Rakes and Radishes

by Susanna Ives

  He didn’t get near her.

  Bucky’s cousin was another matter. Her gaze never left Kesseley’s form, hastening to him at the end of every dance, being sure he had a drink when he wanted one, introducing him to dance partners. He repeated his futile desire to dance with her because it made her smile a flustered, natural smile that should have always been on her face, but waned as her eyes slid to her husband.

  As the clock hand pushed two o’clock, most of the candles on the chandeliers had burned out, and many guests had left. The orchestra took a break. Kesseley searched for a footman. “May I have a brandy?” he asked.

  The footman bowed and disappeared, but it was Bucky’s cousin who returned with a brimming, amber glass she held on level with her generous breasts. Their fingers touched as she handed it to him. She watched him drink.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, biting the lower edge of her lip.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Where’s your beautiful smile?”

  She tried to smile just as her husband fell from his chair onto the floor and awakened with a glazed, stupid look. “Where’s the music? I paid for music, damn it.”

  “I hate him,” she whispered, keeping her beautiful face as still as stone.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he said, heading off like a drunken knight.

  “Come, man, let’s have some manly conversation in your chamber,” Kesseley said, taking the man by his arm and pulling him up. “I think we’ve both had a little too much.”

  It took three of them—Kesseley, the butler and a footman pushing from behind—to get the rotund man up the stairs. Kesseley could hear the hostess below, reassuring guests who suddenly hastened to leave that they could stay. Her voice was shrill, barely containing her panic.

  They dumped the man into his bed. His chamber smelled like smoke and chamber pot. He fell back asleep, snoring through his fat lips. Kesseley let the servants take care of the man and stumbled back into the stairs, wanting to get the hell away.

  The hostess was coming up the stairs, stopping his progress.

  “I’m sorry, Lord Kesseley.” Her voice was a sad whisper.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  She took his hand, turned it over, and her fingers traced along the lines of his hand. The servants were extinguishing the candles. The residual smoke drifted up and the hallway grew dimmer.

  Where was Bucky?

  She started talking, the words coming out so fast, as if they had been fermenting in her brain for a long time. He was too drunk to understand her dialogue, but he knew what she was saying anyway. When she finished, she stood silent, awkward, waiting.

  He exhaled and put his arms about her, drawing her away from the stairwell and the eyes of the servants below. She had tiny bones, frail to his touch, and smelled faintly like citrus in the winter. His penis grew hard with a drunk erection.

  “Damn it!” He backed away, his palms up. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no,” she cried, taking his hand again and caressing it with her thumb.

  “I’m too drunk. I can’t,” he protested, but he didn’t drop her hand, nor did he try to stop her when she led him to her chamber.

  He could just see the faintest outlines from the dim light of the night and the city. Floral wallpaper, floral bed, delicate furniture, paintings, everything crowded, leaving no empty spaces.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, drew his palm to her face, circling it around her cheek.

  “Tell me I’m pretty again.”

  “You’re lovely.”

  She drew his head down, pressing her trembling, unsure lips to his jaw.

  “Please,” she said, her fingers gathering the skirt of her gown. He felt the silk of her stockings against his thighs. “I’ve only known him.”

  “I-I can’t.”

  “Try, please,” she whispered, reaching for the button of his breeches.

  He thrust at her thighs with his weak drunken erection, failing to find that spot of dark oblivion between her legs.

  The hostess let out a strangled sob.

  Pale fabric swished in the periphery of Kesseley’s vision. Then the hard edge of metal slammed down on the base of Kesseley’s skull.

  “Don’t hurt my mama!” a young boy cried.

  Kesseley stumbled back. He didn’t know if the blow was real or remembered.

  “You leave her alone!” the boy wailed. Kesseley could just see the figure of a child, maybe seven. He struck at Kesseley with his small fists. It felt like being beaten with cattails.

  “Don’t hurt my mama!”

  “Damn me to hell,” Kesseley cried.

