The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery

by Annelie Wendeberg

  Garret waits, marvelling at her soft touch, her face, those dark eyes. He’s hit by her determination when her nose touches his. She inhales his aroma and, not quite ready for his mouth just yet, kisses his brow.

  A soft hiss escapes his nostrils. He tips his face towards her, eyes begging. She commands all her courage and lays her lips upon his, her mind blaring warnings, her legs ready to run should the need arise.

  Garret, knowing nothing of her inner battle, slides his hands up her back and holds her face softly. Anxious not to make a wrong move, he is all ears, eyes, and fingertips. He sees her freeze, so he caresses away one fear, hoping the next won’t follow too soon.

  He watches her eyes, the tilt of her mouth, the softness of her hands when he opens the first button of her dress. She freezes again, her breath stumbles, so he retreats to her face and hair.

  They dance together, one step forward, one back, two steps forward, one back. When he touches her bare breast and hides it in his large hand, Anna begins to shiver severely. She feels she stepped across a line, or somehow drifted over it, and there seems to be no return.

  Shocked by her reaction, Garret lays his face to her bosom, his voice heating her skin. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispers, feeling like the brute he is.

  Angry with herself, Anna buries her fingers in his hair and pulls him towards her. ‘Kiss me,’ she whispers, and he obeys.

  Her hands tremble as she unbuttons his shirt. She knows she’s standing in her own way. She slaps at her fears and takes a plunge, using his naivety as her safety net.

  Garret — surprised and confused — takes her sudden decisiveness as arousal of some sort. He rids himself of all his clothes and presses his body to hers.

  Anna’s courage flies out the window.

  He feels the rigidity of her body, sees the paleness in her face. Suddenly, he feels very inappropriately naked.

  He sits up and moves a few inches away from her, covers her with the blanket and uses his pillow to hide his privates.

  ‘Anna, I…I wish I could be close to you, but the closer I get, the more I scare you. And…I don’t know how to do any of this right.

  She tries to swallow, but her mouth and throat are too dry. ‘You do nothing wrong,’ she whispers and sits up, too. ‘The only thing that scares me about you is that you are a man. You have a cock.’

  Nonplussed, he looks at her. ‘What do you want to do now?’

  A master of simple questions, she diagnoses. ‘I don’t know what I want to do at this very moment. But I’m very certain that I don’t want to go on being scared of you. Because that’s what I am, and this realisation surprises me. I hadn’t expected to still be afraid of men after all this time.’ She bites her tongue, so as not to let the entire truth slip out. ‘Would you show me how it is done properly?’

  ‘Show what?’

  She opens the last few buttons of her dress, pushes it over her shoulders and down to her waist.

  Garret’s brain clicks. ‘I’m clumsy,’ he stammers, suddenly too aware of his bulk.

  ‘I am, too.’

  He stares at his hands that always appear too crude to him when she’s near. He’s afraid he might hurt her with those paws of his. He tries to see himself with her eyes, but nothing special or appealing reveals itself.

  Her slender hand sneaks into his strong one. ‘You know,’ she begins. ‘Perhaps neither of us is clumsy. I’m really good at treating gunshot wounds, and you are the best burglar in the neighbourhood. I bet you can pick the most delicate locks.’

  He chuckles and pokes her ribcage. After a while, he moves closer to her.

  ‘Here?’ he asks as he touches her neck.

  ‘Yes,’ she answers. ‘Here?’ she asks in return and lays her fingers onto his chest.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he hums as he lies down next to her, and they continue their dance; two forward, one back.

  When he pulls her dress down her outstretched legs, she follows his moves with wide open eyes. His hands curl around her ankle and slide up into the hollow of her knee. She flinches when his fingers dip into the black curls atop her pubic bone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks when he moves away from her.

  ‘Kissing you.’ His mouth is already covering her thighs. She quivers, nervous and a little amused about the mere thought of his lips touching her there.

