by Bianca Bloom
“Alice!” I insisted, stamping my foot.
“Of course,” he said, but he did not repeat my name. “You must know that I never intended to keep you prisoner here.”
When my eyes met his, tears began forming, and I hardly knew whether they were tears of sadness or tears of rage.
Because I had known that he needed to marry for more pragmatic reasons, but for a day it had seemed that he did not want me to leave his bed. And leaving his house would have been unthinkable.
He was across the room in an instant, and he reached for me. “Please,” he said, and I flinched away, then ran from the room.
“Don’t touch me,” I had tried to say, but the words had not come.
Because I did want him to touch me. I wanted him to hold me, and kiss me, and remind me of all the marvelous things we could do without censure as a newly married couple. But all those things, given without his love and regard, would be torture. I would not stay to be used as his little whore one last time. If pride was the absolute final thing that I could have for myself, then I was not going to let the man steal it.
Within an hour, I had packed a small case, leaving many of my things in the mansion.
Mrs. Barlow, with what I knew was more practicality than generosity, had given me such a large sum of money that it was more than a fund for the road, it was a payoff. If I could hire my own coach to get as far as Sutton, then I did not need to stay another instant.
I set off for the village on my own two feet, walking on the very road that I had trod as a starry-eyed newlywed.
And I felt quite sure, as I left, that I would never walk on that road again.
24
August 1st, 1819
Our animal need for each others’ bodies, and our mutual recognition of that need, was so well-established that Mr. Wharton and I often conversed during the act, even while I was turning red from lifting my flexible leg toward the ceiling while he frigged me roughly from behind.
“It is the first day of August,” he was panting, ramming his prick into me as he held my neck, which was flushed in the candlelight.
I also wanted to make the most of my liaison with the man. In my heart, I knew that he wasn’t worth a fig, but whenever my body made its needs known, he was one of the best people to satisfy them.
“You wouldn’t know it from the weather,” I answered, rubbing my little rosebud frantically with my fingertips. Though I was skilled at getting myself well and finished, Mr. Wharton was so fast that I knew I must not let him get far ahead of me.
“You are anything but cold,” hissed the widower, clutching me even closer to him. “You are always hot as summer, Mrs. Allen.”
It was not a Shakespearian compliment, but it was an accurate one. I had become acquainted with Mr. Wharton when he was a customer in my shop, and he was several strata above me in society. We could never be seen together in public, except at the shop, and even then rarely. But we had quickly discovered a shared hobby, and soon were meeting at least weekly to tear at each other in Mr. Wharton’s fine home.
And to him, I was Mrs. Allen. After my break with the Barlow family, I decided to take on an entirely new assumed name. A friend in London had helped me, and soon I was established as Mrs. Allen.
Miss Quinton had been an innocent young girl, clever with books but not very well-versed in the art of earning money. She had been unmarried, and not particularly interested in starting a family. And she had gone off to a new job as a governess and never returned.
In her place, a new matron arose. Mrs. Allen was a respectable married lady. A widow, which was sad, but she did not speak of her deceased husband. Mrs. Allen provided for her family with the utmost diligence and respectability. And when Mrs. Allen wished to take her pleasure, she snuck into the homes of rich customers and proceeded to ride the lascivious bastards until she was short of breath.
Except for tonight. Something had stirred within me, and I lowered my leg as I tried to understand which of Mr. Wharton’s words had been somehow offensive. He had, after all, only been making innocent comments about the weather, then gone on to say that “The end of summer can’t come fast enough, I’m sick to death of all of these balls and dull merry-making farces. Ever since spring began, I’ve been dull.”
And then I realized it. For the first time in a decade, I had almost passed by the first day in August. It was the anniversary of the day when I first opened my shop, praying that the loan from my friend and my own paltry savings would last enough for me to push into black. Already heavy with child, I did not have the choice of failure. Usually, it was something I thought of for weeks, and when the date actually arrived, I tended to cry in secret, remembering that strenuous time. This year, it had come and gone, and I had not even noticed until summer was nearly over.
“August is begun?” I asked him, pulling away, and he frowned. As a rule, interruptions to our coitus were not to be entertained until he was so close to bursting that any continuation of the act would be dangerous.
“God, what does it matter?” he grumbled, slapping at my derrière as he rose. “These balls are not so awful when I know I can get my needs seen to at the end of the night.”
He positioned me so that I was kneeling on the couch, my head facing to wall, my rear hanging over the edge. With expert hands, Mr. Wharton grabbed at my waist and began thrusting into me again, growling as he did so. The man enjoyed being behind me, probably so he could grab and pull as he pleased.
And when he was at last ready to finish, he said, “That it, Mrs. Allen” and pushed me ever so slightly. I knew the routine, which was that I was to lie on my back on the couch as he spurted himself all over me. For he liked to see me lying there, helpless, covered in the evidence of his virility.
After that, I was permitted to clean myself with silk, and on the rare occasions that the act had not been enough for me, Mr. Wharton liked to sit in a nearby chair and watch me touch myself.
