by Vlad Kahany
But most men were cowards in the matters of the heart, they tried to deny love, and Lord Ashbee was no different. The glimpse of his feelings came out once in a great while, and as soon as they did, he made sure he buried them deep again. To cover it up, he gave obscene statements, traded genuine feelings for bodily pleasures, tried to come off as arrogant. Ah, May could see through it, yet, his words and actions pained her. Love was beautiful. Lord Ashbee’s denial was heart-breaking.
May felt a lump in her throat.
The sun outside was setting on the roofs of London. The shadows started growing, the yard and the street beneath already sunken in the darkness, the voices and sounds more muffled. You couldn’t see the sun itself through the window, just the faint rays of it and the orange reflections. Just like you could never see Lord Ashbee’s love, just its reflection. This city that May got to dislike from the beginning was associated with the Belle House at first. That was all she knew. The city of Lust. The ladies, the parties, the underside of politics and society as heard through the conversations in the parlors. Until she made a bargain with Lord Ashbee. Until he showed her the world of pleasure so different from what she had imagined. Who knew that pleasure could be so intense when mixed with feelings? That the feelings could be so overwhelming that they turned into pain?
Yet, she wouldn’t trade this last month for anything. It made her stronger, wiser. It opened her eyes to the world and human nature. For her, London wasn’t the city of Lust. It was the city of Love.
The knock on the door interrupted her thoughts, and she briskly brushed away the tears.
“The madam would like to see you in her chambers, Miss,” Krissy said timidly.
When May walked into the room, Mrs. Sharke stood by the desk, holding a glass of brandy in one hand, the fingers of the other—drumming on the wooden surface. May met the tense gaze that told her something was happening, and when Mrs. Sharke’s eyes shifted towards the other side of the room, May’s followed in the same direction and just then noticed the figure dressed in all black.
She recognized the man at once, and her heart fluttered with joy.
“My lady,” the man said and bowed. “It’s time to leave.”
PART 3
The Touch of May
CHAPTER 1
A year passed.
It was late spring again, and London blossomed with flowers of all kinds.
It had been a year since May had left abruptly without saying a word, vanished in thin air the evening Lord Ashbee came back only to find her room empty, Krissy cleaning and changing the sheets.
“A carriage came to pick her up,” the maid said solemnly, seeing Lord Ashbee in the doorway.
“Did she leave a message?”
Krissy lowered her eyes with a timid ’no.’
Confused, Lord Ashbee stood in the doorway for a moment. The curtains of the open window fluttered in the night breeze, and the wilted flowers, the only remnants of the affair, still stood in the vase on the bureau.
Mrs. Sharke didn’t have much else to say either.
“Whoever brought her here, came back for her. Left a hefty amount on top of the agreed one. Which I’m quite happy about.”
“You must know something, Sally!” he demanded, but she didn’t know what else to tell him.
“She is gone. I’m glad. The whole brothel knew you spent more time in that woman’s room than in any other place in the city.” She smirked. “It was bound to become public knowledge if it went on any further.”
“Nonsense.”
“I know you too well, Ray. You are used to having the last word. But not this time!” She produced a delighted laugh, observing Lord Ashbee’s irritated expression. “Ah, sweets! That’s a new one!”
“You must know something, Sally. Tell me!”
“Just let it go, Ray,” she said, suddenly annoyed. “You act like a spoiled child whose favorite toy has been taken away.”
He waved her off but didn’t let go.
Not that night, when he raced home to see if anyone had left a message.
Not the next day, sitting empty-eyed in his study without going out or accepting visitors.
Not a week later, when there was still no message from May.
He tried to console himself. Surely, she was drawn to him enough to seek him out. She just needed time.
But the time went by, the summer passed, and there was still no news. No matter where he looked, who he asked, how close he got to those who knew Lord Baillie. Nothing! As if the girl never existed.
Let it be, he told himself, and went to the Garden of Eden, got the prettiest hooker, but the encounter felt flat.
He drank more than ever before. But the drunker he got, the more persistent were the images of May in his mind and the pang of betrayal.
The autumn came and went, and the winter seemed the cruelest he had remembered. He attended parties, but without May in the city, even the most vivacious of them echoed with hollow loneliness. When invited to Paris for the new business venture, Lord Ashbee kept postponing it as if there was something in London that held him back.
Finally, he gave up and went to Algiers with his friend. They rented a house for the winter, but even a month was too long. Suffocated by boredom and the heat, he came back to London.
Everywhere he went, he looked for May, studying the faces on the streets in the hope of seeing hers.
But none of them were her.
She was gone.
Too fast.
Too abruptly.
Oh, if only she knew how Lord Ashbee waited day and night!
If only she knew how it felt to be so close and lose it all!
Dinners and private viewings, concerts and charity events, luncheons and card nights. For the sake of his friends, Lord Ashbee tried to fake cheerfulness and succeeded at times. They say that by mastering the art of pretending, one can turn it into reality and lead a perfectly satisfying life. Lies, he realized. He attended operas and theaters, and while the audience applauded and threw flowers on the stage, his mouth curled in contempt. The beautiful winter gardens seemed lifeless like oil paintings. The elegant parks lacked luster. He tried to hide in the darkness of the night, but the grim thoughts seemed more dreadful in the nighttime. He aimlessly walked the night streets of London until the pale pink crimson of dawn broke out over the city roofs. But it failed to bring the hope that came with the sunrise, to show the reason for the new day.
