“Not everywhere.”
“To Europe, though.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ll take you there.”
She only smiled.
He leaned back in his chair, holding his wineglass to the light and squinting at it, and began to speak of the places he’d been and the sights he’d seen. As he talked, she had the sense that he was answering just to please her, not because the subject held any interest for him at this moment. And when, after a few minutes, he tapered off and stared rather distractedly out at the gulls wheeling in the blue over the headland, she didn’t prompt him with more questions. She let the silence lengthen until he noticed it, sent her a wry look, and began to speak of what they would do tonight.
Last night they’d gone to the Royal Theater to see a play called Petticoats, a silly, mildly risqué revue, very tame for him but deliciously shocking to her. She’d never dreamed women were allowed to appear in public with so little on—outside Paris, that is, or possibly Bora Bora. Which showed what she knew, and how provincial she truly was for all her encyclopedic knowledge.
When Sebastian trailed off again and frowned down abstractedly at a spoon he was turning over and over on the tablecloth, she had to ask, “Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Would you like to go home today instead of tomorrow? This is the day they’re delivering your new horse,” she remembered suddenly. “If you want to—”
“No, I don’t want to go home. Do you?” She shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking about the mare.”
“What, then?”
He looked at her speculatively. She began to think he wouldn’t answer when he said, “I’m thirty years old, Rachel. As of yesterday.”
“Yesterday was your birthday? I didn’t know—I’m sorry. Happy birthday, Sebastian.” She touched his sleeve, trying to gauge his mood; he patted her hand absently. “I wish I’d known.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Does it make you sad?”
“No, not sad. Thoughtful. It’s a time to be thoughtful, don’t you think? Especially if one hasn’t been particularly reflective before. Some would say thirty’s a little late to begin, but better late than never, I suppose.” He sipped his wine. “Needless to say, I haven’t come to any conclusions yet about my life. Except that I’m not very proud of it—but that’s hardly a new insight.”
She stared at his stern profile, feeling close to him and shut out at the same time. “I believe self-discovery is a process,” she said slowly. “It has no end.”
“Yes.” He looked up. “But I think you’re a bit ahead of me in the process.”
“It’s possible. Certainly I’ve had more opportunities.” She knew they were both thinking that being locked up alone in a small room left opportunities for little else. “Do you know, its not as painful for me to think about prison as it used to be. Or even to speak of it. At least to you.”
“I’m glad.” He sat back in his chair, taking her hand and lacing their fingers together.
“You’ve helped me to heal. Thank you,” she said simply. It seemed strange that she’d never said it to him before.
He gave a quick, dismissive shake of his head. “But you’re still sad sometimes. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Oh, no. I’m not, truly, I’m happy, I promise you.” To the extent that it was true, it was because of him. Freedom, employment, friends—of course they had all contributed to her metamorphosis from the wan, speechless ghost behind the prisoner’s bar, but the primary agent of the change was Sebastian. She’d stopped asking herself if he could have been any man, if she’d been so needy and helpless that anyone who held her future in his hands could have made her love him. It wasn’t true. She loved him, Sebastian Verlaine, because there was a softness in him he couldn’t even see himself, and a decency, and a clean, hard-edged integrity that was no less real for being, until lately, somewhat . . . underutilized. He was on a journey of his own, his life riddled with questions and dilemmas he’d never faced before. It was himself he was testing, his philosophy he was trying to understand when he pushed against the boundaries of convention and morality. She loved his energy and tirelessness, his constancy. How different they were: her answer to the catastrophe that had wrecked her life had been to withdraw from life; to die, in effect, in every way she could while her heart still beat and her blood still circulated. Their plights were nothing alike, although something had scarred him, too—the coldness of his family, the absolute lovelessness of his childhood—but he’d confronted his handicap by embracing life in all its uncouth, sensuous, too-human varieties.
