Victorian Passions: The Complete Collection of Four Stories under One Cover

by Alice K. Cross

  "It's a good name, Miss," agreed Mr. Smith. And Lucy touched the horse gently with the crop in her right hand and trotted out through the park.

  ***

  Lucy had been jogging down the lane for about thirty minutes when she looked across the pasture fence to see her father's gelding, Paddy, cropping at the high weeds, a saddle on his back. As she drew nearer, she saw that Mr. Smith was beside the horse on one knee, inspecting the fence.

  "Good morning again," Lucy said, pulling Athena to a stop.

  The man stood, touched his cap and answered, "Miss Lucinda."

  "Do you always say your prayers in the pasture?"

  "Not prayers, Miss." Now he smiled just a little. "There's a gap somewhere. Paddy here has been getting out every night for a week. I sent the boys, yesterday but they couldn't find it," Sam said. "I don't think this is it," he added, stepping to Paddy and mounting him in one quick movement.

  "Sorry," said Lucy.

  "Oh, I'll find it." Mr. Smith took a closer look at Lucy and her horse. "How's the mare, Miss?" he asked her.

  "She's as smooth as butter and responsive as she can be," Lucy answered as the two of them began to ride along on either side of the fence.

  In a moment they came to the pasture gate. "Let me in Mr. Smith?" Lucy asked. The man jumped down from his horse, opened the gate, closed it behind Lucy and remounted Paddy.

  Lucy smiled broadly now, patted the mare on the neck and pointed to an oak tree about a quarter mile away. "I want to see how fast she is. Let's race to that tree."

  "Hadn't you better get to know her a little better, first?" Sam said.

  "I can handle her." Lucy was eager to feel the wind on her face, and suddenly determined that Mr. Smith should join her. "Catch us if you can!" She tapped the mare with her crop and the horse sprang forward.

  Sam nudged Paddy and gave chase as the wind stole Lucy's voice and whipped the train of her riding habit into the air. He pulled Paddy to a stop a few yards from the tree Lucy had designated as the end of the short "race." Athena was still restless, wishing to run further, but Lucy held her steady.

  "You had a head start, Miss!"

  Lucy saw a real smile on the man's face now and knew he was teasing her. She slipped down from the saddle and let the reins go slack so the horse could nibble at the spring grass shoots under the shade of the tree.

  "She's just marvelous," Lucy turned her attention to the mare, stroking her neck and toying with her mane. "I've never owned such a horse."

  "Thoroughbreds are fine animals," Sam agreed, "and she's a excellent example of the type."

  "She's a bribe, though," Lucy said, still stroking Athena's silken neck, her eyes on the mare.

  Mr. Smith said nothing.

  "It would seem that Mr. Barrett expects me to marry him in return for her. Do you think she's worth that much?" Lucy looked at the stable manager now, her smile gone, her eyes stony.

  "That's nothing I can advise you about Miss." Mr. Smith raised his hand to his hat but Lucy saw that he was blushing.

  "Of course. I'm sorry." Lucy knew she had crossed the invisible line between family and staff that her mother was always lecturing her to mind.

  But in spite of her perfunctory apology, she didn't retreat. Instead, some new perversity rose in her.

  "Help me back up?" she asked the stable manager.

  Lucy was perfectly able to mount a horse herself—she did it often enough when she went out alone—but she wanted to make the man touch her.

  One hand on her waist and one on her foot, Mr. Smith launched Lucy back into the saddle. For just a moment, while under his hands, she looked into his eyes. "Thank you Mr. Smith," she said, then kicked her horse and galloped back across the field toward the pasture gate.

  She could hear Paddy running along behind her, but she didn't stop at the gate and wait for Mr. Smith to open it again. Instead she tapped Athena with her crop and sent the mare flying over the gate and on back down the farm lane.

