by L. K. Rigel
“And he deserves admiration, madam.” Now those might be the deepest blue eyes Sir Carey had ever seen. “At Laurelwood, Carleson has enjoyed the cheap transport for his wool and corn. The baron then living had already adapted Wedgwood’s methods to the Asher pottery works. Shipping by canal, breakage decreased and profits soared. The county economy has been well-served by the duke’s canal.”
She seemed interested, but said nothing. There was a hardness to her he’d like to crack.
“Now I’ll tell you a bit of family gossip: The old baron was a fool who would have ruined his good luck soon into the success of it. So everyone agreed it was fortunate when, one night on a drunken ride home, he fell from his horse and broke his neck.”
Mrs. Carleson smiled slightly, and a faraway look came over her jewel-like eyes. Why do you smile like that, Mrs. Carleson, a little sad, and a little wicked too? And why so taciturn?
“The management of the property fell to his middle daughter Philomela, the lady you see there. She was so competent and good, she kept all the men working. The duke prevailed upon the Crown to make her baroness in her own right.”
“No inheriting sons, then.”
Her observations were certainly to the point. “Thank you, Norwood.” He handed his man his cloak and the walking stick topped by a silver dragon’s head with garnets for the eyes. The ash it was made from had come from the woods beside Laurelwood Chapel, a grove long known to be haunted by fairies and worse. He had been about to tell that story, but now he was put off. “No inheriting sons. Madam.” He took leave of the odd Mrs. Carleson.
He was dressed as usual without flaw and at first glance seemed slight, even effeminate. As he walked, all trace of the feminine vanished. His vitality radiated as if he were a blessed thing descended from some charmed dynasty of ancient legend. In motion, he reeked of male power; many pairs of female eyes marked his path. He attracted silly girls as naturally as he alarmed steady women, despite their better judgment, and he made it a point of honor never to insult any lady who would receive him into her gentle grace.
The bride was one who had received him with some regularity, and as he sat down beside her she seemed not to have lost the inclination. He didn’t resent his duty to play host with his aunt, and he liked the duke, his benefactor, very much. But after Mrs. Carleson, he found Delia uninteresting.
“Sir Carey, why so serious a face?” The duchess placed her hand on his thigh. “Don’t worry. I’ll always want you to call me D.”
“Another man enjoys that honor now, your grace.” He ignored her touch and lifted his glass. “Your happiness.”
Mrs. Carleson was silent beside her husband. She appeared serene enough beside him, but Sir Carey thought she was not. In fact, he was certain Mrs. Carleson was miserable in her marriage. Why had he gone on so much about the past, about events which only made him unhappy? Even miserable Mrs. Carleson must be happier than he. He made a show of enjoying the wine, though it was a gift from the infernal Singers, while Delia chatted on about people he did not know and had no desire to know.
Devilliers left the table to speak with the Carlesons, and Mrs. Carleson’s face softened. Several complete and contiguous sentences seemed to come out of her, though Sir Carey could hear none of it. Delia’s hand glided further up his thigh. She would find her way back to his bed once she had spawned an heir for Gohrum, but it didn’t signify. She cared for Sir Carey about as much as he did for her.
Ceremonies of Experience
Leopold didn’t forget Susan Gray. She’d awakened him to love’s sweetness. But his eagerness now was for Marta Schonreden, and as soon as it was proper he went to see her brother. He had to have Marta for his wife, or he would rather follow his parents to his own grave.
He felt no great longing for Marta. He didn’t swoon or sigh when he thought of her. He fancied himself no Dante amazed by his Beatrice. His need was more profound, like his need for water or air. He didn’t long for water or air. He simply had to have them in order to live.
She had captured his fancy years ago, one day on the street when he’d stopped some boys fighting. What man could miss such beauty? Then Susan Gray had taught him what a woman was, and he’d known immediately that he must be with Marta Schonreden. She wasn’t to be wished for; she was to live with or to die without.
