20
THE SECRET CALLIGRAPHIES OF RAIN
Aurienne
t was difficult, thought Aurienne as she leaned next to Mordaunt on theI balcony, to hold him in her habitual disdain. Could one admire someone for acts of goodness, however self-interested, while simultaneously holding them in contempt? Aurienne found it impossible to maintain both perspectives concomitantly. Ultimately, he was a Fyren. And yet, and yet, and yet.
The man dying in her bed and his hot grasps at her hands were a memory.
But what a memory. It should’ve been the best thing in the world to see him suffer, but it had been the worst thing in the world to see him suffer—so where did her peace lie? Certainly not here, not in the murk of this rapprochement, where he almost gave his life to protect her and she, with her own excuses, brought him back from the brink of death.
Aurienne, who revelled in accurate categorisation, hated that she no longer knew what to do with Mordaunt. He was an extraordinary combination of monster and man, of villainous and meritorious, base and noble—and, on occasion, he did good. It changed the anatomical diagram of Mordaunt in her mind. Her labels no longer made sense. The bottles he had found with the suspected Pox virus were undergoing testing at Swanstone; if they came back positive, it would be yet another point in his favour, yet
another source of unwished-for gratitude, yet another challenge to her neat categories.
Aurienne cast a glance towards Mordaunt, who was nearly himself again.
She had noted, as she joined him on the balcony, the cross of braces between muscular shoulders, and the shirt, of a markedly good cut, raffishly open at the neck. Everything about him was, once more, posed and intentional, from his casual recline against the rail to the scruffy beginnings of a beard along his jaw to the smoothness of I serve at your pleasure to the shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows. So careless. So deliberate.
The brush of his arm against hers gave her a thrill. It was clandestine; it was wrong; it was the pretty foretaste of a kiss. Her heart skipped a beat.
“You know, it’s a good thing I listened to your advice,” said Mordaunt.
Aurienne, startled from her musings, intelligently replied, “Hmm?”
“Two drinks in and I’m positively mortalled.” Mordaunt swirled the remains of his Scotch. “Perfect Aedan is looking for you, by the way.”
Aurienne followed Mordaunt’s line of sight to the crowd below the balcony, where Aedan was indeed casting about with a glass in each hand.
“Poor bastard,” said Mordaunt. “That suit looks exactly like someone vomited on it.” He turned to Aurienne and added, inconsequentially, “We
should dance.”
A draughty silence ensued.
“Why?” asked Aurienne.
“To convince him that you’ve moved on.”
“With an episiotomy-scissor peddler?”
“With faults and everything.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary.”
“Look at him. Poor lovelorn pup.” Mordaunt’s pitying words did not match the stare he shot over the rail. “Although Perfect Aedan has got
faults.”
“Which?” asked Aurienne.
“Have you seen his ears?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re massive.”
“They aren’t.”
“Look at those things, scooping up the very air. Could he leave some decibels for the rest of us?”
Why was the only man who could make her laugh tonight a Fyren?
Mordaunt could be a fine conversation partner if one set aside what he was. It was like setting aside gravity—doable, but only for brief moments.
Anyway, Aurienne didn’t wish to speak about Aedan. Desiring to move on from the cloying subject, she made some inapposite remarks about the weather. (The subject was cloying; Aedan was cloying—the more she was clung to, the more she desired escape.) Mordaunt, with a notable lack of interest in the weather, said, “I’m your Friend du jour; surely that warrants a dance. People would think it strange otherwise.”
“As laudable as your commitment to the charade is”—Aurienne held up the shoes dangling from her fingertips—“I’m done for the night. Couldn’t do
another minute in these.”
“Dance without them,” said Mordaunt.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No one can see your indecent ankles from down there. It’s only me.”
“Only you?”
“Only. My near-death experience has left me humble and lamblike.”
Strains of music floated up to them as the first bars of the next song began. Mordaunt held out his hand to Aurienne. Aedan, looking every inch the lovelorn pup, chose that moment to look up, and spot her on the balcony.
If he saw her refuse Mordaunt’s hand, it would send a signal to him, and Aurienne didn’t wish to send signals to Aedan. Well—unless the signal was that she had moved on with another. In which case— Aurienne tossed her shoes to the side and took Mordaunt’s hand. “Very well. I will dance as nature intended.”
“Barefoot, tipsy, and with flowers in your hair.”
“You paint a lovely picture.”
“You are a lovely picture.”
“I thought I was an uptight little fusspot?”
Aurienne was rewarded by one of Mordaunt’s brilliant smiles. “Do you know,” he said, “sometimes I don’t mind being wrong?”
They came together, hands guarded from touch by gloves of leather and silk. Aurienne had lost the added height of her heels; she stood at eye level with Mordaunt’s mouth.
