by Nia Farrell
I fixed my gaze on them, the little pile forming a still life, of sorts. To my artist’s eye, the book represented akasha—the complete record of deeds and events, containing the eternal wisdom of the ages. Serving, then, as metaphors for temporal life and death were the daily news and the severe black of first mourning. I had ordered a sensible wardrobe—blouses, skirts, and dresses that opened in the front (styles popular with new mothers and old spinsters, providing easy access for the first and the ability to dress unassisted for the second). There was one dress for evening wear which fastened in the back, requiring help to get into and out of, but it could not be helped. I knew that I would need something suitable for taking supper in company once we reached England, if not before.
“You have been busy,” he said at last, still watching the mother and child.
“My hands are seldom idle. And it’s just a sketch.”
“Still, it was generous of you to give it.” He did not sound upset. Rather, his tone had warmed, lending a rich gravitas to his voice. It made me dare to hope that he was ready to put the past behind us and move forward without encumbrances.
I smiled, inhaling deeply and exhaling with purpose, relieved to feel some of my tension leave. “Yes, well. I hope that one day she can point to it and speak of the day when Lane Davenport sat in a train station, headed toward the fame and fortune that’s eluded me here.”
He stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “Lane? But surely—”
“What?” I dared to meet his gaze. “My work is known by that name. There’s no reason not to use it.”
“But you are a woman.”
“So I’ve noticed.” So he’d noticed, my ego chimed.
“And Lane is a man’s name.”
I looked at his book. The compilation of biographies of members of the House in the Thirty-Seventh Congress had been written during the war years by a St. Louis native whom I very much admired. “So is Howard Glyndon,” I said, “which is precisely why Miss Laura Redden writes beneath its auspices. A single woman, reporting from Washington on war news? She was wise to give herself every advantage she could. With President Lincoln and General Grant numbered among her fans, her success is to be commended. Being deaf as she is, I cannot fathom how she managed it.”
From the look on his face, I’d clearly told him something about the author that he didn’t know and reveled for a moment in the thrill of it. As well read as he was, such an anomaly might never occur again.
“Still,” he said, refusing to admit that I was right in this.
“Edward, surely you can see the sense of it. Whether or not it helps to advance my career, it remains a fitting tribute. Lane’s name will live on in every piece that I create. The two of us shall be forever entwined.”
He sat silent for a moment, his mind at work behind the storm-swept sea of his eyes. “You never told her.” His tone was, if anything, accusatory. “She died, believing that both her children lived.”
So that’s what had him trussed in knots? “She died content,” I reminded him. “Would you rather that she have suffered these past six years, and your father with her? It’s a moot point, regardless. I was not free to send word of Lane’s death. My brother swore me to secrecy, and I have honored that oath.”
I swallowed the thickness in my throat and looked to my left, towards our unfortunate past. “When I saw how it was going…when we knew he was not long for this earth, knowing how fragile Mother was….he made me promise to say nothing until such time as I was able to see her in person. Once I’d seen that she was sufficiently recovered…only then was I to deliver the news of his passing, when I could be there to comfort her.”
“You did not attend their wedding,” he curtly reminded me. “You would have seen her well enough.”
“Well enough?” I almost snorted. “And how long would that state have lasted, do you think, once she learned that Lane was gone? If I’d come ahead of their marriage, the news would have crushed her, perhaps ruining any chance of happiness for her and your father. You might have welcomed their split, but I doubt that Dr. Wainwright would have thanked me for it.”
The muscle in his clean-shaven jaw ticked. The turquoise eyes narrowed dangerously. “My father has only ever loved two women,” the lion in him growled. “My mother and yours. He would not have abandoned her in her hour of need.”
“I’d like to believe it. Truly. But it’s another moot point. Their marriage was fact before word of it reached me. Not that I could have come, had I known earlier. I was rather busy at the time. Trying to avoid capture while foraging, I believe…a task which was about as comfortable as these stays. If I were truly brave, I’d join the National Dress Reform movement and be shed of them once and for all.”
