To this day, his father didn’t like to be around the kitchen when a meal was prepared. William had simply thought it was one of the generally open-minded man’s more traditional views about who belonged in the kitchen. But he also liked his meat cooked well—he was the bane of chefs in fine restaurants all over San Francisco who lamented that he ruined their steaks by ordering them well done.
William understood the point of the story. His father had had a traumatic event in his past, and a consequent ‘stress reaction,’ too. In fact, he understood his drive to invent a safer tunneling method as well. Henry Frazier’s greatest innovation, inspired by his greatest trauma.
“It’s the guilt, I think, as much as the event. Being okay after something that hurt so many people. It’s hard to face that, feeling lucky and guilty for it. You got to get right with that, son. I can stay away from the kitchen. You can’t stay away from the Bay.” He tried on a grin. “Not until somebody builds that bridge.”
William didn’t want to stay away from the Bay. He wanted to be himself. “I know. I need some time.”
“And you take it. Love that sweet girl you brought home, get her settled in. But don’t wander too far. Have a think before you move out. You’re all we’ve got, William.”
William leaned back in the armchair in the corner of his bedroom and watched Nora settle in. Mrs. Ma and her daughter, June, had unpacked their bags that afternoon, and Nora puttered around the room, finding her things.
She wore a dainty nightgown that fluttered around her legs as she walked from the closet to a bureau to the dressing table his mother had had brought in for her. That table didn’t match the rest of the furniture, because William favored a heavy, sharp-edged style, and the dressing table was lighter, more feminine. If this was going to be her room, too, they should redecorate.
Picking up her new sterling-silver hairbrush, she sat at that dressing table and fussed with her hair. William missed her long locks, too; he’d fantasized often about wrapping them around his hand, but hadn’t gotten the chance. But the soft curls were beautiful, the way they caressed her face, and in San Francisco, she wasn’t quite such an oddity—or better, they were more tolerant of oddities here. The city was a daily mélange of all different kinds of people; it took some doing to scandalize even the top of the social ladder. An atypical hairstyle wouldn’t cause much of a stir.
“What do you think of the city?” he asked.
She smiled into the mirror, meeting his eyes in their reflection. “It’s so beautiful! And unique! The houses are so many colors. And everything looks so shiny and new and bright.”
“That’s because it is. An earthquake reduced us to rubble six years ago.”
Her smile faltered. “I know. I meant no offense.”
“None taken, darling. But that’s why the city looks as it does. The rubble is cleared away, but we’re still rebuilding.”
“Not this house, though. This house survived.”
“It did. Comparatively minor damage.”
“I’m glad. It’s a magnificent house.”
“It’s no Tarrindale Hall.”
She made a bunched face and got up from the dressing table to sit on the side of the bed, facing him. “Tarrindale is a musty old ruin. Full of ghosts.”
William knew perfectly well that Nora adored her home. She’d spoken of it many times in glowing, wistful terms, and he understood what she was doing now: aligning the house with her father so she wouldn’t be homesick for it, now that she’d rejected him. So he didn’t challenge her criticism of the manor.
“This house is delightful. It’s so lovely and bright. Everything here is bright.”
William chuckled. “Let’s remember this talk in the morning, when you wake to an impenetrable wall of fog at the windows.”
“You know there’ll be fog?”
“There’s usually fog in the morning. Most days, it burns off by noon, and the rest of the day is sunny. Up here on the hill, the fog clears a little earlier. Then it comes in again in the night. When it doesn’t burn off, it stays chilly and damp all day, even in the summer.”
“Well, sunny afternoons sound lovely.” She stood again, and William caught her hand before she could begin her busy buzz around the room again.
“Nora, how would you feel about staying here—making our home in this house, with my parents?”
She frowned. “Isn’t that what we’d planned to do?”
Another thing he’d simply assumed, that they’d take their own house. He was a novice at this marriage business and had left all the important questions—children, home—for after the wedding. He wondered what else they’d missed knowing about each other. But these important questions seemed easily resolved between them, and this one made him laugh.
“Apparently, everyone but me planned that we would live here, yes.” He pulled her to him and set her on his lap.
Smiling, she looped her arms around his neck. “What did you think we’d do?”
“I thought we’d buy a home of our own, maybe build one.”
“But why? Do your parents want us to go?”
“They absolutely do not. I just thought—don’t you want to be the mistress of your own home?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve never thought of it.” She did now, looking over his shoulder, out the window, where the city twinkled below. “It rather frightens me. I don’t know how I’d manage a house of my own. My instruction was lacking, I’m afraid. I was a terrible student of the domestic arts.” She met his eyes again. “Do you want to live away?”
William thought about that. He’d always assumed he would. But he loved this house, and the ranch, and his parents. There was plenty of room, and sufficient privacy. This was his home.
“No, I don’t. Maybe, when we’re ready to have children, we can consider the question again. Or not. There’s room for children here, and my mother would explode with happiness to have grandchildren living under her roof.”
“Your mother is an impressive woman. Your aunt, too. I’ve never known women like them.”
