by Thea Devine
"But I—"
Moreton cut him off. "No, no. Here's my card. Send me the information and I'll make an appointment after I've gone over your routes and pricing. There you go. Come, my dear." He took Olivia's arm and steered her to the door. "I'll look forward to hearing from you," he added over his shoulder as they exited the office and flew down the stairs.
"Quickly now ..."
"You're a genius, Moreton ..."
"Too easy," Moreton murmured as they came out of the building onto the wharves. "This way ..."
"But what if they're off already?" Olivia fretted. "What if they're gone?"
"They'll still be in Greybourne," Moreton said confidently. "They still have arrangements to make. And she can't have the appropriate clothing. Or he, for that matter. Nor can they have much money. They're still here, my dear. Ripe for the plucking. We fixed it just right. They won't be hard to find. And remember, our sole purpose here is to hasten them home."
There were dozens of inexpensive sailors' rests in Greybourne. It wasn't hard to choose one that was reasonably clean and where the proprietors included a meal and asked no questions.
It was a soggy little room under the eaves of a four-story inn hard by the warehouses on the quay, and not much different from where they had slept in Dar el Rabat. It was furnished in almost the same way: one bed, a dresser, a worn carpet, a pair of kerosene lamps, a table, and two chairs. Hot water, a shilling extra. A window that looked out onto a scraggly rear garden. This was the end of the journey.
A farewell coupling didn't seem quite the thing to do, Georgiana didn't know what to do. And he was so businesslike, and so aloof, she wanted to scream.
At least it was warm in the room, but that was only because of the residual heat from the chimney flue that ran up the far wall.
It was enough. She sat curled up on the bed, staring at the walls.
Soup, biscuits, and tea were sent up for dinner. They ate in silence, and after, Charles began plotting out what next they needed to do.
"Clothes, for one. There are several dressmakers in town who might have something to buy ready-made. You'll need shoes, stockings, a corset, undergarments. A nightgown. A hat, a coat, a suitcase, a purse ..."
He was talking a foreign language. Stockings? Undergarments? A nightgown? She, who had slept naked since the ceremony of the peacock fan?
He hadn't stopped, hadn't even noticed the appalled expression on her face. "... a brush, a comb, gloves, handkerchiefs, soap ..."
But he did notice after a while the deadly silence, and then he looked at her. She looked overwhelmed and angry and unhappy. But what had he expected? He was hurling all this at her, all the things she needed to give her the appearance of respectability, and they were things she'd never worn, never used, never cared about.
Well, then, that was her father's part. His part was just to get her there, and there was nothing that said he had to dress her like a queen. . Except, for some perverse reason, he wanted to.
"Georgiana—"
She wanted to rip off her abeya and turn back the clock. Wanted to be naked and hot and coupled with him, her legs propped on his chest, his penis plunging deeply, wildly into her.
This is as dressed as I get when I'm in male company ...
Was he remembering that too?
"You can't arrive at your father's house dressed as you are."
yes, I can, she thought rebelliously. I can do anything I damned want.
No, she couldn't. If she wanted at all ever to convince her father that she wanted to be with him and to stay in England, she couldn't, and that was her grim reality right now. That, and saying good-bye to him.
"And it's too cold anyway."
You could warm me...
She turned her head away. Useless thinking that. That was over. Maybe she could kill him instead.
Time to act the part of an Honorable's daughter and just bury the rest away.
The words stuck in her throat. "You're right, of course. I should never want to call such attention to myself."
No way to avoid it, Charles thought, but he didn't say it out loud. She was wary enough, the queen, and on very shaky ground in her quest to go to her father. Nevertheless, after a month travel, and all that sex, she still bore herself like a queen, and nothing in the world, not even that god-awful shroud, could disguise either her beauty or that proud posture.
She was made to be in England, and England was made for her.
And on the morrow, when she was properly clothed, then she'd see.
She slept later than she'd intended, even on that uncomfortable excuse for a bed in that cold and damp room. Maybe it was because she was feeling so distraught and just needed to shut everything out. Maybe it was because she didn't want to face everything that came next.
There was no help for that; the sun would infiltrate even through the dusty windows, and tomorrow would always come, no matter where in the world she was.
But when she awakened, she found that she was alone, and there was a tray on the table with a pot of tea—surely cold by now—and a plate of hard scones. And the water in the pitcher on the dresser was lukewarm, which suggested that Charles was long gone, and had chosen to let her sleep.
She didn't know if she felt the better for it. Everything was still too strange, and she was still too cold.
She poured some of the tea, for want of something to do, and settled back on the bed with the blanket wrapped around her.
In the Valley, she thought, the sun would be shining, the weather heated, breakfast consumed, and the residents going about the pursuits of the day. Sex. Cards. Horseback riding. Sex. Eating. Sex. Gossip. Polo, now, even with Charles's minimal instruction. Gluttony. Sex.
She felt a certain nostalgia for the regimentation. Everyone knew what was available, what to do, and when to do it. Sex anytime anywhere; everything else fixed around that.
