Cry for Passion (29 page)

Rose did a quick calculation.

But it should have, she realized.

Her mother had been thirty when she had given birth to Rose’s youngest brother. Three years younger than Rose was now.

“I didn’t know”—Rose swallowed embarrassment, and did not know if it stemmed from her past ignorance or from the present realization that her mother gave every indication of enjoying sexual relations and might even now be tender and swollen, as was Rose—“you and father employed contraceptives.”

“Your father would have died of an apoplectic fit had I told you. He still would.” The amusement infusing the older woman’s voice died. “These are different times, Rose. I won’t pretend to understand what you’re going through . . . nor can I say that I wholeheartedly approve of your actions . . . but I do admire your strength. You were always the bravest of my children.”

Rose stared through rain-streaked glass. “You called me a ‘little mother.’ ”

“You were a little mother to the boys.”

The riveting drops of water grew faces.

Jonathon. Jack.

“I will never have children, Mother.” The Dutch cap squeezed her cervix. “By choice.”

“I had no choice in the matter, Rose.” There was no condemnation inside her mother’s voice. “I don’t know what I would have done had I been given one. I trust you to make the correct decision for your happiness.”

The faces of her husband and her lover blurred. “Are you trying to make me cry, Mother?”

“Absolutely not.” The denial was unsteady. “It is my sole intention today to cosset you and spend your father’s money.”

v

Rose had been shopping at Whiteley’s Department Store many times. Never had she enjoyed it more than walking arm in arm with her mother.

“This china pattern is very pretty, Rose.”

“Please, Mother: no roses.”

“The bird of paradise, then . . .

“Look, Rose: This shade of blue matches the bird of paradise; it would be lovely on your dining room walls.”

“Yes, it would. And the crimson paint for the drawing room . . .”

“. . . Rose, what are you looking at?”

A naked woman carved in white marble held a bearded head in one hand and a pan flute in the other.

“She killed him,” Rose said, eyes filling with explicable tears. “She killed Bacchus.”

The god of wine and ecstacy.

“Rightfully so.” Susan drew Rose away. “Look at those wicked ears. Oh, now, this Oriental vase would be lovely on your mantel. . . .”

The rain had not ceased during their shopping.

Rose hailed a cab. Conversely, she wanted to wave away the hansom that stopped and wait for a Clarence.

“Mother, why don’t you take this cab”—rain streamed down her neck—“and I’ll hail another. There’s no need for you to see me home.”

“Nonsense.” Susan stepped up the stair and into the dark cavity of the hansom. Reluctantly, Rose followed. “Of course I need to see you home.”

Memories of Jack lurked inside the cramped, dark corners: There she glimpsed an oblong shadow, the wrapped dildo with which she had penetrated herself. There was the outline of two hands, his naked fingers lacing her naked fingers.

Rose made the transformation from cosseted daughter to sexual woman.

Whiteley’s would be delivering everything from china to linen. Contractors would paint on Wednesday.

“Please let me reimburse you for the purchases.” The Oriental vase—protectively wrapped in brown paper—weighted Rose’s lap. With difficulty she folded her umbrella, wire ribs locking with wire ribs. Water sprayed her face. “Father will have an apoplectic fit.”

“Your father”—calmly Susan untangled the two umbrellas, feminine hip pressing into Rose’s hip, lilac scent infusing the gloom—“will thank me, when he comes to his senses.” Without skipping a heartbeat, she asked, “Do I know him?”

Jack.

“No.”

Rose did not lie.

Her parents would no doubt recognize his name from the papers, but they did not move in the same circles in which Jack moved.

Neither did Rose.

Nor could she ever, a lover instead of a wife.

“Would I like him?” Susan probed.

The housekeeper thought he was a tartar. Dr. Burns had called him a bastard.

Please reverberated over the drumming rain and the watery grind of wheels.

“I don’t know,” Rose said truthfully.

Rose knew from personal experience that Jack could be both a tartar and a bastard.

“Do you like him?”

“Yes.” The carriage wheels ate up the road. “I like him very much.”

“Does he love you, Rose?” crowded the gloom.

She had held Jack’s testicles while he slept: She was now filled with his sperm.

“Like Jonathon loves me?” Rose asked, bittersweet emotion tinging her voice.

“Does Jonathon love you?”

