It was convenient for Grace to be engaged to James over the winter. She was still not convinced she wished to marry him — she was not entirely sure what she wished — but she enjoyed being courted by him, if it could be called that. It started strangely, with stumbling, uncertain conversation, as though the gilt had worn off his silver tongue. It was probably not helped by the fact that for several weeks they had no chance to be alone. Mrs Follet made sure of that. The little sitting room at the front of the house was shut up — not comfortable for guests, Mrs Follet declared — and Grace received James in the drawing room where it always seemed that Emma was practicing piano or Alice was reading a novel or Mrs Follet was just sitting down to tea. A few times, James suggested a walk, but Mrs Follet always fretted about the rain being too heavy or invented errands for Alice and Emma to run that would see them walking the same way.

At last, Grace brought the matter up with her mother.

"We are engaged," she said, one morning after James had left. "Engaged couples are normally granted a little privacy."

"I don't mean to intrude," Mrs Follet protested, "but, my dear, I do worry — a man who comes to call in his dressing gown..."

"That was only once," Grace said. "He has always been properly dressed since."

Indeed, she was beginning to see in James's dress shades of the man she had known from a distance for many years. No pink waistcoats made an appearance, but nor was he dressed in winter drab. Indigo velvet and copper-coloured silk were more likely. He was always freshly shaved too, and smelling of cedar-oil soap.

"Y-yes..." Mrs Follet said, hesitatingly. "I had noticed that." A thoughtful pause. "He does go to rather a lot of effort for you, doesn't he? I remember Robert Langley used to cinch himself into twenty-six-inch waistcoats when he came to call on my sister. He couldn't sit down. She was ever so impressed." Mrs Follet sighed. "Your father never did such a thing for me. He was too sensible. He knew I would say yes."

It pleased Grace to think that James's effort was for her. She looked away to hide her smile. "I've already said yes, Mama. You might let us have a little privacy."

"I didn't like the shut door either," Mrs Follet said, a quaver coming into her voice as always when she tried to be firm. "Not that I don't trust him, my dear. I do believe he really cares for you. But... sometimes that makes a man do... unwise things."

Grace blushed. "It was only a kiss, Mother."

"Behind a shut door." Mrs Follet was pink too. "It's not that I don't want you to marry him, Grace. I'm really ever so happy the two of you made up. But I do want you to be careful. Even engagement does not protect against all scandal."

"I'll be careful," Grace said. "I won't shut the door again. But, please, let us have a little space."

The next time James came to visit, Mrs Follet made a conspicuous excuse to leave the drawing room. James looked perplexedly after her.

"That's new," he said. "Have I frightened her?"

"She's giving us some privacy," Grace said. "We're not to shut the door."

"Kind of her." But James didn't sit down, or even come near Grace. He moved about the room instead, fiddling with the miscellany of everyday objects that lay about it. "My father's got sciatica again," he announced, rather indifferently, as he flipped through the music sheets that lay on top of the piano.

"Is he alright?"

"He's in pain, but no danger. I don't think he'd mind a call, if you can put up with his temper." James picked up a bowl of potpourri and sniffed it. "I couldn't."

"I'll come by tomorrow afternoon." Grace watched as James went to the fire and poked it. "Are you cold, James?"

"No. Not at all." James put away the poker and came to sit down opposite her. "What are you reading?"

Grace looked at the novel in her lap, which she had dropped when he came in. "The Memoirs of Emma Courtney. I'm reading the marginalia, really. Emma has underlined all the heart-rending speeches and Alice has written scornfully over the top of them."

"Of course." He reached over and took the book, his fingers brushing Grace's. "Hm. But one way to make me happy and a thousand to make me miserable! Alice: Beggars should be no choosers." He laughed. "I see Alice has never been in love."

He passed the book back to Grace. She set it aside again. She was confused by James. She had thought, somehow, that the moment they had any privacy he would kiss her again. Apparently such behaviour needed encouragement. Well, she had encouraged him last time, sure enough, but he had started it, and he wasn't starting it this time. Mrs Follet might not have left the room at all.

"They're saying it's going to be a miserable Christmas," James said. "Sleet and rain, but no snow."

"I had heard. After the autumn we've had, I suppose it's only to be expected."

"Actually my mother was thinking that you and your family might like to come to dinner with us on Christmas Day. It would be very small and quiet. Just our families. Nothing unsuitable for a house in mourning."

"That's very kind of her." It did not escape Grace's notice that the invitation had come from Mrs Redwood, not James himself. Of course, Mrs Redwood would be proper enough to ask, and Mr Redwood kind enough to think of it. "We've already arranged to visit my sister Harriet in London."

"Oh. Well, that's alright. Probably more fun than our house."

"We always spend Christmas with Harriet," Grace said. "At least, normally she comes over with her children but this year we are going to her instead."

"I'll tell Mother. I think she wants you all over for dinner soon anyway. Now that we're properly engaged again."

Grace glanced at the clock. Mrs Follet would not stay away forever. Perhaps a quarter of an hour. Yet five minutes had passed and James hadn't so much as shaken her hand. How did you work up to a kiss? The trouble was, she had never been good at flirting. When a man started it, she could carry along well enough, if she liked him, but she needed the man to start it. And she'd seen James flirt — she'd seen all manner of pretty compliments drop off his lips at the slightest provocation. She had even been on the receiving end, just a little. Why wasn't he flirting now?

