by L. K. Rigel
“I’m famished,” he said, thick with innuendo, and followed her.
She opened the cloth that covered the scones and broke off a part of one. Trembling, she pushed it into his mouth.
He smiled for her like for no one else. He smiled for her like a devil, like a demon lover who knew her every dark secret, loved her just as she was, asked for no more than she could give, and would never let her go.
“As St. Augustine once said,” he slipped his arms around her waist and pressed her to his chest. “Lord grant me continence.” He kissed her and pushed his tongue into her mouth greedily. “But not yet.”
Songs of Experience
1819, Carleson Peak
Geordie Carleson was as good as his brother, William Asher, was beautiful. Where Wills was light and ephemeral, Geordie was dark and solid. His brown hair accentuated his gentle eyes. He spoke rarely, but when he did he was pleasant to hear. He developed his broad muscularity working with Laurelwood’s men from the time he could carry a basket. Now sixteen, he held his own in the estate’s management. The tenants had begun to call him young squire. He had all the desired attributes: the old family name, a substantial property, a manly sense of service to his land and his people.
Just as his mother felt no need to avoid man’s work, neither did Geordie shy away from woman’s province. He visited the sick and needy, bringing along a chicken or a pudding made by Cook. He was no master of poetry or art, but his goodness and his estate recommended him. More than one county mother remarked to her husband that Geordie Carleson would make a fine husband for their daughter.
But the woman in Geordie’s life was still his mother. He gladly played second officer to her in preparing for his brother’s birthday celebration. Today he was particularly determined to make himself useful. He had to show why he must not be sent away. Last night he’d overheard Lady Asher and Sir Carey talking about Wills’ birthday. It was rare enough to hear them speak more than two words to each other, but this had been a bona fide conversation. Of course, he’d listened. One thing led to another until they came to the subject of the boys’ education and the alarming news that he was to attend Cambridge.
“The tables are put out, Mama.”
“You’re a great help, dear,” Elizabeth said on her way to the carriage house.
“Yes. I am.” He followed her through the kitchen, snatching up a biscuit. “Too useful to be sent to school, don’t you think?”
“Sir Carey wishes it.” Elizabeth stopped at the door. “And he is right.”
“I can’t bear to think of being away from Laurelwood.”
“I know.” She brushed away biscuit crumbs from the corner of her son’s mouth. “But you will bear it, dear.” She couldn’t believe she had a sixteen-year-old child. “Console yourself. It will be a while yet. Now will you collect vases for the tables? I am going to fly over to The Branch to bring back the baroness and as many of her roses as she’ll spare.”
“Good luck.” Geordie watched his mother ride away then went in search of Mrs. Johns. “Abishag.” He found the housekeeper’s granddaughter instead. “Collect what vases you can find. Lady Asher will be setting out flowers.”
“Yes, Master Geordie.” Abby curtsied and showed him the bowl and towel she carried. “Sir Carey has called for a shave. Shall I get the vases when I’ve finished?”
“Very good.” Geordie felt much better. He was safe from Cambridge for now, and Sir Carey might change his mind. He went to see if Cook had what she needed for the punch—knowing she did, and wanting a taste.
-oOo-
Sir Carey watched the girl prepare for his shave and felt how long it had been since he’d shared his wife’s bed. He found comfort with women in London. There were always women in London. There was always Lady Whitley. They satisfied him in the way he had been satisfied before his marriage.
But he missed Elizabeth and the easy rush of warm love he felt watching her sleep. He missed the sudden friendliness of her hand on his at the breakfast table or surprise of a quick kiss in the garden. He often watched her with the boys and longed to join their conversation.
Abby had been coming to him for half a year. He reached for her, and she moved his hands to the arms of the chair and opened the front of his robe. She kissed his birthmark and climbed onto his lap, making no sound. He soon felt he would burst inside her. She made a quiet, animal-like growl and he felt her spasms. He strained to thrust everything into her. He felt wretched, even as he found release.
