The Lady's Chocolatier: a Victorian-era romance novella

by Sandra Sookoo

  “Very well.” How did one broach the subject of one’s life after one made a muck of someone else’s?

  “What did you wish to talk about?” Jasper raked his fingers through his hair, returning the tresses to some semblance of order. He adjusted his position on the sofa as if he were entertaining during proper hours instead of the middle of the night when they were both scandalously under-dressed.

  “Me.” How selfish that sounded. “Or rather, what I have filled my time with since we… since you and I…”

  “Since you ran from Hedgebourne Grange without a backward glance?” Wry humor clung to the question.

  It had been a marvelous summer day and the sun was hot. Even now she swore she could feel its heat upon her cheeks. She’d worn an amethyst gown that afternoon in deference to his liking of the color, the flounces and lace on the skirt a particular favorite of hers. As they’d walked through the gardens on the estate, hand in hand, she’d talked of inconsequential things, never knowing of his proposal plans. After the incident, she’d donated the gown to a friend, for she’d been unable to look upon it without foul memories or tears. She narrowed her eyes as doubt and sadness crowded her chest. “Thank you for never failing to remind me of that day.”

  “I cannot help it, for that moment was the redefinition of our relationship. And my life.” When he reached for a box of matches that rested near an oil lamp, she shook her head.

  “Please don’t. At times, delicate conversation such as this is best done in the concealing shadows.” At least then any emotions she might reveal would remain hidden from him. Not for worlds did she wish to appear vulnerable.

  “Very well.” Jasper leaned back against the gray crushed velvet, and she suspected it matched his eyes. “You have my attention.” He arranged the blanket over his lap.

  “For months after I returned to London, I was confounded as to what I should do with my life.” She pleated the voluminous skirt of her nightdress. “I was ashamed of myself for leaving without an explanation.”

  “And so you should have been,” he agreed without giving quarter. “I shouldn’t have been the only one to suffer.”

  “You were not.” Guilt twisted in her belly. Every day for weeks she’d berated herself. “My mother let me wallow for a while, and then one morning, she entered my room and told me I had to move forward with my life. She’d made an appointment with a dressmaker. It was time for me to circulate within the ton and attract a husband.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “My dear parents, having taken notice that their offspring was underfoot and gripped with a blue mood, decided I needed to make connections, and that meant furthering their reach with an advantageous marriage, as is the fate of every woman regardless of what their dreams and aspirations may be.”

  “Were you successful in that much-crowded pool?” His voice was guarded and the fingers of one hand dug into the cushion of the sofa.

  “Let’s say I avidly protested the men my mother was inclined to shove at me.” A brief smile curved her lips. Frustration didn’t adequately express what she put her parents through, but none of the men felt right. None could live up to what Jasper had brought to her days even when he’d been starched and proper. “Eventually, there was a gentleman I became interested in.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “He was not one of the austere, stodgy, traditional-minded men my mother approved of. In fact, none of my family signed off on the match.” Perhaps that what had attracted her to the man in the first place—he wasn’t remotely like the men she’d had paraded before her. “Frances was a merchant who ran a successful shipping outfit. He courted me for six months.”

  “Did you love him?” The words were low and seemed pulled from his throat.

  Silence built between them. The answer would not reflect well on her, but then, nothing in this telling would. “No.” She swallowed hard but held Jasper’s gaze, proud that hers didn’t waver. “I thought I could eventually, so I let him continue to court me. He was a fine enough man, and easy on the eyes. Then he proposed. I thought marriage was what I wanted.”

  “Obviously, you held your stance on that.” Bitterness roiled through his response. “How soon was this after you’d parted with me?”

  “By that time, perhaps a year and a half.”

  “I see.” He flung himself off the sofa, his blanket falling unheeded to the floor. In his stocking feet and pajamas, he paced the short space in front of the furniture. “So then it wasn’t the thought of tying yourself to me that you found objectionable after all. You are merely dead set against matrimony.”