But that was all in the head, her intellectual motives for loving him. Just as deeply, she was simply infatuated. Everything about him was beautiful to her. Her body reacted to the sight of him before her mind had time to register his presence. She was like a compass, always turning back to him as her focal point, her body’s natural center. She loved his hands, the set of his shoulders, the deep timbre of his voice. He liked to tease her, and that was such a sweet, rare treat. He talked to her, listened intently to everything she said. They lay in bed at night for hours, sometimes until dawn, talking, talking, talking. And laughing. And making love.
“I’m restless,” he said suddenly. “Do you mind if we go?”
“No, I don’t mind.” She studied him surreptitiously while he paid the bill. He looked preoccupied again.
But he smiled when he caught her eye. “It’s nothing—I just feel like walking.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m still a beginner, you know; a little self-discovery goes a long way with me.”
They left the restaurant holding hands.
They strolled along the shady streets of the town, looking in shop windows, watching the other pedestrians. By mutual agreement, they decided against visiting the Maritime Museum, and browsed for an hour instead in a musty old bookstore called The Silverfish. Rachel had a pound and four shillings in her purse, and castigated herself for leaving the rest of her fortune—two pounds, four pence—in her case at the Octagon. Wandering away from Sebastian, she found the section, very small, where the proprietor kept books about music. There were biographies of composers, volumes on music theory, dozens of old hymnals, a few collections of sheet music. Nothing struck her particularly until she came upon a libretto for the opera La Traviata, new-looking and in perfect condition. Tamping down her excitement, she carried it to the tiny counter, behind which the shopkeeper sat on a high stool, making marks in a notebook with a pencil.
They had a whispered consultation. He wanted two pounds for the libretto. The art of bargaining was one Rachel knew, like so many other things, only from books. With manufactured indifference, she offered him a pound. “One and six,” he countered. “Twenty-two shillings,” she said—carelessly, almost wearily. The bookseller looked disgusted. “One and four,” he snapped, “and that’s as low as I’ll go.” Her heart was pounding. She waited one more second, said, “Oh, very well,” with great nonchalance, and gave him all her money.
That night, in a crowded, lamplit eating house called Selby’s, she gave Sebastian his birthday present. She’d known he would like it, but she wasn’t prepared for his unqualified delight. “Rachel, this is wonderful,” he exclaimed, avidly riffling the pages, as thrilled as a boy on Christmas morning. “When did you buy it? How did you know I wanted it?”
“You told—”
“Did you know I saw Traviata performed in Venice in fifty-three? And again in Covent Garden just last spring?”
“Yes, you told—”
“It’s magnificent, I wish you could hear it. Verdi’s a genius. Traviata’s from Dumas’s story of The Lady of the Camellias, you know. Look, here’s the finale to Act Two—‘Alfredo, di questo core.’ I’ll play it for you when we get home. Try to, anyway. What a perfect gift, darling. Thank you.” And in front of all the diners at Selby’s, he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.
She blushed furiously, not from embarrassment but from feeling. The depth of her pleasure because she’d pleased him with her simple gift was profound, and anything but simple. Her emotions were raw; she’d been teary off and on all day. An hour ago, when they’d stood on the headland to watch the sun drop through bands of orchid and gold clouds and sink into the sea, such a storm of melancholy had seized her, she couldn’t keep from weeping. “It’s so beautiful,” she’d explained when Sebastian had asked, with tender amusement, what ailed her. But that wasn’t it. The hours they spent together were too perfect—she loved him too much. It couldn’t last, and she couldn’t bear it.
Sebastian ordered more wine. The waiter made small talk while he poured it, referring to Rachel as “your wife, sir.” Their eyes met, Sebastian’s amused, hers sheepish. After the waiter left, he leaned toward her and murmured, “The man needs glasses. We don’t look anything like a married couple.”
“We don’t?”
“Not in the least. We’re talking, for one thing. Enjoying each other’s company. We look as though we like each other.”
