by Lisa Cach
“I came through my dressing room. What is all this?” He looked curiously at the array on the table, then met her eyes.
She stared dumbly back at him, like a child caught in a forbidden act. “Huh?” she said.
“What are you up to in here? Are you making something?”
“It’s . . . uh . . . not finished yet.”
“Oh?” He arched one eyebrow, and waited for more. He felt something hit his foot and looked down. Something white and wet was draped across his shoe. The dog panted up at him. He lifted his foot and shook the limp piece of matter onto the floor.
“Good God, what is that?”
“Errr . . .”
He nudged it with his toe, and it made little squishy sounds. Tatiana cocked her head to one side, watching.
“Elle?”
“I believe it’s a sheep’s intestine.”
He stopped squishing the thing and looked at her. “Sheep intestine? What on earth are you doing with sheep intestine? You’re not trying to make sausages up here, are you?”
“I don’t know how to make sausages.”
Tatiana picked up the rejected gut and carried it over to the hearth, where she lay down near the soggy pile of cooked innards. She held the end between her paws and began chewing it, pulling and shredding like a child with taffy.
“Then what is it for?”
Elle looked at him for a long moment before speaking. “I was trying to devise an effective means of birth control. The gut was going to be for you to wear, so I wouldn’t get pregnant.”
He looked over at the hearth, where Tatiana was happily devouring the erstwhile condoms, and winced. “I hope you failed?”
“No, actually I think I’ve found a semiacceptable solution. It involves a sponge cut into the correct size and the addition of freshly squeezed lemon juice—”
“Elle,” he cut her off. “Do you think we could talk about this?” He took her by the elbow and steered her into her bedroom before she could answer, shoving her down into the chair before the fire. He remained standing, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. Could she not go half a day without a ludicrous new scheme?
“First off, where did you get such ideas? How do you even know anything about condoms?”
“You know that word?”
“Where did you learn about them?”
“What are they made of?”
“Elle, please answer me. Where did you learn about these things?”
“It wasn’t from a man, if that’s what you’re worried about. Women have been known to discuss these things amongst themselves, you know.”
“Am I to believe it was your sister or your mother, and not the man who took your virginity?”
“Do you use condoms? Do you have some? Can I see them?”
“Elle!” He felt his cheeks heating. By god, she had managed to embarrass him. “Stop trying to change the topic. This is most irregular, and it is quite inappropriate for you to be asking such questions.”
“On the contrary, it seems entirely appropriate.”
“And it is even less appropriate that you should have been attempting to devise such an item from foodstuffs in your dressing room.” He paused a moment, then realization hit him, along with a wave of hot anger. “And why the hell would you want to keep my child from growing in your womb?”
He loomed over her, fists on hips, infuriated by the implications of what she had been doing. “You claim to know nothing about being a countess, but the one task as my wife that requires no wit to accomplish, you set your wits to defeating. I have not asked much of you, Elle. Is it such a burden that I ask you to let nature take its course in this one instance? Is it too selfish of me to ask that you fulfill your basic function as a mother?”
“Enough!” She bolted out of her chair to glare up at him. “It is not my duty to bear children! I will have children only if and when I desire them!”
“Is that the way the merchant class thinks, then? Is that what your mother taught you? Well, things are different here, Countess. You will bear an heir, several if you are healthy enough to do so, and you will bear them as quickly as I can place them in your belly.”
“I am not one of your sheep, Henry. I can’t be bred year after year.”
“You can be and will.”
“It’s inhuman. It’s barbaric. I refuse to be reduced to a breeding machine. I am worth more than the number of offspring I produce.”
“You make motherhood sound like prostitution.”
“No, I don’t make it sound like that. You do, when you make it clear that the price I must pay for my place in this household is the sacrifice of my body to your purposes.”
“What sacrifice? I am speaking of motherhood.”
“Henry, in case it has escaped your notice, bearing a child is neither as easy nor as much fun as creating one. It’s dangerous, and painful, and there are risks involved.”
“You are a strong, healthy young woman . . .”
“Henry, my grandmother died giving birth. My aunt died of toxemia during pregnancy. My mother died of complications after a miscarriage when I was twelve years old.” Tears were in her eyes, and her voice rose an octave as she continued. “They were strong, healthy young women, too. Do you think I want to risk that? Do you think it’s worth it to me, to risk my life getting pregnant to please a man I hardly know, just because he thinks it’s my duty?”
“But your mother is alive . . .”
“Mrs. Moore is not my mother!”
“She is your stepmother? I did not know.”
“She’s nothing to me! This isn’t about her; it’s about me. Have I gotten through to you? I do not want to get pregnant, and I will do whatever I can to prevent it from happening. Maybe someday I’ll be willing to try, but not now. Not today and not tomorrow. I just can’t.”
He stared at her red-eyed, furious face, tears streaking down her cheeks. He saw terror there, under the furor. He had never understood a person as little as he did her at that moment.
