by Nia Farrell
One package of mostly smallclothes contained what I would need for the night. Setting those items aside, I arranged everything else in the trunk and locked it, looping a length of sturdy string through the key, to wear about my neck.
I checked the time and hastily performed my ablutions, donning a striped linen sleep shirt that wound past my knees and a black silk banyan robe. I wish I had been more specific as to the robe’s fabric. True, it was black, as was everything else except what was worn against the skin, since I was supposed to be in mourning. I’d expected a banyan of perhaps wool challis, something whose density would conceal a multitude of sins. Instead I was cocooned in silk, enrobed like a butterfly in a chrysalis, counting the hours when I could finally spread my wings and fly.
Suddenly tomorrow could not come soon enough.
Departing Chicago on Saturday would have us in Rochester the next afternoon, on a train outfitted with a combination dining and sleeping car. Paying a premium for first class accommodations would buffer us from the unwashed masses. Wearing first mourning gave both of us an excuse for isolation. No one would look askance at my traveling with a stepbrother, given the circumstances, or think it odd if I remained quiet in my grief and refused to engage in conversation. I could leave the talking to the professor, who was hungry to learn all that he could about our politics and industry and life in the aftermath of war.
I was hungry, too, I realized, pressing a hand on my complaining stomach. I hesitated to drink too much water—what went in must come out, after all—and was in the midst of nursing a single glass when a knock sounded on the door.
Wainwright had paid to have my repast delivered, with a note that said he was attending an exhibition of a particularly talented young artist and would return later. I confess, I was more than a little flattered. In truth, it pleased me to no end. I was thrilled to think he liked my work and remained hopeful that he would fulfill my fantasy and pose for me. One of the afternoon’s deliveries contained a wooden box and art supplies that went in my carpet bag. If I could not go out in company, I would at least have something constructive to do, whiling away the hours during our transatlantic voyage, filling my sketchpad with pencil and charcoal drawings, thoughts and dreams given form.
I wanted to capture the planes and angles of his face, the thick brush of lashes guarding his gemstone eyes, his straight nose and noble brow. The curve of his ear, the exact angle where the fleshy lobe met the muscled column of his neck. He had a small scar on one cheek. I longed to close my eyes and trace it with my fingers like a blind man reading Braille. More than learning the story written there, I wanted to discover him.
And I wanted him to discover me, too.
I’d never been with a man. If I offered, I wasn’t certain that he’d accept. Even if I made him want me, there were things to consider—family first and foremost among them. How much would he be willing to risk? I was certain there were rules governing the behavior of university professors. Fraternization with students was one thing, but fornication with me?
There’d surely be hell to pay.
When I finished my dinner, I remained seated at the table, lost in silent contemplation so deep that it took a moment for the rap on the door to register.
Not knowing who it was, I kept my silence. Darkness had descended. I sat surrounded by it. To someone in the hall, there was nothing to suggest the room was anything but empty. If by chance there was a Pinkerton outside the door, I refused to alert him to my presence within.
“It is I. Edward.”
My guardian, alerting me to his identity while safe-keeping my name. “Come in,” I stage whispered. A turn of the key, and he appeared, an earthbound angel limned in gold from the gaslight down the hall.
“Sitting in the dark?”
He rectified the situation before closing the door and locking it behind him.
“Yes,” I said. “I was thinking. How are things?”
He knew what I meant. “O’Flaherty was in his element. The crowd was good, and at least one of them was in a buying mood. Your winter garden picture sold. Perhaps to offset the July heat, hmm?”
This, while he shrugged off his tailcoat, pulled out his diamond stick pin, and undid his cravat.
“Um. Yes,” I stammered, thinking of my painting, the emotion that went into it, the tears I allowed myself to shed once it was done. It was the first thing I painted after the war, finished after I’d visited the home of my youth and the garden one last time. I said my goodbyes, then collected the crated pieces, tools and supplies I’d left stored in Richmond with a known Union sympathizer (entrusting them to the intrepid Miss Van Lew rather than have them vandalized, stolen, or destroyed in my absence). Hiring a wagon, I’d hauled everything to the train station and had begun the next stage of a journey that led me here, to the city of my birth.
I caught my lower lip between my teeth and bit it, determined to say as little as possible rather than inadvertently give myself away. Instead, I sat with bated breath, listening to the sounds he made moving behind me, shedding layers of clothing until he was down, I thought, to his shirt and drawers.
“It’s bloody hot,” he said.
“It is,” I agreed. And getting hotter by the minute.
“Then why for God’s sake are you wearing a robe?”
I sought to divert the question. “Do you like it? I did not order silk, but our buyer seems a woman of surprisingly refined tastes. I’m surprised she had enough to cover the costs.”
In two strides, he was at the table, shirtless, the sight of his naked chest burning into my eyes as deeply as the passion that flared in his. “She. Didn’t.” He lowered his head and looked at me with an intensity that served to pin me to my chair. “The extra was billed to my room,” he growled in that leonine manner of his. “I shall pay it tomorrow, when I settle accounts.”
