Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

Any woman in Britain (except the one he was still married to and still wanted to do… well, all sorts of things to) might find it a bit of an honor.

Forget her. Get past this muddle of past and present, aching memory and sharp-fanged desire. He had work to do. No, Mary, not ceremonial puffery, but real work in the service of the domestic order -if, in fact, the Home Office agreed to take him on.

He should move his aching bones and get himself upstairs to sleep.

He should… but he didn’t.

He sank back into the vortex of memory. Voices, glances exchanged…

Quite the dandy…

The French… expect an English gentleman…

And you, you kept your hair short…

He’d cut it himself, the first time, with a pair of little silver scissors he’d found on her dressing table in Curzon Street. He could remember the coal fire popping in the grate, even while the slender bones and muscles had trembled beneath her skin.

The scissors were shaped like a hummingbird, with fine steel blades for a beak. He’d barely breathed as he snipped and clipped, the blades so close to her bent nape, her spine like a string of pearls, his bare arms and torso held carefully away from her body. If he touched anything but her hair, he’d be certain to lose all control of himself.

Her shift hiked up around her naked hips, she’d sat backward in a little gilt chair; the chestnut curls, falling to the parquet floor of her dressing room, piled up around her bare feet.

Glancing at herself in the mirror, nodding with satisfaction. “There, you see, I’ll make a perfect boy.”

He’d had to laugh.

“No, really, Kit. In one of your coats and a cut-down pair of your breeches. And a neckcloth, a big bright one, like the ones those ridiculous coaching bucks wear.”

Squinting at her, trying to imagine her in disguise.

She’d responded by squaring her shoulders and twisting her facial expression into a sly simulacrum of his when freshly shaved and prepared to meet a new day.

“I’ve been studying you,” she whispered.

He’d had to work to keep his countenance. “I expect we could pull it off.” Shrugging in an offhand manner. “A beardless youth in ill-fitting, rumpled clothing-yes, it’s just possible. I’ll call you Ned, introduce you as a distant cousin just up from the country; all you’ll have to do is nod and gawp at the wonders of the metropolis. And Morrice can help us. If anyone tries to engage you in conversation, he’ll just barge right in with a stream of his endless claptrap.”

Oh yes, Morrice had been a very big help indeed.

“And so you’ll take me to a boxing exhibition? And a gaming hell too?”

“The pugilists first: everybody’s attention will be fixed on what’s happening in the ring. Yes, all right. We’ll try it.”

Surprisingly circumspect at routs and assemblies, she’d been brazen and curious about his gentlemen’s pursuits, demanding so strenuously to see for herself that he’d finally agreed to take her, show her everything he found thrilling and fascinating.

Not only because she’d been so adorable behind her crimson neckcloth, but because it allowed him to see everything twice, first in his own way and then through her brave, clear eyes. Wonderful to have her beside him, out in the exciting world beyond Mayfair and St. James, Rowen and Beechwood Knolls-to show off for her, present the raffish companions he’d made during earlier forays.

As though he’d known anything, really, about the world-except that he cherished a taste for risk and danger, for chance, change, and harsh, shocking contrast. And that (mostly thanks to Joshua Penley) he could afford to pursue his tastes in a leisured, gentlemanly fashion. No demands upon his time except pleasure… nor, for that matter, on her time either.

In Calais, he might have asked her if she hadn’t sometimes found herself bored during that aimless first year of marriage. Impossible to confide such a thing back then-any admission of imperfection was as bad as a betrayal when you were young; better to go out and betray each other instead.

Which was exactly what he and his wife had done.

So young, so stupid. At twenty-one and -two it had felt a queer thing even to have a wife. He’d repeat the word to himself, whisper it silently: wife, or (even more strangely) my wife. Waking up at night, he’d wrap his lips about the reedy little syllable and shake his head in private astonishment-that his wife was sleeping beside him, close by and yet secreted away, tiny movements so familiar and dreams so unknowable, her body curled as in a nest of voluptuous murmurings and smells.

If he wanted, he’d think, he could simply wake, touch, enter her. But no matter if he did or didn’t, she’d still be there in the morning.

At which point in his meditations he usually would wake her, to lose his confused self within her.

It hadn’t been true, of course, that she’d always be there. He and she-and both their families’ solicitors-had found a way around that.

It was years since he’d let himself feel these things. Well, you couldn’t when you were responsible for people besides yourself. Anger-like anarchy-needed to be kept in check.

Yes, right. A word or two from her, and the angry boy he’d been had emerged from hiding like a fox poking his head out of a hole after the hunters had gone by.

Even as he’d wanted to show her the new, responsible Kit, who’d won his men’s respect, who wanted a real career, and who’d even rather enjoyed exchanging letters with his dullish brother-the old Kit had stomped out the door of her bedchamber, given it a thumping loud slam behind him, and to hell with any lodger who’d still be trying for a little sleep. To summon the little serving girl Mary had glared at in the dining room- Good, he’d thought, give her something to glare about.

One woman as good as another for certain things-or so he’d been instructed, long ago, by a group of gentlemen at White’s. The French girl would have been perfectly good at what the Old Kit had wanted. Except for one problem. The New Kit hadn’t wanted her. Hadn’t wanted anyone (Lord, how his London cronies would have hooted at him) except the woman who no longer wanted to be his wife.

At this moment, however, in the library at Park Lane, both Kits had had enough of painful reminiscence-as well as of wondering where one Kit left off and the other began. Pull yourself together, man. Summoning his valet, he got himself neatly and cozily put to bed.

A book he liked lay on the nightstand. Good for times like this. But tonight he didn’t require anything but a few easily summoned images. A curve of her lips, the slope of her nape, even (or perhaps especially) the angry flash of her eyes above that absurdly wonderful threadbare shift.

Reminding him, quite suddenly, of a night when Cousin Ned had rather misbehaved. A ragged shirt, perhaps, unbefitting even a country cousin.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Ned.”

“Have I, sir?”

Her eyes very round, dimple flickering into sight, even as her hands crept toward the buttons of her breeches.

“You need a bit of a punishment, my boy. Come here; it’ll be the making of you. A touch of… discipline. Yes, bend over…”