Chapter 17

Dora and James reached the clearing. The logs from the last bonfire were in their remembered position. Dora wondered when the special fire had last been lit. Last year, maybe? The trio had long since stopped telling her about Night Vigils, just in case her "guilty conscience" might spur her to get them caught in the act.

James gathered some dry leaves and added them to the pile. Dora found her eyes attracted to the blue-grey shadows playing on his hands and forearms as he worked in the vanishing dusk.

"You can put the book down now," he said to Dora, raising an eyebrow. "And I need that candle."

Dora hadn't realized how still she'd been standing.

She bent to put the book on a group of rocks, and she walked toward the center of the clearing, to the pile. James swiped the candle from her hand and lit the fire. As he fanned the flames, coaxing them to rise, his dark eyes caught hers and held them. She stared back. The warm wind tumbled in her hair, seeking furrows between the curls.

As her eyes devoured his jawline, the knifelike cut of his cheekbones, the modeling of his nose and the wings of his eyebrows, she felt improper. As she memorized the contours of his lips, the delicate convexities and concavities only visible in this dramatic firelight, she felt positively brazen. She should not be doing this, she thought. It was ridiculous to revel in the appearance of someone she hated. Her gaze strayed lower. He was unshaven. He hadn't taken very good care of himself today. He hadn't even finished buttoning his shirt up. His collarbones were surprisingly thick on such a thin frame, and his shirt revealed a patch of bare skin above a sliver of white undershirt, a few dark bristles poking out of its nadir.

This chest hair made Dora lower her eyes and blush. It reminded her that James was 24 years old, not a teenager like Dora. Not her equal.

It also excited her, fueled her curiosity about other things she wasn't meant to see.

"So," said James, his voice a black velvet murmur, his open collar flapping against him in the wind. "What do you want to do?"

She hated him, she reminded herself. Hate.

He ran a hand through his hair, very slowly, keeping his eyes on Dora all the while. Dora found herself imagining how that thick wavy hair must feel to his hand, how his hand must feel to his scalp, how his fingers would feel burrowing in her own hair. She looked down.

"You've hardly said a word to me for two days."

He'd noticed?

"Are you mad at me?" he asked. "Have I done something to provoke you?"

She shook her head.

"Then why?" He began walking toward her, skirting around the fire.

She dug her toes into the bottoms of her shoes as he came closer.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you out here. Why did you stop coming?"

Dora shrugged and injected flippancy into her voice. "Why do you care? You were having so much fun without me."

James saw the hurt flicker in her eyes before she could school them back to impassivity. He had his answer. He hadn't known. He felt a glimmer of sympathy as he thought of how the little girl must have suffered because of him, feeling the emotions he'd felt for Davy. Then he mentally shook his head. He had an agenda here, a game to play. No mercy.

"I think you can be fun, too," he said. His shirt was not only half-unbuttoned, but also half-untucked. His face half-twisted in a half-smirk. "What do you think?"

He was three feet away from Dora and showed no intention of stopping.

"What happened? Cat's got your tongue again?"

"Um," said Dora, very fast. "Um. I have a scene picked out, in my Shakespeare, that we can, uh, act-"

James' face was so close she could count individual bristles in his stubble. "Then go get it," he whispered.

Dora turned on her heel and practically ran to the rock. She snatched up the book and hurried back to James.

"Go on," he said. "Open it." He stretched lazily.

Dora kept her eyes firmly trained on the book. It would be very dangerous to look at him now, stretching, when his clothes already barely held together. She didn't know why her hands were shaking so hard, why she was having trouble just turning pages.

James noted all of this with interest. One nice thing about fair girls was how easy it was to read their emotions. Even the faintest flush showed on white cheeks. Even the minutest pupillary dilation could be detected in light eyes. Dora's skin shone ivory against the black of her dress, and it was a very warm night, but gooseflesh rose on her bare forearms. Fascinating, how little effort he had to put into generating this effect on Dora Keith.

"I don't think this scene will work anymore because Miranda isn't here," blurted Dora.

James peeked over her shoulder, letting his stubbled cheek graze against Dora's smooth one for just a split second.

