That night we fell asleep after our conversation drifted to more mundane topics, like the first building he’d ever designed—an annex to an old office building that he said he’d made outrageously overcomplicated for what it had been, but he was still proud of it. And I told him about my only grandparent I’d ever met, my father’s mother, who’d died when I was seven, but I could still remember the soft, leathery feel of her skin.
Now it was Saturday morning, we were decidedly awake, and I was fretting, packing for one night with his parents, which after last night made me nervous. Nervous for me—I wanted to do what I could to make it go well—and nervous for him, for all the reasons he’d shared.
“What about this one?” I asked, holding up the same printed wrap dress I’d worn on one of our first dates. It was a bit summery but also really cheerful, which I thought might be a good note to strike.
“I told you, damsel, any dress will do. You’d look stunning in a paper sack,” Dylan replied unhelpfully, looking at his computer from my bed. I was pretty sure he was trying not to think about this visit, or certain parts of it.
I groaned in frustration. “Dylan, I’ve never visited anyone who ‘dresses for dinner,’ and the last thing I need is to get this wrong. Please—be specific. Help me.” I was now holding up the wrap dress and one other—a red, tailored dress that I’d always liked.
Dylan had assured me that I had nothing to prove, but he and I both knew that was bullshit. His mother, the Duchess of Abingdon, hated me or at the very least prayed daily that Dylan would get bored of me. And I hated to admit it, but lately I was wondering myself when Dylan might get a little tired of the antics involved in dating again. I was just waiting for him to decide his original plan—hiding out in his architecture firm until he died of old age—was better than this one, which involved having paparazzi comment on whether he wore boxers or briefs (boxer briefs, naturally) and speculated about whether or not I was on birth control (taking it faithfully).
Dylan reached back into my closet and removed a tailored crepe navy-blue dress with a pleated skirt, three-quarter sleeves, and a subtle eyelet trim at the scooped neck. “This one.”
“Really? Not this one?” I double-checked, holding up the red one. “I always get compliments when I wear it.”
Dylan slowly caged me in, backing me against the edge of the closet door, pressing his front into my own. He held the navy dress by the hanger in his hand, high against the wall behind me. “That’s because it’s red and fits you like a goddamn condom. And every time you wear it, every bloke who passes within a mile sees you, sees how fit you are, and can’t help imagining what it would be like to fuck you.” He was whispering in a controlled, determined way, his face above mine, looking down. “And every woman who passes wants to be you. You should be grateful I allow you to wear it at all,” he said, glancing down at the red dress still pressed into my hand.
I gulped, and Dylan knew he had me. He stroked the hair from my face and tucked a loose strand behind my ear. Whenever he did that, I felt like he was trying to uncover me, see me. Then he grabbed the wrap dress from my other hand and shoved it harshly against my bottom, pulling me even closer to him. “This one I can’t look at without remembering the first time you wore it. When I tied you up, plugged this perfect ass, and fucked your mouth. If you wear this at my parents’ I will be drooling at the table.”
I chuckled between my increasingly shallow breaths. “We wouldn’t want that,” I said back, my voice barely recognizable.
“No,” he said, leaning down to brush my lips with his own. “This one is perfect,” he added, tossing the navy dress on the bed behind him and then running his thumb along my lips while my cheek rested in his palm. “Now. Damsel. Stop worrying. And get this sweet, perfect ass into your jeans. I want to get there in time for a jaunt around.”
My heart rate, which had been elevated with anxiety only a moment before, was now elevated for entirely different reasons. I was completely seduced and gave a frustrated groan as he backed away, fully prepared to leave me all hot and bothered.
But he quickly turned on his heels and came stalking back towards me. “Fuck it,” he said under his breath, and he lifted me against the closet door as I smiled and laughed into his shoulder. I guess we could be late after all.
* * *
An hour later than planned, Dylan sat behind the wheel of the Land Rover and drove us east, out of the city, towards Humboldt Park. I sat cross-legged in the front seat, flipping through my email on my phone while he switched from classical music to a mix I’d made him of indie bands from New York.
A new email arrived, and my hand stilled.
It was from Daphne and the subject line read, As if you’d ever get Botox. Gross! I clicked the link to some royal gossip blog and was afraid to start reading.
“What is it?” Dylan asked, interrupting my anxiety.
“Daphne sent me a link to a blog post about me.”
“Oh? From where? What does it say?” Dylan’s hand moved to my thigh, and I could feel him tense a little. “Read it to me.”
“Okay.” I gulped. “‘If the American shopgirl wants to land Dylan Hale for the long haul, she’ll have to learn to piss with the lords (and ladies). Well, Lydia, we’re here to help. We asked, and here are the top six things our readers think you can do to be more aristocratic.’”
