13

I felt wicked, slipping away just after dinner the next day, making excuses that I was tired and wanted to turn in early. I went to my room to freshen up, dabbing scent behind my ears and patting rouge on my lips to tint them. They didn’t need much, already bright pink from the mere thought of joining Julian for after-dinner drinks in his apartments.

It still thrilled me to think of him this way. Julian.

There’s no lying here—I was not what one might call a virtuous woman. At seventeen, I’d discovered early the allure of sex after sneaking from a local dance with a boy my age. In the cover of darkness, we explored each other’s bodies, and though his methods left much to be desired, I rather enjoyed the act, and sought to make it happen again, and again. Just simple dalliances. But if my parents knew the sort of girl I was, they would both drop dead.

In any case, I had thin faith that the Earl of Wakeford would be so untoward. Though if he were, I would be prepared.

I removed my shoes to quiet my footfalls, and padded down the corridor to Julian’s door. He opened after the first knock.

The sitting room was fuggy, still smelling of his dinner, savory rosemary and seared meat trapped in the unmoving air. He’d already started with a digestif, a tumbler of whisky he’d left on a side table, near where the imprint of his body was carved in his wingback. We stood together just inside, both with a half smile, both unsure of what precisely we were doing.

To my surprise, Julian spoke first. “May I offer you a drink?”

“Please do.”

He walked backwards to the sideboard. “I’ve had Huxley bring a fine thirty-year Scotch whisky.”

“Sounds divine. I can’t say I’ve ever had a drink older than I am.”

While he poured, I went to see how my painting looked in the orange light of evening. It took on a sinister air—the sky in flames, clouds with the greyish hue of smoke.

“I was just considering how best to frame it,” Julian said, coming up behind me with a glass.

“I think that depends on where it’s to be hung.” I breathed in the whisky. It was certainly the finest I’d had, rich, smooth, and tasting of all thirty years it had waited for us to drink it. “Where will you go after Braemore?”

I wasn’t sure Julian had heard until he eventually answered, “Somewhere people pass without noticing.”

Lamplight cast a glare over Julian’s spectacles, making it difficult to read his eye, which for a man of such few words could be the only way to understand what he was thinking.

“Will you take it off?” I asked. “As much as I appreciate Mrs. Ladd’s artwork, I’d much prefer to spend the evening looking at you.”

Julian unhooked the arms from his ears and dropped his chin, letting the mask fall into his open palm. He set it gingerly on his desk and returned, pushing his hands through his hair.

“Much better,” I said, and drank again, wandering away from the painting to collect Julian’s abandoned tumbler to return to him. Now the mask was off, I hoped he might find himself at ease enough to drink with me. “It mustn’t’ve been easy, traveling to Paris so soon after you’d mended. And France itself, in recovery.” He looked down at his shoes, and I knew I’d overstepped. “We needn’t talk about it any further.”

I moved to the settee. Julian sat close and lifted his glass tentatively before draining it. As he set it on the table, he produced a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his lip.

“People would stare,” he said. “They stared at the scars; they stared at the mask—it didn’t make much difference. It helped to be in uniform, but even so, women went pale . . .” He replaced the handkerchief and leaned back, stretching his arm behind me. “There isn’t much to be done, is there?”

I was guilty for pushing, thinking perhaps I’d ruined any chance this evening might bring us yet again closer. I wanted us to be closer—to test how my heart might respond.

I took his glass to refill it. He lit a cigarette. When I sat again, he offered one to me, but I waved him off. “I’m sorry, truly. My mother always says I flog the dead horse . . .”

His hand went to my knee, heavy and warm. I had not thought him so bold, but was glad of it. I ran the tips of my fingers over his knuckles as a fire was lit inside me.

“You can tell me to stop talking,” I said. “I won’t be offended.” The whisky had crumbled my defenses. “It’s just that—you really listen, don’t you? You don’t just grin for etiquette’s sake. Do you know how rare that is in a person?”

Julian waited to speak, demonstrating the simple beauty in a long pause. Outside the cracked window, sheep bleated in the distance, an owl hooed, wind hissed through trees.

“I like hearing you talk,” he said finally. “And I don’t mind telling you about myself. But I do mind that I know precious little of you.”

“There is little to know.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Julian’s thumb brushed back and forth on my knee. It took my every ounce of will to stay still. I wanted to be closer, to move his hand to other places which were reaching out to him.

“Let’s see . . . ,” I began. “I’m nosy. Though I suspect you’ve deduced that already.”

Julian smiled. “Go on.”

I settled into my seat, letting my memory spread out before me. “When I was a girl, I wanted to marry the screever who chalked the pavement in Hyde Park. I would put by every farthing for his cap, surrendering it on day trips to London.”