  A jolt arches her back when he takes a taste of her. Images scamper past her eyelids — those of a lion sending his coarse tongue across her most sensitive parts.

  Her brain is rattling away, busy analysing her own reactions to his touches, scrutinising his moves and moans. Somehow, she is still waiting for a turning of the leaf, for him to lose his senses and force her. At least she’s tried. She isn’t a coward.

  But slowly, gradually, with every small kiss and and every soft caress, her body demands more attention. The pulling and yearning someplace behind her navel, the heaviness of her sex, the quickening of her core. Her mind makes one last attempt at sharp observance and control. Then, Garret sighs softly, and her desire to taste his lips is too overwhelming. She grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls him towards her.

  He follows her order, then stops, and traces a scar from her left hipbone to her right. ‘What happened there? Was that him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Not quite a lie. One of them. ‘I’m unable to bear children.’

  His face falls into his hand, his breath staggers. ‘If only we had met before this,’ he whispers, placing his palm on the old injury. He covers her belly with kisses, then pushes himself up to her, caresses her face, whispering soothingly. Her throat constricts, her stomach aches, half with pain, half with longing.

  ‘Garret,’ she whispers in his ear as her hand moves from his chest down along his belly. ‘Show me.’ Tentatively, she touches him. It feels foreign; like a weapon on a man too gentle to know how to use it.

  He guides her on top of him, kissing her lips, her cheeks and earlobes, her neck and shoulders. She lowers herself onto him until she feels his touch on her vulva. Her eyes close while she tests a little more pressure, and a little more yet.

  He trembles beneath her, his breath ragged against her forehead. Slowly she slides down further, senses how he begins to enter this one part of her three men had befouled and torn apart years ago.

  Garret feels his control slipping. He tightens his grip, makes a sound like a wounded animal, and calls her name. His hips tilt forwards in one forceful reflex.

  His eyes snap open. He takes her face in his hands and makes her look at him. ‘I am so sorry,’ he says over and over again. ‘I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to… I’m such an idiot!’ He searches her face for pain, shock, or disgust, but finds only puzzlement. His arms wrap around her, protectively and consolingly, trying to undo any harm he might have caused.

  Astounded at how precious she feels in his embrace and surprised that the burning in her sex doesn’t reach her soul, a chuckle bursts from her chest. For her, one world had just collapsed and another was tearing wide open. She gazes at him, rakes her fingers through his orange mane, whispers, ‘Clearly, we have to practice,’ and continues her dance with the lion. Two steps forward, one back.

  Sun

  London is covered in thick September morning fog. The windows of Garret’s room seem to be made of dark-grey cotton, framed in white-washed wood. Anna blinks, rubs her eyes, and estimates the time to be five thirty or six o’clock. She catches herself wishing it would be a Sunday afternoon. The arm draped over hers and the warm body moulding itself against her back and legs make her want to remain where she is now.

  Inch by inch, she turns around, hoping she doesn’t wake him. He crinkles his lips and exhales a sigh. She takes in his unguarded expression, the pale-blue tinge of his eyelids and the movement underneath, and the stubble on his cheek that set her skin on fire. The mop of disorderly orange hair spread on the pillow makes her feel as though the sun has dropped into bed with her. Why had she ever thought him threatening?

  She trails a
finger over his shoulder, tries to span its width with one hand. The tip of a faint red line peeks through a gap between her fingers.

  His wrist twitches as his hand wakes up. He strokes her back, and presses her to him before his eyes are fully open. ‘Hmm…’ he breathes when the church bell strikes six.

  ‘I have to leave soon.’

  He looks at her, his eyebrows drawn together, and brushes a black curl from her face. ‘Are you alright? Wasn’t I too…something?’

  ‘You were certainly too something.’ She grins at him, then grows serious. ‘Lie on your stomach for a moment.’

  He does as she asked, trying not to push her off the small mattress. ‘It doesn’t hurt, Anna. I already forgot it’s there.’

