She’d obeyed his command and bought a new dress. It was black, anything but stylish, obviously cheap; still, it was a huge improvement over the old one. Beauty wasn’t what had attracted him to Mrs. Wade and made him hire her that day in the town hall, but here she was, looking . . . if not beautiful, then striking in her plain wool gown, high-necked and tight-sleeved, with a dainty white apron he’d have called coy on another kind of woman. After a few days of seeing her in her new dress, he’d told her he liked it but he didn’t want to see it all the time. Get another one, get two more, he instructed, and this time defy housekeeper tradition and don’t get black. Anything but black. The next day she appeared in his study wearing her second new dress: brown. Dark brown. But, strangely enough, it suited her, looked almost pretty on her, probably because it matched her hair, and so he hadn’t complained.
She was by no means blooming, and yet she had come a long way from the silent, downcast spectre at the magistrates’ hearing. She must be eating better; she’d lost her alarming pallor and even some of the angularity in her figure. She always wore her hair pinned up under a cap, and the shortest strands escaped and hung about her neck in a becoming way that came close to looking youthful. But she was still solemn as the grave, spoke only when spoken to, and never, ever smiled.
Holyoake’s astonishing revelations had raised Sebastian’s already keen curiosity about her to a new and salacious plane. He wanted very much to know what her one-week marriage had been like, and exactly what had been the late Mr. Wade’s “ah, peculiarities.” He entertained himself by imagining her in lewd sexual situations, but the man in his fantasies was always himself; when he tried to put a deviant or a pervert in them with her, someone who hurt her or degraded her—someone other than himself—the fantasies evaporated, leaving him with a bad taste in the mouth.
Whenever possible, he tried to shock her out of her brittle composure. One day, in the middle of a one-sided conversation about a chimney fire in the best drawing room, he interrupted her to inquire casually, “Tell me, Mrs. Wade, did you kill your husband?”
Annoyingly, her face didn’t change. Her hands tightened on the accounts ledger she always brought with her, but otherwise she didn’t react. After scarcely a pause, she said, “No, my lord. But everyone in Dartmoor Prison is there by some terrible mistake; certainly I never met a guilty inmate in all the years I was there. The English penal system was built to incarcerate innocent victims—were you not aware of that?”
He didn’t know which was more discomfiting, her sarcasm or her indifference to whether he believed her or not. He sent her away with a curt word. This time the one who had been shocked was himself, and he didn’t like it.
He wasn’t sure why he tormented Mrs. Wade, why he had numerous new torments in mind for her in the future. It wasn’t his usual style. But he’d seen a change coming in himself for a while now. Out of boredom and cynicism, he was starting to become nasty. He didn’t approve of it, but in some ways he saw it as inevitable. Life, he’d decided years ago, was supremely, spectacularly pointless, and a wise man learned to deal resourcefully with that disappointing truth. Fortunately, Sebastian Verlaine had been born into wealth and comfort, two commodities that helped mitigate pointlessness no end.
But the older he got, the less fun he was having. It took more every day to divert him, and lately he’d begun moving gradually, with misgivings, into excess. There were no vices and few depravities he hadn’t tasted, with differing degrees of satisfaction. He worried that when he ran out, he would choose a few favorites and indulge in them until they killed him.
In some ways, what he saw in Rachel Wade was what he couldn’t see in himself anymore. She was like some raw, naked thing, stripped down to the basics, without illusions or hope, without vanity. The fire she’d been through had burned her clean to the bone. She knew something now; she’d learned a secret maybe the secret—and he had some idea that if he could possess her, the essence of what he lacked and she had would be his. He would appropriate it.
It made no rational sense, but he told himself it was an instinct, and instincts were allowed to defy reason.
On a rainy Thursday morning, he sat at his desk in his first-floor study, paging through his correspondence while waiting for her to join him. She had a distinctive knock; he listened unconsciously for the soft tap tap—tap she always used to announce herself. But the appointed time came and went, and after only a few minutes he decided not to wait; he decided to go and find her.
