After Innocence

by Brenda Joyce

  Sofie jerked her foot off his lap at the exact instant she realized her mother stood behind Edward on the veranda. She flushed, sitting up straighter, gripping the thick arms of the chair. Her mother’s expression was carefully controlled. Edward slowly rose to his full height, as graceful and sleek as an oversized panther, and before he turned to face Suzanne, he gave Sofie a smile that might have been meant as encouragement, but that was so warm, it would have melted a frozen stick of butter. Sofie’s heart beat double time.

  Sofie closed her eyes in despair, praying for guidance, praying for help before it was too late—before she took an irrevocable plunge into the deep, still waters of love.

  “Sofie, put your shoe on,” Suzanne said.

  Sofie did not move. Her shoe was out of reach.

  Edward moved with the speed of a striking cobra, retrieving the unfashionable shoe and sliding it onto her foot. Sofie glimpsed his face, which had tightened with anger. As he laced it up, she dared to look at her mother, who was just as displeased.

  “Mr. Delanza, would you excuse us?” Suzanne asked, her tone clipped.

  Edward placed himself squarely between mother and daughter. “Your daughter, Mrs. Ralston, is in some pain. I would like to help her upstairs.” His tone was cool. “With your permission, of course.”

  Suzanne’s voice was sugar-coated. “That will not be necessary, sir. I shall have one of the servants aid her. However, might I have a word with you on the morrow—say, after breakfast?” She smiled with vinegary sweetness.

  He bowed. “Of course. Good night, madam.” He turned, giving Sofie a look filled with dark concern, and with something more, something conspiratorial and intimate that made Sofie’s pulse race. “Good night. Miss O’Neil.”

  She managed a wan smile. Edward left. Suzanne stared after him, waiting until he was gone. Then she turned to her daughter. Her hand swung out. Sofie cried out in surprise and pain as Suzanne’s palm cracked across her face. It had been many years since her mother had slapped her. She drew back against the chair, holding her stinging cheek, stunned.

  “I told you to stay way from him!” Suzanne cried. “Don’t you understand? He is exactly like your father, your goddamned, rotten father, that miserable Irish bastard—and he’ll use you just like your father did me!”

  Sofie did not sleep. She did not dare think, either, or try to analyze what had happened. She would never be able to understand the events that had passed this day.

  She sketched. Sofie preferred color, oils being her favorite medium, but she knew that her mother would have never allowed her to bring her paints to Newport for the weekend. and in truth, a short trip hardly justified lugging all of her equipment such a distance. And she had come to the beach house with the honorable intention of being sociable, which was not possible if she locked herself in her room painting all day, nor was it easily accomplished if she spent all night with her work, either. But she was helpless to fight the urge to draw, an urge she had fought all day, and now she gave in with single-minded frenzy. Sleep was the very last thing on her mind.

  She drew with abandon. Her strokes were mostly hard and bold. One sketch rapidly followed another. The subject never changed. The portraits were all of the same man; only the poses were different. They were all of Edward Delanza.

  She drew Edward kneeling, standing, silting, sauntering, she drew him holding her ugly shoe. In every portrait she drew him fully clothed but in his shirtsleeves, so she could hint at the powerful musculature she had felt against her body but had not seen. How she wished she had seen him fully unclothed—for then she would draw him nude.

  His body, she defined in a few powerful, simple strokes, unable to do more. But in every portrait she detailed his face with great care. In every portrait, his expression was the same. As she had last seen it, tender, concerned, yet somehow wicked with promise, too.

  4

  Suzanne paced. She had spent a sleepless night. And of course, when Benjamin had asked her what was wrong, she could not tell him.

  She was in the music room, alone. She paused to look in the Venetian minor on the wall above a small marble-topped Louis XIV table. She wore her dark, shoulder-length hair swept up loosely, for it was the perfect foil for her flawless ivory complexion and her classic features. Her morning dress was simple, a fine peach-hued cotton with a deeply veed neckline and a fitted bodice despite the fact that fashion tended towards high necklines and loose, billowy tops. Suzanne knew her figure was superb, and since her remarriage, she had always flaunted it. Now, selfconsciously, she smoothed down her skirt, which clung to her hips before flaring out in the customary trumpet shape. She could find no flaw with her appearance, except for the faint circles beneath her eyes.

