Rakes and Radishes (20 page)

Henrietta chased after him, catching his arm, her bare feet sliding on the floor. He swung around. She was scared, her eyes large and luminous. Her hair hung loose, curling around her breast, her nipples poking through her thin shift. The candlelight behind her showed the curve of her thighs and the small feminine valley between her limbs.

“You’re not your father! She didn’t mean those words. You’re not a horrid rake,” Henrietta cried.

“You are a stupid, naive girl.” He took her to him, pressing her against him until he could feel her—her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

“I am trying to help. That’s all I’m trying to do. Maybe if you could be more understanding—”

He put his finger over her mouth and tilted her head back until her large eyes were under his. He continued to move as he spoke, forcing her to walk backward into the parlor. “I want you to tell me when in the last twenty-five years I haven’t been understanding. When I didn’t bend over backwards for you, when I didn’t do your bidding. All that time you thought you controlled me, but I protected you, Henrietta. I protected you from all this—from me.”

“This isn’t you, Kesseley. This is everything you are afraid of. You don’t—”

“I thought as a boy you could save me, that quaint house of yours, your strange parents, your dreams you spun like a silken cocoon. Tell me, how does it feel inside? Is it comfortable? Does it shield you from the ugliness surrounding this moment?”

“I’m sorry I was so blind to everything. I’m sorry I hurt you all those years. I love you.”

He sank his mouth onto hers, plunging his tongue deep inside her, taking her right into the heart of his ugliness. His fingers tangled in the chains of her mother’s pendant. He felt the necklace loosen, then bounce off his thigh.

Henrietta didn’t notice. Her lips desperately tried to slow his frantic pace. He wouldn’t let her. Instead he lightly ran his thumb over her breast to shock her.

She lowered her head onto his shoulder. “Do you want me to tell you how horrid you are? I can’t. I love you. The real you.”

She entwined her fingers over his hand, still on her breast, then she raised her mouth and gently kissed the edge of his ear.

“I love you,” she whispered again.

She drew his head down and opened his mouth with her lips. Her tongue caressed his as he had taught her that night in the corridor. A thousand years ago. She nestled her body against his. The tip of her nipple teased his palm.

“Don’t.” His voice trembled.

Despite his will, his penis rose at her touch. Her mouth released his, and she let out an uneven breath.

“If you want me to be your mistress, I will,” she whispered. “Show me everything I don’t know if that will help you, if it will ease your anger.”

He didn’t move—too angry and terrified. He wanted to hurt her as he had been hurt. He wanted to deny her so she might know the bitter pain of rejection. He wanted to wage some battle with his father, his mother on her body. He wanted…

He wanted her and that made him hate himself.

She stepped away from him, but kept her gaze on his face. Her throat contracted with her breath and she slowly drew down the sleeve of her shift, revealing her right breast. A supple, perfect creation capped with a dainty pink tip. Kesseley heard his own inhale.
Dear God.

“Touch me,” she whispered.

Kesseley stumbled backward. “No.”

“I want you to.”

She reached out and took his hand and placed it over her breast, her fingers guiding his over its delicate surface.

“Dearest Kesseley,” she murmured, oblivious to her own danger. “Show me how to love you, so you don’t have to go out tonight.”

She tugged his arm, pulling him to the sofa. She lay back on the cushions and gave her body over to him.

He didn’t know if it was rage or desire that made him want to drive himself into her and find that thoughtless oblivion of moving inside her body.

He lowered his head and kissed her breast, running his tongue over its lush tip. Her body rose under his mouth, and she released a high, sweet gasp. In an easy motion, he slid off the sofa and knelt onto the floor. He pulled her legs around him. The feminine contours of her body pressed against his hardness. He could feel the warm wetness of her femininity through his breeches. Her earthy scent covered him. Years and years of unfulfilled dreams and frustration pushed him on.

He rubbed his thighs over her sex. His penis strained to be inside her.

“Do you feel me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He moved in the rhythmic motions of love as he watched her face, a tenderness in her eyes that cut to his heart. He wanted her to yell at him, tell him to stop. He wanted to hate her.

“Is this what you always wanted?” she asked.

His skin prickled. Above him, the crystals from the chandelier waited like cold, gray daggers. Henrietta dangled off the sofa, her legs apart, her shift falling from her shoulders. No, this was not what he always wanted. He had wanted it to be beautiful for her, not this desperate act for an angry, vengeful man. He couldn’t let her do it.