This woman-child had seduced him, though none would believe it. He wasn’t her master. She owned him though he paid her ten pounds a year plus the odd gift of a cap or ribbon. She sat still now, on his spent lap, her breasts free. She smiled like the victor, scraping his whiskers away as he absently caressed her. Abby would never be called beautiful, but she was a pretty girl. Her skin was tight and her ample bosom needed no support. The natural perfume of her youthful skin was intoxicating.
“You are quite handsome today.” She finished and kissed him on the cheek fondly when he gave her a coin. “Everyone is going in to The Peak after the party, but I’ll stay behind.”
“Is that so?” It was the custom at Laurelwood to give the household servants a half-day off on the boys’ birthdays.
“In my room.”
He swore he wouldn’t go to her later, just as he’d sworn he wouldn’t do what he had just done.
-oOo-
“Fourteen years ago, when I christened William Philo George Asher,” Dr. Devilliers addressed the gathering, “I thought who is this marvelous child? The babe fairly glowed with a kind of magnetism ...”
Devilliers’ voice trailed away, as did his listeners’ thoughts. Each remembered seeing Wills for the first time: the sharp intake of breath, a sense of something uncanny, the absolute beauty in his face and figure. His hair was golden like straw—or a halo. His eyes were blue like cornflowers, yet they glittered like sunlight on the sea. His skin was pale and perfect, never a blotch or blemish, and the hint of rose blush on his cheeks.
When Wills looked at you, you felt as if your soul had come home. He delighted in everything that made you happy. In a world where children were neatly stored away with a governess or at school, Wills was included in every invitation.
“I shouldn’t be surprised to be told in a few years,” Devilliers’s voice was vulgar compared to his audience’s daydreams, “that our Wills has accomplished the noblest of deeds and captured the heart and hand of a princess. To Wills.” He raised his glass. “Your health and happiness.”
“Health and happiness,” the gathered friends repeated, along with cries of “Speech!”
Wills addressed his admirers like the shining prince that he was. “I am very glad you have all come to help me celebrate my birthday. I especially like the prediction about capturing the heart of a princess.” He searched for his friend beyond the table and gave her a special smile, then turned to Lady Asher. “But I promise you, Mama, it will not be for a few years yet.”
Abby was refilling the glass of a friend of his father, some MP. He pulled Abby close, but she escaped his grasp without spilling a drop. Wills fixed on the old man and held him in a blank stare. The man reddened, flustered, disfavored without knowing why. Wills dropped his gaze.
Hours later when the guests had left and the servants were gone for their evening off, Wills went to see if Abby had stayed behind. At her door, he heard laughter. Good. They could go for a walk or play with the new puppies. He heard a strange grunting sound as he opened the door. Abby was nude on her stomach, draped over the end of her bed, her face turned away from him to the wall.
Sir Carey stood behind her, rutting. Wills lived in the country. It wasn’t the sex that repulsed him. It was the picture of his old father ramming into the tender flesh of his young friend. It was the destruction in a moment of a lifetime’s camaraderie. It was that Abby had kissed him first, years ago.
Sir Carey’s heart-shaped birthmark seemed to swell and deepen in c
olor until the old man’s shudder broke the spell and Wills fled.
Wills had been like a minor god, above mere mortals, perfect and golden. It wasn’t that he’d ignored the baser things but that he hadn’t seen them. Believing the world beautiful and good, he was all the more destroyed by the discovery that it was not. He became a perverted version of his former self. A cruel streak formed. He ignored Abby and took pleasure in the discomfort of others. He enjoyed no one’s company but his brother’s.
Escape!
1825, Boston
During the day, The Black Swan catered to ladies. Igraine and April met there on Tuesday afternoons to drink coffee, gossip, discuss the rift between Trinitarians and Unitarians. For a few hours once a week, they escaped the unending demands of employers and other people’s children.
A pile of newspapers and magazines lay on the table. “What an indulgence.” April picked up the one on top.
“Research,” Igraine said. “The girls are starting a school paper.”