He went to her room first. Cold gray light from the open doorway spilled onto the stone corridor, picking out every worn place and threadbare fiber in the thin carpet that ran down the center. He paused for the barest second, then entered without knocking. The sitting room was empty, but he heard a soft noise from the bedroom. Bad manners to walk in on a lady in her bedroom. Keeping his feet quiet on the meager rug, he moved toward the bedroom door.
She was coming out—they almost collided in the threshold. She started in surprise and backed up, begging his pardon. She had her white cap in one hand, the heavy accounts ledger in the other, clutching it to her chest. “I’m sorry I’m late, my lord. I was just on my way to come to you. There was a crisis in the kitchen just now, nothing terrible, but Clara burned her hand on the stove. It’s not serious, but I stayed to see that she was all right and that Susan put the salve on—” She came to a sudden halt, flushing, gathering herself.
It never failed: the more agitated she became, the calmer he felt. “Relax, Mrs. Wade,” he drawled. “Being late to our morning meeting is not grounds for dismissal.”
She dropped her eyes, embarrassed. She had on her brown dress today; she must alternate: black, brown, black, brown. The bodice crossed modestly over her bosom and tied at the waist in two plain, practical bows. Such a demure dress. So easy to open. Yank, yank, and there she would be, clutching her corseted breasts, red-cheeked and wide-eyed. An enticing picture altogether.
He came farther into the room, and she had no choice but to back up. An invasion of her privacy. He did it deliberately, even as he wondered what in the world it was that made him want to test her, push her, see how far he could go before she broke.
“This is pleasant,” he said, pleasantly, glancing around. It wasn’t the austere nun’s cell it had been a few weeks ago. She’d put jars of flowers in the window and on her small night table; a few actual possessions could be seen here and there. She had a yellow flannel nightgown, folded neatly at the foot of her bed. He thought of picking it up, shaking it out, bringing it to his nose to discover what it smelled like. He resisted the impulse, but imagining her reaction made him smile.
Something on the wall over her bed caught his eye. Pictures of some sort. He walked over to investigate, intensely aware of her standing, rigid with suppressed indignation, in the doorway behind him. There were two pictures tacked to the wall with pins, both on low-grade paper, neatly cut, as if from a magazine. One was a pen-and-ink drawing of a small, ivy-covered house, much idealized; the other was a sentimental portrait of two children, one an infant in a carriage, the other older, wearing a woman’s enormous bonnet and pushing the carriage, pretending to be the mama. Sebastian stared at them in growing discomfort, realizing what they were: Mrs. Wade’s attempt to decorate her little room, embellish it, give it some human warmth with the only things she had at hand—cheap representations of other people’s happiness.
He backed away, embarrassed, but before he could turn, his attention was caught by another picture on her bedside table. This one was a framed photograph. He sensed more than heard her soft, indrawn breath when he reached out and picked it up. It was a family portrait, and at first he thought it was another of her impersonal consolations. Then the face of the girl in the picture came into focus, and he realized it was she. Rachel.
She had heavy, black-silk hair, an oval face, a straight, willowy girl-figure, strongly provocative. Her light eyes stared straight into the camera, poised, winsomely confident, maybe secretly amused. T
he child and the self-possessed woman met and mingled in the startling image. She was a good, dutiful daughter, everything in the portrait proclaimed, a joy to her middle-class parents, the father stern-looking, the mother vapid but pretty. She was turned slightly toward her tall, handsome brother, and her smile was soft and unbearably sweet.
“What was your maiden name?” he asked, not looking up from the photograph. A moment passed. He lifted his head. She was staring at him, and in her face he saw everything that was in the portrait except hope. But that was everything.
“Crenshaw.” Her intonation gave the two syllables a quiet, devastating bitterness.
“You were . . . lovely.”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand and looked away, but not before he saw the sad mask of her face begin to crack, the crystal-colored eyes almost caressing in their melancholy. He put the picture down and crossed the small room to her in three strides.
She pressed her back against the door, thinking he was leaving, making room for him so their bodies wouldn’t touch. When he stopped before her, she stiffened, realizing the truth. Her instantaneous understanding of what was going to happen helped him get over a bizarre urge to embrace her and hold her close, give her comfort. Comforting Mrs. Wade didn’t figure in his plans.
