“I wasn’t discounting your abilities.” She was forcing him to defend his position. What should have been a quick, vigorous march toward his objective now threatened to become an undignified retreat.
She placed both hands on the cushion between them, leaning close in her eagerness to convince him. “Then let me help you. Teach me to perform the operations.”
Jonathan shook his head. He couldn’t believe he was losing this argument. How could he discourage her, short of bluntly presenting her with her letter of dismissal?
“Ah, but if I did teach you . . . ” He stopped in mid sentence. The objection he was about to make distressed him even more than it would her. But it was his last weapon.
“If you did?” Isabelle frowned. “You think I would be slow to learn. Or that I would hinder your work in some way.”
If he agreed, he could immediately end this unfortunate discussion. Yet she felt her lack of education so keenly, he could not bring himself to disparage her intelligence.
“No, not at all.”
“Then why won’t you teach me?”
Jonathan slid his palms over his thighs, then caught himself at the nervous habit and stilled his hands by cupping them over his knees. He bowed his head and studied the tops of his gloves, unable to meet her eyes.
“Because of these,” he said, barely above a whisper.
As he stared at his hands, he thought of the expression, deafening silence. Her lack of response was, after all, a resounding corroboration of his very point. He had finally won the argument, but his victory felt more like defeat.
“I don’t understand.” She spoke as quietly as he had, her voice thin and high as a child’s.
Jonathan looked up, at first not understanding himself.
“Because of these,” he repeated. He held his hands up, turning them back to front before her face, then let them drop back onto his knees.
“I still don’t understand.”
Christ. Was she being deliberately obtuse?
“In order to teach you how to wield a scalpel, I would have to remove my gloves.” He studied her face, watching for the slightest sign that might reveal an effort to hide her revulsion. “You would have to see my scars.”
She stared at him, her expression a cipher he could not fathom. When she eventually spoke, her voice trembled with emotion, though he was hard put to identify its nature.
“Do you think so ill of me? That I have so little strength of character, I would allow an overblown sense of my own delicacy to keep me from helping you?”
“No, I . . . ” Damnation. Why should he defend himself against her sanctimonious hypocrisy? “You revealed your distaste, that day in the parlor. You saw my wrists and had to cover them with a cloth to spare yourself the sight.”
She gasped as though he had insulted her with a shocking vulgarity. He thought for a moment she was about to slap him across the face and actually braced himself to take the blow. Instead, she studied him with that keen look of hers, a look so sharp he had to will himself not to cringe from it.
“No matter if I deny your accusation, you will never believe me.” She was shaking her head slowly. “I see it in your eyes.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. She had told the truth.
Before he knew what was happening, she slid off the couch and was on her knees in front of him. She took his hands in hers, squeezing them until he nearly cried out in pain.
“What can I do to make you believe me?” She pulled his left hand toward her.
“What are you doing, Isabelle?”
“I am proving to you that you are not distasteful to me, that you do not offend my sensibilities, that I am not a shallow, witless woman who never looks beyond the surface of things.”
She turned his hand over and pushed back his shirt cuff. Realizing her intent, he tried to jerk his arm away. “Don’t.”
She refused to release him.
“Don’t. Please.”
“If you have any regard for me at all, you will allow me to do this.”
She had already undone one of the spherical pearl buttons at his wrist, and was working on the second that would unfasten his glove. He watched in horror, paralyzed by her audacity and his own inability to defend himself.
When she began to peel the fabric back, carefully turning the glove inside out as she removed it, time slowed as in the worst nightmare. Everything took on a strange underwater quality, as if he had been plunged to the ocean’s depths. The pressure of his shame filled his ears, it deafened him, the weight of it threatened to crush his ribs. His hand emerged from its protective husk, magnified in its nakedness until the sight of it filled his vision, and the sight of her bare hands undressing his filled his awareness and became his world entire.
Holy Mother of God, stop her. But it was already too late.
She dropped the glove onto the floor, and they both stared at the naked underside of his hand. His palm was as normal as any man’s. But when she saw the back of his hand, the contrast would make the sight that much more shocking.
“No,” he whispered, one last time, though his objection served little purpose. The deed was done.
She turned his hand over, gentle now that he no longer offered any resistance, and carefully laid it on his leg, opening out his fingers one by one. His hand spread over his trousers like a lump of melted paraffin, the waxen scars mottled yellow and red. All but one of his fingers were missing their nails, the remaining one an ugly, horny thing that persisted in growing up rather than out, thick as an animal’s claw.
When she began undressing his right hand, he groaned in mortification. She looked up, concerned, and it was all he could do to meet her eyes.
“Did I hurt you?”
He shook his head, no longer trusting his voice. His mangled right hand, knotted and misshapen as well as scarred, would turn her stomach for certain. As she peeled his glove away, he closed his eyes, unable to stomach the sight himself, imagining how his deformity would look to someone seeing it for the first time.
He felt the cool air against his palm and knew that hand was exposed now as well. He let his head loll back against the cushion, lacking the energy to support its weight.
