The Queen Anne Victorian Atticus had rented for the month was just off Lenox’s main square, and as Elegy carefully extracted herself from the Rolls so as not to tear her skirt, her eyes darted about the street, searching for the crack of a door, the moving aside of a curtain. It was only a quarter after two, but these were the retired sort, sitting in their living rooms with little to do but note and remark upon the comings and goings of others. Elegy was, on her own, a novelty in town, however much she’d hoped it would wear off with age. With a man, with this man, she was positively legend.
Ducking her head and shielding her face with her reticule, she followed Atticus up the stairs and waited on the sun-drenched porch while he unlocked the front door and held it open. She’d never been inside such an ordinary place before; she loved it instantly.
In the center of a cheerful foyer, a white ceramic jug filled with sprays of Stargazer lilies sat upon a round table painted pale green. Beneath was a Turkish rug, the bright colors long faded though no less beautiful, and beneath that were wide wooden planks worn by age and shuffling feet.
A set of stairs rose to the second floor, where a round stained-glass window sat proudly at the landing, depicting a magnificent tree as it passed through all four seasons. Beneath it, another smaller arrangement of lilies sat beneath a slag-glass lamp.
To her right was the dining room, and although it was so much more humble than that of Thorne Hall, Elegy had the feeling it was used far more frequently and in far higher spirits. To her left was a small sitting room. A stack of freshly cut firewood sat at the ready beside the fireplace, and above it, around it, upon the faded damask wallpaper, were sketches and lithographs of silhouettes and flowers and all manner of landscapes Elegy had never seen.
There was a television in one corner that even she recognized as terribly old, and a leather Chesterfield opposite with a coffee table, where a sleek, silver laptop computer sat beside a stack of files. She could picture him upon the couch in the evenings, catching up on work while a fire burned in the hearth, a tumbler of Scotch or perhaps whiskey set beside him and a documentary of some sort on the television, perhaps something about physics; she could not be certain, but it seemed unlikely he cared for mindless sitcoms. It was warm and pleasant the way she saw him in her mind, and even though he was alone in this lovely house, she did not think he was lonely; not in the way she was, even though she was never alone.
Atticus said nothing as she stepped into the sitting room and ran her fingers down the gold velvet of a shabby chair, one of a pair that sat squat before the hearth.
“It’s nothing like what you’re used to,” he mused. “But it’ll do me fine for the month.”
She looked to where he stood leaning his tall frame against the archway between the sitting room and the foyer. “Is your home in Seattle like this?”
“No, nothing like. I’m actually thinking of buying a new place near the ocean once I get back. That’s what my company does—hydro power.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
His brow rose. “You don’t mean the ocean.”
“I do.”
He did not seem to know what to make of this, and she could not bear to see the pity in the forest of his eyes, so she cast her gaze back to the shabby velvet beneath her fingers.
“Make yourself at home,” he said. “Wine?”
“Wine would be lovely.”
Elegy removed her shoes and placed them beside one of the chairs as he disappeared, then tried and failed to fold her legs beneath her without splitting the seams of a skirt older than the house she sat in. By the time Atticus emerged from the kitchen with two glasses of red wine in his hands, she had given up and sat primly upon the edge of the chair with her pale hands folded in her lap.
“That cannot be comfortable,” he observed, handing her one of the glasses before lowering himself into the chair opposite hers and stretching out his long legs.
“This skirt is very old,” she informed him, her tone as stiff as her posture. “It belonged to the first mistress of Thorne Hall.”
“And when was she mistress?”
“Eighteen ninety-seven.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not.”
“And the car?”
“Nineteen thirty-eight,” she answered. “It belonged to my great-grandfather.”
He took a sip of his wine and studied her over the rim of the glass. “You Thornes hand everything down?”
“Old families like ours often do.”
“I thought it was usually money and property,” he remarked, and though his tone was light, it ill concealed the distain he clearly felt for such practices. “Not clothing.”
“Wait until you find out about our Perpetual Pill.”
“Perpetual what?”
“Antimony.”
“The chemical element?”
“The very same. Fools used to swallow pills made of the stuff in the Victorian era,” she explained. “Once swallowed, the pill induced purging. After it had been purged itself, it was cleaned off and put away until it was needed again. They were so valuable that families often handed them down through generations. We’ve been in possession of ours since the Napoleonic War.”