His gaze swept downward, as if he were imagining me in a shortened skirt worn over Turkish pants. When his eyes moved upward, the lambent warmth in their depth made me think that he appreciated a corseted form. His controlling nature would see the laces drawn tight, giving me the perfect hourglass shape, until the sands ran through and he would free me, one hook and eye at a time, starting at the top, my breasts spilling into his hands.
“I suppose that you are a suffragette?”
The flush on my face had less to do with the answer to his question and more to do with thoughts of his fingers and mouth on my flesh.
“I…um…yes? No? In principal, I suppose I am—although I’ve never been involved in the movement. Regardless of gender, I hate politics. However, I recognize that they are a necessary evil, and I know that I shall regret not being able to vote in the next election. Being male has its advantages.”
I wondered if he realized just how much freedom I was giving up. Women were still, in many cases, considered and treated as chattel. Deemed inferior of intellect and much in need of keeping. Unworthy to vote, let alone aspire to an office. Pioneering women like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, who had served with the Union army, and Miss Clara Barton, who had pressed for the creation of, then headed the Missing Soldiers Office after the war, had proven themselves exceptions to the rule. My struggle for artistic achievement seemed paltry by comparison, yet I could empathize with them and truly admired what each had accomplished, finding ways to succeed despite having to dance to the tune of male bureaucrats.
“Point taken.” Edward rubbed the back of his neck, the tight, ropy muscles refusing to yield whatever emotions yet gripped them. In my mind, I rose from my seat and walked until I was behind him. My graphite-stained hands were miraculously clean as I began to work the tension from ligaments and tendons, fascia and muscles. Beneath my expert massage, I felt him unwind, relax, finally surrender to it. To this.
To us.
Except there was no us. There was Edward and Elena and the identity I’d assumed, then kept for the sake of my art. He had wanted me then, when he thought that I was Lane. He’d confessed as much, had said that he was tempted. Twice tempted, now that I’d revealed my femininity, and the risks were considerably less. There were statutes against homosexuality. The consequences—both personally and professionally—would be dire, should he be caught in flagrante delicto with another man.
I wondered about his experience, his likes, his dislikes, his needs. The dark cravings that he mentioned when he was trying to warn me off. Did he not know, that just fed my fire, and made me that much more determined to seduce him? I wanted to push him to the edge of resistance, to drive him over the edge and freefall with him, like a pair of mating eagles, locked in a tumbling flight while we ravished each other.
“Hmm. Yes,” I sighed, ignoring the arched brow and black look that Edward slanted at me.
I thought: That’s right. Let him wonder.
Buoyed by my small victories, I settled into companionable silence, which was perfectly agreeable with Edward. I read a bit. Sketched a bit. Stood and stretched intermittently to keep the circulation flowing and the pins and needles from my legs. The mother and baby left. An elderly couple arrived. The closer to our train time, the more cro
wded and noisy the depot grew. One family had a pair of rowdy boys with “poppers.” They were only toys, and yet an unexpected barrage of play gunfire was enough to half-cock my trigger. I felt my face grow white as the blood drained from it. Edward could not see it, of course; the gauzy black veil of my bonnet hid it from him, but there was no denying the tremors that took hold of my hands and my body. Within seconds, I was shaking like an asylum patient forced into ice bath therapy.
“Elena?” Finally he reached and touched my hand. “Lane?”
Hearing it pulled me back to a reality that was suddenly too harsh to bear. I squeezed my eyes shut behind the curtain of my veil. “Please,” I begged him, rocking slightly. “Please, please, please.”
“What can I do?” he asked quietly, all solicitousness, as if my well-being were his utmost concern.
“I don’t know,” I cried, tears tracking down my cheeks. “Nothing. Anything. I can’t…They’re…It’s too much, Edward. Please, please, how much longer?”
