Chapter Twenty-One




Buffy’s hand fell to her side and then came back up to touch her forehead. She wanted to stay calm for him, to be gentle and reassuring, but the words left her lips before she could even think to stop them.

“Jesus Christ, William.”

He looked down at the floor then, as if ashamed or embarrassed at that which drew such an extreme reaction from her. But he didn’t say anything.

In the dim flickering light of the lamp, his right cheekbone bloomed in a half-dozen different hues of black and blue, and there was a split to the skin, as if someone had been wearing a ring when they struck him. His nose looked all right, and so did his mouth, but his right eye was a misshapen slit ringed by a dark shade of purple. A ribbon of blood snaked from another cut on his temple and did not quite meet the bottom of his jaw. There were smudges of dirt on his white shirt, as if someone had kicked him in his ribs and his belly. His spectacles were bent, the right lens cracked and broken. He saw her looking at them, and he quickly pulled them off, sticking them into the pocket of his coat.

In truth, the injuries were not so terribly severe. They looked to be the work of an unpracticed or somewhat weak individual—at least, in Buffy’s eyes, which had seen so much worse in her lifetime. It was the fact that he was blemished--that someone had so mishandled that tender, handsome face--that angered her. She wiped a bit at the blood with the pad of her thumb, and this time when she spoke, her voice was soft.

“Who did it?”

He did not quite meet her eyes as he murmured, “You do surprise me. I fell, of course, and did myself an injury. On the ice. I fell.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t lie.”

He flushed at that.

“Were you robbed?”

Almost before the question was out of her mouth, she knew the answer. Not robbed. There was a mutinous look on his face, a barely contained anger in those blue eyes. And she knew—she just knew—

“It was Archer. Wasn’t it?”

He said nothing, but she could read the truth in his expression, in the way he raised one shoulder in that familiar gesture of discomfort and reserve, of experienced self-preservation. She pressed, “Why did he hit you? You didn’t jump him again for that smack he was talking, did you? Because, honestly, I don’t think it’s worth your time—”

“Smack?” He sounded puzzled. “I don’t—”

“Insults.”

Again, silence. He fidgeted and looked away. Buffy sighed. A confusing mix of affection, concern, and exasperation washed over her. Yet only the latter emotion spilled over into words.

“God, what is with you people? I thought the English upper class was supposed to be all reserved and polite--and refined! Now it seems like every time I turn around, there you are, throwing down like a prize fighter over some idiot whose opinion shouldn’t even mean anything to you—”

“It was them!” he burst out. “Charles and—and—and David Havisham. They said—”

“Who cares what they said?” she demanded. “Why are you getting so angry about it? Is it because, deep down, you’re afraid that they’re right?”

The anger that had been directed at them swiftly turned to her. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, ordered through gritted teeth: “Don’t say that! I could never think—”

She made an impatient sound, not at all intimidated by his show of temper.

“Well, what is it then? Why do you care what they think?”

His tone softened. “What kind of love could I claim, if I were not willing to defend you?” he asked. It completely disarmed her. She touched the wound at his temple gently.

“Tell me what happened. Did they just come up and tap you on the shoulder…and then call me a trollop?”

He raised the eyebrow that wasn’t swollen, and she shook her head in disbelief.

“They did. Okay, that just reeks of class. Then what happened? Did you hit them?”

“I tell you it was him. Archer. He had no right—”

“So, you hit him,” she interrupted. “And then he hit you back.”

“He would not have dared if Havisham had not been there; Charles was there to meet him off the train. It was a cowardly thing.”

Buffy could see that talking about it only agitated him more. She promptly changed the subject.

“Come on.” She tugged on his arm gently. “Come sit in the parlor, and we’ll fix you up.”

Obediently, he followed her into the dark room; he even carried the lamp for her. But he could not seem to settle down.

“I should call him out for his ungentlemanly behavior,” he insisted, low. “To insult a lady, to accuse her of such terrible, vulgar things; it is unlawful. I should kill him—”

The matter-of-fact way with which he said it alarmed her. She pushed him back down into his chair. “Don’t say that. You’re not going to kill anybody.”

He fell into a brooding silence that Buffy struggled to ignore. She knew he was still seething inside; she just didn't know what to do about it.

