Page 13 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Mercy swept through the front door, sighing with relief to be home at last and away from the stifling heat of the ballroom. Her fingers itched to pull the pins from her hair, to release the strain of the heavy locks from their perfect coil atop her head as she headed for the stairs.

Thomas had paused in the foyer, yanking at his cravat. “Billiards this evening?”

he asked as he pulled the fabric from around his neck and stuffed the now-rumpled linen into the depths of his pocket.

“I suppose,”

she tossed over her shoulder as she paused upon the landing. “So long as you’re of a mind to be beaten.”

A queer sort of half-smile touched the corner of his mouth as he braced one hand upon the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. “I will beat you one of these days, you know,”

he said, adjusting his slightly-crooked spectacles upon the bridge of his nose.

Probably. But she would lay a wager on it not being tonight. “All right, then,”

she said, as she turned once more to proceed up the stairs. And paused again just at the top, where a fluttering scrap of paper which had been affixed with a bit of string to the newel post at the top of the stairs attracted her attention.

Shoes, read the word scrawled across it in strong, masculine handwriting.

The faint creak of the staircase behind her told her that Thomas had followed her up and stopped just behind her—just waiting. Beneath her skirts, Mercy scrunched her toes, feeling only the fabric of her stockings upon them. She’d discarded her slippers already when she had stopped upon the landing, and hadn’t even noticed.

But Thomas had. A dozen times before already, he must have noticed her shoes discarded there, and had left her a note as a reminder.

Still, there was a sort of instinctual embarrassment about it. Her cheeks felt flushed as she turned. “I’m sorry, I—”

Thomas dangled her discarded slippers before her and pressed them into her hands. “Don’t be sorry. We are just discovering what works for you,” he said.

Her fingers tangled in the ribbons of her slippers. “I’ll forget them again,”

she said. And again—and again.

“Yes. And the note will be there still, and you’ll remember again.”

Mercy managed a grim sort of smile. “At least until I forget the note.”

Until it had stopped being novel, until her eyes glazed right over it, her brain dismissing it entirely.

Thomas shrugged, unconcerned. “It’s merely a first attempt. If it should fail, then we shall find something else.”

With a gesture of one hand, he indicated the stairs. “Go on, then. Mother and the girls won’t be too terribly far behind us, and I shouldn’t like for anyone else to witness my inevitable humiliation when you beat me once again.”

A laugh bubbled up in her throat. Of course he wouldn’t—not perfect, infallible Thomas. “I’ll just put my shoes back in my bed chamber, where they’re meant to be, first,”

she said as she followed. “It seems the least I ought to do.”

And she had something to retrieve, besides.

∞∞∞

Thou shalt not lust after thy neighbor’s daughter.

Perhaps that particular commandment in its specificity had never made it into the Bible, but Thomas felt reasonably certain he ought to be honoring it anyway. A task made all the more burdensome by the fact that while Mercy had been in her bed chamber, she had also elected to rid herself of her ball gown in favor of a dressing gown, and to remove the pins from her hair, leaving the whole mass of it to tumble down her back in a cascading fall of wild curls.

They smelled like cinnamon. Just occasionally, when she had meandered round the table to take her own shot, he’d caught just the faintest whiff of it. Spicy and warm, like Chelsea buns fresh from the oven.

She leaned over the table opposite him as he bent to line up his next shot, and he prayed to whichever god happened to be listening that she was wearing something beneath that crimson velvet dressing gown, for it was belted none too tightly at the waist with little else to secure it. He adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose—a somewhat futile endeavor, since the slight bend in the frame made the lenses distort his vision regardless.

He missed. Of course he’d missed. He’d been focused more upon the swell of her breasts beneath the rich fabric of her dressing gown than he had the shot that might have won him the game.

“Too bad,”

she said with a mock-sigh, as she eagerly lined up her next shot and sunk the ball without much effort, securing her victory. “You’ll win one of these days.”

Not if he couldn’t keep his eyes away from her breasts. Or her bum. Or her damned pretty, cinnamon-scented hair. “You took down your hair,”

he said. “It was distracting.”

Her brows lifted in interest. “Was it? I’m sorry. It’s just that pins make my head ache after a while.”

“You never wore your hair up like that in the countryside,”

he said as he poured her a glass of brandy—and then a larger one for himself. “I suppose I’ve been accustomed to seeing it all wind-blown and frizzy. Or else only plaited.”

His fingers twitched around his glass as he envisioned himself running them through her hair.

A quiver of amusement slid across her mouth. “I had no idea you had even noticed.”

“I noticed.”

Of course he’d noticed. It would have been impossible not to. But he hadn’t been meant to notice her. Father had clapped him upside the head more than a few times, for letting his eyes linger upon her too long on those rare occasions they’d encountered her. “But the ball gowns, the pinned-up hair—I don’t think I care for them.”

Her head canted to the right, and she set her glass aside to fold her arms across her chest. Not quite offended; not yet. But curious. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not how you’re meant to look.”

