City of Dreams (104 page)

“Yes, it will be,” he agreed. “Very nice indeed. Wonderful, in fact.”

Raif Devrey had looked into Clare Campbell’s blue-purple eyes and his world had stopped, then started to turn in a different direction.

He was back the next day with three huge sheets of well-oiled canvas, and he stayed long enough to help Roisin and her daughter rig a waterproof tent in which to live.

“Moves about a whole lot better than you’d think he might,” Roisin said after he left. “Fat as he is, Raif Devrey’s light on his feet.”

“And kind,” Clare added.

“Very.”

Roisin heard something in Clare’s voice. Not something new, something old.

Two days earlier, in Andrew Turner’s consulting room, when Clare whispered that if her mother thought to marry her off to Josie Harmon’s nephew she might as well know that Clare would slit her own throat on her wedding day, she’d sounded like someone already dead, a spirit returned from the grave. Now, because a funny little fat man who must be twice her age had brought them a gift—in addition to the wonderful simples—Clare sounded like the girl she’d been. Roisin couldn’t fathom why, but she was grateful.

Two months later Clare and Raif were married. The ceremony took place in St. Paul’s Chapel. With Trinity a charred ruin, St. Paul’s was the most fashionable church in the town. Roisin was intensely conscious of that as she stood and watched her daughter, gowned in exquisite blue satin and elegant black lace, vow to love, honor, and obey Raif Devrey. Clare looked entirely calm and self-possessed, but Roisin felt as if she must pinch herself to be certain she wasn’t dreaming.

“You’re sure, child?” she had asked a few days before. “Rich as he is, and kind as he is, Raif’s old enough to be your father.”

“He’s thirty-six.”

Roisin gasped. Older even than she’d thought. “Clare, you’re only sixteen.”

“I’m going to marry Raif. If you say no we’ll run away.”

Ah, Holy Virgin, who was she to stand in the girl’s way? There was no passion in it, of that Roisin was quite sure. But what was passion worth to a woman? Hadn’t she denied her own passion existed until it was too late, and following her heart would have meant breaking the heart of the best man she’d ever known? “Kindness counts for much,” Roisin had said. “As long as you’re sure, darling girl.”

“Very sure.”

And so Clare was. “I do,” she said firmly when the vicar of St. Paul’s asked if she took this man to be her lawfully wedded husband. Indeed, she repeated it a second time. “I very do.” Clare was entirely sure of her decision, but not for the reasons her mother imagined.

“I want to show you something,” Clare had told Raif at the end of the first month she’d known him, when he’d come to the Fiddle and Clogs every single day on one or another pretext. “Let down the flap.”

Raif’s first instinct was always to do exactly what she told him, but that time he’d hesitated. It wasn’t seemly. It might lead to his being forbidden to come again. “Your mother,” he said. “Mistress Healsall, she might be near.”

“She’s gone to the court part of town to treat a patient has boils and doesn’t want a barber to lance them. Mama will apply mustard and mint plasters to draw the poison. It’s a slow business, another hour at least. Go ahead, let down the flap.”

Raif did as he was told. Clare struck a spark and lit the stub of a candle—another of Raif’s many practical gifts—and in its glow she beckoned him closer. “Come near enough so you can see without squinting,” she told him. “There, that will do.”

Without another word she unlaced her dress and pushed her bodice down to her waist. Raif wanted to ask what she was doing, but he couldn’t speak for the burning. Not just between his legs; all of him was on fire. In an entire lifetime he had never felt as he felt now. Certainly not with his wife, or with the whores who serviced him before his brief marriage, or with those he’d occasionally visited since. Nothing ever had been like this.

When Clare pulled her chemise over her head, her mobcap came off as well. The long black hair fell free and made a curtain that reached to her waist. Clare lifted both hands and pushed it back so it would conceal nothing. Her breasts rose when she moved, defining themselves above her long, taut midriff. Small breasts. He knew they would be firm if he touched them, like a pair of pink-flushed apples. Tart and yet sweet. Delicious to the tongue.

