Chapter 8

CHAPTER8

“Are you certain you wish to know this?” Anthony asked as he circled the table and came to stand behind Susanna.

It was their third meeting in a week now, and he was feeling as if the two of them could be doing something much better together, yet he was afraid of uttering the truth to her.

How can I tell her that I long to return to my studio with her? To paint her again in some unbidden fashion? To kiss her again…

“I am certain.” Her words cut off his thought, and he turned his focus to the moment at hand.

They were sitting at his dining table where he had invited her for lunch. Peggy had been hurried off to the kitchen again, much to her disappointment as she evidently had hoped to stay and chaperone her mistress. At the table, Anthony had been placed at the head and Susanna at an angle to him. With the table dressed well with multiple knives and forks, Susanna had wished for proper instruction.

“It was not something my godmother ever taught me,” Susanna explained as Anthony came to stand at her side. He placed one hand on the table, the better to look down at the cutlery in front of her. The movement brought them close to each other. “Agnes has always been keen on allowing me my freedoms. I love her for it! Yet, it would be nice to know what cutlery I should be using and when.”

“I find it hard to believe such a thing can bother you, Susanna,” he said softly. He loved saying her name now; it rolled easily off his tongue and seemed to have equal effect on her, for her smile grew wider.

“It does not bother me. Not exactly. I would just like to know what to do.” She gestured to the cutlery before her. “Who needs so many forks on a table anyway?”

“We do not. Not really. It is all about making statements. That is all.” Anthony shrugged, for he could remember exactly what his mother had told him about such things.

“One should know what cutlery to use, Anthony. That is all. Imagine what people would think of you if you got it wrong!”

“Did your mother not show you which fork to use?” Anthony asked, rearranging Susanna’s napkin slightly beside her on the table.

“My mother, well, she… I mean…” Susanna stumbled over her words. The oddity of her tone made Anthony shift his focus to her, for Susanna never stumbled. She talked with confidence. It was one of the things he liked about her so much. Susanna was staring at the cutlery, chewing her lip, apparently in deep thought.

“Oh, I am a fool.” Anthony realized too late what mistake he had made. “You never mentioned a mother. I’m sorry, Susanna. I did not realize –”

“Do not apologize for that,” Susanna said hurriedly, shifting in the seat to face him. “You did not know. To be honest, it is nice to hear someone talk of her. Most days, we don’t speak of her. It’s almost as if she didn’t exist at all.” She fidgeted again and looked away from him. “I do not like that.”

“I am sorry for your loss, truly,” Anthony said softly. He picked up his chair from the head of the table and moved it to sit beside Susanna to be closer to her. “I lost my own father three years ago. People can say they’re sorry, but I know the truth. None of it makes the pain any better.” Susanna moved her eyes to him as she smiled sadly.

“You understand then.”

“I do.” He nodded, assuring her. “Would your mother care if you knew any of this do you think?” He gestured at the cutlery.

“Perhaps not,” Susanna shrugged. “Yet I would like to know all the same. Please, show me.”

“Very well.” Anthony leaned toward the table. First, he picked up the napkin and flattened it out before laying it across Susanna’s lap. She looked startled at him coming so close.

“I could have done that,” she whispered.

“Consider it an excuse to be near you. I’ve discovered I rather like it.” His flirtation made her smile wider before he turned his focus on the cutlery. One at a time, he began to point out which fork was used for which course. The crease in Susanna’s brow grew worse with each thing he said until she sat back slumped in the chair.

“What a lot of pointless stuff this is to remember.” She puffed out her cheeks with the words.

“I have to admit, I agree.” Anthony shook his head in bemusement as he looked down at the cutlery. “My parents drummed this into me at an early age; it seems now that space in my memory could have been taken up with something more useful.”

“Were your parents very keen on propriety?” Susanna asked with sudden vigor, turning to face him in her seat. The sudden closeness had a heat crawling up Anthony’s skin.

It always happens when I am near her now.

He felt it deep in his gut, this attraction to her. It was wild and almost a feral feeling, something he wasn’t used to, but he loved it all the same.

“Anthony?” she murmured, urging him on. “Were your parents very keen on propriety? You seemed somewhat distracted then.”

“I confess, I was.” Though he wasn’t in a hurry to explain why. She may have kissed him back once, but he didn’t know how she would feel if he asked for another kiss, the next one deeper than the last. “Yes, my parents were determined when it came to propriety.”

He was suddenly aware of their position. He could practically hear his mother’s words in his mind.

