by Rose Lerner
Something on her face made him think she knew it was all true. Poor Jamie.
“The other part—do you want me to tell you the other part? As far as I can see, respectable married people like to pretend they’ve never even had eyes for anyone else.”
She froze for a minute, then laughed, a tense little laugh. “I ought to pretend to be insulted, that you’d speak of such things to me.”
“I don’t want to insult you,” he said quietly. He wasn’t ashamed of his past, but if she didn’t want to look at it, that was all right.
“Tell me,” she said, finally.
“It’s not uncommon for boys like me to keep mistresses.”
She turned to stare at him. “But—how old were you?”
“Ten. I was ten when I kept my first girl.”
It had been ordinary. When he stopped being somewhere it was ordinary, he stopped telling people. He didn’t like this feeling. He didn’t like the horror on her face. He didn’t like wondering if something terrible had happened to him and he was too much of a flat to realize it.
He tried to imagine how she’d look if she knew that when he was older, he’d done a little streetwalking. Only a week or two a year, when they got too deep in debt. He tried to imagine telling her that the worst thing he could say about it was that he liked stealing better. She’d never understand.
“Everyone did it,” he said. “And I needed someone to watch Rafe when I was working. I needed someone who liked me enough she’d look after Rafe even if I went to jail. So I got them to love me. I confided in them. I put false bottoms on the drawers in my mind and let them think they had the run of me. It worked out well for me, but there’s no reason you should do it, just so as not to hurt Mrs. Sparks’s feelings.”
There was a long pause. Then she said, “Did you love them?”
He didn’t know if she wanted him to say yes, so she could pretend he was an upstanding man, or no, so she wouldn’t have to be jealous. He thought about Speranza, who had wanted him to read her anything he could get his hands on, Ruchl who loved oranges, Dvoire who always pushed his head between her legs, redheaded Faige who could talk for hours about what a shithole Poland was. “Of course,” he said honestly. “How could I not love someone I knew that well? People are beautiful, most all of them. I don’t know why some folks can’t see it.”
She chewed that over. “Did you ever go to jail?”
His pulse raced at the memory. “Only twice. For a little bit each time. It scared Rafe something awful, though.”
Lydia had never thought much of the mania for visiting prisons. It was a prime example of Whiggish sentimentality, feeling virtuous for gawking uselessly at another’s misfortune. In her opinion, the money the Opposition wished to use to make prisons more hospitable would be better spent on schools in the districts that mainly fed them.
But a friend had dragged her to Newgate once. She remembered the stench and the clamor, and the horror of—dear God. She swallowed. The horror of seeing children in among the hardened criminals. Oh, they’re every bit as hardened as the men, her friend had said. No, don’t give them money, Lydia, it will only be taken from them, or they’ll spend it on gin.
He must have been terrified. But he’d told her not to pity him. He’d said that his brother was scared.
So she thought of his brother, a small child left alone in a brutal, violent world. Jamie had disliked it quite enough when Lydia went away to visit family. “It’s frightening for children, when constants in their lives are no longer constant,” she said, and her voice barely shook.
He nodded. “Have you heard anything of Mary and Joanna?”
She shook her head. “We can visit Mary this afternoon. It’s too early to go and see Joanna. They always cry the first few days they’re with the nurse, and it doesn’t mean much about how she’ll do when she’s settled.” When she had first started working with the parish, she had had to learn that lesson many times over before she could stop herself from going. “When Jamie first went to Eton…” she began.
It had been on her mind since he said public school, and now it wouldn’t stay inside. “Well, all little boys of his rank go to school. If he hadn’t gone, he’d be left out of everything now. All his friends are boys he met at school.”
She turned her head, not liking that she couldn’t see him around the brim of her bonnet as they walked. He was listening, open to whatever she might say. She had never had anyone to talk to, before, who didn’t have a stake in the value of public schools.
“He was eight, and he didn’t want to go. He cried and cried. Papa said that was why he had to go, he couldn’t grow up tied to his sister’s apron strings. And then—he wrote to me three times a day, begging me to let him come home. He wrote that the other boys were cruel to him, that—terrible things. Papa said it was nothing to worry about, that it was difficult at first but in a few years, Jamie would barely remember it. Papa said he couldn’t come home.”
She felt squirmingly disloyal—when Lord Wheatcroft was not even alive to defend himself. “But I didn’t want to tell Jamie I wanted to bring him home and Papa refused, it seemed—oh, disobedient, or maybe I was only embarrassed that I had so little influence with Papa, or I wanted—I wanted to seem like a grown-up, as if Papa and I were really his parents together, speaking with one voice. Maybe I was being a sentimental woman for wanting to give in, I don’t know. I wrote back and told Jamie he must be brave and strong…and his letters did begin to sound more cheerful after the first term. He did well, he made friends…I don’t know if he even remembers those letters.”