But that night, it seemed to be beyond my power. Images of Mr. Barlow, the man I had once thought would be my companion in old age, flashed across my mind as I sat up on the couch, assuming the position that I found most comfortable for self pleasure.
This was usually rather easy for me. After all, in my everyday life such roguish pleasures were rarely seen, and so the moments that I shared with Mr. Wharton let every inch of my being breathe with a lust that was usually trapped inside. But the thought of my former poverty continued to thrum at my brain, and I could not help but compare the itch of my current lust with the tides that I had felt when I gazed at Luke that day, ten years ago, in the little country church.
It was only when I thought of what the room would look like if Mr. Barlow were there that I was finally able to start twitching my hips onto my fingers with the requisite passion. Mr. Wharton growled with appreciation, picking up his weapon once again, but my thoughts were only with the man I had known for one complete night. How Luke Barlow had wanted me, that first and only night we spent together! Mr. Wharton wanted me too, of course, but the difference was that he would have been able to accept almost anyone else, provided she had long hair and an impish grin. Luke had actually wanted me, and the thought made me shiver with longing.
And, for a few minutes, I squeezed my eyes shut and forced out an ending to the evening. For no matter how troubled my mind was, by stripping naked and spreading my legs on a silken couch I knew that I should be able to get my body to respond.
25
The next day, the consequences of our prior evening together were all too apparent. When I stood, my legs trembled with weariness. But when I sat, every position that I found was painful. It took a good deal of concentration for me to maintain my composure with my customers. The morning started slow, and I sold a fair few bonnets, so I thought that I might be able to last into the hour when I closed the shop for my lunch. But just as I was resolving to push through my discomfort, I heard a pair of clients whom I had never met discussing several of the best bonnets I had for sale.<
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It was quickly apparent that one of these customers did not want to be in my shop at all.
“But I like the ones at Claude’s much better, grandmama,” the young lady was saying, fingering the outrageous maroon gown she was wearing as she spoke. “These hats may as well be from your day.”
“That is why I approve of them, my dear,” said the grandmother. “My word, the pieces of frippery that you young ladies want to call hats.”
And she looked at her granddaughter with scorn. I was surprised that she did not say anything about the outrageous pieces of frippery that this particular girl called gowns, for the thing that she was wearing certainly qualified as outrageous.
“I certainly don’t want to call this a hat,” she said, looking at one of the finest green bonnets. I had placed it in full view so that customers might remark upon the expensive velvet.
I moved over toward the customers without speaking to them again, making as if I were about to rearrange a different hat. But the young woman continued on, completely oblivious to my presence.
“I haven’t time for such nonsense, grandmama,” she said. “Indeed, if Withers ever presented me with such a hat, I should be exceedingly angry with her.”
Even through my aggravation, I recognized that the “grandmama” was attempting to control her young charge. With the quickest of glances, she tried a cool reprimand. “Then you would be angry over nothing, my dear. Indeed, do you mean to say that clothing not made to your taste is the worst fate that could possibly befall you?”
“There are worse,” she hissed. “The musicians last night were simply dragging. I could not get them to play anything fast, and the dancing was so tedious that I thought I might fall asleep on my feet.”
The grandmother looked over at one of my less expensive spring bonnets. It was still quite well made, and I knew that she had a good eye.
“Nobody was forcing you to dance, Larissa,” she insisted, still looking carefully at the bonnet.
This elicited some sound closely resembling a yelp. “But I had not danced in a week! I had no possible choice in the matter.”
“God gives each of us free will, my dear. I’m sure that you could have chosen not to dance.”
“Grandmama, did you not hear me?” said the girl, heaving a great sigh. “I simply had to dance, even though it was tedious. We must go somewhere lively tonight, not to the Leons’ at all. Your friends are so dull, all they want to do is talk of books and other nonsense.”
The grandmother’s face tightened, though I had to give a half smile. The Leons seemed like eminently suitable people, and I should have liked nothing better than a free evening in which I could sit in a comfortable home and speak of books and “nonsense” that this Larissa apparently despised.
“Have a look at this bonnet, Larissa,” said the girl’s grandmother.
“I’m quite sure I have never seen anything so ugly in my life,” whined the petulant girl, hardly looking at the gorgeous bonnet that had taken my mother three weeks to create.
This was was the remark that broke my spirit. At once, I went to the back of the shop to consult with my mother before I had a chance to take my best pair of scissors and make a large gash in the impertinent girl’s silly gown.
“I have a sick headache, mama,” I told her, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“A headache,” she said, and that was all that she needed to say. My mother never needed very many words to convey to me exactly what she was thinking. And what she was doubtless thinking was that I had always dismissed headaches as the providence of wealthy women. Even when I actually ill, I forced myself to work.
“I’m not saying that I’m going to lie in my bed and carry on all day, mama,” I told her. “I just want a walk. A little bit of air will set me to rights.”
She frowned at me, but made no response. She simply moved to the front of the shop and stood silently while Larissa and her grandmother argued over the merits of white muslin. It seemed that Larissa was looking for something much more exciting.
