by Lisa Cach
Theresa was just taking the tart from the brick oven when Charmaine arrived. The warm scent of apples and cinnamon mingled with the other smells of the cottage, creating a sense of welcome to which even Charmaine was not immune.
“Good morning, Mother. I see I chose a good day to visit.”
“Any day would be a good day.”
Valerian kept to the background as mother and daughter engaged in stilted small-talk. Charmaine’s visits were few and far between, and Valerian knew that Aunt Theresa was pained by the distance between herself and her daughter.
Valerian watched her cousin, wondering what had prompted her to drop in like this. There was worry in Charmaine’s eyes, which skipped around the cottage, rarely making contact with her mother’s. She was pale, and the lines around her mouth had deepened. Valerian relaxed the habitual mental guard she wore around her cousin, and allowed herself to accept the fragments of subtle information Charmaine put out.
Her focus centered on Charmaine’s posture, and the outline of her midriff. She was not surprised she had missed it the last time she and Charmaine had met—she had been too busy apologizing for Oscar and thinking about both Nathaniel and getting away from Charmaine to spare so much as a real look at her. But it was obvious now, despite the fact that Charmaine had always had a slightly stocky figure and wore loose dresses.
Charmaine was pregnant.
Valerian forgot her reserve and came to where Charmaine sat at the table. Hardly thinking, she lay her hand on Charmaine’s belly.
“How long?” Valerian asked. “Four months?” She was beginning to get a sense of life within her cousin, flowing up into her hand.
What color there had been in Charmaine’s face drained away. “So it is true. I was not sure for so long, and even now. . . . Am I not too old? I thought all chance had passed.”
Valerian took her hand away. “Four months, maybe a little more.”
“We have hoped for so long.” Charmaine sniffed back a sob. “You are sure?”
Valerian nodded.
“I cannot believe I did not see it myself,” Theresa exclaimed, coming forward and clasping her daughter’s hands in hers. Theresa’s cheeks flushed with pleasure, giving her a healthier look than she had had for weeks.
“Will you help me through this?” Charmaine asked her mother tentatively. “I would not trust anyone but you. I know I have not come to see you as much as—”
“I will do everything I can,” Theresa interrupted. “And Valerian will help you, too. You know she is the more talented of us.”
Charmaine spared a doubtful glance for her young cousin. “But you will be there for me?” she asked her mother, vulnerable in a way she had not been since a child.
“I will do all in my power.”
Charmaine ate most of the tart, asking Theresa question upon question about childbearing. Valerian could not help but notice that Theresa hardly touched the tart on her own plate, just as she had not been eating her meals of late.
Charmaine finally left, and after Valerian had finished cleaning up she sat down across from Theresa, who was sitting silent and lost in thought.
“I do not know if I will be able to help her, when her time comes,” Theresa finally said.
“I was wondering when you would admit to being ill.”
“You knew?” Her eyebrows rose fractionally. “But of course you knew. How did I think I would hide it from you, of all people?”
“Will you let me examine you?”
“ ‘Twould be of no use. There is no help for this.”
“You do not know that. Mayhap there is no medical treatment, but I could—”
“No, Valerian. I will not have you wasting your energies on what cannot be stopped.”
“You do not know—”
“This I do know.”
“You have seen it.” It was a statement, and Valerian’s voice was dead as she spoke it, knowing what it meant, and yet unwilling to accept it. “But it is not certain,” she protested. “It is possibilities that you see, you have always said that.”
“Sometimes there are no other possibilities. Sometimes all paths lead to the same end.”
Valerian’s throat closed. “I cannot lose you, too. Let me help you, you know I can help.”
“No, child,” Theresa said gently. “There is nothing that will not serve to merely prolong the inevitable, and I will not have you wasting your energies on that. And I must be frank with you, and say that as much as I want to stay, I do not know that I could stand to. Accept this, Valerian. I want you to take care of Charmaine when I cannot. She will need you.”