“Do you still think it was worth it?” she asked more softly. “Marrying me? Was the money worth a wife who may be unwilling to give you children, or who will most likely die in the process?”
She looked into his eyes, searching them for a response he was unable yet to give. She turned away and went to the bed, her back to him, leaning against a post, her arms folded around her as if she could protect herself from her own fears.
The floorboards creaked under his weight as he approached her, and he saw her duck her head lower, tensing. He paused behind her, raising his hand to touch her, then he let it drop again and walked past her to the dressing room.
He stopped in the doorway and spoke quietly. “I will leave you alone. We will discuss this later.” He did not know what else to say, did not know what he felt, and so he turned again and left her, the image of her huddling alone beside her bed tearing at his heart.
Chapter Seventeen
Elle took dinner in her own room, picking at the greasy meat dishes with less than her usual tolerance for such fare. She was now intimately acquainted with English puddings, which she used to assume were just like the chocolate and butterscotch Jell-O varieties at home. English puddings, however, were more like cooked pancake batter, served with meat and gravy, and she was heartily sick of the things.
What she wouldn’t give for a pizza or fajitas, or even for some vegetables that had not been boiled to oblivion and drowned in a pool of melted butter. Steamed broccoli danced through her mind, taking on alluring qualities it had never before held. A bowl of tomato soup appeared in her imagination and a small stack of cheese sandwiches. Rice Krispie treats. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It had been years since she’d had one, but they suddenly sounded irresistable.
Her room was dark, even with several candles burning and the fire in the grate. The windows cast back flickers of light from their uneven surfaces, but beyond them all was darkness. The only sounds were the clink of her fork and knife on the plate, and
the crackle of the fire. The quiet rang in her ears, hummed in her blood.
She gave up on the dinner and pushed back from the small table. The food was sitting heavily in her stomach, her tension doing nothing to help her digestion. She did not know what Henry’s eventual response would be to her determination to avoid conception, and the longer she kept herself alone, in voluntary seclusion, the more her imagination produced unhappy scenarios.
After she had calmed down yesterday, her practical side had once again asserted itself, prodding her with uncomfortable truths. As her husband, Henry could probably do whatever he wished to her, short of killing her. She couldn’t imagine him becoming violent with her, and for the most part he had been astonishingly patient with her oddities, but everyone had their breaking point—and like he’d said, this was the one duty a countess was absolutely required to perform.
The wish she made on the coupon came back to taunt her. She had her civil husband who did not expect love, and she had her big house. Her wish had come true, and here she was, alone in a poorly lit room, worried sick. The ring on her finger looked more like a golden shackle than a comforting pledge of protection and security.
A brief knock came on her door.
She looked up, half dreading, half hoping. “Come in.”
The door opened and Marianne came in, followed by two maids, who set about clearing the table. Elle went and stood by the fire, waiting for her heart to slow again.
She heard the click of the latch, and turned to see that the maids had left. Marianne was humming happily under her breath, moving about in the nightly routine that already felt familiar to Elle, turning down the bedcovers and tidying the room. When a knock came again, Marianne went to let in the maids who appeared in the shadowed doorway, buckets of heated water in their hands.
Several minutes later, Elle was standing in her dressing room, letting Marianne tug loose the ties of her gown and corset.
“Did Henry ask after me?” she finally asked.
“Yes, milady, when you didn’t appear for dinner. I told him you had a headache and would not be down.”
Elle didn’t reply. What had she expected, that he would come and check on her? He had probably rightly assumed that she was hiding from him, as she had been for more than a day now.
She stepped into the tub and sank down into the warm, scented water. The warmth of the fire heated only one side of her, turning her pink, while the other side felt the chill of air on damp skin.
The fire crackled, glowing orange in the dim room, its flames sending shadows dancing on the ceiling. The water splashed with the movements of her arms, as she lifted the sponge and soap and reached for knees and feet. Marianne’s heeled shoes made erratic beats on the floor. She was beginning to feel that she had lived this way all her life. The antiseptic whiteness of her apartment bathroom seemed a million miles away.
Marianne poured the last rinse of water over Elle’s hair, and Elle rose, accepting the sheet of toweling from the maid without embarrassment over her own nakedness. She had already grown accustomed to Marianne’s presence during such times.
The warm bath had relaxed her. She slipped on the clean shift Marianne held out for her, then sat by the fire untangling her hair as the maids returned and drained the tub through the spigot at the base.
“Thank you. That’ll be all, Marianne. Go on to bed.”
“Is your headache any better, milady?”
“Yes, much. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
She pulled her chair a little closer to the fire, propping her bare feet up on a footstool and feeling the delicious pain of the intense heat on her soles. She stared into the flames, absently combing through the last of the tangles in the heavy wet hair that lay across her breast.
A floorboard creaked loudly from behind the door to Henry’s dressing room. Her eyes flicked to the doorknob, watching its levered handle to see if it would move. She sat up straight and put her feet on the floor. Her fingers rested motionless in her hair.