  “I’m not.” How could she explain the convoluted thoughts to him when she didn’t fully understand them herself? “The concept of marriage is a weighty thing. After a man is wed, his life continues on much like it always has. When a woman weds, her whole existence is required to change, and she is more or less expected to be a dutiful wife, mother, housekeeper and flawless host.”

  Jasper scoffed. “This is abhorrent to you?”

  “No. Yes.” She sighed. “I am not sure that is the life I wish for. It is a prison, complete with golden shackles.”

  “Preposterous notion.” He stared at her. “If two people love each other, marriage is the next logical step in a relationship, as is becoming a wife and mother.” His voice lowered. “However, if a woman does not wish to become pregnant, there are ways and devices readily available to prevent such an occurrence, if one only aspires to be a wife.”

  Would he make that sacrifice? “Perhaps, but a man wouldn’t willingly offer that, for isn’t it the duty of a gentleman in society to further his line?”

  Another long swath of silence fell over then. Then he spoke, his voice still low and intense. “The line, in my case, has been furthered by my brother’s children. Also, if a man loved his wife enough, he wouldn’t care what society wanted. He would defer to her wishes, for that is what perfect love does.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Logic has nothing to do with love and neither does perfection.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since the train platform.” When he turned to her, a smile tipped up one corner of his mouth. “You’re correct. Love should never be logical. It should be all-consuming and silly and insane. It should defy common sense and make a person feel as if they could fly…” His voice trailed off as he stared, and then he cleared his throat. “Perhaps love is an overrated affliction, and in saying so, it is rarely perfect.”

  “I agree.”

  “To which part?” He stopped pacing and sank into his original spot.

  “I agree with everything you just said about love. It should be a swift, sure something that two people tumble headlong into, complete with desire and the knowledge that the future will work itself out because of that love.” It was something she and Jasper hadn’t shared and had led to her flight.

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Conversing, talking about one’s fears with one’s partner is key.” His eyes glittered in the dim flash of faraway lightning filtering in through the window at his back. The rain beat against the glass with relentless precision. “You were not in love with me five years ago.” It was a statement, more of a realization than a question.

  “I wouldn’t say it that way.” Now they were in the thick of it. She smoothed a hand over her nightgown and then began pleating it all over again. “I was fond of you, of course.”

  “Fondness doesn’t equate to the sort of love you spoke of.” Resignation filled his tone. His gaze jogged away from hers.

  “No.” Best to tell the truth and be done with it. “Perhaps I loved you too much, and the enormity of all that entailed frightened me.”

  “I would have been by your side, fighting every imagined threat, making certain I was your anchor during the storms.”

  Tears prickled the backs of her eyelids. Such pretty words had the power to pull her back under, lure her into the web of a lifestyle she didn’t want. Time to snip that thread for good. “There was no passio
n, no zest in our connection.” She encouraged the long braid of her hair over one shoulder and finger-combed the end below the ribbon that held it bound. “I… I needed more from you, for I could never commit myself to a dreary, lackluster marriage.”

  “At least now I have a reason.” He rubbed a hand along his jaw and the side of his face. “I was without amorous intent. Regardless of how well we suited in other aspects of our lives, this was, for you, the one sticking point.”

  “I would say instead you were too much a gentleman. Perhaps you were too polite.” Evangeline shook her head but couldn’t dislodge the tight ball of emotion in her throat. When said aloud, it sounded petty, but that wasn’t her point at all. Why shouldn’t a woman wish for passion-filled kisses and thrilling embraces from her suitor? “I didn’t want proper and stodgy, Jasper. I didn’t want another fine, upstanding member of the ton who has had all the excitement and personality bred out of him.”

  “That was made painfully obvious. How silly of me to propose, then. How disappointed you must have been.”

