Unfinished (Historical Fiction)

by Harper Alibeck

  Then he saw her, staring up at the night sky, gulping the air like it was water in the desert. Her desperation showed; thin arms rested akimbo on her tiny hips, her lightweight dress no match for fall's sudden chill. Perky breasts, not enough to fill half his hand, pushed against the cotton as her chest heaved up, then slowly lowered, each breath seeming to cleanse her. She bent over, hands on knees, and he wondered if she needed privacy for a sick stomach.

  A swift self-correction and she stood straight again, lips pursed, nostrils flaring as she inhaled through them, seeming to count slowly, to a beat of eight, while letting the air back into the night. One, two, three such breaths and he admired her centeredness, her ability to find calm after public scorn. A delicate hand rose up to the base of her neck, as if searching for a gem on a necklace. Fingers played with the skin, tight against her clavicle, and then slowly descended down the valley between her breasts, settling at the diaphragm.

  "Lilith." Proper manners dictated that he use her full name, but "Miss Stone" seemed too formal. He didn't want formality.

  "James." Ah, she planned to match him. This one would give no quarter.

  He tipped his head. "May I escort you to your carriage?" He nodded toward Harvard Square. Lectures abounded this particular evening, along with the usual Cambridge traffic, leaving many coachmen parked blocks from the church. Aspersions on her character be damned; no one would fault him, or her, for a brief walk to her coach's position.

  Her eyes searched the area, then his face. One side of her mouth lifted in a sardonic smile. "Yes. I would like that."

  Her thick, leather boots clicked on the cobblestones with sharp, staccato sounds. He imagined the leather would feel as soft as a baby's fat skin at the elbow, warm and supple, her boots costing as much as a year's worth of sewing for his mother. Lilith's dress was cut in a fine manner, and the cotton held a silky nuance that James admired, the weaving an artistic form that spoke of understood wealth, of money that didn't recognize itself, that whispered under the chatter of life and was part of the sound of everything that the rich assumed simply was.

  A shock of cold on his foot and an obstacle in his arch made him stumble, nearly crashing in to Lilith. He righted himself quickly.

  "A bit too much to drink?" she mused, arching an eyebrow and puckering her lips just so in a tease. A hard jolt of desire blossomed within him and he stifled it quickly, the roar too fast and too much to unleash on her now. Not yet.

  The source of his stumble became apparent within three steps. Step -- flap. Step -- flap. Step -- flap. The sole of his shoe, already glued twice in place, had finally come unmoored. Shuffling would not work; the separation went past the back of the arch, almost clean through to the end of the heel. Newspaper he'd stuffed in the shoe some time ago was his only cushion against the dirt and stones.

  Lilith glanced down, her ears catching the odd sound. Puzzled, she studied his foot for some time. He halted and stared at her, embarrassment and humiliation bubbling up.

  "Is there a problem with your shoe?" she asked without guile.

  "Yes."

  "Do you need to go home to fetch another pair?"

  "Another what?"

  "Another pair of shoes?"

  His eyes narrowed as he caught her gaze and bore down. "Another pair of shoes? As if anyone has a spare pair simply sitting around, gathering dust? Shall I go and get my extra gold ingots from Mr. Carnegie's pumpkin patch as well?"

  She flinched and pulled away.

  Ah, dammit. They continued walking. She said nothing, staring straight ahead.

  Step--flap. Step--flap.

  "Mr. Hillman, I --"

  "James. Call me James. I have a flapping, torn shoe, woman. You don't need to worry about my dignity any longer." The acrimony in his voice made him laugh at himself. She joined him.

  "You're embarrassed. I am sorry. I forget that...no, I assume. And I shouldn't assume." She pointed vaguely at his shoe, at a match girl, and at a beggar with no legs, propped against a coal chute, drinking from a dirty, green bottle. "I have no good excuse."

  He shrugged. "You don't know a different life. I don't know a different life. These shoes," he pointed down, "are six years old. And I got them from my Da. So now I need to find the money to buy new, or hope my Da dies this weekend so I can inherit his shoes." She shot him an impertinent look and chuckled.

