Chapter 22
“I’ll deal,” Buffy said, as she shuffled the cards.
William said nothing, watching her while sipping his whiskey at glacial speed.
“You’ll like this game. I know you will.” She reached over and gave his arm a squeeze, trying to play the coquette and feeling like she was failing miserably.
Her hand consisted of a pair of jacks, a two, a six and a ten. She quickly discarded the jacks, then threw in the ten for good measure, which would be a really boneheaded move if she were trying to win. Her goal in this game, however, was to lose - to undress herself and seduce the man across from her.
“How many cards?” she asked.
“Two,” he replied.
After the draw was sorted, they showed their respective hands, and William won with a pair of threes.
“I lose!” Buffy said, as she began unbuttoning the front of her gown.
William looked at her and swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing. “You needn’t do that, dear.”
“But that’s the game.”
He sighed and tugged on his hair. “What about your boots?” he suggested hopefully.
“I’m sure I’ll get around to that.” She flashed a grin at him, then continued to work on the row of buttons. After a few moments, she’d undone enough of the wrists and collar that she could slide the dress over her head. She draped it over the back of a chair before returning to the bed, her petticoats fluffing up as she sat.
“I fear you’re at a disadvantage, love. With my waistcoat and frock coat and cravat … well, it’s terribly unfair.” He tugged at his hair with one hand while his other kept a firm grip on the tumbler of whiskey.
“Gosh, I hope I don’t lose too many hands then.” Buffy deftly plucked the whiskey from his grasp and drained it dry. Feeling the exuberance of the newly drunk, she stood up and went to his trunk, rooting around until she unearthed his auxiliary flask. After refilling the tumbler, she returned it to him, teasing the back of his hand with her fingertips as she slid her hand up his arm. A blush splashed upon his cheeks immediately.
Her second hand was pretty awful to begin with, but just to make certain, she got rid of a queen and a ten. William bit his bottom lip worriedly and showed his pair of jacks, winning over her eight high. Since she was feeling a little ridiculous wearing shoes with her underwear, Buffy unbuttoned and discarded a boot.
For the third round, she made an effort to win a hand since she dealt herself three kings. Her efforts at undressing and seducing him couldn’t appear too obvious. When William lost to her with a pair of nines, he was so delighted that she began to feel a twinge of guilt. He removed his gray frock coat and spent a great deal of time putting it away, keeping the whiskey glass close to him the whole time.
After several more hands and two, or possibly three, refillings of the tumbler, William had done slightly worse than she had. He’d divested himself of shoes, stockings, vest and cravat. Since she’d seen how clever he was with all the time-killing card games they’d played on The Adriatic, to see him in such a losing streak was a little shocking.
She’d just lost a hand by throwing away a perfectly good pair of sevens and removed her last stocking, wiggling her toes at him just before tossing the stocking onto his shoulder. He plucked it off, biting his lip nervously.
With only bloomers and a chemise remaining, she merely had to manage two more horrible deals before she’d be completely naked. However, since she’d lost quite a few hands in a row, she’d need to let him lose one or two along the way.
“Are you getting tired, darling?” William gave a horribly fake yawn and stretched his arms upwards. “I find myself terribly fatigued.”
“You’re not getting out of this quite yet, husband.” She slapped their cards down on the bed. After a few moments of scrutinizing his cards, he asked for three. She discarded an ace and a king before dealing their cards.
He adjusted the bed cover nervously as she reached over to pluck the protected tumbler from his hand, taking a deep sip before showing her hand.
“Bupkiss,” she said. Which wasn’t entirely true. She’d had the misfortune to collect a queen on her draw.
“My highest card is an eight. I’m afraid you win again,” William said, with a relieved sigh, as he unbuttoned his dress shirt. After he shrugged out of it, he hung it on the back of the chair where he’d carefully draped the rest of his clothes. He’d been running his hand through his hair so often that it was a tangled mess of curls. He returned to their bed wearing an undershirt and trousers fastened with suspenders.
“We’re practically dressed for bed now. Aren’t you feeling sleepy, dear?” He watched her cautiously.
She shook her head. “I’m pretty much feeling the opposite of tired. I’m feeling … excited, aroused even.” And she was. Even through the false sense of euphoria brought on by booze, she felt a genuine pull towards him. He watched her cautiously, his rumpled hair and sun burned arms called for her fingers, but she kept a tight grip on her cards – for now.
“I feel I owe you an apology,” William began nervously as she dealt another round.
“Why?”
“For the disaster of the play tonight, of course. I don’t understand all of the differences you must encounter, but I know that it must be extremely difficult at times.”