  ***

  An hour later, Lucy walked Athena back into the yard, where she spied the stable manager again, standing by Paddy at the trough. Lucy pulled her horse gently to a stop and slipped to the ground, her little boot heels clattering on the paving stones.

  Mr. Smith looked up, but Lucy was leading Athena into the stable. When Sam came in behind her, she had already tied the horse in the aisle and was unbuckling the saddle. Neither the grooms nor the boys were near.

  "Miss! There's no need... I'll just tie Paddy here and take care of them both..." Sam tried to stop her, but she was already lifting the saddle down from the horse.

  "It's all right, Mr. Smith. I'm not ready to let go of her just yet," Lucy headed into the tack room with the saddle over one arm and her riding habit's long train over the other.

  The stable manager stood for a moment watching her, seemingly unsure what to do or say next. But when Lucy came out of the tack room, he turned to Paddy, removed the bridle and saddle, put them away in the tack room and brushed the horse down, working silently by Lucy's side.

  They finished the task and walked together to turn the horses out.

  "Thank you for letting me take care of her," Lucy said, offering up a gloved hand. Mr. Smith took it briefly in a naked, callused one and answered, "she's your horse, Miss," as the girl headed back to the house.

  ***

  There was something unusual about Sam Smith. Lucy lay awake staring at the bed canopy and turning the stable manager over and over in her mind. She couldn't put her finger quite on it, but Mr. Smith was not like Bill or Nate, the other grooms. And he certainly was not like her father or Henry Barrett.

  He was quieter than any of those men. But that alone was not strange. There was a changeless gravity behind his eyes, even when he broke down and smiled at some little joke of hers. And sometimes, when he looked at her, or helped her into the saddle, there was something else too. He had almost the air of wanting to ask her a question, then thinking better of it and staying silent instead.

  What did he want to ask? Lucy wondered. And she found herself wishing that he trusted her enough to let her answer.

  ***

  In the morning, Lucy was at the stable again. Mr. Smith was expecting her. Athena was ready and as the man handed Lucy the reigns, their eyes met for just a moment too long.

  There it was: the unasked question. Curiosity welled in her, but she simply thanked him and rode off in the usual direction.

  She was well down the farm lane when she heard quick hoof beats behind her. Turning, she saw Mr. Smith and Paddy galloping up. She wondered if there was some message from the house. As the man approached, he slowed his horse and finally settled in to ride beside her on the narrow path, his right leg almost brushing her skirt.

  "Good morning again, Miss Lucinda," said Mr. Smith with a touch of his cap.

  "Mr. Smith," Lucy nodded with a smile. "On your way somewhere urgent?"

  "Not so urgent, just going to talk with Mr. Lloyd," he said, indicating Black Fields's farm supervisor.

  The two rode along in silence for a few minutes, the horses falling into companionable step with one another.

  Lucy stifled a rising impulse to ask the man outright why he had wanted to catch her. Instead, she watched him as he sat the horse beside her, her eye tracing him from his clean boots, up his brown wool breeches to the matching jacket that strained just a bit to cover his muscled shoulders.

  She eyed the man's gloveless, callused hands and marveled at how lightly and expertly they managed the reins. She could almost feel their familiar touch on her body, steadying her as she mounted her horse, and a nervous warmth filled her at the thought of it.

  Her gaze had moved to his young, clean-shaven face, shaded by a workman's cap when Mr. Smith turned to catch her staring. She blushed. But he smiled kindly instead of looking away and in the flash of that smile it immediately came to Lucy just what was different about him.

  She gasped to herself in wonder and before she could consider the wis
dom of speaking, had already said, "Why, Mr. Smith! You aren't a man at all!"

  The stable manager almost jerked the reins in shock. Lucy stopped Athena too and they sat, side by side.

  "Sorry Miss...sorry, what do you mean?"

  "You've disguised yourself as a man..." Her voice was gentler now.

  "Miss, please..."