He found her in the parlor arranging winter greenery on a table. Their worlds had changed in the same way, the great Rocks of their lives crumbled and gone forever. But his loss had had the opposite effect to hers. He now had autonomy and means, the two necessary underpinnings of real freedom.
“Miss Schonreden, your brother has given me permission to speak to you.”
“Yes?” Her throat flushed a deep pink.
“Is something the matter?”
“No.” She indicated he should sit. “Just for a moment, you reminded me of von Beethoven.”
“You have seen the composer?” He ignored the chair she’d gestured toward and sat beside her on the sofa.
“When I was in Vienna with my aunt and uncle. He is a horrid man.”
Leopold laughed. “How so?”
“I was with a group of students at a salon to hear him play. He pinched my chin and stole a kiss in front of everyone.”
“What insolence. How horrible for you.”
“Yes, it was.” She lifted her lovely eyelashes and seemed pleased by his understanding. “Later, my teacher commended my tolerance. In truth I felt more violated by that sentiment than I had by the kiss.”
“Your beauty, I think, stuns a man’s reason.”
“Mm?” She blushed again.
He brought her fingers to his lips. “And do you think I am a horrid man, like Beethoven?”
“Oh.”
“Miss Schonreden. Marta. I have thought of you often this last year with much affection. With more than affection. What I mean to say is, would you to do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
“You are too kind.”
“I come into my majority in May, when I will have full authority over my estate.” He recited the speech he’d composed in his head on the road from Salzburg. “If you grant me the honor, I’d like to be married then. You will be well cared for.”
Just barely, she pulled her fingers away from his kisses. A less perceptive man wouldn’t notice, but Leopold felt a momentary physical rejection like an unexpected blow. Then she yielded and the dark instant passed.
“You will be loved, Marta. You are loved.” All was well. He felt her acquiesce into the Marta he knew, lovely, compliant, and his perfect complement.
Marta could barely believe this was happening. Prospects are funny things, Vati had said, and so they were. Hers had improved because he had looked out for them. Because he’d sent her to Vienna, she’d always know he had loved her though Fate had left her to Wolfram’s negligent care.
Now she again felt revived by Leopold Singer’s vital force. She wanted to touch his cheek, to rest her head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. With her father’s death had come the great shock of her utter powerlessness. Dependent on her brother’s good will, she faced a sobering and self-diminishing reality. In that world, no one was her champion. A new kind of necessity colored her feelings. As much as she wanted Leopold Singer, she needed him more.
She had never spoken of Beethoven’s kiss, yet it was easy to tell him about it. He was sympathetic, where Wolfram would have ridiculed her. She remembered Oktav’s kiss, and how she had imagined Leopold in his place. She could still imagine it. She wanted Leopold’s kiss. She wanted him for her husband and for her lover.
And he was here, making love to her, kissing her fingers. The thrill of his touch surged through her body. For the mere fraction of a moment she’d thought, maybe I am as bad as Eve after all. In that instant of self-doubt, a chasm had opened between them, and it was terrifying.
“I will marry you,” she said. He brought her into his strength and kissed her full on the mouth. The chasm closed. She did not fee
l evil. The world felt exactly right.
The following May, Gabrielle helped Marta put on the veil they had made together. It was Gabby’s design and more a mantilla than a veil, the color of light brown eggshells, each crocheted star centered with pastel rosettes in green, pink, and blue. It cascaded over Marta’s blue silk wedding dress, made by a dressmaker in Salzburg at Leopold’s expense. He had guessed rightly that Wolfram would not pay for such a thing.
“God’s grace,” Gabby said. “You look like a Spanish queen!”
The image in the glass offered proof. Marta really was going to be married today. The lacy veil against her dark hair did make her seem exotic. Wolfram could not begrudge the luxury of her dress because her husband-to-be had ordered it. Her mother’s voice could not intrude on her beauty because she was giving it as an offering to her bridegroom.