Oh, dear. I’d asked him to trust me to make my list, had charged him with finding a female buyer without qualms. He’d followed my wishes, and look what it got him—money spent above and beyond what he’d apportioned. I felt as if I had betrayed him, however inadvertently.
“I’m sorry, sir. I swear, I’ll make it up to you. I will pay you back.”
“Lane…” He spoke my name, caressing it in a manner that by rights should be reserved for lovers. “Do not make promises that you cannot keep.”
I shrugged the banyan off my shoulders and let it drape the back of the chair. I was tempting the beast—I knew it—and yet I could not seem to help myself, however mismatched we were. Older and younger. British and American. Nothing seemed to matter except him—standing, barefoot, in sweat-damp linen drawers, looking masterful—and me, seated in a Windsor chair, my eyes transfixed on the front of his pants, envisioning the wonders that lay beyond.
“What else can I do?” I asked him, forcing my gaze upward, admiring the hair on his manly chest, the flat brown paps and pebbled peaks. “Tell me. Please, say something,” I begged him. “I fear it’s going to be a very long trip if we do not speak.”
He stared at me, the muscle in his jaw working.
“Edward, please! Tell me what I can do to make things right between us. What is it that you want of me?”
I touched his forearm, felt the corded muscle flex beneath my fingers as I stroked his hair-dusted skin, petting him carefully, as if he might be gentled, even if he could never be tamed. Turquoise light flared in his eyes as he locked his heated gaze on mine, holding me breathless in its grasp as surely as if I were manacled and bound to him.
“I do not know if you are ready,” he said, his voice rough and low and raw with his own vulnerability. “What I want…” He blew out harshly. “God help me.”
I knew something of what he wanted. There was no mistaking the evidence of desire taking shape before my eyes, filling the front of his undergarment until it threatened to spill from the gape-jawed opening. I’d never been with a man, but I knew that there were many paths to pleasure, some of which did not include…penetration.
I bit my lower lip and looked at him. My face, by now, was crimson with mortification. He would have to tell me what he wanted. Show me what he needed me to do. “Teach me?” I whispered. “I promise, I can learn.”
“Damn it.” He shrugged off my hand and closed his eyes, shuttering me out momentarily. When he looked at me again, he was deadly serious. “This isn’t a game,” he snapped. “You have no idea how demanding I can be. You have no concept of the things that I like. The things that I crave. What it takes to satisfy the basest of my desires. I do not want to ruin you.”
“Ruin me? I am already broken,” I reminded him. Easing from my chair, I knelt at his feet and palmed his thighs, looking up past his Priapus to meet his tormented gaze. “Please, sir.”
“How easily that falls from your lips,” he murmured, offering a smile that held no humor. “Do you have any idea what I’d like to do to that mouth, what I’ve wanted to do since the first time I saw you?”
“What?” I knew that I’d been smitten with his beauty, Narcissus reflected in the waters of his eyes.
He touched the black cap of my hair, smoothing it back with his fingers. “I watched you setting your Belle de la Rosa on her pedestal. Such focus. Such care. Such quiet strength. But when you finished, you did not immediately abandon her. You stroked her cheek, like a lover. I wanted to do the same to you, and feel your touch in turn. Even now, knowing who you are…what we are to each other….”
“Stepsiblings?” I shook my head. “Before, but not now. Now it’s just…us. Two people drawn together by Fate. I may be younger, but I have fought my share of battles. I just… I can’t help it. I cannot—will not—fight what I’m feeling. What you make me feel….”
My throat closed, trapping the words inside me. The pleading look that I gave him spoke volumes. I was not too proud to beg.
“So tempting.” He dropped his hand to his side and clenched it to keep from touching me. “But we cannot. We dare not,” he said succinctly. “The risks are too great for pleasures so fleeting. Now come to bed. We shall pass the night, each of us keeping to our respective sides like Whigs and Tories, where ne’er the twain shall meet. Tomorrow, and thereafter, we will not speak of this again. Is that understood?”
I dropped my hands to my lap and balled them, fisting my nightshirt when he denied me himself. He extended a hand to help me up, and I took it, greedy for whatever part of him I could get. He’d drawn a line, but in so doing, I feared that he had sealed his fate, and mine with it. He’d as much as challenged me to seduce him, without a word being spoken, using only the artful language of my body, the longing in my languorous eyes, the telling foray of my tongue, darting out to tease lips that burned for his. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have guessed at the passion he kept hidden, masked by an icy demeanor that I must now find a way to melt.
Edward. Silently I tasted his name. Not Professor. Not Wainwright. No, we were beyond such formalities—although not as far as I had hoped. I had two weeks, more or less. Two weeks to win Edward, to woo him, to make him mine, if only for the length of our journey.
If I were very lucky, by the time we reached London, I would be virgin no more.
Chapter Five
God, what a night.
It started out innocently enough. I’d been denied, lectured, and sent to bed, to lie swathed in my night shirt, drenched with sweat in the oppressive July heat, the humid air thick and hot with our commingled scents. Thankfully, the room had a private bath that I made good use of. Sometime past midnight, after a quick splash on my face and a cool, damp handkerchief draped around my neck, I finally drifted into an uneasy slumber. My dreams were plagued with thoughts of Professor Edward Wainwright, and of all the wicked, lascivious deeds that I’d heard about and wished to experience with him.