  "No, let's save your Da. I'll pray my father dies this weekend, and then I'll send all his many shoes to your neighborhood and you can hand them out." Serious tones under the comedy made him sigh rather than laugh.

  "You'd like that? For your father to die?"

  She shuddered in response but said nothing.

  "I'm sorry," he rushed in. "I meant no offense."

  Surprise filled her face, then was replaced with comprehension. "Ah, no -- I didn't shudder from your words! I'm catching a chill."

  He slid his coat off, noticing the missing button. No use retrieving it from Burnham's lecture; the crowd would tear Lilith to bits right now. Ma could find him a new one, he hoped. "Here," he said, sliding the coat over her shoulders. "This should keep you warm." What had been a suit coat on his body looked like an overcoat on Lilith. With sleeves that stretched to her knees.

  Bursting into laughter, she wrapped the coat around her and tipped her chin up to meet his eyes. "Thank you."

  "It's a ratty old thing. Cheap tweed. Nothing you're accustomed to." She made him feel small and insignificant, a feat few had achieved. Never did she hint at intent to do so. Nonetheless, it hung between them, the burden of it on his shoulders, a weight far greater than he'd ever managed.

  She tilted her head and studied his face, letting layers of silence deepen their connection. When she spoke it was an old soul's words. "You realize I do not care. I've been raised with wealth. You have not."

  He studied her face – there was no taunting, no sarcasm. Her words were without affect, a statement of fact. A brief thought – my God, she's the one – passed through his mind so quickly he almost didn't catch it, the skin on his arms turning to gooseflesh not from the night chill, but rather from his premonition.

  “James?” Gentle tones, questioning his inattentiveness. He peered down at her; she had taken two tentative steps toward him. Praying he was not too forward, and shocked at his own worry, he reached down and rested his hand on her shoulder.

  “Yes?” he whispered, unsure of his own vocal cords. Right now, he was unsure of himself. Unsure of the night. Unsure of everything but those gemstone eyes.

  His hand seemed to render her speechless. Blinking, she stared at him, then sighed and shook her head slightly. Tightening his grasp was involuntarily; he feared she was shaking off the very feelings that stirred inside him, searching for homeostasis. Particles that clouded the solution of his heart and soul as they were shaken by this turn of events. Particles that would, nonetheless, settle sometime.

  Yet always remain in the liquid.

  Her face inclined toward his, a small moon to the one in the sky, and as if pulled by fate his lips found hers, tiny hands wrapping around his neck as he bent over, nearly folding in half to catch her mouth.

  Her artless response took him by surprise but increased this confounded tenderness that he could not help but feel toward her. While lacking in skill, Lilith's eager response showed an abundance of desire. As he slowly, playfully teased her lips with his tongue, a wellspring of desire claimed his rational mind and he pressed against her, his arousal unmistakably clear.

  The kisses slowed, the connection fostered, the aftermath now inevitably making its way to clarity signaled to both that a parting of faces and bodies must take place. James, pulled back, then leaned his forehead against hers, inhaling her lavender scent mixed with the musk and grime of his respectable, though well-worn, coat.

  “James,” she breathlessly intoned.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have a healthy fear of billionaire fathers?” She kept her face hidden, but he could feel her grin piercing
his heart, the implied laughter a balm that felt forbidden.

  He pulled back and held her at arm's distance, the streetlight's arc of light around them forming a protective barrier against the dark. “I do indeed, Lilith. But more important: does your father have a healthy fear of Southie ne'er do wells who kiss his daughter?”

  “I think,” she replied, narrowing her eyes as if appraising a jewel, turning her head to and fro to examine him through her own unyielding prism, “we are about to find out.”

  Chapter Four

  JAMES SPENT THE NEXT MONTH WONDERING how to court a billionaire's daughter. He might as well have attempted to build a time machine with scraps from the city dump. An impossible task lay before him, but memories of those kisses, of her gentle vulnerability, Lilith's willingness to let him in behind that seemingly impenetrable fortress, fueled him to find a way.

