The passion in his voice unnerved her, made her warm in some places and wobbly in others and thoroughly disconcerted in all of them.
“I think that was Mr. Fulton’s lightning machine,” Emma said. “The sparkle, I mean.”
Augustus gave her a quelling look. “Haven’t you noticed the way people gather around you? Everywhere we go, everyone clamors for Madame Delagardie, to join in a game, to judge a contest, to read a poem. The only way to get you by yourself is to find you in your book room, and even then, the notes and flowers keep coming. You need an army of footmen to keep your acquaintances at bay.”
Emma wordlessly shook her head. She was a habit with people, that was all. They knew her. She was convenient.
“You don’t think so? You don’t realize how much joy you give simply by being yourself?”
“So does a statue,” said Emma stubbornly. “Or cut flowers in a vase.”
“Marble collects moss. Flowers wither. They’re decorative, passive. You’re the least passive person I know. I’d like to see someone try to put you on a pedestal. You’d be off before you were on. They’d be left with an empty base and a deserted gallery.”
Was that a good thing? Emma wasn’t sure.
“Well…” she said, but Augustus wasn’t done.
“You told me earlier that you’re not my vision of Cytherea.” Augustus’s hands tightened on hers, holding her fast before she could pull away. “You were right. You’re not Cytherea. Cytherea is—she’s cold. If she shines, she shines the way ice shines. Her beauty chills what it touches. She’s essentially untouchable. As for you…”
He paused, searching for the right words. Emma knew she should say something, should intervene, should potentially be offended, but she seemed to be frozen, caught in breathless expectation in the heat of the shimmering air, half fire, half ice, hot, then cold. If Cytherea was untouchable, what did that make her? She had never felt so touchable in her life. Her skin ached with it.
“Yes?” she said hoarsely.
“You…” Augustus’s eyes slithered away from hers. “You transcend towers,” he said grandly.
“Thank you,” said Emma. “I think.”
Augustus looked at her tenderly. “Just because I didn’t render it in rhyme doesn’t mean it wasn’t a compliment.”
“You did alliterate a bit there,” said Emma shyly. Why did she suddenly feel shy? This was Augustus, for heaven’s sake. Augustus. She ducked her head. “I shouldn’t have called you a fainéant. It was unkind.”
Augustus released her hands, straightening. Emma found herself with a very good view of the breast of his shirt. “Unkind, but not untrue.”
“You work very hard at your poetry,” protested Emma.
“My poetry is rubbish,” he said brutally. She could see his chest move beneath the thin linen of his shirt as he shrugged. “It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.”
“That doesn’t mean that you are,” said Emma tentatively. “Rubbish, I mean.”
“Aren’t I?” His hair fell around his face as he looked down at her. Emma thought, absurdly, of fallen angels chained to rocks in hell. “Once I wanted to be a gadfly of the government. I was going to start a journal, write satirical political pieces, maybe even run for Parliament. Whatever I did, my words were going to count for something. And now, I find, they’ve come to this.” His gesture encompassed his attire, the unfinished page on the writing desk, the narrow room.
“There’s still time,” said Emma. “I hear
“No,” said Augustus. “If I were to do it, it would have to be back in England.”
England. The thought of it took Emma aback with a force she hadn’t expected. What would it mean for Augustus to go? No Augustus reciting silly poetry, no Augustus sprawled on the spare chair in her book room, no Augustus looking at her as though she were a comet who lit up the sky.
As a good friend, she could encourage him to go. But…
“Oh,” said Emma.
“It’s not on,” said Augustus. “And do you know why? Because I’m too much of a coward to try. I’ve written nothing but this…doggerel for years now.” His face twisted with self-mockery. “My pen’s gone limp.”
“You never know unless you try,” said Emma softly, and couldn’t help thinking that they might be talking about something more than politics or poetry. “No risk, no reward.”
Augustus shook his head. “You were right, in every respect. I’ve become estranged from my family, shunned my friends, mooned after rainbows, and”—he paused, his face unreadable—“most unforgivable by far, I’ve done everything I can to offend and alienate the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Emma looked up at him, quizzically. “Jane?”
His lips quirked in something that was almost a smile. “You.”
She was the best thing that had ever happened to him?
“You haven’t alienated me,” she said dumbly.
“But I have offended,” he said. He looked down at her, his expression serious. “I don’t even know where to begin begging your pardon.”
Emma pressed a hand to his lips. “Don’t. Please. There’s no need.”
Augustus caught her hand in his. “You have a generous spirit, Emma Delagardie.” She could feel his breath against her palm, more intimate than a kiss. “But even generosity only goes so far.”
“If this is about—if this is about that kiss…” Emma floundered.
There was a strange light in his deep brown eyes. “That kiss,” said Augustus, “is the one thing I won’t apologize for. I know I should say otherwise, but I can’t. I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
After weeks of working together, debating phrasing and parsing words, it wasn’t wasted on Emma that he had said “I kissed you.” Not,
“You’re not?” said Emma.
“No.” They were standing, she realized, very, very close together. His hand was still on her wrist, holding her fingers just away from his lips, his thumb resting on the point where her blood had begun to pound with betraying speed. “It may break all the rules of friendship and make me the worst sort of cad, but, no. I can’t be sorry. I’m glad I kissed you. And if I had the chance, I would do it again.”
The blood was pounding in her ears, turning his words to sounds heard through a seashell. She could feel them in her lips, her hands, her skin. This was what the poets couldn’t put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.
“You would?” she said breathlessly.
Augustus’s lips turned up at the corners. “Is that an invitation?”
What if she said yes? Emma wondered wildly. What then?
He was so close, all he had to do was bend his head. There was no mistaking the light in his eye. It was something she hadn’t seen in a very long time, desire and tenderness and uncertainty, all mixed together. It wasn’t just the wanting that was making her fingers tingle and her chest tight, it was the caring.
And that was the truly scary bit.
“Do you want it to be?” Emma blurted out, and winced at her own gaucherie.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Emma floundered.
She put out a hand to touch his arm, a gesture she had made a hundred times, a thousand times, but this time she flinched away from it at the last minute.
“I’m scared,” she admitted. “I haven’t felt this way about anyone since—”
No, not even with Paul. She had been young and naïve then, and dalliance had been a game, desire a toy to be played with. She hadn’t known, as she knew now, the pleasures involved. And the pitfalls.
She looked wordlessly to Augustus, but he had no answers for her.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Ever,” he said. “You have me in terra incognita.”
He wasn’t the only one. Here be dragons, Emma knew. Dragons and sea serpents and monsters poised to swallow a heart whole. She could stay snugly on board, steering her barque back to safer waters—but, then, who knew what wonders she might miss?