Julian listened with keen attention, pulling on his cigarette with curved lips.

“I have two elder sisters who are perfect—perfectly proper and perfectly boring. My parents haven’t an ounce of creativity between them, but my father makes model ships now. He’s very proud of them . . .”

My throat tightened. I missed him. I missed all of them—and I couldn’t go home.

Julian leaned forward to tap his ash in a crystal tray, then resumed rubbing my knee. It was a welcome distraction from my heartache.

“I took some of my paintings to London once, and set them on a bench along Victoria Embankment to peddle them for a few pence. But I didn’t sell a single one. It was humiliating.”

Julian furrowed his brow and moved his hand behind me, elbow resting on the top of the settee. I shivered as his fingers traced the back of my neck, tickling as the short hairs moved to and fro.

“I slipped out to attend suffragette rallies before the war—perhaps I was too young, but I couldn’t resist. My mother called me mad, unladylike. My sisters told me to leave politics to men. But I went because I believe in women. Though when I hear my mother’s voice in my head, I wonder if I truly am mad for having such nerve, for cutting my hair.”

Julian pinched a bit of it, twisting and releasing the strand. My neck burned.

“I’m afraid I’ll die before I’ve done anything of worth. I’m afraid my mother is right, that the greatest thing a woman can contribute to the world is children, and I’ve spent so long chasing after some silly dream that I’ve run out of time for all that—for love.”

I had never admitted that to anyone. Rarely enough to myself.

Julian pushed my hair behind my ear, angling my face to look at him. He said nothing, though his expression spoke words of comfort. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to carve my heart out of my chest and place it in his hands.

“When I was a VAD, I drew portraits of soldiers to send to their families. Sometimes I drew them without bandages, without sunken cheeks and black eyes. Sometimes I drew them smiling when they weren’t; I drew them looking well when I knew they would be dead by week’s end. I’ve never forgiven myself.”

Julian dropped his cigarette in the tray and brought his other hand to my face, smelling strongly of tobacco. I nearly said it—I nearly told him all my fears of getting involved with a broken man. My fear that Celia’s opinion of him was worth cautioning. Then a tear slipped from my eye. He caught it on my cheek with his lips, tracing upwards, clearing it away. When he kissed me, I could taste the salt, satiating and moreish, not nearly enough.

“Then I met an earl,” I said. “I imagined he was a kindly old man with a potbelly, but as it happens he’s rather young and quite lovely.” I traced my fingers from his sunken left brow, following the track of his scar. “And I like him terribly.”

Julian kissed me again, ever so briefly, and it felt like an answer. If he preferred to speak in kisses for the duration of our friendship, I would comply. Apparently it was a language in which I was fluent; I could understand precisely what he was telling me.

He pulled away with intention, and took my hand. “There’s something I would like to show you.”

Wordlessly, Julian led me to his bedroom. The lights were on already, a standing lamp glowing over one corner, another beside the bed. It was a colossal tester bed of regal mahogany, something belonging in a genuine Tudor castle, with maroon brocade curtains and an intricately carved headboard.

“Have a seat, if you like,” Julian said, and went through another door.

I sat on the bed, feeling I must because of how breathtaking it was. The room was thick with the peopled scent of a lived-in space, the lasting sharpness of bergamot soap and sheets steeped in the mellow tang of a summer-warmed body. I wanted to fall back to let the plush quilt catch me but feared I’d never get up.

Julian returned with a plain wooden box and sat beside me, not the least bit bothered by the idea we were on his bed. I watched curiously as he arranged the box on his lap and unlocked it with a key before lifting the lid.

“Oh!”

On the top was a tray lined with velvet, designed for jewelry. This one had military medals—many of them—colored ribbons in brilliant contrast to the black they were set on, bronze, silver, copper shining proudly. I thought this was what Julian wanted me to see until he lifted the tray out as if it mattered little and handed it to me to hold.

I touched the cold, rigid metal lion on a Victoria Cross, mind racing. To think what he must have done to receive it, to shake the king’s hand . . .

“You ought to have these on display,” I said.

He ignored that, pulling out the next-largest item from the box—a revolver—though not the make I had seen often in a British officer’s kit. I must have reacted, for Julian set it aside gently and said, “Seized from an unlucky Hun.”

I decided not to ask if the German man had been alive.

Then he rifled through what was left in the box—papers and letters, documents and scattered photographs. He handed me a leather-bound journal, which I opened to find his drawings. Most were silly cartoons with captions: a plump, mustached general titled Passed Inspection; a gap-toothed Tommy boxing with a rat of equal size, Recreation on Dover Street. Smiling, I turned the page and found less happy reflections—line drawings of a camp in pouring rain, a blackened battlefield, and an eerie makeshift gravestone that looked to have been made from a biscuit tin lid. Remember Him, Julian had written beneath it.