“I haven’t seen this. Boston Monthly Magazine.”
“It’s the first issue.”
“Listen to this.” April read the mission statement:
Among the fair we expect readers and hope for patrons, for we have at all times advocated their claims to an equal share with men, in the advancement of knowledge and happiness in society, and shall still continue to support the same doctrine. The time has gone when females were pleased with driveling flattery, and smiled in approbation at mawkish sonnets to their beauty and charms.
“That’s funny?” Igraine said.
“They always start out that way,” April said, “all idealism and conviction.”
A beam of sunlight splashed through the window and illuminated April’s green eyes. Her hair shone like a red-gold halo. Igraine was used to April’s loveliness, but every so often something surprisingly accentuated it.
Igraine asked her friend, “Why have you never married?”
April wasn’t at all bothered by the question. “Do you remember George Mark? Of course you do. Mr. Mark’s nephew.”
“Yes. I remember.”
“I once fancied he was in love with me. But I was wrong.”
Igraine felt her cheeks grow warm, remembering her own short-lived romantic notions about George Mark. “Poor Charity.”
April spurted tea over her scone. “Poor Charity, indeed. Seven children in ten years.”
“I have the two older girls at the school,” Igraine said. “They’re horrible. Undisciplined little monsters.”
“He drinks.” April’s eyes twinkled. “No sour grapes on my part.”
Igraine said, “But do you regret having no family?”
“Sometimes. I won’t dissemble. Who knows? Life isn’t finished with me. Perhaps some handsome sea captain will roll in off the ocean ready to retire and take me to his mansion.”
“Here’s to the captain and his mansion.” Igraine lifted her cup in salute.
“The captain and his mansion.”
Mrs. Johnson’s offers had long stopped, but sometimes Igraine wondered if she’d made a mistake in staying where she was. “Why don’t you come over to Mr. Mark? We could accomplish so much together.”
“Good lord.” April shivered. “That man gives me goose-bumps. I’ll never know how you abide him.”
“I hardly notice him anymore.”
“That’s surely a comfort,” April said drily.
“I’d better go,” Igraine said. “Mr. Mark will be out of sorts if I’m gone too long.”
April smiled. “And you hardly notice him anymore.”
Walking back to the school, Igraine felt restless. Each year she had less energy. Each year her pupils were less lively, more detached, stupider, their parents less liberal and more dedicated to material gain. How had such a people summoned the imagination to break free of tyranny and create an entirely new kind of civilization?
She wasn’t past the threshold before a gaggle of eager students descended, relieved to see her. “Hello girls.” She dispersed hugs and pats on heads. “Margaret.”
“Miss Fiddyment, did you bring them?” said Margaret Lawrence, an enterprising student with one or two ideas in her brain.
“Yes, yes. Here they are.” Igraine passed out the newspapers and magazines. “Have you assembled your staff, Margaret?”
“Yes, Miss Fiddyment. I hope I’m influenced by my grandfather’s memory,” Margaret never missed an opportunity to mention her ancestor, who had been a pamphleteer during the War for Independence. “As managing editor of The Boston Re-Mark, I’ve listed assignments for everyone.”
“Very good. Girls, spread these editions out so you can study their styles.”
The girls made a cheerful to-do of spreading sheets on the floor. They crawled about to search for stories of scandal and mayhem and squealed with mock horror when they found them. Igraine looked over Margaret’s shoulder at The Boston Gazette and an advertisement caught her attention:
Wanted: Educated lady to read to infirm older gentlelady. Room, board, wages. Inquire Grasmere House, Shermer Landing, Massachusetts.
Igraine couldn’t tear herself away from the words. She was suddenly weary. Fifteen years of service were repayment enough. Weren’t indentured servants held for only seven? Even Jacob endured fourteen years, and that was for love. She posted an inquiry that afternoon. Within ten days, Grasmere House responded.
Mr. Mark was not happy.
“Are you a fool?” He spilled his ink as he rose from his desk. “You’d leave your secure position for a mere chimera? You actually believe some unknown lady will pay you to read to her?”