“Do you see it?” she demanded.

“See…” He couldn’t get the words out. He had to swallow a few times and try a second time. “See what?”

“The nipple of my left pappe. It’s crooked. Bend down and take a good look.”

He bent his head until his lips were a few inches from her flesh. She smelled of the eau de Cologne he’d given her. She smelled like sweet and endless summer. “Yes,” he whispered finally, observing the skewed angle of the small brown stem of the apple. “I see it.”

“The wound’s healed over now, but the nipple will always be crooked like this. An English sailor did it. I’m not a virgin. Six sailors raped me the night of the fire.” Clare spoke the words with no emphasis and no emotion. “One of them did this to my tit.” She put her hand under her breast and lifted it even closer to his mouth. Then she put her other hand behind Raif’s head.

He dared not move. Her smell was overwhelming him. Her fingers on the back of his neck singed his flesh. He craved to tongue the crooked nipple, desired it more than he’d desired anything in his life. But he knew that if he did not do exactly what she wanted when she wanted, she would send him away and not let him return, and what he’d so recently found to cherish of life would be over.

“No English bastard grew in my belly,” Clare said. “My mother used her arts to open me up and scrape their seed out before a bastard could take form.” She dropped her hand. Her fingers no longer touched him. Yet his flesh continued to burn. “Now that you know all that, and you see how I’m misformed, do you still lust after me, Raif Devrey?”

“I worship you,” Raif whispered. “I love you more than my own life.”

Clare backed away. Raif made a sound in his throat, an inarticulate groan of loss. His declaration had revolted her. He should have expected as much. It couldn’t be otherwise with someone as beautiful as she and a fat, ugly toad like himself. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Clare walked backward as far as the horsehair blankets that were folded away in one corner of the makeshift tent. She was still looking at Raif when she lay down on them and lifted the hem of her dress so she was as exposed below as she was above, the cloth of her dress bunched around her waist. “Come here and stick your thing in me.”

“What? I don’t…”

“You heard me. You want to do it, I know you do. I’m saying you may.” She spread her legs. “Come lie on top of me and put your cock in my twat. Come ahead and do it. Quickly. Before my mother comes home.”

She heard the way he was breathing, as if he was gasping for air. It took him an age to fumble open his trouser buttons and free himself. When he finally managed it and she saw the thing that stuck out in front of him, Clare considered jumping to her feet and telling him she’d made a terrible mistake. But she did not.

She had thought about this for days, knew exactly what she was doing and why. “Come ahead,” she encouraged, half sitting up, supporting herself on her elbows. “Do it quickly.”

He stumbled forward, shivering with want. Her thatch was as dark black as the hair of her head. He put out one tentative finger and touched it. Like velvet. Like the softest wool of a newborn lamb.

“Come on then,” she said softly, lying back and lifting her hips toward him. “Time’s wasting.” She opened her legs wider. The black thatch parted slightly and he glimpsed the sweet, moist pinkness within.

Raif made a sound between a sigh and a groan. He got to his knees beside her, then lay over her, between her long and tapered thighs, and used his own hand to guide his tool into her. After that, for a long moment, he remained absolutely still, savoring his joy. Simply by uniting himself to her, he had taken possession of her beauty. He wasn’t short and ugly Raif Devrey any longer. He was a king, a prince of heaven and earth. Finally, when he could wait no longer, he stroked in and out. Two, maybe three times. Then it was over.

“Are you done?” she asked. He must be. He’d shivered a bit. Now he lay unmoving atop her, his face squashed up against hers. His cheeks were wet… Maybe tears. First time she’d ever seen a man do that. “Well, tell me, are you finished?”

“Yes, I am. Clare, beloved, listen…” He lifted his head and tried to look into her eyes.

She turned her face away. “If you’re done, get off me.”

