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She snatched up her papers with sweaty palms, smearing the ink. Friedrich didn’t move from his chair, elbows on his knees and his glasses dangling from his fingertips, dark eyes tracking her as she scrambled and gestured and stumbled over hateful words.
“We are not friends, you are not my friend. And I don’t want your opinion because I don’t like you very much so just don’t talk to me anymore, thank you,” she spat, trembling. She left before she could see or hear his response, anger vibrating through her like a bird in a cage.
She was self aware enough to know his criticism hurt her vanity, that she had always entertained specific audiences with her work so as to always avoid an unsatisfactory opinion. She knew what to write for her sisters to entertain them and she knew how to write for the newspapers, what scandal stories would bring her regular pay, how the mention of a betrayal and a slighted woman might get her a few extra dollars. She had felt so sure of her goodness and purpose that his critique felt like a rejection of the very thing that allowed her to provide. So often she was asked to be less, less words, less loud, less rough and less angry. She did not know what to do with being asked for more than what everyone seemed content with.
She avoided him for many weeks after. He saw only a flash of her auburn hair around a corner, a swirl of burnt skirt hem. She seemed to haunt each room, a curtain disturbed, an inky fingerprint on the fireplace mantle. At mealtimes she stuck close to the other women, even tried to engage in conversation with the wizened Mrs. Dunderfield who taught etiquette and always had a critique for Jo on how she held her dinner knife and conveniently could not hear out of her right ear. Jo could say whatever she wanted to her, as long as she kept her tone genial.
She went out of her way to avoid him, but found that meant avoiding the places she most liked. After classes she would often venture to the little library, but there he would be mentoring a student in French or German or Italian or witchcraft for all she knew. In school meetings, which she had enjoyed merely for the chance to make eye contact with him and roll her eyes at Mr. Dunderfield’s suggestions of dunce caps, but now she stayed close to the door so she might escape before he could find her.
After dinner, she liked to sneak down to the kitchens and chat with the cooks, feeling more at home with them and their gossip than she did with the older teachers. The younger ones reminded her of her sisters, and they indulged her many questions about their lives and loved ones as she stole an extra sweetcake to chew. But there she found him, speaking German to Liesl, the pretty blonde cook who somehow managed to smile demurely and answer his questions all while she prepared the next day’s bread dough to rise overnight. He had taken off his jacket, rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves and was spinning ropes of dough into pretzel knots.
Jo liked Liesl, even though they could not speak to each other. Liesl was happy to listen to Jo’s chatter if Jo would peel apples or potatoes or anything to keep her hands as busy as her mouth. But when she saw Liesl laugh and cheer, “Wunderbar! Wunderbar!” for Friedrich and his pretzels, her dinner turned to stone inside her and she felt cold and lost on the outside of their laughter. When Liesl reached up and dabbed at the flour on his cheek with her apron, Jo turned quickly on her heel before she could see anymore.
The vision of his back and the breadth of his shoulders in his vest plagued her that night. She had told him the world would forget him, but why couldn’t she?
Objectively, she knew he was handsome. She had heard the maids at the boardinghouse cooing over his curls, his shoulders, his accent. They had teased her about him before, how “he always sits near you at dinner, Ms. March.” But she was Jo March so she would scowl and say, “so does Mrs. Dunderfield, but I hear nothing from you about her persistent nearness.” And so she kept her head down and her feet fast so she never lingered long when they teased her about his attention. Yet still she found herself dozing by the fire, parchment dangling from her cramping hands, musing on the shape of his mouth and the timber of his voice. When she stood behind him in the school meeting and resisted the urge to touch the curl at the nape of his neck, brushing his white collar, she wondered if Liesl knew their softness.
She excused it as just missing her sisters, Laurie even. When she swayed closer to the warmth of him, it was just her missing the comfort of her sisters pressed in from all sides. When she and the other teachers filled an aisle of the opera house for a performance of one of Shakespeare’s comedies, she was naturally more excited for the memory of performing with her sisters, not because he was just a seat away in his best suit. She did not once seek out his face to see if he was enjoying the performance. She did not want to know what he thought of how they switched Puck from male to female. She did not think of how the last time they were here, she followed him to a bar full of musicians and artists and drunks and how merrily they danced. Applause thundered through the theater, and Jo was on her feet, loudly whooping.