“Here,” she said, eventually. She held out one hand. “Give me your handkerchief, and I’ll run get you some ice for your face.”

William surrendered it without comment, and she hurried out of the room. There was a draft in the foyer, and she was shivering even before she reached the door. Nevertheless, she wrenched it open and stepped outside into the biting cold. There were icicles hanging from the eaves, and she jumped up and knocked them down with both fists—not exactly easy, but still a simpler task than running down cellar to chisel pieces off the huge blocks the Hartleys bought off a vender. She wrapped some of the bigger chunks in his handkerchief and ran back into the house.

Back in the parlor, she placed the lamp nearer to his chair so that she could see his face clearly. He had a cut beneath his eye that she had not noticed before; it was more than an inch long from the middle of his under-eye to past the corner. She traced it lightly with her fingertip, and he sucked in his breath.

“Was it your spectacles? Did the glass scratch your eye?”

He nodded. Then added, upon seeing her worried expression, “Truly, it is all right. It does not hurt, and I shall go to Dr. Wright tomorrow to see about having a new pair made. It is only the idea that he should be spreading such lies about you—”

She could see him getting annoyed again and quickly pressed the bundle of ice into his palm. “Put that over your eye first, then on the side of you head and jaw. You’re getting all swollen.”

He did as she said, watching her all the time as she perched gracefully on the ottoman at his feet. His gaze was so intense, so steady, that she could not help asking, “Can you see me without your spectacles?”

For a moment, he looked puzzled.

“They are only for reading.”

“But you wear them all the time,” she pointed out.

“I read a good deal.”

She laughed a little at that, and although she suspected he had no idea why, he chuckled too. A moment after, he winced.

“Does your head hurt?”

He nodded. Buffy leaned against the side of his knee so that she could comb her fingers through his hair, probing at the lump over his temple and trying to determine its seriousness. She did not intend it to be a caress, but he visibly relaxed into the touch, his long limbs becoming splayed and boneless, his eyelids half-shut. It might have been the first time she had ever seen him so tranquil. Although on closer inspection, she realized that was probably more due to complete exhaustion than any sudden change in his temperament.

“Sleepy?” she asked. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, slightly unfocused. He looked not just sleepy but ready to collapse. Naturally, he tried to downplay this when he answered her.

“Only a bit tired.” She was still running her fingers through his hair, and to her complete surprise his hand reached up to cover hers, as if he was afraid that she might stop. As if she could stop.

She petted him softly, and eventually, he relaxed back, letting his hand drop from hers. He looked almost asleep, almost drunk, and she wondered for a moment if she had cast a spell on him.

Her eyes followed the rise and fall of his chest, the dip of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed. That soft throat. How easy it would have been for Drusilla to take the opportunity that she, Buffy, had provided. How easy it would be for her to take the next opportunity—or the next, or the one after that—to rip open his throat and drain his life.

“William, promise me something?”

He barely stirred. “Yes.”

“Promise me that you won’t go out alone after dark anymore.” His eyes opened at that, surprised and even a little amused. She added urgently, “There are all kinds of things happening in London…all kinds of evil people running around. It isn’t safe. Promise me.”

“If you wish. Of course I shall promise.”

She leaned her head against his arm, and shortly after, he gave a sleepy laugh. “What?”

“Only that it seems you worry for my safety as much as I worry for yours. I never realized women were so protective before.”

She looked up in surprise.

“Is that why you came back so suddenly…because you were worried about me?”

“Yes. I thought—I felt—that somehow you must be in danger. That you were in need of me.” He smiled self-consciously. “I suppose that sounds very silly to you.”

She kissed his bruised cheek tenderly.

“No. It doesn’t sound silly at all,” she whispered.

She brushed the damp curls off his forehead, and he leaned his head into her hand, allowing his eyes to go half-closed and dreamy once again.

“How’s that eye doing?”

“A good deal better. Thank you.”

He nuzzled at her palm as it passed over his cheek, and it amazed her. How could someone be so hungry for touch yet so insistent upon denying himself the best part of it? She leaned a little forward.

“William, can we talk about what happened before you left, do you think?”