Her eyes were green with anticipation. Other girls seemed to lose something of their selves when they married. Even dear Gabrielle was not quite as lively as before she became Mrs. Wolfram Schonreden. But in marriage, Marta anticipated a new freedom. She would no longer be a father’s daughter or a brother’s ward.
She would be Leopold Singer’s wife. She would keep her own house and entertain her husband’s friends. Wolfie and Gabby would come to dinner on Sundays. Soon her children would join Gabby’s children in studies and games. The dress and mantilla would go into a cedar chest until the day of her daughter’s wedding.
“Are you ready, sister?” Wolfram stood in the doorway beaming with unlikely good cheer, cleaned up and dressed in their father’s best suit.
“Wolfram, you are so handsome!” She linked arms with him, emerged from the house of her childhood forever and rode to the plain and unmysterious Lutheran church to be transformed into a new person.
In celebration of the marriage, the servants had the full day off. When Leopold brought Marta home from the boisterous reception Wolfram hosted, the house was silent. In her new room, she began to detach the mantilla.
“Let me help you.” He set it aside and unbuttoned the tiny buttons that ran from her hairline to the base of her spine. She stepped out of the dress, trembling. Gabrielle had given her a gruesome talk about men’s physical appetites. She was prepared to do her duty. More than that, she looked forward to a feast of Leopold’s kisses. She bent to remove her shoes.
“Let me,” he murmured, kneeling.
She felt ungrounded. Steadying against the back of a chair, she studied the wallpaper; if she looked at him she would faint. He slid one stocking from her leg. A small, strange noise escaped her throat when she felt his lips warm on the inside of her thigh. She gripped the chair.
He removed the last of her undergarments, and she felt the relief of her breasts coming unbound and the sting of cold—but wasn’t she warm? Did she fall? Or did he sweep her into his arms? He laid her on the bed and undressed himself. She didn’t recognize his expression—a look of hunger, purpose, desire, license. He bent over her, and she braced herself, but he did not enter her. He kissed her neck and stroked her breasts and her stomach. He kissed her belly, and she ran her fingers through his hair. His mouth on her skin was all she knew, then a shock of delight as his lips found a nipple. She grew hot with the ache of desire. Gabrielle had not said it would be like this.
Then he was inside her. Pain, and then not pain. He was filling her, surrounding her, blinding her to everything but him, and binding her to him, her husband, her friend. Then another unexpected thing happened: she felt him shudder as he lost himself inside her and surrendered to her. This was the mystery she had barely guessed at when Oktav kissed her in the shrubs on the cathedral road.
“I love you,” he said, and she understood.
And then it was over. The full weight of him was upon her, his head between her breasts, his breath heavy. She floated into sleep, happier than she thought possible on earth. The most important question had its answer: Who was she? She felt as if her self—the self out of which she had lived, breathed, and seen the world—had evaporated, yet all its particulars had come into sharp focus to animate this new person, made real by the love of this man. Marta Singer now knew her name; everything else would follow.
Let Me Die
Susan left Gohrum House while the duke was away on his wedding trip. She had the excuse of her mother’s worsening illness, but she couldn’t have stayed in any event. She wasn’t in Bath six weeks before the landlady had made it a habit to shake her head sadly and look sideways at Susan’s expanding belly.
Mrs. Bead met Susan one morning at the bottom of the stairs. “Is that for the post?” She nodded at the letter in Susan’s hand.
“The doctor has told me to write to my brother,” Susan said. “My mother may not last the night.”
John was eighteen now and married, to Susan’s regret. He arrived the day after she buried their poor mother, took one look at Susan’s swollen shape and said, “My Meg is in about the same way as you.”
“Oh, John. You are so young.” This was too much to bear. “Is there no hope for our family?”
“None, I think.” John laughed. He had been a kind and sweet boy, and he looked to become a generous and good man. “Come home and meet my bride. She’s a good girl, and we’ve got a nice little farm on Gohrum’s land with an extra room that will do for you two.”
