by M. J. Logue
“Oh, Thankful,” she said, and her bare foot escaped his fingers and traced, instead, the solid muscle of his thigh. “You are beautiful, sir.”
He said nothing, her formal, wonderful, deceptively cool husband. Said not a word, though his eyes widened a little, and his lips parted like a flattered maid’s. “Beautiful,” she said again, firmly. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine. I have thought so all of this evening, sir, and I will think so all the days of my life, for you are my rebel angel, husband.”
"Oh,” he said. Under her toes the silk of his breeches was smooth, and warm, and quivering, very slightly. “Thomazine, I -” She wondered what he might have said, had her foot not been quite where it was. She was not sitting barefoot and abandoned in a rocking coach. It was the motion of the conveyance that caused her foot to be caressing him in a most intimate manner. It was merely the swaying of the vehicle, behind those tight leather blinds, that was making her feel quite so heated and restless -
“Thomazine Russell,” he said, and there was that quiver in his voice that might have been desire, or might have been laughter. “You are a naughty, wanton wench. Come over here, and give over teasing your poor aged husband.”
“You would have me sit beside you?” - and her heart gave another great quivering leap of excitement, for being so close to him was yet a comfort and a delight -
He leaned forward and took her about the waist and heaved her into his lap in a great flurry of rustling silks. “No, tibber, I would have you where you are,” he said, and it was not laughter, and his hands were not on her waist any more.
She suddenly could not breathe, and there was nothing more she could do but kiss him, blindly, with her eyes tight-shut. Winding her hands up into his hair, so that he might not stop kissing her, not now, not ever -
“Thomazine,” he was saying against her mouth, and she shook her head fiercely - now is not the time for talking -
not that he was paying any attention. He was just saying her name for the pleasure of saying it, and the coach was swaying and jolting on the cobbles -
“Don’t you dare stop,” she said wildly, and opened her eyes, and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
He said nothing, but his eyes sparkled - he did not mind the bite, then, for she thought later that she might have bruises on her backside where he had held her, hard. He did not think she was made of glass. Not afraid of her passion or her ferocity, for he had his own.
“Thankful,” she whimpered, and it was jolted out of her, and he turned his head abruptly and bit her in his turn, his face buried in the curve of her neck. “Oh. Oh - Apple!”
“Zee - tib - am I hurting -”
“Yes - no - I don’t - “ and she did not know, only that she would die if he stopped now, and she pressed his head to her heart and braced her bare feet against the floor of the carriage and let the world go to pieces.
29
Her hair had all fallen down loose from its pins and her feet were bare and her lips were swollen, and his wife looked nothing short of debauched and it was rather marvellous.
Not in all his life had he made love to a woman in a moving conveyance, nor even conceived that such a thing might be possible -
“Oh,” she said drowsily against his chest, “I had not noticed you taking so active a role, husband. I thought I had been doing the greater part of the labour -”
“Minx,” he said, and he hoped he sounded reproving, but suspected he did not. He would have stayed so all night, for all she was a fine, well-nourished young lady and she did not quite fit in his lap. A little discomfort was a small price to pay, for the joy of the softness of her loose hair over his hands and the hitch of her breathlessness against him.
She was in some disarray, and he must blame himself for that. He was not aware that he was looking on her with quite such intent, but the flush on her cheeks suddenly spread all the way down to the loosened neck of her shift, and she endeavoured to tuck herself back into her bodice as if she were suddenly embarrassed.
Or cold. She had a wonderfully wicked smile, when she realised what he was looking on. “I trust you are satisfied with what you see, husband,” she said pertly.
“I am,” he said, and then, a little awkwardly, "And you?"
"Always," she said. And the odd thing was, he believed her. Her eyes were very bright, and she would have said more, but that there was a tapping on the carriage door. A tapping that was becoming increasingly urgent, as if the tapper might have been tactfully trying to attract their attention for some time, and Thomazine looked at the jerking door handle with a look that mingled horror and sheer wicked joy, before draping herself artistically across his shoulder.