She didn’t know what she wanted Mr. Cahill to say. That’s life, and it isn’t a tragedy? Or perhaps she wanted someone to admit that it was a tragedy, that ordinary life—the things everyone told you were just how it was supposed to be—that it was all right to feel this overwhelming sadness about them.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. “We did our best. But maybe we could have done better.”
That was what she’d wanted, after all: we. Oh God, if she kept on like this, she’d be crying about her father within five minutes. She turned her head towards Mr. Cahill again. He looked about as cheerful as she felt, and even more than she wanted to feel better herself she wanted to make him feel better.
He was beautiful when he was sad, though. When he wasn’t smiling, she could see how full and lovely his lips were, and his brown eyes looked larger. The brim of his hat was unfashionably wide and the crown too short, but she liked that—it made him look like a country man. She would never guess he was a Londoner from looking at him. She would never guess anything about him from looking. He was like an unremarkable brown-paper-wrapped parcel she’d been waiting for anxiously—holding it in her hands was all the more exciting because no one else knew what was inside.
He tugged her to the left, and she realized she’d almost walked straight into a hole in the sidewalk that had been there for a good five years. He gave her a sidelong crinkle-eyed smile; he couldn’t help but know she was staring at him. They were coming to the Market Cross, with its long line of irate cart drivers going in single file around the wide stone canopy. A drop of rain fell, and another. “We’d better take cover,” she said, and pulled him between two stopped carts into the shelter of the old timbered roof.
At dinnertime the cross would be full of people with pies and sandwiches, but right now they were alone. “Jamie used to love this place when he was an infant,” she said. “He’d hide behind the columns. He’d giggle all the time he was hiding, and then be surprised when I found him.”
“Mmm.” Mr. Cahill maneuvered her so her calves pressed against one of the stone seats that ringed the canopy’s pillars. He leaned in to kiss her.
“You know that pillar only blocks us from view from one angle.”
“I do know,” he murmured. “All to the better.” He didn’t really kiss her, not the way
he had earlier. It was a quick soft press of closed mouths, for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.
And knowing that people were watching, that she and Mr. Cahill were performing together, gave a weight and electric charge to everything she did—when she tilted her head up to meet him, arched her back slightly, made a small humming sound. A clean burst of happiness swept everything else aside. When he pulled back, she smiled, tsked, and hit him on the arm with her muff, saying to anyone looking on, I’m a good girl, but I’m not angry.
He leaned in one more time, and oh God, the brief brush of his lips, she wanted his hands too, his body, all of him. He was already pulling back when she pushed him gently away with a breathy laugh and a not-very-indignant, “Mr. Cahill!”
“Yes?” he said innocently, looking as electrified as she felt.
She held that moment close through the long afternoon. Visiting was, for now, another reminder of grief: she would never relay the news she got to her father. But its rewards remained, and to the satisfaction of efficiency, usefulness and community was added the frisson of doing it all while firmly yet indulgently preventing Mr. Cahill from removing her gloves, playing with her hair, whispering in her ear, stealing her pencil or notebook, or otherwise demonstrating his admiration for her person and desire for her attention.
Of course it was all a show, but he was clearly enjoying the game, and she could feel the smug happiness on her own face as she smiled apologetically at person after person and confessed, Mr. Summers will read the banns tomorrow.
Mr. Cahill paid attention, too. Once, while Lydia listened patiently to a list of sick Mrs. Goacher’s symptoms and promised to ask the grocer to extend her credit, he chimed in with, “Which grocer is that?…How much can you afford to pay him down?…Even sixpence will sweeten him…I’ll be back in a bit, ladies.” Twenty minutes later, he was back with the news that the grocer had extended Mrs. Goacher’s credit for another month. By the end of the afternoon he had wheedled three grocers, two butchers, a tallow-chandler and a baker. She tried not to beam with pride at the beneficiaries of his efforts—and then she remembered that she was supposed to be madly in love, and beamed away.
They visited Miss Tice, the milliner. Mary Luff was wan and fidgety and asked anxiously after her sister, but Miss Tice had nothing but praise for her progress.
“Thank you,” Lydia said at the end of the day.
He shrugged. “I’m a master at sweet-talking tradesmen.”
So was she. It was exceptionally lovely nevertheless, having something done for her that she could have done herself.
But then, she was paying him three thousand pounds to be the perfect husband for six months, so it was really no different than if Mr. Gilchrist had helped her.
She invited him for dinner and they stopped at the Drunk St. Leonard so he could change his clothes. To her astonishment, in under twenty minutes he was back in the carriage in breeches, pumps, a gray waistcoat, and a dark coat, his fresh cravat in a knot whose plain serviceability would have embarrassed Jamie and his friends.
“That was fast.”
“Really?” His eyes glinted with curiosity. “Was it too fast? How long do men of your set usually take?”
“Well, I—I don’t know for sure,” she said with the peculiar uncertainty that came from being asked to quantify something one had never given a moment’s thought to. “Father generally took half an hour. Jamie…Jamie always goes up to his room forty-five minutes before the dinner bell, and then we wait fifteen minutes for him. The cooks have started planning dinner accordingly, when he’s at home.”