He was awake in an instant, flushed and stuttering anxiously. “We--we--we already spoke. Must we go over it again? That is—should we not just forget about it?”

“Do you want to forget about it?” she asked him. “Do you think you can forget about it?”

“Ye—es.” There was a hesitance in his voice. Still, he insisted, “At the very least, I feel we should not allude to it again. It is not seemly—it—it is not—”

Her hand moved from his knee to the front of his rumpled, soiled shirt. His warm, thin chest and thumping heart beneath the stretch of her palm, she went on, low: “I know it embarrassed you, but did it make you feel at all nice? Did you like my touching you…even a little bit?”

A foggy look came to his eye at the mention of her touch, and he looked, for moment, so dazed and tempted that her breath caught.

“It felt—”

“What?” she whispered.

He was slumped in his chair, his legs spread so that she, on her low stool, sat almost in between them. Six inches from his crotch, five buttons and a lapse of self-control from taking that growing evidence of his arousal into her mouth. The eroticism of the pose seemed to occur to him belatedly, and he pulled himself upright, shaking his head slowly.

“I don’t think…I cannot…”

“It’s all right,” she said. She drew back, gently pulled the ice from his eye and repositioned it to the knot on his temple.

“Hold it here for a while.”

He nodded dumbly and obeyed.

She didn’t touch him again.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




They sat in the parlor together until the ice melted and the throbbing of his head became merely a dull ache. It was she who drew away first. It was so late, she said, and he looked so tired. He was tired. He was so tired that the night was taking on the hazy, surreal quality of a dream—so tired that his mind did not seem to be functioning properly at all. It could not have been. Because how else to explain what he did next?

He saw Elizabeth to her room, as a gentleman should; there was nothing strange about that. What was strange—what was wrong—was the fact that, once she went into her room and closed the door behind her, he still could not bring himself to move away from it. Instead, he stood there on and on, his fingertips lightly brushing the smooth wood. He closed his eyes, and in his mind he could almost see her there. He could see her stepping out of her slippers and unbuttoning the coat that covered her nightdress. He thought that he could imagine how she looked in that frail, feminine garment, the muslin so thin and delicate one could see every tender curve of her body. And for a moment, for an agonizing moment, he could not breathe. The soft rustle of her body settling into the feather mattress, the overwhelming temptation of it—

Stop it, he told himself angrily. It isn’t something to be thought about.

Yet even as he forced himself away from the door and walked the corridor to his own rooms, he could think of nothing else. He felt as if he were in the pull of laudanum: stupefied and struggling. Addicted. She knew how to do something no lady should know how to do. She enjoyed doing it—

But she is a lady, he reminded himself. She is. She must be.

Even in their repetition, the words seemed to lose some meaning. A lady. What was a lady, precisely? Miss Underwood was considered a lady and one of some standing in London. Yet she was cold and aloof, taken more with herself and her reputation than anything else. Strange that he had not noticed that until recently. Miss Summers—Elizabeth—was so different. She was like a creature from a different world, a lovely, fiery creature. Whatever the others said of her character (and he refused to believe any of it), the content of her heart was good. He knew that. He had seen her stay awake all night caring for his mother; he had seen her give her last coins to the dirty beggar children that accosted them on the streets. Did that not make her a lady? It must.

He entered his own room and began to undress. Although the air was chill, he felt flushed and strange. He thought that he could still feel her soft fingers in his hair. He thought that he could see her green eyes in the dark. He thought he could hear her whispering.

Did you like my touching you even a little bit?

Yes, he thought desperately. God, yes.

And it was wrong.

He lay down upon his bed with a sigh. When he closed his eyes, he could not quite banish the image of her seated on his lap and nestling into him, pleasuring him not just with her hands but also with the feel of her body, the scent of her flesh. The sheer, overwhelming beauty of her. She was—

Doing things no lady should know how to do.

An automatic thought and one to which he could not quite become reconciled. Immediately, he began to argue with himself.

But it was for me. That beauty, that act—they were mine—not meant for any eyes, any hands, or any body but my own.

He felt a rush of shameful, possessive satisfaction at the thought—then, just as quickly, he banished it. Wrong, still wrong. But—

Oh, God. How can I resist her?

And the desire took hold of him like a fever and did not let go.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~