  “Don’t be like that.” Her stomach muscles clenched at his sarcastic display. “It was five years ago. I hardly knew my own mind then let alone the state of my heart.” Not that she definitively knew it now. Could it be that she’d held Jasper up as an ideal, a measuring stick of sorts against every male she’d met after him? Worse, had she subconsciously found them all lacking, despite his absence of passion? Perhaps that had been an error in judgment on her part as well. She stared at him with the dark shadow of stubble clinging to his jaw. That queer little thrill zipped down her spine once more. She had consigned him to the past, hadn’t she?

  “You could have given me the courtesy of being honest. We could have talked.” The annoyance in his voice snapped her back to the conversation. “I could have changed or at the very least given a go to being that man you desire.”

  Oh God. He had been willing to learn, and she hadn’t given him the time. “That’s all we ever did, don’t you see?” She unfolded herself, gaining her feet as restless energy filled her. “There is more to a romance than the art of conversation or how one looks or what one does while in a drawing room.” Why couldn’t he understand? “Answer me this. Did you love me?” Why did she want to know? Their relationship belonged to memories.

  “Of course I did. The battered state of my heart confirmed that I felt something deep for you. It took copious amounts of time to heal.”

  “The same could be said for wounded pride,” she said in a soft voice.

  “Touché.” Jasper stretched an arm along the back of the sofa, looking for all the word like a man who had moved on from his broken engagement. “Our relationship might not have had the heat or bedazzlement of a comet streaking across the sky, but I was willing to wait for that fire to catch once we wed.”

  “And I wanted that fire as insurance. I didn’t want connections or the accolades that would come from a sensible ton marriage. I certainly didn’t want the gilded cage such a union would bring.”

  “Your view on such things is skewed,” he said softly. “It wouldn’t have been that way between us. I am not those men you are so afraid of; I do not live such a life. You are not those women. You couldn’t be prim or proper for all the Crown jewels. Together, we would have forged our own direction, turned society on its ear in our own way.”

  Tingles played at the base of her spine and spread through her lower belly. Romantic words to be sure, but they came too late. There was nothing between them any longer. At least that’s what she had to remind herself because the alternative was too… glimmering with possibility… too terrifying. “At the time, the risk outweighed the reward.” God, that makes me sound like a horrible person. It was her turn to pace, which she did between the bedroom door and the sofa she’d recently vacated. “None of it matters now.” If that were true, why did she still yearn to know heated passion with a man as proof that love didn’t need to be staid in order to be a good match, and why did she wish that man would be him? “The people we once were, the things we once did, have no bearing on the present.”

  “On this we are of an accord.” Except, his eyes narrowed and he stroked his chin, that telling gesture the same one he’d always had when he tried to puzzle something out. When he said nothing more, Evangeline’s chest squeezed. Had she wounded him so horribly that he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—forgive her? “What did you do with your life after you ran from your second unfortunate beau?”

  She ignored the warmth infusing her cheeks. “I needed to escape London and everything it meant, so I went down to Brighton.”

  “Why Brighton? It’s not exactly in style these days. Most folks travel the world when they want a change of scenery. Why did you not hie to Egypt or Italy or somewhere you’ve heard of in your grandmother’s stories?”

  That pulled a tiny smile from her, but then, Jasper always had that knack. “Brighton is where Grandmother and my aunt reside, for Grandmother adores the sea and Aunt Adelaide looks after her.”

  “So you resorted to passing the time with two old ladies.” Softly, he tsked his tongue. “That will hardly make a woman feel young.”

  Despite herself, Evangeline snorted with laughter. “Indeed.” She didn’t realize how much she’d missed him making her laugh until now. Could they have worked everything out? It was too late to pursue such a thing. Pausing near the sofa, she rested a hand on the back of it. “My aunt had been in business for herself for years selling undergarments and corsets to her friends and their female family members. I became her apprentice. I’ve done it for three years.”

  “You peddle corsets?” The next flash of lightning, closer now, saw his dark eyebrows rocketing into his hairline. “I cannot wait to hear what the unflappable Lady Jane said about that. Does she approve?”

