Necessary Sins

by Elizabeth Bell

  Tessa’s own nose brushed his shirt. “I love the way you smell: of myrrh…”

  “You smell of gardenias.” Purity and ecstasy.

  She tilted her face to him now, her bronze hair spilling over her shoulders. “Do you like it?”

  “Very much.” What he liked—what he adored—was the scent of gardenias mingled with her: perspiration and something else he could not even name. He longed to taste her. Only his fingers lapped the pomegranate blush of her cheek; only his thumb licked at the corner of her luscious mouth. But she was more masterpiece than meal. His hand plunged down the soft column of her neck, across the exquisite workmanship of her collarbone, all the way to that bare alabaster shoulder.

  And then he saw his hand against her skin, how it was several shades darker. He wore gloves so often; he could not blame that darkness on the sun.

  “What are you thinking?” Tessa whispered.

  “It would be different, wouldn’t it, if I looked more like my Haitian grandmother? If I were the color of pitch and my features were African?”

  She squeezed his knee again. “I would love you if you were green.”

  He looked behind her, to her wall mirror, which reflected only his curly head. “But not if I were black.” Why did it even matter to him, when his skin wasn’t black? When she shouldn’t love him in the first place? Yet it mattered more than anything in the world.

  “I want to say it wouldn’t make any difference at all. But I cannot truly answer that question.” Tessa stroked her thumb beneath his lower lip. “I have grown very, very fond of your person, exactly as it is.”

  Joseph did not smile back.

  Tessa knew he wasn’t satisfied. She rested her hand on his upper thigh and closed her eyes. “I shall try to imagine it. When I first came to Charleston, everything here was so new and strange, frightening even—the negroes most of all. But the longer I know them, the more beautiful they become to me. That is the truth.” She opened her eyes again—shining like hot myrrh in the lamplight. “I think it only would have taken me a little longer to fall in love with you.” She twined her fingers into the curls at his brow. “You are black and beautiful, my beloved.”

  This time, he smiled back. She’d changed the verse; originally, it was: I am black BUT beautiful. He felt whiter than snow and yet truly colored for the first time in his life. He could claim it now; he was no longer ashamed. He felt newly baptized, blessed and washed clean to the bottom of his soul, because this woman loved him. “You’ve read the Canticles.”

  “They are quite…inspirational.” Tessa caught her lower lip between her teeth again. “Now, will you come to bed, my love?”

  What exactly did she mean by that?

  She took his hand in hers and sprang to her feet, lithe and agile as a doe. Somehow, they managed not to stumble over their shoes as she towed him across the bedroom—though her petticoats hindered him temporarily, making Tessa giggle and Joseph blush.

  When she reached the end of the bed, Tessa released him, only to draw up the skirt of her chemise and climb onto the counterpane. Joseph tried not to stare at her legs, sheathed only in translucent stockings, one of them exposed all the way to her knee. He tried even harder not to watch how her breasts moved beneath her chemise as she slid backwards on the bed and then lounged on her elbow against one of the large pillows.

  Tessa held out her hand to him. “Come here.”

  What on Earth did she expect from him? Did she really believe seeing her like this would do nothing to him, that they could cuddle chastely like children? His only consolation was this: his member remained in a state of shock so profound that it seemed to be cowering, terrified rather than elated by its luck.

  He chose to lie down on the far side of the bed, where he could gaze at her without touching her. Tessa did not approach him, but she did turn toward him. Her head on the pillow, she tucked her hands under her neck, so that her bent arms blocked her breasts, which was a mercy. But most of her hair had ended up either beneath her or behind her. Only a few precious tendrils lay between them on the counterpane.

  Tessa saw him looking, and she knew him as well as he knew himself. She pulled the gold-brown tresses from beneath her and flung them above her head. Her hair settled on the pillows like the rays of a monstrance. “Better?”

  “Yes,” he laughed. “Even better.”

  “I have a favorite part of you, too—a new favorite part.”

  “Oh?”

  “’Tis right”—she extended her arm across the space between them till her fingertip tapped the bulge in his throat—“here.”

  Joseph frowned. “My Adam’s apple?”

