House of Bliss

by T T Thomas

  “Shame Lena couldn’t have joined us,” Annabel said. She saw the look Sabrina gave her. “No, honestly, I wouldn’t have minded. She is a lovely woman, Sabrina. I can see—”

  “No, you cannot,” Sabrina interrupted.

  “I didn’t mean…I’m sorry. I know you are suffering enormous conflict and pressure.”

  Sabrina looked at Annabel, her mouth distorted in anguish. “You cannot see the furor in my heart, you cannot know how it is fluttering and palpitating wildly, and you have no idea of the fear I’m feeling. I want you Annabel, more than I ever have, more than you will ever know…I, I cannot bring myself to hurt Lena again.”

  Sabrina swiped at her eyes. Tears were forming, and she couldn’t stop them. She sat up and buried her head on her knees.

  After a while Annabel spoke. “This is precisely one of the many reasons I am in love with you. I would think far less of you if this were easy for you.”

  “I’ve tried,” Sabrina sobbed. “I’ve sought to be a loving companion, a good partner. There is nothing wrong with Lena. She is lovely in every way. But I’m not…I’m not in love with her. And if I ever was, then it was in response to losing you—the first time.”

  Annabel sat up, reached over and placed her arm around Sabrina’s shoulders. She leaned in close. “I know. I know. I am so sorry for my disappearance. I was desperate, scared, convinced Hugh Glyver would cause you great harm and afraid for our very lives.”

  Sabrina lifted her head, her eyes bloodshot, her face blotchy, her nose bright red. “I don’t blame you at all, darling. It was a warranted fear. Glyver’s madness nearly killed us all.”

  “And maybe Markham’s, too,” Annabel said. She swatted away the invisible memory. “They were two of a kind.”

  Sabrina nodded. “That’s what Lena always said.”

  She dried her eyes and stood. “I need to move my body.” Reaching out a hand to Annabel, she smiled. “Shall we walk along the bank? Jeremy should be back soon. We can leave our things right here.”

  That walk, those kisses, the heat between them—unplanned but undeniable. When Sabrina was leaning against the smooth, pale-gray Beech tree, with Annabel’s body pressed to hers, she thought her legs would buckle with deferred desire and suppressed hunger. The kisses refused to wait, no judicious deferment, no cerebral saneness, no moment of common sense to protect them from brimful passion.

  Sabrina would memorialize it a week later in her new journal, a large paper bound notebook covered with a colorful print of a woman sitting on a river bank.

  I reached up under her skirts and moved my hand to the center of her affliction. She was fumbling with the drawstring cinch of my walking trousers and seemed to succeed just in time to allow me to join her in celebratory synchronicity of exaltation.

  By now my trousers and my knickers were down around my ankles, her skirt was up and her britches down and that one swift movement of pulling her close sent both of us to paradise, again, at the same moment. I do mean Paradise!

  Yes, we fucked standing up, there’s no better way to say it.

  Well, yes there is. I could say we made love…because it was. And yet, in memory of that moment, I prefer the raw and primal, the guttural, perhaps, and the clawing, nipping, biting that was us. We were hungry, starved for the love that was uniquely ours. And…we fell to the ground and became as two wildcats in the underbrush, rolling in the leaves, sticks in our hair, sweat on our skin, possession in our hearts, release in our bodies.

  ‘Twas Annabel whose breathy whispers brought Sabrina back to reality. “I think I hear Jeremy calling us.”

  They tried to appear nonchalant as they walked toward him.

  “Oh, Jeremy, look at you,” Sabina said as they approached. “You’re all red-faced. Was it a hard going up that hill?”

  He looked at them, rosy cheeked, out of breath and more than a little disheveled themselves. He nodded but said nothing as he busied himself packing up the car with their sun umbrella, their picnic basket and their blanket. The ride home was uncharacteristically quiet.

  The housekeeper approached them at the front door and began to help Annabel up the stairs.

  “Miss?” she said to Sabrina as she pointed to a letter on the nearby mail table. They all turned and saw it.

  As Annabel and her helper walked upstairs, Jeremy and Sabrina went into the sitting room. A small fire warmed the room. Jeremy poured them a drink.

  Sabrina sat with the envelope in her lap, starring at the burning wood.

  “You going to open that?” Jeremy asked as he handed her a tumbler of whiskey.

  “It’s from Lena.” She took a giant gulp of her whiskey and opened the envelope. As she read each line, her eyes filled with tears for the second time that day. Tears of exhaustion. Lena had written it the prior evening.

  Wordlessly, she gave the letter to Jeremy, took another swallow of the strong spirits and began the long walk upstairs.

  Chapter 54

  With each passing minute, Annabel became more upset. What was in that letter? Where was Lena? It had to be from Lena as there was no postage on the envelope. They all saw it.

  Annabel got up from the bed, dried her tears and walked to the window.

  Pacing, thinking, body held rigid.