  He fled, running out into the night without his greatcoat and his shirt hanging out. He made it to the park and concealed himself in the blackness under the tree branches. The wind whipped around him, whispering. My son. My son.

  He swung at the ghost in the air. The phantom slipped away, hiding behind him. Now you know me, it whispered.

  “No!” Kesseley screamed.

  He felt a hard blow in his belly, knocking the wind from him. He fell on his knees.

  “Father?” he cried.

  “Look in ’is coat,” a low rough voice growled.

  A strong hand held Kesseley’s face down, suffocating him in the black, murky dirt. Rough hands reached from behind, ripping his coat. Kesseley thrust his elbow back. Something cracked. The weight fell off Kesseley’s shoulders. He bolted forward as a fist rammed his kidney.

  He groaned, fighting to keep standing. Sweet brandy ran out of his mouth. He felt heat and the stirring of air before him. Swinging blindly, he connected with hard bone, perhaps a cheek. Pain reverberated down his arm.

  “Bloody ’ell,” the hoarse voice coughed out.

  A cold edge dug into his skin. A knife, slicing like a slithering snake down his arm.

  “You son of a bitch,” Kesseley shouted, throwing his arm back. He caught his assailant’s face with the back of his fist. The knife spiked into Kesseley’s forearm and then fell with a muted thud on the grass.

  Then nothing. Wind and the trilling chirp of a nightingale. And pain.

  He grabbed his arm, holding it tight, feeling it throb under his hand. Warm blood seeped through his fingers.

  He was shaking, everything blurring. He stumbled, following the faint light glowing through the leaves. The pain screaming in his mind. The lights came from torches outside the ghostly white mansion on Park Lane. He held on to the iron gates with his mangled arm, blood drenching his shirt. Everything was narrowing to a small spot. His mind was collapsing.

  He had to get to her.

  He inched along, forcing himself to stay conscious.

  His home was silent. The light coming over the door shadowed the stairs on the wall. Kesseley clenched his teeth, stifling his desire to scream as he held the railing and forced himself up step by step, until he leaned his head against her door.

  “Henrietta,” he whispered.

  She didn’t come.

  “Henrietta…”

  He fell, his cheekbone slamming the floor planks. He thought he heard her footsteps. Blackness.

  ***

  Her warmth was all around him—the ridge of her collarbone, her tiny wrists, her breasts under the soft fabric of her shift. Her loose curls tickled his neck.

  “Oh God, Kesseley, what’s happened?”

  He clung to her, shaking, his teeth chattering, so cold a snowstorm could have blown down the hall.

  “You’re hurt!”

  He put a feeble finger on her mouth. “Shhh. Get Baggot.”

  ***

  Big hands were on him—men’s hands—lifting him. She trailed behind them.

  “Don’t tell,” he murmured.

  They put him in his bed. He looked up at the slats of wood running across his canopy. Henrietta’s fingers felt like tight strings around his hand, her eyes shiny like obsidian. Baggot cut off his coat and shirt. Blood. Blood. Blood. She put her hand over her mouth, tears squirting out of the
edge of her eyes.

  Don’t cry, he thought.

  The cut ran like a winding river from his shoulder to his elbow. Baggot poured herbal water on it. Kesseley crushed his teeth together, trying to keep the pain inside him. She squeezed his hand, her fingers stroking his forehead. The candle cast her shadow on the wall behind her, cutting across his father’s portrait. He was afraid his father would hurt her, but he couldn’t move his arms to protect her and cried out in frustration.

  Then suddenly he felt nothing, the pain leaving, his body falling away from him.

  ***

  He awoke to the sound of rain tapping the window. A line of pale light shone through his curtain. He felt pain, but also her warm skin on his, her cinnamon scent in his nose. She sat in a chair by his bed, her head bent down beside him on the mattress with her arm across his chest. Asleep.

  His father peered down from his portrait with cold metal-gray eyes.

  Kesseley didn’t move, could scarcely breathe. He just wanted to keep her here longer, the quiet rhythm of her breath and the ping of rain on the glass. He tried to memorize every detail of this moment to keep in his memory. Soon she would wake up and everything would end.