Always Rose would remember Jonathon with smiling eyes framed by a blue sky.

“I believe so,” Rose said.

Sadness filled her mother’s voice. “You love him still.”

“Yes.”

The hip pressing Rose shifted. “I will tell your father. . . .”

Rose turned her head and studied the eyes that were ageless in the shadowy light. “What will you tell him, Mother?”

How could she possibly justify to her father why Rose committed adultery?

“I will tell him,” Susan said on a deep breath, “you have met a man who has given us back our daughter.”

But Rose was not the same woman who had married Jonathon.

The cab halted too soon.

“I have to let you go,” Susan said regretfully.

“Yes,” Rose said. She had a house waiting to be transformed into a home. “Will you and Father come visit”—would Jack be interested in meeting her parents?—“me?”

“Certainly,” Susan said dryly. “He can see for himself what his stubbornness cost.”

Smiling, Rose unfurled her umbrella and reached for the cab door. “Thank you, Mother.”

“I was wrong, Rose,” halted her.

Water pummeled the umbrella. “About what?”

“You did the right thing when you testified.” Rose stared at the bulleting rain. “In the end, that is what matters: That you do the right thing. Regardless of the consequences.”

Rose exited the cab and slammed shut the door.

Big Ben sounded over the drumming rain: It was four o’clock. Jack would be taking his seat in the House of Commons.

The hansom lurched forward, horse hooves a muffled clop.

Rose juggled the vase and the umbrella. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a cab door open.

There was no reason for her heart to start hammering: She hurried down the pavement.

“Rose,” stopped her at the foot of her stoop.

She threw her head back at the pain that knifed through her chest.

It had been so long since he had spoken her name.

Slowly she lowered her head, opened her eyes and turned around.

Rain hammered her umbrella . . . the pavement . . . the man’s umbrella.

“Jonathon,” Rose quietly acknowledged.

Chapter 31

Jack knew Rose did not wait for him the moment he stepped outside St. Stephen’s Hall.

Black sheets of rain battered the flickering streetlamp.

Emotion surged through him.

Fear. Rage.

Not again.

A hansom cab waited in the circle, horse stoically enduring the cold and wet: The cabby huddled underneath an umbrella.

Steps muffled—rain pounding his umbrella like fists—Jack closed on the cab and stepped up onto the platform.

“ ’Ere now.” The cabby alertly came to life. “What d’ye think ye’re—”

Jack jerked open the door.

A pale orb dominated by two fathomless eyes stared up at him.

Rose’s housekeeper. Not Rose.

Rain slashed Jack’s exposed neck. “Where is she?”

“She didn’ come home.”

The cab shuddered underneath his feet.

“Whoa, there!” the cabby shouted, voice wetly ringing over a roll of thunder. “I say whoa, damn ye!”

“Where did she go?” Jack asked, voice distant.

“She went shoppin’ wi’ her mum.” The housemaid’s voice sounded as distant as did Jack’s. And then, as if he did not know the woman’s name, she added: “Mrs. Davis.”

“What time did she leave?”

“Around eleven, Cook said.”

Jack had been in court for an arraignment. But Rose had known that.

I have always known Rose would take a lover, rumbled on a roll of thunder. Just as I have always known it is I to whom she will return.

“What time did she say she’d be back?” Jack asked tonelessly.

“She said furniture’d be comin’ in the afternoon,” the housekeeper said. Hard, cold rain punctuated each syllable. “She said she’d be back before it was delivered.”

“What time was it delivered?”

“Thirty minutes after four.”

A quarter chime rang out: It was fifteen minutes past eight.

Rose had said the housekeeper had her own family to take care of.

Water crawled down his collar. “Why are you here, Mrs. Dobkins?”

“I be a woman of my word, Mr. Lodoun: I said we wouldn’ let no one take Mrs. Clarring.”

“What makes you think someone took her?”

“Cause I saw ’em do it.”

Lightning split the sky, turning pale skin and dark eyeholes into a guilty woman.

Jack wanted to shout. Jack wanted to weep.

Instead he harshly asked: “Who took her?”

“Git in the cab, Mr. Lodoun, an’ I’ll tell ye.” A piercing clap of thunder vanquished the lightning, leaving behind a pale shadow that suddenly sounded old and tired. “Ye ain’t gonna do ’er no good by standin’ in the rain an’ catchin’ yer death.”