  “There it goes again! I love watching it move! This is the first time I’ve ever seen it—your choker always hides it. ’Tis so deliciously masculine.”

  “You have one too, you know.”

  “I do not! What a terrible thing to say!” She crossed her arms over her breasts and looked away from him, with only coy glances back. “Your inexperience with women is showing, sir. I’m not sure I can forgive you.”

  “Everyone has an Adam’s apple!” Joseph protested, lifting on one elbow. “It’s nothing but cartilage protecting your larynx—your vocal cords. Yours is harder to find than mine, but it’s there. My father taught us about it years ago.” His sisters had been delighted by the secret, but Joseph had never imagined he would need to know such a thing.

  Tessa pouted, still unwilling to believe him.

  “I’ll show you.” He slipped his hand to the place where her neck became her shoulder and rested his thumb at the center of her throat. “Tilt back your head?”

  Tessa obeyed, though she might have been lifting her nose in defiance as well. Gently but firmly, Joseph pressed down his thumb near the base of her throat, seeking the hidden ridge beneath the surface. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “I trust you, Joseph.”

  He’d almost found the place; he’d felt it move just then. “Sing something for me.”

  Tessa smiled wickedly and obliged: “O-O-O-O ve-re be-a-ta nox…” She pulled out the “O” just as he’d done that morning, so it took up nearly as many notes as “vere beata nox.” Her tiny perfect apple leapt and vibrated beneath his finger with every transcendent syllable: O truly blessed night…

  “Did you feel that?” Joseph asked excitedly.

  Tessa only grinned at him.

  “It’s right here.” He tapped her hidden apple with his thumb. “Right…” The next instant, he’d leaned closer, and his lips had replaced his finger.

  He didn’t know what possessed him to do it. Without the participation of his mind, his body chose for him. Every time he celebrated a Sacrament, he kissed the cross on his vestments. In the course of every Mass, he kissed the altar that held the bone of a saint and the Body of Christ. For three decades, he’d kissed the rings of Bishops, the hands of Priests, and the feet of Popes. He honored them with his kisses; he acknowledged his unworthiness and their right to his veneration; he told them they were precious to him.

  But nothing and no one he’d ever felt beneath his lips had responded like this. Tessa moaned his name, and the well of her beautiful voice trembled against his mouth. She grasped the front of his shirt and the key with it, but she did not ask him to stop.

  One kiss was not nearly enough, so he did it again and then again. He wanted to praise every inch of her. He wanted to trail kisses down her throat, lick the perspiration from her collarbones, and discover her glorious breasts. But she was nursing; he would embarrass her. So with a sigh of his own, he skimmed his mouth upward instead, deepening his kisses, lingering, tasting the sweet salt of her skin and the musk of gardenias. He must be leaving a sheen on her flesh, but he didn’t care. Four months before, hadn’t he blessed her daughter with wetness from his mouth?

  He reached the underside of her jaw, let his teeth brush her skin, felt her quivering against him as her pulse grew quicker and quicker, and still he did not stop.
One hand gripping that bare shoulder, the other lost in her hair, he kissed toward her ear, up to the edge of her cheek, hesitated. Her mouth was so near now, but the way he wanted to kiss her there might appall her, and he’d no real notion how to do it. Perhaps he should continue upward instead, kiss the lids of her luminous eyes… But Tessa was turning, deciding for him, panting warm at the corner of his lips, at their center, her open mouth—

  Then all at once she was jerking away from him, sitting up. Startled, bereft, Joseph’s eyes blinked open, but he saw only the white pillow and the ends of her hair. He’d asked too much of her, too soon. He never should have grasped her shoulder; she must have felt trapped. Her moans had been discomfort, not pleasure.

  In the next moment, he understood. Tessa called out her daughter’s name, and Clare’s wail reached them from the other side of the hall.

  “I’m coming, a chuisle!” Tessa cried. But before she dashed from the room, for one brief second she caressed Joseph’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  Joseph hesitated. He wanted to go after her, but Hannah would be there too.

  Hannah knew everything already.

  In her haste, Tessa left the doors open. Across the hall, he heard Hannah telling her mistress: “I’m sorry; I tried to calm her. But she wanted you.”