An unconvincing moan escaped her lips as the door finally flew open, the blind rolling up with a fleshy smack.
“Are you in need of aid, sir? Should I call for assistance?”
“A ladies’ maid,” she murmured wickedly for his ear alone, “for I don’t think either you or I can repair this damage unaided.”
And Thankful Russell, who had been an honest citizen when he was a bachelor, looked at the earnest, worried countenance of their driver, and claimed that the poor lady had been taken faint. Grateful, not for the first time, that he had not taken to drink or gluttony with any abandon for he was still lithe enough to take her in his arms as if she truly were taken ill, and carry her trailing like a poor hurt bird across the rutted mud of the street.
(Which was harder work than it looked, actually. But he wasn't going to tell her that.)
29
He had thought she had fallen asleep as soon as he had laid her on the bed, and he was glad she had not, for she curled herself against him and it was warm and companionable under the blankets in the dark.
She wriggled, and blew into his shoulder like a happy horse, holding his hands about her waist. (Possibly she ought to be wearing a shift. Possibly he ought to be wearing a nightshirt, in the name of decency. But God knows he had struggled enough to get the clothes off both of them in the dark, in that little space, without waking the house, that he might be excused that.)
“Do you not like him?” she said sleepily, and his arm tightened about her shoulder comfortably.
“Do I not like who, tibber?”
“Him. Charles.”
"Can’t abide the man. He’s about as much sense as a gadfly, and it turns my stomach to see a man his age crawling to that pack of shameless little apes. Who loathe him, so soon as his purse is closed."
“That’s not nice,” she murmured.
He laughed, silently. “Says the man my age who would crawl as spinelessly to retain the favour of a girl no older than my lord Rochester. So no. I cannot abide him. But I understand him.”
“That is barely a compliment!”
“I did not accuse you of meaning to withdraw your favour, tibber. Just that if you chose not to love me, I should be just as willing to humiliate myself in any form you should choose, so long as you would only care for me again.”
“Then you are a big silly,” she said, and nestled her face into his armpit. And then, “Would you? Truly, Thankful?”
“I should prefer you not try the experiment. But yes.”
The wind was moaning again, and a flung handful of hail rattled against the dark glass. “I pity him,” he said, suddenly wide-awake, “and I can conceive of little worse than to wake every day and know yourself to be the object of every man’s pity. I thank God for Sir Charles’ admirable talent for self-deception, for were he to know how utterly he is held in contempt by his peers as a tattling, lickspittle popinjay - he should put a period to his existence, I think.”
“And you think of him with such contempt? And call him your friend?”
“Oh, no, tibber. He would call himself my friend. Presently. Be assured we had precious little to say to one another when I was an unfashionable young lieutenant.”
“Twenty years ago.“
“Twenty years ago,�
� he agreed, and they were quiet for a while. The window rattled, and a nasty little finger of wind prodded its way under the door where it shifted in its frame. He let her shift and nuzzle against him, wondering, still, at the marvel of a warm body in your bed, in your arms, in your heart, on such an uncharitable night. (A warm body with cold feet, intent on warming those icy digits against your own warm flesh. No matter. It was a small price to pay for the joy of her company. He gave a resigned sigh, and hooked his own foot over her shin, and rubbed it till she warmed a little.) “Tibber. 'S like being in bed with a frog, wench." She laughed sleepily, and rubbed her head against his chest, but did not speak. "You ‘wake, still?”
“Mm.”
“I think – I think - I do not like Charles because I pity him. And I pity him because I see in him what I could be. Might have been. So desperate to be liked he will permit any indignity, any abuse –“
“Not you,” she said firmly, and he closed his eyes in the dark. No. Not him. Not now.
But once.
He had been that lonely, once, when he had been that damaged young lieutenant who could not bear to see the ruin of his once-lovely face in a shaving-glass. Lonely, and unable to bear his own company, and he would have borne any humiliation if he could have only belonged to someone. But then, Fly had taught him well; he had not known how to belong, then, only that he craved it.