Touching her did. He imagined caressing her breasts, holding them through her dress right now, with no preliminaries. Would she jerk away in fright? No. Oh, no, she would close her eyes and bear it, let him handle her as intimately as he liked, a martyr to the inevitable. There might be nothing he could do to her that she wouldn’t bear. The thought excited him. Depressed him.
He lifted his hand to run his fingers along the line of her jaw. Fine white skin, virginal skin, smooth as warm glass. What had Wade done to her? The question was starting to obsess him. Wade the sodomite, Wade the flagellant. He pressed lightly against her opposite cheek, making her turn her head and look at him. Her eyes were downcast, and martyrdom had never been one of his aphrodisiacs. Leaning in, he ran his tongue along the prickly line of her lashes. She had stopped breathing. She waited for him to do the next thing, take the next conscienceless liberty with her body. Very well, he would. He gently inserted the tip of his middle finger between her lips. Her mouth moistened it, and he wet her lips with his finger, smoothing it back and forth, going back inside for more wetness when her lips went dry. He thought she might be trembling, and brought his other hand to the back of her neck to see. Yes. Soft, subtle quivers coursing through her, like a light breeze rustling the leaves of a small, slight tree. Her neck was so thin, so fragile. Had he ever had a woman more vulnerable than this one? His head was swimming.
He put his hands flat on her chest, feeling her heart thud, thud, as she drew a choking breath. She was going to the stake like St. Joan, brave and above it all. He slid one hand to her face, spreading her lips to the sides a little with his thumb and forefinger, parting them. She made a soft sound, helpless. He put his open mouth on hers, breathing on her, and tasted inside her lips with his tongue, circling them slowly.
Heat jerked through him, rough and willful, out of control. He stopped tonguing her, stood perfectly still, his mouth on hers but not moving.
Seconds passed. Control returned, but he was wary. A lesson had been learned. The seducer could be seduced.
Ruthless now, he used his teeth, biting her full lower lip until she whimpered, then soothed her with his slow, hot tongue. A taste of salt startled him. Blood? Impossible. He pulled back, and saw the long, lone tearstain on her pink cheek.
A good way to end this, tears, because he hadn’t intended it to go this far. Not yet. And if they stood in this doorway much longer, the next step would be quite, quite inevitable. But what he wanted wasn’t a fast, hot fuck in the housekeeper’s narrow bed. What he wanted . . . he had no words for it yet. Possession. Appropriation. Whatever it was, it called for more finesse than this backstairs grope. He might not deserve more—although he didn’t believe that—but she did. Rachel Crenshaw did.
He leaned in toward her and caressed her lips with his, just a soft, farewell brush. Her breath rippling over his skin excited him, invited him to linger, but he didn’t. He could always master himself when he chose to, and he chose to now. But what was she thinking? Had he moved her at all? No way to tell; she kept her eyes down, and the pitiful little tear could mean anything.
“Have dinner with me tonight, Mrs. Wade. Since we’ve missed our morning meeting.” Not quite a command, but by no means a question. He stepped away so that they weren’t touching, so she could entertain the illusion, if she wished, that she had a choice. “Six o’clock, you recall. I’ll expect you, shall I?”
He was a patient man; he could wait forever. It seemed that long before she realized there really was no choice. “Yes, my lord.” she answered, in a voice that started out steady and ended in a harsh whisper.
He couldn’t ask for more. Not yet. He made her a slight bow and left her alone.
VI
“PUTAIN! IMBECILES PARTOUT!” Monsieur Judelet smacked a wooden spoon against the side of a bowl of rennet with such force, the handle split and the spoon end went flying across the kitchen.
Rachel flinched, but held her ground. “I have said I will order the anchovies,” she enunciated in her careful schoolgirl French. “They will arrive in time for you to make the fricassee of partridges, monsieur. Do not worry.”
That didn’t begin to appease him. “Espece de vache,” he snarled, brandishing a fork. “Idiot—get out!” Those were his three best English words; he spoke them so often, they came out virtually accent-free.