  She was sorry about last night. God, she was. But she had told her daughter to stay away from Edward Delanza, and Sofie had not listened. If only she hadn’t lost her temper. But perhaps Sofie had learned her lesson.

  If only he did not remind her so damn much of Jake.

  Suzanne inhaled hard. Jake had died eleven years ago, and she still felt that horrible gut-wrenching emptiness whenever she thought of him—which was often. Yes, she missed the miserable bastard, she always would—but she also hated him. He had come so close to destroying her!

  Suzanne just could not forgive Jake any of it, not his taking her away from society, from her possessions and her wealth, not the other women, not his intention to separate from her when she flatly denied him a divorce. And when Jake had been forced to flee the country, she had been branded the wife of a murderer, of a traitor. Had Benjamin Ralston not married her upon Jake’s death, giving her back her place in society and her respectability, she would still carry Jake’s heinous brands.

  Most important of all, she could not forgive Jake for leaving his entire estate—comprised of a million dollars in assets and cash—to their daughter. That had been the greatest blow of all. Sofie would receive it immediately should she marry, or begin receiving installments at twenty-one, the final sum to be received on her twenty-fifth birthday if she was still unwed. After all Suzanne had suffered, after all she had endured and given up, he had not left her a single red Cent. Not one.

  She knew that it was his way of getting back at her as he had threatened to do the last time they had seen each other, even though he had been behind bars then. Neither one of them had ever thought he would be dead two years later, and Suzanne had also thought the threat idle, for how could he strike at her while incarcerated? But it had not been idle. Despite his incarceration, despite his death, Jake had carried out his threat—even now, he was carrying on their passionate love-and-hate war from the very grave.

  But it was Suzanne’s turn to hold the upper hand. Seven years ago the executor of Jake’s estate had died, and Suzanne had been appointed executrix of Sofie’s trust. Suzanne imagined that Jake was spinning in his grave right now, for Suzanne was administering the trust in a manner that benefited not just her daughter, but herself.

  Abruptly, despite the fact that she was expecting Edward Delanza at any moment and was prepared to do battle with him over her daughter if she must, Suzanne sank down into a plush brocade chair, stabbed with sudden anguish. It wasn’t fair. Not any of it. Not his death, and not the fact that, when it had all begun, she had been far too young and too spoiled to appreciate what they had had—and what could have been theirs if only they had tried.

  Suzanne closed her eyes, her anguish turned to an intense longing. How well she remembered what it was to be fifteen and obsessed with Jake O’Neil. She smiled, and allowed herself to be swept back into the past.

  New York City, 1880

  Suzanne dashed from the house, her black riding skirts flaring around her, a jaunty hat with a half veil set at an angle on her head. Her magnificent bay hunter was waiting for her. Suzanne allowed the groom to help her mount. Excitement rippled in her, hardly containable. The groom mounted another horse and followed at a discreet distance behind her.

  Suzanne spurred her hun
ter forward. She was not going riding in Central Park, nor was she meeting friends, as she had let her parents believe. Her heart beat wildly now; she was perspiring. She was acutely aware of the feel of the saddle leather between her thighs.

  Would he be there? Would he be there today, as he had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that—ever since she had first laid her eyes on him?

  The week before, Suzanne had gone riding with a group of friends. It had been a large, raucous group of young ladies and eligible bachelors. There had been much ado in the papers recently about all the building on the city’s west side, a direct response to the opening of the Ninth Avenue El the year before. Suzanne and her friends had never been farther west than Central Park, except for occasional shopping excursions to the boulevard farther downtown. The entire group had enthusiastically decided to visit the newly opened Riverside Park.

  Crossing town, one and all scoffed at the idea that one day the West Side would be fit for habitation—much less a rival for the East Side’s residents. For they rode through open dirt streets, past small farms with cows and dogs, past shabby, lonely shacks. Gas and water lines were few, barren fields everywhere.