26
When I first reached the Thames, I felt that a bit of air would, indeed, set me to rights almost at once. It was not the kind of air that should have made me feel well. Though the summer was hot, it was half over, and that gave me a measure of relief. For summer was not a pleasant time to stay in London. Already the smell of fish should have overwhelmed me, and the boatmen’s coarse shouting should have been grating to my ears. But in truth, anything was preferable to the din inside my shop. For every well-bred person who passed through, there was a leech like Larissa, someone with no breeding and far too much leisure.
My sympathy with my country’s rebellious colonies rose within me once again. To read the papers’ take on their strange system of governance, financial instability and foreign wars made the life of the residents rather horrid. However, I could not help but feel that the House of Lords, with or without voting reform, was thoroughly ridiculous. Who would want the brother of someone like Larissa to hold political office? As long as the seats were handed down, the most hardworking people in society would have to answer to the laziest.
I spied several couples from a distance, and as they approached, I decided that they certainly fell into the category of “lazy” in my eyes. The women were holding large parasols, the gentlemen sporting colorful coats that I could tell had been made either by my own hands or by some of my most skilled competitors. And yet, they were uncommonly picaresque, and just as I despised them, I found myself longing for their situation.
Most days I was far too busy to think about how my life would be if I were a lady of leisure. Every time I found myself dreaming of a life that had nearly been mine, I filled my day with more tasks. If I thought about how I would love to have the luxury of not rising early, perhaps taking breakfast in my bed, I would decide that one of our pots required a good scrubbing and go straight to work. If I felt cold on a winter’s day when I had to go out and deal with merchants, I began to walk more quickly before I could remind myself that some people were able to have roaring fires made before they even began to notice a chill.
But walking by the Thames, looking at the colorful ladies and gentleman walking toward me, I could not shut out the vision of what a summer day might have been for me if I were very rich indeed.
My day would not even have to begin in London. Instead, I could rise in silence, breathing in fresh country air. I could walk off into the forest, with nobody to insist that I occupy myself or that I earn a single farthing. Perhaps I would have a horse, or a pack of dogs to keep me company. Or perhaps I would be completely alone, a state that would likely be unfamiliar to nearly every Londoner. After all, I was never alone. If I sought to walk on the street during one of the wee hours of the morning, when nobody else was about, I might be robbed or killed, leaving nobody to provide for my family. Mama was an excellent seamstress, but I was the one who got all of the supplies for our shop, the woman who charmed the clients into thinking that money almost did not enter into any of our transactions. And so I never knew a single day in which I was not in close proximity, not only to my family, but to dozens of strangers.
All of my visions of a carefree life seemed borne out by the couple that lead the party I had been watching. The woman looked as if she might easily be at least my age, likely older, but she had an elegant walk and an even more elegant light blue jacket. The man walking with her looked portly but healthy, and their conversation was plainly a lively one. If I were in a long and happy marriage, would I look just as happy as that lady? I imagined that at home she ate well, cared for some great number of children only when the nanny was otherwise occupied, and had any number of leisure hours that she could fill as she wished. And the nearer I got to her, the more I found myself wishing that I was she, that our positions in society were perfectly reversed. Instead of resentment, I felt only wonder. I was so enthralled by that particular couple that I did not see the couple that walked some yards behind them until we were quite nea
r to passing by each other.
The woman looked young. So young that she was probably about the same age as young Larissa, the girl who had inspired me to go out to the street in the first place. And so young that she apparently could not walk on the arm of a handsome man without her whole face bursting into a beautiful, sunny smile.
This might have irritated me, but I was so focused on the face of the gentleman that I had no more than a passing glance at the lady. He was not hidden by a parasol. His features were in full view, and if I had raised my head only a little bit more, he would certainly have gotten a very good look at my own features as well.
In fact, it was the bonnet that my mother had made with her own hands that saved me. It may not have fit well with the fashions for spring, but it hid my face so well that nobody could have possibly recognized me. And that was what I required, because the man was none other than Luke Barlow.
After ten years of hiding successfully, ten years in which I had come to believe that I would live out the rest of my days as “the widowed Mrs. Allen,” I had come nearly face to face with my husband.
27
After I got back to the shop, I was very nearly useless. In fact, my hands, usually quick and capable, were shaking. So I knew that the afternoon was not going to go well.
However, there was one course still open to me. Though the nature of my enterprise did not allow me to have many friends, I did have one, and that was quite enough for me. Most of the city knew her as the Duchess of Wilmington, but to me she was Rachel.
A note to her was enough to set me spirits to rest, at least temporarily. Most of the time, I had only to tell Rachel that I needed cheering up before she swooped in to rescue me. We met when I was governess to her great-nieces, and though there was quite a difference in our ages, I had always felt that different upbringings and circumstances had somehow produced in us two women who were very similar to sisters. Rachel was as kind to me as any sister would be, and I was as short with her as a younger sister ought to be. We were, in truth, very well matched.