Page 11 of Meet Me at the Anvil

She pretended to fix her skirts and hummed another negative.

“Couples dancing.”

Diane rolled her eyes. Another no.

“Couples... kissing.”

“Hmm. Some of them, I suppose.”

“Quite scandalous, indeed,” he nodded.

Diane chewed the inside of her mouth. She would not have him first laugh at her, now think that she was so truly innocent, so truly ignorant, as to not know what would compose a truly scandalous scene.

She played with the cuff of her gloves so she would not look at him.

“You may want to do away with ‘couples’. Some of them have at least a half dozen people present, quite moved beyond kissing.”

She tried hard not to smile when Liam’s head turned sharply to her.

“Do keep your eyes on the road.”

Part of her was starting to enjoy the surprise that crept into Liam’s face, in revealing she was a bit worldlier than he might have suspected. It gave her immense satisfaction to be more than frail, weak Diane, who fainted at anything too stimulating for a delicate young lady. She could be Diane, coy and coquettish, who knew the whole range of sordid acts people got up to.

“Who would sell such a thing to a lady?” he said incredulously, seemingly asking the road before them, perhaps the horse.

“No one,” Diane answered, straightening her spine. She was quite proud of her deviousness, her ingenuity, her careful observation of the human form and her clever imagination for all it could accomplish. Never before had she the chance to express that pride to another soul. She almost beamed as she declared, “I drew them all. I taught myself how.”

“So you have become a connoisseur of erotica.”

“I.... of illustrations!” She stammered to correct him. She had half a mind to get her fan out of her reticule and smack his shoulder with it for such a slander against her character.

“Erotic illustrations.”

She exclaimed. “With an existence as restrained as mine, is it so wrong I should find excitement where I can?”

Several moments passed in silence between the pair of them, the only sound was the rumble of the carriage against the road, grinding dirt and rocks against the wheels. It was a different silence than the first, which had been born easily, a relaxed and comfortable silence, dozing in the warm sunlight. This one was heavier, hanging in the air like dark clouds, threatening storms.

Every time her shoulder brushed his, it felt like a mistake, crossing a line.

“No one knows about my collection,” she said quietly, some small part of her wondering if she should have kept it that way.

Perhaps it was foolish to reveal her secrets to anyone, even the man that was often quiet as the grave. She hadn’t expected that anyone would react with joy upon learning this hobby of hers, peculiar and unsuitable for a young lady as it was. But having given a hint of her secret to Liam in her outburst at the church, the dam had cracked. There was no putting it back.

Liam sighed, something in his shoulders relaxing. “Perhaps I ought to return the favor.”

Something no one knew about Liam? That was nearly everything. She wondered if he would tell her where the scars on his face were from, if they were indeed from badgers, or dogs, or weasels, or all of the above.

As many hours as she had spent avoiding looking directly at Liam and still sneaking those heart rate spiking glances, she had been observing Liam.

To others, perhaps, the man seemed to have the personality of a statue.

But Diane had been collecting facts about Liam.

For example, he liked to tilt framed paintings so that they hung the tiniest bit crooked when he thought no one was looking. He hung about on the periphery of conversations as if he wasn’t listening, but he was quick to bring up a new abrupt topic whenever Martin was about to saying something idiotic. The sound of breaking glass would send him to the other side of the house in under a minute. There was a fork with slightly bent tines that he preferred over all others, though he would deny it when pressed. He re-tied his hair at least six times a day because he was always messing it up.

“I thought I could stand by and let Martin marry you,” he said at long last, his gaze becoming miles distant, as if he were looking back over the horizon to the church they’d left.

Diane’s brow furrowed. He had said as much back at the church, that she was unsuitable for Martin.

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