  On Riverside Avenue they paused before one development. Some fifty laborers were hard at work, banging nails, lifting posts, laying bricks. Below the site of this dwelling’s foundation, everyone agreed that the view was spectacular. There the Hudson River churned, framed by striking cliff palisades.

  Suzanne did not hear. She sat her bay at the edge of the group—closest to the building activity. One of the laborers was shirtless, bronzed from the sun. His tawny hair was thick and wild and streaked heavily with gold. She watched him bending over. Watched the tight fit of his denims over high, hard buttocks, watched him straighten, saw the play of muscle in his broad back. When he turned, not yet aware of her, she continued to watch. He was superbly built, all lean, exquisitely defined muscle, and when she glimpsed his face, she gasped. He was as handsome as the gods of classical Greek mythology.

  Suzanne was no stranger to lust. She had been flirting with the opposite sex since she was thirteen, had been mildly attracted to many young men, and even some older ones. But more important, at night she was restless and unable to sleep. At night she burned with forbidden heat, dreaming of a handsome, faceless stranger, and she yearned to explore herself, to discover the extent of her own passion.

  That day, sitting on her hunter, she had begun to throb heavily, watching the stranger—who was no longer faceless.

  He paused, stood, turned. Instantly his restless gaze found hers. He did not move, staring back at her as openly as she stared at him.

  It sizzled between them, like a jagged, white-hot streak of lightning, the current of animal desire. He did not smile, but his lips curled slightly and something unspoken seemed to pass between them.

  Suzanne could not stay away. Now she was stricken with burning restlessness at night, the fever of her body a conflagration that had gone out of control. She no longer rode with her friends. She look the old groom, instructing him to stay far behind her. Every day she ventured across town to Riverside Avenue. Every day he was mere, and she watched him. Every day he watched her.

  Today Suzanne pressed some coins into the groom’s hand and told him that she did not feel well, to get her some lemonade from the fruit stand she had seen a few blocks away. When he had left, she turned, meeting his tawny gaze.

  Suzanne licked her lips.

  He dropped the hammer and moved towards her. As always, he was shirtless. A faint sheen glimmered on his golden skin. He moved with predatory grace. When he paused before the hunter, Suzanne started when she realized he was hardly older than herself.

  “I was wonderin’ when you’d get rid o’ him,” he said, his glance skewering her. It was bold and sexual. His tone was dry and rough.

  “I—I don’t feel well,” Suzanne said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. Staring at him, she realized that he might be a year or two older than she, but he was hardly a boy. He exuded a dangerous male vitality, something ineffable, powerful.

  “Can I help?” His eyes gleamed.

  Suzanne slid off the hunter. He steadied her. Suzanne couldn’t help herself, she glanced down between them, at his thick, denim-constrained groin. “Only if you have some water.” She lifted her chin, regaining some of her composure. Some of her imperiousness. After all, he was only a laborer, an Irish one at that. There had been the faintest hint of a brogue in his tone.

  “Water?” He released her, folded his arms. He was amused. “That’s all you want from me. Miss … er …?”

  “Miss Vanderkemp,” she said softly.

  “Of the Fifth Avenue Vanderkemps?”

  She was proud. She nodded.

  He laughed. “Jake O’Neil, Miss Vanderkemp. Of the Ballymena O’Neils.” His long, dark lashes lowered, and when he looked up from under them, his gaze was potently seductive. “Are you goin’ to meet me, Miss Vanderkemp?”

  Suzanne did not have to think about it. It was all she had thought of for the past week. Soon she would marry some pale, boring Knickerbocker, or maybe some moneyed newcomer. She could imagine herself in bed with Peter Kerenson, or with Richard Astor. It wouldn’t be horrid, but it would hardly be exciting. She wanted Jake O’Neil more than she had ever wanted anything, and she would have him, too, while she could. She nodded.

  He sucked in his breath, the wry amusement gone now the bulge in his denims far more pronounced. “Let’s go.”

  “Now?” She gasped.

  “Now,” he said, low and rough. “Right now. Right goddamn now. You’ve been teasin’ me all week. Miss Vanderkemp—and now it’s my turn.”

