A/N: I completely messed up last time I posted a chapter. I had been a bit sleepless and stressed out. I had wanted to prove that I could still function. Ha.
So, some of you have seen much of this chapter already, because I inadvertently posted a draft version of THIS in July. When I realized my error, I quickly put up the real Chapter 6. So, you may need to go look at (what is now) Chapter 6…
What a mess, huh? Thank you if you have made it this far as witness to my madness.
Luckily, this has been beta'd by dancesabove. Iz all better now?
/
Mrs. Higgins had given up on Eliza taking to any of the young men of her acquaintance. Eleanor had, therefore, resigned herself to the reliable foursome of Pickering, Henry, Eliza and herself.
They'd been to the symphony on this particular evening, three long, strange weeks after their return from Brighton. One cagey week after the incident in the library.
A shrewd Pickering had gone straight back to Wimpole Street when Henry insisted that he would see the ladies home.
And so it was Eleanor, feeling like the last sane person for many miles, who looked from the agitated man pacing her foyer to the young woman who seemed ready to melt into the wallpaper. She sighed. The sound seemed to help Henry remember who and where he was.
He mumbled a 'good night' to his mother, and kissed her on the cheek at the bottom of the stairs. Silently Henry watched her head up toward her room.
He turned then a bit like a man in a trance. As he made to move past Eliza to find the door, he let his hand fall at her elbow. Abruptly, he pulled up short. He hesitated in front of her as if he could not let go. And somehow, he found his lips were brushing against her cheek.
As if they were old friends. As if they were distant family.
As if...
The quick, impulsive kiss Higgins had placed at Eliza's cheek might have been meant to seem quite like the one he had given his mother. But it did not at all, they both realized, as they stood frozen together.
He had, whether knowingly or not, plunged them into a brief sort of horror. Because there was nothing chaste about that kiss at all, suddenly. But Eliza did not know if that was by his design or because of her very present desire. She was not shocked by his display. This... this sort of necessary experiment in crossing the line between them had been months in coming.
Henry lingered close still. Too close for any propriety. Until he seemed to shake off the intimate mood. "Damn this tomfoolery," he muttered at last, as he pulled away.
The words came out weak. Eliza almost pitied him his unease.
"Were you hoping to... to truly kiss me?" she asked shyly.
And Higgins had wanted to. But her insight unsettled him.
"Such presumption," he accused faintly and feebly.
She nodded, eased a step away. "If I was wrong, I apologize. My manners will never be what they should, I suppose."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "I don't want or need the apology. In truth, I find nothing wrong with your manners."
"I'm not sure you are my model in those things," she ventured in a firm, quiet voice.
"Be that way if you must," he said, tiredly, twisting half away. "My pride is at your mercy tonight."
In the past, she would have said no more. But she felt something for this man, and so she would cross that line—even if she merely ended up pushed back to her side of it again.
"I have no patience with... pretense," she told him, after an unhealthy silence. "There is so much said about what should or shouldn't be. I think people forget what simply is. The feelings. The report. There are things that make themselves. Things that can't be helped. Nor stopped."
She is telling me she feels this tension, too, he realized as he studied her. That the urges are not of our design. Not of either party's making. Unavoidable. Spontaneous and faultless.
Would she let me kiss her? Now? After every misstep?
Turning back to her then, he leaned very close. Enthralled with the pulse of anticipation, he was somehow unwilling to have their intimate moment come, because then it would be gone again. And so he stalled there, registering, analyzing the change in her breathing and the palpable heat between them. He felt her hand land at his lapel, not to push him away, but to steady them both. As he heeded the urge to draw back and study her, he saw her blush.
He did this, he saw. He had known how to make her angry. How to make her laugh. But this?
She believed she understood his hesitation and the look in his eyes. Eliza felt his professorial scrutiny turning her into an object. "Stop," she told him as she turned her head away. "I'm not your experiment."
"Not any longer. No," he confirmed, lowly.
Idiotically.
Henry immediately regretted what he'd done in making her so uncomfortable and in losing his chance. Because surely, surely she had been about to let him kiss her. Quickly then, he backed up, a stutter in his step, breaking his contact with her. "I'm sorry, Eliza. Truly." In seeing this new side to her, he had seen an undesirable one in himself—that willingness to mistreat people.
She straightened a tad, and went stiff with formality. "Do you know what it is to be hurt?" she asked more than accused.
"I do. Of course, I do," he sniffed.
"How?"
The truth came easier when speaking to Eliza than to anyone alive, he suddenly sensed. "Because the same man who hurts you, hurts me. I don't always know how to forgive him, either."