  Jack Reed was no help; John Stone had dismissed him, and Reed hung on to his job by his teeth. As Reed's main clerk,this meant that James would have had no legitimate reason to conduct business in or around Lilith, but some finagling and flattery had gotten him moved over to work with the partner who now managed Stone's affairs, a well-known opium addict named Michael Hanlon. He was as slim as James was wide, with a face that hung so long it looked like the moon in its sliver time. Neither pleasant nor gruff, Hanlon kept his job for one simple reason: his father had founded the firm.

  And, according to rumor, he had no sex drive of any kind. For women.

  James helped Hanlon with very basic work and found ways to encourage the man to let him make courier deliveries himself. Four separate visits to the Stone house revealed nothing of Lilith. What would she want with him anyway? He could offer her kisses and a warm coat and not much else.

  Soon enough, though, that might change.

  James read constantly. Obsessively. He had figured out letters and words on his own, long before being shoved off to school at six, and he'd taken to printed matter like some kids took to pickpocketing. Even now, at twenty-six, he picked up any newspaper he found, reading it front and back. A chance encounter with a dropped copy of Financial News, a halfpenny newspaper from London, England, gave James an idea, a way out, an opportunity that could catapult him into the ranks of the Carnegies, the Jarveys – and, maybe, even the Stones.

  The article described the Nitrate Railway, a system developed by one Colonel John North. Though he'd died several years back, the article described his success in extracting sodium nitrate, a powerful fertilizer, from the mine fields of Peru and Chile.

  Maria Escola had popped into his head just then, and he'd promptly used the excuse of research to spend time at work digging into details on the nitrate industry in Chile. Some sources claimed it was in decline; North had so thoroughly exploited the profit from the perpetually-turmoiled South American governments. And yet a few sources claimed that some minerals experts believed there were large stores that remained to be tapped.

  And the market was strong.

  Ah, but he'd spent days, weeks – nay, months – chasing dreams like this. North was like him, a poor, workingman's kid from a run-down side of the city. Tucking the thought away, James went about his business.

  Until one night, in bed with Maria, he'd asked her what she knew of the industry. Mutual attraction has taken hold after they'd attended a lecture on polygamy; Maria had scandalized most of proper Boston society by asking the lecturer the word for one woman with many husbands.

  “Polyandry,” the befuddled anthropology professor had replied. “But it is very rare.”

  “I should think so,” she had said. “Only a woman of extraordinary...appetites could handle more than one man at once.”

  “Oh, no, Miss – ”

  “Escola. Maria Escola.” One half of her fire-engine red lips raised in a sultry grin.

  “Miss Escola. Not at the same time. Polyandry does not mean that the husbands and wives experience conjugal relations simultaneously.”

  The crowd had tittered, Maria's half-grin frozen on her face. James had admired her composure, and saw the wheels turning behind her eyes, searching for a retort.

  And oh, my, had she found one.

  “Well, then, my fine professor, what is the point?”

  The crowd's response had been schizophrenic. Half gasped, half roared. All knew her name by the evening's end.

  While others shunned her, James sought her out. This was a woman worth knowing.

  They'd been lovers for a few weeks, more from availability than any strong desire, and she seemed surprised that he would ask her anything of substance. Both seemed to find the other vapid, yet the sexual arrangements were pleasing enough to maintain a truce of sorts, an unstable detente between the bedsheets. Smeared red lipstick and mussed hair gave her an unfinished, rather than intimate, appearance, and James studied her as she spoke, as if watching a lecturer.

  “My father invests in such, how do you say in English? Companies? No, people who wish to go out and find the products in the fields, in the mines. Those people.”

  “Really?” He sat up, propping his head on his and, and narrowed his eyes. “He funds prospectors?”

  “Prospectors? Is that the word? Men who say there is still coal or copper or nitrate in a part of the land, but who do not have the money to go themselves? Then yes.” One hand dipped under the sheet and reached for him.

  Thoughts of nitrate had disintegrated.

