I realized I was staring dreamily off into the distance, and hurriedly snapped my thoughts back on the here and now, where they belonged.
As you said before, I reminded myself once more. Frightfully disgusting and horribly terrible! That’s what it was like. Definitely. Absolutely.
My hands were clenching the sheets in a steely grip, and only now did I realize that they were shaking. How could I have let myself go like this? How could I have let go of every cherished principle of female independence for the sake of a few seconds of hot, immensely blissful…
No, not blissful, I corrected myself hurriedly, awful! Awful, understood? Awful!
How could I have forgotten myself like this, just for a few seconds of immensely awful kissing in the arms of a man?
Not just any man, mind, but Mr Rikkard Ambrose! The man who had humiliated me, who had made my life hell for the past few weeks, the man who was determined to get rid of me.
But… wasn’t he also the man who had let me stay because he had given his word, even though he didn’t like it? The man who had given me a job when nobody else would have? The man who had brought adventure and independence into my life? The man whose kiss roused feelings in me that had never, ever before…
No! Stop it!
I had to stop right there. If I sank into those memories again, I would start thinking thoughts I wouldn’t like… or rather would like too damn much… and would despise… and desire… oh, this was all so confusing!
Grabbing the pillow on the bed that most resembled Mr Ambrose’s head, I drew back my arm and gave it a good right hook. Unfortunately, the pillow didn’t have a great resemblance to the original. I knew, because if it hadn’t been before last night, now his chiselled face was branded into my mind forever.
No surprise, considering the lengthy opportunity I had had to study it at close quarters. Once more, the scene from last night flashed in front of my eyes: he swooping down towards me, pressing his lips on mine, hard, demanding, so incredibly…
Blast him!
How dare he! How dare he want me? And how dare I not want him to not want me?
Dash it all!
I had to face the facts.
It had really happened. Mr Ambrose had kissed me, kissed me passionately. I remembered it distinctly.
I sank forward onto the bed. This was probably the time when I should have started to cry in shame, like a good little lady. Ella probably would have. Personally, I thought my head still hurt too much to make the effort, but I punched the Mr-Ambrose-pillow a few more times for good measure.
Blast, blast, blast!
Was there no way it could not have happened? No way I could get out from under the weight of this horrible catastrophe, and could have imagined the whole thing?
No. I distinctly remembered it.
But then… I also remembered Napoleon playing chess in the powder room and a dance troupe of little yellow piggies. Maybe my memories of last night weren’t quite as reliable as I had thought. A ray of hope broke through the darkness of despair around me.
Please, I prayed. Please let them be unreliable, please!
Calm down, I told myself. You have to think about it logically.
Easier said than done. Every time my mind strayed back to those few heated moments in the office, every kind of logic simply vaporized, leaving in its place a hot shiver that usurped power over my brain and tried to have my common sense executed by guillotine.
Slowly. Do it slowly. Think back to what happened first, before the kiss…
Well, I got drunk. Royally. Epically. The thrumming pain in my skull could attest to that. A smile tugged at the corners of my lips.
Don’t get me wrong - I didn’t exactly enjoy the pain. But the realization that I had done something that proper young ladies definitely were not supposed to do gave me great satisfaction. Plus, while doing it, I had actually had fun. I could understand why men drank. There was a certain liberating effect to it, if you didn’t mind yellow piggies too much. I might actually drink again some time - though maybe not quite as much. And not the same rotgut they’d sold in that tavern.
What next…
Oh yes. The fight. My smile widened. Most of that was a blur, a red and black blur. On some level I knew that I hadn’t been of much use, and that irked me a bit, but the thrill of the experience made up for it.
Hmm… Could you try and learn how to shoot a gun?
Why not? Soon enough, at the end of the month, I would have money of my own. Money with which I could buy anything I wanted - even firearms. Or perhaps solid chocolate. My smile widened even more.
What next…
The drive to the office. I didn’t remember much of that.
And then…
The shower.
My smile disappeared, whisked off my face like chalk off a board.
I had been in the shower - which had been much too cold, by the way - and Mr Ambrose had come in, dressed in a red hunting costume, and he had…
Heat flooded my cheeks, and I hurriedly buried my face in my blanket. Dash it, no! I… we… we couldn’t have, could we? I mean… how could he even…? That wasn’t really possible, was it, that a man and a women could… like that? Dear me! And after he… Oh gosh, that was even more… No, he couldn’t possibly, we could never have… no! I refused to believe it! It had to have been a dream. I would never have done anything like… well, like what I remembered us doing. Not with him, anyway!
And even if I had been persuaded to engage in such elicit activities by some underhand method, Mr Ambrose would never, ever wear a red hunting costume. He probably didn’t own a stitch of coloured clothing. This last point consoled me a great deal. A really great deal. I had actually been wondering whether he and I had, after all… no!
Laughable. It hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have happened.
But did that mean the kiss hadn’t happened, either?
Almost against my will, I reached up to touch my lips again. They didn’t feel swollen. If anything, they felt… warm. Surely, after touching the lips of that silent, cold master of Mammon they would be cold as ice. But I remembered his lips on mine so fiercely! Could all that have been a dream?
I thought of Mr Ambrose - of his arctic manner towards me, his attempts at getting rid of me. It must have been a dream. How could this coldest of men, this block of ice, ever feel something for anybody? The warmth of the feeling would surely melt him away and just leave a puddle of meltwater for Mr Stone or Karim to clean up.