“I refuse to believe there is nothing to be done.” Even as she said it, she knew it was empty defiance. It was rare for Theresa to be certain, but when she was, whatever she saw came to pass.
“Come, feel it.” Theresa gestured her over. Valerian knelt before her, and Theresa took her hand and pressed her fingertips into her abdomen.
Valerian felt the solid mass where none should be. She closed her eyes, letting her senses flow through the pads of her fingers. She visualized the tumor in its warm fleshy nest, and sensed the spreading seeds of its presence. Without direction to do so, she reached up to Theresa’s armpit, feeling there the offspring of the tumor. She moved her hand again, to the nodes under her aunt’s jaw. The more she felt, the deeper became her awareness of the illness. She sensed the traces all through Theresa’s body, depriving her of nourishment and consuming her energies. She felt as well the distress of the tissues, and knew her aunt’s pain must be severe.
Theresa took Valerian’s hand in both of hers. “Enough.”
Valerian sat back on her heels and opened her eyes. “Why did you try to hide it?”
“I did not want to worry you.”
“Does it make it easier for me to know that you have been alone with this knowledge? How could you have not even allowed me to try to help, when it was early yet and something might have been done? If there is one thing above all others that you have taught me, it is the value of letting others know they are not alone with their pain.”
“I am sorry,” Theresa said, and Valerian saw the sheen of tears in her aunt’s eyes, and knew they were for her rather than for Theresa’s own self.
Valerian felt her lip tremble, her neck muscles clenched against emotion.
“I am sorry,” Theresa repeated, and Valerian covered her face with her hands. She leant forward and buried herself in Theresa’s lap. She sobbed deeply into the heavy cloth that smelled of green plants, Theresa’s gentle stroking of her hair all the sweeter for the knowledge that it would soon not be there.
She did not know how long she wept. She sniffed back the last of her tears and turned her head to the side, resting her cheek on Theresa’s thigh. Theresa brushed the hair back from her face, and they stayed that way for long moments.
Valerian broke the silence. “I am not sure that Charmaine’s baby is healthy.”
Theresa’s fingers stilled in her hair. “Oh, no. . . .” she whispered.
“I do not know the extent. I do not think I wanted to know, so I stopped looking. I will not be enough to help her through that. She does not care for me, and will not turn to me for comfort.”
Theresa did not answer, her silence an acknowledgment of this truth. When she closed her eyes the paths to the future stretched before her, and in all but the vaguest and least likely, great turmoil and a sense of growing danger surrounded her niece, and now her daughter, too.
She wished she did not have this gift of sight. It was hard enough to leave the two she loved dearest in the world. It was torture to know she would be abandoning them at a time they would need her more than they ever had.
Chapter Eleven
Valerian tossed and turned in her bed, her mind running beyond her control. Theresa’s tumors, Charmaine’s flawed baby, Gwen and Eddie, Nathaniel and his licentious offer—her mind spun round and round, refusing to give her rest. She could hear Theresa’s snores from her bed below,
and for a brief moment Valerian considered waking her to talk out her thoughts. But her aunt needed her rest, and Valerian did not want to burden her when she already had so much to worry about. It was Valerian’s turn to be strong, to be the supportive one.
Only, when it was all over, who would be there to support her?
She sighed and let her limbs lie loosely. She stared into the dark above her. She tossed back the covers, kicking her feet free of the blankets in disgust. She could not lie here another moment.
Valerian crawled to the ladder and started down, then heard Oscar rustle his feathers.
“Biscuit!” he croaked out, his voice loud in the quiet cottage.
“Hush!” Valerian hissed. “No biscuits. Go back to sleep.”
“Go for walk, walk.”
“Oscar, quiet, you will wake Aunt Theresa.” She heard him drop from his perch onto the boards of the loft, and then the scrabbling sounds of his claws on the wood. She reached her hand into the dark at the top of the ladder. Oscar found her fingers and tried to swallow one.
