king when he kissed Winnie. But the stupid toff had set the truth on him like a pack of dogs: In the real world, he was king of the beggars—a fake lord, a good fake, but a real ratcatcher: He would never be good enough for Winnie Bollash.

He and Winnie. Whatever they were to each other, to extend it into the realm of mating was sham. Their relationship in this regard was as fake as Lord Tremore himself: It had no future.

Unmindful of the fact, she chatted softly at him as they entered her house. The hallway was dim. There was only the sconce lit at the end to provide enough light to enter safely. He stopped her from putting on the brighter lamp on the side table. He was too depressed to want her to see him clearly.

Milton, happily, had gone to sleep already. At least they weren't required to make explanations for the careless way she laid her blouse, jacket, and hat on the side table. She hadn't bothered to put them on again, presumably too warm from her thrilling night.

Oh, he knew she was thrilled, and he was happy for her. He just wasn't too thrilled with himself or the role he played. Where was his real self? Where did this game end and where did he begin? He felt confused. And tired. And unhappy.

As Win walked to the stairs, she rambled and digressed, laughing, whispering intimate things to him. He loved her openness; he hated it. The social gap between them made it feel awful, like looking at a kindred spirit across that river Styx.

Of course, he could invite her downstairs to his room for a little lovemaking. They could have a fine old time, so long as they didn't make too much noise and wake her butler. Or he could go upstairs to her room, upstairs with a fancy woman who wanted an earthy good time, as he'd done half a dozen times.

He muttered curses under his breath as he paused at the newel post. He didn't want either of these things, yet he could find no equal footing. Perhaps there was none. He resolved to say good night quickly. Alas, nothing seemed more appropriate than they part here, that she go up her polished staircase, while he took the service stairs down.

But at the base of her polished staircase, she touched his arm, drawing him literally closer as she laughed her way into another of her stories. He tried not to be interested, but ended up being taken in. He couldn't help it. He found Winnie, her life, endlessly entertaining.

"I was very young," she was saying. "It was Easter, and the parish church asked the children to bring tins of food for the poor. Only I misunderstood somehow. 'Bring tins,' I heard. I was fascinated by tins myself. I played with them, put holes in their shiny metal for candle holders, beat on them for music. I was allowed to have them from the cook. Anyway, I interpreted the priest's directive to mean that I was to bring empty food tins. My mother insisted I was wrong, but I was adamant.

"Then destroyed: for when I got to the church with my empty tins, everyone of course had brought full ones, which, the second I saw them, made ever so much more sense. I felt utterly bereft. I cried and cried with a sense of hopelessness for myself. How could I have made such a stupid mistake? I was humiliated. My mother was mortified. She made her usual to-do. 'I told you. But it is so like you, Winnie, not to listen to a word I say. I don't know what's to become of you. You look like a mantis and think like a mule.' Oh, what a scene she could make, what drama. I was a pigheaded child, difficult, selfish, the bane of her existence. And, that day, I agreed with her. I still do at times."

She sighed, laughing at her own story. "Though not tonight," she said. She leaned back against the rails of the balustrade, the banister slanting upward over her head. She looked inviting. Her chemise was damp, its lace lying wilted against the curve of her breast. "Tonight," she said, the gypsy come-hither aura shining shyly again in her eyes: looking to be fanned to life. "Tonight I was no mantis."

"No," he said sincerely, wishing he didn't feel the truth of his words as sharply as he did. "Tonight you were the most desirable woman I have ever looked upon, ever watched move or draw breath."

Her breasts, there in the dim light of the hallway, swelled as she softly inhaled his compliment.

It was crushing to watch her. She was so full of life. Her mind was shining, bright. The beauty of it, of her here in the hallway, pierced him, the pain as exquisite as catching his fingertip in the spring of a trap: a pinch so hard it brought tears to the backs of his eyes. It ravished him; it shimmered and blurred his vision. Winnie, the beautiful, could be his.

Till the end of the week.

Then she couldn't.

Next week, he'd became a ratcatcher again. Or a valet perhaps, though now the two felt almost the same in light of the fact that neither were good enough for Edwina Bollash. Sunday morning, when the impossible magic of Emile and Jeremy Lamont evaporated, as in the fairy tale, Michael's fine horses and clothing would return to Mick's rats and rags once more. He and this remarkable woman would no longer struggle with the make-believe of him. When he walked out her door—whoever, whatever he was—the only thing certain would be that neither his "what" nor "who" would be the equal of Edwina, Princess of the Empty Tins.

She was waiting for him to respond. She expected him to kiss her.

Mick smiled, hesitated. God knew, nothing would be so sweet as to make love to Winnie the gypsy girl tonight. Nothing better, that is, than making love to her while knowing it was no magic or pretense or heedless moment: that he could make love to her as his own, his other half, his mate.

He could pretend a lot of things. He could fake much. Yet he couldn't fake this: He couldn't pretend tonight was forever. Such a lie would have made his chest so tight no air could enter.

So he laid his palm against her face, as if he could touch for a second what was inside her bright, waiting expression. He smoothed his thumb down her soft cheek and met her glistening eyes—they were fixed on him in a way he would not easily forget. He leaned, pressed his dry lips to her forehead, drew the smell of her hair into his nose, his lungs, held it there, then pushed himself back and spun on his heels.

