Page 13 of Lover
The words were a slap, and I looked up, both stunned and unforgivably aroused by her audacity. Had she known me, I would have retaliated by throwing her over my shoulder and carrying her off to find other ways for her mouth to occupy itself. I’d discovered relatively early in our romance that she enjoyed being handled roughly as long as her environment was safe. In fact, it often diverted her from her more painful moods.
“I apologize.” She winced, feeling either contrite or in peril. I had no way of deciphering. “I hope we can agree to make this our last argument.”
I didn’t like her apologizing to me, not when she hadn’t done a thing wrong. Not when her behavior had filled me with pride and stoked pleasant fires long cold.
I turned toward her, pulled by the magnetism of our once-love and her bold spirit, my eyes traveling briefly to her mouth.
Too eager to rile her further, I replied, “I very much doubt that, Miss Foxboro.”
Her brow creased with sudden fury.
“If you insist on being an absolute tyrant, then you’re correct.”
I nearly took a step toward her, having tested my limits a touch too far.
“We’re done for the day,” I barked. No other option but to dismiss her. “Ms. Dillard will advise you.”
She stood there for a moment more, so full of her own anger and no way to vent it that wouldn’t involve going toe to toe with me—a man who held her future in his hands.
“Of course, sir,” she said instead, voice sweet as arsenic-laced sugar. “I am at your beck and call.”
My God.
She left the room trailing animosity, and I watched her leave with a score of battling emotions, tying themselves up into knots within me. In a short time, the hinges of the heavy doors in the front hall screamed. She was going outside.
Was she trying to leave? Had I pushed her so far?
I made for the window, searching for her. There, walking resolutely down the drive as though she planned to hike to the village. I was about to go after her when her footsteps slowed and she stopped, standing in the cold air with no coat.
With little warning, she lifted her head and looked to the window. We watched each other for a moment which felt like an eternity.
“What do you write in that journal of yours, Millie? You’re always scribbling.”
She looked up at me, having been sitting comfortably in the crook of my arm in our spot beneath the low willow branches at the bank of the pond, where we often found peace and spent warm evenings waiting for the sun to give way to stars. She offered a coy, tempting smile.
“I write down all the ways you please me, body and soul, so when you’re away, I can remember.”
I turned from the window, a fathomless ache in my chest.
CHAPTER 8
I NEEDED DISTANCE, and very likely Millie did too. I couldn’t imagine she’d want to lay eyes on me after what had transpired in the library. I alerted Ms. Dillard to my plans of leaving the house for the day, though I asked her to tell Millie I wouldn’t return for several. I was learning some unappealing things about myself, related mainly to an inability to control my urges around my wife, intent on toeing the line, entertaining dangerous notions to cross it entirely.
I called ahead to Dr. Hannigan, then went to the garage, a nearly foreign place to me lately. The car was very little used, but started with no trouble, and I relaxed into the familiar drive from Willowfield into town, an hour’s distance to where Burt and Lottie Terrance, long-time friends and partners in Hughes Perfumery, lived. I’d gone to graduate school with Burt, though he was older than me by nearly a decade. He’d fought in the war before returning to civilian life to resume his studies in law, facing and rising above all the challenges born from his war-torn mind and the undue prejudices against his skin. Lottie, the beautiful daughter of a prominent, wealthy financier, with a mind for business and a backbone of steel, fell head over heels for my brash, courageous friend at, I liked to boast, one of Willowfield’s famous parties. Before my father passed, he’d discussed expanding the business, though struggled to find a partner whom he trusted implicitly. Burt and Lottie, with their combined ambitions, strengths, and our genuine admiration for each other, had been my first choice when the task passed tome, and after much convincing, they had taken a stake in the perfumery, which had since grown tenfold.
They lived in the center of town in a home done in the neo-Gothic style so popular in Boston, nearest the parks and the school their three children attended, and it always glowed from the inside with a holy sort of warmth, one Willowfield could no longer boast.
When I arrived, I was ushered into the parlor, pink and green and full of ferns, Burt, Lottie, and Dr. Hannigan already seated and sipping coffee.
Burt rose to meet me, clapping my shoulder, tears in his eyes.
“How’s our girl?” he asked, voice tight.
“I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“No breakthroughs?” Lottie asked from her perch on the sofa, square-shouldered and elegant as always, like a dainty figurine secretly made of iron.
“None that I can tell. She still has no clue who I am, and she wanders the house like it’s a brand-new wonder.”