“What do they do with all that time?” Mr. Cahill asked, fascinated. “Take one set off, shave, put another set on, and off you go. Or do they just have so many clothes it takes that long to choose?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you know how young men are. Jamie can spend half an hour in front of the mirror worrying over his hair.” It was incomprehensible, when he was such a handsome boy.
“Rafe is vain of his hair too. He…” He trailed off.
Lydia’s heart lurched in sympathy—but she was suddenly distracted by something he had said. “You shaved?” Now she could see that the stubble whose progress she had watched throughout the day was gone. She wanted to touch his clean, smooth skin. She wanted it very badly.
He grinned and tilted his head from side to side, exposing the smooth underside of his chin and a sliver of throat above collar and cravat.
Oh, why not? “May I?” She tugged at the fingers of her glove to loosen it.
He frowned in puzzlement at her hand. Then his generous mouth curled up at one corner, slyly. “I promise it’s an even shave, but you can check if you don’t believe me.”
She raised a brow severely. “We’ll see about that.” She ran her hand firmly down one cheek, over his mouth and up the other, sweeping her thumb under his chin. “Hmm. I’ll need to take a closer look.” She slid forward in her seat and tilted his chin up, leaning in to press a kiss to his jaw. She slid her mouth along it. Her lips, more sensitive than her fingertips, could feel the texture of his skin, a patch by his ear where he hadn’t shaved as closely. He smelled like Eau de Cologne and soap.
She felt him swallow. “You can shave me yourself one of these days if you like.”
She was plunged headlong into desperate lust. “Really? I—but what if I cut you?”
“Then I’ll have to go about with sticking plaster on my face, and people will think me clumsy. I imagine the experience would be worth it, don’t you?”
She turned his face towards her and kissed him, abruptly overwhelmed with gratitude. He held very still and let her; it reminded her of that first kiss, and this morning when she’d leaned her head on his shoulder. When she pulled back, he drew in a breath with a small, protesting sound, but he didn’t move.
“Sometimes you go still,” she said. “When I touch you, or when I ask you something.” She didn’t know how to phrase her question. Does it mean you want me to stop? Does it mean you’re afraid I’ll stop?
He did it again, watched her for a moment perfectly still, like a hare that sees the hunter. She half expected him to bound out of the carriage, but instead he leaned back against the squabs, relaxed and confident, and laughed. “It means I haven’t bedded anyone above twice or thrice in the last thirteen years, and I’m nervous. I don’t want to look green.” He didn’t look nervous, or green.
She remembered that that didn’t mean anything with him, but her moment of skepticism had lasted long enough for her to realize that didn’t explain when he did it in conversation. “Did you just lie to me?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “It’s God’s own truth. One of the hazards of pretending to be a Gentile—there’s one part of me that can’t pass muster.”
He’d already told her he lied with the truth. If the truth was distracting, as this one was, she was sure that was all to the good. Well, if he didn’t want to talk about it, she didn’t need to know, so long as she knew one thing. “Does it mean you want me to stop? We agreed that refusal would not affect our agreement. You don’t have to win me over.” She thought of those girls he’d lived with in London, how he’d made them love him.
She’d worked at being easy to love too. She’d made her father love her, and her brother—or at least it had felt that way. She’d made this town like her. It seemed sad, somehow; she wondered whether other people were loved naturally, without trying, even when they were difficult and useless. Whether she could have been, too.
“Sweetheart, if we were going at my pace I’d have my tongue between your legs right now.”
She could feel her eyes turn to saucers. His tongue? Between her legs? Did people do that?
He ran his tongue along his top lip, filthily.
So—he didn’t want to talk about it, and he was annoyed that she’d asked. She felt a brief flare of anger herself, tempted to
lift her skirts and say, Well, have at it then.
The flare wasn’t just anger. His tongue—she imagined it—only she couldn’t imagine it. She didn’t have the slightest idea what it would feel like, only knew she wanted it. Even the jolt of her secret places against the carriage seat when they went over a hole in the road made her ache. She was tired of this. She was tired of aching, of hot frustration, of desperate desire. She wanted to be satisfied.
She wished she could turn the tables, leave him aching and unsatisfied. She wanted to say coolly, May I?, calmly unbutton his trousers, and pull out his—his male part? She was dissatisfied with the word too, but still shrank from using coarser ones. Never mind. She imagined toying with it until he made desperate sounds—and then the carriage would pull up in front of her house and they would have to stop. That would serve him right.
She wanted to do it, and she probably could, but she refused to turn the attraction between them into a weapon, the way he had done. It was petty, and not a precedent she liked to set. So she gave him one more kiss, to show she wasn’t punishing him, and leaned back against her seat.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Cahill said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have spoken so crudely.”
“You can speak as crudely as you like, if you do it because you want to and not because you’re annoyed with me.”