Лорен Уиллиг - The Garden Intrigue

She wouldn’t call it exactly a scootch, but Augustus slid over, making room for her on the overturned raft.

He didn’t look up. “I’ve been in love with a mirage for the better part of a year.”

Emma settled herself down next to him. “What’s a year in the grand scheme of things? And at least you’ve got lots of poetry out of it.”

Augustus looked at her with dead eyes. “You think my poetry is rubbish.”

“Not all of it.” Taken individually, the words had promise. It was just strung together that they made no sense. “Other people like it.”

Augustus sighed. “You really don’t tell a lie, do you?”

“I try not to.” Tentatively, Emma slid an arm around his shoulders, cuddling him as she would Hortense, or as she had Paul once, long ago. She found the hollow above his shoulder blade and pressed down with two fingers, rubbing away the pain. “It really isn’t so bad as all that. I promise.”

She couldn’t have said whether she was talking about his romantic predicament or his poetry.

She could feel the moment he relaxed against her, letting his back slump and his head come to rest against her breast. His breath emerged in a long exhalation, almost like a sigh. He curled up against her, a tangle of dark curls hiding his face. His skin was warm through the thin muslin shirt, his body heavy against hers, curling comfortably into the hollow below her arm.

Emma stroked her fingers through his hair, focusing on the drowsy warmth of his body, the dust motes on the floor, the scents of soap and skin, as her brain turned and turned in unpleasant circles.

She wondered if she had been wrong to warn him away. He might have been happier continuing to daydream of Jane, worshipping her from an arm’s length away. But what happened when an arm’s length became too far? When he wanted more? He had been bound to find out sooner or later. Surely better sooner, before the hurt became even greater.

Emma rested her cheek against his hair and assured herself that what she had done, she had done out of friendship. And it wasn’t that she was glad that Jane had answered as she had, not really. It was simply—simply the hastening of an inevitability. That was all. There was no other reason at all.

They sat in silence for what might have been five minutes or half an hour, no sound but the rhythmic rustle of his hair beneath her fingers, the soft susurration of their breath.

Into the dusty silence, Augustus said diffidently, “Did Jane ever mention it to you? Did she know that it wasn’t—that I—”

“If she suspected, she never said anything.” Emma chose her words very carefully, stroking his hair in long, measured strokes. “I think she values you too much for that.”

“Yes, but only—” Augustus mumbled something incomprehensible.

“What?”

Augustus shifted in his seat. “Nothing.” But the mood was broken. He shook off her hold, drawing back so he could look at her, his hair brushing across her chest. “When you said you knew what it was like, what did you mean?”

Emma caught herself floundering, unsure of what to say. It was much easier being on the other side of it. She preferred eliciting confidences to making them.

“I—exactly what I said. That’s all.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Emma pressed his head back into the crook of her shoulder. “This is about you, not me, remember?”

She could feel his skepticism, from somewhere in the area of her collarbone. “Is it? It’s only fair. I confide in you; you confide in me.”

Emma peered down at the top of Augustus’s head. “Appealing to my sense of fair play, are you?”

His voice rose sepulchrally from her chest. “You brought up the topic.”

“I—oh, fine.” Was it possible to feel both very protective and very irritated at the same time? Fair enough. “I was very young when I met my husband,” she said, striving to put a sensible face on it. “I had all sorts of romantic images about him. Don’t misunderstand me! Paul was a wonderful man, really he was. He just wasn’t the person I thought he was.”

“What was he?” Augustus’s voice was a brush of breath against her bosom. She could feel the tingle of it straight down to her toes.

Emma shivered with something that wasn’t cold.

“Human,” said Emma, pushing away and twitching her bodice more firmly up over her shoulders. She made a droll face. “You can’t believe what a disappointment that was.”

Augustus hoisted himself back into a sitting position. “You were fairly young, weren’t you?”

“Fifteen.”