“A gentleman should always keep his distance from a lady if they are unwed. You wouldn’t want to give a young lady the wrong idea, would you?”

Anthony stood to his feet and clasped the back of his chair, moving it to the head of the table once again. He sat in the chair and poured out some fresh tea for the two of them, very aware of how Susanna watched him, waiting for him to go on. When he didn’t, but merely stayed silent, she rested an elbow on the table and cradled her chin in her hand, staring at him.

“I am in no rush to be home today,” she said with a small smile. “If it is a long story, we have the time.”

“It is not long, merely strange to talk of.” He busied himself with his teacup, breaking his gaze from her for a minute.

I have never talked of these things. Not with anyone. Until now…

“My parents were always keen on how a duke should behave,” he began slowly. “I can remember being very young, so young I had not yet been breeched, when they started using the word ‘proper’. My mother called them the rules of being a duke.” Anthony lifted his eyes to see Susanna was staring at him, rather uncertainly. It made those dark eyes of hers rather intense. “Lessons began. How to walk and talk; how to act in public and in private.”

“In private?” Susanna’s head jerked at a tilted angle. “Surely you can be anything you want to be in private?” Anthony didn’t answer. He lifted his teacup and took a sip instead. Apparently, it was the only answer he needed to give. “Oh… I see,” Susanna spoke slowly. “It sounds a very controlling way to live, Anthony, if you do not mind me saying.”

“I do not mind.” He found himself thinking of how he was as a young boy, constantly running back and forth.

He could picture a day he had run into this very dining room, excitedly talking about a creature he had found in the garden, that turned out to be a frog, only to be told by his father it was not how a young man should behave.

“I was a rather excitable child. I think they wanted to curb that. I have a distinct memory of wandering in the garden and falling in the river that passes through the estate one day. When I got back to the house, my mother told me I was no gentleman, merely an animal.”

Susanna clasped a hand over her mouth, apparently so shocked that she had to stop herself from uttering whatever words she longed to say.

“They made it plain they were disappointed in me.” Anthony shrugged as if it did not matter to him. “It was clear how to please them; that was to be proper. Practice became habit, and habit became a way of life. That is all.”

“That is all?” Susanna asked, lowering her hand from her mouth, revealing the parted lips in shock and a paleness to her cheeks. “You speak as if such things are normal.”

“They are normal to me. I was an unruly boy.” He shrugged another time, rather wishing the conversation would come to an end as he focused on his tea. “That came to an end.”

“Unruly? Hmm, something tells me I would have liked you as a boy.”

“You would have?” Anthony coughed, nearly choking on his tea in surprise.

“Had I been a little girl alongside you when you had fallen in the river, knowing me, I would have jumped in with you then made a game out of it.” Susanna smiled widely. “Now, is that so awful a way to live?”

No. There’s nothing awful in that at all.

Anthony’s growing smile was evidently enough of an answer as Susanna gestured to that smile with a flick of her finger.

“See? There are other ways to be happy. Ways where we are not bound by rules and propriety.”

“You have shown me more than one glimpse of that already.” Anthony’s words made a blush grow up her cheeks, clearly reminding her of the kiss they had shared.

To hell with the rules.

“Now, enough of cutlery. I have thought of something else we should spend our time on with your lesson today.” Anthony stood to his feet, eagerly pushing back his chair.

“Something else? I haven’t got the knack of the forks yet!” Susanna said with drama as she moved to her feet. “Something tells me I will need a follow-up lesson.”

“For now, there is something else I’d rather teach.” He urged her to follow him with a wave of his hand. They passed through a couple of doors, out of the dining room, through the hallway, and into a vast sitting room — one so large that he didn’t need to push the settees apart in order to create a space. All he had to do was lift a small trestle table and push it to the side of the room. “That is better. Now we have the space.”

Turning back round, he found Susanna staring at him from the other side of the rug with her arms folded.

“Space for what? I know you cannot mean painting as we would be in your studio for that.”

“Do not tempt me to take you back there. I will, given the opportunity,” Anthony replied playfully, watching as she giggled.

“So, what are we doing?”

“You desired to learn a few things to navigate society, yes?” Anthony said, stepping toward her.

“Yes. Forks was one of them.”

“How about some of the more complicated dances?” Anthony offered, watching as Susanna cursed under her breath.

“You noticed how poor a dancer I was the other night, did you not?”

“I would not have described you as a poor dancer. Merely…” Anthony struggled for the right word.

“Not adept?”