They danced slowly, because he couldn’t go very fast, and because the song was a low, romantic ballad. It meant nothing—it was a stupid little dance that was part of a stupid little charade—but her pulse was all aflutter.
Aurienne took refuge in the clinical. She quizzed Mordaunt on any lingering symptoms: dizziness, confusion, palpitations, tachypnoea, and, finally, oliguria—“And when’s the last time you urinated?”
Mordaunt, who looked increasingly discontented as her evaluation
progressed, said, “Really?”
“What?”
“We’re dancing and you’re interrogating me about urine?”
“It’s important,” said Aurienne.
“You really can wring the romance out of anything,” said Mordaunt.
“What romance?” asked Aurienne. “This is a sham.”
“Well, I was enjoying the sham—and the garden, and the lights, and the music; it all pleases my sense of Aesthetics.”
Aurienne dismissed the Aesthetics with a flick of her fingers. “Answer me about the urine.”
“Yes, I had a piss,” said Mordaunt, with slight, alcohol-induced slurring.
“Since we’re ruining everything with vulgar reality.”
“Quantity?”
“Well, I didn’t measure it.”
“Normal?”
“Yes. Gods.”
“Excellent. You’re well enough to leave tomorrow. We can draw the charade to a close. You may go back to enjoying the Aesthetics.”
Mordaunt resumed this activity by observing the glittering crowd below.
“Your family likes their jewels.”
“They do,” said Aurienne. “Have you seen anything you like?”
“Some.”
“Have you stolen anything from the house yet?”
“You still don’t trust me?”
“No,” said Aurienne. “I know you’ve thought about it.”
“It is a fascinating house. So automated. Mine must seem rather—”
“Primitive,” suggested Aurienne.
“Traditional,” said Mordaunt. “Your mother is quite the horologist.”
“Her favourite holiday location is La Chaux-de-Fonds, if that gives you an idea.”
Mordaunt’s eyebrows rose at this mention of the cradle of Swiss watchmaking. “I’m even more tempted now. Her alarm system has,
admittedly, given me pause.”
“I was right: you’re a common thief.”
“Not common. Not common.”
“Have you no pleasure in life but to acquire things that aren’t yours?” asked Aurienne.
Mordaunt gave her a look veiled by heavy eyelids and drink. “I have other pleasures,” he said, and did not elaborate further.
“I ought to go warn my aunts to count their diamonds.”
Mordaunt’s fingers tightened at her waist. “But then you won’t be here to supervise me. Anyway, you can’t leave yet—the song hasn’t ended. It’ll look like we had a falling-out.”
“We exist in a perpetual state of falling out.”
“Others needn’t know the sordid truth,” said Mordaunt. Aurienne matched him in a slow spin. “These few days have been a pleasant interlude, false as they were.”
“For you, perhaps,” said Aurienne. “I’ll be subject to questions about you until I tell my parents it’s over.”
“What excuse will you give for my ignominious loss of your favour?”
“A selection of sordid truths,” said Aurienne. “I shall tell them you were too smug, too arrogant, too convinced that you were right all the time, and that these things suffocated all your other attractions. To the bin with you.”
“All of those things are equally applicable to you,” said Mordaunt.
He was right, so Aurienne said, with vast matter-of-factness: “Nonsense.”
“What other attractions?” asked Mordaunt.
“I can’t think of any, but, for the sake of your dignity, I’ll pretend they exist.”
The scar over Mordaunt’s mouth twitched. “I fish for compliments, and instead of taking the bait, you slap into the stratosphere.”
Aurienne squeezed at their joined hands. “I know what’s under here; it casts a pall over any possible attractions.”
“What if my tācn were something else?” asked Mordaunt. “What would the attractions be then?”
The question was posed with sarcastic, boozy interest—only Aurienne caught real curiosity in Mordaunt’s downward glance. A moment later, it was gone. There again was the quirk in the lips; there was the mordacity.
“That tācn has tainted everything I know of you,” said Aurienne. “I
couldn’t answer the question.”
“Not even as a thought exercise?”
“A thought exercise? Of this scope? Mid-dance?”
“Try.”
“Arm veins,” said Aurienne.
“Arm veins?” repeated Mordaunt.
“I’d love to pop a large bore into this one,” said Aurienne, running a
finger over the juiciest one.
“I am absolutely wasted on you.”
Mordaunt had used her soap today; Aurienne could smell it on him. He was very near. Had they begun the dance this close together? And if they hadn’t, which of them had closed the gap? It might have been her. She hoped it had been him. She looked at the hollow at the base of his throat. It was the lighthouse all over again, the pull of the wanting to be near, the natural
repulsion, the back-and-forth.
It began to rain.
There were gasps from the garden below and a faltering in the music as the quartet backed itself under a canopy. The music picked up again, as did the chatter, all dampened by the soft percussion of a gentle June-time shower.
It scattered itself upon Aurienne and Mordaunt in glittering handfuls, lit by
the green and gold lights below.