And then the next day, the cycle began again.
Was there something comforting about that? Really?
Where was Charles?
She felt edgy, uncertain. There were no more threats; there was nothing to keep Charles here. They were done with sex. Done with the Valley. Done with everything except taking her to Aling.
He wasn't gone; she was fairly certain of that. He was probably out finding something proper for her to wear. He was just the kind of man to know about things like that. No more shifts and gauze and paper-thin slippers that could be divested at a moment's notice.
No more sex .. .
Her choice. But why had she seen it so clearly in the Valley, and it suddenly seemed so blurred and distorted here?
Him. The unknown, unobtainable him, that was why.
No. No. No. He had been the means to an end, and she had been a convenience. That was the end of that story.
But still... after him—who?
She had to stop this, had to stop thinking about sex, thinking about him, thinking about them, coupled, together.
There was a knock on the door.
"Yes?" Her voice quavered a little. Who in the inn knew she was alone in the room?
A woman's voice answered. "Your bath, missus. The mister arranged it before he went out this morning."
He hadn't left her, hadn't forgotten her.
Georgiana jumped off the bed and unlocked the door. Two hefty men bore in a copper tub, followed by two servants and the landlady, all carrying large ewers of hot water.
"Put it by the chimney breast there," the landlady directed, "so she'll get a bit of the heat. And careful with the water now, there's precious little of it. I've got some soap here, and some clean toweling for you, missus. The water cools off fast in this weather, so you want to make best use of it now."
She couldn't wait for them to leave, the landlady not wanting to, obviously unable to hide her curiosity. Finally, she locked the door emphatically behind them, stripped off her abeya in one motion, and, grabbing the sliver of soap, she climbed into the tub.
Ahhhh—hot. Blessed blessed heat, seeping into her bones. That was what she missed: the heat. She slid down as deeply into the water as she could, wet her hair, and started rubbing her body with the fragrant spit of soap.
What had it cost him, this, the most basic of needs, in this charnel house of an inn? She would never ask. It was enough it was done, and she soaked in the heat and the wet and the scent until time ran out and the water turned cold.
Oh, yes, he knew about all things feminine. She was shocked at just what that entailed, here. A hideous one-piece undergarment topped by a corset, a chemise, petticoats ...
And the corset! An instrument of torture, surely, but he knew just how to squeeze her into it, just how every piece should fit and and everything should go. And the godawful stockings. And the stiff light lady boots.
The litany of requisites he had recited to her yesterday all now constricting her body, her sex, and her life.
"This is what it will take to become my father's daughter?" she demanded, her voice a huff of breath as he pulled one last time at the corset.
Even he thought it was a damned shame to truss that body into it, but he wouldn't have told her that for a fortune in gold.
"A lady properly dressed wears all of this," he said noncommittally.
"If this is how I must dress from this day forward, coming here was a very bad idea."
"Cheer up, my lady. At least you will be not be cold. And you will go to your father in a recognizable fashion."
And as someone too beautiful to behold. Even in the constraining undergarments, she radiated sensuality. And he didn't know how he was managing to keep his hands off of her.
Corsets helped. Normally. But on her, the undergarments only engendered a raging urge in him to strip them off.
His need gnawed at him. He had forgotten how arousing undergarments could be. On the right woman.
On her.
Whose right woman would she become now?
He couldn't allow his thoughts to take that track. She was distracting enough as it was.
And she hated everything she had to wear, and everything about this last leg of the journey. "What further brutality must I endure in the name of dressing properly?" she asked imperiously.
He waved his hand at the clothes he had purchased and already laid on the bed: a clay-colored skirt to be worn with a blouse the color of amber and a short matching cape jacket.
She put them on grudgingly. Pretty. Plain. Heavy against her skin, pulling her down, down. Stockings on her legs— she felt rooted to the ground. She hated them; she hated him.
She wanted to go back to the Valley, now, instantly.
There was a comb, and a hat. A small valise. He'd thought of everything, including for himself.
It was the only thing that kept her from bolting, that he had to constrict and stuff his body into these god-awful clothes too.
No longer was he the desert brigand. The flowing robes were gone, and there was nothing to mark him as anything but a gentleman except his sun-dark skin, which contrasted starkly with the white shirt, dark suit, and long frock coat he now wore.
"You have become Charles Elliott," she murmured, as she combed her tangled hair.
"And you are the daughter of the Honorable Henry Maitland, my lady. And so our roles have changed."
They had changed, she thought, everything carnal about them both obliterated by the constraints imposed in this society. She hadn't expected that, the tightness, the rigidity of conformation.
And yet, he seemed comfortable with it, as if he understood it, as if he even embraced it. Oh, but how, after all their unfettered weeks together? If she could comprehend that, she thought, she could do this. She could slough off everything about the Valley and she could be her father's daughter instead of Charles's desert whore.
She wanted desperately just to be his desert whore. She knew how to do that. And she loved it, she especially loved it with him. And she didn't need much more than that—the pleasure was almost secondary to his obsessed possession of her.
