by Eden Myles
I was surprised. “Really, Nellie. That ogre?”
Nellie sat up straighter, looking angry. She wagged her finger in my face. “Lucille Elizabeth Van der Meer, that’s not a very Christian thing to say. You are very quick to lay judgment on Mr. Sloan. You always have been, girl. He is not some monster! He was your father’s trusted partner for years! Perhaps he is not as comely as your young suitor downstairs, but he’s certainly not an…an ogre, as you say.”
Yes, Nellie, I thought with a sigh. And if you knew what arrangement we had between ourselves, how he had turned your innocent little girl into his personal doxy, you might not be so quick to defend Mr. Sloan! But I didn’t say those things, though sometimes I wondered if Nellie didn’t realize there was something between us. She was an astute woman, she lived with us both, and she was a chronic insomniac. How she had not run into Tiberius visiting me in my room late at night was still a mystery to me.
“Thank you for the advice, Nellie,” I told her with a weary smile. “I shall take it under advisement.”
***
I stepped outside the house in my coat, muff and bonnet, and found Stuart’s hansom waiting on the cobblestone drive. He was standing beside it, smiling, as I approached, tall and blond and princely. His blue eyes twinkled. “Miss Van der Meer, I’m very sorry to call on you so unexpectedly, but I was conducting business in town and decided to stop by and perhaps take you to tea.”
As he took my hand to kiss the back of it, I said, “Stuart, it’s very good to see you again.”
He looked surprised and delighted by my statement. After having quite a row with Tiberius, my partner had finally allowed me to take Stuart on as our solicitor. But since he lived in New York City, we didn’t expect to see him more than a few times a year, and all our correspondence was done by courier. Tiberius had seemed unaccountably pleased by that.
“Tell me about your business here,” I said.
“I had an account down in Stony Brook to look into, and…well, the truth of the matter is, I’ve been putting some thought into purchasing a house here in Smithtown. I was wondering if you might give me a tour?”
“I’d be delighted,” I told him before having the good sense to check his hansom for an escort. There was none.
I thought briefly about asking him to wait until I’d summoned Nellie to accompany us, but the truth was, I found the custom terribly outdated. Although I was not exactly of courting age anymore, being seen alone with Stuart was still likely to set tongues wagging in town, and wouldn’t that be delightful? So I let him hand me up into his hansom and then we were off.
I suggested we make a detour through the fir woods, where I knew there were a number of choice estates available. Stuart directed his driver to take us that way, and soon we were engulfed in the piney darkness of the woods while I mentioned which homes were available to purchase and recounted some of the history behind them.
“Have their been many Indian attacks in these woods?” he asked with interest.
I laughed. “None that I know of, unless the victims aren’t talking. There haven’t been Indians living in these woods for over fifty years.”
“Old Goodman Hampton’s house is this way, isn’t it?”
“That’s a few miles east, actually,” I said, and then mentally kicked myself. I thought how a proper lady like myself should not know such things, seeing how Hampton House had a soiled history. I quickly added, “It has quite a history, as do many of the houses on Long Island.”
“Yes, Jeremiah Hampton was quite the libertine,” Stuart said with bright-eyed interest. “Is it true he kept women locked in his basement as concubines?”
I laughed again at that, a little nervously, then mentioned a newly built manor we were coming upon in an effort to change the subject. Stuart was interested and we stopped so he could examine it more closely. I felt a wave of relief.
Back in town, Stuart escorted me inside a teashop and ordered for us both. “You’ll be pleased to know your stocks have redoubled,” he explained over tea and biscuits.
“That’s wonderful news,” I said as we chatted amicably about business, New York, and all the frightening local legends that my region had to offer. I was finally feeling more comfortable with Stuart and we discussed the possibility of Jeremiah Hampton’s habits and what he might have been doing with those concubines, then I recounted the old ghost story of the Headless Horseman that supposedly haunted the burial grounds and bridges of Tarrytown further upstate. I told him the Horseman would supposedly appear to unwary travelers, turn into a skeleton in a clap of thunder, and throw them off the bridge and into the Pocantico River. Stuart shivered and told me my imagination was much too vivid for his liking.