  But they returned later. And through a series of pillow talks with Maria, James had gained access to her father, Marco Escola, a dark-haired, bushy-browed Latin man who spoke more with his hands than his mouth. Nobility flowed through his veins, blood centuries-thick with aristocratic ties, but when it came to money, investment, and ambition, Stone and Escola were equals. Momentarily. And then Marco had offered a deal James had no choice but to accept: basic expenses in return for unfettered devotion to finding a new, untapped store of nitrate.

  The offer left him reeling. Ma and Da relied on his paycheck at the firm. He'd never left Boston, much less the country. He didn't speak Spanish, though Maria had taught him enough words to navigate her body; somehow, he didn't think that would help him much when he arrived in the Andes mountains and needed to hire men for the mines. And, worst of all, he would have to tuck his desire for Lilith away, fold it neatly like a contract one never signs, a mark of what could have been that stays filed away for future reference but never redeemed.

  “What have you learned?” Lilith hissed through clenched teeth, using the lecture's program to cover her mouth. It had taken a month, but she had stirred up the courage to attend another lecture on sexual health, this one on the importance of exercise for women to prevent hysteria.

  “He is known for his sexual appetite, Lilith. And Maria Escola is his dinner.” In desperation, Lilith had turned to her college friend, Esther Nourse, for help with information on James. Esther was eccentric; anyone who kept a Capuchin and dressed it in infant clothes could not be trusted for any mission but social spying. And organizing Oberlin college reunions.

  Esther's wild, greying hair spilled out from its bun, her eyes too alert and bright. Though they were the same age, twenty-four, Esther looked to be closer in age to Lilith's mother, as though Esther were an eccentric, spinster aunt one tolerated at family gatherings in hopes of being named in her will one day.

  She resembled a woman terrified half out of her mind after a fright, but on Esther the look was permanent. A constant twitch of the left eyelid added to the portrait of madness, and Lilith found herself falling down a spiral hole of surreality, hoping that she could end this evening and get out from Esther's socially-deprived clutches.

  “So they are lovers.” Lilith's words were not a question.

  “They were as of a month ago. Other sources tell me that Miss Escola is angry, having been spurned by Goliath.” Pleased with her own joke, Esther had now used it precisely six times this evening. What had been faintly amusing had now instilled in Lilith a deep desire to poke a hat p
in through Esther's hand.

  Esther fumbled with her carpet bag, which appeared to move of its own accord. A snout protruded from the opening near the clasp, followed by a searching eye.

  “Esther! What do you have in there?”

  “A tiny dog,” Esther answered, as if it were the most normal object to stuff into a purse at a lecture hall.

  “He must go!” And with that, the dog agreed, escaping down the row of chairs.

  “Rodrigo!” Esther cried, chasing after the little Mexican canine.

  Emulating Rodrigo, Lilith took the chance to escape. Walking down the same street where she and James had kissed just a month ago was pure torture. Maria Escola? Lovers? His lips had craved hers, licked and laved and touched and teased with mouth and hands on that woman, just as he had done on her. A furious flush filled her and she began to sweat from anger, her heart beating twice as fast as it should, hand fluttering to her collarbone to quell it. A familiar darkness skirted around the edges of her vision and she searched out a bench, panic setting in.

  But Esther had said James spurned Maria. A month ago. Did that mean...?

  In that simple kiss, Lilith had come home. Her soul felt settled. She couldn't make heads or tails of it, and it made no sense at all, yet she was pragmatic, even about passion. There it was: she was falling in love with a poor, Irish man from South Boston, like something in a cheap rag that the maids passed around to read to each other. Except in those stories, the rich character was always the man. She didn't care. Never in her life had anyone made her feel this alive. His mouth spoke to her without words, stirring a deep – dare she say it? Love? – that felt more complete than any feeling she knew possible. She wanted nothing more than this. Ever.

  And yet the same man was sleeping his way through the wealthy daughters of Boston?

  Damn it, Lilith. It meant that talking with James was the only solution. She walked back to her carriage and gave the driver James' address. Startled, her coachman asked, “Miss Stone, you sure you want to go there? Now? It's awful dark and that part of town isn't...” His voice dropped off with the implication that she understood his unexpressed meaning.