Chapter Eight

H eloise was in the library bright and early the next morning. She had spent a restless night tossing and turning, the thin cotton sheets scratchy against her unusually sensitive skin. When the weak gray light of dawn had begun to fill her bedroom, she leaped up, splashed a few handfuls of water on her face, and tugged on her dress. She had practically skipped down the hall, twisting and pinning up her hair as she went.

Heloise took her usual seat and glanced over yesterday's notes. Considered out of context, touching one's mouth to another's should have been off-putting, if not downright revolting. In practice, this was not at all the case. She understood better now the swooning and rhapsodizing that often accompanied kissing in books. Was her rapturous response commonplace? Was her tutor unusually skilled? Further research was required.

She put aside her notes and took up her play, the Parisian romantic drama. She had been stymied for months, unable to come up with anything that seemed genuine. This morning, however, she felt inspired. She was halfway through a scene when her tutor entered with a manuscript tucked under his arm.

"Good morning." His hair was slightly mussed, and his voice still carried a gravelly trace of sleep. Heloise wondered when she could ask him to kiss her again. Immediately? Was that too soon?

"Did you write this?" Her tutor held up the manuscript.

Heloise recognized the cover page. "It's one of my old plays. Where did you find it?"

"On the bookshelf in my bedchamber."

"It must have been mislaid." She rarely revisited her own work; as a result, things tended to remain where she dropped them.

"I read it."

"All of it?" She took it and flipped through the thick stack of pages.

"Yesterday when I discovered it, I read the first page, out of curiosity. Then I sat down and read the entire thing. Thank God Sarah knocked at some point with a plate of sandwiches. I might have starved."

"I'm sorry." She wasn't sure what to say; no one had ever read her work.

Her tutor was looking at her intently, his eyes narrowed and inquisitive.

"It's a critique of determinism," he said.

"Yes."

"It begins predictably. A man realizes that, with enough data, our every action and decision may be predicted. Free will is an illusion. Etcetera." He waved his hand, causing his shoulder to flex distractingly. "Then the man's wife challenges him. I expected her to point to the soul to justify our elevation above mere cause and effect."

Heloise snorted. "No. She is not concerned with the question either way."

"Why?"

"Because the intellect required to predict something as complicated as human behavior is beyond our grasp. So, while the theory may be correct, it has no practical application. We must, therefore, consider ourselves creatures of free will. Theories which cannot be seen, felt, or acted upon are of little consequence."

Her tutor gave a fussy little huff and crossed his arms. "You realize this runs contrary to the general project of philosophy. Ideas exist independent of real-world concerns."

"Do they? We must live in the world. Surely, we should begin there, and extrapolate outward to theory."

He frowned, his generous mouth somehow making the perturbed expression seem sensual.

"Do you disagree?" she asked.

"I'd have thought so. But, at the moment, I find I cannot summon a defense."

He looked grudgingly impressed, as if she had performed an artful card trick. Heloise was not sure why they were talking about a play she had written at fifteen, when they could have been talking about kissing. She shook her head and returned to her work. Her tutor set his elbows on the table and leaned over, so close that she was tempted to stroke his sable hair.

"How are our lovers?" he asked, when he saw what she was writing.

"They've just had their first kiss."

"I flatter myself that I contributed in some small way."

"You did." He grinned, showing his dimple, and every thought flew out of her head. "They're arguing," she continued, so that she would have a reason to keep looking at him. "Francois insists the kiss is evidence of an emotional connection. Marie believes it was only lust."

"A common conundrum."

"How does one tell the difference?"

"With difficulty."

She tapped her quill casually on the inkwell. "It seems kissing involves many subtle nuances. We should continue with our experiments." His face lit with amusement, and she felt her cheeks heat. "When you are so inclined, of course."

He laughed but let his humor fade when he saw her red, humiliated face. "Come now. Don't pierce me with those lovely eyes." He held out a hand and she took it, allowing him to lead her to the old Chesterfield. He tugged her down so that they were sitting side by side on the sofa, the shiny leather worn dull in the center of the cushions.

"This is a beautiful piece," her tutor said, running his hand over the sofa's low back and pleated buttons. "I've never seen one in a library."

"It's from my childhood home. All the furniture is. When my uncle had this place built, I told him he could furnish every other room to his liking, but the library was my domain." She pointed to the sturdy dining table that had seen her through a lifetime of compositions. "That's where I learned to read and write."

"Your parents taught you?"

"My father was a professor of literature, and my mother studied languages. Our house was like a schoolroom, I think, only livelier. We studied whatever interested me; Egyptian mummies, Dante, Persian poetry. Philosophy, when I was a bit older." It felt good to talk about her parents, here on their sofa, surrounded by their books. "They spoke to me as if I were worthy of adult conversation. It was an unusual upbringing. I didn't realize how much so, until they were gone."

Her tutor made a soft noise of sympathy. With a start, she realized that he had put her at ease. She had begun talking and forgotten to be nervous. That he would be so thoughtful, and she respond so readily, was disconcerting.

"Why did you say that about my eyes?" she blurted.

"Pardon?"

"You said my eyes are lovely. But they're a perfectly ordinary shade of brown."

He touched her under the chin, only a slight pressure from his fingertips, but her face tilted up until she was looking full into his.

"Your eyes shine when you're impassioned," he said. "When you're thoughtful, they're deep and mysterious. There's nothing ordinary about them."

Heloise knew she was staring at him with her mouth open. The sly smile on his lips told her as much. She was completely disoriented, caught in the gentle cage of his hand, full to the brim with bewildered, urgent longing. She had no idea what to say, so she simply lunged forward on the slippery leather sofa and kissed him.