I roused again just ahead of dawn and slipped away, tiptoeing across the room to sneak into the water closet. There was barely enough light, but I managed to find Edward’s shaving kit and borrow it, scraping my face clean before going back to bed.
The next time I awoke, my nose was in Edward’s chest, buried in whorls of hair shades darker than his head. The crisp curls tickled more than my fancy, and I jerked my head away when I felt a sneeze coming on.
I rubbed my nose furiously and had managed to quiet it when I noticed that Edward was awake. He was watching me, clearly disturbed. By it? By me? I wondered but said nothing, choosing instead to study his beard-stippled jaw.
Two could play his game.
Suddenly, I smiled and rolled away. Unapologetic, I stretched and glanced at him over my shoulder like La Grande Odalisque. “Good morning,” I rasped, my throat thick with all the words that I wanted to voice last night. They were still there, of course, just waiting for his permission to speak.
One brow rose, daring to disagree. “Is it?”
“Mmm. Yes,” I said. “Decidedly so. By this time tomorrow, we shall be well into Canada.”
His gemmy gaze hardened. “If I manage to get you past the Pinkertons. Your man says that they are watching your doors, front and back. By the bye, to avoid suspicion, he will not start packing things until he gets word that you have sailed. He knows to crate your entire studio: tools, finished pieces, works in progress, blocks of marble, et cetera. If you will give me a list—all or some—of any household contents that you wish to keep, I will deliver it to O’Flaherty and pick up lunch on my way back.”
His offer touched me deeply. “Thank you,” I whispered, suddenly ashamed of myself. He was a decent man, an honorable man, and I was pledged to corrupt him…or, more precisely, hoping to have him corrupt me. “Sorry. I…I don’t know how…well, I do, but…thank you?”
“Make your list,” he ordered gruffly. Pushing off the bed, he disappeared into the water closet, sweat-damp drawers clinging to the perfect curve of his bottom. I lay there for a moment longer, still mesmerized by the flex and play of muscle, then forced myself up. His absence this morning would give me time for my transformation. Yes, I thought. I could wait for him in the lobby. If I succeeded in remaining undetected, if Edward passed me by, surely he could be persuaded to keep me with him, Pinkertons be damned.
Waiting in his New York hotel room with only his books for company whilst he took in the spectacle of the Democratic National Convention was far preferable to being abandoned in Canada and sailing to England on my own.
I donned my banyan, retrieved the writing supplies that he’d allowed me before, and set to work. Sneaking an occasional glance through the opened bathroom door to watch him shave, I thought of what paltry few things of value I had left (having hocked, bartered, or sold most of them these past few years). A tea pot here, a silver candlestick there…things admired but not truly needed. Canvas and brushes, food and rent, on the other hand—those were as necessary to my existence as sunshine and rain had been to our artist father’s gardens. A constant source of inspiration for his paintings, they had since come to represent all that I had lost. It saddened me to think that I might never see them again, but what would be the point? To walk the paths overgrown with weeds, to see the decay in a once-grand design, to sit on the rotting bench by the rose garden and contemplate life, death, and the vagaries of existence?
I thought: We are all of us dying, from the moment we are born. True, some of us lingered longer and some of us burned bright as a comet, with a life just as fleeting. Who was to say how long I had? One slip, one accident, one piece of bad meat and I, too, would be lying cold in the ground.
Who will mourn me when I’m gone?
Morbid thought. I shoved it aside. Straightening my spine, I stabbed at the inkwell, stopping short of the bottom. I might be experiencing the dark night of the soul, but I would not take it out on Edward’s fine pen.
Slanting a sheet of exquisitely smooth-grained stationery, I made my list (short and sad though it was) describing where Daniel might find the items listed. Some of them were in plain sight, where I enjoyed them every day. Others reste
d in a secret hiding place, accessible through a loose board under my bed. Hopefully Daniel could retrieve them all and my one piece of fine furniture and see them safely to London.
I wasn’t much of a praying person—not even before losing my faith years ago—but I bowed my head and asked for mercy and for grace, through which nothing is supposed to be impossible.
Because what I wanted, and what I was about to do, seemed rather that.
I stayed behind when Edward went out for breakfast, unwilling to reveal my hand too soon. I told him not to bother on my account, that I would make do with the bread and fresh peach left from last night’s supper. He ignored me and brought back crisp slices of thick, fried bacon, wrapped in a napkin with two biscuits split and slathered with butter and apple butter. I thanked him for his kindness and savored every morsel, to my chagrin and his amusement.
It was too good to shun, and I admitted as much.
“Now you know,” I told him. “The secret to my heart is bacon. Apple butter works too, unless the cinnamon is overpowering. This was nice. Light enough to taste the fruit. If the opportunity affords, please give my compliments to the cook.”
“I shall,” he said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “At lunch. I placed an order to pick up on my way back from your studio. Now, is there anything you need O’Flaherty to fetch to take with you? Anything that cannot follow?”