Then there was a drawing of a girl, her sudden softness and beauty a striking contrast to the previous images. Julian, who’d been looking over my shoulder, cleared his throat.

I couldn’t say why, but I didn’t wish to point her out. “These are very clever.”

Before I could continue, a pressed flower fell from between the pages into my lap. Returning to the journal, I found more—poppies, bluebells, chicory, cornflowers.

“I collected those for Celia,” Julian said. A shadow passed over his face.

“You must miss her.”

He nodded.

“Why did the two of you fall out?”

Julian bowed his head, scratched his nose, stalling the inevitable. But I was patient. I’d waited this long to hear the story—another few breaths were of no matter.

“I’ve disappointed her,” he said weakly. “She’s every right to be upset.”

Vague, as ever. I’d come to expect it. “How have you disappointed her?”

Julian leaned his shoulder against mine for support. I feared his answer, but was willing to have it, no matter how bitter the pill. I was through with secrets.

“I did things during the war that I’m not proud of. I’ve changed, and I—I suppose that’s the reason I wanted to show this to you.” He pulled a postcard from the bottom of the box.

It was a photograph of him, one of the postcards men sat for once they had their uniforms, and sent home for their parents to place proudly on the mantel. I had one of my own, dressed in apron and veil, just as honored to wear the Red Cross as the boys were to be in khaki.

Julian was young. Whole. He sat with his shoulders back, his peaked cap on his knee, hair short and combed neatly to one side. I wished he was smiling, but of course he was stern, eyes dark and deep, revealing only perhaps fear, or the agony of knowing what he must do.

His cheeks were rounder with youth, clean-shaven and pale. He looked the same and somehow completely different. I couldn’t take my eyes from it.

Julian, however, kept his down and away.

“How young you look,” I said.

“I was. Four and twenty.”

“Were you a good officer?”

He thought, clenching his jaw. “Not at first. I’ve never been one for violence or confrontation. So when I began my training, I decided I’d have to be someone else if I was going to survive at the front. I had to”—a line formed on his forehead—“force myself in half. To cut away what I was until only a sort of primal skeleton remained. I cut away anything which was not fear or rage or hate. I lived that way for years, and when I returned, I couldn’t find where I’d left the other part of myself, the larger part. And when I found it, they were two separate halves that wouldn’t bind. This part”—he pointed to the postcard, then to his scars—“and this.”

“You think Celia is upset by the change in you?”

“I know she is.”

I lifted the postcard. “Why have you shown me this?”

Julian plucked it from between my fingers and set it back in the box. We replaced the book with the flowers, and the revolver, and then the tray of medals. It was all locked up again so neatly.

“I wanted you to see that I was just another of them,” Julian said. “I could sense you were beginning to believe this bloody mythos my family have fashioned about me. I don’t want you to think of me that way. I’m merely a man.” His throat caught.

I took the box from his lap, setting it gently on the floor, and kissed him. Lightly, on the scarred side of his mouth. He pulled me closer, lips parting. My tongue slipped easily through the gap to taste whisky on his teeth. He drew away, tilting his face so that my next attempt landed on his unhurt side. That was something. For he deepened the kiss and hummed into my mouth. I echoed him, discovering that despite my best effort to move him past his insecurities, his strength did lie on this end.

He gripped my leg to keep me close, and I pushed his hand down and up again, under my skirt, the sensation causing my mouth to fall open. As he kissed my neck, I dipped my head, leading him to more until I was flat on the mattress, Julian beside me. I worked the knot from his tie, unfastened one button at a time. He rucked up my dress, opening my garters with two snaps. I pushed his braces off, tugged at his undershirt. My fingers splayed over his bare breast, stopping when the texture shifted. Scars like roots over his shoulder where he’d taken shrapnel.

I willed myself not to linger. Instead, let my legs fall apart to make room for his hips. He was not like I expected—flushed chest hard and carved like the Grecian statues in his garden, not usual for a man who hadn’t known a day of physical labor. Unblemished skin rolled over prominent ribs. Julian sighed as I drew him down. We were wild. It came from somewhere deep within us; mine understood his.

And then he stopped.

Stopped moving, stopped kissing, stopped breathing, perhaps. He turned his face from me, eye closed firmly as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me.

I waited. It didn’t feel right to speak.

He rose and moved away from me to sit on the end of the mattress with head in hands. The sudden lack of heat made me shiver. I counted the notches on his spine, prominent under porcelain skin, gilded in the dim light.

