“And now you regret your knowledge.” He said it sadly, without blame.
“I regret that I asked something of you I cannot give in return.”
“Cannot?” Jonathan leaned forward with a sudden aggressiveness that made Isabelle draw back in her chair. “You have a choice.”
“I’m afraid,” she said weakly.
“You think I was not?” He delivered the question like a hard slap, one that left a stinging imprint on her conscience.
“I can’t deny I’m a coward.”
“A convenient excuse.”
The way he threw out the accusation made her feel like the worst sort of liar. “What do you mean, convenient?”
“You’re not afraid of me. If you were, would you be here in my room? Alone?” Jonathan’s damaged vocal cords lacked their normal range, yet he had the ability to register his lowest note in a way that called forth a frightening harmonic from somewhere deep within her. He paused, then dropped his voice to its lowest pitch and added, “At night?”
She felt the question as though it had been a physical touch. It resonated in her flesh, warming her in hidden places. Her cheeks were aflame.
“I’m afraid of losing your good opinion of me.” She continued to stare at her lap, unable to meet his eyes, afraid he would see through them to the heat inside. “You deserve better.”
“Better than what?”
“Than me.” Isabelle forced herself to lift her head and meet Jonathan’s gaze. “I wish I could make you understand.”
“I understand the only thing that matters.” Jonathan’s dark eyes shone with pain. “I’m losing you.”
She didn’t need to see beneath the mask to know what Jonathan was feeling. Anguish filled his voice; his body was taut with it. He gripped the seat of his chair the way a man bites down on a piece of wood, anticipating the surgeon’s knife without benefit of chloroform.
She couldn’t bear seeing his pain, knowing she was the cause. Knowing, too, that she possessed the cure. There was but a single medicine to relieve his suffering. The truth.
“Very well, I shall tell you everything.” Isabelle rubbed the scar on her thumb, remembering their first meeting. She had nearly ruined everything then, yet Jonathan had forgiven her. This time, he would not. “When you hear my story, you will no longer fear my leaving, you will demand it.”
Simply stating her intention to confess brought a cold sweat to her brow. Her hands were cold, too, yet her cheeks burned as if they were on fire. The walls around her warped and twisted, seeming to melt like wax, while the light in the room dimmed, fading quickly to darkness.
The next thing she knew, Jonathan was kneeling beside her chair, offering her a glass. Isabelle stared at it dully, struggling to find her way through the dark fog that clouded her mind. A span of time had gone missing, and with it the reason for Jonathan’s presence at her side.
“What is it?” she asked, nodding toward the glass.
“Brandy,” Jonathan said tersely. “You fainted.”
She took the drink with an uncertain nod of thanks. After a tentative sip, she drank it down without pause, aware that Jonathan was studying her the entire time.
“I’m better now.” She tried to sound convincing, less to allay Jonathan’s concern than to escape his scrutiny. When she handed back the glass, he understood his dismissal and returned to his seat.
Rather than dull her wits, the brandy cleared the fog from her brain. The knowledge of her purpose returned with a swift and cruel clarity. It was time to end her deception. Jonathan deserved the truth, no matter the cost to her.
Isabelle took a deep breath and plunged into her story, the way a suicide might jump from the roof of a tall building.
“My mother abandoned our family when I was five. No one ever said why, though I always suspected I was somehow to blame.” Her face cinched into a tight frown at the memory. “To hear my father, I was to blame for everything.”
Isabelle looked down at her lap. She had unconsciously twined her fingers together to keep her hands from shaking. Anyone walking into the room at that moment might have thought she was praying.
The thought amused her in a dark way. Experience had taught her only too well that God does not hear the prayers of an innocent child. How much less would he hear her now? Strong drink, not God, would give her the strength to say what must be said. Brandy was her only help in confessing what she had never before confessed.
“It was a few weeks after my thirteenth birthday when I was told my mother wished to see me.” Isabelle twisted her mouth into a bitter imitation of a smile. “I was thrilled. I thought she had finally forgiven me for whatever it was I had done to drive her away. I thought I could persuade her to return home.”