She hesitated. Carleson Peak was the last place she wanted to see again.
He said, “Don’t worry about Morgan Baker. Yes, I know all about that rascal. You think I didn’t see him trifle with my big sister?”
More than trifle, but there was no need to enlighten John further.
“He was dismissed not long after you went to London. The man was nothing but hot air. They say he went to New Holland.”
John cheerfully loaded her few bags and boxes into his cart, and Susan left Bath forever. John a tenant farmer! She had ruined herself and any chance of helping her brother to regain his inheritance. Even the duke would be loath to employ her now. For the first time in her life, she had no idea what to do.
Two months later, she still had no plan for the future. The pain came in waves, closer and closer together until one wouldn’t let go. She had to push. She had to.
Let me die, she thought. Let me die and have done with it. The pains were so close together now she couldn’t catch her breath. She tried pacing her room, which helped for a few minutes. The next contraction took hold so fiercely she let out a scream, a scream that mixed with other screams down the hall in another room.
Her brother’s wife Margaret had been in labor for three days, and Susan could tell the midwife was worried. When her own pains started that morning, she’d stayed quiet. It was two months too early to be birth pangs. But could anything possibly be worse? If God could just let her die, she really wouldn’t mind.
Something had happened. Margaret’s screams metamorphosed into wails of unbearable heartbreak. No. No.
Susan’s bedroom door opened. The midwife came in, worn out, but she eased Susan into the bed. Lying down was worse. Susan tried to stand again, but the midwife would have none of it.
“How is my sister?” But she knew the answer.
Hours later, when the house was silent with exhaustion and sorrow, Susan woke to the sweet song of a nightjar outside her window. She picked up her baby and studied his features in the moonlight. He had the deep brown eyes of his father and no hair at all on his head. She gasped as her heart swelled. What wonder was this? That such a small helpless person could give her back her heart and all her belief in life? Love like this made up for everything.
Once she had run to the woods to join the fairies. She’d believed her mother had foolishly left the enchanted world, given up everything good, to love her father. But there were no fairies. It was John Gray who had made a bad marriage and called it enchantment. He died and left his children to the care of a woman with no connections, no talents, and no ambition. Susan was no better than her mother or her father. She’d brought this beautiful miracle
into a world that would call him bastard and see no beauty, no miracle.
She wouldn’t let his life be ruined before it even began.
She slipped down the hall and into Meg’s room. The midwife slept next to the bed, but poor Meg was awake, staring into the night. Her baby lay cold in his crib. Susan laid her own child on Meg’s bed and began to exchange the infants’ clothes.
“His name is Perseus,” she said. She offered Persey to Meg, who mechanically opened her night dress to feed him.
Susan turned and froze under the midwife’s stare. After an eternity, the midwife nodded her approval and closed her eyes again.
Susan returned to her room with aching breasts and the wrench of longing for the one who’d lived inside her these many months. Snow falling on the other side of the window made no noise. She laid her dead nephew in her son’s place.
Motives Malignant and Benign
1802, London
The carriage sent by the Duke of Gohrum waited for Marta and Leopold at the London docks as they disembarked the ship. A footman handed Leopold a note then set about the luggage. Leopold frowned at the note’s handwriting and slipped it into a pocket then handed Marta into the carriage.
“Let’s have the top down,” he said. “My wife has never seen London.”
Marta gaped at the cathedral they passed on the way to Gohrum House. “This is a Protestant church?” The magnificent St. Paul’s didn’t just open onto the street—rather, a plaza—or boast spires. It also had two baroque towers and a great dome. And yet it must belong to the Church of England; of course it was Protestant. They’d definitely left the Holy Roman Empire.
“I fear I’ll embarrass you among your friends,” she said. Leopold was acquainted with barons and dukes. He was richer than she’d supposed. In truth, she’d never really thought about it before their marriage, but discovering the extent of his wealth had been intimidating. Why did he choose her? He could have married a duke’s daughter—a princess!