Another sip of brandy, and the liquor warmed a path toward his stomach. “You don’t look like yourself with your hair up.”

“You mean I look like a lady.”

“No. I mean you don’t look like yourself. You’re prettiest when your hair is frizzy and wild and you’ve got dirt on your face and grass stains on your dress.”

Good God, he hadn’t meant to say it quite like that. He hadn’t truly meant to say it at all.

A burst of startled laughter wreathed itself about the room, and there it was—that dimple shining in her cheek. And all he’d had to do was make a fool of himself to get it. “You think I’m pretty?”

she asked, and her fingers came up to rub at the smile upon her lips, as if even she had surprised herself with it.

“I don’t think you’re pretty,”

he said, and swallowed down the sulkiness in his voice with another sip of brandy. “You are pretty.”

To his mind this was simply an objective truth, incontrovertible and undeniable.

“You do think I’m pretty.”

Another laugh, bright and vivid and visible in the sparkle of her dark eyes, in that damned adorable dimple. “You think I’m pretty!”

His face felt suddenly and unaccountably warm. “You needn’t make such a fuss about it.”

“I don’t know; I feel as if a fuss is warranted, at least a little,”

she said, and still there was a warm shimmer of delight in her voice. “Perhaps you simply have not seen me clearly of late. Have you considered that perhaps it is the fault of your spectacles? They are still bent,”

she said, creeping closer, the hint of a smirk lingering just at the corner of her mouth.

“That would make it your fault, would it not?”

he asked, casting back the last of his brandy.

“I suppose you’re right,”

she said, and her hands stretched out toward him, fingers landing gently upon the earpieces. Slowly, carefully, she pulled the spectacles off of his face. The room entire went blurry, indistinct blots of color merging and blending with one another in the dim candlelight. “Try these instead.”

There was a flash of light across something silver, and then—cool metal touched his face as a new set of spectacles settled upon the bridge of his nose and the earpieces slid around the sides of his head. The world came into focus once more, no longer lopsided and distorted, but perfectly crisp and clear and visible through new lenses unmarred by even the tiniest of scratches or flecks of dust.

Thomas blinked, startled. “You—you bought me a new pair of spectacles?”

“It seemed the least I could do,”

Mercy said softly, reaching once more for her glass. “Since you went to the trouble of purchasing a new sketchbook for me. You can’t deny it; I’ve asked everyone else.”

She’d not made mention of it to him since he had left it in the library for her, but he supposed he could not blame her for assuming first that they had come from someone else. But he had noticed her sketching within it from time to time, and it had made him feel—strange. Good, but strange. He had neither wanted nor expected her gratitude for it, but it had pleased him to know that she had found it an acceptable replacement.

“Besides,”

Mercy continued, with a breezy lilt to her voice, “I suppose it was my fault the old ones were bent. Really, I owed you the replacement of them.”

“How did you get these?”

he asked, touching the frames of the new spectacles. “When?”

“Oh, well—”

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “We went shopping earlier today, and the bookshop we patronized happened to be directly across the street from your oculist’s shop. Marina made mention of it.”

“And?”

His eyes narrowed, instantly suspicious.

“And—while the girls were otherwise engaged in their search for a few new novels, I slipped out the front and went over. I simply asked the man if he had kept any notes on what sort of spectacles you might require, and he had, so—so I bought them. I retrieved them from my room when I put my slippers away. They’ve been in my pocket until now.”

She patted the pocket sewn into her dressing gown.

“And you could not have given them to me before our game?”

“Thomas,”

she chided over her glass, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “I really could not have. You might have won if I had.”

Yes; he might well have done. With one hand he removed the spectacles from his face, held the frames close to his eyes, and squinted to bring them into focus. Silver, just as his old pair had been, but—finer, he thought. He’d never purchased anything but the most basic available, because they were meant to be functional, not ornamental. But Mercy had put thought into them, selecting a finer frame with delicate etching upon the earpieces, little furls and frills that reminded him rather of someone of the patterns she’d so carefully designed within her sketchbook. She’d chosen these with thought, with care. Not merely a replacement of an item she’d damaged, but a gift. “Why?”

he asked again as he replaced the spectacles upon his face. Because for all of her protests, they were too thoughtful a gift to have been given out of obligation.

Another shrug, this one marginally less comfortable, almost sheepish. “I suppose because…because you didn’t laugh at me,”

she said. “For my little problem. Even Papa laughs at me sometimes, when I am particularly forgetful. I know he doesn’t mean anything by it, but…”

Another shrug, tight and uncomfortable. “You said we.”

“Hmm?”

“We,”

she repeated. “If it should fail, then we shall try something else. As if you might also have this particular problem. And I think—I rather liked that. Even if it’s not precisely true, it makes me feel…not so very alone. Not quite so odd, or—or broken.”

“I see.”