“Silly bird,” Valerian whispered, dragging him off the loft. He hung by the grip of his throat around her finger, a favorite trick of his when he was feeling lonely or frightened, or did not want her to go. “Do you need comfort, too?”
At the bottom of the ladder she set him on the floor, and gently pried her finger from his grip. Once free, she grabbed her cloak and wrapped it around her, then lifted Oscar up onto her shoulder. He nuzzled into her hair, and she could not say she was sorry for his presence.
Pale moonlight seeped through the windows. Her dark-adjusted eyes picked out the grey shapes of furniture, and the dark shadows where the light did not reach. She walked on the balls of her bare feet to the door, and paused. Theresa’s snores continued, undisturbed.
The door opened with a faint whining creak, revealing a silvered vista of meadow. Dark shapes shifted in the grass—deer, grazing on the new growth. They were far from the garden, and its hanging sachets of blood meal and human hair put there to keep them from devouring the herbs.
The deer raised their heads, and she knew they were watching her, scenting the air for danger. Then their heads lowered back to their grazing, a tacit acceptance of her presence.
Valerian walked out into the meadow, the grass cool and wet on her feet. The hem of her chemise dragged against the stalks. She wrapped her arms around her middle, holding herself in the chill air, and looked up at the moon, half-full in a clear sky shimmering with stars. There was a cold beauty to the scene—sky and stars, white moon and silvery meadow—but Valerian could not be comforted by it. She wanted warmth and closeness, not this sterile, distant light that told her only that she was alone.
She leant her head against Oscar, wishing there was more understanding to him than allowed by the mind of a bird.
She remembered the kiss Nathaniel had given her, and the sense of losing herself within his arms. He would not question her if she came to him: He would only welcome and accept.
She stood wondering if this was what she wanted, and could not answer. She knew she did not want to be alone in the night, and could not bear the thought of returning to her bed and the torture of her thoughts.
She went to the shed for a lantern and put on her mud shoes. She would go to him as she was, for she would not return to the cottage to dress and perhaps wake Theresa. She wanted a private escape, however temporary, from the considerations of real life. If she could not disappear into dreams during the night, then she would find oblivion in a different manner. Let the worries of daylight stay in the waking world.
The lantern cast a feeble, patterned light, illuminating the ground for only a few feet around her with its yellow glow. Her shadow flickered on her left, dancing a mad jig beside her on the grass. She did not often go out this late, and when she did it was almost always with a son or husband sent to fetch her for an ailing family member. Still, the forest even in its darkness did not scare her, for she knew it as well as she knew her home.
Oscar dug around in the folds of her hood, arranging the cloth to his satisfaction. She scratched the ridges over his eyes as she walked, and his head tilted forward in a trance of pleasure. The forest path was dark, the moon casting little light through the tangled branches overhead. Once a pair of pale green eyes caught and reflected the light from her lantern, then the creature turned and ran from her intrusion.
It was not until she was at the edge of Nathaniel’s gardens that she paused to wonder how she should get into the hall if all had retired for the night. She would rather sit in the cold all night than pound upon the front door for admittance.
She blew out her lantern and left it under a bush, and emerged from the last row of shrubberies onto the open ground before the house.
George Bradlaugh, Nathaniel’s uncle, had had his suite of rooms on the ground floor. She hoped that Nathaniel had taken them over, and would be there. She walked around the house, stumbling in the moonlight on deceptive shadows of ground. As she approached the windows to the suite, she was filled with a certainty that he was in there, and her heart raced with the first hint of nervousness.
The bushes under the window rustled and cracked as she shoved her way through them. The room was dark through the window but for the orange glow of the coals in the fire. She cupped her hands around her eyes to shut out the moonlight, and pressed her face to the glass. The reflective window so close was more than Oscar could resist. He rapped his beak against it, three times in quick succession.
Valerian jerked back, grabbing Oscar’s beak. He wiggled free, and gave out a loud “Rawwwk” of affront.