There was no feeling in the scars, only the arthritic pain in the crushed joints of his hand. He lay with his head back, his eyes squeezed shut, trying to distance himself from his nakedness the same way he had learned after the fire to distance himself from his pain.
He felt her positioning his hand beside the other and waited for her inevitable cry of disgust. The seconds ticked by, yet she didn’t speak or move, until he began to imagine her turned to stone like one of Medusa’s victims. Eventually, curiosity compelled him to raise his head and open his eyes to discover the reason for her silence.
Isabelle was kneeling before him like a supplicant, looking up expectantly. A sudden, powerful urge to cry took hold of him. He pushed the emotion down, deep, cursing himself, cursing his weakness. How had he allowed her to do this? How had she steered him so far from his purpose in coming here tonight?
“Isabelle.”
“Yes?”
He looked down at his hands dispassionately, as if they belonged to another. “I want to be alone now.”
Isabelle nodded, taking her dismissal better than he expected. “Will you . . . ” She hesitated, then began again. “Will you join me tomorrow morning? For our walk?”
Her diffidence struck him as quite ironic, considering her brazen behavior only moments before.
“Yes, very well,” he said without enthusiasm, agreeing because it was the easy thing to do. He wondered if she would regret her invitation, given time. Given the chance to see him in her nightmares.
“I look forward to it.” She smiled, then gracefully bent to one side to retrieve his gloves from the floor.
Thinking Isabelle meant to give him the gloves, he reached to take them with his left hand, palm up so his scars were hidden from view. She shook her head.
“I’m ke
eping these,” she said, standing to her feet. “I never want to see you wearing them again.”
He watched her go, afterward sitting for a good half hour in a stupor as paralyzing as an opiate dream. When he eventually got to his feet, his legs were like rubber beneath him.
Remembering the letter, he shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the envelope. As he did so, the vial of laudanum fell to the floor. He stooped to pick it up, then straightened slowly, holding both hands away from his body. The laudanum rested on one palm, the letter on the other, like objects on a balance scale. Jonathan stared at them, studying first one, then the other, weighing his addictions. Isabelle. Oblivion.
One hand tightened into a fist. While Jonathan cursed his weakness, the letter slowly crumpled beneath his fingers.
Chapter Twenty nine
Jonathan had watched Isabelle as she stood waving good bye to the servants. And now he watched her waiting, long after the buggy disappeared over the crest of the hill, waiting for him to keep a promise he was loath to keep, one she had extracted from him in a vulnerable moment.
His conscience berated him: a gentleman keeps his promises. Un chevalier, his mother would have said, a knight, calling on examples of courtly behavior in the romantic tales she loved to read.
Isabelle paced at the head of the stairs, descended them, waited, ascended, then paced some more. Her anxiety compounded his guilt, which in turn added to his resentment of her. Why should he feel guilty? Was he to blame for her anxiety?
Of course he was to blame.
He considered all that had passed between them since her arrival. Nothing she said or did made any sense to him. Much of the time he ascribed sinister motives to her, unjustly doubting her sincerity. And why? Because he feared her kindness almost as much as he feared her rejection.
Isabelle descended the steps once more, then turned, looking toward the door as though expecting him to join her. She had left off her hat, allowing him a clear view of her face. A frown cinched her mouth into a tight circle of displeasure.
Abruptly, she looked up at the window where he stood. Jonathan dropped the curtain and made a quick about face, falling back against the glass. His heart pounded in his chest until the sound of it filled his ears.
She could not have seen him watching her. He had parted the curtains a mere quarter of an inch, careful to remain hidden. But she had somehow sensed his presence. Her accusing look left little doubt of it. He parted the curtains a hair’s breadth, hoping to see that she had gone.
She had not. Isabelle remained staring up at his window, her hands on her hips.
Richard said the waters of her spirit flowed deep, but at this moment they appeared to have risen to the surface. Until now, Jonathan had never suspected how closely she guarded her passions. Whether the emotion about to overflow its boundaries was anger or disappointment, he couldn’t tell; this he did know, the fierce expression she now wore transformed her from merely beautiful to something he had no words to describe.
The revelation struck him then, that he was the agent of her transformation. The thought excited him, despite the fact that he had called forth her darker feelings.
Isabelle tossed her head defiantly, and with such violence that a long lock of her hair tumbled free. The wayward strand curved against her throat, spilling over her shoulder to end in a ribbon of color against the pure white of her bodice, like an artist’s first brushstroke across a bare canvas. She turned from her vigil then—reluctantly, it seemed—and traveled with unhurried steps away from the house.
Jonathan exhaled a soft curse. Damn his conscience. Damn his useless lust.
Propelled by both, he ran from his room, down the steps and through the door into the open, determined to overtake Isabelle before she reached the rose garden.
Chapter Thirty
Garrick detoured around the pair of legs protruding into his path. A filthy drunk, clutching an empty bottle of cheap wine, slept inside a doorway where he had sought shelter for the night. Even at a distance, he reeked of sweat and vomit and stale urine. A dark stain spread across the inner thigh of one trouser leg where he had pissed himself.