“It’s not … oh, how to explain?” She sighed, throwing away the beginnings of a royal flush. The alcohol was loosening her tongue at the same time it was muddling her thoughts. “It’s not just the racism or the sexism. It’s the … differentness, William.”
“How so, love?” The earnestness in his blue-eyed gaze made her feel extremely uncomfortable, and she took another burning sip from the tumbler.
“Ah Sin? The foreigner? The joke? That’s me. That’s going to be me from now on. The one that nobody gets.”
He placed his cards down on the bedspread, face down and carefully reached up to trace his fingertips down her arm. “I’d like to think that I get you. At least, I’d like to try. I used to get you quite well.”
The look he was giving her was just about heartbreaking in its sincerity. Either that, or the booze was making her overly emotional. She suspected, hoped, it was the former, so she turned her attention back to the game.
“How many cards do you want?”
“One.” He pulled his hand from her arm and swallowed, returning his attention to his cards.
After dealing his card and her three, they showed their hands. He lost again, with a dismal five high.
“Lady Luck is treating you like a baby treats a diaper,” she said grumpily, as he stood up to remove his suspenders.
He nodded in confirmation but said nothing. Just as he was about to sit back down on the bed, she reached over to smooth out the bunched up covers. As she pulled on the bedspread, a small scattering of cards fluttered to the floor from the spot where he’d apparently tucked them between the folds of the blankets.
William looked horrified and miserable.
“Cheating?” Buffy was incensed. “You’ve been cheating at cards?”
He took a breath as if about to speak, then let it out in a whoosh. Opening his mouth as if to speak, he closed his lips, thinning them to a line and nodded.
“I can’t believe you’ve been cheating!”
He sat back down on the bed and folded his hands together, staring at the floor. “I forfeit. You win.”
“It’s not a matter of winning.” She was a boiling pot, and alcohol was her flame. “It’s a matter of cheating! And what’s worse, you’re so bad at it! You’ve been losing to me three to one!”
Then the truth of it began to shine through her booze-dimmed brain.
“You haven’t been trying to win. You were cheating to lose, weren’t you William? You didn’t have an ace up your sleeves. You had a two of clubs in the covers.”
He nodded miserably.
Sweet, honest William would turn to cheating so that she’d keep her clothes on? He’d go to those lengths to keep them from being intimate?
Her whiskeyfied emotions took another turn, and she felt a tear roll down her cheek. As her chin began to quiver, she quickly tightened her jaw so he wouldn’t see.
“Oh, love,” he began, but she leapt up before he could continue.
She reached her trunk and found her granny nightgown quickly, angrily tugging it over her head.
When she turned around he stood behind her, holding his trousers up with one hand while the other reached toward her. She batted it out of the way.
“Please, Buffy.”
“Please what?” she snapped.
“Darling, it’s just that you were acting so unlike yourself. So angry. I didn’t know what else to do. You’d lost so many hands and were undressing so rapidly – I feared that you’d regret it in the morning.”
“Regret what? Being naked in front of you?”
“Well, yes, love. And … it was selfish of me, I know, but I find it very difficult to control myself when you are in a state of undress. I feared we’d do something we’d regret.”
“What would that be, William?”
“That we’d make love,” he admitted, giving her a look of total honesty.
“You know you’re talking to me, right? The wife you’ve had sex with quite a few times.”
“But since … your change and your difficulty with remembering…” He trailed off.
“Since then,” she stepped towards him, poking him in the chest with an accusing finger, “you’ve seen me naked. On the ship you got very intimate with me when you were using the doctor’s handy ‘hysteria’ machine. And I returned the favor when you were locked in that stupid penis prison. You do remember that, don’t you?”
She stomped to bed and climbed in. As she yanked up the covers a few hidden cards flew into the air and fluttered to the ground with something that sounded to her like moral superiority
“I do remember, darling. Those moments are burned into my mind, my skin.”
“But from here on out, it’s ‘William’s Rules.’ No touching.” She glared up at him. “Sex has got to be on your timetable, not mine. You’re the man, and I’m just the female now. That’s how it works in this age, isn’t it?”
William looked as though she’d slapped him across the face.
“That’s not fair, Buffy.”
“It’s not?” Even as she said the words, she knew he was right. It wasn’t fair. If anyone had tried to dominate, it had been her, the bully manipulating him into sex. And yet she seemed to be unable to find a filter for her emotions, so she channeled all her lust into anger towards him.
She turned to face the wall. After a moment he turned off the lights, and she felt the bed dip when he climbed in behind her. She could feel him unwind and stretch out, spooning her without touching her body.