He went to East London and stayed there for several days, seeking physical pain. But it failed to save him from the strange agony that twisted his soul inside out. He laughed and mocked himself in drunk slurs. Lay high on opium for days in the lowest dens of Bluegate Fields. Then drowned in loathing and self-pity. The memories were eating him away. Knowing so much—the depth of pleasure, the happiest highs, and the ugliest lows, the mind-opening adventures, and poison-filled substances—it shocked him that the feelings for someone could bring so much despair.
Gordon watched him like a hawk. He’d seen this before. “It’s just a phase,” he said. But the phase seemed to be a dark tunnel with no light at the end. Lord Ashbee thought sick people had it easy with the physical pain. The laughing lovers and smiling families made him feel envious of their bliss. He encountered the cripples, the mentally sick, the madmen, and thought how blessed they were to be oblivious to the torments of life. How happy some people were in their madness while some utterly unhappy in their sanity!
“What is with Lord Ashbee lately?” Lady Agatha said to Charles one night at the English Opera House. She was scanning the crowd through her opera glasses and saw Lord Ashbee in a tense conversation with another gentleman. “Age does bring out one’s most prominent traits. In Lord Ashbee’s case, they are becoming quite unpleasant.”
“Lady Agatha!” Charles exclaimed. “Age?! He is barely in his mid-thirties! I think the problem here is of a different sort.’
“Do tell!” The woman cocked her head in anticipation of fresh gossips.
“Sometimes, one discovers that something they believed for the longest time proves them wrong. It might be that Lord Ashbee drank his own poison, and now it makes him suffer,” Charles said with a mysterious look in his eyes.
“Well!” Lady Agatha narrowed her eyes on Charles. “It can’t be money—he has plenty. Can’t be friends, for he is known to have the most questionable connections. And the good ones like you, Charles, can never disappoint the likes of Lord Ashbee, for they have low expectations from people anyway.” She sighed theatrically. “Oh, I would love to see the poison with my own eyes… Is she pretty?”
And Charles’s laughter shook the Opera House.“
CHAPTER 2
It was a beautiful evening. Lord Ashbee and Charles sat in the garden behind Lord Ashbee’s house and smoked cigars. The weather was lovely, as it usually was in the late spring. The birds rustled through the trees and chirped madly like the ladies on the streets. The flowers were in full bloom like the young girls out in the parks. Everything seemed to enjoy life, yet, Lord Ashbee was bored and indifferent, watching nature with lackluster eyes. This time of the year, his melancholy was especially sharp as everything around reminded him of the sweet times with May.
Charles observed him with disappointment, as every time he saw Ashbee lately, his face was shadowed with a sullen expression.
“Was it your cousin Walter Bentley that I saw at Drury Lane the other day?”
“Very well could be. He is in town.”
“Wasn’t he visiting just the other month?” Charles exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, he was!” Lord Ashbee chuckled. “He seems to have developed an obsession with London. Or its brothels and social life, to be exact. One girl in particular. It shall pass, of course. What is youth for if not for enjoying all it has to offer?”
“We are quite young ourselves, Ray. We should take an example. Let’s go to the country!” Charles exclaimed.
Lord Ashbee gave him a side glance.
“That’s right!” Charles continued. “Let’s take a break! My acquaintance, Sir Yvense, invited me to his estate in Southampton. He is my Aunt Mildred’s neighbor. An interesting and determined man, he had some trouble a while ago but is doing well. Great, actually! I told him I would only come if I could bring with me the one man that can completely fascinate the local nobility and leave them gossiping for weeks.”
At that, Lord Ashbee chuckled.
“I am not enjoying the city, and the country just might kill me with its boredom.”
“Ah, the city! Don’t you get tired of it sometimes? The noise? The over-the-top taste? The prejudice? But you, it seems, have developed a strange obsession with people lately. As if you are searching for something or someone. Is it still that infatuation of yours?”
“Maybe,” Lord Ashbee answered with a mysterious yet bitter smile. “A dream that fascinated me once. And I haven’t encountered anything like it ever since.”
“Come on, Ashbee. Is it about that girl again? It is so unlike you!”
“Maybe, I’m getting old. I’ve been thinking lately that perhaps one needs to have more than bodily pleasures to satisfy oneself and more than sensual stimulation to feed curiosity. There is a certain charm in the human attachment to each other.”
“Are you drunk?” Charles laughed.
“I wish,” Lord Ashbee answered solemnly.
“Ashbee! You sound like that crazy man from Sir Rekots’s book.”
“What did the crazy man say?”
“He was a ‘vampir’ who believed that love was a spur-of-the-moment thing and lasted only until you annihilated the desire’s soul. In his case—drink the person’s blood and kill him or her.”
“And of course, one day, he proved himself wrong.”
“Yes!”
“How banal, Charles.”