He pulled away, restored her shift to her shoulder and brushed her cheek with his hand. “I’m sorry.”

Tears swelled in her eyes. “But I want you to,” she pleaded.

“Henrietta, don’t you understand? Too much has happened.”

“No.” Her voice was a scarce breath.

He shook his head and rose to leave. “It’s too late.”

“Don’t leave, Kesseley. Stay here. Please don’t go out there tonight. You’re too upset. Stay with me. You don’t have to…You don’t have to do anything.” Her words were choked with tears.

When he didn’t stop, she ran around him and hid the doorknob behind her back. “No, Kesseley. I’m afraid for you.”

“Goodbye,” he said, then gently pulled her from her station, stepped outside and shut the door.

Pain ripped through his chest and burned down his arm. He grabbed his heart and doubled over. For several seconds, he couldn’t move. Finally, he pushed himself from the steps and headed out into the night.

***

Henrietta curled in her bed and wept. Kesseley’s smell and feel was still on her skin. She prayed he was somewhere safe tonight. She blamed herself for his hurt. She had asked him to be a rake, thinking only of a fictional Lord Blackraven. She’d had no idea what being a rake truly meant and how by asking Kesseley to play the part of one, she had unwittingly opened old wounds inflicted upon him by his father. There weren’t enough
I’m sorrys
to make up for the damage she had caused by her ignorance. Of course, he wouldn’t let her be his mistress. She repulsed him. Yet in her feminine core, his touch had caused an acute need that throbbed, unabated, for him.

***

Kesseley didn’t come home. When a ribbon of sunlight cut through the tiny alley running between the houses, Henrietta left her chamber and went to see about Lady Kesseley.

She lay back in her pillow, her golden hair loose. Red veins spread like spider legs around her light blue irises. She stared out at the sunlight streaming through the window, showing no expression. Her lady’s maid attended her, pouring liquid from a small brown bottle into a spoon, then holding her hand under Lady Kesseley’s chin as she sipped.

Henrietta sat on the edge of the bed. Lying open across Lady Kesseley’s lap was
The Critique of Pure Reason
by Immanuel Kant. She’d never imagined Lady Kesseley would be interested in philosophy. She was about to ask Lady Kesseley about the book when she began to speak in a quiet whisper.

“I lived in Kent when I was girl. It was a hot summer, hotter than anyone remembered—I felt as if I were swimming through the air. I would run off in the woods by the lake and sit on the cool rocks in the afternoon. He came down the trail, his hair loose, all tangled about his face. He and a servant carried a boat over their heads. He had just moved into his uncle’s house. I don’t know where he had been before, but he didn’t look like any of us. He plopped the boat in the water and waded in.
Come here,
he said, lifting me up from my waist and putting me in the boat. I remember his touch, how this jolt of something passed through me. He swam about the boat, twirling it in the water. Then he said,
Do you think the world is only our perception?
I laughed. Then—and I think he did this on purpose, even though he denied it—the boat fell over and I plunged in. I had that moment of panic, not being able to feel the bottom, then his arm came around me.
Don’t worry, I can stand,
he said.”

Henrietta waited for more of the story, but that was it.

“Who was he?” she asked.

“He was the only man I have ever loved.” Lady Kesseley waved her hand, dismissing the question waiting on Henrietta’s tongue. “I told him I couldn’t marry him. My father wanted me to marry Lord Kesseley.”

She turned her head on her pillow to look at Henrietta. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should never have let Kesseley bring you here.”

Henrietta couldn’t respond, wanting to say all she couldn’t. It was just too big and awful, and Lady Kesseley was so weak now.

“I don’t think Kesseley meant what he said last night.”

“There is so much you don’t know. So much hurt. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had run away with him—would it have been different?—and I hate myself for thinking it…because of Tommie.”

She closed her eyes. Henrietta waited silently beside her until the medicine took effect and Lady Kesseley drifted off, her book falling to her side. Henrietta picked it up, remembering her mother and father discussing Immanuel Kant at the table. She opened the first page and found an inscription.

“If the world is my perception, then I am in love with the world, for wherever I look, I see only Eleanora. Danny Elliot.”

Danny Elliot! Good God!

Henrietta ran back to her chamber, grabbed her pelisse and bonnet, and flew down the stairs. She called out for Samuel and a footman, her body exhausted, but her will driving her on.

