“Sheep’s stomach,” he said, “stuffed with chopped sheep innards and gruel.”
She put down her fork. “Very nourishing, I’m sure,” she said faintly.
She didn’t pick up her cutlery again but kept drinking her wine in tiny sips.
“I can order you a new dish,” he said after a while.
Suspicion flickered in her eyes and his fingers tightened around his spoon. He should be wholly unaffected by her moods and lack of trust, but she had introduced a hitherto unknown complexity to his life: he found he was holding multiple contradictory thoughts—or worse, feelings—at the same time. Her mistrust, her sniping, the sullen, petulant curve of her mouth, bedeviled him very effectively, and yet he still wanted to lean across the narrow table and kiss that mouth. Her expensive burnt-vanilla scent was mixing with the smell of smoldering coal creeping in from the pits, a bizarre, sensual clash of his old life and the new that unmoored him in some fashion.
She finally continued to eat, and once and again her gaze strayed out the window to the dark outline of the far hills gradually fading into the night.
“Were you really hoping to see mountains?” he said, because apparently, he was perverted and craved rejection.
“Of course.” She sighed, her wistfulness sincere. “Looking at them elevates the soul. ‘What are men to rocks and mountains?’”
“That’s from a poem?”
She regarded him with a carefully curated look of pity in her brown eyes. “It is a line by Jane Austen.”
“Ah.” He’d heard of Jane Austen but knew nothing of her work.
“Of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t know—you don’t read novels. In any case, you could not be farther from a Mr. Bingley if you tried.”
He had no idea how to reply to such a thing, so he took a long draft of his ale.
“You are beyond even a Mr. Rochester,” Harriet said, and he didn’t know that fellow, either, but he deduced he was odious so he pinned her with a look over the rim of his glass.
“In fact,” she said, her eyes widening with shocked realization, “in fact, you—you are a Heathcliff.”
Perhaps—and this occurred to him for the first time—perhaps she wasn’t just trying to provoke him; perhaps she was genuinely unhinged. She didn’t speak for the rest of the meal, and when they had finished, she asked to be excused and he had barely nodded when she had already fled from the booth.
The waitress took Harriet’s departure as the signal to approach to clear the table and inquire whether he wished for more ale.
“Who, or what, is Heathcliff?” he demanded.
“Heathcliff—why, he’s a bit of a villain in Wuthering Heights, sir,” she supplied as she leaned in close to collect his plate. “It’s a novel.”
“The villain, eh?”
“Well, he’s a brooding, ill-bred man who moons after a fine lady.”
“Is he, now?” he muttered.
“Then he makes a fortune but is still obsessed with revenge and ruins everything.”
Lucian was quiet.
“Some of the lasses quite fancy him,” the waitress said, and glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
Heat washed over his neck in response. The glance could have been anything; innocuous, pitiful, or a flirtation. He looked away. This was the state of things now, was it, him becoming randy the moment a woman glanced his way? It had been too long; he hadn’t sought out female company since he had struck the deal with Greenfield, and it had been a while even before that. Now he had a wife around who smelled like something edible when he couldn’t taste her, whose skin was glossy and smooth when he couldn’t touch her. He wanted to follow her to their room, peel off her prim dress, and push her down on the creaky bed. He would run his ill-bred, villainous Heathcliff hands all over her soft curves while she was looking up at him with a sweet smile and desire in her eyes; She would eagerly open her legs for him … and she would be impossibly snug and hot and he would fuck her so slowly, she would soon whine for him to do it harder …
“Whisky,” he said hoarsely. “More whisky.”
It was well past midnight when he returned to their room. She seemed asleep. He quietly undressed and washed, then fumbled his way toward the bed. He paused next to where the cuckoo clock had hung and found the spot on the wall already empty. Harriet must have tossed it out the window, and she’d probably done it with a pout and shrug, just how she would do such a thing. He was drunk. He was never drunk. Except for those few days a year … She made a breathy little noise when he came to bed. He carefully pulled the covers up to his shoulders and lay quietly on his side. Her warm body was curled up just inches from his back, and despite the drinking, his muscles were hard with a yearning tension so thick a knife wouldn’t cut it.