C
HAPTER
5
Figures rushed past her, dark masses in the gloomy light. The fog thickened around her, viscous, putrid-gray as cold porridge. Sarah pushed through it, nearly running, darting through the packs of people making their way toward home or market or their favorite tavern. Her maid called out in alarm, and Sarah slowed her pace to allow the girl to catch up.
“Ma’am,” Betsy panted. “Is something wrong?”
There was nothing about this trip that called for an illiterate companion, but Sarah felt secure with Betsy now, as if the maid were part of keeping this secret safe.
She didn’t bother answering the question, just waved at her to move faster.
Sarah’s father and stepmother lived nearly a mile from her new home, but despite the weather, Sarah had been determined to walk. The idea of being shut in a hack in creeping traffic had made her hands tremble.
Too many words were crawling through her, too many terrors.
The condition is most often hereditary.... Weakness leading to hysteria . . . slow descent into lunacy . . . confinement to an institution . . .
Sarah pressed her handkerchief to her mouth to cover her quiet sob. If she had inherited her mother’s disease, then she’d cursed James to misery. Her father had lived through it, but had lost so much of himself in the process. She could remember him in her early childhood, still garrulous and cheerful. But each month had added a new crease to his once-smooth brow. Each year had darkened his eyes. In the end . . . in the end, his grief had been more like hatred for his wife.
They had never once spoken of Sarah’s mother after her death. She did not expect he would speak of it now, but perhaps he had talked with his new wife about it. Not likely, but perhaps.
Finally, she reached her old street. She started to turn the corner, but made herself pause and wait for Betsy to catch up again. Without giving the girl time to slow her breath, Sarah rushed on. “You may rest in the kitchen while I take tea with my stepmother,” she said over her shoulder. The girl’s red cheeks wobbled when she nodded.
“Wait!” she cried when Sarah put her foot on the first step.
Sarah was so startled that she actually stopped, providing Betsy the time to rush past her and clank the knocker herself. Here was a girl with ambitions and the determination to do things right. Before her descent into madness, Sarah would have to remember to recommend her for promotion.
She actually managed a smile for that morbid thought just before the door swung open.
“Mrs. Hood!” the butler cried with far too much unseemly fondness when he spied her. But Sarah was supremely grateful for the show of affection.
“MacNeal, it is so good to see you. Is my stepmother in? I am sorry for not sending word, but I was in the neighborhood, you see, and . . .”
“Let’s just see if she’s receiving,” he offered with a wink as he waved them in. But he didn’t have to check after all, as Lorelei rushed out of the drawing room at just that moment.
“Oh, Sarah! What a lovely surprise. I’ve just poured myself a cup of tea. Will you join me?”
“I’m not intruding?”
“Of course not,” her stepmother laughed, motioning her forward.
It was still strange to think of her as a mother. Lorelei was only seven years older than Sarah and had been married to Sarah’s father for a mere five months.
Still, Sarah liked Lorelei. How could she not? Her warm smile bloomed with an ease that bespoke her kindness. Her eyes shone with calm joy. There was no doubt in Sarah’s mind why her father had chosen this new bride after so many years. Sarah couldn’t imagine anyone less inclined to melancholia or instability.
“We must have you and James over for dinner soon,” Lorelei chattered as she took a seat. “I daresay it’s been two weeks since we’ve seen you.”
“It’s my fault, of course. I keep meaning to have a small dinner party. I promise to speak with Cook as soon as I get home.”
Lorelei handed her a cup of tea, already sweetened with two lumps of sugar just as Sarah liked it. “Forgetful? Why, don’t tell me you’re feeling ill in the mornings as well?” Her eyes darted quickly to Sarah’s middle.
“Oh, no!” she protested. “Not at all.”
A moment passed. Lorelei’s smile blossomed. Her cheeks went pink. “I am!” she suddenly blurted out. “I mean . . . that is to say that I am feeling unwell in the mornings!”
“Oh?”
“We can talk about these things now, can we not? We are both old married women, after all. Oh, Sarah!” Her delighted laugh finally drove home the point that Sarah had missed.