“Oh wasn’t it grand?” she breathed, turning to smile at the small woman next to her, Mrs. Langley, the penmanship teacher at the boardinghouse.
“Awfully brazen, I thought. I’ve never seen a woman on stage…” she murmured. Mrs. Langley played at reluctance and class, but Jo had noticed her hiding gasps and giggles behind her handkerchief.
“Well, I just wish my sister Meg could be here to see it! I told her all our life that she ought to seek out the stage with her talent! She can make herself cry, truly the most elegant weeping,” Jo said, tucking her hands to her chest.
“Being a wife and mother is a noble life.”
“Well, I’d rather fairies and pirates if I could have it.” She leant forward, looking at Friedrich on Mrs. Langley’s other side, and thought it was the polite thing to ask. “Now what did you think Professor Bhaer?” Mrs. Dunderfield would be proud.
He had the decency to not look startled that she had spoken to him. He smiled, nodded his head and said, “Quite splendid. Shakespeare is one of the rare masters of humor in poetry.”
“And thank goodness for that, for I dearly love to laugh!”
“Yes, you are quite loud,” Mrs. Langley interjected, sniffing.
Jo rolled her eyes. “I’ve always loved laughing more than I hate crying, which may be my greatest virtue, though my sisters would disagree.”
“And what would they say it was?” Friedrich asked, peering around from Mrs. Langley’s other side.
“Well if you can’t tell from looking at me, perhaps they were wrong!” Jo called with a laugh. She felt a familiar warmth when he looked at her, probably just from the crowd of people bustling around her. Nothing to do with having his attention again after weeks of going without.
“Your hair is by far your loveliest feature,” Mrs. Langley said with a sigh.
“And here I was hoping you would say it was my penmanship.”
At that, Mrs. Langley did finally laugh. “No dear, there even I could not help you, and I have trained the hands of many a fine law man and clergyman.”
“No, you are right. My hand is too stubborn to be swayed or slowed for it is only doing its best to keep up with my buzzing mind,” Jo conceded.
“I would think someone who writes with both hands could be taught a finer hand with practice,” Friedrich interjected, and Jo glanced at him again. Was he teasing? His face was always so earnest, but there was something in the lilt of his voice. Perhaps it was just his accent.
“Oh if anything it has lowered my standards so my stronger hand may meet my weaker. In only this have I ever compromised!” Jo mused, shrugging into her jacket.
“The right hand shall inherit the kingdom, the left into everlasting fire,” Mrs. Langley said matter-of factly, prim nose in the air.
Jo affixed her hat on her head without even rolling her eyes at Mrs. Langley’s condemnations. If Mrs. Dunderfield could see her now! All the better that she couldn’t hear her when Jo said, “Then here I lounge in purgatory, none the wiser for all the ink stains.”
Friedrich tucked his chin to his chest, barely containing his own laughter, and Jo futzed with her scarf around her neck to hide her beaming.
“Come now, let us leave this place. I am tired and want nothing but my own bed and a cup of tea,” Mrs. Langley huffed, ushering Friedrich forward with a wave of her handkerchief. He bowed his head to her, using his height to carve a path out of the crowd. Mrs. Langley fluttered away when she took notice of the seamstress at the boardinghouse, leaving Jo in the crowd just barely behind Friedrich.
The opera was crowded and she followed the bob and weave of his frame to sort through the bustle. Too caught up in her admiring his shoulders, she failed to notice the pace slowing and bumped into his back, catching his heel with her boot. When he looked over his shoulder to meet her eyes, something in her stomach twisted, queasy and hot. She had never seen eyes so dark and she watched them flutter over her and recognize her, a small smile on the edge of his mouth.
Before she could think she was saying, “I know how to get out.” He scanned the room, met her eyes and nodded. She bit her lip, grasped his coat sleeve and headed around the outskirts of the crowd to a door near the bathrooms she had spotted an attendant using to smoke in the alley.
Their excitement was startled by the wintry night air, cold plucking at their blushing cheeks. At the front of the alley they could see the other audience members in their fine frocks milling out to wait for carriages in the snow. Jo was still clutching his forearm, grinning at their luck and the pride of her know how. He felt her glee creep into him until he was smiling back. It felt natural to lean closer, seeking the warmth of her shining face, taking the brunt of the falling snow against his back. He had wondered if he would ever be in her good grace ever again.
