Letty Trentham did read to him, sitting cross-legged on the bed, but only four pages. She closed the book and glanced at him, with the same shy diffidence she’d shown in the doorway.
They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, and then Icarus reached out and drew her close enough to kiss. Her lips were warm and soft and perfect.
Icarus gave a deep sigh of pleasure, and drew her even closer. He’d missed this: kissing Letty Trentham.
Later, he kissed his way up her inner thighs and brought her to a shuddering climax, and after that, Letty returned the favor. It seemed hypocritical to refuse consent when she’d done it before.
They fell asleep in the warm, cozy, rumpled bed, holding each another. For the sixth night in a row, Icarus had no nightmares, and for the sixth morning in a row, he woke feeling alive.
That afternoon, when he and Houghton were debating the merits of London over Exeter as the site of the inaugural bakery, Letty Trentham and Green and Eliza returned from a walk on the moor.
“Look what we found, sir,” Green said, depositing a bundle wrapped in one of Miss Trentham’s shawls on the hearthrug.
The bundle moved.
Green peeled open the shawl. Inside was a puppy. It had huge dark eyes and a muddy black-and-tan coat. Icarus could see every one of its ribs.
“I thought you might like him,” Letty Trentham said hesitantly. “He has three black paws, like the dog you had when you were a boy.”
Ulysses had been black and white, and had looked nothing like this pup, but Icarus was aware of three pairs of eyes beseeching him. He got up from his chair, and crouched beside the puppy, holding out his hand for it to sniff.
“He’s going to be big,” Houghton said, crouching alongside him. “Look at the size of his paws.”
The puppy did indeed have huge paws. It timidly wagged its tail and licked Icarus’s hand.
“Of course I’ll keep him,” Icarus heard himself say.
Green beamed at him. “I’ll wash him,” he said, bundling the pup up again.
“And I’ll find some food,” Eliza said. “The poor wee thing’s starving!”
“Not so wee,” Houghton said, once Green and Eliza had gone.
“No,” Icarus said ruefully. He glanced at Letty Trentham. Her gown and her eyes were green today.
“You don’t mind?” she said, faintly anxious.
“I don’t mind.” He smiled, and held out his hand out to her.
She slipped her hand into his, and squeezed his fingers lightly. “I’m glad. Because I couldn’t leave him to starve up on the moor, and I know I couldn’t order him drowned!”
Icarus grimaced. “No.”
“What will you call him, sir?”
Icarus thought for a moment. “Ajax Telamon. The giant, Ajax.”
Ajax spent the evening snoring on the hearthrug, his belly rounded with food. “As soon as he wakes, we must take him outside,” Icarus said. It had been a long time since he’d had charge of a puppy, but he remembered that much: when puppies woke, they peed.
Ajax woke—and peed outside—and then Green bore him off to his bedchamber, where he’d set up a basket and an old horse blanket. And later that evening, after they’d all retired, Letty Trentham read to Icarus again, and after that she spent the night in his bed.
The days drifted past, slipping into a gentle routine: a morning stroll with Ajax gamboling at his feet, lunchtime discussions with Houghton, afternoon rambles with Letty Trentham, card games in the evening. And food. And laughter. Ajax’s ribs became less prominent. He learned to sit on command. He made everyone laugh. He made everyone love him. Icarus, sitting by the fire one damp afternoon, with Ajax sprawled across his lap, warm and bony and deeply asleep, thought that he’d never felt so content in his life. He pulled one of the pup’s velvety ears slowly through his fingers—Ajax’s favorite caress. How easy it is to make a dog happy. And how happy they make us in turn. He’d forgotten this in the years since he’d buried Ulysses, forgotten how infectious a dog’s joy in life was.
He glanced at Letty Trentham, mending a torn hem, and at Houghton writing notes at the table, and his sense of contentment swelled until it seemed that his body couldn’t contain it. I overflow with contentment.
And if the days slipped into a routine, so, too, did the nights. Every night, after everyone had retired, Letty knocked on his door, and every night Icarus asked her to come in. And every night, he had no nightmares.
He had the feeling—a feeling so strong it was a conviction—that he wasn’t the only one sleeping better now. He knew that Pereira and the scouts rested more peacefully in their graves. And he knew that Pereira’s soul was no longer anguished.