All of that, she wanted. Where would she ever find such an intense, devouring sensuality ever again? What man could equal his sexual appetite, his stamina and prowess?
What could her father give her that would equal that?
And yet, by his own hand, he had restricted and inhibited her, contained, confined, and hemmed her in with these repressive clothes. What were they meant to do but obliterate every sensual feeling and utterly suppress her desire for sex?
Well, he had underestimated her. Nothing could blot out the driving need for sex. It throbbed like the drums of Ngano, night and day, just beneath her skin.
Standing this close to him, as she combed her hair and twisted it away from her face, she felt it. He felt it. It simmered in the air between them, flaring like sunspots.
She took a pin and jabbed into the topknot.
"There's a train to London in the next hour," he said coolly, ignoring the heat between them. "I suggest we get ready to go."
"I don't want to go."
Everything in him tightened up. It would be so easy to capitulate to her now. Another day would make no difference. Another year would make no difference for that matter. And he could feed on her breasts, on her body forever.
Except for one thing. And even now he wasn't certain his imagination wasn't playing tricks on him. But still it was something about which he could not take the chance.
This morning he thought he'd seen Moreton.
Logically it wasn't possible. Moreton was stuck in the Valley, sticking himself into some willing hole.
And he'd only caught the merest glimpse of the man's face, of the way he held himself, the way he walked. Nothing conclusive.
Nothing he would tell her. But suddenly time was of the essence, and every other consideration went out the window, except getting her to Aling.
"You wanted very badly to come to England, my lady. I think we should go."
There was no arguing with that tone of voice. She tucked the comb and the sliver of soap and her abeya and boots into the valise, closing it up. Packing away another life. There was nothing else left.
Had there ever been anything except the pure proprietary animal need of two people on an isolating journey? Any woman would have done in that scenario, and she needed to remember that and get on with it.
She took the flat-crowned piece of felt adorned with two feathers that he called a hat and tied it onto her head.
Ridiculous thing. The cape next. The valise. Down the steps. Pay the landlady. Charles with his hand at her elbow guiding her out onto the street.
Dazzling sunlight today, beaming through the clouds. The same misery: too many people, too cold, too much noise.
For her, a horrible gray day ...
"We go this way."
This way was a long winding street that curved up above the harbor. It was a brisk walk too, difficult in her more feminine boots that were not broken in.
Not even the rows of shops along each side of the street could distract her. The upward climb was onerous, tiring. The sun hurt her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the summit where the view of the harbor was spectacular. From here, the channel looked like an ocean sparkling in the sun, the ships riding the swells like toys and the tall masts like matchsticks scraping the sky.
Here, at the top of the hill, the road flattened out and fed into a broad boulevard lined with homes and office buildings and stores in one direction, and, just at the intersection, the train station, already crowded with carriages and taxis and travelers.
He had their tickets in hand, purchased from an agent on the wharf earlier that morning. So it was just a matter of elbowing through the crowd, until they found their car. Scanning each face. Helping her up into the crowded carriage. Settling her on the nearest bench, making sure he had the window seat.
Looking out over the crowd with minutes to go before departure. A sea of an
onymous faces. Nothing there.
And then, he saw him—Moreton back beyond the crowd, looking directly at him, smiling his evil smile.
Chapter Nineteen
And then, the man was everywhere. Was that him nudging his way through the crowded carriage? Or on the platform at Malverne? On that bucking horse chasing after the engine past Stratton Church?
His brain had to be sun-damaged. Moreton Estabrook was still in the Valley, fucking and scheming his way to infamy.
Georgiana was preternaturally quiet. But then all of this was new to her. There were no wide open spaces on the train ride to London. In the south, they passed vast swaths of farmland dotted with small village homes that gave way to smaller villages, the houses set closer together, and narrow streets and market squares. Everywhere, a glimpse of the bustle of daily living as the train flew by. Everything growing crowded and more congested as the train steamed closer and closer to the suburbs of London.
Almost over. Almost there, whatever there meant. Georgiana had no sense of there. Just noise. And people. And a babble of voices that all seemed to be speaking some foreign language.
And everything hurt: her ribs, her feet, her head. The price to escape the Valley was beginning to seem too steep if it meant she had to acclimate to all this.
And then the endless vista of land and encroaching houses and roads and cold blue sky and the endless towns: Featherstone, Milford, Haystoke, Smythe.
She'd wanted this. Yearned for this. Sold her body for this. And her soul, too. But how could she have known where it would lead, when a man like Charles Elliott was so completely beyond her experience?
"Well, there it was. The lessons of the Valley had not included a primer on this. In not too many hours, she would be on her own. In her father's house, stepping into another world, another way of life.
The house of her childhood fairy tales. The one Olivia couldn't wait to escape. Was it not fated that her daughter had escaped to return to it?
Aling. All she knew of it was what Olivia had told her. Olivia had brought no pictures, no mementos. She had thrown off the shackles of genteel society and everything it stood for, everything that went with it, to come to South Africa, to wallow in Moreton's debauched Eden.