“Miss March! Professor Bhaer!” came a hiss. They were both startled to see the boardinghouse mistress in her finest bonnet staring at them from the street, horrified. She let go of his arm in a hurry, already missing its weight in her hand. Mrs. Kirke tucked her hand into Jo’s elbow to drag her into the bustling sidewalk. “Wouldn’t want you to lose your way, dear. Say goodnight to Professor Bhaer.”
Already feeling the threat of a good scolding coming, Jo bit back a sharp retort and inclined her head to him with the most grace she could muster. Before she could linger, Mrs. Kirke was ushering her along the street, Bhaer a safe distance away even as they went in the same direction.
“Professor Bhaer is a handsome man, is he not?” Mrs. Kirke mused but before Jo could respond, Mrs. Kirke forged on. “A teacher like yourself should know better than to linger in dark alleys with handsome European men, weak willed as we women are. But Miss March I must remind you that I am not running a cathouse. No matter how good a teacher you are, if rumor tells of dalliances in alleys, parents will withdraw their students, and I cannot and will not allow my establishment to become just another whorehouse.”
Jo flinched, Mrs. Kirke’s tight grip on her arm pinching, her cheeks aflame at the very insinuation. She! Jo! The only March sister to have never even kissed a boy! Why even Beth had pecked Georgie and run home crying from the impropriety of it all.
“I assure you, Mrs. Kirke, nothing has occurred to merit such concerns.”
Mrs. Kirke gave a very unladylike snort. “I saw a gifted young teacher in the alley practically in an embrace with a European! Say what you will of both your characters, but that alone is enough to lose you your room here. I am not evicting you, dear girl, but commanding you to pay heed to how you present yourself among your peers. You are not the only writer of stories in New York.” With that they were upon the steps of the boardinghouse.
Properly humiliated, Jo stomped her way in, unwinding her scarf with vicious tugs as she tramped up the stairs. She spared a glance over the banister and saw his head of curls flecked with white snow, those dark warm eyes gazing up at her with an uneasy mixture of curiosity and concern.
She furiously prepared for bed, wrenching her nicest frock off her to replace it with her coziest nightgown. She plucked pins out of her hair and didn’t care that they discarded as much on her floor as her desk. Stomping back and forth, she shook with fury and rubbed tears away from her eyes. She assigned herself to the task of writing to quell her fit of pique but then it was midnight and her candle was running low, and she had written very little.
Her paper was blotted with drops of ink, quill left to waver over her writing too long as her thoughts wandered from the glory of a night at the theater to the touch of her mittened hand on his arm to the shame she had felt at Mrs. Kirke’s scolding, and then hot anger at Mrs. Kirke’s judgement. And now a sheet of precious paper, stained and ruined, her candle minutes from extinguishing. She swore under her breath, snuck quietly down the stairs in her nightgown and woolen stockings to pilfer one of the many candles lining the den’s fireplace.
She gasped when she saw him, huddled in a chair by the fire, a book hefted in one arm. He looked up in surprise, and she noted what he looked like at night with a fire reflected in his glasses.
“Miss March-” he began, hesitating. It was disarming to see him there without his suit jacket, the cuffs of his shirt rolled to his elbows, the dusting of dark hair across his forearms. She became aware of her open robe, the thick short nightgown she wore exposing the violent red stockings she wore to bed. Self conscious, she pulled the robe around her, a protective layer of dark flannel.
“I’ve just come for a candle and then I’ll leave you be.”
“On fire again I see,” he said with a nod to the ink stained fingers clutching her robe closed.
“Well I was til the wick ran out,” she lied, playing with her hands. She moved forward quickly, snatching an unlit candle from the mantle, turning to leave, doing a full circle and gesturing to him suddenly with the candle, like a wand or a police baton, he wasn’t sure. “In the alley, I wasn’t trying to-to-to ensnare you.”
He rose from his seat, hands out before him. “Oh I know, I know.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “Yes of course.”
She gave a great sigh, drummed her fingers across her mouth. She tried to speak many times before she spit out, “Mrs. Kirke said she wouldn’t allow me to make her boardinghouse a cathouse.”
“And a good thing that,” he said and she swung her head up angrily, but he continued, “for I am allergic to cats.”
She shook a finger at him, lips pursed against a smile. “That wasn’t funny.”