“Please tell me it hasn’t been used since then.”
She grimaced. “Unfortunately, I cannot. The use of it actually killed my twice-great-aunt.”
“Jesus,” he said upon a shudder. “What was she trying to cure?”
“Her rather large waistline.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I am not.”
“Well, that’s horrifying, but it still doesn’t explain the skirt.”
Damn it all; she’d rather hoped the shocking nature of the Perpetual Pill would’ve made him forget about her clothing entirely, but it appeared that Atticus was not easily deterred. And so she told him the truth: “My father is very particular regarding appearances. Modern sensibilities do not appeal to him, so he prefers that I select my attire from what is original to our family and to the house.”
“And is that what you want?”
“What I want is irrelevant,” she answered immediately, for that was how quickly the thought came to her, now, after so many years of forcing herself to accept it. Her father would’ve been terribly proud.
This Atticus did not care for at all, as evidenced by the furrow of his brow, and Elegy wanted suddenly to climb into his lap, smooth it away with her thumb, and then kiss him until they were both breathless with it.
Her experience regarding the mouths of men consisted of exactly one bumbling attempt with Chauncy (goddamned Chauncy) during one of Fletcher’s parties after she’d had too much brandy. It’d been Chauncy because he was leaving for college in Paris the next day and she’d never have to look him in the eye again. A good thing, too, because it had been fucking awful. Both of them drunk and neither having the faintest clue what to do with their limbs, he’d thrust about inside her mouth with his thick, slimy tongue until she’d shoved him away and hurled her guts into a nearby vase.
Having absolutely no evidence, she could not say with any authority that kissing Atticus would be any different; however, given the warm, throbbing sensation she suddenly felt about her lips and lower still, she very much doubted it.
She ought to try it, really, just to be certain.
Her eyes fell to the wine clutched tightly in her hand, and as though the glass had suddenly caught fire, she set it firmly upon the coffee table.
“Do you not like the wine?” he asked. “I have a couple of other bottles if you like—maybe a white?”
“No!”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “No?”
“That is, the car is quite temperamental, and I must keep my wits about me if I expect to make it back to the manor in one piece.”
“Suit yourself.”
She cast about for another topic, and her gaze fell upon the laptop sitting open on the coffee table. “You are a self-made man,” she said. “Your father is very proud.”
Atticus grinned, reclining back with the air of a man with the world in his pocket and himself sure of it staying there. “He tried to talk me into basing the company out of Boston, but I’ve spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest and can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“Is that where you went to college?”
“No, I went Caltech in Pasadena,” he answered. “You?”
No one had ever asked her that before. She almost never met anyone who did not already know about the long history of Thorne Hall and accept whatever she told them of the estate and its need for her constant attention without question or care.
Atticus knew nothing of such things. He saw a twenty-five-year-old woman with the means to do anything she pleased, and why should that not include the enrichment of her mind, attending a university with a building that likely bore her family name, all of them earning degrees and honorifics they would never use.
It was a curious sensation, the prickling flush of humiliation that settled beneath her skin as the silence between them stretched too long.
“I didn’t attend college,” she answered at last. “Though I would have liked to.”
“You still could, you know,” he told her gently, as he watched her with what appeared to be pity, and this she hated most of all.
“You’re very kind, but I couldn’t. My father is not well, and soon the estate will come to me.”
“Let someone else manage it.”
“Let us simply say it is not possible and leave it at that.”
To her very great surprise, he did leave it, and they talked of more pleasant things. She shared with him what she knew of Lenox and, and throughout it all, however ridiculous, he smiled and laughed. She wished she was anyone else, something worthy of the attentions of such a splendid person, perhaps her favorite person despite her knowing him all of two days.
“I suppose you’ll leave your father to fend for himself again tomorrow?” she asked him as he walked her to the Rolls, wincing at her own flippancy. She’d never quite learned how to say goodbye, so fiercely did she hate doing so.
“Is that your way of asking if I’ll be at the house?”
“No.”
Yes.
“Do you want me to be there?”
She could manage only a brief nod, cheeks aflame. Then she promptly turned and fled.