It would have been so easy to use that as an excuse. Emma contemplated her knees, twin bumps beneath the thin lawn of her gown. Nine years. Had it really been so long? Five years with Paul, four years without him. In a few months, he would have been gone longer than they had been together. It was a curious sensation.

Her skin prickled as she felt Augustus’s hand come to rest on the small of her back, rubbing in small, discreet circles. He was offering her the same promise of comfort she had held out to him. She wanted, so very much, to let herself curl into the crook of his arm, to rest her head against his shoulder and feel his lips on her hair and allow herself the solace of touch. It would be so nice to be cuddled and comforted, all the worries of the last nine years soothed away.

If she did so, it would be under false pretenses. She might have been young, but she ought to have known better, just as she ought to know better now.

Sighing, Emma straightened. “I don’t think age has anything to do with it. We’re all prey to our emotions, whether we’re fifteen or fifty.”

“Which you know,” Augustus said drily, “because you turned fifty when?”

“When we started writing this masque,” she said and waited for him to laugh.

He didn’t. “Has it been that onerous for you?”

“Not onerous, no.” She looked at him, at the long hair curling around his thin face, at the tiny lines at the sides of his eyes, at the long, flexible mouth that could crimp into absurdity or relax into gentleness. He had become so familiar to her in the past month. Familiar and dearer than she cared to admit. “Against all my better judgment, I actually like you.”

“Just not my poetry.”

“If I were you, I would take what I can get.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Emma realized how they sounded. “I didn’t mean—”

His brown eyes shaded to violet at the edges, warm as velvet. “I know.” His thumb rubbed against her cheekbone. “Honest Emma.”

Of all the epithets he had offered to provide her, that had to be the least flattering of the lot.

Emma grimaced. “Make me immortal, Emma, with plain-speaking? That doesn’t have much of a ring to it.”

His fingers found a bit of hair that had escaped from her bandeau. He smoothed it back behind her ear. Emma closed her eyes and let herself lean into his touch, just a little bit. Just for the moment.

“You said you didn’t want to launch ships.”

No, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to be just a little bit of an object of romantic desire. Someday. For someone.

Oh, well.

Emma abruptly sat up, her hair tangling in his fingers. “No, I just—”

She had been about to say sit on them, and maybe make a silly comment about something to do with not launching ships, but the words caught in her throat as her nose bumped his.

She went very still.

She could feel his fingers caught in her hair, the muscles of his arm tense beneath her hand, frozen, just as she was. She should, she knew, wiggle away, move back, laugh, say something.

Her voice came out half whisper, half squeak. “Augustus?”

“Emma?” he said, and she could feel the brush of his breath like a caress against her lips.

It wasn’t, she thought, entirely reassuring that he sounded as entirely befuddled as she felt.

“I—” she began, and broke off, because she didn’t have the least idea of what she was trying to say, or why she was trying to say anything at all.

His lips brushed hers, so softly she might have imagined it.

She should open her eyes, she knew. But there was something terribly seductive about the darkness, something drugging and dreamlike.

As in a dream, her hands moved without conscious volition, threading up through his hair, as tentative as his lips, learning as they went, following the curve of his scalp like someone embarking in twilight on an unfamiliar path through winter woods, warm and cold at the same time, fascinated and hesitant, white snow and dark trees, light and shade all mixed up together.

His hands cupped her face, not coercing or forcing, not pushing or demanding, but cradling. If he had pushed or demanded, she might have pulled away.

But he didn’t.

She smelled like violets and musk, innocence and experience, all rolled into one.

Augustus nuzzled the side of Emma’s face with his nose, breathing in the scent of her, so familiar and yet strangely heady at such close quarters, like perfume in its purest and distilled form, or spirits drunk straight.

She blinked at him, like one half asleep, eyes blurred and unfocused. She looked adorable that way, hair tousled, cheeks flushed. He had seen her flustered before, flustered, tousled, blustering, but never like this, soft around the corners.