“No, no it wasn’t.” His head dropped low below his shoulders, and he took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “I must ask you to excuse me for my indiscretions. I should not have let you be in a situation that would allow Mrs. Kirke to think she could question your morals.”
Jo huffed, hands at her hips, forgetting how her hands were the only things keeping her robe closed. “Oh damn Mrs. Kirke’s morals! I dragged you out there and we both know it! God forbid I take a shortcut for fear of being mistaken for a prostitute.” Her humiliation gave quickly to rage, and she brandished the candle like a sword. She paced in front of the fire and he sat back down, blinking. “It is especially amusing when you consider that I am the lone one of my sisters who has never kissed a man and yet I am the first accused of solicitation! I thought I would be safe from such rumors and yet she thinks she can brand me such, and you know what disappoints me most? Is to be spoken of so when I haven’t even the experience to merit the gossip and what a waste of reputation if I have not!”
Whether it was the fire warming pink into his cheeks or his embarrassment at her bluntness, she did not know. Self awareness drifted back into her, aware of his eyes, how they flitted from the fire to appraise her, to linger on her in a way she had seen men look at Amy and Meg.
“Why do you look at me so? Have you never seen a woman so taken with her own voice?” She smoothed down her robe, avoiding looking into his dark eyes.
“I…,” he paused, inhaled a great deep breath, his accent stronger than usual, “I am wondering how a woman like you could go so long without a man trying to kiss her.”
She barked a laugh, bewildered. “I am homely and awkward.” He made a face, and she placed her hands on her hips, swaying from foot to foot. “What is there to question? My sisters were a great distraction to any suitor and better so because it gave me more time to my writing.”
“Surely someone tried.”
Jo shrugged and dropped into the other rocking chair with little grace, folding her hands across her stomach. “There was one but I could only love him dearly as a brother and naught else. We were friends, siblings even, for years but since I told him no, he has not written me.”
“All your writing of adventure and swashbucklers, you have not considered love another adventure?” He rubbed a hand across his mouth and watched her sprawl across from him.
“If it will bring me a fortune from the papers to send home to Beth, I will write it.” Pushing herself back and forth in the chair with one red stocking foot, fingertips tapping her stomach, eyes wandering across the room, she looked at him and then away, back and forth.
“But never pursue it.”
“Love makes fools of women,” she scoffed.
“Do you think your mother is a fool?”
“No, of course not. I thank my mother for her love because without it I would not be here and have my family. But love took her freedom and her name and left her but one future of children and housekeeping and embroidery. Isn’t love just another form of indentured servitude for a woman?”
“It is not for me to convince you of love’s merits, Miss March-”
“Jo. It’s Jo.”
He met her eyes, nodded. “Jo. Forgive me for I am tired, but I cannot help but think a woman like you should be kissed.”
Her head whipped to look at him. She flushed red, hoping she could excuse it by firelight. She glanced away quickly, played with a loose thread on her robe, her chest tight with something she didn’t recognize. “Are you propositioning me, professor?”
“I thought this wasn’t a cathouse.”
“It’s not.”
“Well then, I am not. And good thing that. I am a penniless professor. I could not afford you.” He stood, folding his book over his finger to keep his place, settling his glasses on the bridge of his aquiline nose.
She pinched her lips together, holding back her laugh. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, looked up at him with those bright eyes. “Have you ever been in love?”
A small smile touched his lips and he looked at once young and tired. “Oh yes. We were very young, spent a summer by the sea in France, and I would have been content to never leave. But she married another who could care for her and her family. While I may have been a fool for love, I cannot regret it.”
“Even though she abandoned you for another?”
“I cannot hold against her a more convenient match,” he said, hanging his head and shrugging. His dark eyes watched the avalanche of feelings run across her face.
“You are not as spiteful as I,” she mused, frowning.
“You give me too much credit. Even I, a pompous blowhard, may be taken by passion.”
She blushed and said, “Was it too much to hope you might forget that day?”
He shook his head, smile small and sad. “I could not forget. It has been the subject of many a sleepless night.”
“Do you mean to blame me?”
“No! No, I just mean that I have thought long and often about that day and how I wish I would have spoken better, explained more so as to not offend you.”
“I felt I heard you loud and clear. You did not like it because it wasn’t good. No need to expound on all the reasons why. It’s not as efficient,” she grumbled, sinking back into her seat.