“I’m going, Mr. Mark. I’ve accepted the position.”
“More likely this is a trap to lure an unsuspecting young lady into—I dare not say what!”
He was right. Her place at the school was a known quantity, and this was entirely uncertain. She nearly wavered, but he said, “How can you walk away so easily after everything I have done for you?”
“With my own two legs.” She didn’t expect he’d enjoy her humor. The known quantity of Mr. Mark had fed her and housed her and kept her from the world and suffocated her. “I should have left years ago, if only I’d had the imagination.”
“Imagination won’t feed you when reason brings you to your senses.”
She laughed at the oxymoron, which only enraged him.
“I certainly hope you don’t imagine some prince will rescue you from the world with an offer of marriage. That face isn’t capable of launching one ship, let alone a thousand.”
“Mr. Mark, your insults strike so often that the words no longer enter my brain. Let me pass.” He grasped her hands in his, and she felt a creepy diminishment in her being.
“Very well, then,” he said. “I will marry you, Miss Fiddyment.”
“Oh, lord.” She wanted to scream, and she wanted to laugh. She left Mr. Mark to wonder at her folly.
When Igraine came down to the front door she carried an ugly box, its lid held on tied by string tied. Margaret stood at the front door with a pleading look on her face. Years ago, Igraine had stayed for the girls’ sake then watched so many leave and never even write to her. It was surprisingly easy to say, “Goodbye, Miss Lawrence.”
A summer rain drenched her as she walked away from fifteen years at Mr. Mark’s Girls’ School. The one box held every material thing she owned. April came to say goodbye, the rain disguising her tears. In a stage-coach more wagon than carriage, Igraine crawled over benches to the back. “What will I do without you?” April called from the street.
“Get married,” Igraine said.
“My heart is breaking. Write to me.”
“We will always be friends, dear April.”
The driver climbed onto the front bench and spat affectionately at the lead horse, “Git up, there Joe, or I’ll swap ye fer a mule.”
Cinderella in Two Bad Shoes
Built by the original publisher of The Shermer Post, Grasmere Hous
e stood three-stories tall in the heart of Shermer Landing with a thirty-foot setback on Hamilton Street and a circular drive. Behind the mansion, stables and a carriage house occupied two and a half acres with coops and pens, chickens and a few pigs, and a small orchard of apple, walnut, and cherry trees, along with a cherished hazelnut.
When Mr. Grasmere died in the influenza epidemic of 1809, Leopold Singer bought the newspaper from Grasmere’s widow. He offered to buy the house, but Mrs. Grasmere had lost her daughter as well as her husband to the disease. She wouldn’t lose her home too. The Post was another matter as she had no interest in it and her remaining living son had gone to sea.
When Leopold discovered Helene Grasmere’s delight in town gossip, he made it a routine to visit her from time to time with what morsels came to his attention. Tonight he called at Grasmere House with something delicious.
“Good evening, Mrs. Fuller,” he said to the housekeeper. “Is Mrs. Grasmere in? I’ve come with the latest on Martin Grim.”
“She’ll be sorry to have missed you, Mr. Singer, but she’s gone to bed for the night.”
“A visitor is coming.” Old Kate stood behind Mrs. Fuller, not hiding exactly. It wasn’t that Mrs. Fuller was so very large, but that Old Kate was so very tiny.
“Hello there, Old Kate.”
Leopold always favored the grumpy little gnome with his most musical voice, and she always pretended immunity to his charms. They made an incongruous pair: he tall, expansive, and beautiful; she tiny, contracting, brittle and dry. Old Kate always seemed like a kitten who didn’t want to show how much she wanted to be petted.
“Likely even now at the coach station, waiting in the dark,” she said with a bit of resentment, “and it’s going to rain again.”
“Yes, yes, Old Kate,” said Mrs. Fuller. “I was just about to…”
“I have the rig, Mrs. Fuller, on the street ready to go. Let me fetch Mrs. Grasmere’s visitor for you.”