On the tenth evening after Cuthbertson’s death, after a close-run game of Commerce, Letty Trentham packed up the cards and counters. She’d been laughing while they played, but now her expression was sober. “I must return to London soon.”
Icarus’s contentment drained away. “How soon?”
“Oh . . .” She squared the cards. “I need to leave here the day after tomorrow.”
Icarus glanced at Houghton. He looked as somber as Letty. None of us wishes this to end.
But it had to come to an end. He’d always known that.
That evening, Letty Trentham read from Herodotus for twenty minutes. “How many pages are left?” Icarus asked, when she put the book aside.
“Three. Would you like me to finish?”
“No.”
He didn’t want Letty to ever stop reading to him. I don’t want this to end. Any of it. But it had to. If one chose to live, life went on. One couldn’t sit forever in an inn on the edge of Dartmoor, however much one wanted to. Letty Trentham had to return to the world of the ton, and he had to forge ahead with his new life.
Icarus gathered Letty close and kissed her. Her mouth was as perfect as it had been last night, as perfect as it had been every night. Icarus kissed her slowly and thoroughly, regretfully. He was going to miss Letty’s mouth. And her voice. And her changeable eyes. And her company.
He should ask her to marry him—it was the honorable thing to do after the intimacies they’d indulged in—but Letty could hear lies. She’d ask whether he truly wanted to marry her, and he’d have to say No. He didn’t want to marry anyone. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He liked Letty, liked her a lot—more than any woman he’d ever known—but marriage? Marriage was being a good husband and a good father, and he wasn’t certain he could do either of those things. He wasn’t yet certain that he could succeed at being alive.
Yesterday he’d been alive, and today he was alive, but what if he woke up tomorrow and he was dead again?
He kissed Letty’s mouth, and then her throat. Warm anticipation built in his body. He wanted to kneel between her legs, wanted to run his hands up her inner thighs, wanted to inhale her secret, intimate scent and lick inside her.
“Icarus?”
“Mmm?”
“Can we do it properly tonight?”
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Icarus stopped kissing her throat. He raised his head and blinked, focusing on her candlelit face. “What?”
“Can we please do it properly tonight?”
“Of course not!” Icarus pushed away from her, sitting up in the bed. “You’d no longer be a virgin. When you marry, your husband would know!”
“I shan’t marry.”
“Of course you’ll marry!”
Letty sat up, too. “Icarus, I’ve been on the Marriage Mart for six years. I’ve been proposed to by nearly two hundred men, and not one of them—not one!—wanted to marry me for myself. It’s not going to happen.”
Icarus shook his head. “You’ll meet someone.”
“I’m taking myself off the Marriage Mart,” Letty said. “I’ve had enough.”
“But . . .” he said stupidly. “But . . . what will you do?”
She looked past his shoulder. A fleeting expression of sadness crossed her face, and then her lips compressed slightly and she met his eyes again and lifted her chin. “I shall establish a lying-in hospital and foundling homes and a school, like my mother.”
“Foundling homes?”
“I always intended to, after I married. But I shall do it now.”
Icarus stared at her, dismayed. “But Letty—”
“My mind is made up,” she said firmly. “But I do want to know what it’s like to lie with a man, so would you please do it?”
Icarus shook his head. “Letty, you know I can’t! You’d no longer be a virg—”
“Have you not listened to a word I’ve said? I shall never marry.”
He couldn’t hear lies the way she could, but he heard the vehemence in her voice. Letty meant it: she would never marry.
“Please, Icarus.” Her tone was beseeching. “This will be my only chance. I know I’ll never meet a man I like more than you! Please will you do it?”
Is she saying she loves me?
Icarus recoiled inwardly. He wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love, and Letty Trentham understood that better than any person on this earth. She’d seen him at his worst. She knew how far he’d fallen. Of course she doesn’t love me. No woman could.
But she was attracted to him, and there was no denying that he was attracted to her. No denying that he wanted to bed her.
Icarus made one last attempt to dissuade her. “You might fall pregnant.”
Letty gave a lopsided smile. “A child would be nice.”
Icarus looked away. His throat was inexplicably tight. He swallowed. “Letty . . .”
She touched his arm lightly. “Please, Icarus.”
Icarus knew he was lost. How could he reject that plea? How could he ignore that light touch on his arm?
He turned his head and looked at her. Letty Trentham. Not pretty, but poised and interesting and eye-catching. The woman he wanted more than any other in the world. “If it’s what you wish.”