“If you say so. He fell in love with his prey. Realized that once in a lifetime, if lucky, one meets a person that manages to reach into the very depths of his soul and understand him completely, recharge his energy, and fill the voids that one hides in himself.”
“An interesting concept from a ‘vampir’,” Lord Ashbee smirked, but his humor was lost on Charles.
“Indeed!” His friend nodded. “He says this one person opens up your full potential, makes you realize who you are and forget it at the same time.”
“The thought seems a bit crowded, don’t you think.”
“Ah!”—Charles waved him away—“You need to read it! It’s quite a fascinating read!”
“So, what happens afterward?”
“The only way for him to be with his love is to cross to the other side. Except, he can’t cross. He is a ‘vampir,’ you know. So he decides to get himself killed. But!” He paused for emphasis.
“Surprise-surprise!” Lord Ashbee chuckled.
“She confesses her love to him, despite him being a monster, and instead crosses over to his world.”
“Ah! What a nice fairy tale.”
“And then they die at the end in each others’ arms.”
“Oh? That’s refreshing.” Lord Ashbee smiled.
“Yes, my friend. Quite a book. And the woman! A woman that agrees to cross over to the dark world for the sake of love can be twice as dangerous as a man.”
Lord Ashbee didn’t answer. He drifted away, deep in his thoughts, looking at the flowers.
It was May again.
It’d been a year since last May.
A year since his May.
He realized he was missing her terribly and despised himself for that. If he could only know where she was and that she was doing fine, he would let it go. Perhaps… But maybe the universe was keeping her away from him for her own sake. He could sell himself to the devil just to see May again. Maybe, this was the devil’s price to pay for buying her in the first place.
Ah! The irony!
Lord Ashbee could not deny his feelings anymore. But now that he admitted them to himself, May was gone, and he was left with rejection that he so passionately warned others about.
“Let’s take a trip, Ray,” Charles interrupted his thoughts, “just for several days. A week, at most. Riding around the country on horses. Pheasant hunting. Cricket. Yvense is hosting a ball or a dance party. Something of the kind, whatever they call it in the country. He has a pretty sister, you know.” Charles smiled. “She is a beauty, though quite independent and with character. I hear Lord Ramsay is going to propose, and she might accept, though she’s known to be quite stern. They say, there is not a single decent bachelor in Hampshire, Wiltshire or Dorset that is not fascinated with her.”
“Have you met her?” Lord Ashbee asked though lately the conversations about beauty bored him too.
“I’ve met her several years back when she wasn’t yet twenty. Ah! She was already quite a little thing back then! They have money, so, she is sure a good catch.”
Lord Ashbee smirked. He hadn’t been interested in women since May’s disappearance.
“What’s her name?” he asked just to continue the topic.
“Mary Ann.”
“Ah! What a perfect country name!”
“But do I see a familiar sparkle in your eyes?”
“I fail to find beauty in the heart of London that brings the best to the table. You think you can seduce me with country chic?” Ashbee chuckled. “I have two estates in less than a day’s travel from this city, and I barely visit.” He sighed. “I would only go to keep you from dying of boredom. Or keep an eye on you. I would hate to lose you to some country girl with a lot of money. Next thing I know, you move there. Imagine! Isolation ruins the sharpness of the mind. And good habits. And refined taste. And—“
“Enough-enough, Ashbee! It’s set then! We are going to Southampton!”
Charles, excited, kept chirping away in sync with the birds in the shrubs as Lord Ashbee sank deep into his thoughts.
He looked around with an absent gaze.
The end of spring, his favorite time.
The t
ime of awakening.
When nature gave birth to its most precious scents.
But in all this picturesque awakening, the triumph of all things that enhanced one’s senses, one thing was missing.
The scent of May.
His May.
CHAPTER 3
Two weeks later, Lord Ashbee and Charles boarded a train.
The trip through the towns and villages was quite a delight. Lord Ashbee was used to traveling. Usually, his mind was preoccupied with business. Now it wandered around thinking how unpredictable fate was. How easily people lost and found each other in the vast sea of humankind.
The two men were met by the carriage that took them to Charles’s aunt, Lady Mildred Hamilton, at whose estate they were to stay.
Lady Mildred was in her seventies—a big impressive woman with equally big ambitions, a sign of her fortune. So was everything about her. Her chubby fingers were clutched into rings with gems of various sizes. Her thick neck was locked into a collar of extraordinary beauty and, no doubt, investment. “When one has as much money as me,” she said, “one can afford to display good taste as well as the absence of one. Without giving a rat’s ass about others’ opinions.”
Or the language, Lord Ashbee thought with a smile.
“I have nothing to lose except my life, and that I don’t have much left of.”
So Lady Mildred set on a mission to live it to the fullest. That, at times, included a dubious company and questionable entertainment. Strangely, because of that nonchalant and direct attitude, her popularity increased threefold.
“When you go against the grain, people scold you at first, then look at you with interest, then start admiring you,” she said to Lord Ashbee that same evening at the game of cards.
“You’ll be surprised to know that Lord Ashbee follows exactly the same philosophy in his life,” Charles exclaimed in delight.