  Joseph wondered if Clare’s wailing had woken David. He supposed his nephew was used to such sounds by now. Still, Joseph must be careful not to make any loud noises himself; he did not wish to alert the boy to his presence, especially not in his current state of undress. Even when Tessa had sung for him, they’d been careful to keep their voices low. Joseph rose from the bed and gently pushed the door closed.

  He supposed David would become aware of his visits eventually, but Joseph was not eager to face the boy. “I think he’s old enough to understand,” Hélène had said. That much was probably true: David had left his childhood beside Independence Rock. Joseph’s sister had also implied that their nephew disliked Edward as much as they did. But neither was David reconciled to God. The knowledge that his spiritual advisor was fondling his foster-mother would hardly restore the boy’s faith.

  Joseph had done a great deal more fondling than he’d intended for their first night together—less than he’d wanted, but more than he’d intended. Tessa’s willingness to fondle him was simultaneously exhilarating and unsettling. It frightened him, how easily he surrendered to it, how quickly and completely his body snatched control from his mind. If he waited for Tessa to return to this bedchamber, they were sure to do more.

  One of their guardian angels must have woken Clare as a warning. Joseph should not have needed such divine intervention. He should have been more careful. He would be more careful. He would prove to himself that he could stop. Right now.

  Right now.

  He closed his eyes and steeled himself.

  He returned to the méridienne and pulled his boots back on. He retrieved his waistcoat and rebuttoned it, then his coat. His choker had slithered to the floor under the prie-Dieu, and he nearly forgot it.

  He crossed the hall as quietly as he could. In the nursery, Tessa’s maid stood with her back to the door, but she turned at Joseph’s approach and smiled a greeting. “Hannah…” he began. He stared down at his hat, uncertain how to proceed. Finally, he said simply: “Thank you.”

  She understood. Hannah looked to the easy chair, where Tessa was singing softly in Irish to her daughter. “I know what it’s like to be separated from someone you love. Tessa does all she can for me—I’ll do all I can for her.”

  Joseph remained at the threshold. Clare was content now that Tessa had pulled open the neck of her chemise. The baby’s eager mouth concealed Tessa’s nipple, but not the white swell of her breast. No: not truly white, any more than he was truly black. Tessa sat in shadow, but he could still see it: her skin was closer to peach flushed with pink, like the Jaune Desprez.

  Barely three years ago, Tessa had longed for death to end her grief. Now, she was pulsing with life, blooming with love before his very eyes, as fresh and new as her daughter—and a thousand times more beautiful than the Virgin in his father’s painting.

  In the portrait, Joseph the saint averted his eyes to his prayer book. Joseph the boy had fled to the confessional. Now, Joseph the man lingered and smiled.

  When Tessa looked up at him, she saw he was dressed. Her rose mouth turned downward. “Won’t you stay?”

  Reluctantly, Joseph shook his head. “Not tonight.” Tomorrow was a rather important Mass.

  “But you’ll come back to me, another night?”

  “I will.”

  They were the words of the Marriage vow. I, Joseph Lazare, take thee, Teresa Conley, for my unlawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse…

  The End of Necessary Sins.

  But the Lazare Family Saga is just beginning…

  If you enjoyed this novel, pretty please help other readers discover my books by leaving an honest review, even a short one, on Amazon, Goodreads, and/or BookBub. I’d be thrilled if you’d mention Necessary Sins on social media too. Without word of mouth, a new author quickly falls into obscurity. Thank you so much!

  Do you want to know what happens next between Joseph and Tessa? What’s really haunting David? Who Clare will grow up to be? Lost Saints, Book 2 in the Lazare Family Saga, will be available on January 6, 2020. Subscribe to my newsletter to be alerted when the rest of my series is published, when my books go on sale, and for exclusive content.

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  Author’s Note

  While all of my central characters are fictional, they interact with many people who really lived. To the best of my ability, I have portrayed these figures as the historical record reveals them, inventing as little as possible. In some cases, I have adapted their actual words into my text, such as John Horry’s chilling statement to his master or Father Baker’s farewell over the tomb of Bishop England. The following is a list of these historical figures.