  A servant tapped on his door.

  She lifted her head, her curls tickling his bare skin.

  “No, not now,” he called out.

  Her eyes, gentle with sleep and concern, gazed at him. She smiled. “Kesseley,” she whispered, letting her fingers gingerly touch his bindings, stained with old, brown blood. “Does it hurt?”

  “No.” Yes. He wanted so much to feel her lips on his, without anger or hurt, just her softness smothering his fear.

  “I s-stayed. Baggot said the cuts weren’t deep. B-but I was afraid,” she said. “I love you, Kesseley.”

  She leaned over and kissed his lips.

  This was the hardest moment of his life. He couldn’t let her know him like this. The ugliness. The words he had to say burned in his throat. He gently pushed her away.

  “Last night, a young man lost his inheritance to me at cards. The remains of one man’s life lost in an evening. I wasn’t even remorseful. I was drunk. I went to a ball and the hostess drew me into her chamber.” His words rattled through his body like an old man. “Her son walked in—he couldn’t have been more than seven—and saw his mother’s legs around me.”

  Henrietta’s lips quivered as if she wanted to say words, but couldn’t find any. Nothing would make it better. His sins were as true as the blood staining his sheets.

  “You can never say ‘I love you’ again. Do you understand? We can never have a life together. In any capacity.”

  She bowed her head, her long, black hair concealing her face.

  “I won’t stop saying I love you, because I do.” She lifted her gaze. Her eyes were fierce. “I will love you all my life.”

  “Henrietta, I’m not a good man.”

  “Don’t say that! You are the kindest, best man I know. We can go back to Wrenthorpe. It could be like it used to be.”

  He tensed and pain shot up his arm. “It can’t be like it was before. What it was before was a lie.”

  “No!”

  He closed his eyes, so she couldn’t see the lie he was about to tell her. “I don’t love you, Henrietta. Understand. I will never love you again. You must find someone else.”

  ***

  It was impossible to keep Kesseley’s injuries a secret in the small house. Blood is hard to conceal. His mother left her chamber for the first time in almost two weeks and rushed to her son’s bedside. An hour later, they came downstairs arm in arm to the parlor, a strained truce between them. Kesseley wore gray pantaloons and an unbuttoned shirt with no cravat, his arm bound tightly under his sleeve. His lips were tight. The skin around his eyes was a pale blue.

  He didn’t look at her, just at the tip of his glossy boot.

  “Kesseley is engaged, dearest,” Lady Kesseley said in a bright, empty voice.

  “Who?” Henrietta whispered.

  He raised his eyes to hers. His voice was hard, emotionless. “I am betrothed to Lady Sara.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Henrietta needed the things she remembered around her, holding her. She wanted to go back to Rose House, to its crooked, crumbling walls, the smell of hundreds of years of fires, and the dried lavender, rosemary and mint hanging in the pantry. She wanted to curl up in her woolen blanket, her feet tucked under her body. She would gaze out the large windows to the expanse of field extending beyond the village to the horizon, bending and blurred through the old, thick-paned glass. All her life she had tried to make her quaint, irregular relic of a home into the grand estate it could never be. She wanted her old home back with its smoking fireplaces, squat medieval walls and aging timbers. Where the rooms were thick with memories of her mother’s laughter and young Kesseley playing by her side. From now on, she would stop trying to cover her home—her life—in pretty paint, but would cherish it as it was. But she couldn’t go home, though, not when her father would be arriving in London in two days. Two days.

  When her mother died, her body was laid out in the parlor for two days, the ravages of cancer concealed under the long sleeves and lace collar Mrs. Potts and Henrietta had sewn on her mother’s blue evening gown. Kesseley had come that first morning as the servants set the bed in the parlor. Her father brought her mother down, her body so emaciated she could have been a kitten in his arms. He placed her on the bed. Then he wept, kissed his wife’s cheek and unclasped her necklace.