His admission was so very unlikely—or would have been before this—that it took her a moment to comprehend that he meant himself.
Suddenly she didn't know what to do with his admission at all.
"It's late," she stammered. "Perhaps you should see to the taxi." It was all the flustered young woman could manage in the moment.
She wasn't sure he had heard her, as he stood unblinking before her. Finally he spoke. "It is ridiculous. I am loathe to be away from you, Eliza. Even for the night. But I haven't another thing I need to say."
He sighed and gripped at his forehead before turning for the door. "I believe that says it all," he finished. With that, he left the house.
It was not the first time his behavior had confused her, she considered. She lingered downstairs, letting up a sigh and relaxing enough to lean against the wall a moment in her fatigue and ennui. She let her eyes fall shut, only to open them a few seconds later when she heard the door open again.
It was not the weary footman.
"You've sent off the taxi, then?" she asked with confusion when Henry walked back in.
He only hummed in answer. After striding for the staircase, he sat on a tread, his impossibly long-legged form a study in angles.
Eliza was oddly pleased to see him back again. Smiling to herself, she put a hand on the banister and bent her neck to catch his eye. "You will tire of me," she assessed, when she was sure she held his attention.
"Ha. Long after you have tired of me," he insisted.
"All these years you have been at phonetics. Do you care about it less?"
He looked confused, but answered her. "No."
"Personally, I find you more fascinating than phonetics," she assured him, a tentative smile working at her lips.
He pulled at the banister to get back on his feet. So sure of himself did he look in that moment, that she thought he might walk right past her and head for the door. As he loomed now in front of her, he dropped his chin to his chest and his hand found hers. Eliza laughed lowly, quickly, as if they were just sharing an odd little moment. Embarrassed and confused, she made to drop his hand. But he held tight.
"Eliza... you will marry me. Stop our infernal traveling back and forth. All these inconvenient partings," he said. "Just..."
"Yes."
He had acted very self-assured, but he hadn't been. He groaned in relief now. Moved to stand a little closer. Close enough to hear her tattered-sounding breaths.
"Henry?" she ventured, the unfamiliar name barely making it off her tongue.
"Hmmm?"
"You will kiss me? Please."
"You... want my kisses?" He was a foolish, lovestruck man suddenly, wanting to hear her say it again. But he couldn't bring himself to care how far he'd fallen. It was a lovely fall.
"Yes," she answered.
"As out of practice as I am?" he whispered, then mentally chastised himself. More idiocy, Higgins?
"And how would I notice such a thing?" She hid a blush. "I can't explain. I... I want to be near you. It feels as if I need you close."
She sounded a tad ashamed of such a thing. And he didn't want her to be. Because he understood that need, to touch and be touched. Suddenly. Completely.
"You don't need to explain," he said, his voice hushed and warm against the spot between her cheek and ear.
She looked up at him. "Are you in love with me?" she was brave enough to ask.
"I suppose I am." His voice was pitched higher with the realization of it.
She smiled, almost laughed. "I love you, too."
"We should be practical about this, however."
"Discuss this, you mean?" she asked. She caught her breath, wondering if she would ever get her requested kiss.
Impossibly, then, he asked her, "Do you care about household allowances? Social expectations?"
"A girl tends to worry more about… marital expectations."
He raised an eyebrow at the frankness of her worries. "I can be a complete trial about some things, Eliza. I know. But not about that."
"Meaning?" she said, feeling small, but trying hard not to seem it.
And he realized his statement could be misconstrued. She might think he meant he had no desire for a marriage involving a regularly shared bed at all.
Laughable. Well, almost laughable, when he considered that it had been the then-frightening flash of such shared things that had both derailed him and put him on track.
"Meaning..." he started to explain. Words failed him for a second, and he quirked a smile as he decided to proceed without them. He kissed her then, pressing against her, tenderly, yes, but all along her body. It was the most gentle thing, and yet unerringly intimate.
It was an offer.
"Yes?" he wondered, as if he expected her to say something. She sighed in answer as they broke apart. "Meaning," he whispered now, "my regard for you will be quite evident in those moments. I promise you. I will not pounce on you with demands. When you are alone with me in our room, you will know... that I care for you." They were lovely words. They just seemed a tad difficultly spoken.
"Our room?" She manufactured a pout. "Although I may need some place of my own to hide in, when your moods strike."
"So says the lion tamer. You shall have your room, for those rare moments I am out of sorts. And I can hide in mine when you are the same."
"Kiss me, then."
His grin grew as he pressed his lips to her cheek and jaw.
"Henry," she pleaded at his teasing.
And finally, his kisses found her mouth.