“You are expecting?” She looked with disbelief at Lorelei’s flat stomach.
“Yes! I am so happy, and your father as well. And you, Sarah! You will be a sister!”
“A sister,” she repeated, stunned. Despite her shock, she had to grin, if only in response to Lorelei’s joy. Still, she couldn’t help but reel at the thought that her father and Lorelei had been doing the same kinds of things that Sarah and James had. And if she’d conceived, did this mean that Lorelei
enjoyed
the marriage bed as well? Sarah blinked and shoved the thought away. It didn’t bear thinking about.
To hide her shock, she pulled her stepmother into a tight hug. “I am so happy for you.”
“I have always wanted to be a mother,” she whispered into Sarah’s shoulder. “Always.”
“You will be wonderful.” And she would be. Nothing like Sarah’s own mother, who had spent so much time in her bed that she’d hardly seemed real.
Sarah cleared her throat as she sat back and straightened her skirts. “Have you . . . ?” She reached for her tea and took a bracing sip before she tried again. “Has my father ever spoken to you of my mother?”
Her smile faded into a look of surprise. “Oh, Sarah. I’m so sorry. I did not mean to be insensitive.”
“Nonsense,” Sarah said immediately. “Your words only brought her to mind. I find I have been thinking of her lately, being newly married. It is quite a change of circumstance.”
“Oh, it is wonderful, is it not? I thought I should never marry, but your father seemed relieved that I was firmly on the shelf. Silly man.”
Yes, Sarah’s mother had been seventeen at their marriage, so Lorelei’s age could only have been an asset in his mind.
“But what was it you wanted to know?” she asked.
“My father, does he ever speak of her?”
“No, but you know how quiet he can be. I do know that she died, of course, after a long illness.” She clasped Sarah’s hand. “It must have been so hard for you.”
“I was only seven. I remember very little,” she lied.
“Still.” Lorelei sniffed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, look at me! They say a baby makes you fretful, and I fear it is true. I will ask your father about her, if you like.”
“No, I don’t wish to distress him.”
Lorelei nodded. “When he mentioned her illness, he seemed very subdued. I think he must have loved her very much.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, do have a treat,” Lorelei urged, reaching for a plate. “It will give me an excuse to eat more. And I’m sure you need your strength, too. No doubt you will also be enjoying motherhood soon if James is doing his duty.”
Though she hadn’t yet taken a bite of sweetmeat, Sarah choked.
Her dry throat seemed to send Lorelei into a swell of giggles. “The last time you were here, I was talking with your husband when you laughed at some ridiculous thing my cousin said. James’s eyes were drawn to you like a magnet. The man watched you laughing from across the room and completely lost track of our conversation! I wondered if you might not get pregnant that very night.”
“Lorelei!”
“Oh, pshaw. We are wives now, Sarah. What is the point of being married except to enjoy it? Do you not feel so . . . whole?”
“Whole?”
“Yes! For so many years I was led about with blinders on, always aware of the hushed conversations that ended when I stepped into a room of women my own age. They had all married years before, and I was not one of them. I was some sort of bizarrely overgrown child to be patted on the head and guided back toward the younger girls so that the adults could talk. And unmarried women were even worse. How many conversations can one have about bonnets before one goes mad? And to be treated as if my circumstance might rub off and curse them to spinsterhood as well . . .”
“Lorelei,” Sarah sighed. “I had no idea.”
“I do not mind now, for I have your father and he is wonderful. Forty-two is not so old a man, I’ve found.” Her grin nearly split her face. “Not very old at all.” Her hand went to her belly, and Sarah watched her fingers curl gently over the treasure there.
If only Lorelei wasn’t married to Sarah’s father, she could answer so many questions.
Do you enjoy your husband’s attentions? If so, how often? Does his touch make you shake and sob? Has he ever approached you in the morning?
But she could not ask those questions of her father’s wife, so she didn’t. And when she left an hour later, Sarah knew nothing more than she had when she’d arrived, except that there would be one more life affected by any disease she might eventually succumb to.
* * *
James Hood scowled at the man on the opposite seat of the carriage. “If that piece of rubbish imagines he can convince me to support his measure over Harding’s, he’s clearly picked up more than bad manners at that whorehouse he frequents.”