“Oh, don’t you like being frightened?” I asked.
“Do you?”
“Yes, very much so,” I told him and he laughed. “I know all the local ghost stories, and it is almost Hallowe’en, after all.”
“You’re a very strange woman, Lucky,” he said, and briefly touched my hand.
I was starting to believe this was an almost perfect day, but then my bad luck stepped in and disaster struck, not that I was terribly surprised. I was more surprised that something terrible hadn’t happened yet. On the way back to my father’s house, Stuart’s hansom became irretrievably stuck in a muddy hole. At first, Stuart tried to help his driver rock the hansom out, but when that didn’t happen, he returned to me, splattered in mud, and told me they would need to fetch some larger draft horses from town to tow the hansom out of the mud. He asked if I would be patient enough to wait until he walked back to town to get help.
“I’ll come with you,” I told him, knowing Gunmetal could get the hansom out. “I know a shortcut through the woods and my father’s house is only a few miles east of here.”
I think after my scary ghost stories that Stuart was a little afraid of the wood, but I took his hand and reassured him that we wouldn’t run into any scalp-hunting Indians or Headless Horseman along the way. We had only gone perhaps a quarter mile before it started to rain. “This is quite a disaster!” Stuart said, glaring around the misty, wet woods with large, flickering eyes. It was getting darker and colder very quickly, and my assurances seemed to be doing nothing for his nervous state.
“At least there’s no thunder or lightning,” I sighed in simple resignation, and it occurred to me that Tiberius would have likely laughed about the rain, and how I had somehow caused it. He never seemed very frightened of the local ghost stories, and I would sometimes hear him hunting in these woods even in the dead of night, the crack of his musket rifle almost a reassuring noise. He wasn’t afraid of Indians or Headless Horseman. I doubted there was much that frightened Tiberius Sloan at all. As the downpour continued, we were finally forced to seek shelter in the hollow of a huge widowmaker tree that I had often climbed when I was a young girl. We sat huddled together in the hollow and I watched Stuart wring out his cravat and then his stockings.
“I’m sorry. The rain is my fault,” I told him.
“How is it your fault, Lucille?”
I thought about correcting him about the name, but then shrugged it off. Maybe, if I stopped being Lucky, my luck would improve. Not likely, but I was willing to try almost anything. “I was cursed as a young girl by a witch who hated my father. Things like this are always happening to me.”
“There was a witch too?” Stuart asked as he slid on his wet stockings with a disapproving grimace. He glanced around the woods as if an army of hobgoblins might pounce upon us anytime. “There are no such things as witches!”
“I’m a disaster,” I told him, bowing my head a little. “No one in the village wants to say as much, but they all think it.” I put my hand reassuringly on his arm. “And no, Stuart, there are no witches. Not anymore, anyway.”
Stuart turned to me and sympathetically brushed his knuckles against my wet cheek. “May I ask you something, Lucille?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Are you…? What I
mean to say is…do you have any other suitors?”
I stared at him a long, silent moment. Naturally, I thought of Tiberius, but our relationship was based on our business arrangement, and I did not think he wanted anything more than that. If he did, he would have said as much by now. Wouldn’t he? “No,” I answered. “There are no other suitors, Stuart.”
“How very odd. You’re a very pretty girl, Lucille.”
I twisted my hands together in my lap. “Well, you see…the fact of the matter is…” I swallowed hard before blurting out the bad news. “I’m quite barren. Witch’s curse, you understand.”
He looked at me with a curious sadness. Then he bent his head to kiss me. It was a light kiss, nothing at all like the searing kisses that Tiberius gave me, the ones that stole my breath, made my head swim, and made my bosom heave upward with their force, but it was still nice. It was a proper kiss, the kind of kiss a suitor gives his intended.