  Lucy felt a pang of guilt. "I'm sorry. It's none of my business. But it is queer..." She looked down at her own gloved hands, suddenly embarrassed. Part of her wished she had said nothing but most of her was burning with curiosity about the man--the woman? About Sam Smith.

  "Miss—" Mr. Smith tried again and Lucy looked up now to meet the stable manager's eye. "Please don't tell anyone. I'd lose my place."

  "Oh—" Lucy's eyes were still locked on the stable manager's. "No. No of course not. I'd not have you lose your place...Mr. Smith."

  "Thank you."

  They walked on in awkward silence. But when they reached the pasture gate, Mr. Smith turned to Lucy and said "I'd better be getting back to work," and once through the gate, rode away at a canter, seeming to have forgotten about the errand at the farm.

  Lucy turned and slowly rode home herself, handing her horse to Bill in the yard and meeting her parents for breakfast. She didn't see Sam Smith again that day.

  ***

  No one—not her employer Mr. Foster, not the grooms or boys who worked for her, not the house maids who, from time to time she chased out of the loft—knew Sam was a woman. They all believed her a quiet young man who kept his nose down and rarely strayed from the task at hand, keeping to himself in his off hours—which were few—and never speaking of a family or a childhood or anything at all beyond his job.

  After many difficult years, Sam had found that the best strategy was to do her job so well, that no one would need to look beyond her excellent work, to see who, exactly was standing behind it.

  When the fire that destroyed her shabby home had also killed her parents, her younger brother and her baby sister, there had been nothing left for twelve-year-old Sarah Foley to do but ask for charity from the neighbors. But since many of them had lost property and family too, they had little to offer the girl. So, filling a blanket with the things the fire didn't consume—a few coins from a box on the mantel, some badly warped kitchen silver, and the laundry that had been hanging wet outside on the clothesline—Sarah left the only neighborhood she had ever known.

  It didn't take her many days on her own before she came to the conclusion that it was better to be a boy alone in the world than a girl. And so she put on her dead brother's clothes, chopped her hair off at the nape of her neck and became a boy.

  Sarah had never been very happy to be a girl anyway. As the oldest daughter, her mother had put her to work cooking, washing and minding the baby, keeping her in the tiny orbit of the cramped house when she would rather have been learning shipbuilding or blacksmithing or printing like the boys her age she knew.

  Thus Sarah became "Sam" to the outside world and soon apprenticed to a blacksmith who taught his "boy" basic metal work. But after three years of forging shoes for horses, Sam knew it was the animals she loved, not the iron. So she began to inquire about stable work and found her first job as an assistant groom right after her fifteenth birthday.

  In the stables, she thrived. And as she grew, she learned to dress and act more and more like a boy, then a young man, and now, she hardly felt female anymore, until night came, and she unwound the tight bindings from her breasts before bed. She often found herself shocked at her own body after a day of hard, heavy work, surrounded by men and boys and horses.

  She rarely thought of her family now. When anyone inquired, she simply said they were all killed in a fire when she was young and that kept more questions at bay. But she had been worried when she first met old Charlie at a hunt near Black Fields and realized that he had known the Foleys. His daughter lived in the same neighborhood in which Sam had spent her childhood, and Charlie remembered the fire and how it had barely spared his own kin. At first, Sam had been terrified that he would recognize her and reveal her true identity, but in Charlie's aging mind, Sam became mixed up with her younger brother, whose clothes she had taken, and he clapped her fondly on the back with no suspicion whatsoever.

  In the end, it was Charlie who recommended she replace him when he gave his notice to Mr. Foster. Sam couldn't believe her good fortune. By age twenty-six, she had the supervision of her own stable, a kind employer who wanted his horses treated well—Sam had seen plenty of men who weren't and didn't—and a fair wage. A month on the job had proved her first impressions and Charlie's description of Black Fields happily accurate. Sam considered herself a success and had no greater ambition than to stay on until she herself was ready to retire.