“I thought I was being honest, but I see now that it was more complicated than that for you. I hurt you,” he said, pacing in front of the fire. She felt the desire to reject him to tell him he wasn’t important enough to hurt her, but instead she watched, studied how his brow furrowed and his little pauses where she felt she could see him translating his thoughts into English before her very eyes. “That was never my intention, and I do apologize.”
“What was your intention then?”
“I...I want you to write stories you would sign your own name to.”
“And what if I don’t want that?” she spat.
“Then I will never speak of it again,” he said, with so solemn a face that the rise of her anger was dampened for the moment.
“What does me putting my name to a story in a scandal rag have to do with this?”
“You have such talent, Jo, and I would want to support you in writing the stories you want to write, not the ones that you can sell to papers.”
“Without those stories, my sisters and mother wouldn’t have the extra comfort of milk on the table or a warm dress for winter.”
“And I commend you for it! You take great care of your family and I admire this about you. But what about you, Jo? Who do you want to be? Is it Shakespeare? The Brontes? Because we already have them, and the world is better for it having Jo March in it.” He slowed his pacing, turning to face her, face so baldly open that she flushed at the sight. “Write your scandals, do what you need, but is there anything else you would like to do? To write?”
Jo March was not often a woman stunned into silence, but he stood before her, speaking in such quiet passion unlike any she had ever been witness. At her long pause, he sighed, raked a hand through his curls and cursed under his breath in French or German, she couldn’t be sure. She clenched her hands against the desire to touch his hair too.
“I have been too forward. Forgive me. It is late, and I did not expect to ever have the opportunity to speak plainly with you. I will take my leave.” He returned to his chair, reassembling his coat and his book under his arm.
At the sign of him preparing to go, she hurried to say, “I marvel at you apologizing to me when it was I who called you all sorts of horrible things.”
He paused at the doorway. “I have been called worse.”
“Yes, but I am so vain and so unused to criticism from those whose opinions I actually value you see...you are the first outside of my sisters and dear Teddy and newspaper editors who I have shared any of it with. The editors are not kind with their words but they are strangers and I was beginning to feel you and I…” She paused, unsure of the right words, letting it die there without a proper ending. But he was waiting, black eyes searching her face.
She blanched under his attention, glanced away, back again into his dark eyes. “I want to write a novel, I want to see Europe and opera and bask in everything this world has to offer. But I have a family that needs me.”
“And I admire your dedication. I have little family of my own left and the ones I have I have only disappointed, but..” He paused, took a deep breath and continued, “I-I have had the privilege of university and have had many a critique of my own work and am well acquainted with the feeling. I do not have your talent and I never meant it to be a rejection of you. Especially when all I desire is your company.”
She allowed herself to look at him then, at his eyelashes casting shadows across his high cheekbones, long as any of her sister’s and nearly as pretty, the sensual shape of his mouth and the tender way it carried each word. A strong nose like the marble statues she’d seen in Mr. Laurence’s library. The wild mop of curls on his head that always seemed in some state of disarray from busy hands. He wore no swords at his waist, he was no soldier, but his large hands held books close to his chest in a way that made her stomach clench. He watched her too, looking so vulnerable even at his height with that book pressed to his chest, his brow furrowed.
“If I asked you to now, would you kiss me?” she asked, face hot, heart drumming in her chest the way it did the first time she climbed a tree, Meg begging her to come down, don’t go higher.
Friedrich froze, looking down at her with shining black eyes. He lifted a tentative hand, hovering it over where a curl dangling by her ear before withdrawing. “Forgive me, I am very tired, and very weak against any teasing right now.”
“I am not teasing.”
She stood up, discarding the candle. She admired the shape of his jaw, angled her own up towards him. He took a tentative step back at her approach, and a shiver ran down her spine.
“Miss March-”
“Jo. I will not ask a man to kiss me if he calls me Miss March,” she said, voice firm.
He huffed a quiet, nervous laugh. “All these years, that’s what held you back?”
“Well I never knew which one of us they meant, and I was never wrong to assume it was one of the others. Even then it was all stealing kisses like apples, and I would like to do the choosing rather than be plucked.”
“And you would choose me?” he murmured, eyes focusing in and out on her eyes, her freckles, the bow of her smart mouth.