She let out a deep sigh.

"Is something wrong, Grace?" James asked.

Grace felt her cheeks heat. If she just asked him to kiss her, he probably would. But she didn't dare, and besides, it seemed somehow unromantic to merely ask. She shook her head. "It's just that... Harriet's house is so cramped and hectic. There's always one child crying and another one teasing the cat. And I have to share a bed with Mother. I'd much rather... could I spend Christmas with you?"

James frowned. "I'd love you to come, but I don't want to spoil your mother's plans. And, besides, I'm not sure about the correctness of having you to dinner alone."

"We are engaged."

"It would raise eyebrows. For a woman to dine apart from her family on Christmas day, practically unchaperoned — my mother hardly counts — and then, I suppose, you might even be going back to an empty house. Or have to stay the night, if the weather were bad. No." James shook his head. "It would be impolite and indiscreet."

"That's rather fastidious, coming from a man who makes calls in his dressing gown."

James smiled wryly. "Touché," he said. "And it was damned foolish of me, Grace. I should think as my..." He paused, looking cautiously at her. "...friend you would not be afraid to tell me when I am being a fool."

"As I recall," Grace said, stiffening, as she felt this conversation was going in the wrong direction, "I was not."

"And as your friend, I feel I have a certain obligation to guard you from your — very rare — flights of foolery."

"Never mind," Grace said. "It was just a thought."

She took up her book again and pointedly turned a page. James leaned back in his chair, tilted his head to the side, and watched her. She kept her gaze upon her book but was keenly aware of his watching figure in the corner of her eyes.

"Your hackles are up," James observed as she turned another page.

"I'm not a cat."

"I have put my foot in it, clearly," James said. "Is this a game, Grace, where I must tease and cajole you into a good mood, or is this a real fit of temper, and must I apologize? And if so, what on earth for?"

Tears pricked Grace's eyes. She knew perfectly well she was being unreasonable. He was right that it was incorrect to spend Christmas with him alone. And it was she who had put her foot in it, really. If she had any artifice or charm, she could have got him flirting of his own accord. Quite easily, too. It was James, after all, not stodgy Mr Montague or pious George Benson. And at the thought of that, more tears pricked her eyes.

"It's not a game," James said softly, moving to the couch next to her. "Grace dear, what's wrong?"

She let the book fall to her lap again and wiped her eyes. "It's nothing. Really."

"Really?" James touched her hand then, hesitatingly, slipped his arm around her shoulder. "Well, sometimes it is, isn't it?"

She turned her face into the shoulder of his coat, the scent of cedar oil and his soft, woodsy perfume rising over her. He was warm and solid, and she yearned for him to hold her — closer, with heat.

"I'm sorry," she said into his coat lapel. "I thought it would be different now you've kissed me."

"Did you?" his breath stirred her hair. "It is different, Grace. I don't know where to step next."

She raised her face to look him in the eyes. "Did you ever?"

"With you?" The ghost of a smile flitted over his lips. "Now that you mention it... I'm not sure I did. You're terra incognita. Terra periculosa." His eyes went dark with sudden want. "I'm going to kiss you again."

He did so, with an urgency that caught Grace off-guard. His arms were like steel around her — he was stronger than she had imagined — and despite that she had the impression that he was trying to restrain himself. She felt the pressure of his teeth on her bottom lip but did not taste blood and let her lips part to allow him in. And then she was quite weightless but for his arms around her, and quite blind and deaf too, consumed wholly by the sensation of touch.

After some time, he moved, his kisses journeyed over her cheek, her ear, her hair, and sound and sight were restored to her, and with them speech. Nonsense, whispered, breathless speech, which could not be called flirting because flirting had wit and this did not. James didn't seem to mind. Between kisses, he was saying much the same things. And then he found her mouth again, or she found his, and the conversation, or what there was of it, ceased. The silence in the room was, in fact, so deep and suspicious that it brought Mrs Follet back earlier than she would have been otherwise, and she felt the need to announce her presence by knocking over a chair in the hallway. Slowly, confusedly, as though the sense had been kissed out of her, Grace disentangled herself from James and made the effort to straighten her limbs and skirt and back. Following the lightness she had felt in his arms, her body now felt heavy and dull. He moved quicker than she and was back in his own seat when her mother entered the room, albeit in a state of pink-cheeked, bright-eyed dishevelment.

After that, their courtship moved into a new phase. The words were still not quite there. They seemed to be constantly stepping on each other's toes and having to apologize for it. Grace began to see in the suppression of the corner of James's mouth or the subtle narrowing of his eyes the small hurts she gave him, the discomfort he sometimes felt with her. But what they could not fluently say in words was communicated much more easily with touch — in public, the brush of her fingers across his or the pressure of his hand at her waist; in private, deep, long kisses and soft, exploring caresses. To Grace, it all came as a dizzying revelation. She had stolen a few kisses in her girlhood, or had them stolen from her, and shared a few yielding embraces with George Benson. They had been nothing like this. There was a sensuality about James that stunned her, a sense of a powerful hunger within him for her, contained — but barely — and its containment sparked within her the ruinous desire to make him break his control and see it released.

Though then she would have to marry him.

And some days, that did not seem like a burden, but a blessing.

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A/N 2022-06-09: It's very hard to write their relationship. I should have invented someone different for James. Ah well. I'm committed now, so I just keep on shoving them into situations where eventually they might discover something good about each other.