Garrick bent down, low enough to see the man’s face, and forced himself to look more closely, though the sight repelled him. With his curiosity satisfied, he continued on at a brisker pace than before.
Thank God, was all he could think. Thank God it wasn’t Alfred Tate. Yet he wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere in the city Tate awoke this morning in similar circumstances.
Garrick slowed his steps, amazed that the street had changed so little, though it had been years since he’d last visited the place. Like the two bit whores who congregated beneath its gaslights, the neighborhood whose charms enticed men during the night revealed its tawdry ugliness in the light of day.
However, few men chose to come during the day, especially on a Sunday morning. No, on a Sunday even those who had exercised their vilest passions the night before would be sitting with their families piously listening to the pastor’s sermon. Veritable models of propriety.
Thanks to these pillars of the community, faithful churchgoers all, now was the best time of the week to pay the madam and her girls a visit. It was the time he was least likely to be seen—and he had no desire to be seen. Despite its seedy location, the brothel serviced some of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens. These very same men were glad enough to see him when afflicted with the physical consequences of their vice, but they would each and every one turn their backs on him should he encounter them here.
Garrick reached the house, its bright red door with the brass goat’s head knocker still the same. He hesitated before lifting the knocker, steeling himself against unpleasant memories. Madam—just plain Madam, as she liked to be called—would remember him. He had spent a good fifteen years coming one, sometimes two Sundays a month, providing his services gratis, taking neither money nor barter, though both were offered, sometimes insistently.
He struck the knocker several times, hard, then pounded with the side of his fist against the door. Eleven o’clock in the morning was like the crack of dawn for these women.
Getting no results, he pounded the door again until a woman’s voice, raspy with sleep, called from within the house. “I’m a comin’. Keep your britches on.”
The door opened a crack, and the dark face of Madam’s colored maid peered out cautiously. She eyed him up and down with a practiced look, assessing his appearance. Not, Garrick knew, to determine his character, but the size of his wallet.
“What do you want?” she asked ungraciously, though not with the harshness she would have displayed had the cut of his suit been of a lesser quality.
Garrick doffed his hat. “I need to speak with Madam.”
“She ain’t up yet. Come back later.”
The maid started to close the door in his face, but Garrick insinuated his foot onto the threshold and leaned his weight against the panel, feeling the brass knocker press into his shoulder as he did so.
“I believe she would be displeased if you turned me away.” Garrick reached into the inner breast pocket of his coat and produced his card. “Give her this and tell her I need a few minutes of her time.”
“Her time ain’t free,” the maid said sullenly, though she took the card.
“Neither is mine, but I have given it to her freely in the past.” The maid studied the card, frowning, then looked back up at him. Garrick could tell her resolve was weakening. “I’ll wait in the parlor while you rouse her.”
The maid shrugged, then turned away without a word, gracelessly leaving the door open for Garrick to let himself in. He discounted her rudeness, allowing her some sympathy. Unless Madam had changed her business practices, even her maid would have been engaged in the previous night’s commerce. God knew, enough of his patients had shamelessly told him that their cocks like to be fed on dark meat.
He entered the parlor, where he poured himself a glass of sherry from the sideboard, ma
king himself at home. Raising Lazarus from the dead was an easier task than getting Madam out of bed on a Sunday morning. He sank onto the soft cushions of a satin covered love seat and settled back comfortably, prepared to wait.
* * *
Less than three quarters of an hour after he’d arrived at her front door, Garrick was sitting in Madam’s boudoir. Across from him, she lay propped up by a mass of pillows piled against the massive carved headboard of her bed. Her hair was combed—after a fashion—and she had painted her eyes and lips. Garrick appreciated that it had been a herculean effort.
“Thank you for seeing me, Madam.” Garrick spoke with true gratitude, aware that his wait could have been much longer.
“I’m always glad to see an old friend, doctor.” She studied him a moment. “Especially one of the few good men I’ve ever known.”
“Thank you,” Garrick replied modestly. Somehow the compliment touched him deeply, coming as it did from this wizened old harlot.
She laughed. “I do believe you’re blushing, doctor. Now that is a rarity in a man.”
Garrick smiled, not minding that she found humor at his expense. “As the years progress, I am less and less able to see the good in myself.”
“And an honest man, too.” She narrowed her eyes, giving him a shrewd look. “Tell me what you want, doctor. I don’t think you’re here for the pleasure of my conversation, even if I spend it in your praises.”
“I need some information.”
Garrick reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small metal frame, about three inches square. He opened the hinged cover and passed the daguerreotype to Madam, suffering a stab of guilt as she took it from him. He had put Mrs. Cooper up to the theft, excusing it as a temporary and most necessary crime.
“Do you recognize this woman?”
Madam examined the portrait. “Should I?”
“I was told she left her family to live in a house of pleasure.” Garrick censored Tate’s phraseology, adopting the expression Madam liked to use. “And since yours is the best known in the city, I thought she might have come here.”
A Bed of Thorns and Roses Page 24