Dylan chuckled. “Well, this ought to be good.”
I gulped again. “It’s a list…and some pictures.” All of a sudden I really didn’t want to do this.
Dylan slid his hands between my thighs and gave my leg a squeeze. “Go on, then.”
I exhaled loudly. “‘One. Hold your fork properly.’” I wrinkled my nose in confusion. “There’s a picture of us eating at that restaurant in Butler’s Wharf.” Dylan quickly looked over my shoulder at the photo. “I don’t get it.”
“Oh, well, we don’t eat that way over here.”
“What way?”
“You switch the fork from your right hand to your left to cut your food, and then you switch it back. We keep our fork in our left hand over here.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Have you noticed that?”
“Damsel, it’s meaningless. Don’t you think if it really mattered I would have told you? Come on, don’t be daft. What’s number two?”
I already hated this game.
“‘Two. Don’t wear T-shirts with writing on them.’ There’s a picture of you and I running, and I’m wearing my Brooklyn Lager T-shirt.” I looked down, and sure enough, under my sweater I had on an old concert T-shirt. “Is that really a thing?” I searched back through my memories and couldn’t remember one instance of Dylan wearing a T-shirt with any kind of logo or writing on it.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I love all your worn-in old T-shirts. They’re adorable. Never stop wearing them.”
“But is it true? Do you not wear T-shirts like that?”
Dylan just shrugged.
“Okay, ‘Three. Go blond.’ There’s just a picture of a debutante ball somewhere and all the girls are that perfect shade of sunshiny blond.”
Dylan looked over my shoulder to see the picture again, flicking his eyes back to the road. “Oh, that lot. Boring. Don’t go blonder, please,” he said, and he ran his fingers through my decidedly dirty-blond, light-brownish hair, cupping the nape of my neck.
“‘Four. Get Botox.’ There’s no picture, thank god.” I flicked down the mirror in the sun visor and started to look at my lips. But before I could get a good look, Dylan flipped it back up.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know how I know your lips are perfect?”
“How?” He opened his mouth to speak, but I stopped him. “No. Wait. You’re about to say something dirty.”
Dylan laughed, clearly caught. “No,” he emphasized. “I was just going to say because I can’t take my eyes off them.”
“Yeah, right.” I gave him my best exaggerated eye roll before continuing. “‘Five. Attend Ascot.’ Again, no picture of me, just a picture of Ascot.”
“It’s not till June, but I’ll take you if you want.”
“‘Six. Learn your place.’” I stilled. In other words, You don’t belong here. Below were photographs of the several single, beautiful, young aristocrats who would be deemed better girlfriend choices for Dylan—daughters of earls and barons, fashionable, willowy, sunshiny blond model types caught leaving exclusive nightclubs, dining in members-only clubs, and just walking down the street. The kind of women found in the society pages not because of who they were dating but because of who they were. Amelia Reynolds was number four.
Dylan peeked at my phone again, catching a glimpse. “Damsel, that’s ridiculous.”
Just then another email arrived from Daphne with the subject line Ignore my last email!!!!!! I opened it and read her begging me not to read that terrible post and how she should have finished reading it before sending. Too late.
“Damsel,” Dylan said, hearing my heavy exhale for what it was: the desire for blog posts like this to disappear from the Internet. “You must develop a thicker skin. Trust me, this kind of thing has nothing to do with you and everything to do with selling adverts. And it won’t stop. At least not until the next exciting thing comes along.”
I nodded. In a few short months I’d come to need him, to want him, to not be able to envision my life without him, but things like this—this litany of ways in which we were different, our worlds were different—nagged at me, frayed the edges of my confidence that those differences didn’t matter. He would always be the one born to be a duke, and I would always be the one born to be a normal person, someone for whom Botox would be out of the question. I could never go back to pre-Dylan, but there was a part of me that didn’t know what it meant to go forward.
Dylan interrupted my ruminating—his soft fingers stroking my leg. I realized that the car had stopped. We were pulled over to the side of the road. I looked at him, wondering what was happening, and he swiftly lifted me and pulled me over the console so I was straddling his lap.
He held my face in both of his hands, forcing me to look right at him. He kissed me firmly on the lips, slow, warm, and with total conviction.
“Number seven. Nothing. Dylan Hale wants Lydia Bell in the exact package, the exact character, and the exact delightful attire in which she arrived on British soil.” His hand was now playing with my shirt and creeping up under it towards my breast. “Trust me, damsel. Thicker skin.”
I nodded and inhaled just in time before his lips met mine. His tongue pried my lips apart and coaxed me into the kiss. He refused to let my mind wander back to that blog post and instead, with every flick of his tongue, with every movement of his lips, with every stroke of my skin, insisted that I be right there with him. Only with him. If only I could stay in that kissing world forever.