“Oh Stuart…” I began, but my words were cut off by a sharp crackling noise in the dark woods, followed by a sudden, steady beat, like frantic hooves against the forest litter.
Stuart turned, wide-eyed, and in the spare moonlight I saw his face was very pale and his hands were shaking. Then a family of whitetail deer burst from the undergrowth and charged down an old Indian trail and away from us. Stuart let out a barking laugh of relief.
And that’s when the top branches of the old widowmaker were hit by lightning.
***
I was soaking wet, shivering, and covered in mud and debris when I finally let myself into the house. I did so quietly, not wanting to alert Nellie or one of the servants that Tiberius had hired to keep the house. I didn’t want anyone seeing me like this.
As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a door open from down the long hallway. A few moments later, Tiberius appeared, looking me over dubiously. It was obvious he was preparing for bed as he was dressed in a long, royal blue dressing gown, though he hadn’t fastened it very well, and I immediately spotted a long, pale line of flesh beneath it, except at his groin, which was dark with the rich, dark thatch of hair that I knew far too intimately grew there. I wondered if he had spotted Stuart’s hansom from his window. I wondered if he had been looking for it, waiting up for my return. “Nanny Nellie mentioned you were out,” he said, making it sound somehow accusatory as he played with the tie on his gown.
“Oh, she didn’t!” I said, dripping all over the hall runner.
“I asked where you’d gotten yourself off to.” He looked down at the puddle of muddy water gathering beneath me and said, “Come with me, Lucky. You’re making a mess of the runner my servants just cleaned today.”
I glanced around to make certain Nellie and my cousin Rupert had gone to bed, and then followed him down the hallways to his room. I had given Tiberius the western suite, which was vast and had belonged to my grandfather when he was still alive. It looked more like a library with a bed in it than anything else, but Tiberius seemed to like it. He’d been fascinated to learn that Grandfather had been a dedicated collector of books from the Far and Middle East. It was warm and cozy when we entered, with a fire crackling in the hearth. Tiberius indicated the gold-toned bathtub before the fire. “My valet drew a hot bath for me before he retired, but why not avail yourself?”
I shivered and plucked at my wet wrap and dress. “I couldn’t.”
“I’m afraid Nellie and the servants have gone to bed, Lucky, so there’s no one else to draw you a bath.”
“It wouldn’t be proper.”
Tiberius sighed and went to the sidebar to pour a brandy. “Really, Lucky. I’m hardly seeing something new.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“A proper lady doesn’t undress in front of a man.”
Shaking his head with exasperation, he brought me the brandy and let me sip the scorching liquid. My insides immediately began to warm and melt and feel better. I stared at his chest, at the dressing gown that wouldn’t stay shut very well. The hair there was sparser than at his groin, but always soft and warm when I rubbed my cheek against it after we’d made love. “Go behind the screen. You’ll catch your death in those clothes, otherwise.”
I went behind his dressing screen and peeled the wet, dirty fabric off myself. To his credit, Tiberius was a perfect gentleman, even turning his back when I emerged in my chemise so I might shimmy out of it and sink into his bath. The warm, honey-scented water was like heaven! I sank beneath it briefly in an effort to get the forest debris out of my hair. The clear, scented water quickly turned grey.
When I had finished washing, Tiberius offered me a towel and a dressing gown, then turned as if to leave the room. “Wait,” I said, and he stopped near the door and just waited. He was right, of course. He was my lover. I was his courtesan. This formal modesty between us was ridiculous. I had made love to him for the entertainment of his friends in the Society. I didn’t understand why I was feeling so embarrassed now.
I stood up, the water streaming around me, and climbed from the tub. The warmth of the fire warmed my wet skin, but I still shivered as he approached me, went to one knee, and gathered the towel up in his hands. Without saying a word, he began drying me off, starting with my feet and ankles and working his way up slowly over my body. I sat on the edge of the tub and relished the gentle friction of the towel as he worked it over my thighs and lower belly, being careful not to touch me anywhere he thought I might find indecent.