William nodded. “They’re mighty.”
“’Mighty,’ yes. That’s the word. They’re warriors.” She played with the ends of his hair, where it lay on his neck. He’d taken off his shirt and suspenders and had been relaxing in only his trousers. “Your mother wants me to work with her. To tell my story about what happened in England.”
“You mean go on a speaking tour with her? Fight for suffrage?” Nora nodded, and William sighed. “I’m sorry. She shouldn’t have brought that up, not today. We just got home.”
“I don’t mind. I want to do it. I want to keep fighting, even though I left England. As you said, I can use my voice and my pen. Here, I can fight for justice in both countries, and I can be safer when I do it, I think.”
“You absolutely can. I’ll keep you safe.” He thought about his breakdown on the ferry, his outrageous weakness, and slammed his eyes shut against the memory. “I’m sorry about today.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ferry. I hate this weakness that’s insinuated itself in my head.”
He’d dropped his head; now, she lifted his chin with her small hand and stared into his eyes. “It’s not weakness.”
“Nora, please. Of course it is. I hate it, and I’m sorry.”
“William, think for a moment, please. What do you think it says, to me, that you’re so appalled by the stress you’re experiencing right now? When I’ve experienced something similar, when my mind, too, has had difficulty making sense of reality, and you told me that I was strong and brave. Were you lying to me? Humoring me as you would a child?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you not also strong and brave?”
“It’s different.”
“How? Because you’re a man and supposed to be strong, and I’m a woman and supposed to be weak?”
He didn’t have an answer to that, because yes, that was it. He was supposed to protect her,
care for her. Save her. He was the hero, not the victim. And of course he couldn’t say that aloud, not to Nora.
Her wry smirk and the lift of her eyebrow told him he didn’t need to say it. “Fine. I suppose it would be too much to expect you to be entirely perfect and enlightened. So let’s think of it in your ‘manly’ terms. You saved at least a dozen women and four children, William. That’s what we know from the accounts. In your heroics, you endured tremendous horror and pain, and you very nearly died. It’s only been a month since it happened. If you’d broken your leg, your bone would still be mending.” She framed his face in her hands and leaned close, staring into his eyes with such intensity her blue-green gems seemed to catch fire. “You’re not weak, William. You’re injured.”
Overcome with love, he tried to pull her close and hold on, but she slipped from his grasp, off his lap, and settled on her knees on the floor, between his legs. When she smiled up at him and took hold of the waistband of his trousers, William grabbed her hands.
“Nora.”
Though they’d been together almost nonstop since he’d woken in her arms on the Carpathia, and they’d been more emotionally intimate and vulnerable with each other than ever before, they hadn’t made love since their last night on the Titanic. It was him who’d held them back. At first, he’d been confused, and then ill. As his body healed, and, to a great extent, his mind, still he’d held back, not from a lack of desire or need for her, but from that numb, wooden place inside him. He’d felt everything he’d ever felt for her, more intense than ever, but there was that place of disconnection, that distance from himself. He was a stranger in his own body and hadn’t felt worthy of her.
He still didn’t, no matter the wisdom of her words just now, and he meant to hold her off until he was again the man she’d married. A man who didn’t collapse into a quivering mass at the sight of a body of water.
But Nora twisted her hands in his grip and laced her fingers through his. “William. I love you. I want you. Let me love you. Please. Don’t hold yourself back from me any longer. We’re home now. This is our beginning.”
He wanted her. God, so much. So he relaxed and let her take him.
Smiling, she opened his trousers. By the time she reached into his drawers, he was fully erect, and her smile grew into something hungry and smug. He watched, rapt, as she pressed a kiss to his tip and then opened that beautiful mouth to flick her tongue over it. After weeks of convoluted, confounding emotions and needs and a constant thrum of incompleteness, William found himself undone by his wife’s tender attention.
She was still learning the art of this act; only once more after the first time, when he’d felt the clench of her back teeth on his skin, had she made the attempt. That second time had gone better, though she’d been shy and too careful, reacting nervously with his every groan.
This time, she seemed more confident. Maybe it was his own vulnerability that had emboldened her. She kept her eyes locked with his as she tasted him, licking him all over, long laps up his shaft, tiny, teasing flicks over his head, swirls at his tip. Her hand held him firmly at his base.
Then, when his arousal had reached the place where it clamped his chest and he could only pant, she sucked him in, taking him in deep enough that he could feel the press and writhe of her tongue against his head and shaft. Her hand squeezed as she pulled back and sucked him in again, and he groaned as the hot need pooling at the floor of his gut began to boil.
“Nora. Nora!” He grabbed her arms—remembering not to be too forceful—and she paused with her mouth hovering just at his tip, tantalizing. She didn’t speak, only stared at him, waiting. “I need to be in you.”
She let him go, and he moaned at the loss of her touch. But he couldn’t feel too forlorn, as she stood before him and dropped her nightgown away, exposing her lovely bare body. William squirmed to rid himself of his own clothes, but he didn’t leave his chair.
