Sherry Thomas - His At Night

“Yes, he did,” replied Cipriani. “He mentioned he was raising funds for a venture to South Africa.”

Her bed was crimson Italian silk. Against this sumptuous backdrop, Angelica stretched, immodestly, deliciously. Part of Freddie still felt he should avert his eyes. The rest of him not only could not look away, but reached out a hand to caress the underside of her breast.

“Hmm, that was splendid,” she said.

His cheeks grew warm. He leaned in to kiss her again. “The pleasure was all mine.”

And how.

“Can I make a confession?” he asked.

“Hmm, you never have confessions to make. This I must hear.”

He cleared his throat, embarrassed now that he was about to volunteer the information. “I was not that interested in the provenance of the angel painting.”

Her jaw went slack. “You weren’t?”

“Your oldest friend asks you to paint her in the altogether. You are terribly tempted but not sure how to say yes. Wouldn’t you find a seemingly legitimate inquiry so that you may exchange favors?”

She sat up straight, a rich cascade of crimson silk held to her breasts. “Freddie! I never guessed you to be so sneaky.”

He flushed. “I’m not—not usually, in any case. I just wanted to be a little less transparent.”

She hit him lightly on the arm. “Oh, you were opaque enough for me. I had quite despaired of how I would ever make myself understood.”

“You could have just told me.”

“If I could, I would have done it ten years ago.” She kissed him where she’d hit him. “It was probably best I didn’t: You viewed me as completely lacking in feminine attributes.”

“That is not true. It was more the case that I never thought about your feminine attributes. I mean, you were—and are—my oldest friend. You didn’t need breasts and buttocks to matter to me.”

“That is a sweet thing to say, although my breasts and buttocks might dissent.”

He smiled.

She snuggled closer to him. “Did you ever think that I was too critical? Or had too many ideas about how you should do things?”

“No, never. My father was too critical: He put me down because he enjoyed it, and because I didn’t quite know how to fight back like Penny did. Your suggestions were always rooted in a sincere interest in me. And it was never a condition of our friendship that I must do as you said: You gave your advice and I was free to take it or not.”

“Good,” she said.

He hesitated.

She peered at him. “There is something else you want to say, isn’t there? Go ahead; I’d like to hear it.”

He kept forgetting how well she knew him. “I was thinking that there was a time when I felt you were too ambitious for me. You were constantly telling me that I needed to paint faster, and exhibit, and establish a large body of work.”

“Ah, that. That was when I was unbearably jealous of Lady Tremaine. I was trying to make you see that she didn’t know rose madder from crimson lake, while I was an expert in both art and the art world.”

He truly had been blind. It never occurred to him that her seemingly frantic drive to propel him toward artistic prominence had anything to do with hidden desires of the heart. He lifted a strand of her hair. It would seem he had not done it justice in his painting: There were shades of auburn too.

“Before Lady Tremaine left for America, she’d hoped I would find solace in your arms. But when you came to comfort me, I all but chased you away.”

“I don’t blame you. I was very rude about it.”

“When you married Canaletto out of the blue, I couldn’t help but worry that my conduct that day had something to do with it. Just know I’ve always regretted my abruptness.”

She shook her head. “My inability to handle my disappointment without doing something stupid was not your fault, but my own shortcoming. In fact, this time, I was determined that should you turn me down, I was absolutely not going to do anything foolish—like sleeping with Penny, for instance—to soothe my bruised vanity.”

“Penny would be traumatized. He still thinks of you as a sister.”

She chuckled. “I would be traumatized, too.”

She lifted her arm and set her hand down atop a small framed picture on her nightstand. Absently she twisted the frame this way and that, and he saw that the frame contained a pencil drawing of her face he had sketched many years ago and given her as a gift. The art critic in her should have found too many defects in the sketch, which lacked both technique and composition, and seemed to have only a great earnestness to recommend itself.

He’d always loved and cared about her, but now his heart was filled with tenderness, so much that it was almost painful. “I’m glad you came back,” he said, tracing his hand across her cheekbone.

“So am I,” she said, her gaze direct and clear. “So am I.”