  She remembered Kesseley putting the pendant around her neck, lifting her hair and clasping the chain. The silver setting felt heavy on her young neck. He stayed beside her as she watched her mother’s still body, waiting for her chest to expand with breath, as if this were all a mistake.

  “Come with me,” he whispered, taking her hand. They slipped through the villagers starting to fill the house and escaped to the quiet streaming of the Great Ouse.

  Now Henrietta felt that acute sorrow again.

  Kesseley rested in his bed just beyond her wall. She wanted to lie beside him again and let him fill her senses. The warm smoothness of his skin under her arm, his comforting smell of leather and apples and earth. The rustling sound of his breath when he slept, like wind through summer leaves. Now it would only be a memory. She had been severed, and her imagined life expanded before her without Kesseley. A separation like a death.

  ***

  The two days passed as slow as a mournful march of a defeated army. She searched for her pendant, not finding it. She pushed back the thought that it had fallen off in the park or at a ball, and that she had lost her mother’s necklace forever. Kesseley was either in his chamber or gone. He dined only once with Henrietta and his mother, asking Henrietta only to oblige him with the pudding.

  She carried so much inside her, her heart sloshed like an overfilled, heavy bucket. She was desperate to see Mr. Elliot, but he never returned to the park.

  Kesseley left the house early on the day of his engagement ball. She heard his door close. He paused by her door. She could see the shadow of his feet from where she sat at her dressing table. Her heart tightened. Then he walked on. The thud of the entrance door reverberated up the stairwell.

  ***

  Later in the afternoon, Henrietta tapped Lady Kesseley’s chamber door. Her lady’s maid, with pins pressed between her lips, let Henrietta inside. Silk and sheer gowns were strewn about the bed and chairs.

  Lady Kesseley stood before her commode, dressed only in shift, stays and a diamond necklace. Tiny anxious lines radiated from her thinned lips. She pressed her palm on her forehead. “I’m not sure what to wear on the day I lose my son. Oh, Henrietta, everything has to be perfect. I have to be perfect.”

  “You will be the most beautiful lady there.”

  Lady Kesseley shook her head, as if Henrietta hadn’t answered her question properly.

  Henrietta carefully folded back the edge of a pale voile gown on the edge of the bed and sa
t. “I do not think I can be your companion for the remainder of the Season,” she said. “You see, my father and his colleague have an appointment at Greenwich Observatory tomorrow night. I’m not sure how long my father shall stay in London, but when he leaves, I want to go with him.”

  “Becky, please let us continue in a few minutes,” Lady Kesseley said to her lady’s maid and waited for her leave.

  “I do wish you would stay. And, well…” She paused. A sad smile teetered on her lips, then faded. “It’s all so peculiar. I wasn’t invited to dine this evening. I’ve not heard from the duke or duchess. Yet Winslow and the princess tell me it is true that all of the ton is talking of the engagement. Does my son seem happy to you?”

  “I-I don’t know.”

  “I’m so afraid. He doesn’t care for Lady Sara. I hear only coldness in his voice. There is nothing I can do. He still despises me because of my affair with Gilling. Nothing I say will work on him. Everything that happened before is happening again, and it is because I was too weak to stop it.”

  Lady Kesseley looked at Henrietta expectantly as if Henrietta was supposed to say something to make everything better.

  “I-I’ve lost Mother’s pendant,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’ve looked everywhere. I fear it may be in the park or the street. But if you find it, please return it to me.”

  Lady Kesseley nodded, pursing her lips together. Henrietta rose to leave.

  “Why didn’t you love him?” Lady Kesseley asked.

  “I do love him.” The words burst out of Henrietta. “It was all my fault. I wanted him to steal Lady Sara away, because I thought I loved Edward. I urged him to dress better and change his manners. I was foolish and ignorant. Then he kissed me, and I realized I loved him all along. But when I told him, he said I was t-too late.”

  Lady Kesseley stared at her, her face stricken with pain. “Oh no.” She reached out, but Henrietta couldn’t bear to be touched. She hated herself too much at this moment.