Fairmantle had a place, and people about him. A wife, back in Buckinghamshire. Were there children? He did not know. But a wife, and a home, and a place that wanted him in it, and missed him when he was not in it.
To have that, and for it not to be enough? No, Russell did not understand that. And it made him uneasy.
30
He had thought, the next morning, that his headache was the result of an unaccustomed lack of sleep, and now he was sure it was not. He blinked hard, and discreetly rubbed his eyes, but the elegant back-slanting scrawl remained as wavering.
The room was too warm, and it smelt of exotic spice. He rather suspected that everything about Clarence di Cavalese was expensive, and subtly fragranced with the breath of the Indies. The only sign of his country of birth was a very small, dark, portrait of a young woman in an unfastened, fur-lined jacket, putting on her stockings the edge of an unmade bed.
Russell had very recently left a young woman with very similar breasts, putting on her stockings, sitting on the edge of an unmade bed that he and she had unmade. Dear God, but he found that painting erotic, even when he felt like death. He wondered if Cavalese would consider parting with it, and then he felt guilty for even wondering such a thing, for it was not inconceivable that in Amsterdam - den Haag, wherever the man hailed from - that the pretty girl was sitting on the edge of her bed alone, and waiting for her man to come home from his trading in a hostile foreign land.
Across the well-polished inlaid table, Mijnheer di Cavalese’s profile remained as impassive as ever, as white and unreadable as a Roman emperor on an old coin. He wondered what would happen if he told Cavalese he was sick. Wondered if Cavalese ever got sick, although looking at that impeccable figure in its dark wool suit, he doubted it. Couldn’t imagine Cavalese with a hair out of place –
“Major Russell, sir, I await your answer?” he said crisply.
And Russell couldn’t do it. His head was stuffed with wool, fit only for spinning fancies around this man's inscrutable domestic arrangements. He simply could not gather his thoughts together sufficient, not only to work through that bloody stupid code of spice and silk and monopoly and export, but that impenetrable code of circuitous courtesies. Of what might offend the Dutch, or might not, and what formalities must be observed in one’s personal dealings –
“I can’t,” he said simply, and Cavalese blinked at him.
“Cannot? But sir, we expect to reach some kind of settlement this morning?”
He wondered how many other men there were across London this morning, engaged in this polite fiction of trade. Like spiders, all spinning their own little webs, with the great fat white spider of that erstwhile regicide George Downing in the middle of it, manipulating all those sticky little strings –
“I cannot,” he said again, more firmly.
“Perhaps you should spend a little less time in debauchery, sir, and a little more time at your work?” Cavalese snapped, and that was so unlikely as to make Russell laugh out loud. (Which hurt.)
“Possibly, mijnheer.” And then, because all the bones in his head were hurting, and his skin ached, he said with more asperity than was professionally discreet, “And perhaps you should spend a little less time listening to slanderous rumour, and a little more time in gathering intelligence, or you would know that I have suffered from a recurrent fever for the better part of ten years.”
“A most convenient fever,” Cavalese said. “Will you to business, or no?”
He should. He must.
By rights this man was his enemy: England was declared at war with the Dutch, again. He owed it to his country – he owed it to his wife’s safety, and his family’s, Russell, you have a family, you have an obligation to look to their safety, that they might not be hurt or distressed in a further great war –
He was a very small, very sick spider, and he wanted to limp away to a dark corner and be ill in peace.
Downing pulled the sticky strings. Downing had known Russell in Scotland, ten years ago: had trusted him with autonomy in this tiny matter of negotiating some trade leeway with the Dutch merchants –
George Downing would sell the souls of his unborn children for profit, so long as he retained his mercantile links with the Low Countries and the gold continued to flow unchecked into his pockets. Which was, possibly, what His Majesty wanted in an ambassador, a man whose nose for self-interested profit was legendary. That matter of a day, two days’ delay in cementing those tiny fragile links of commerce – it was of no great significance. A few guineas lost, to men on both sides of the North Sea. No more.