Jack had heard that tone of recalcitrance in both men and women who had witnessed violence: The housekeeper would not talk until she regained a semblance of control.

Bending—simultaneously folding his umbrella—Jack stiffly stepped into the cab.

The close air smelled of damp wool and unfamiliar woman.

Slamming shut the door, Jack said: “Tell me what you saw.”

A wool-padded shoulder dug into his arm: Simultaneously words tumbled into the night.

Jack didn’t want to see the housekeeper’s words: Vivid images slashed through his mind.

Rose. Jonathon Clarring.

Two strange men.

“The first man must’ve called out t’ ’er, ’cause she stopped in front of the stoop.”

Jonathon Clarring would have called her name, Jack grimly thought. That’s all it would have taken to get her attention: for him to simply acknowledge her.

“She stood there fer long seconds,” the housekeeper said over the relentless drum of water, “wi’ the rain comin’ down, an’ then she turned. The other two men ’ad split up, one goin’ left, the other right. When Mrs. Clarring turned t’ face the first man, they sneaked up in the rain.”

The sun had been shining, Jack remembered, when Cynthia had died.

A brisk October rendezvous.

Had she seen the cab before it struck her? he wondered.

“I didn’t know ’ow t’ contact ye, so I waited,” the housekeeper said. “And then a cabby came t’ the door an’ said ’e was t’ pick up Mrs. Clarring. So I told the cabby I was ’er an’ came in ’er place. ’Oping it would be ye. Or someone else who could help ’er.”

Because the police couldn’t.

But neither could Jack.

“Go home, Mrs. Dobkins.”

Another time, another woman flooded his mind: Go home, Mrs. Clarring, Jack had told Rose outside the courthouse.

But she had not listened.

Jack wondered if she now regretted her decision.

“It be my fault.” The pale eyes gleaming in the darkness winked out of view. The shoulder crowding Jack hunched, arm circling, hand digging. “Mrs. Brown an’ Mrs. Finley don’ deserve t’ be discharged. They work ’ard. It would be a ’ardship fer ’em t’ lose this position.”

You are not responsible for the death of Cynthia Whitcox, Rose had adjured.

“How long did you stand watching?” Jack asked hollowly.

“It ’appened so quickly.” The arm and shoulder chafing his arm stilled. “A minute, mayhap.”

“You’re not at fault,” Jack said.

But words did not absolve guilt.

“Go home, Mrs. Dobkins,” he repeated, reaching into his pocket. He pressed a half crown into the housekeeper’s gloved fingers, hand smaller than Rose’s hand. “Mrs. Clarring would want you to take care of her home.”

And so did Jack.

“Will she be all right?” the housekeeper gruffly enquired.

“I don’t know,” Jack said flatly.

“Are ye all right?”

Jack pushed open the door and exited the hansom.

One goal drove him forward in the numbing rain.

“Where ye be goin’, mister?”

What are we going to do, Jack?

Jack gave the cabby the address he had requested.

Tears slithered down the windows, danced in passing street-lamps.

Do you cry for her?

Would Jack cry for Rose?

Long seconds passed before Jack realized the cab was no longer moving.

No light illuminated the ground floor. A window on the second floor shone like a beacon.

Through the glass and the rain, a dark silhouette blocked the flickering light.

Heart skipping a beat, Jack stepped out of the cab. “Stay.”

“It’s rainin’ like piss,” the cabby protested. “I ain’t waitin’ in this bloody weather fer God ’imself.”

God would not pay in sterling silver.

“I’ll give you a night’s fare,” Jack bit back.

He did not wait for the cabby to accede; he stepped off the platform into a river of racing water.

A pale, oval face in the upstairs window peered down at him.

Every muscle inside his body clenched in recognition.

Jack was suddenly, painfully alive, cold and rain scouring his skin.

A gas lantern feebly lit the front door.

Jack pounded on wood, water sluicing down his hand and underneath his cuff.

No one answered.

The woman in the window spurred him on.

“Open this bloody door!” Jack suddenly shouted. He could not be this close to Rose and lose her. “Goddamn you, Clarring! I know you’re in there! Open this bloody fucking door!”

But Jack could not force open the door.

And the law would not force Jonathon Clarring to relinquish his wife.