  Softly, she sends her fingers over the criss-crossing scars. ‘After more than nine months in St Giles, observing disease, violence, and severe poverty, I still didn’t learn to not see, nor will I ever learn to forget. This,’ she lays a palm flat onto his back, ‘will always hurt me, no matter how old the scars are. I’ll never forget Poppy’s face, either. Is she dead?’

  Garret clears his throat. ‘What did your husband do to you?’

  She sighs and presses her face to his neck, wondering how many dark secrets can possibly stand between two lovers until the distance between them begins to grow.

  He turns, wraps his arms around her, and kisses her face, her neck, and her bosom until she chuckles. ‘When do you have to leave?’

  ‘In half an hour.’

  ‘Rather short, but…’ he throws the blanket up and over both their heads. ‘I need to see where exactly I have been too something. Them places might need soothing.’

  ‘Such hasty medical treatment might be interpreted as sloppy and careless.’

  ‘We can discuss it at length, or we can make an attempt at saving the patient.’

  ‘Hard to tell which alternative would be the most reasonable,’ she says. ‘But I’d suggest an emergency treatment of all parts that had to endure your stubble.’

  ‘Hmm. Can’t remember all the places I put my mouth last night. Perhaps here?’ he says and touches his lips to hers.

  ‘All over, I’d wager.’

  Helena

  ‘William,’ she whispers. ‘Are you still not sleeping?’ The boy cracks one eye open in response. ‘It’s late. Your mother won’t be pleased.’

  ‘But my head is so noisy, Miss Worthing, it wants me to stay awake.’

  ‘What noises does it make?’

  ‘Noises of the park we walked today, the pretty birdsong and children playing, and what Mother said about the countryside and Grandfather’s house. And Father, who looked ill and upset. I always think of this. Did I upset him, Miss Worthing?’

  She caresses his head and his warm cheek and says softly, ‘Of course he is not upset with you, William. He has business to attend to and works hard. For you and your mother.’

  ‘But he left and didn’t return last night, and the night before. Did I make him leave?’

  ‘Of course not. Shush now, you silly boy, and promise to not bother your mother with your strange thoughts. You’ll only upset her.’

  The boy squeezes both eyes shut, folds his hands under his chin, and whispers, ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good boy, William. Say your prayers.’ She removes her hand from his hair, smoothes her dress, and leaves the nursery.

  The boy is spoiled and overly sensitive, she thinks. How could his mother let this happen? Surely, he was already like this when she arrived a year ago. A sickly child, too. Wouldn’t survive a day without his mother pampering him. William this and William that.

  Bristling with disapproval, she climbs the stairs to her room — a small compartment just beneath the attic where the servants live. She pushes the door into its frame. A soft creak, then silence. Her haven of privacy.

  She undresses and washes with warm water the maid brought a few minutes earlier. She lies down flat on her bed, her legs straight out, her arms on her sides, face directed at the ceiling. A body methodically arranged, ready to drift off into bleak nothingness. But then, thoughts of her twin brothers creep through her skull.

  Peter and Timothy. When she was a child, she spoke their names with love. Now she dreads the monthly meetings with them. She dreads their stories of hardship, their petty lives, their sour-smelling, thirdhand clothes, their fat wives and sick children, their ragged haircuts, their scrubby beards. Just thinking of their home makes her skin crawl. That hovel of a dwelling that reeks of shellfish gone bad and diapers gone rancid. It smells of something that will glue itself onto her, never let go, drag itself along when she returns to her well-kept room that smells of lemon juice the maid put into the water to wipe the windows and scrub the floors, threatening to turn all that she has accomplished with her own hard work into something just as rancid, stinky, diseased.

  Whenever she meets her brothers, the word discarded scurries through her mind. Then, she quickly extracts all her savings — despite her resolutions not to — and gives Tim one pound and Pete another, knowing the money will melt away like the ice they use to keep their oysters fresh.

  Surely she does wish to help, she tells herself then. It isn’t bad conscience at all. Or, at least, not the only reason for her to regularly abandon all the savings she possesses.