As soon as he saw the page, he jerked back.

Why would Dora pick that scene from Lear? He stepped away from the girl.

"We could try to act it, but we'd each have to play two people," she continued.

James tried to push the horrible torture-and-eye-gouging scene out of his mind, but he knew it would tug at the chains of his brain until he understood her choice. No matter. He needed to improvise. Something else from Shakespeare.

A smirk grew on his face. Yes.

"How about we act out something else?" he said. "With only two characters."

"All right," said Dora.

James took the book from her and pretended to flip through it for a while before he opened to the page he wanted.

"Do you like A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

Dora smiled. It was rather shallow, but rich with fireflies and fairy dust and sweet madness that hurt no one in the end. It was Anne's favorite, and Anne had read it to Dora when she was seven and ill with fever. For weeks she'd dreamt of leaf-clad sprites playing flutes and harps and dancing in the enchanted woodland dusk.

"Here," he said, handing her the book opened to Act II, Scene 1. "I'll be Demetrius, you be Helena."

Dora didn't remember this part too well. It was before most of the fairy action.

"'I love thee not, therefore pursue me not,'" James began, pitching his voice to the irritation Demetrius must feel at that point, followed by a lovesick girl when the one he wanted was too busy having summer sleepovers with another man. Really, he thought, it was too fitting.

"'You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant- but yet you draw not iron, for my heart is true as steel: leave you your power to draw, and I shall have no power to follow you." Dora stumbled over the iambs. This line confused her.

"'Do I entice you?'" James' voice sharpened, as though Demetrius was very annoyed indeed by Helena's cryptic puns. Dora shivered. "'Do I speak you fair? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth tell you I do not nor I cannot love you?'"

"'And even for that do I love you the more,'" returned Dora. "'I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on you. Use me as but your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me: only give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you.'"

She stopped and glared at James.

"You're not finished with your line," said James, raising an eyebrow.

"Why did you pick this scene?"

"Chance." James sat down on a large grey rock and looked up at her through the shock of messy bangs veiling one eye. "Does it bother you?"

Dora could have smacked him with the book. Instead her features just thinned out more, and her cheeks burned red and white.

"Real actors put aside their personal feelings and just act as the script demands," said James. "I should've known you didn't have it in you."

Oh, no he didn't. Oh, no he did not. He did NOT just say that.

"You were right," said James, stretching again, eyes on the inky sky. "It is more fun without you."

Dora flipped the book back open and rushed back into her line. "'What worser place can I beg in your love, and yet a place of high respect with me, than to be used as you use your dog?'" she finished, forcing her expression and voice to drip grotesquely maudlin. She snapped back to stone and shoved the book at James.

James tried not to laugh at her rage. "'Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, for I am sick when I do look on thee.'"

"'And I am sick when I look not on you.'"

"'You do impeach your modesty too much, to leave the city, and commit yourself into the hands of one who loves you not; to trust the opportunity of night and the ill counsel of a desert place with the rich worth of your virginity.'"

At this Dora's anger vanished, replaced by confusion and embarrassment. When had she sat down next to James? And why were they so close? She could see irregularities in the parchment texture of his skin. His eyes seemed to envelop her. She quickly looked down at the book spread across both of their knees. His hand and hers were mirrored on the pages. His was large-boned and callused, hers was small and pale and defenseless-looking. Dora's gaze traveled farther down, then back up again, following the trajectory of their thighs. If they were half an inch closer, she calculated, their knees would touch.

She stood up. The book clattered to the forest floor. She didn't notice. She couldn't be here- she couldn't, she couldn't. She couldn't be out in the woods at night, alone with a fire and James. She should never have come. She needed to go home. Back to Green Gables, back to her little white bed, the lull of crickets and safety and boredom.

She spun away and started walking. She tripped. She cursed herself for forgetting the limitations of her dress as her face sank to the dirt.

Hands gripped her forearms just as her nose was about to touch mud.

James pulled her up. She leaned back against him. Her frizzy hair tickled the naked trapezoid of his chest. Her eyelids sank as she was overwhelmed by his scent, musky and exotic as though infused with a rare spice, and both of them knew that she was not going anywhere.