***

Henrietta meandered around the Serpentine like some vagrant female, following every bearded graying man who passed. How was it that Mr. Elliot popped up whenever you least expected him, but when you desperately needed him, he was nowhere to be found. She reached for her mother’s pendant. It wasn’t there. She frowned—she must have forgotten to put it on that morning. She sat on the pigeon-fouled bench waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Twice the footman came back and asked if she wanted to leave. Twice she refused.

The sun was approaching its zenith when Henrietta gave up. She wanted so much to tell Mr. Elliot that Lady Kesseley still loved him, that maybe they could make a happy ending in all this wreckage. A small redemption. She shut her eyes and prayed that he would find her and take all these things that her heart couldn’t carry anymore.

The philosopher wasn’t at the park the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. Henrietta feared he might have sailed away to the far-off places of his stories just as she needed him. She couldn’t solve the equations before her: Lady Kesseley and Mr. Elliot, Kesseley and herself.

Kesseley wandered home in the mornings and early evenings, sometimes somber. He washed, changed and doused himself with cologne, then set out again. She didn’t know where he went or what he did. He wouldn’t talk to her except to exchange a terse greeting, ignoring her attempts to engage him in any conversation. She wished he would scream at her, kiss her, hold her, berate her, anything but act as if she didn’t exist, that she didn’t mean anything to him.

Lady Winslow and the princess visited Lady Kesseley’s bedside like dutiful friends. They spoke only of frivolous gossip, a forced gaiety in their distressed faces. They knew things, many things they weren’t telling Lady Kesseley. Each day they became more uncomfortable in their chairs, straining harder for topics. If Lady Kesseley asked about her son, they said they hadn’t heard anything, their eyes darting to the window or the miniatures on the commode, anywhere but Lady Kesseley’s face.

One Monday, Kesseley didn’t even come home in the morning. Henrietta waited by the window, hoping every shadowy profile on the street’s horizon was his. Where was he? Was he safe? Her fingers rubbed the spot where she’d once worn her mother’s pendant, saying a tiny prayer. At one o’clock, when Lady Winslow and the princess didn’t come by, Henrietta called the footman and Samuel. They set off for Lady Winslow’s, walking into the wind to Cavendish Square. Dense, gray clouds covered the sky to the west, shadowing Hyde Park and blowing into the city.

Lady Winslow’s trim, Mediterranean-looking butler ushered Henrietta to a bright, white room where curtainless windows stretched the height of the walls, looking on to a small flowering garden. It was a feminine library with white bookcases overfilled with books and objects.

Lady Winslow sat at a round table. She wore round glasses low on her nose and was reading a page she held in her hands. Edward peered over her shoulder, his eyes following her progress. He jumped away when he saw Henrietta, as if reading was some illicit act.

Lady Winslow’s eyes narrowed under her spectacles. Henrietta noticed she wore no lace cap, letting her hair fall loose in glossy curls. Her dress was rather dashing for the afternoon.

“Shall I come back?” Henrietta asked.

“No! Stay. I was just leaving,” Edward assured her. “Lady Winslow was reading some of my new poems.” He quickly gathered his work, stacking it into a pile, then concealing it under his arm.

“You don’t have to leave.” Lady Winslow tried to sound casual, but her voice carried a small plea.

“I shall let you visit alone.” He bowed to Lady Winslow, then again to Henrietta as he fled the room.

Lady Winslow sat back in her chair and flung her glasses on the table. “What brings you out this afternoon? How is Ellie?”

“She only wants to sleep.”

“As usual. Have a seat.” Lady Winslow gathered the remaining papers and books. She took them to a glass bookshelf and set them inside with stacks of other paper and various writing implements.

“Do you write, as well?” Henrietta said spontaneously as she sat on a red sofa with a nice view of the garden.

“I used to write. Now I just pass my endless hours,” Lady Winslow said, closing her cabinet and locking it. “So you’ve come to find out what we couldn’t tell Ellie.”

“Yes.”

Lady Winslow crossed to the mantel and pulled out a cheroot from a silver box. She lit it, then took a chair across from Henrietta. “He lost seven thousand the other evening at faro. Then he won eight thousand at dice the next evening. He bets wildly and wins as wildly.” She took a long breath and then blew it out. “He is seen with different ladies, though none are under his protection. He fights in the morning at Gentleman Joe’s. Whenever the old boxer looks the other way, bets are being made.”

It seemed almost inconceivable Lady Winslow was talking about Kesseley and not some notorious rake, unnamed except for his initials in the gossip columns.