  Suzanne did not make him wait. She remounted with his help, acutely aware of his hands on her waist, careless of what the groom would think when he returned and found her gone. He slid the key to his flat into her palm, giving her directions. Alone, Suzanne galloped off.

  She did not notice the squalor of the shack he rented two blocks north of Ninth Avenue. She paced the main room, kept staring at the rumpled bed. She prayed for him to hurry. Her heart was in her throat. Her blood churned hot and wild. She thought that if he did not appear in another moment, she would scream with agony, with rage, and claw her own clothes from her body.

  “Sorry, ma’am, to keep you waitin’,” he said from the doorway.

  Suzanne whirled. “I did not hear you come in!”

  He gave her a mock bow. “Learned how to move rea silent, I did, when I was a boy pickin’ pockets in Dublin.”

  Suzanne didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She couldn’t care. He stared at her, but he was unbuttoning his cotton shirt, slowly, leisurely, provocatively. Inch by inch he revealed more of his hard, tanned chest, his torso his flat, hard belly. He finally pulled it open. Suzanne was aware of how brazenly he was behaving, but she was mesmerized by his performance, and hurting now more than ever, the muscles in her inner thighs bunched into tight knots.

  He shrugged off his shirt, tossing it to the floor. “Do get paid for this?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t come cheap.”

  “I … I don’t understand …” Suzanne couldn’t continue

  He had yanked off his shoes; now he was unbuttoning the fly of his Levi’s. He did not rush, seemed to enjoy the way his fingers brushed over the hard bulge there, seemed to enjoy her wide-eyed, speechless stare.

  His grin came, wicked and wry. An instant later he had slid his faded trousers down his lean hips, freeing his erection.

  Suzanne whimpered.

  “Like what you see, darlin’?” he asked.

  Suzanne had never dreamed that a man would look like he did. She wrenched her gaze away, to his beautiful amber eyes. He was stalking her.

  “Like what you’re gonna get?” he whispered, pausing in front of her. The ripe tip of his phallus brushed her skirts. Suzanne whimpered again.

  He laughed once more before pulling her into his arm
s and seizing her mouth with his.

  Suzanne came alive. She opened for him hungrily, clinging. He made a harsh sound as her tongue rushed into his mouth, deep. They sparred, quickly becoming frantic. The kiss took on its own wild, desperate life, tongues entwining. Jake began to rock his hips against hers with insistence.

  He clutched handfuls of her buttocks, coming up for air, gasping. “Jesus,” he whispered, his gaze wide and surprised.

  “Don’t stop,” Suzanne begged, digging her gloved fingertips into his back. She undulated shamelessly against him.

  “Words I love to hear,” Jake muttered, abruptly lifting her in his arms. He tipped her onto the bed, sinking down beside her, claiming her mouth again. While he kissed her, he flipped up her skirts, cupped her sex. Suzanne gasped, arching up hard beneath his hand as he stroked her through her soft, white pantalets.

  “God!” Suzanne screamed. “God, God, God!” She shattered. She shattered into a million tiny, shardlike pieces in the most brilliant, fantastic, all-consuming explosion. Her abandoned cries filled the shack.

  Jake came down on top of her, ripping apart her underwear. He tossed shreds of the flimsy fabric aside, his big, naked body shaking. He thrust hard against her, did not penetrate, thrust again. He paused, panting.

  “Relax, darlin’,” he crooned against her ear. “This is gonna be so good, like you’ve never had before—I guarantee it, darlin’.”

  Suzanne was shaking with excitement, but also with some real fear. Her gloved hands gripped his shoulders, she wriggled her wet flesh against him, moaning with irrepressible need. But when he pressed forward, she stiffened in spite of herself. “I c-can’t re-relax,” she gasped.

  “Shh, shh,” he hushed, nibbling her ear.

  “J-Jake,” Suzanne said hoarsely, “please, be gentle, please.”

  “You don’t want gentle, darlin’, believe me, I know what you want—what you need.” He licked her ear for emphasis, and Suzanne whimpered. But when he rocked against her again, she stiffened like a board.