He was getting married tomorrow.
Felipe swung back and forth in his rocker in a rhythmic meditation of motion, an uncracked volume of poetry on his knee.
Tonight would be his last night in his overseer’s cabin. What little was left here would be moved over to the new house tomorrow.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, he’d promised whenever he thought of leaving the cabin. Now tomorrow was here.
He slid his hand deep into the fur of Dally’s neck as the dog pressed against his leg, his fingers slipping past the slick outer fur to find the softness of the under fur beneath. To find the comfort of it.
Working on the house all these weeks, as he sawed and hammered and painted, he could pretend that he was doing all this work on someone else’s home.
Could pretend that someone besides him would be living there.
After tomorrow, there would be no more pretending.
He leaned his head against the chair, sighing. He closed his eyes as his legs ceaselessly kicked him back, back, back. If only he could sleep. But as jittery as his thoughts were, he knew he’d simply stare off into the darkness if he went to bed.
Dally jumped up at a knock from the front door, but his woofs were soft and low. More welcome than warning.
He knew it was her before the rattle of the latch ceased echoing through the house.
“Come in,” he called.
She tramped down the hall, Dally settling again when she rubbed his head.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as if it were entirely unexceptional for her to be here. She was dressed as she’d been earlier that day, in a shirtwaist and skirt, her braids pinned up. He hated seeing her dressed like that, as if she were like any ordinary lady he might pass on the street.
She wasn’t like them at all.
“I’m reading,” he answered, still rocking. The creaking was loud in the silences between their words. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“We’re to be married,” she pointed out.
“I know.” He toed off the floor. “So what couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
That little crease appeared between her brows. “Do you think we’re making a mistake? Getting married?”
What? He grabbed at the chair’s arms, slamming his heels down to stop his motion. “Are you—?” Filling his lungs, he tried again. “It’s too late to stop it now.” The air wavered as it passed his lips.
“Well, you seem unhappy.” She looked unhappy herself, her expression pinched as she gnawed at her bottom lip. “Even my sisters have noticed.”
Her sisters. What had the two of them put into her head to have her ready to call off the wedding? “What were you three talking about today? And don’t tell me flowers.”
Her expression tightened further. “Preventatives. Just in case…” She shook her head. “Not that we will.”
No. They wouldn’t. Even if it was all he could think about whenever he closed his eyes. “No,” he answered slowly. “We won’t.”
She began to pace the room, hands flying, all nervous animation. For once, the sight didn’t irritate him. “No, of course we won’t. It’s not that kind of marriage. We’re not those kinds of people. We don’t feel that way about each other.” She stopped and gave him a searching look, as if she didn’t quite believe it herself.
“No. Of course not.” Liar.
He wasn’t certain if he referred to himself or her. Or both.
She kept staring at him as she licked at her lips.
A slow burn started in his blood.
“See?” she whispered. “I know you haven’t been thinking about that night either.”
Well, then. The both of them were lying here. He rose, going to stand in front of her. “No, I haven’t thought on that night at all.”
He only thought on the memory constantly.
She took a single step back. He followed, as if this were a dance between them. Another step away for her, another step forward for him.
“I don’t think on it either.” Her words were hot enough to start a brush fire, her eyes bright. He wanted to watch his reflection in them endlessly.
A thunk heralded her arrival at the wall, and he slammed his hands on either side of her, the wood hard under his palms and all the softness of her less than an inch away. She looked up at him, her gaze hot enough to melt steel. And it near killed him.
He should not, could not, do this. He could not give his body any more fuel for its obsession with hers.
He let himself have half a moment to imagine gathering her close and kissing her, as he’d dreamed of all these long weeks apart. Because imaginings were all he could allow himself. Any farther than that and he risked losing himself in her.
Enough. He pulled away, finally ready to return her home, to leave her untouched.
But then her arms were round his neck, her mouth on his, and she pulled him straight under. He hadn’t even a chance to kick or struggle before he was drowning in her.
Her mouth was soft and yet fierce against his as she pressed along his length. Lord, but he was in trouble—it was better than he’d remembered or imagined. He slid his hands down the wall, trying to fight the urge to wrap them around her thighs and draw her fully against his growing erection.
I mustn’t, I mustn’t, his mind whispered.
You must, you must, his body hissed, whistling with the steam that had to be coming off his heated skin.
Her tongue boldly met his, and for several mind-churning moments their mouths tangled together as closely as possible. He pulled away to rain kisses along the edge of her jaw and she oh so obligingly tipped her head back to allow him to trail down the smooth line of her neck.
He was only half way to his destination—the sharp ridge of her collarbone, a place of endless secret hollows and dips in his memory—when he encountered the high collar of her shirtwaist. He stared at it, trying to figure out how this irritating scrap of fabric came to be in his path.
A laugh pealed from her. “You can undo the buttons, you know.”
Undo the buttons. He would show her undone when he was through with her.