He rolled away and restored order to his clothing. Clare jumped up and allowed the skirt of her dress to fall back into place. She was busy pulling her bodice up and tying the laces. “Clare,” he said again.

“No, don’t speak. Listen. I had to know if I could bear it.”

“Bear it? Every man, and every woman for that matter, has need of—”

“Don’t talk to me of need. Each thing that has been put between my legs has caused me pain and suffering. I could not face a lifetime of the same. But you …” He was looking at her the way a puppy dog might, his eyes begging her for something. “You were gentle,” she said. “I thank you for that. Will you promise to always be so?”

“I would die before I would hurt you in any way.” His tone made the words a solemn vow.

“Yes, I believe you. Very well, Raif Devrey. I’ll wed you. You want to wed me, don’t you?”

He could only nod.

“Fine. Then that’s what we’ll do. But there’s one condition. You can only put your cock in me…” She considered. “Once a month. I’ll say when. Do you consent?”

He nodded again.

“Swear it.”

Raif swore and the bargain was made.

So they were standing in St. Paul’s being married. With no fuss. Another of Clare’s demands. Bede and Nancy said they were too old and ill to attend the ceremony. They were quite overcome with surprise at the fact that Raif had decided to marry again; they tried to tell themselves it didn’t matter that the girl was a pauper and had a share of Negro blood. Not when compared to the fact that they might yet have a Devrey grandchild to carry on the name. After the ceremony, when Raif brought Clare home to Wall Street, they greeted her formally, then fled to their private rooms.

“Now we’re married,” Clare said as soon as she and Raif were alone. “Tell me what you’re good at.”

“I don’t know. How do you mean, good at?”

“Things you do best. I can simple. And cook. And play a bit on the dulcimer. What can you do?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve never been good at anything.”

“Nonsense. You help in your father’s business, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. At least, I did. These days there’s not much to do in his business. He’s sent all his ships to Virginia.”

“When there was much to do, what were you best at?”

Raif thought for a moment. “Figures,” he said finally. “I guess I was best at doing the calculations. For the manifests and the like. I’m quick at that.”

Clare clapped her hands. “Excellent! Figures are very important. And I know something else. You’re good at getting things that are hard to come by. Such as the canvas, and the candles, and eau de Cologne. Right after the fire, when there was nothing to be had anywhere.”

He was good at that because those things were for her. He didn’t say so, simply wondered if tonight was going to be the once a month she’d promised. If she was true to her word, it might be. The count should start from the day they were married, shouldn’t it? And he hadn’t touched her since that first time when they became betrothed. Sometimes he thought that had been a dream. “I can find things if they’re important,” he said.

“We’ll need a great many important things. A place of our own, for a start.”

“To live in?”

“Yes. And to open our shop.”

“What kind of shop?”

“An apothecary. But different,” Clare said.

“There’s a shop in the Rhode Island colony called a pharmacy,” Raif said. “Leastwise there was, before the war. I saw it in Newport once when my father sent me to the town on some business. Owned by a Dr. Hunter; he makes that Number Six Cologne everyone’s so mad for.”

“Excellent,” Clare said, again clapping her hands. “We shall open a pharmacy.”

“But we don’t have any Number Six Cologne. What will we sell?” She was a marvel. He’d given her money to buy a dress for today, and she had gowned herself in the same color blue as her eyes. That seemed wondrous to him.

“We’ll trade in simples. And powder for wigs. And eau de Cologne. Things like that.”

“I see. Clare, is tonight to be—”

“Where are we to sleep?”

“In my room. It’s up those stairs. I had them put fresh linen on the bed for you.”

She tingled at the thought of sleeping in a proper bed with fresh linen. “I’m tired. Let’s go up this very minute.” When they were halfway up the stairs—Clare leading, as if she were the one born in this house rather than he—she turned and whispered over her shoulder, “If you promise to be quick, you can do it to me tonight.”

Chapter Thirteen