  And yet, every time she turns her back to her brothers to catch a cab back home, she feels as though she’s bribed the rancid, stinky, and diseased thing to stay with them one month longer before it comes and fetches her.

  And so she returns to a warm and clean home, a respected occupation, to plenty of good food and pretty dresses, feeling guilty instead of grateful. Shame on you! Say ten Ave Marias!

  It wasn’t her brothers’ fault, and had never been. When Father lost his shops and his houses, he took to drink so heavily that soon, the family found themselves without means.

  Now she’s glad for the piano and poetry lessons her father insisted on. Without them, she couldn’t have obtained a position as governess. Her brothers, however, hadn’t been able to obtain anything but a costermonger’s cart to start a shellfish business in the slums. Selling shellfish no one else would eat but the wretched.

  She blinks, absentmindedly fingering the letter she keeps under her pillow. The crinkled sheet of thin paper has been read so often, wept upon, and folded to a small rectangle again and again, that one can barely decipher the writing. She knows its contents by heart. The whore was murdered. A gentleman did it. The tone her brothers had used allows only one conclusion.

  She’s afraid. Will God forgive her if she says nothing about it? Thou shall not kill! But wouldn’t she kill them if she told the police and they were hung? Still, she dearly hopes they won’t be caught. But then, doesn’t that mean she wishes that man to be dead? How can there be redemption, if sin lies in every direction no matter which way she turns?

  Condemned be the unlucky day when she and her brothers saw this girl with the cruelly cut-up face! Condemned shall she be herself for this one night, when she was at her lowest and had to seek refuge in Alf’s attic. Perhaps the girl would still be alive had she never lodged there, never known it, or if she’d simply kept her mouth shut.

  A soft knock interrupts her thoughts and pulls her from the past to the present.

  When the dark shadow of her master approaches, she feels her cheeks glow like those of a child waiting for candy. She knows she mustn’t give herself to a married man. But he needs her so. He cannot be without her, he said, before he lay with her the first night. And it surely didn’t help her resolution that his hands were knowing and gentle, his manhood strong.

  He lifts the corner of her blanket. ‘How are you, my dear Helena?’ he whispers.

  He’s barely able to keep his hackles down, so great the pleasure of triumph. He slides his tongue across his incisors and forces the grin off his face before he plants a kiss on the woman’s lips.

  Astonishing how incidents fall into perfect place and time, how a small bribe — merely
pocket money — can redirect a mob in full rage. Whoever that man was who’d been killed, he doesn’t feel sorry for him. This man will always shine like a beacon of his own glory. He imagines him floating down the river, a sack of clothes hugging a limp body, lazily drifting out onto the sea, waves lapping at it, fish nibbling. Or perhaps, his pockets had been filled with stones and his skin is already perforated and his flesh gnawed at by the countless bottom-dwelling fish and crayfish.

  He pushes his hand underneath the woman’s nightgown and her sighs make his already rock-hard erection ache with fury.

  He growls. Low, and guttural. Wolf-like.

  Such triumph! Despite his unforgivable mistake. But he’d never again allow himself such carelessness, such rage. But the brilliance of it! His brilliance!

  He cares little that he must find a new territory now. A new playground. In fact, he’s thrilled. So many slums in this city, countless whores.

  Like this one.

  She rocks her voluptuous hips against his narrow ones, and his mind and body answer with a scream for release.

  Behind his eyes, images begin to fade — those of a body in the river, of the girl with an artfully carved grin, and the map on his desk, the streets’ criss-crossing, the Thames’ meandering.

  His eager fingers dig into her large buttocks, and his hips lodge between her welcoming thighs. It doesn’t take long.

  ___

  Below the skin of history are London’s veins. These symbols, the mitre, the pentacle star, even to someone as ignorant and degenerate as you can sense that they course with energy... and meaning.

  I am that meaning.

  I am that energy.

  One day, men will look back and say that I gave birth to the 20th century.

  From Hell, by Albert & Allen Hughes

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