It was very late at night, but her husband still had not returned from London.

Elissande lay awake in an unrelieved darkness, staring at a ceiling she could not see, thinking of the first time she laid eyes on him. She remembered every detail: the homburg he’d worn, the glimpse of blue waistcoat beneath his fawn jacket, the spark of sunlight on his cuff links, but most of all, the joyful buoyancy she’d experienced when he’d smiled at his brother.

If only they’d met a week later, when she no longer needed to entrap anyone. How different things would have been.

But she had entrapped him. And he was not happy with her. And if he would not talk to her—or make love to her—how would they ever be anything but strangers in this marriage?

Her door creaked slightly as it swung open. He was home. He had opened her door. He was on her threshold and had but to take one more step to enter her room.

Excitement shot through her, an excitement that was almost panic. Her heart pumped madly, like a steam-driven piston. She bit her lower lip to not breathe too heavily.

She must hold very quiet, and give the firm impression of being sound asleep. Then he might be more encouraged to approach her. To touch her. And from there, to forgive her, some day.

She willed him to come to her, to seek solace in her arms for his loneliness, his weariness.

But the door closed again and he sought his own bed instead.

The longcase clock gonged the hour, three brassy chimes that quavered in the dark, still air.

It was always three o’clock.

He ran. The pitch-black corridor would not end. Something slammed into his calf. He cried out in pain, stumbling. But he must keep running. He must reach his mother and warn her of the mortal danger.

There, the hall. At the distant end of its Olympic length, the staircase that would be her undoing. He’d almost made it. He would save her; he would not let her fall.

He stumbled again, pain lancing deep into his knees.

He hobbled on.

But she was already there when he at last reached the foot of the staircase. Blood pooled under her head, blood the same black-red as her gown and the rubies glittering on her chest.

He screamed. Why could he not save her? Why was he never in time to save her?

Someone called his name. Someone shook his shoulder. It must be the person responsible for his mother’s death. He threw the person down.

“Penny, are you all right?” she squeaked.

No, he was not all right. He would never be all right again.

“Penny, stop. Stop. You’ll hurt me.”

He very much wanted to hurt somebody.

“Penny, please!”

His eyes flew open. He was gasping, as if he’d been running from the hounds of hell. The room was pitch-dark, just like in his dream. He made a sound at the back of his throat, not yet free from the terror of the nightmare.

“It’s all right,” murmured the person in bed with him, someone warm and soft who smelled of honey and roses. “It was just a bad dream.”

She caressed his face and his hair. “It was just a bad dream,” she repeated. “Don’t be afraid.”

Ridiculous. He wasn’t afraid of anything.

She kissed him on his jaw. “I’m here. It’s all right. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He was big, strong, and clever. He needed no one to protect him from something as flimsy as dreams.

She pulled him into her arms. “I have bad dreams too. Sometimes I dream I’m Prometheus, chained to the rock forever and ever. And then, of course, I can’t go back to sleep afterward, so I think of Capri, beautiful, faraway Capri.”

She had an exquisite voice. He’d never noticed before. But there in the dark, as she spoke, the sound of her words was as lovely as the sound of water to a desert tribe.

“I imagine that I have a boat of my own,” she whispered. “When it’s warm and breezy, I sail it into the open waters, sleep under the sun, and turn as brown as the fishermen. And when it’s stormy, I stand atop the cliffs and watch the sea rage, knowing that an angry sea keeps me isolated—and keeps me safe.”

His breaths no longer came in quite such huge gulps. He understood what she was doing. After the abrupt loss of their mother, he’d done the same for Freddie, his arm around Freddie’s shoulders, talking about netting trout and catching fireflies until Freddie fell asleep again.

But he’d never let anyone do it for him.

“It was unlikely, of course,” she continued. “I always knew that it was most unlikely. If ever I managed to get away from my uncle, I would need to work for a living, and nobody pays a woman much for anything. I’d have to scrimp to save for a rainy day, and count myself fortunate if I could someday spare the coin for a train ticket to Brighton.” Her fingers traced his cheekbone. “But Capri made it possible to go on. It was my flame in the dark, my escape when there was no escape.”