  Médéric-Louis-Elie Moreau de Saint-Méry, who left the most complete record of Saint-Domingue; Dr. Charles Arthaud; Jean-Baptiste de Caradeux, who married his nineteen-year-old niece when he was forty-two; and the Gallifet family. Makandal, Vincent Ogé, Toussaint Louverture, and Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer.

  “Father of the Deaf” Abbé Charles-Michel de l’Épée and Dr. Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard. Swiss scientist and inventor Ami Argand.

  Denmark Vesey; Jemmy Clement; Elias Horry and his coachman, John. Postmaster Alfred Huger.

  Horticulturist Philippe Noisette, Celestine, and their children. Botanist and physician Carolus Linnaeus. Diplomat Joel Poinsett, for whom the poinsettia is named. English landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown.

  Schoolmistress Ann Marsan Talvande. Since Mary Chesnut’s novel Two Years is semi-autobiographical, her character “Monkey” is likely based on a real person; historian Elisabeth Muhlenfeld found “a young free black female under ten years in age” listed in the Talvande household in the 1830 census (Two Novels by Mary Chesnut, 2002).

  Most of the priests, with the exception of Joseph himself and Fathers Laroche and Verchese. I named the latter in homage to Father Ralph de Bricassart’s mentor in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds (1977). Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal; Bishop John England (as well as his sister, Joanna Monica England); Father John McEncroe; and Father Richard Swinton Baker are all taken from life—although there is no evidence the latter ever wore a corset.

  Bishop England did ordain the mixed-race George Paddington in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He also banished a mixed-race nun from Charleston. The Bishop’s ownership of a male slave is based on the 1830 Federal Census and the Bishop’s mention of “Castalio” in a May 4, 1831 letter reprinted in the May 14 United States Catholic Miscellany. History does not tell us how Bishop England acquired Castalio or what became of him after 1831; these are my invention. My gratitude goes to Professor David C. R. Heisser, who put the pie
ces together and brought Castalio to my attention via his article “Bishop Lynch’s People” in The South Carolina Historical Magazine 102.3 (2001).

  Father James Wallace’s priesthood, professorship, investment acumen, and general brilliance are described in Father Jeremiah Joseph O’Connell’s Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia (1879) and Father Peter Guilday’s The Life and Times of John England (1927). That Wallace “was the father by a colored woman whom he owned of three sons—Andrew, George, and James” is documented in Julian A. Selby’s Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscences of Columbia, S. C. (1905). I discovered the Wallaces through John Hammond Moore’s Columbia and Richland County (1993).

  All the writers, composers, artists, and saints I mention are historical, such as Saint Teresa of Ávila, Julian(a) of Norwich, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Gaetano Donizetti. I took a bit of poetic license by having Lucia di Lammermoor (written in 1835) performed in Charleston a few months before its recorded debut in the United States, although the French version had been performed in New Orleans in 1841.

  “Absence is to love as wind is to fire…” is from Count Roger de Bussy-Rabutin’s Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1665). The lyrics of the ballad “I’d Offer Thee This Hand of Mine” were penned by Bransford Vawter of Lynchburg, Virginia, who would die of consumption at the age of twenty-three in 1838. “The grave’s a fine and private place” is a line from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress,” written about 1651.

  All the clocks in Gérard Saint-Clair’s shop are based on real 18th- and 19th-century timepieces. In his office, René has copies of Joos van Cleve’s The Holy Family (1515-20) and Titian’s Noli Me Tangere (circa 1514), both now held by The National Gallery in London. Léon Bonnat’s Martyrdom of St. Denis (1885), a mural in the Panthéon in Paris, inspired the third painting.

  My characters use several foreign terms of endearment, some of which translate into English better than others. They are all equivalent to “sweetheart” or “my dear.” Haitian Creole: trezò mwen (my treasure). French: ma petite (my little one), ma poulette (my chicken), ma minette (my pussycat), and ma belle (my beautiful one). Irish: a pheata (my pet) and a chuisle mo chroí (pulse of my heart). For a more extensive glossary and bibliography, please visit my website: https://elizabethbellauthor.com/