  This was it, wasn’t it? This is where her heart finally breaks in two. This is where the fire of her love consumes her.

  This, then, must be the official end—the one she had spent years avoiding. As if not confronting the loss somehow kept the heartache at bay.

  She reached for the handle of the casement window and cranked it open. Air. She must have air.

  The moon was full…it would be, wouldn’t it?

  Looking down into the gravel area of the drive, seeing the evening dew beading on Sabrina’s car. A magnificent machine for a magnificent woman.

  Seeing the moon all alone in the sky mirroring her aloneness in this room and in this life, no containment for tears. Why had she waited so long? Why had she encouraged Sabrina to be with Lena the night Felicity…died?

  Revisiting, recalling, regretting.

  She knew, she knew in the middle of that same night she had made a mistake. She woke up hoping to see a look, hear some word, feel the gesture of touch that would tell her Sabrina felt the same. But Sabrina and Lena never left Sabrina’s bedroom until past noon. By then, Annabel realized she must leave. She had released Sabrina, and Sabrina did not object. She packed suitcases for the journey to Cornwall and Blissdon Park. She and Sophia would leave the following day.

  Annabel had accepted her fate, and it was not an unfortunate one. She and Sophia were safe, secure and living in a magnificent home…a home that would forever remind her of George Markham but should remind her of Sabrina Blissdon. Without Sabrina, though, Annabel felt as a ghost in this house, trying to maintain a facade of happiness for her daughter, for her letters to Sabrina, for the sake of her own spirit.

  But it was no use. She didn’t dare debate the efficacy of sending the telegram—she simply did it, quickly, before she could change her mind. With no idea how Sabrina’s presence might improve her life, she saw now that Sabrina would die rather than hurt Lena again, despite loving Annabel as fiercely as ever.

  That was an outcome Annabel hadn’t considered enough.

  Annabel coughed and felt a chill from the open window. She couldn’t take her eyes off the moon. She wanted the part of Sabrina no one else had seen. She wanted the Sabrina who couldn’t live without her. Sabrina had seen the dark side of her moon. Sabrina loved her without condition or reservation.

  Annabel leaned out the window and looked up at the bracelet of stars surrounding that moon.

  Chapter 55

  Darling Sabrina,

  I must write this quickly before you and Jeremy finish your wine. I am leaving. By that I mean, I am leaving our relationship. Jean and I have found, over the past year or so, that we have fallen in love again.

  I can only imagine all the turmoil you’re in, too.
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  We didn’t plan it, of course, and I am loath to cause you any pain. But Sabrina…darling, you and I both know, we are not meant to be. We have tried, we have worked hard, we have even loved. I regret nothing and trust that eventually you will look at it this way too.

  I will not be returning to Blissdon Park or our homes in London. Jean has given up her vows, resigned her position, left the convent. We are planning to go to America. Jean has exciting ideas about helping the poor women of the streets in the cities—she mentioned Chicago, a big, burly town with a beautiful lake and with society’s lowest and highest, I’m told…I am certainly qualified to travel this road with her. And yes, we are in love. We always were.

  We are free, Sabrina…free to love the persons we are in love with…The night of poor Felicity’s death, I overheard Jeremy and Walters discussing what Felicity said as she lay dying. She wanted you to know that Bel, Annabel, still loved you. No one wanted to tell you for fear, I thought, of causing more disruption. Or perhaps they didn’t believe what she said was true. But I believed it.

  I told myself you didn’t feel the same.

  I did not realize your truths until I rediscovered my own. I think, darling, we cannot hide the truth even as we bury the messengers of it. And now, you, too, must believe and trust your own truth.

  I wish you happiness, health and love,

  Always, Lena

  Chapter 56

  Sabrina put her right foot on the first step and looked at the long staircase ahead of her. How could this be happening? She recalled Lena’s lovely expression at dinner last night. Her calm demeanor. Her sweet voice. Her attentiveness. Sabrina reached the second step, slowed only by shock and surrender.

  Sabrina’s head was throbbing. She stopped on the staircase, put her hand on her heart as the emotion rising in her chest burst out in a strangled sob of uncertainty. Had she driven Lena into the arms of another? Isn’t that what she wanted—the answer to her prayers? Yes, and yet…She bent over, clutching the railing.

  By the time Sabrina reached the quarter point on the staircase, fat tears of despair and deliverance were streaming down her face. Lena’s words rose before her eyes as sunlight coming over the eastern horizon, stunning, blinding, beautiful and true: “We have tried, we have worked hard, we have even loved.”

  Yes. Yes, they had loved. They had worked hard. Sabrina thought of Lena working in the garden, the bright smile when she looked up and saw Sabrina watching her, the way she absent-mindedly wiped her brow with her earth-caked glove, the way she put the plants in the ground like a mother owl coaxing her owlets back into the interior of the safe nest. If Lena ever felt Sabrina hadn’t loved her…she truly had loved Lena. She had tried to forget Annabel.