He turned and fled down the hall, across the dining room and into the half-kitchen, then down the stairs and into the servants' quarters where—Milton was right—he belonged.

He ran like Freddie. Too many dark, ugly things down there, Mick. And the teeth are sharp; I know. Can't knowingly jump down into a rat's nest anymore. You just got to understand.

And he did. Oh, he did. Too well.

* * *

Mick was undressing for bed, the placket of his shirt open, his trouser braces dangling, standing there in his bare feet, his back to the door, when he heard her. He turned, expecting the sound was his imagination.

But no, there Winnie was, framed in his doorway. She'd rallied the courage to follow him downstairs—now of all times suddenly uncowed by the fact that Milton was asleep only three walls away.

"Well," Mick said, then couldn't think how to follow the pointless remark. It seemed rude to ask simply,
What do you want?

How funny: Her eyes fixed at his chest. She loved his chest, and he loved that she did. She eyed what she could see of him inside his open shirt. It was a strain for her to bring her eyes up to his face, even though, clearly, she had something to say.

Bloody hell, he thought. She was finally going to say it. Something brave and romantic. Too late, he told himself. They were past where it would do them some good. Still, he listened attentively. He waited, half-hoping, half-fearing he might finally hear "Kiss me" or "I love you."
I love you
would have been nice.

Instead, her sweet-soft, classy voice said, like silk, in her tea-party singsong, "I figured out what I want. I want you to be as naked as a statue: I want to see you in the rude with your widge hanging out."

Chapter 24

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M
ick burst out laughing. He tried to contain it, then couldn't. What release. "My widge?" he said finally. And that started him all over again. "Oh, God," he said, trying to get hold of himself. He put his hand in his hair and leaned his shoulder on the bedpost. He didn't know where to look. His widge? She wanted to see his widge?

Winnie smiled at his discomposure. She liked it. It made her bold. She told him, "You promised. You told me when I could say what I wanted, I could have it."

And so he had. "Winnie—"

He didn't know what to tell her. He touched his lip, in his distress forgetting for the hundredth time his mustache was missing. He shaved it off every morning, then forgot he had, at least once a day. He brought his hand down and tried telling this unusual woman the truth. "Winnie, I'm in love with you," he said.

It was not what she was expecting. She glanced down quickly. She couldn't look at him for longer than a second at a time, but her face filled with wonder. She was happy one moment, then sad the next. She finally squinched her face and held his eyes long enough to ask mildly, "So that means you can't make love to me?"

He shook his head. "It means—" He couldn't explain it neatly. "It means I want more than I can have. And having a little, a taste, might hurt worse than having nothing at all." He shook his head again, frowned. "I wasn't prepared to feel as I do about you, Win."

With a new curiosity and a kind of timid, but growing confidence, she stepped into the room. "Mick," she said, "don't worry about the future so much that you make our present less than what it should be. We could die tomorrow." She spouted his own philosophy. "Anything could happen." She came to a stop right in front of him and whispered, "Make love to me now. Please."

He shook his head, then muttered, "No escape." It was true. He laughed helplessly at where he'd gotten himself. Up to his eyeballs here in trouble, and only able to dig himself in deeper. Muttering, still laughing, he looked at her and repeated, "In the rude? Honest to God, Win. With my widge hanging out? Where did you hear such a thing?"

"You said it."

He did? He sat down on the end of the bed, bewildered.

In the end, though, he knew what to do. He lifted his arms and peeled his shirt over his head. He wore no underclothes; he hated them and no one knew the difference. Until now. Winnie looked rather amazed by the fact.

He tossed the shirt, then patted the mattress beside him. "Right here, loovey. Put it here. The wicked widge of Michael Tremore would love to make your acquaintance."

Winnie only stood there.

After a moment, he complained with humor, "You tell me to make love to you. I tell you how to start, what I want you to do, then you won't do it. You are not the obedient girl you once were."

"I know." She smiled and murmured, "I want to see. Show me."

"Aah. The widge," he said. He felt himself lift—from simply the sound of her voice, the cool-soft, feminine plush of her saying in her tony English,
Show me.
Yes, he was going to have something to show her. "Close the door."

* * *

Winnie turned and leaned against the door, watching as Mick's dexterous fingers undid the buttons of his trousers. His long-fingered hands moved with a slow grace that was almost courtly as he opened them for her. She wet her lips and watched with concupiscent curiosity. Then started at what dropped into view. He continued, shoving his trousers down his legs, not the least bit inhibited. Already barefoot and bare-chested, once he stepped out of the wool worsted, he stood naked in front of her.

A statue, yes. Warm and breathing.

She watched the rise of his chest as she walked forward. She already knew he was broad and muscular through the chest and shoulders, but she hadn't realized how narrow he was through the hips. Sturdy, but slender. His thighs were long and cut with muscle. But between his thighs—

She walked close, riveted. She said,
"That
wouldn't fit under any fig leaf. In fact"—she looked up into his face with a sudden frown—"that won't fit anywhere I know of."

"Oh, yes, it will." He laughed at her. "And perhaps I might mention"—he mocked himself—"it ain't a widge, loov. Not now." When she knit her brow, he explained, "It's a widge when it's quiet. Or when it's nosing around just a bit. At some point, though, Win, it becomes a cock: mine especially."