I propped myself on my elbows and waited some more. When nothing came, I pulled my skirt down and sat up. “It’s all right. We don’t have to . . .”

I had a few guesses at what the problem was, only hoping it wasn’t the idea that I was loose legged, or not attractive enough, or perhaps only too common. I took a chance and stroked Julian’s broad back. He tensed, then relaxed, breaths slowing under my palm.

“I’m sorry,” he said into his hands. “I warned you I’m no good at this.”

“On the contrary, I thought you were doing quite well. Is something the matter?”

No answer. The well had run dry. That seemed to be what happened to him. After a time, he lost words as one loses breath on a long run.

“Hadn’t I better be gone, anyhow?” I said. “You look spent.”

“I should like you to stay.”

That was good, for I was loath to return to my room, which would be too quiet and empty without him. So I fetched our drinks and his cigarettes. He accepted his whisky and had a tentative sip, then wiped what had drained down his chin with the back of his hand.

“If I’m staying, shall you mind if I get comfortable?” I asked. Julian looked up at me from under low brows, shook his head.

I rolled down my stockings to slip them off, then went to the other side of the bed, careful not to spill my drink as I climbed over the mattress. The quilt sank under my weight as air escaped, smelling of Julian. I leaned against the carved headboard, feeling at home.

“Fit for Henry the Eighth, isn’t it?” I patted the space beside me. “Come; tell me more about the boy in the postcard.”

Julian observed me over his shoulder, eye creasing with the beginnings of contentment. He moved himself back, settling close beside me. “He’s always hated this bed.”

I smiled. “Why not replace it?”

With a shrug: “Too much bother.”

We paused to drink and it loosened any misgivings I’d been harboring. Julian appeared to be relaxing as well, crossing ankles and sinking into the pillows. He peered at his glass for a moment, then half smiled. “I’ve not shared it before.”

“The whisky?”

“The bed.”

There was no preventing my blush. “You’ve never come close to marrying?”

“I was too young, and then the war . . .” Julian sighed a stream of blue smoke.

“Had you never been in love?”

He leaned away to stifle his cigarette. “There was one girl, but she—I lost her.”

The girl in his drawings? “I’m sorry. That must pain you terribly.”

Julian regarded me as though I’d said something he didn’t quite understand. He finished his drink, and set our empty glasses on the bedside table. I pivoted to face him for ease of conversation. His hand found my empty one. With that bit of touch, things were more comfortable.

“I’ve never been in love myself,” I said, lacing my fingers through his. “I’ve been lonely, however, and I think perhaps it hurts in a similar way.”

Julian watched our hands move around each other, in an amorous tumble of their own. “Making art is a lonesome business.”

I nodded. “One is inspired by someplace, or someone. Then, inevitably, one must return to one’s room alone and put it to canvas. But I crave more than a room. I wish to see things and meet people and taste and dance and find reason to be alive. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lonesome, though?”

He spread my hand flat on his and covered it with the other. “I’ve always coveted solitude. I used to believe that meant I wouldn’t long for other people, but—I do . . . get lonely. I am, I suppose.”

“Now?”

“Not now.”

I unlocked our fingers and slid my hand over his wrist, following violet roots to a rigid arm that changed shape as the muscle contracted beneath my touch. I stretched to search further. Julian bent, threading his arm until my palm crested the sphered peak of his shoulder. Our noses met. He exhaled heavily against my lips.

I nipped at his mouth but he hesitated yet again. Bowed his head.

I stared at him, aghast. Most men I had met would not pause at this stage, their minds completely fogged by exposed skin and freedom of touch. Yet here was Julian, still holding me but refusing to move closer.

For the first time, I worried, truly, that what was not right about Julian was deeper than I was prepared to deal with. But he softened into me, and the way his arms weaved behind my back, I knew whatever was keeping him from me was not cynical.

“Are you frightened of me?” I asked him.

He blushed, but smiled, and met my eyes again. “Not any longer.”

“But you are frightened of something?”

Julian lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my palm, then cradled it against his chest. “Despite my failures at propriety, my utmost intention is merely to protect you.”

A flutter in my stomach led me to smile again. I pushed the hair from his face and held it there, admiring him from inky black eye to plush, swollen lips. “I am a grown woman, Lord Wakeford, entirely capable of protecting herself.”

And though the notion broke the tension between us, it also put an end to the reaching. I was moving much too quickly for him, and perhaps he was right to give me pause.

So I crawled beneath his heavy quilt and we lay side by side, where the heat of our bodies mixed and swirled. I knew I should return to my room if this was going to be an end, but I could not bring myself to leave Julian. This sort of closeness—the closeness that did not require carnality—was what I had wondered about.

As Julian’s breaths evened beside me, I thought perhaps it was better.