  “To a point.” Evangeline returned to her spot on the sofa and once more drew her legs beneath her. “She realizes women in today’s world want to make their own way and earn their own money. And she thinks it’s highly entertaining. However, such an activity is seen as scandalous in some circles, mainly those my mother travels in.” She huffed a sigh that stirred tendrils of escaped hair on her forehead. “It’s not as if my aunt and I are as gauche as to have a shop. We do private fittings in homes at the discretion of our clients.”

  “I don’t know that it makes a difference, Evie. Corsets and undergarments will always be seen as scandalous to those with no imaginations.” When she gasped at his use of the nickname he’d given her long ago, he cleared his throat. “Er, I mean, is hawking underpinning interesting work?”

  “To a certain extent, but thankless no matter how I help women with their varying figures.” He didn’t need to know all the mean and hateful things some of her clients said about each other instead of focusing how amazing each of them looked in the satin corsets or lace-trimmed combinations. “And no one wants to pay the prices such private fittings entail. Time and again I hear that ready-made clothing is more affordable even if it is lesser quality.”

  “That isn’t a falsehood.”

  “No, it’s not, but all of those ready-made product in stores aren’t tailor-made for each individual client.” Again, she fell to pleating the fabric of her nightdress. “Exact fit doesn’t come cheap, and neither should it. A corset is personal and should fit a woman’s figure like a second skin. It should move with her, enhance her body, not rub and chafe because measurements are off by an inch here or there for the sake of convenience.” It was one of the reasons she’d consented to help her aunt with sales. She enjoyed the sensual nature of undergarments and how pretty things that fit well could give a woman confidence. Once someone had that, there was no limit to where said woman could go or what she would do.

  “I’ll wager your sales are struggling against the surge of manufactured goods. Factories are cropping up everywhere these days.”

  It wouldn’t do to lie to him at his point. She wanted a clean confession of everything her life currently held. Only then could she
start over again with a clear conscience. “Yes. It’s a miserable thing at times. It makes me want to run screaming from the room and quit the business altogether. But what is the alternative? If I return home on the heels of this failure, Mother will be all the more unlikely to let me leave unless I’m wed.”

  Silence brewed between them as Jasper stared at her but didn’t quite see her. More like he looked through her. Gooseflesh popped on her skin. What did he see, and was she lacking? The longer he contemplated, stroking his chin, the more uncomfortable she grew. Couple that with the low growl and rumble of faraway thunder and her nerves became more frayed.

  Finally, he nodded and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his splayed knees. “Underpinnings are much like chocolates; each piece is unique. Everyone won’t agree on a flavor or style, fabric or fit. You need a gimmick, a pitch of the best corset or the best undergarments you have. Something flashy and personal that will catch the eye and grab your clients’ desires.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I am rather rubbish at sales. I know that, and a gimmick smacks as a con. I refuse to partake in something like that. If it means the business suffers, so be it. Besides, I don’t see how a gimmick will help sell corsets anyway.”

  “Perhaps.” He stared at her, his stormy eyes assessing and intense in each flash of lightning. “Is this your dream?”

  “Selling undergarments?” Her grin was wry. “No, but independence is.” The smile faltered under his unwavering regard. “I refuse to depend on a man or family money to see me through life. I want to know that I can stand on my own power. I want the assurance that I can be more than someone’s wife, someone’s hostess or someone’s mother.”

  “I understand. Perhaps all too well.” He leaned back, the power of his gaze directed elsewhere. “You and I aren’t as different as you wish to believe.”

  But she had to keep believing that; otherwise, running from him all those years ago was for naught. If they weren’t all that different, if the only thing separating them was the lack of passion on his part and if he was willing to work on that, what was keeping them apart other than her fear of what the future held? “I want more than society can—or will—give me, as a woman, as a person. I don’t want what’s expected, or what is traditional.” Even now, in the talking of it, her palms grew moist as panic rose in her chest. Clinging to the same old excuse sounded thin even to her own ears.