She smiled, but his facile cynicism oppressed her. She tried to echo his light tone. “Do we look like lovers?”
“Definitely.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to give up my hopes of tricking anyone in Wyckerly into thinking I’m a lady. Perhaps I would do better as your London mistress. There at least I’d have a chance at anonymity, if not respectability.”
“Oh, no,” he said easily, “then I’d have to spend all my time in the city, and I much prefer it here.”
She couldn’t look at him. She made a business of breaking off a piece of bread and spreading it with butter. But when she tried to eat it, it stuck in her throat like sand.
***
That night, she told him about Randolph.
She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t thought she could. But Sebastian made love to her with such gentleness, such soft, deliberate tenderness, that when it was over she found herself in tears again. This time he wouldn’t accept her inarticulate explanation. While he held her close, caressed her, and murmured to her, the terrible confession came out. It shocked both of them; she was as dismayed as he was to hear herself speaking the unspeakable, telling, in jerky, whispered rushes, the awful things Randolph had done. Once she started, she couldn’t stop; she was compelled to describe the very worst, every lewd, despicable act. She knew she was horrifying him, but she couldn’t stop. In the back of her mind, she had a sick certainty that time was running out—that if she didn’t tell him now, she never would. Would never tell anyone. This was her last chance.
When she finished, they tried to console each other. “My dear,” he called her. “Oh, my dear.”
“But I’m all right now,” she said urgently when he cursed Wade and admitted the violence he’d have done to him if he could.
They held each other for a long time, and slowly, surely, the bittersweet knowledge came to Rachel that the worst had happened: she had opened herself up completely, and Sebastian was going to hurt her. They had never spoken of it, but she thought he must know it, too. How could he not? She’d come to him with her eyes open, had never asked for promises, never hoped for a future. He couldn’t help being who he was; she couldn’t claim she didn’t understand him. Today she’d lied and told him she was happy. But for all that her life had turned into a spectacular dream, she couldn’t be content, not in any deep, true way, any more than an actress could be truly, deeply happy because her play was a great success. One day the play would close—and one day Rachel’s time with Sebastian would end.
But she had him now. The things she’d told him were ugly, and she could feel the lingering distress in his body where it touched hers in the bed. The candle burned low, casting slow-dancing shadows on the dark walls and the pale ceiling. It was very late; the city slept without a sound, and the thick silence deepened and sharpened the intimacy between them in their rented room. She stroked his arm, the smooth curve of his shoulder; she put her lips on his chest where his heart beat. In the garden at Lynton he’d taught her passion’s rise and fall, its question and the sweet, explosive answer. Another gift, another addiction she would have to overcome.
But she had him now. And his skin was warm, and the sound of his sigh when she touched him was full of longing. Randolph’s depravities mustn’t be allowed to linger or to poison what was between them. But he wouldn’t reach for her first—the brutality of the story she’d told had appalled him and made him careful, wary of touching her. So she touched him. The silky skin over his hipbone. The hardness of his thigh. And she tasted him. The salty-sweet hollow in the base of his throat. His mouth. The palm of his hand and his long, sensitive fingers.
Gasping, he tried to pull her down, but she slipped out of his grasp. She needed him this way, receiving instead of giving. She couldn’t speak the words, but she had to show him what she felt. She had to make love.
“He made me do this to him,” she whispered, letting her hair graze his stomach.
“Rachel—-”
“I hated it. It made me gag.” His strong, narrow hips were beautiful; she rested her hands on the sides and stroked the tops of his thighs with her thumbs. Dark hair grew in a line from his navel to his groin. She brushed the length of it with her tongue.
“Rachel. God, Rachel.”
“He said it was good. He said it gave him pleasure. Do you like it?”
He had his fist on his forehead, grinding it between his eyebrows. All he could say was her name.