“The night the carriage came, I went gladly, full of hope. But when we arrived, the woman who met me was not my mother.”
She had been grotesque, with her hair piled high on her head, and her cheeks rouged a garish red to match her equally garish lips.
“She said I was pretty.” Isabelle’s bitter half smile returned. “She seemed quite happy about it, in fact, and hugged me.” The memory of being crushed against the woman’s bosom, of sinking into those obscenely huge mounds of flesh, sent a cold shiver through her. “I thought she was going to smother me against her huge breasts.”
Sudden heat rose in Isabelle’s already burning cheeks. She hadn’t meant to use that word in front of Jonathan. What must he think, hearing her speak of breasts?
She glanced across at him. Though their eyes met for the briefest of moments, it was enough to fan the fire in her cheeks to an even brighter flame. She looked down, unable to hold his steady gaze.
If she found a single word so difficult, how could she possibly tell the rest of her story? Because what came next was worse. Much worse.
She swallowed hard, forcing down her shame, then made herself repeat the embarrassing word. “I remember marveling at how her dress covered so little of her enormous breasts.”
Isabelle ventured another quick glance in Jonathan’s direction. He was inscrutable behind the mask, which was—for once—a blessing.
“Inside the house, there was a lot of noise and laughter. I thought, My mother has planned a party for me. But when we passed the sitting room . . . ”
Nausea rose from the pit of her stomach, filling her mouth with the taste of vomit. She had drunk the brandy too quickly.
Isabelle took several slow, deep breaths, waiting for the sensation to subside. Across from her, Jonathan shifted in his seat. She didn’t know whether he was readying himself to come to her aid should she faint again, or if he was bored and simply wanted her to get on with the story. She took another deep breath and forced herself to continue despite the nausea.
“There were ladies parading in their undergarments. There were men, too, who looked on, some in evening dress. As we passed, one of them whistled at me, as though he was calling a dog, and others shouted rude words that frightened me. But the woman told me not to worry. She said I wasn’t for the likes of them, that I had a special friend waiting for me.”
Jonathan made a strangled noise in his throat, but when she glanced up, he didn’t say a word. He was sitting perfectly still—unnaturally still, like one of the statues in the sculpture garden. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
Isabelle looked down at her lap. Jonathan’s hard stare shamed her. His eyes were devoid of feeling. They had grown cold toward her. And, surely, so had his heart.
“She said my friend was a very important man. A very wealthy one.”
Isabelle closed her eyes. Her temples throbbed. Her heart was pounding, its beat swelling until the sound filled her head and pressed painfully against her eardrums.
Something inside her tore, like a page ripped from a book. Her past detached itself from the present moment, the girl then from the woman now. Those terrible things had happened to someone else.
“Upstairs was a room, nearly empty except for a bed in one corner. The only decoration w
as a tall screen painted with pictures of naked men and ladies . . . ” The girl had not understood what she was seeing. Nor, even now, did the woman. “They were doing things.”
“Madam—that’s what she said to call her—moved the screen so it stood between me and the door. She wasn’t pretending to be nice any more. She said I had to stay there. She said to do whatever the man wanted, or I would have to answer to her later. Then Madam left. The room was empty and cold and . . . ”
Isabelle touched her cheek and felt the tears, but it was the girl who was crying, not her. The girl who had been afraid to make a sound, afraid to run away. Then it was too late to run.
“The door opened, and a man came into the room. He was wheezing, stumbling and cursing the way Papa did when he came home drunk at night. The man belched, then he laughed and belched again, even louder the second time. I couldn’t see him behind the screen. But then I noticed two small openings in it, and his eyes looking out at me.”
Jonathan interrupted her with a groan. “The screen,” he said in a choked voice. “If I had known.”
Lost inside her story, Isabelle had nearly forgotten Jonathan’s presence. Now his weak regret angered her, prompting another, more familiar anger, the same dark rage she felt every time she remembered what had been done to her. It was men who had hurt her, and she blamed them all. Even Jonathan.