She squirmed under his attention. “Does kissing usually take this much convincing? Must I resort to bribery?”
“No, it is just I fear that one kiss from you would never be enough for me.”
She blinked in surprise, shocked at how openly he wore his admiration without wild gestures or sobbing declarations. She had made her request on impulse, without forethought and consideration of who they would be after whatever was happening. She felt warmth pool in her stomach, her heart thudding. She hadn’t known that anticipation could feel so much like fear.
“I am not a good cook and my embroidery is terrible. I would not make a good wife.”
He almost smiled, but bit his lip instead. “I am a pompous blowhard and a foreigner without status to his name. I would not make a good husband.”
“Good thing a kiss is not legally binding.”
“Good thing I can cook.”
She took a deep breath, said, “I would like you to kiss me, Friedrich.”
He hesitated, took a small step closer, let his fingers toy with a lock of her hair. He moved slowly, as though approaching a wild animal, his hand trailing down her cheek to cup her chin, raising it to reach him. This close, she could see the faintest shade of brown in his dark eyes, the dusting of afternoon stubble over his lip. He closed his eyes, lashes fluttering against his cheek, and brushed his mouth tenderly over hers, feather light and soft. He paused there, pressed gently and began to pull back. But Jo was a wild thing, eyes wide the entire time, and she slid her hands up his chest to the breadth of his shoulders and pulled him back to her, catching his mouth too hard against hers, clacking their teeth together. He grunted, hands snatching up her waist to steady her against the long line of him, book and coat dropping to the ground with a thud.
Startled and flushing with embarrassment, Jo ducked her head away, but he caught her chin with his finger, beckoning her back to him, letting her press forward and test the pressure of her mouth against his. Her eyes fluttered closed and she shuddered at the feeling of his hand trailing over her jaw to tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck, at the rasp of his stubble against her skin. She caught on quickly, plucking at his lip with her teeth, heat speeding through her when he quietly moaned and swiped his tongue over the seam of her lips. She was dizzy with excitement and hyperaware of every point of contact between them, at finally touching the soft curls at the nape of his neck, the heavy warmth of one of his large hands sliding inside her robe to grasp of her waist, hand hot through her thin nightgown. She felt powerful, buoyed by his attention and the way he shivered when she clutched tight at his hair as he pulled back to kiss her jawline. The weight of him against her felt enticing in a way she didn’t recognize, pulling at something deep inside her. She squeezed her thighs together, trying to relieve that something.
“I warned you,” he murmured against her cheek, sending a delightful shiver down her spine.
“The books got it all wrong,” she whispered.
He pulled back, grin all bright, white teeth. “Pardon?”
“I’ve always thought kissing was described in such an underwhelming way, but nothing did tell of such an embrace. I’ve held my sisters and even Laurie but…” She chewed her lip, chasing words and her hands itched for a quill, sliding from his neck to his chest and playing with the pocket on his shirt. “I feel dizzy and my heart too fast, but I am not ill.”
“Some have called it a sickness before,” he mused, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
“And what do you call it?”
“Passion, attraction,” he said simply, hand flexing against her waist.
“You are attracted to me.” She said it like a statement she didn’t quite believe yet.
He laughed, almost exasperated. “Jo March, I am absolutely taken with you.”
She tensed, all furrowed brow and pursed lips. “Oh don’t be foolish.”
“Have I not been obvious in my regard?” he quipped, raising his hand to cup where hers had settled on his chest, but letting it slip though when she pulled away.
She felt embarrassed, wanted to snap at him, but his lips were red and swollen and she flushed at the sight, wiping her palms on her robe. “I’ve never wanted nor expected such attention to the point I hardly feel qualified to identify it.”
“Might I ask, why me then?” He looked oddly abandoned, his book and jacket crumpled at his feet where he had dropped them, his arms still open in the shape of her.
“Pardon?” she huffed, wrapping her robe around her, playing with the belt. The desire to touch him again hummed under her skin and she tried not to let her eyes settle too long on him. Her mother would often tease her that her face could never hide her hunger and she felt she had only whet her appetite.
“You said you would like to do the choosing and you chose to kiss me. I must ask then, why me?”
“Well I...well because it was a choice I think.”
