“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. “
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
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.
Chapter 18
Close your lips; don’t speak me fair;
Those wordy vows are but pure air.
My port is yours, my friendship free,
In simple camaraderie.
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.
“I don’t think—” she said hoarsely.
Augustus put a finger to her lips. “Yes, you do,” he said fondly. “All the time.”
Gently, he brushed his finger across her lips. For a moment, he thought she might argue, her lips parted as though to speak, but only air came out. Her eyelids flickered closed, lilac paint making purple shadows.
“Emma,” Augustus said, tasting the name on his tongue, invocation and question all in one. This was Emma and it wasn’t, commonplace and strange all at the same time, like a familiar landscape viewed from a new angle. What was the line?
Rich and strange, indeed. Her lips were soft and slightly parted beneath his finger, her breath a benediction on his skin. So many discussions they had had, so many conversations, so many arguments, and he had never imagined her lips would feel like this, like crinkled satin, smooth and soft to touch.
How had he known her without knowing this?
In fact, all of her was soft, from the whispery fabric of her dress to the bare skin of her arm beneath the small, puffed sleeve of her dress. The costly muslin of her dress felt coarse next to the silk of her skin, coarse and crude, the clumsy work of man a poor second to the wonders of nature. He skimmed his hand lightly up her arm, feeling the goose pimples rise beneath his fingers. He had dismissed her as skinny once, but there was flesh on her bones, soft, feminine flesh that quivered with the passage of his touch.
He ran his knuckles along the border of her bodice, once so seemingly low, now far too high.
“Emma,” he said again, and leaned in to kiss her.
“Don’t.” Emma jerked sharply sideways. Augustus’s lips grazed hair. “Augustus—don’t.”
Augustus spat out a blond hair that had attached itself to his tongue. “Emma?”
Using both hands, she held his head away from her. Her small hands had surprising strength in them. “No. Please.”