She couldn’t know it, but the words she’d chosen had been among those his father had often slung at him in the heat of anger over his persistent stammer. He was willing to bet that her father—who had always been indulgent and loving, in his experience—had never cast those word before her. That his mother and sisters would not have done, either. But who did that leave but Mercy herself who had judged herself so?

A little frown pursed her lips. “Haven’t you anything to say?”

“Yes, of course. You’re not to go sneaking out of or into shops in the future.”

But the faint plea in her voice, like a child yearning for only a sliver of long-withheld approval, had sparked the realization at last. He had given her that impression. Even if he had not, to his knowledge, used those hated words in her hearing, probably he had made her feel that way for years now. Forced those thoughts into her head the very same way his father had done to him.

Mercy threw up her hands, nearly sloshing the remainder of her brandy straight out of her glass. “It was for a good purpose!”

“I know. I am appreciative. Don’t do it again.”

He seized her shoulder when she would have turned, drawing her back toward him. “You’re not odd,” he said.

She did not shrug off his hand, but her shoulders hunched a bit as she scoffed. “I think there’s a fair few who would disagree with you there.”

“They might. They’d be wrong.”

Just as he had been. “My stammer,”

he said. “It’s not left me. I will likely struggle with it all of my life, to varying degrees. Does it make me broken?”

Still her eyes shied away from his. “No, of course not—”

“And these,”

he said, touching the fingers of his free hand to the new spectacles upon his face. “Without these, I can hardly see more than a few inches before my face. My eyesight is truly terrible. Does that make me broken?”

“No.”

Her teeth gnawed at her lower lip. “The spectacles, they’re just a—a—”

“A tool,”

he said. “They don’t repair me. They simply help me to see clearly when I wear them. We will find you tools of your own,”

he said. “Perhaps we won’t solve every problem. Perhaps those tools won’t always work. But we will find you your version of spectacles. It is worth the effort. You are worth the effort.”

Her eyes widened, dark irises dramatically fringed by such long, thick lashes. Her lips parted as she sucked in a surprised breath. Even in the dim light, Thomas could see the slow creep of a blush—vibrant, brilliant—searing its way across her pale cheeks, down the long line of her throat.

He’d never seen her blush before, had never imagined her the sort of woman who could be moved to one. For one alarming, desperate moment, he wondered what it would be like to kiss her. To surrender to that maddening urge that afflicted him and just—kiss her. And for that one instant, which seemed to stretch into infinity as if it had been plucked straight out of time itself, he wanted it so badly that he imagined he could taste it already, the brandy-sweet flavor of her on his lips.

For that one instant, he thought she knew it. That there might be something in her that wanted it, too.

∞∞∞

Mercy skittered into her room as if the very flames of Hell had been licking at her feet on her wild race down the halls. Somehow, despite the trembling of her hands, she managed to close the door softly behind her and to brace her back against the cool wood, drawing in several deep breaths in what proved to be a futile attempt to quell the jitters that raced up her spine.

It hadn’t helped. Not even a little.

Damn it all, her heart had fluttered. Like something straight out of those romantic novels Marina and Juliet favored. Like she had once hoped would happen, all those years ago in her first Season, when she, too, had nurtured those foolish, romantic notions which had never come to pass. Which she had long ceased to hope ever would.

It could not happen now. And with him, of all people. They’d been at one another’s throats whenever they had chanced to meet for nigh on twenty years. Familiarity was meant to breed contempt, not—not whatever this was.

The back of her head thumped against the door, and still her heart pounded in her chest, a persistent and maddening beat that shuddered throughout her body. A terrible, horrible awakening of nerves, a vexing current of awareness that sizzled along the surface of her skin, prickled in her fingertips, and curled her toes.

She had thought, for a moment, that he might kiss her. And for that moment, she might have…hoped he would. Her lips had tingled in anticipation of it. She had wanted that kiss as she had never wanted anything else before, with a longing that had wrenched at her heart. The sort of longing wrought of impossible dreams. The sort that lived only in the secret shadows of the night and burned away to nothing with the first light of morning.

“It was nothing,”

she whispered to herself, though the ragged, fraught sound of her voice did little to reassure her. It had to be nothing. It had to be.

Still her heart tripped through its paces in her chest. Fluttered, like a flight of butterflies.

Her stomach pitched and rolled with dread, with a queer sense of loss for something she had never had. For something that she had come closer to just recently than she had ever imagined possible, and she thought—under different circumstances, perhaps there would have been a chance for them. A sliver of one, at least.

It had hung there in the air between them, in those scant inches that had separated lips which had not yet touched, and now never could. She had surrendered even the tiniest possibility of it with the lies she had told to him, and to Papa. The lies she would continue to tell. The secrets she could never reveal.

He would not want her if he knew the truth of her. So it had to be nothing. It had to be.

But that kiss, she thought, and let loose the hopeless sigh that had been trapped in her throat these last long minutes. She had the strangest sensation that it would have been everything.