“I do not understand.” His accent sounded so thick and lovely that for a moment she luxuriated in its patient timbre, the crackle of the dying fire. She felt flustered, unnerved by how his voice could make her feel so aware of her own skin, that she knew what it sounded when he murmured in her ear. He sat down again, clasped his hands together and looked up at her, a patient student.
“I-I’ve never wanted to be swept off my feet or assigned the responsibility of an advantageous marriage to benefit my family and was always grateful to my prettier sisters for taking that burden so happily. Or even to fulfill some prophecy of womanhood from daughter to mother to crone. I didn’t want these futures to happen to me, but rather to make my own way in the world...which my Aunt March said only comes to a woman with wealth but what greater wealth is there than experience?” She looked up to where he patiently listened, his rapt attention all her own. “And there you are listening to my selfish prattling. I find myself often so lonely without my family, but I don’t feel it quite so much when I share a fire with you.”
He was quiet, considering and she fidgeted, barely able to stand the silence.
She squeezed her arms tighter around herself. Any looser and she might reach for him. “So is that enough theater for you for one night? I assure you I didn’t mean to monologue, but when inspiration strikes, I am its faithful servant.”
“Jo,” he said, reaching one hand out to her, an offering. It seemed so innocent until she remembered the warmth of his hands on her waist mere moments before. She hesitated, but accepted his hand and let him draw her near him. She found she enjoyed standing taller than him, gazing down into his dark eyes, his neck craned to face her. “Thank you for choosing me. I am not a selfless man and if I could convince you of it, I’d want you to choose me each day or night or both, whatever you should want of me. But be this the end of it, if you are satisfied, be honest with me, and I can share your fire and not have your kiss again.”
“Mrs. Kirke would throw me out if she knew what we had already done tonight,” she murmured.
“There are bigger dragons than Mrs. Kirke,” he laughed.
“Liesl’s heart will be broken.” At his furrowed brow she huffed. “The cook you speak German with! Surely you can see she is besotted. She has all the symptoms.”
“Jo,” he gathered her other hand in his, lifted them both to his lips. “I am absolutely taken with you, Jo March.”
“I still say you are a fool.”
“And a pompous blowhard.”
She couldn’t hide her smile. “I don’t think I’d enjoy your company half so much if you had half your opinions, wrong as they are.” She lifted their hands to cup his face, rubbing her thumbs across his cheeks, marvelling at the stubble against her palms. “I still think you’ve made me ill. I’ve found comfort in my sisters’s embraces but at your touch I am utterly distracted from the world and feel taken by fever.”
“I am too selfish to dissuade you from your plight,” he said, turning his head to kiss her wrist, eyes darkening when she shivered.
“I cannot promise you my hand. I don’t know if I ever will want to offer it.”
“I like where your hands are now,” he murmured, and with a huff she started to withdraw, but he caught her wrists before she could. “I meant what I said before, Jo. Tell me now if friendship is all you want of me, but if you want me, would choose me, not even the dragon Mrs. Kirke could deter me from your side.”
Jo considered him, the thin shapely lips, the forever furrowed brow. How he was a man often found in quiet and yet still delighted in loud spectacles. How he was honest with her even when she wished he would lie for her vanity. “You musn’t change though. I want not your flowers or chaperoned walks and meaningless talk of the weather and false compliments comparing my eyes to jewels or such nonsense.”
“Never.”
“Alright then.” She stepped back, offered one long arm out to him. He stood up, extended his hand to her and grinned when she clasped his forearm in her palm and gave him a firm shake. “We are in agreement.”
He used his hand’s grip around her forearm to pull her suddenly close, glancing his nose along hers before capturing her mouth in a firm kiss. When he leaned back, her eyes were unfocused, cheeks red and mouth agape. “Now go before we are spotted and before my willpower is tested any longer by you and this absurd nightgown.” He glanced down at her, eyes trailing over her in a way that did nothing to quell the heat in her veins.
“You do not think it becoming?” she mused, ruffling the skirt around her, chuckling at the worn hem around her calves, the bright red socks darned and patched with mismatched yarn.
“I think it frightful that you can be so ridiculous, and I ever the more enticed by you. Now leave a poor man to the midnight hour so I may finally find peace.”
She obediently took a step back, clutching her robe tight around her and admiring his rigid posture, how he watched her, body still hunched around the absence of her. “Goodnight, Friedrich.”
“Goodnight, Jo.” He smiled at her then, eyes warm and daring. And she smiled back.