His fingers reached for the dainty things, plucking at them in his frustration to slip them free.
“Why are you wearing such impractical clothes?” he gritted, as yet another button fought with him.
“Today is the last day, I promise.” Her voice was like he’d never heard it before, soft and yielding, a pillow of words he wanted to rest his head on. “Well, tomorrow will be the last day.”
His hand stilled on the last button.
They were getting married tomorrow.
What did he think was doing here?
He wasn’t thinking—that was the problem. She kissed him, and everything but the feel of her, her taste, her scent, her soft sighs, had left his head.
He raised his hands from her bodice, looking at the undergarments he’d uncovered and the expanse of skin topping them, her small breasts nearly begging him to lift them free, taste them, bury himself in them.
But he mustn’t. They’d set a line and they needed to hold to it. He shook his head and stepped back, leaving her propped against the wall, alone.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
How to explain to her? “Franny, I don’t—”
Don’t want children? Don’t want this? Don’t want you? It was all true and all lies, and he couldn’t unwind the threads of which was which.
How to explain the terrible danger that if they continued as they were, they might fall and fall and fall, and who knew where the bottom was?
“If you don’t, then why did you start?” She was the huntress again, stalking the trail he’d left. “Why did you stop?”
“Don’t tell me you want to. I thought we agreed, it isn’t safe.”
“Isabel told me today about things to prevent conception. But I suppose we don’t have any at the moment.”
Lord, did she know how tempting she sounded?
“What did she tell you about? Sheaths? Those don’t always work,” he warned. Best to take preventatives right out of her head.
“How would you know? Do you have some?” When he didn’t answer, her mouth pinched. “Wait, you’ve done this before? With other girls? That’s why you have them.” Her voice had an accusing note he’d never heard before.
Was she actually angry he had the things? This lust must be clouding his brain. “Well, I—”
“Who? Who was it? Was it Ines?”
He took another step back. This was fast moving into unfamiliar territory, and he didn’t like it. “This isn’t an acceptable topic for young ladies.”
“I’m going to be your wife and I deserve to know. So tell me.” She stabbed a finger at him. “As for acceptable topics, you can have relations with all those girls, go through with the physical act, but you can’t speak of it? How absurd.”
“All those girls? How many do you think there were?”
“Well, you won’t tell me. Was it Ines?”
She worried the name Ines like a dog with a bone. “No, it was not Ines,” he bit off. “Would you stop this?”
She pushed off from the wall and advanced on him. “Of course it wasn’t Ines.” Now he was being backed into a corner. “She’s a lady, isn’t she, the perfect woman to take to wife, and I’m only a hoyden, a pest, a—”
He put his hand across her mouth to stop the bitter flow of her words. Good Lord, he couldn’t think under that onslaught. “It doesn’t matter who it was. That’s all done now. And while you seem to think it was legions, it was only three.” He studied her. “Are you jealous?”
He had never seen her jealous. Something powerful surged within him at the thought that she might care, that she might actually—
He shoved the sensation away.
She was mumbling against his hand, so he lifted it to let her answer.
“I’m not jealous,” she said, “I’m angry.”
“You can be jealous and angry, all at the same time.”
A fierce little crease appeared between her brows, quite like the crease her mother and sisters got when they were angry. Funny how much alike they looked when they were perturbed. “Not jealous. Only angry.”
But her words were certainly tinged with green.
“Well, don’t be.” Time to right this situation before it tipped further into madness. “And we don’t need preventatives, since we won’t be engaging in marital relations. Remember our agreement?”
Her face went still and tight. “You pinned me to the wall.”
“I know, and I regret it.” The hurt and rejection coming off her sent a thousand needles to pierce his heart.
It was already beginning. This falling for her, into her.
He had to arrest it.
“You regret it?” Her voice was as strained as her expression.
He could tell her the truth—that it had been transporting, incandescent. That he didn’t know how lonely and dark his life had been until she lit the lamp.
Or he could tell her a lie and save himself from the grief that would ensue when the lamp went out. Because it would. Didn’t he know that better than anyone?
He imagined himself laying her in a coffin, lowering it into the ground—her copper eyes forever closed, that electric body of hers forever stilled.
And his heart nearly stopped.
No. Better a lie to her than another lifetime of crushing grief for himself.
“I do,” he said firmly. “You yourself said it wouldn’t be that kind of marriage.”
She pushed away from him, straightening in a forced, pained way that hit at his gut. “So I did. Thank you for reminding me.”
Her choking swallow echoed through the room, and he begged all the saints that she wouldn’t start crying. If she began to weep, he was finished for certain.
But of course, she didn’t. Not Franny.
She went for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And I won’t kiss you again.”
The door slammed, the noise echoing through the house for half a second before all was silent once more. He sank back into the chair, too wrung out to start rocking again.
He’d lied to spare himself more grief. But the ache snaking through his chest felt remarkably like exactly what he’d meant to avoid.