I was in physical pain now. Stomach clenched, acids burning, muscle memory screaming for relief that refused to come. I’d had attacks before, but I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d had them this bad, and so close together.
“Half an hour or so.”
An eternity. “Please, can you help me get out of here? I’ll find some shade, stand or sit. I need…I need….”
He secured the latches on my wooden art box. Tucking my supplies, the book, and his newspaper into my carpet bag, he put on his gloves then grasped my mitted hand. Easing me into a balanced stand, he picked up my bag and helped me outside.
“Thank you,” I said, pushing the words past the tightness in my throat. “It hasn’t been this bad in years. I suppose the news of Mother’s death has dredged up all the darkness. I’m sorry to be such a burden. Most men detest weak females.”
The most amazing thing happened then. Edward looked at me with such an enigmatic expression, I would have been hard pressed to paint it. He set my bag on the ground, took me by the shoulders, spun me around, and pulled me back against him, my hoop skirt belling in the front like a call to worship.
“I am not most men. And you,” he said, his fingers sliding from my shoulders to my biceps, his growl tapering down to a rumbling purr by my right ear, “are the strongest, bravest, most noble woman whom I have ever had the privilege to meet. My dear, I cannot fathom the horrors that you have seen. I can only begin to guess the things that you have experienced. But this much I know. Whenever you are…haunted, you are to be honest with me about what you are feeling. You are forbidden to apologize, and you will not demean yourself. Do you understand me? Accept that you are…perfectly imperfect, just as you are.”
Perfectly imperfect?
“Edward, I…I….”
With that, the world went black.
Chapter Seven
“You gave me quite a scare, sister, dear.”
I forced open my fluttering eyelids to find Edward’s face hovering above mine as I lay beside him, and on him, his thigh cushioning my head. As crowded as the depot was, they’d vacated a bench for us. He ministered to me, applying a cool, wet cloth to my brow.
“The heat,” I said. “The noise. My poor nerves.” I knew that I sounded like Mrs. Bennet, but at least my words rang true.
Edward crooked a smile. “I have the utmost respect for your nerves,” he quoted. “They’ve been my constant companion these”—he checked his pocket watch—“twenty minutes and counting.”
Twenty minutes? Panic gripped my chest, and I struggled to sit up.
Edward would have none of it. “The train will be here soon,” he said. “Are you certain that you are up to traveling? I can change the tickets if need be.”
I turned my head and saw my bonnet perched atop the leather handles of my carpet bag. “It’s July Fourth. I’ll be safer on board a train than huddled in bed with cotton in my ears, trying to block the sounds of fireworks and gun salutes. Please, Edward?”
He nodded. “All right. But remember what we discussed. Honesty. Acceptance. Positivity. I depend on you to follow my directives.”
“Obey you, you mean.”
“Or suffer the consequences.”
I caught him smirking and gave him the skunk eye.
Edward chuckled. “I am glad to see that you are feeling better. Can you sit?”
“Yes. I think so.” I twisted my torso and pushed myself up, one hand on the seat, the other on his leg. I should have snatched back my hand when I realized that I’d lingered longer than was necessary. If we had not been in a public place with a dozen set of eyes on us, I would have been tempted to feel him, to follow the lines of muscle from knee to groin, thigh to hip.
Unlike me, he was perfectly perfect.
God have mercy on my soul, I wanted to see him. Touch him. Explore this attraction that flared between us, striking unexpectedly like a bolt of heat lightning, leaving scorched earth in its wake. It was all I could do to comport myself, to play the part of a stepsister mourning the loss of the mother we had shared. To call him “brother” while my thoughts of him were so very far from familial.
Wicked girl.
Yes, I was. Or I wanted to be. I yet harbored hope for it. Not on the train, where the drapes surrounding the berths in the sleeping car offered the barest modicum of privacy, screening sight but not sound. In Rochester, we would have one only night. New York? Hmm, perhaps. The length of our stay would depend on the Democratic spectacle and how soon Edward could secure first class accommodations aboard a transatlantic steamer, insisting that it was the only way to comfortably travel. Crossing the ocean in a cabin for two with a private bath…well, the July heat might well work in my favor.