  But she knew better than to trust a rich young lady of eighteen with her life's great secret. So in spite of Lucy's promise not to tell, the stable manager was beside herself for the rest of the day.

  That evening, before undressing for bed, Sam inspected herself in the cracked glass above her rough washstand. What was wrong with her hair, her clothes, her gait? What had Miss Lucinda seen in her that was escaping her own diligent self-observation? She could find nothing amiss—nothing any different than it had been in fourteen years of living as Sam Smith, undetected, unsuspected as an imposter. She stared into her own eyes, the image of Lucy, bare shouldered in the window coming again to mind. For the first time, the injustice of the incident struck her. Why could she catch Miss Lucinda so naked without threat to the girl, while Miss Lucinda could uncover Sam so dangerously while she was fully clothed?

  She rubbed a hand across her chin and wished for the hundredth time she could will whiskers to grow there. Men—who were born so—didn't know how lucky they were.

  ***

  Lucy's mind was on Sam all day. She had no intention of breaking her promise to keep the secret, but her curiosity about the stable manager only grew with every passing hour.

  Why was the woman playing a man? How long had she been doing it? Who else knew? Had Old Charlie known when he recommended Sam to replace him at Black Fields?

  Lucy found herself looking at her own hands, clothes, face in mirrors as she passed them. What would it take to make her a man? Where did a woman find men's clothes? What tailor would measure a girl for a boy's suit?

  Lucy wondered what she would do with her life if she were a boy instead of herself. She would certainly not be considering marriage at the age of eighteen. After all, Henry Barrett was thirty-eight and he was only now considering it. Men could wait for that. They could do other things instead. What did they do? How did they know what they wanted to do? What had Sam wanted that only a man could have?

  After their awkward parting today, Lucy intuited that Sam wouldn't want to see her tomorrow. And yet, it made no sense to stay away, with a fine new horse just waiting to be ridden by a girl who loved to ride.

  A girl.

  Who loved to ride.

  A girl.

  And then, right around midnight, while lying sleeplessly in bed, Lucy had an idea.

  ***

  Sam didn't see Miss Lucinda for two days. But on the third morning, she found her in the stable doorway just as she was arriving herself, a cup of black coffee in her hand, a halter over her shoulder.

  The sight of the girl filled Sam with nervous ambivalence. She was almost afraid to hear what Miss Lucinda had to say, yet she was also relieved to see her. She touched her cap in greeting.

  "Mr. Smith," Lucy began with a confident air, "I have a proposal for you."

  "Yes, Miss?"

  "You have a secret. I have one too. If you'll help me with mine, perhaps you'll feel more able to trust me with yours. What do you say?"

  Sam shifted her weight from foot to foot. She could not imagine Miss Lucinda capable of actual blackmail, and she wondered if the lady knew how threatening her words sounded. "I trust you Miss," she lied, "but I'm happy to help you if I can."

 
"I'd like to learn to ride a horse properly," Lucy began. Sam opened her mouth to protest that Lucy was already an accomplished rider, but the girl went on quickly, "—to ride astride—like a boy. I want you to teach me. We could do it early in the mornings, before dawn. No one would know—no one must know."

  Sam didn't know what to say. She had no idea why Miss Lucinda would make such a request though it made sense that she'd want the thing done in secret. Mr. Foster typically gave Lucy help with riding if she needed it. She was an excellent rider as ladies went. But Sam had never known a lady to ride astride, nor had she ever known a lady—or any girl for that matter—to want to do so. Sam could imagine Miss Lucinda's father would scoff at such an interest at best, perhaps see something amiss in his daughter and forbid her at worst. What was the girl planning? Why did she think she needed to learn a boy's seat?

  "Well, Miss..."

  "Please Sam—" Miss Lucinda called her by given name as if she were a stable boy. Sam felt a strange heat suffuse her in spite of the chill morning as the girl rushed on, "it's life and death to me."