“I was going to say unfamiliar with some of the choreography.” Anthony gestured to the space he had created on the rug. “Yet, I can help with that if you like.”

“This is my next lesson?” She tapped her chin in thought. “I rather like that idea.”

“Excellent. Now, shall we begin?” Anthony moved to the middle of the floor. When Susanna didn’t move forward straightaway, he beckoned her to do so with a crook of his finger. “I hope I am not that frightening.”

“On the contrary, you are not frightening at all.” She hurried forward this time, making his temptation to take her back to his studio grow by the second.

“What of a cotillion? In particular, the Dancer’s Quartet?”

“You know that is the one I forgot the steps too,” Susanna sighed as if it were a great task indeed to revisit the dance. “I embarrassed you by doing it wrong.”

“You did not.”

“You are a poor fibber, Anthony.” She placed her hands on her hips, looking at him as if she were telling him off.

“Very well, I may have been a little…” He struggled to finish the sentence. Rather than finish it for him, Susanna waited, her eyebrows lifted. “Well, conscious of people watching us and having peculiar thoughts.”

“That is the fanciest way I have ever heard anyone describe being embarrassed.”

“No more teasing. Now, we dance.” Anthony bowed to her, ready to begin the number. Susanna curtsied, despite her protests. When he offered his hand to her, ready to begin the dance, she took it with ease.

Her fingers slid against his own with warmth, making his heart thud harder.

“First, we circle each other, like this. Then when we step apart, you turn to your right, and I turn to my left. Your other right, Susanna.” She turned the other way.

“Can I ask you something?” Susanna said as they released each other, their fingers slipping off one another’s so slowly that Anthony longed to grasp that hand again.

“Of course.”

“Would it matter greatly if we all got a dance wrong?”

They returned to facing each other, and he took both of her hands. When she tried to move the wrong way, he encouraged her the right way. The two of them shared an amused smirk before they continued.

“Not in the slightest,” he answered quietly. “It is just that people like to gossip about others when they dance.”

“What people? Such people I would not care to know.”

“How do you mean?” he asked as he took hold of her properly with one hand resting on her waist, and his other hand taking her own.

“I mean that people who would gossip and think ill of someone just because they are not the fairest dancer, do not seem like the kindest of people,” Susanna said, tilting her head up to look at him better. “Would you not rather spend your time with people who are kind?”

“I would. Infinitely,” he confirmed, finding himself rather lost as he looked at her. “Ah, this is my lesson, is it not?”

“It is.” She challenged him with her chin lifting higher. “If I were to fall over in a dance we shared, what would it matter, apart from the fact it would be amusing to the two of us?”

“My concern would be more for you. I would fear you had hurt yourself.”

“Then you have a good heart, Anthony.” Her words had softened.

Anthony grew aware that the speed of their dance had slowed completely. Now, they were moving side to side, their close hold on each other just the same.

“I was not aware you were showing me how to waltz,” she noted after a minute of them dancing so close together.

“It seems my intention has changed,” he whispered, very aware of every place that they touched. His fingers on her waist were light, yet he could feel clearly the curve of her waist. It tempted him to lower his hand down to the top of her hip. He gave in but just an inch. When she gasped, he moved no further.

In his other hand, her fingers slid against his own, so they were completely entwined, and her free hand gripped to his bicep. That grip had Anthony’s mind wandering. He was thinking of other ways that Susanna could clasp onto him in such a way, perhaps with pleasure.

He thought of indulging in those kisses he had imagined the other day, to her neck and the top curve of her breasts before lifting her skirt between them. Then, she would surely grip to his arms, out of pleasure and the want for more.

Then the image changed. They were alone and completely bare on the very rug where they now danced with their bodies rocking together. As Anthony explored Susanna, gripping the curve of her hips and pleasuring her with his own body, her fingers would cling to his biceps until she made ridges in his skin, and she gasped his name.

“Anthony?” Susanna’s voice brought him back to the moment.

He had stopped dancing. The two of them were standing perfectly still in his sitting room, holding onto one another.

“You seemed miles away,” Susanna said with a small giggle. “And your hand…”

Anthony felt where his hand had gone. It had travelled further south over the curve of her hip.

“I apologize.” He moved his hand back to her waist, aware how that touch had sent a pulsing thrill through him.

“You didn’t have to take it away nor apologize.” Susanna shook her head. “You have me curious. That look you gave me then… The silence, you were clearly thinking of something. Anthony, would you tell me what you were thinking?”