Page 23 of Wake Me Most Wickedly
Sleep did not come easily that night. Sol tossed and turned for hours, his mind unwilling to quiet as his thoughts darted between worry over his brother’s situation and the unbidden memories of that damned kiss. A kiss like none he’d experienced prior. Not that there had been too many—given how often they were outside the community, he and his brother had taken care to truly behave in the manner gentiles called “upright”—but there had been enough.
But none had haunted him. Until hers.
He stuffed his pillow over his head and groaned. He was the worst. The absolute worst, for all the reasonable, correct reasons Aaron and now Roger Berab—who he didn’t quite trust but who was still no fool—had given him. Especially given Penrose’s disapproval of Frederick and—argh.
His brother had a problem, and it was his duty to assist in solving it. By whatever means Frederick asked of him. Which meant he needed to fulfill the request his brother had made of him months ago: pay off their remaining debts and raise his standing in the world.
He could not see Hannah again, nor think of her.
Gritting his teeth, he forced his eyes shut and fellinto a restless half sleep for all of an hour. He glanced at the mirrored clock on the wall. Not even four. With a groan, he padded out of bed and splashed his face with water from the basin, stretching his now sore back. A walk would do him good. Just a little one, around their neighborhood. He’d clear his head, sleep, and wake in a few hours with his brain doing what it needed.
After running a comb through his hair, he donned a shirt and a pair of trousers, struggling a touch with the cuffs. Glancing at the tiny flakes of snow swirling in the wind outside his bedchamber, he pulled on a dark but warm overcoat before creeping as quietly as he could down the back staircase and into the early morning darkness.
However, his path didn’t remain close to his home and instead meandered east, so before he knew it, without even truly thinking, he was standing in Hannah’s back alley, staring at the windows above and wondering which was hers.
A door creaked open, startling him into a near jump.
“You have got to be joking.” Carrying a bucket on one hip, wearing what appeared to be merely a shawl over a thin night rail and boots, her hair in a simple braid down her back, Hannah herself stepped onto the cracked stones. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I was—” He gasped as a flicker of moonlight illuminated angry purplish bruises and skin so swollen that her left eye didn’t quite fully open. “What happened to your face?” he blurted out, before cursing at himself in his head.
She sniffed, her lips curling into a dismissive, halfsmirk. “I fell,” she said. “My skin bruises easily. Don’t worry, no one will see it, or this—” She pulled down her shawl to reveal a series of even deeper marks around her neck, resembling human fingers. Her eyes bored into him, almost as if she was daring him to react. To prove to her—rightly—that he should be hurrying away as fast as he could, not itching to draw nearer.
And yet that was not the reaction he was suppressing. Instead, it took everything in him not to snatch her in his arms and promise to fix it all. Even if he probably couldn’t and certainly shouldn’t, given his promises to Frederick.
“Bruises fade as easily as they come to me,” she continued, breaking him from his thoughts. “And if you leave, you won’t have to see either.” She glared at him.
“I—” he started as his overly tired brain searched for the right answer, the right way to respond.
“You don’t belong here,” she pronounced. As if to emphasize her point, she dumped the bucket in the trough, before slamming it on the ground.
“And you do?” he asked, his voice thick, because who belonged in a world wherethiswas the price of doing business? Yes, he’d been in a few scrapes over the years. While his brother had used his natural charm and education—traits that Sol sorely lacked—to put on a respectable front for their business, he’d ventured into the darker places to use less genteel means. Including the occasional fisticuffs when necessary.
Though it had been a long time since he’d been caught cheating at cards.
“This is my home,” she said as she snatched up her broom and began to furiously sweep the single step. “And this is who I am,” she added in a voice that madehis heart crack a little. She sniffed. “After all, I struck the first blow.”
Every meeting, every encounter, every thought in this woman’s direction was a mistake. Neither of them had any place in the other’s life.
And yet, in that moment, all he wished was for the right words to take her pain away. Because that was what he was usually so good at—words. Even if they were often empty. Even if it shouldn’t matter. Even if it was foolish.
“I hope the hit was to a lower area,” he said, joking instead.
When she gave him a full smile, it warmed his body a great deal more than his coat. Even if it shouldn’t.
“My, my, Mr. Weiss—”
“You can call me Sol, you know,” he corrected, grinning back at her, despite, well, everything.
“Mr. Weiss,” she repeated, with a roll of her good eye. He flexed his gloved fingers, which itched to reach for her. She brushed her braid behind her shoulder. “I didn’t know that you were so bloodthirsty. What will all those community leaders back at the Great Synagogue think?” And there was a bitterness to her voice that both cut him and piqued his curiosity.
He opened his mouth to quip back—carefully, in the direction he wanted to lead the conversation—but she wasn’t finished.
“As for your question, sadly, no, that was not the area I went for first,” she said, rubbing the back of her ear with her free hand. “I was a touch… overcome… to have remembered that. A mistake I don’t usually make.”
“Overcome?” he couldn’t help but ask.
She stopped sweeping and lay the broom against the wall, before releasing a great sigh. “I was angry,” she said, this time giving him a sad shake of her head. “Fatal flaw, it seems.” Her smile dimmed. “Though, I suppose not so fatal as I’m still alive. Again.”