He toweled off my shoulders, keeping his attention on my face, then proceeded to dry my hair. “Why are you being so nice to me?” I finally asked. His robe had fallen a little further open with his work, and I had a clear view of his tightly sculpted body, the line of sparkling dark hair down the centermost part of his body, and his partially erect cock. I could feel the heat of his body soaking into my wet skin. I squirmed at the wetness gathering between my legs at his proximity. It was almost as if God had compensated for his ruined face by giving him the most beautiful body and lovely, thick cock. Just the sight or scent of him was enough to make me lose all my senses, like an itch I could never truly scratch, a wanting that never left me whenever he was near.
“What are you talking about? I’m always nice to you,” he said, his voice soft and intimate as his breath brushed against my cheek. I smelled tobacco on his breath, and brandy, which made me squirm even more. I had come to relish those manly scents. At least I knew now why his skin and cock always tasted faintly sweet. It must be the honey baths that his valet drew for him.
“I went driving with Stuart in his hansom today,” I confessed. “We talked, just talked.”
I watched his face for his reaction but he remained expressionless, focused on his work of toweling me off. Finally, he said, “And what did you talk about?”
“He told me our stocks had redoubled,” I said, hoping this would please Tiberius. At this rate, I would be able to pay him back much sooner than I had expected. “And I told him some scary ghost stories. But then we were caught in the rain, and we took shelter under a tree that was hit by lightning. The witch’s curse, you know.”
He tensed as he finished drying my hair. He looked me over suddenly as if afraid. “Are you all right? Were you hurt?”
“No, we’re fine. We both were.” I looked at him, acutely aware of how he’d left Stuart out of the equation of his worry. But I wanted him to know. “Tiberius…I kissed Stuart. It was my first kiss.”
His face hardened. It made his facial scar stand out, his face being so tense that way. “That was hardly your first kiss…”
“I mean…it was the first kiss I ever received from a suitor.” I immediately regretted saying it because it implied Tiberius was never a suitor, could never be a suitor. I immediately went on, “When I was a girl of courting age, no man in the village would kiss me, even when we played kissing games because they were afraid I would give them the curse.” I gathered the towel against myself, suddenly embarrassed to be sittin
g here naked and damp and confessing these things to him.
“Why are you telling me this, Lucky?” He sounded weary.
“I thought you should know. And…I wanted to know something.”
“What’s that?”
“Courtesans…are they allowed to court? You never said, and I wondered…”
He held my eyes. “They’re allowed to court, yes. If the gentleman deems it acceptable.”
“I didn’t know. I thought, perhaps…”
“What is it?”
I thought perhaps you would wish to court me. But what I said was, “I thought it was a permanent arrangement.”
He stood up and went to the sidebar to pour himself a brandy. “It can be, if the parties involved wish it to be.”
I wondered what he meant, if he was offering. I waited, but he said nothing more, so I pushed. “Do you…do you wish it to be permanent? Because if you do, I won’t allow Stuart to court me, of course.”
He drank down the brandy before turning to look at me. Something passed across his eyes but it was there and gone much too quickly for me to decipher it. “No, of course not. I have the import business to see after. There is no way I could make a life for myself here in Smithtown.”
I felt a small part of me die inside. I pulled the towel close around myself. So it was true. He didn’t love me. I had held out hope that maybe…well, I reminded myself, that was foolish. I couldn’t give Tiberius an heir. And I was much too forward in my opinions. It was obvious why he didn’t want me. “I see,” I finally said.
The silence sat between us like a mountain before he said, “Is Stuart aware of your unique situation?”
I rubbed at my stomach, which had begun to hurt. “He knows. I told him but he still wishes to court me.” And then, to cover the hurt in my voice, I said, “And I understand your situation, of course. Smithtown is certainly no metropolis. Really, we must seem rather quaint and unsophisticated to you. When will you go back to London…or wherever the import business takes you?”
“When I know the mill is running smoothly. A year, perhaps. Just until I know my investment is turning a profit.”