“He told me to take my clothes off.” She said it defiantly, almost as a challenge. Jonathan had wanted her confession and now, by God, he would have it.
“He sounded mean, I didn’t dare disobey him. I started to undo the front of my dress, but I couldn’t work the buttons fast enough. He told me to hurry, so I pulled the dress over my head without undoing it. One of the buttons popped off, and then I felt a sharp pain, and a burning in my scalp. Another button had caught my hair and pulled out a hank of it by the roots.”
Isabelle rubbed her arms, suddenly cold, just as she had been while she stood there with that man’s eyes on her.
“When I crossed my arms, trying to cover my nakedness, he told me good girls don’t have anything to hide. But I knew he was lying. I knew good girls didn’t have to undress for strangers.” She closed her eyes and shivered at the memory, feeling gooseflesh rise up and down her arms. “His eyes roamed over my body, looking everywhere. The sensation was like cockroaches swarming over my skin.”
Jonathan interrupted. “This isn’t necessary.”
“I don’t want your pity,” Isabelle snapped. As angry as she was, she realized the irony of repeating Jonathan’s own words back to him.
Her shivering had become uncontrollable. Isabelle hunched over, hugging herself. No matter how hard she rubbed her arms, she couldn’t warm herself. The room felt as cold as a grave. She had often wished then—after—to die. Jenny had been her only reason for staying alive.
Jonathan left his seat and crossed the room to retrieve his jacket, where it lay neatly folded over the back of a chair. He carried the jacket to her and, without asking permission, settled it on her shoulders.
Isabelle looked up at him through narrowed eyes. His chivalry came as a surprise. Though, on second thought, she doubted his consideration was motivated by sympathy. He had been more than careful to avoid touching her as he draped the jacket around her shoulders.
“Would you like another drink?” he asked.
When she nodded, he took her glass, returning with two this time. He handed her a drink, then removed himself to another part of the room, out of her line of vision. Isabelle twisted around in her chair to watch him. He tossed off his drink, then carefully smoothed the front of his mask. When he turned back toward her, Isabelle quickly sank behind the wing of her chair before he could catch her spying on him.
Jonathan started to speak after he had resumed his seat. “You don’t have to—”
She cut him off. “Yes, I do.”
Isabelle drank her brandy as quickly as Jonathan had, then leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The drink made her tired, but it was a good feeling, a relaxed feeling. Nothing mattered anymore. Why should it, when she had already lost everything?
“I’m sure you can imagine what happened next,” she muttered. She no longer felt the need to elaborate. God knew, her pathetic story was probably not that uncommon. There were countless ruined women in the world. Thousands upon thousands of whores.
Jonathan broke the silence. “I don’t know what to say.”
Isabelle opened her eyes. She had almost dozed off. “I haven’t finished.”
Even behind the mask, she could see his eyes widen in surprise. He had yet to understand the extent of her ruination. The depth of her depravity.
She sat up, fighting off her drowsiness. “I don’t have much memory of when the man left. I remember being bundled up and shoved into a carriage, too numb to cry. I looked out the window, watching the houses go by—lost, with no idea where they were taking me. I just assumed they were taking me home, now that they had finished with me.”
Jonathan shifted in his chair, crossed his legs, then uncrossed them. Isabelle found a certain morbid satisfaction in his unease. Misery loves company, she thought, but the sentiment fell short of explaining her reason for wanting him to suffer. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure she cared to know.
“We left the town, traveling down a narrow country road. I began to be afraid they meant to drop me in the middle of nowhere, the way people dump an unwanted litter of pups. Then the carriage stopped, and the two men climbed down, the driver and his friend. Or accomplice, I should say.”
The brandy made her bold. She looked hard at Jonathan, searching his eyes to find the revulsion he had thus far managed to hide.
