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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.
I couldn’t suppress a giggle at the mental image.
Him? Feel something? Let alone feel something for me? Never!
He couldn’t want me for my money, either. I had none, and he had all he could ever wish for. Well, knowing him, he probably wished for a lot more still. I should have said he had all the money a sane person could ever wish for.
Last but not least, the last possible motivation: him wanting me not because of some silly romantic feeling, or for pecuniary reasons, but because he had been overcome by irresistible desire at the sight of me, like the villain in a penny dreadful.
I looked up from my blanket into the mirror that hung on the opposite wall. In the glass, I could see my reflection: round cheeks, a perky nose, wild tangles of brown hair and equally chocolate brown eyes, and skin that was turning tanned from all the time I had spent outdoors. No, I was pretty sure that sight wouldn’t instil irresistible desire to put their hands on me in anyone, except perhaps a hairdresser with a serious work ethic.
I sighed. I was now quite sure the kiss hadn’t happened. Well, that was cause for rejoicing, wasn’t it? And I was rejoicing, I was definitely rejoicing a lot. I wasn’t feeling the least bit sentimental or regretful that it all had turned out to be a hallucination. Now that I knew there had never ever happened anything between us, I could go back to the office and face Mr Ambrose with my head held high, knowing that I had not succumbed to this supposed weakness of my sex that men propagated, suggesting that we needed men to take care of us.
Ha! I was proud of myself. Once more, I knew I was an independent and rational human being and perfectly capable of taking care of myself. How wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