Lady Winslow continued. “The betting book at White’s is filled with dates of when Lady Sara—or her father—will bring him up to scratch. Most believe an announcement will be made at their ball.” Lady Winslow looked down at her lap. “Poor Edward—he loved her so,” she muttered. She inhaled her cheroot again, raising her eyes to stare frankly at Henrietta through the smoke. “Now, I have been truthful with you, and so you must be with me. Are you truly over Edward?”

Henrietta blinked, not expecting that question or Lady Winslow’s earnest face, the trembling at the corner her eyes, as if bracing for a blow. Suddenly Henrietta understood.

She walked to a bookshelf, where she picked up a tiny wooden figure of an owl. “I love him as I should a dear cousin. I took all my dreams and placed them on him. Only now I realize those aren’t the dreams I want.”

“And what do you want now?”

Henrietta pulled her rueful smile under her lips. “For my father to find a planet behind Uranus.” She turned away before Lady Winslow could read any more in her face. She scanned the titles on the bookshelf. Lying flat as bookends were several volumes of
The Lost Manor
and
The Fatal Rendezvous
by Mrs. Alexander Fairfax.

“You read Mrs. Fairfax?” she asked.

“Do you?”

Henrietta shrugged. “I used to.”

“But you don’t now.”

“I find her work…almost too fanciful. It’s fun to read. That is all.”

Lady Winslow rose. “They are rubbish, then?”

“Yes.”

“Frivolous dribble read by the masses. Something base, to tantalize their lower natures.”

“To some degree.”

“You are very diplomatic.” Lady Winslow reached around Henrietta and took out a slim volume. “Perhaps our Mrs. Fairfax wasn’t always that way. Perhaps once she had other aspirations.” She handed Henrietta a book—
Quiet Reminisces
by Miss Frances Fairfax.

Henrietta gasped, the full understanding coming to her. “Oh no! I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. I am a horrid writer now. Selling Lord Damien and sensation instead of the truths I feel inside. I tell Edward to write what is true, but I can’t myself, afraid I will receive the same harsh welcome as that volume in your hands.” She collapsed back in her chair, rubbing her forehead with her thumb. “No, I’m old and scared now. What could someone like Edward ever see in me?”

***

Kesseley could barely think for the dull aching in his head. He couldn’t separate the details of the evening before, the places and people compressing into one loud scene. It was three in the afternoon, and he was just coming home. His evening clothes hung uncomfortably on his skin, stained and smelling of the last evening’s debacles.

Looking at his stark, gray row house on Curzon Street filled him with that tangled mix of sweet nostalgia, bitterness and dread. Boxly let him in. The house was as quiet and somber as a chapel. Was Henrietta gone? He felt an unexplainable disappointment in his chest. He stomped up the stairs, his steps reverberating around him, letting everyone know—including his mother, hiding in her chamber—that he had come home at three in the afternoon.

Henrietta never came out.

The previous evening, Kesseley had promised to meet Bucky at Hyde Park for fashionable hour. He bathed and changed into doeskins and a blue coat, lingering in his chamber even as he was ready to go. He always found something that needed to be done, a letter to reread, a number to commit to his ledgers.

Admit it, you’re waiting for her.

He grabbed his hat and headed downstairs, as Boxly let Henrietta and Samuel in. His dog came running to Kesseley, wet and smelly, his tail wagging the back half of his body. Kesseley knelt and Samuel started turning circles between his knees, rubbing his face on his master’s hand. He patted Samuel’s ribs. “There, there, big boy.”

“We are happy to see you,” Henrietta said, a small tentative smile on her lips. She removed her bonnet and pelisse and handed them to Boxly. She was pale, no luster in her eyes. For a weak moment, he wanted to draw her into his arms and comfort her. Then his anger came back. He was finally free of her control. He would be damned if he was going to be dragged under again.

“May we speak for a moment?” she asked.

Kesseley nodded.

“I-I am concerned about your mother,” she began after a pause. “She is very sad. She doesn’t leave her chamber. I’ve been managing the house these last few days. I will be leav—”

“You don’t have to protect my mother. This is a game to her.”

“And to you? Is this all a game to you as well?”

Kesseley smiled, the same phony one he gave the ladies who flaunted themselves before him. “You tell me. You’re the one who is so good with games.”

“There is no game. I love you. But I’m scared. The things I hear about you…”

“Why are you so afraid for me?” He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m having a wonderful time. Hell, I won eight thousand last evening.”

“To make up for the seven thousand you lost the previous evening?”