Montgomery snorted. “Syphilitic or not, he has high hopes for that bill.”
“I’d rather cross the aisle than throw my support behind him.”
“Come now, the bill simply expands—”
“He not only wants to send women of ‘doubtful morals’ to the workhouse but also he wishes to confiscate their children for factory work?
He,
who refers to the Priory as his London home? That level of hypocrisy begs a beating.”
Montgomery arched an eyebrow. “Have you ever
been
to the Priory? I wouldn’t say those girls’ morals are in any doubt at all. I’d say they are quite delightfully irredeemable. No need to send them to a workhouse; it wouldn’t take.”
“Christ,” James muttered as Montgomery laughed.
“Come, James. You’ve been married for weeks now. Time to get back to the hunting grounds. I’d planned a trip to the Priory myself tonight. Come along and I’ll give you a tour.”
James glanced out the window to see how close they were to his house.
“Good man.” Montgomery slapped his shoulder and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Listen, they’re a bit pricey, but there are a pair of twins—rather fleshy, but they’re identical twins, you understand—and they will absolutely devour your—”
“No.”
“I’ll treat. Consider it a belated wedding gift.”
“Bugger yourself, Monty.”
“What?”
“I’m in love with my wife.”
Montgomery’s hand froze on James’s shoulder, then dropped back to his side of the hack as if he feared contagion. “Pardon?”
James glanced up to find his friend watching him as if he’d just announced that he was running off to Timbuktu with a stable hand. He couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m in love with Sarah.”
“Since when?” Monty scoffed.
Since the day I met her,
he wanted to say, but didn’t. “None of your business. Just watch your mouth if she ever deigns to invite you to dinner.”
He scowled. “I can’t imagine when that will be. I don’t think she likes me.”
“Hard to fathom.”
His friend’s confusion wasn’t feigned. He’d flirted with Sarah the way he flirted with every woman and grew more dumbfounded each time she responded with annoyance. Most women loved Montgomery. Sarah did not. James felt inordinately pleased.
“Well, this is intolerable,” Monty complained. “You were enough of a stick-in-the-mud before.”
“Then it’s not much of a loss, is it?” When James saw familiar doorways begin to pass by the window, he smiled. He’d had no choice but to attend this dinner meeting, but now he was home and his pretty, surprising wife awaited within. He had the door open before the carriage rocked to a stop. “Good evening, Monty.”
His friend snorted in disgust as the hack pulled away, but James only grinned wider. Half an hour, tops, and he planned to have the taste of Sarah on his tongue. He’d spent a good quarter of the day hard. At every opportunity, his mind turned to the image of her sex spread wide for his enjoyment. How pretty and delicate she was down there, how perfect as she shuddered against his lips.
His mouth watering, he inclined his head at Crawford’s greeting, then contemplated holding on to his hat to avoid embarrassing the servant.
“Sir?” the butler intoned.
James gave in and turned over the hat, spinning quickly toward the parlor in an attempt to flee with his pride intact. “Is Mrs. Hood still up?”
“No, sir. She retired a half hour ago.”
“Ah. Wonderful.” He’d already made it halfway up the stairs when Crawford’s next words reached him. “Madam was suffering from the headache and decided to retire early.”
“Oh.” He froze, one foot already on the next step. Was she sick or was she laid out naked in anticipation of his arrival? He thought of the blush that so easily overtook her, and revised his fantasy. Not naked, perhaps, but still anticipating his return? “Thank you, Crawford.” He continued on, hopeful.
There was no hint awaiting him in his dressing room. Tugging off his tie, he dropped it on a table as he passed through to the dark bedroom beyond. His cock throbbed in anticipation as he moved toward the bed.
“Sarah?” he murmured.
“Hm?”
“Are you unwell?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “A bit.”
“Oh, I see.” He tried not to indulge the disappointment that flooded his veins. The disappointment had no effect on his erection, unfortunately, but it also did not dull his need to breathe her in after a full day away from her side. Whether they made love or not, he wanted to be in bed with her.