Free This Wicked Gift by Courtney Milan Page A

almost supercilious expression on his
face, his posture seemed a gross parody of a proposal of marriage.
    “In the year since I first saw you,” he
said, “I have imagined your giving yourself to me a
thousand times. If these were my wildest dreams, I’d have you now. On that chair. I would spread your legs and nibble my way
from your thigh to your sex. I’d slip inside you. And when I’d had my way with
you, I would thank the Lord for the bruises on my knees.”
    As he spoke, her legs parted. Her sex
tingled. His breath quickened to match hers.   Do it. Yes, do it.
    He reached out one hand and laid it on her
knee. It was the first time he’d touched her all morning, and her whole body
thrilled in wicked recognition of his. She leaned forward. For one eternal
second, she could taste his breath, hot and masculine, on the tip of her
tongue. She stretched to meet him. But before her lips found his, he stood.
    “Lavinia.” His
words sounded like a reproach. “I can’t have you in dishonor. I can’t have you
in poverty. And so I will not be marrying you.”
    She stared up into his eyes. Those dark
mahogany orbs seemed so far away, so implacable. She   had   to fix this. But before she could
speak, a hissing, sputtering noise intruded from her left, and he turned away
from her.
    It was the kettle, boiling with
inappropriate merriment over the fire. He found a cloth. For a few minutes, he
busied himself with the kettle and teapot, his back to her.
    When he finally turned back, he held a cup
in his hands.
    “Here,” he said. “The
very nectar of poverty. Five washings of the leaves. I believe the liquid still has some flavor.” He handed it to her. “There’s no sugar. There’s never any
sugar.”
    She took the cup. He pulled his hand away
quickly, before she could clasp it against the clay. In her hands, the warm mug
radiated heat. Tiny black dots, the dust of broken tea leaves, swirled in the
beverage.
    “You don’t speak like a poor man.” She
darted a gaze up at him. “You don’t   read   like
a poor man, either. Malthus. Smith. Craig.   The
Annals of Agriculture. ”
    He turned away from her to pour his own
cup of tea. He did not drink it. “When I was fourteen, my father, a tradesman
who aspired to be more, engaged in some rather risky speculation. A friend of
his had lured him in. He promised to see me through my schooling, and   to settle some significant amount on
me should the investment fail.”
    William lifted the mug to his mouth. But
he barely wet his lips with the liquid. “The investment did fail—quite
spectacularly. My father shot himself. And his   friend —”
he drew that last word out, a curl to his lip “—thought that a promise made to
a man who killed himself was no promise at all. What little property remained
was forfeit when he was adjudged a suicide. And so down I went to London, to
try and make shift for myself.”
    “Where did all this take place?”
    “Leicester. I still have the edge of their
speech on my tongue. I’ve tried to eradicate it, but…”
    He looked down, moving his cup in gentle
circles. Perhaps he was trying to read his own tea leaves. More likely, Lavinia
thought, he was avoiding her gaze.
    “So you see , I am
in fact the lowest of the low. I am the son of a suicide. I make a bare
eighteen pounds a year. I was once a member of that unfortunate class that your
lovely books label the deserving poor. After I had you—after I took to my bed a
woman I could not afford to marry—I don’t qualify as deserving any longer. Even
if I had the coin to take you as my wife, I don’t think I’d have the temerity.”
    Lavinia stood, the better to knock sense into his head.
    But already he was setting down his tea,
stepping away from her.
    “It’s getting on toward morning,” he said.
“I’d best get you home.” And then he turned toward the hall and left her.

CHAPTER FIVE
    W ILLIAM WALKED DOWN   the hall. He had
made the matter as plain as he dared