“Remettez-vous,” Rachel dared to say—Calm yourself—but she didn’t turn her back on him as she sidled out of the room. So far Monsieur Judelet had thrown everything except knives at anyone who came into his kitchen with bad news—that they were out of anchovies, for example, or Lord D’Aubrey had barely touched his woodcock in caper sauce—but there was a first time for everything. Out in the hall, she could still hear him shouting, words she was thankful she couldn’t understand. “Temperamental” was too mild a term to describe the hotheaded chef, but his rages never truly upset her. He was evenhandedly vile to everyone, and he was the only member of the household staff who seemed completely indifferent to her personal situation, if he even knew what it was.
“Mrs. Wade?” She turned to see Tess coming toward her along the corridor from the servants’ staircase. “Mrs. Wade, can you come an’ look at the curtains in the yellow sitting room? Susan were beatin’ ’em wi’ a broom to get the dust out, like you said? An’ all at onct they ripped something tumble an’ come down on top of ’er ’ead. She were quite a object,” she added, grinning at the memory. “Now we don’t know what’s best t’ do, hang ’em up again or throw ’em away. So can you come an’ have a look?”
The housemaids were cleaning and airing all the drawing rooms, one each day when everything went well. Next week they would start on the second floor, where, besides a cavernous picture gallery, there were eleven bedrooms and an uncounted number of dressing, sitting, and powder rooms. It was a task Rachel had set for them herself, on her own initiative, after the most perfunctory consultation with his lordship. The fact that she gave instructions to the servants and they actually carried them out still seemed like a miracle to her, akin to parting the Red Sea or walking on water. She could scarcely believe she still had her job at all, much less that she was performing it fairly well. Any day, any minute, everything could blow up; one egregious blunder would be all it would take. So she moved slowly, worried about everything, and kept out of sight as much as possible. She reminded herself of some slow, plodding animal, a night creature turned out of its lair, blinking in the scary daylight, hoping no one would notice it and bash its brains in with a shovel.
What a violent metaphor, she thought, following Tess upstairs. It would have disturbed her, except she was grateful for the fact that her mind was thinking in analogies at all. It hadn’t in prison. Nothing wa
s like anything there: everything was precisely, horribly, exactly what it was. Comparisons to anything better would have been pointless, to anything worse, impossible.
The yellow drawing room owed its name to the dingy, brocaded wallpaper, even though it had faded to a depressing shade of beige years ago. Before today, its best feature had been the blue velvet curtains covering the wide, west-facing windows. Rachel found Susan on her knees beside the fallen fabric, contemplating it with a jaundiced eye.
“They come down right in my hand, Mrs. Wade,” she complained, blowing a damp lock of orange hair out of her eyes. “I promise you it weren’t my fault.”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t.” She sank down beside Susan and ran her fingers over the stiff material, desiccated from age and dust, crumbling almost at a touch.
“What ought we to do, ma’am? The view’s tumble without ’em, ain’t it?”
It was. The bare window looked naked, and the unattractive vista was of the half-dead back of a boxwood hedge in need of trimming.
On the other side of the room, Violet Cocker squatted on the marble hearth, polishing a brass firescreen. She laid her blackened cloth aside and turned her full, malicious attention on Rachel. In a boldly taunting voice, she echoed, “Yes, ma’am, what ought we t’ do?” Her spiteful eyes gleamed with anticipation; she was looking forward to witnessing the new housekeeper wrestle with this ridiculous dilemma, which to anyone else would be no dilemma at all. From the beginning, Violet had understood with devilish accuracy what Rachel’s biggest fear was, the source of her deepest anxiety: making decisions.
“Should we throw ’em out, ma’am, or try to fix ’em back the way they was?’ Susan asked innocently. “Dora’s the handiest wi’ a needle, but I’m thinking they’re past that. Making new ones ’ud cost a fortune, I expect,” she continued when Rachel didn’t answer. “But the lookout through the window’s that ugly, seems like it ought to get covered up some way. Don’t it, ma’am?”
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