“I heard one of them say he didn’t get paid a slave’s wages, why shouldn’t he take what extra he could get? The carriage door opened, and before I knew it, the nightmare began again. They were pawing at me and tearing my dress. I fought and kicked, but this only made them laugh. One of them held me down, and then the other. They took turns.”
Jonathan had quit fidgeting. Perhaps he had heard enough. But now that she’d begun, Isabelle had a cruel impulse to tell it all, before he ordered her to leave.
“Shall I go on?” she asked, the sarcasm in her tone accusatory, implying that he enjoyed a prurient interest in her sordid story.
Jonathan dipped his head in a shallow nod. Isabelle didn’t wait for a more emphatic invitation. She hadn’t expected one.
“It was nearly dawn when they shoved me out of the carriage in the middle of Market Square. I knew my way home. Somehow, I got there.”
Isabelle paused, enjoying Jonathan’s shocked silence. She didn’t honestly know if it was him or herself she wanted to punish. Perhaps both.
“It took nearly three months before my father suspected I was pregnant. He took me to Madam, and together they took me to a bad part of town, a neighborhood even the police avoided, one full of run down tenements and rough looking men. I remember lying on a kitchen table. And the pain.”
It came back to her with startling immediacy. Whoever said a woman forgets the pain of childbirth had not taken into consideration the pain of a botched abortion. Isabelle wondered if Jonathan remembered his own suffering as vividly.
“The next day, at home, I started to bleed. It wouldn’t stop. By the time my father took me back to Madam, I was burning with fever. They argued, though I didn’t understand what they were saying. I was delirious when they finally called in a real doctor. I have no memory of him, except as a soothing presence. He saved my life, but . . . ”
Isabelle sucked in her breath and forced back an embarrassing sob by biting down on her knuckles, hard enough to taste blood.
“But?” Jonathan prompted.
She dug her nails into the soft underside of her wrist, focusing on the pain there, determined not to cry.
“I can never have children.”
The room was quiet, except for the sound of her ragged breathing, and the soft, even ticking of a mantel clock. Jo
nathan’s silence disturbed her. She would have preferred he shout at her or order her to leave, even to curse her for deceiving him all along.
“Now you know me,” she said, “now I’ve told you everything, can you understand that it is I who am the monster?” All the anger she felt toward Jonathan while telling her story evaporated. He was the one with every right to be angry. “I am sorry you had to hear this, but I wanted you to know why I can never marry you. I am certain you will be happy to retract your offer.”
Jonathan got to his feet and walked away from her. Isabelle thought he intended to leave without a word, but then he stopped in the middle of the room, standing there with his back to her.
She couldn’t blame him for turning his back on her. Maybe he wanted to make it easier for her to leave. Maybe he simply couldn’t bear looking at her. She eased out of her chair, meaning to slip quietly past him and out the door.
Just as Isabelle passed behind him, Jonathan dropped something onto the floor. She stopped to look. A diamond cufflink lay on the carpet. While she watched, a second one fell next to it. The two diamonds caught the light from the gas lamp overhead, sparkling like a pair of brilliant teardrops.
Jonathan turned to her. “Help me.”
He had undone the top two buttons of his dress shirt and now, trying to undo the third, ripped it loose in his clumsiness. His hands were shaking so that he barely had control of them.
Isabelle gaped at him. “What are you doing?”
“The same as you—sharing my secret.” His voice quavered when he said a second time, “Help me.”
Then she understood what he was offering her, and tears came to her eyes. Behind the mask, Jonathan’s eyes, too, held the sheen of tears.
She moved his hands aside and began undoing the rest of the buttons, her own fingers trembling almost as violently as Jonathan’s. He stood with his arms at his sides and submitted to her clumsy efforts. When she reached his waistband, she looked up at him and blushed, suddenly shy. He understood and tugged his shirttails free.
Beneath the shirt, his skin was pale, smooth and perfect. Without thinking, she reached up to touch him. The moment she rested her fingertips on his breastbone, Jonathan sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.
A Bed of Thorns and Roses Page 38