When he didn’t get up, she gave him a bemused look. He reached up for her hand, and then she smiled. As she began to sit on his lap, he turned her and brought her down with her back to him.
“Oh,” she sighed, understanding. There was so much yet he had to show her about love. He lifted her and positioned himself, bringing her back down, slowly. They both sighed together, a harmony of pleasure, as he filled her.
“Oh.” She repeated the quiet sound as her bottom rested on his thighs, and he pulled her back to rest on his chest. “Oh.”
“All of you is mine this way,” he breathed against her ear as he covered her breasts with his hands, feeling her nipples become tiny pebbles against his palm. The sensation was duller than it had been before his night in the sea, but no less potent.
The sound she made in answer resounded with carnal satisfaction, and she lifted her arms over her head, finding his head, twisting her fingers in his hair. He played with her nipples, plucking and pinching, running his fingertips over the tightly gathered skin, and she writhed on him, her chest arching up to meet him, to deepen his touch, as her hips rocked on him.
“God, yes. Ride me.”
She moaned at his whispered words and rocked harder on him, arching her back in a graceful bow over his chest. Her unreserved response to his touch, to her own pleasure, their connection, enflamed William’s own need. He’d been wrong, so wrong—there was nothing numb inside him, not when Nora was in his arms. She brought every corner to life, brought light to every shadowy place.
“Oh, oh, oh,” she chanted, and he could feel her body ripening for its climax. Leaving a breast, he dipped his hand low, between her legs, pushing through her dripping folds to the swollen node of her pleasure.
“Oh! William, yes! Please!” she cried out, loudly, as he excited her. Her hips went wild, and he shifted beneath her, giving her the last bit of him, until she arched like an acrobat and went perfectly rigid, except for the pulse of her core around him.
He was close himself, too close. He clenched down everywhere to hold off until she was done. When she was, before she took the time to enjoy her afterglow, she sat up and lifted away, until his shaft, hard as steel and sensitive as an exposed nerve, was free of her. He groaned at the painful loss, but she reached down, between her legs, with both hands, and took hold of him, pumping him, fast and firm.
That was all he could take. “Fuck! Nora! Jesus!” He came, like a fire hose, all over the imported carpet at their feet.
She went limp, and with his last ounce of strength, he was able to ease her back to rest on him. They reclined like that, sweaty and breathless, for a long time.
“You swear more now, since what happened,” she eventually said, the words mumbles of near sleep.
He kissed her shoulder, brushed his nose over the damp, soft, fragrant skin of her neck, brought his lips to her ear. “Do I? I’m sorry.” He always tried to watch his language around women, but he supposed he hadn’t been paying as much attention lately.
“Don’t be. It’s … appealing. At times like this.”
He chuckled and snugged her close. “I’ll remember that.”
“William, I love you.” Her voice was more wakeful now, and she turned in his arms, settling into the cradle of his embrace.
“And I love you.”
“This is our beginning.”
It had been very nearly two years since he’d first met his friend’s young sister, on the Ladies’ Mile at Hyde Park. William thought of all that had happened, all they’d been through, in those two years. As he played the events over in his mind—what he’d witnessed, what he’d experienced, what she’d experienced, what he knew of only in secondhand accounts, even when they were his own experiences—his mind reeled. So much had happened. So much life and love, trial and tragedy. So much loss and return. Too much for such a short span of time. Too much for any one lifetime.
Yes, it did indeed feel like a beginning now, with all that behind them. They’d survived. Their love had survived. Here, on Nora’s first night in the house of William’s birth, the past
was a closed book. This was the first page of their story.
“Yes,” he agreed, holding her tight. “This is where we start.”
THIRTY-ONE
California weather was a delight, in general. William had of course been correct about the fog, but it burned off most days and left bright sun and pleasant temperatures. The summer had been generally cooler than the autumn, oddly. But usually, nights and mornings were just the perfect kind of chilly, so that they could keep the windows open a bit and snuggle together under the covers, and the day warmed considerably, with a much wider range of highs and lows than Nora had ever experienced before—especially when they crossed on the ferry into Marin, or to the east side of the bay.
And oh, such a beautiful place. Never had she seen such variety of landscape. As they’d traveled to California from New York last spring, the entire country had seemed to contain every possible kind of geography and climate, but California itself did as well. Throughout the summer and fall, William had several times taken her away from the city, north of San Francisco and south. She’d traveled east, to Sacramento, with Angelica. In a radius of less than two hundred miles from Presidio Heights were majestic mountains, vast farmland, wineries over rolling golden hills, long stretches of beach, and vertiginous cliffs breaking magnificent waves. Rivers, lakes, bays, and the sea. And a bright, high, beautiful sun beaming over it all, seated in a cloudless, endless blue sky.
She hadn’t seen much of the world, but she found it hard to believe there were many places more beautiful than this.
But winter in San Francisco, it turned out, was not much different to winter in England. Usually grey and foggy, frequently rainy, and chilly, with a temperature that never moved very far in either direction, day or night. Not a miserable kind of cold, but unpleasant.
Nothing on Earth & Nothing in Heaven Page 43