Spy limit

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Wouldn't it be fun if you were there at the same time, and we could meet!" She bit her lip and, with a naughty smile, asked, "Would you get me a macquereau?"

"A hundred!" Emma promised gaily. "They're like flies round bad meat in New York. Are you really going?"

"It depends on Papa, of course, but Mama's sure he'll say yes."

They wrote a note to tell Lawrence they'd gone for a stroll up in Highbury Fields, but, just as they were closing the apartment door behind them, they heard him come dashing in from the street, leaping up the stairs, three at a time.

"Thank heavens!" He almost bowled them over.

"Have you just got here?" "No, we were on our way out for a stroll," his sister told him.

"Oh." He had eyes only for Emma, of course - who also seemed unable to take hers off him. "I think I know

"Well," Kathleen said shrewdly, what you're trying to say."

"You're a true brick!" He smiled gratefully at her. "D'you mind awfully?"

"Would it matter if I did? What shall I tell them at home?"

"Oh say I'm ornithologizing down at Hackney Marshes. I haven't used that one for a long time. Come back here after supper if they'll let you."

"I'll see you tomorrow," she told Emma. Then, with a sideways nod toward her brother, "Try and earn a ribbon for that bonnet!"

"Ha ha!" Emma responded uncomfortably. Lawrence followed her to the stairhead and called down after her, "Thanks, Little Face! I'll do something for you one day."

"Oh, you will!" she assured him heavily.

Emma had meanwhile reopened the door and back inside. She was just unpinning her bonnet when gone he joined her. "We could go for that stroll instead, if you like," he said.

She dropped the bonnet on the table and eyed the sideboard.

"There's still half a bottle of port," he added drily. Her jaw dropped. "Kathy?"

He shook his head and patted his breastbone. "Good." She grinned. "Me? I've not touched a drop for... oh, two months. Time was, I could have told you to the nearest hour."

"Did you mean what you wrote? About being in love with me?" "And also what I said about it being no good for either of us. Have a drink if you want. It doesn't bother me any longer."

"The thing is, Emma..." He took a step toward her and then paused awkwardly. "I love you, too. I can't get you out of my mind. That's what I was coming here to tell you that Saturday morning."

"I'll take my clothes off if you like," she offered. "What?" He stared at her aghast.

"I mean, I'll be your missie if you wish - and there's no other man in all the world I'd say those words to. But if you have any thoughts about wedding bells and me forget them."

He was about to reply when it struck him that he could use her offer to achieve his own much more limited ambition at least in the immediate term. Smiling he went to her, took her in his arms, and kissed her passionately, massaging her lips with his and playing a delicious game with their tongues among her teeth.

She resisted him at first; he could feel the tension in her everywhere their bodies touched. But then she yielded and surrendered herself, almost limp, into his embrace. And when at last he took his lips from hers the time for words had gone. Dumbly, shivering with her need for him, she took a pace back toward the bed, grasping his hand and pulling him after her. But he held his ground and said, "No!"

"I do want you," she replied in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

He closed his eyes against the enticement of her beauty. "I want you, too." "Well then."

He turned his back on her and stared at the window. "Listen," he said. "If you want war, you may have it. But I'll tell you now it's a war I shall win. And the victor's trophy will be your hand in marriage. And I won't go to bed with you until we are married. So make up your mind to it now. We can have a long agony or a short one. You decide."

She came to him and wrapped her arms about him from behind. "Don't," she pleaded, laying her head against his backbone.

"Don't what?"

"Fight me. Because you'll only go and win." He went tense at once. "Are you accepting my proposal?"

"I'm telling you to withdraw it. Marriage between you and me would just never work."