A short time later, the call came to board and I was ushered onto a Pullman Palace Hotel sleeping car, headed for Rochester, New York, by way of Detroit and Niagara. Pairs of opposing seats lined both sides of the central aisle, with tables set up between them, to be used for dining, cards, or other pursuits. There was a single water closet for men at one end, a single water closet for women at the other.
The upper berths were stowed in a slanted ceiling. Come tonight, they would be lowered and the space converted for sleeping. Meanwhile, the kitchen occupying the far end offered a fair range of items on its menu, each individually priced.
Edward ordered venison steak, with vegetables. My sensitive stomach needed plainer fare. Perusing the menu, I settled on dry toast, a hardboiled egg, and a bowl of fresh, sliced peaches, served with cream.
Daylight was waning by the time we finished. Then again, we had lingered over supper, simply because we had fallen into an easy conversation. With our seats to ourselves, we had a modicum of privacy. I asked Edward about English life in general, about London in particular. The United States was such a new country by comparison. Hearing him describe the museums and galleries and private collections that he’d seen, I knew I’d been right to trust my instinct, to trust him to see me safely there. With the increase in episodes, perhaps I could talk him into giving me the equivalent of a “physician-assisted paroxysm” for the treatment of hysteria. His arms certainly seemed toned enough. His fingers were long and strong. And he was a surgeon’s son. Surely, growing up in the household of a doctor, he would be somewhat familiar with disorders and their cures.
I should have found the rhythm of the train relaxing—and I did, up to a point. Beyond that, I felt myself growing more sensitive, instead of less, and found myself moving into a heightened state of awareness of the man seated across from me. I pressed my thighs tightly together, hoping it would help, but, alas, it did not. When Edward paused his soliloquy long enough to ask if I was well, I could honestly tell him no, I wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feigning a yawn behind my hands. “I know it’s early, but it has been an eventful day.” The trouble was, once the porter converted the lower seats into a bed, Edward would have nowhere to sit, unless he joined with other passengers, or found a parlor car where gentle
men could while away the hours. “I forgot to ask, do you have a preference: top or bottom?”
Edward choked on his wine. He pinned me with his gaze. The heat in it made him look like a man on the verge of conflagration.
“Berth,” I stammered, fanning myself. I swear, he could make anything sexual. “Top or bottom berth?”
“I doubt you could climb in those skirts,” he rumbled. “I shall take the upper berth and you, dear sister, may have the lower.”
Rather than mingle, Edward stayed with me, eventually returning to his paper while I sketched our sleeping car. I was poor company at best, but his continued presence served to shield me from the most forward of our fellow passengers, who were unfortunately situated across the aisle from us. They were new money, I would guess. A man and wife, at once obvious and oblivious in their pursuit of advancement, so determined were they to succeed. They clearly hoped to make and cultivate connections with anyone possessing an aura of good breeding and taste. I was tempted to put my bonnet back on and hide beneath my veil, but even that would not have dissuaded, not when the wife wanted Edward.
I might have found it amusing if it did not rankle so. The husband seemed not to mind, but Edward did, finding her attempts to flirt in poor taste. At one point, she actually followed him to the men’s water closet. They were far enough away and spoke low enough, I could not overhear their exchange, but there was a curious light in Edward’s eyes when he returned to my side.
I said nothing. I did, however, arch a questioning brow.
“Later,” he said, taking up his paper once more.
The porter eventually came, and conversion began, transforming the day arrangement into overnight accommodations. Upper berths attached to the walls were lowered. The seats where we’d been sitting cleverly changed into a bed. Sheets and pillows were added to the upper and lower bunks. Curtains sectioned off each pair. When ours was ready, Edward instructed me to prepare for bed and let him know when I’d tucked myself in.