  And apparently, Lena had tried to forget Jean.

  As Sabrina reached the top of the stairs, she thought she heard a cough. She would go to her, now. She would give her every beat of her heart, every breath left in life. She would love her so proudly and with so much gratitude. She would have her life back with Annabel. She would…tell her in person, everything, always.

  Sabrina opened the door. She saw the open window and froze. The curtains were blowing slightly in the breeze—enough to reveal the lunar highlands and dark gray Maria, the seas from a volcanic past life.

  She stood there peering through the darkness. Her own dark thoughts propelled her forward toward the window…but movement near the bed caught her eye. As she got closer to the window, she saw Annabel sitting on the side of the bed with a small coverlet wrapped around her shoulders. Her own pulse slowed.

  “I may have got a little chill,” she said to Sabrina.

  There was a narrow shaft of light from the full moon streaming through the window, but the area near the bed was dark. Sabrina thought she saw Annabel’s eyes sparkling. Later, she would recall them as tears. She reached the window and closed it.

  “She left me, Annabel.” Sabrina stood between the window and the bed. She seemed unable to move. “She fell in love with someone…too.”

  Annabel rose from the bed immediately and went to Sabrina. She took the shocked and subdued woman into her arms and soothed her, rocked her back and forth, pushed her hair off the wet cheeks it was stuck on.

  Although gasping for air, Sabrina managed to speak in short bursts. “I don’t understand. How I can be so sad. And so happy. At the same time. It’s got me. Stunned.”

  Annabel slowly walked the two of them over to her bed. She put a couple pillows behind her back and faced Sabrina who sat on the edge of the bed, but she held onto one of her lover’s hands. She listened quietly while Sabrina talked.

  It was a review, of sorts, of her life since the night they both met. Annabel smiled as Sabrina recalled their first meeting.

  “And then, and then…well, I couldn’t believe you vanished. I didn’t find out, at first, that someone had arrived before me that night.” Sabrina paused. Annabel could see her mind running through the events. “It was only later I found out,” she whispered. “And then much, much later discovered it was Glyver. I never wanted…I never wanted him to touch…I never dreamed he would be so violent and…” Sabrina couldn’t continue. The harsh reality of what had happened to Annabel had left her without words.

  Annabel reached for Sabrina’s chin and turned her face toward her. “I loved you the first night I met you,” she said. “I loved everything about you—your kindness, your bravery, your shyness, the way you trembled in my arms, the way you trusted me, the way you wanted me. And it was that love, darling, that decency and that magnificent smile that has kept me alive for this reunion.”

  Sabrina put both arms around Annabel. Their tear-saturated cheeks touched, melding grief with relief with love. They held onto one another until both of them stopped shivering.

  Sabrina moved her left arm to wipe away Annabel’s tears.

  “You are my oxygen.” She kissed her damp cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. “And I have never been in love like this, except with you.”

  Annabel reached for Sabrina’s face. “And you are the answer to my prayers. Yes, I’ve prayed. You are my very heartbeat, my bliss…and I love you.”

  THE END

  About the Author

  T. T. Thomas is an author of Historical Romance, Noir and Paranormal novels and short stories. She lives in Southern California.

  Also by T. T. Thomas

  NOVELS:

  Vampire Bohemian (2020) (includes Vampire Vexed & Vampire Impious)

  House of Bliss (2019)

  Mistress of Mogador (2017)

  The Girl with 2 Hearts (2014)

  A Delicate Refusal (2013)

  The Blondness of Honey (2012)

  NOVELLAS:

  Vivian and Rose (2012)

  Two Weeks at Gay Banana Hot Springs (2011)

  SERIALS & SHORT STORIES:

  A Woman of Dark Intention (Short story) (2018)

  Some Enchanted NOIR (Short story) (2015)

  Bread and Butter (Short story) 2011

  Acknowledgments

  Friends…my friends helped me finish this book. In the space of 6 months, after starting the House of Bliss in January of 2018, my middle sister, Mary, passed away after open-heart surgery and 30 hellish days in the hospital. That kind of trauma is too big to absorb all at once…after the initial shock and pain, it continues to weave its way through one’s life in small(ish) increments of hurt and heartache. Our entire family went through it…goes through it, still…especially my other sister, Liz, who did the yeoman’s work while Mary was hospitalized. To the list that includes my family, I add, in no particular order, the people who sent me texts, phone calls, emails, even visits and the people who got me out of the house for my once every two-week writer’s group meeting.

  Dorothy (Chase), Sheryl (Wendy), Connie, Neal, David, Jean, Linda D., Carol VEC, Patty, Victoria, Ann, Helen, Michele, Linda, June, Catherine, Danna, Sherry, Coral, all the MIC O’Brien friends and so many more.

  Thank you so much.

&nbs
p; T.T. Thomas