“Hush, Oscar!” She hissed.
“Bad bird, bad bird,” he squawked.
She turned back to the window. A pale figure stood faintly visible behind the glass. She caught her breath, frightened by the sudden apparition, her heart skipping a beat, and then she realized who it was. He opened the window, the casement pushing outward. She stared. Even in the moonlight she could see that he was naked.
“I would know that voice anywhere,” he said.
“Eee-diot!” Oscar screeched, and leapt from Valerian’s shoulder into the night.
She stood mute, at a loss for words, allowing anticipation and a queer, thrilling fear to overtake her thoughts. She would not falter from her path now that she was here, but did not know what to do next.
“Wait a moment. Let me throw something on.” He disappeared into the dark room. Valerian stepped forward again, leaning through the window. She watched his faint movements as he wrapped a dressing gown around his body.
When he came back he paused for a moment, as if trying to read her face in the darkness, to be certain of her reason for appearing at his bedroom window. He must have seen enough to satisfy him, for he put his hands on either side of her face and held her there, and then his mouth came down on hers. She closed her eyes and let him kiss her, his lips hot on her chilled skin. Every trace of worry, every trace of grief was for a moment pushed aside by his touch.
She raised her hands to his neck, stroking the angles of tendons and muscles, then slid her fingers up into the hair at the base of his neck. His own arms moved down around her to clasp her closer to his chest, and he dragged her off her feet and over the low sill of the window.
“I thought you would never come to me,” he said, breaking the kiss.
She put a fingertip to his lips. “I do not want to talk.”
“I want you to be certain that you know what you are doing.”
“Shhh. . . .” She did not want this talk of rational decisions. She did not come here to be logical. She pressed her hands against his bare chest, exposed by the vee of his robe. She pushed the robe open and pressed her lips softly against the warm flesh. She inhaled the scent of him, tinged with soap and his own scent.
She wanted him to ravish her, to take control and sweep all will away. She did not want to be herself, with her life, responsible and alone with her grief. She wanted to be overwhelmed,
pushed outside herself. She kicked off her shoes, and untied the throat of her cloak, letting it fall to the floor.
“Please,” she whispered.
He accepted the invitation, and untied the string that gathered closed the neck of her chemise, pushing the garment down her shoulders, following his hands with his lips. He moved across to her breasts, tugging the thin cloth over her hard nipples with his teeth, the roughness of his unshaven jaw on her skin. She stared wide-eyed at the top of his head, a welcome sense of unreality falling over her.
She came back to herself with a groan of pleasure when he raised his head to suck at her breast. She felt her nerves light a trail down to her groin, the wet heat of his lips and tongue kneading a response from her. His hands shoved her chemise down over her hips, and she felt it fall to the floor, lying over her feet.
She felt him shift as he shucked his own robe, and then his arms came around her and lifted her against him, his head still at her breast, one arm against her buttocks. She felt the hard ridge of his manhood, and quivered with pleasure when he rubbed himself against her, bringing her hidden flesh to the yearning beginnings of arousal.
He carried her to his bed, still warm from his sleep, and slid in beside her. He threw his leg over hers and propped himself up on an elbow, leaving one hand free to roam at will over her body. She closed her eyes, tracing in her mind the route his hand took, trailing lightly over her face, down over her breasts, swirling in gentle circles over her abdomen, then stroking solidly against the insides of her thighs, never quite touching their apex.
Valerian moaned softly, deep in her throat, and shifted her hips to draw his hand to her. His mouth found hers, distracting her with the intrusion of tongue, and then his fingers finally touched her. She could not concentrate on kissing him back, her whole body listening to each minute movement of his hand. A fingertip slid just inside her and she tensed at the unfamiliarity of it, feeling a virgin’s fear. It moved in and out, the tip only, and then he took the wetness he found and moistened the folds that hid the nub of her desire, and she forgot the fears in the rush of luscious pleasure.