The floor creaked again, more softly, and she discerned muffled footsteps. She waited. More time, more faint noises. Her ears strained, waiting to hear him come to her door, and then, almost inaudibly, she heard the click of a door latch and then silence. He had left the room. She felt a crushing disappointment.
She stood up, staring at the closed door. She stepped over to it and put her hand lightly on the latch, and then her hand as if of its own volition opened the door.
The room was black but for the coals of the fire, burning too low to cast light upon the room. A faint line of light seeped from under the door across the room. It was cooler in here, and smelled faintly of the soap and cologne she associated with his skin.
She crossed the room to his bedroom door, where she stopped, listening. She could hear no one moving within. She didn’t examine why she was doing this and didn’t even try to stop herself. Quietly and carefully she turned the latch, waited, then eased the door open a crack.
His room was even more bare than her own. There was a chair by the fire that looked like an all-wood version of a wing-back chair, devoid of cushions; there was the bed, immense and shadowed by dark hangings; and there was a small table beside the bed, where a candle burned. The walls were of dark panelling, soaking up what little light there was, and the deep windows were hung with open curtains that looked black in the dim light.
She stepped inside, looking curiously at his meager furnishings. She had not been in his room before and was a little surprised that he paid so little heed to his own comfort. She looked at the bed hangings, touching them with her fingertips. They were heavily embroidered with animals and vegetation, but there were jagged rips in them, where the threads had given way. In the full light of day they were probably a sorry sight.
“They were made for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Brookhaven, two hundred years ago.”
Elle caught her breath and turned to the sound of Henry’s voice. She could make out only shadows by the windows, until one of those shadows moved and came towards her in the shape of a man.
“ ’Tis nigh a miracle they have survived as long as they have,” he continued, stopping a couple feet from her and touching the draperies. “Half of the house that was here then was destroyed in a fire: These hangings were amongst the few things saved.” The fire sent flickers of orange reflecting in his dark eyes, as his finger traced the outline of an embroidered stag. Elle stood motionless, as if she were a deer transfixed by that light.
“Brookhaven has been the seat of the earls of Allsbrook for over three hundred years. The Trevelyan family can trace its roots back until at least the twelfth century. The line of descent is unbroken, and the estate has never left our hands. Do you realize how remarkable that is?” He turned his fire-glazed eyes to her.
“I can barely trace my family three generations, and our name was made up by my grandparents. They thought their real name was too difficult to pronounce in English.”
“Then perhaps it is foolish of me to hope that you can understand.” He stared into the dark for a moment. “It is as if I, and the efforts I make to preserve my home and continue the line, are but a page in a book. No more important than what has come before, but still necessary for the continuation of the story. I have lived my life knowing that there would be pages after my own: many pages. It has been my comfort and a source of strength.”
“Then I envy you that. My page has been torn free and is blown by the wind. Not that it was much of a book to begin with.”
He turned to her, meeting her eyes with his own, which were dark and compelling. “Elle, when we married you became a part of that book that is my heritage. Our children—and our children’s children—will continue on long after we are gone. A hundred years from now, a young boy will walk the gallery of portraits of his ancestors, searching out his face in those that came before. He may have eyes the color of the forest, and he will pause before your portrait, seeing that you are the source of those eyes. His father w
ill tell him who you were and tell stories about you that have become a part of the family history.”
An unbidden image came to her, of the line of Henry’s ancestors stretching behind the two of them, and another line, equally long, of descendents stretching before them, the two lines meeting at she and Henry, as if they were trapped between two mirrors, reflecting each other into eternity.
“Where I come from,” she said, “the future is one of uncertainty. I may know what today looks like, but tomorrow will be different. What was here will be gone, something new replacing it. No one lives in the same place for more than a few years, and families are scattered. Permanence exists only in fantasy. Where I come from, we are all loose sheets of paper, tossed and blown. There is no immortality through family for us.”
He touched her cheek. “It sounds frightening.”
“And your world sounds confining.”
He sighed and dropped his hand, then moved to the wooden chair and sat, slouching down slightly, his legs stretched in front of him. He was wearing the robe he had worn on their wedding night, and it parted to reveal one knee and part of his thigh, lightly shadowed with black hair.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, and there was neither impatience nor exasperation in his voice.
She sank to the floor between the fire and his legs, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Be patient, get to know me, let me do as I wish.”
He laughed without humor. “And what do I get in return?”
“I’ll be patient, get to know you, and let you do as you wish.”
“That is not exactly what I had in mind. Unless, of course, doing as I wish includes this,” he said, and leant forward, his fingers sliding into her damp hair, cupping the back of her head and bringing her towards him. The kiss was slow and gentle, his lips languorous on her own. Her eyes closed and random, colored images played across her vision. She was lost in the sensation of his mouth on her own, the warmth and strength of his hand, the press of his leg against her arm, and the feel of his own silky hair when she reached up and touched it.