She took him in her mouth. “I can taste both of us,” she murmured after a moment, and he brought his fist down on the sheet beside them with helpless violence. She knew everything, all the refinements that would please him, but she listened, listened, watched and felt, alert to the subtlest nuance of his pleasure. When he couldn’t stand any more, he reached for her—but she shifted away again, wouldn’t let him take her. “Let go,” she whispered—exactly as he’d whispered it to her. She smiled into his startled face. If he had eyes to see, he must know that she loved him. “Don’t hold back. Give yourself to me, Sebastian. Because I want you.”
She let him keep her hand when he grabbed for it. He squeezed it tight, so tight he was hurting her—but then his punishing grip slackened and a groan tore from his throat. Panting, he lifted his head from the pillow and dropped it back heavily, twice, too stunned to speak. She could feel him trembling, feel the tension in his muscles and the light sheen of sweat everywhere she touched him. His fingers tangled in her hair. “Rachel,” he said on a sigh, and he sounded sated, resigned, almost hopeless. “Too much. Oh God, Rachel.”
She rested beside him, her arm across his waist, thinking, Ah, then you know how it feels. It was good that he knew. When she left him, they could feel, at least for a time, the same loss.
XVIII
RACHEL WAS LEANING over the arch of the stone bridge, tossing sprigs of pimpernel into the river and watching the sluggish current carry them away, when she heard a light footstep on the dusty stones. Looking up, she saw Sidony Timms, smiling shyly, coming toward her from the direction of the house.
“Saw you from out the window,” she greeted Rachel, taking a place beside her. “Thought I’d come out and say good afternoon t’ you. I don’t get to talk to you as much now that I’m workin’ in the dairy.”
“Mr. Holyoake tells me you’re doing very well, Sidony. Do you like it?”
“Yes, ma’am, I like it fine. I can never say thank you enough for thinking of it for me.”
“But I didn’t think of it, William did.”
Sidony ducked her head, acknowledging that. “He did, didn’t ’er He’s been ever so kind to me, Mrs. Wade. You ought to see the place he fixed up in the barn for me to sleep in. It’s nicer’n my room at home! These last weeks, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”
She looked happy. Healthier, too, and there was a new confidence in the way she moved. Her limp was improving, but Dr. Hesselius
had examined her again recently, and his judgment was that she would always be lame.
“I’m glad you like your new job,” Rachel told her. “It was kind of Mr. Holyoake to fix the place in the barn for you.”
“It was,” she agreed.
Rachel hesitated, then asked, “Do you ever see your father?”
“I saw ’im in church last Sunday. He wouldn’t look at me, so I didn’t speak to ’im. It’s hard on him, I think, me being gone from home. Not just the work. I expect he’s lonely on his own.”
Rachel tried to dredge up some sympathy for Marcus Timms, but found she had none to spare.
“I could never go back, though. Even though I forgive him, I can’t be his daughter anymore. Sometimes . . .” She sighed, resting her forearms on the ledge and leaning over to look at the water. “Sometimes I feel like I’m an old, old lady. Mrs. Wade?”
“Yes?”
“I was wanting to ask you about something.” She sent her a quick glance from under her lashes. “It’s kind of personal. It’s about me, not you,” she clarified hastily, and Rachel relaxed, smiling to think Sidony could read her so easily.
“Go ahead,” she invited. “Ask me anything you like.”
“Well, ma’am, it’s about Mr. Holyoake. He’s been ever so nice to me, as I said, what wi’ the place in the cow barn, and talkin’ to me in the evenings when I can’t sleep and he can’t either. He’s probably the best man I’ve ever known. He’s not a real gentleman, I know that, not like is lordship or anything—but to me he is, you know, because he’s good. And strong, and he would never tell a lie nor do a dishonest deed.”
“William has been kind to me as well, Sidony. He is a gentleman. In the truest sense.”
“There, ma’am, I knew you would understand. I don’t know why I can talk to you, you being educated and a lady and all. But I can.”
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