For some idiotic reason, which she suspected was primarily alcohol-related, the tears that she’d held onto so tightly began to flow freely down her cheeks.
Before the card game she’d felt lonely, wanting to connect with him on a purely physical level. But now she felt like a predatory bitch, trying to hector him into having sex against his wishes.
Through the veil of booze and tears, she could see very little besides her own guilt and misery. She was absolutely hopeless when it came to relationships. She drove them all away in the end. Poor William was damned, to be chained to her in a marriage.
She wept - not subtle tears and brave hidden whimpers, but with a gulping, shoulder shaking keening.
And his hands came, tenderly wrapping around her middle.
“Shhh, love. It’s all right.” He stroked her hair soothingly.
She didn’t deserve his care, his tender hands and kind words. She was acting like Bi-polar Betty tonight with the anger and the tears. Her drunkenness wasn’t a good enough excuse. Even sober she knew she didn’t deserve him, would ruin their relationship if her past was any indicator.
“Don’t comfort me.” Her voice was shaky and hitched as she spoke.
He thoroughly ignored her, nuzzling his nose against her neck. “I like comforting you. I suspect you like it, too.”
“I do, but you shouldn’t do it.”
“Um hmm,” he murmured in her ear. It sent deliciously fizzing sensations down her spine, like a sparkler.
Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, she worked to get her quivering chin under control before turning to face him. As she shifted in bed, the world tilted, just a little – the alcohol toying with her equilibrium.
She screwed up her courage, and looked him in the eye. She suspected that he knew how much it cost her to face him when she caught his surprised expression.
“I’m sorry, William.”
“I love you, Buffy,” he said simply, inadvertently destroying her in the process, and her tears began anew.
He gathered her tightly in his arms, and she felt as if she was cradled safely from the world, even from her own machinations. As he often did, he reminded her of the sun: so bright to look at sometimes, so warm. Finally, like a trickling stream drying out under the sun that was William, her tears were depleted. She was spent.
“When you first came into my life, as Elizabeth, I once was quite drunk in front of you,” his baritone voice said, just above a whisper. He so rarely brought up her time as Elizabeth, that she pulled back to check his expression.
He smiled lovingly and continued. “At that point I’d not yet admitted I loved you, not even to myself. My confessions to you that night were stunning to both of us. You had the good grace to suggest I wouldn’t remember it in the morning, and I had the common sense to pretend I hadn’t. Perhaps, darling, tomorrow morning you could do the same.”
She nodded, feeling the room pitch and sway slightly. “Sounds like a good idea.”
“And since you’re going to forget this anyway…” He leaned down and tenderly brushed his lips along her jaw in a line of tiny kisses. When he reached her mouth, he deepened their kiss. His tongue licked the corners of her mouth and just as he began to nibble on her bottom lip, she pulled away.
“I have whiskey breath,” she grumbled.
“I like your whiskey breath.” He beamed a smile at her.
“So, you didn’t kiss me while I was half naked and seducing my ass off. You kiss me now, while I’ve got a runny nose and am wearing a godawful granny gown.” She shook her head, and the room tilted uncooperatively.
“I keep telling you, darling, we write our own rules.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Just remember, we’ll remember none of this in the morning.”
“Right. I’ll remember that I don’t remember it, knucklehead.”
He chuckled. “Sweet dreams, Buffy.”
She settled down in his arms, content. “’Night, love,” she replied, grateful to her core for the ‘no remembering what was said’ rule.
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Author's notes:
Will he do it? The next day is their last full day in NYC and his last day to bring on the woo. You will have your answer in the next thrilling installment.
Because starting next chapter, this becomes important
Back when I was plotting this story, I was beyond thrilled when I came across a guidebook written in 1879, specifically for people traveling to the Pacific coast via rail, in its nearly 500 pages of fantastically detailed glory. It’s the same book William was reading on The Adriatic. Honestly, my spastic geek status at this would surprise and disappoint you.
From this point on, I’ll be relying on it a great deal – from train time tables to menus, and I need to give it proper credit. My primary source (complete with racism!) is ‘The Pacific Tourist,’ by Henry T. Williams. I will also reference ‘Crofutt’s New Overland Tourist and Pacific Coast Guide’ by George Crofutt, (pub. 1880) who is as bigoted as Henry T. Williams yet who manages to be aggressively cheerful too! Like a creepy maiden, racist aunt!
These are available free online, if you think my time tables are wack – feel free to follow along.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to Capella, Science, Lutamira and DoriansKitten for betaing, Amy for the banner and to those of you who review - big hugs.