It was a tiny fragile link that underpinned a bigger thing. He had a duty.
“My apologies, Mijnheer di Cavalese,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster. “I will attend you tomorrow. By your leave, sir?”
Outside, the fresh air made him feel a little better. A very little. He closed his eyes and put his hand on the nearest wall, grateful for the warm, rough feel of the plaster under his fingers. It was solid, and real. It made him feel less as if he might fall on his face. He could smell the river, the salt mud and the tide and the debris that washed up there with every turn of the moon, and the damp wood and water of the big ships moored up, and the tar and rope.
Spices of the Indies, where one of the big ships was unloading, and that made him smile a little, for perhaps tomorrow he might be well enough to talk to Mijnheer di Cavalese of peppercorns and nutmegs and bastard cassia. The gulls were laughing, high up over his head in a rain-washed sky, and he could hear the slow, faint slap of the water against the hulls of the moored ships. It was chill, but the cold salt felt good against his sweaty skin.
He thought he might have slept for a while, sitting on a coil of rotting rope with his back up against the harbourmaster’s wall. The sun had moved, between the ragged clouds, and the water shimmered, although he thought that was perhaps just in his head. He felt steadier. Hungry – well, perhaps that was what ailed him, a lack of food and no more. They were still unloading the big ship, though down to the last bales, bringing them up out of the darkness in their oiled silk wrappers. (He wondered what Thomazine would make of this, this business in deep waters: if it would fascinate her and excite her as much as it did him. He wanted, suddenly, very badly, to take her a gift of this – not a packet of peppercorns or a bolt of silk, but the smell of hemp and tar and sweat and sunlight, and the sound of men hammering and boot-heels thumping on wood -)
But he could not. And he had been here too long already, and she would be worried for him, and he missed her. He stood up, swaying a little.
“Y’all right, major?�
�
They knew him, here. Some of them. He was here often enough that he went unmolested, though he rather suspected they spun yarns about how he had come by his scarred face that were considerably less romantic than the reality. “Persephone due in by the end o’ the week, I reckon. Provided the bloody butterboxes didn’t put a hole in her.”
He had something of a soft spot for the Perse, too. Would not have chose her for his enterprises else, she being a good forty years old and as comfortably unfashionable and wide in the beam as a little country goodwife. He’d been fond of the Perse since the first time he’d set foot on her rackety splintered deck, and the first time he’d gone to the Low Countries it had been in her comfortable, wallowing embrace, and he had come home safe. “I trust so,” he said, and turned his face up to the sun. “Though on the wings of the storm, I fear.”
31
She had just drawn a horse, on the hearthstone, for the amusement of the Bartholomew-baby. The child’s mother had not been as impressed, and had huffed at Thomazine’s dirtying her clean hearth with such daubery, but the baby was delighted, and –
“Man shall not live by bread alone,” Thomazine said tartly, “but some roses, also.”
“You are clever,” the widow said grudgingly. “With your hands. It is a good drawing.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like a dog, at least.” She looked out of the window, then, out into a street that was touched by sun for the first time since she had been in London, and it lifted her heart. “May I do any errands for you, mistress?”
“I have no errands for you to run. And even if I had, Mistress Russell, I am quite sure the major would not think it fitting for his wife to be running his errands, like a maid.”
“But –“ she was bored, she came from a house where there was always work to be done, where the labourer was worthy of his hire, and a man was not judged on what work he did but the quality of it. They had not been in London for any of his linen to require her attention, and his stockings were all but intact. (He had been mending his own for so long that they were as lumpy as walnuts, the poor sweet. Perhaps she might go out and get him some more, not elegant silk ones, but sensible wool, that he might wear at home, when he was out about his day-to-day business on such cool, brisk spring days as this.)