“Keeping account of me?”

She came to him and raised her hand, letting it hover over his arm, then pulled it back as if she’d thought better of touching him. “I am afraid because when I look in your eyes, I don’t see the Kesseley I knew.”

“The Kesseley you controlled, who did your bidding?”

“No,” she said. “The Kesseley who lets his poorest tenants live in their homes without rent—it’s no secret in the village, you know. I don’t see the Kesseley who gave a milking goat and food to Mrs. Rogers when her children were sick, who makes sure all the village children have good shoes and coats for the winter. You’re acting out some nightmare. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Then stay the hell out.”

***

Kesseley found Bucky waiting at the gate. He had donned pedestrian clothes for his secretive mission, which involved finding some merchant’s daughter—a mousy brunette with an unusual quantity of beauty marks and wealth—who frequented the park at fashionable hour. Bucky’s uncle had been turning her family up sweet last week and had talked Bucky’s cousin into sending the homely gel and her family an invitation to her ball this evening. So Bucky figured he had best secretly see her so he could prepare himself.

“Afterwards we can head over to Two Sevens and curse my fate over some drinks. You are coming with me to my cousin’s ball. She’s been bragging to my other cousins all week that you’re coming.”

“Give me enough brandy and point the way,” Kesseley said. Henrietta still colored his thoughts. Twice on the way to the park he wanted to run back to Curzon Street, but he held himself back.

Don’t give in to her. All she’s ever done is hurt you.

Inside the park, Kesseley could feel everyone’s gaze on him, taking in the tiniest aspects of his person, as if he were their personal property. He and Bucky could hardly move in the crush. People he could scarce recognize greeted him as an old friend—insisting on drawing him into conversation, introducing him to their sisters, daughters, nieces or other female friends. Merely bowing to the ladies caused them to blush and stammer. He gave them the most mundane of compliments—faint praise for bonnet or gown—and they clung to his words, as if they were the dearest tribute anyone had ever bestowed upon them. After half an hour, Kesseley could tolerate no more and veered into the interior of the park.

The wind had picked up and massive oak branches waved over the path. The breeze felt cool on his cheek, and he let out a long breath. Ahead of him, the Serpentine expanded. There were no people wanting something from him, staring at him, trying to draw his attention, only bickering ducks and swans gliding along the brown water.

“Did you see how those ladies looked at you?” Bucky said. “I just want to make one thing clear. You are my closest friend. Those years I didn’t send you a single letter, be sure I was thinking about you every day.”

“I like you, Bucky, but you’re not my closest friend.”

“Can I call you my friend if it helps me with the ladies? Do you even have a close friend?”

Kesseley looked at the water, the wind raising little ripples on the surface. He remembered how long ago, he and Henrietta, too young to be conscious of their bodies, had waded in the Ouse in the hot summer afternoons. Just their heads stuck out of the water, their hands held underneath, keeping each other from flowing away.

Bucky jabbed Kesseley with his elbow. “It’s your wife,” he said in a chastising shrill falsetto.

Lady Sara was not thirty feet away. He couldn’t escape. Lady Sara had already seen him.

Oh hell!

He braced for the collision. She was coming along the narrow path by the water, flanked by two friends. All in white, they looked like moving Greek columns. The wind blew Lady Sara’s gown around her becoming curves and lifted her pale blond curls. She looked as serenely beautiful as the lush surroundings.

“Good afternoon, Lord Kesseley,” she said, performing a demure curtsey. The small, beguiling smile that quivered on her lips looked too perfect to be spontaneous. She wore it like a lure. “You are much improved since I last saw you, not nearly so frightening. So I must deprive you of the opportunity of holding me in your arms.”

Her friends giggled in their hands, all but a rather cool, tall girl with creamy freckled skin and almond-shaped hazel eyes. She appeared confused by the whole interaction.

“Lady Sara swooned when I last visited her family, allowing me the opportunity to be gallant,” he explained. Really, Lady Sara was as relentless as her father. “Would you be so kind as to introduce me to your lovely friends?” he said rather severely, taking her to task for her lack of decorum.

The girls leaped forward for the introduction, except for the tall one. Kesseley learned she was the American cousin of Lady Sara’s friend.

Kesseley must have smiled too warmly, or displayed some small hint of favoritism to the sensible American, for Lady Sara said, “She is marrying a very handsome gentleman in Charleston this summer,” with that practiced innocent look of hers, as if she were unaware of any subtext in her words.