“It’s raining,” said Aurienne.
“I know,” said Mordaunt.
“Shouldn’t we go in?”
“Why must you be sensible?”
“One of us ought to be.”
But they weren’t sensible. They were tipsy. They danced in the rain.
Besides, they were indoors, sort of—as well as outside: a bit of both, all at once. Aurienne’s bare feet danced from the balcony’s cold stone to the bedroom’s warm floorboards and back again. The wet splashed indoors; the lamplight glowed outdoors; the rain washed the distinctions away. Water dripped against Mordaunt’s neck, and Aurienne’s bodice, and his temples, and her lips, and wrote things there in calligraphies long forgotten.
Their shadows also spoke things in their twine and untwine against balcony railing and white curtains, cast now by the lamps in the bedroom, and now by the light of the half-moon. The space between her and Mordaunt was a sparkling, rain-studded thing; they pulled it apart and tightened it with every spin, over and under, farther and nearer; they wove and unwove, and wove and unwove.
What was between them? An ebb and a flow, curiosity and guilt, today’s fatal daydream and tomorrow’s scars.
Delighted laughter echoed below as partygoers noticed Aurienne and Mordaunt’s rain-drenched dance. There was applause—a celebration of a thing that was not, and could never be.
Aurienne sought Mordaunt’s gaze to see how much longer he wished to keep up the pretence of the dance, but his eyes were on their joined hands.
Their star-crossed tācn pressed against each other’s. Their Orders were in their veins, as inescapable as their own blood.
He held his arm overhead; she spun out and spun back in; pale skirts clung to black trousers.
What was between them? Once it had been a theatre of war; now it was a no-man’s-land. They had grown entangled in each other through
reciprocities. Healing and killing, killing and healing.
The music swelled. Mordaunt radiated warmth; Aurienne could feel it through the front of her dress where it brushed his chest, through her glove where he clasped her hand. He was loose and relaxed; his head hung low, the scruff at his jaw brushed her cheek. The hand that had been decorously perched at her waist slid into the small of her back. Through the fine fabric of her dress, she felt the press of his signet ring.
Their faces were near each other’s. Mordaunt looked at her mouth like he
thought of kissing it.
He was a very good actor.
To their audience below, a kiss would be utterly unremarkable—normal —expected, even. Aedan had found a recipient for his drink, but he was still looking at Aurienne.
“Let’s put the poor bastard out of his misery,” said Mordaunt, his voice more warmth than word against Aurienne’s mouth.
A lie—that’s what was between them now.
Their cheeks touched. Their noses brushed. His eyes flashed ardent, wanting.
“I don’t kiss patients,” said Aurienne against his lips.
“I thought I wasn’t a patient,” said Mordaunt.
“Right. You’re just a Point of Leverage.”
“You must make use of me.”
And, because Aedan was watching—and only because Aedan was watching—Aurienne rose to her tiptoes and ran silk-clad fingers through Mordaunt’s hair.
He didn’t hesitate, didn’t give her time to change her mind. He pulled her in close, put a hand around the back of her neck, tilted her head upwards.
Then came the tender apocalypse of his lips on hers.
She felt Mordaunt’s scar against her mouth, felt the tightening of his hand at her neck, savoured Scotch and chocolate and lies from his lips. Her body didn’t know what her brain knew; her heart beat wild in her chest; breathing became an act of discipline, irregular ins and outs and ins and outs between the press of rain-wet lips.
While it lasted, the kiss was eternal.
And it was too much and too little, and it was unhallowed, and it was sacrosanct.
There was warmth at the side of her neck. Mordaunt mapped the course of raindrops against her throat with his mouth. He released a long, shuddering breath against her skin. He held her against him rather possessively for a kiss that meant nothing.
The audience sighed about a thing that did not exist.
Aurienne stilled. The music carried on; the violins made a rapturous chorus with the dripping melody of the rain. She released her hold on Mordaunt’s shoulder, but his lingered at her waist. He kept her hand clasped in his. His nearness, the kiss, her rushing blood, all heightened her perception, and, as at the lighthouse, she saw warring in his eyes: vulnerability, yearning, desperate unhappiness.
He retreated into irony. Grey hardened into silver. He said, “Didn’t think you would.”
As for Aurienne, she regretted the kiss immediately—because it blurred already-blurred lines, because of what he was and what she was, because it felt good.
She blinked rain-misted eyes. She liked her precious categories. She liked things sharp and delineated. She liked contrasts. Clarity. Knowing where she stood.
She did not care about the secret calligraphies of rain.
She said, “I’d better go.”
He said, “If you must.”
Aurienne turned away. She dropped his hand and its profane tācn.
He released hers slowly. Leather slid against silk, palm slid against palm, fingertip slid against wet fingertip, and whatever had been woven between them stretched and tore and severed with a snap.
