Lords of Desire (32 page)

“Send a tray to my room!” she called to the maid sweeping the parlor and rushed up the stairs to pull a new book from the pile.

She hadn’t known that James could—or would—take her from behind. She hadn’t known he would put his mouththere and make her shudder and cry. What else must there be? What more could they do together? Her sex felt warm and tight as she pondered the thought.

Waiting for her meal—and squirming a bit on her chair—Sarah flipped idly through the book, hoping to find some interesting pictures. Unfortunately, this author showed more interest in charts than drawings. She crinkled her nose in disappointment as she hid the book in her skirts at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Despite her brief hope that it might be James, it was only Betsy, the kitchen maid, lugging the heavy tray. Sarah had nibbled half a piece of buttered bread by the time the girl stopped pouring tea and puttering around. As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Sarah slipped the book onto the table.

Women in Marriage: A Treatise on the Peculiar Health of Wives and Mothers.

Peculiar.Well, that might be the word to describe her.

Sarah’s lips were just rising into a smile when she saw the author’s name.

Dr. C. Malcolm Whitcomb.

Her lungs froze, body reacting before her brain could generate a thought.Whitcomb.

Brow furrowed, she stared at the name imprinted into the cover in gold ink. The name was familiar, but why did it make her muscles tighten to the point of pain?

“Doctor Whitcomb,” she said aloud, and the words left a bright trail of recognition in their wake. The bread fell from her hand, landing on the carpet with aplop.

Her mother’s doctor. The very man who had treated her mother in the years before her death. He’d been an elegant man, polite and handsome, and very somberly concerned about his patient’s deterioration.

The anticipation with which Sarah had approached her reading vanished like paper tossed into a fire. In the space of one short day, she’d forgotten her original purpose in acquiring the books. It hadn’t been titillation or curiosity, but true fear that had driven her to that bookshop. That fear was back.

Tray of food forgotten, Sarah rose with the book in her hand and rushed to the door to lock it. This would be far more than idle reading. She curled into the large chair nearest the fireplace and opened the book.

She tried to read slowly, but the words rushed at her. Whitcomb seemed to believe that women’s natural modesty often protected them from their own inherent weaknesses.

Their sheltered lives provided protection and insulation from the realities of life. He theorized that the very delicacy that so attracted a man to clasp his wife to his bosom also left her susceptible to being traumatized by that attention.

A woman is not a sexual creature. The scabbard is designed only to embrace the sword, not to take action. The wife receives the husband’s attentions because she was made to do so, not because she is compelled by desire. But her delicate psyche, previously innocent of all idea of lust and copulation, can be damaged by this male assault. She cannot make sense of it. It holds no meaning for her. And so, if already predisposed to pitiful weakness, her brain may suffer peculiar maladies that lead to mental destruction.

Pitiful weakness? She hoped that wasn’t true, but the rest of it…The rest of it made her hands tremble. Marital relationshad been strange and startling to her, even frightening in the beginning. She certainly hadn’t been compelled by desire.

Sarah glanced at the bellpull, tempted to call for a glass of sherry to steel her nerves against the rest of it. But she was already putting on an odd show for the servants. They might be inclined to report to her husband if she began drinking wine in the middle of the afternoon.

After taking one long, deep breath, Sarah bent her head back to the book. She read quickly, emotionlessly. Pages and pages of information.

According to Doctor Whitcomb, there were several different manifestations of this mental damage. Paranoia. Hypochondria. Exhaustion. Painful spasms and rictus of the birth canal.

Despite the terrible nature of the afflictions, Sarah began to relax. She was fine. These diseases had nothing to do with her.

But she breathed a sigh of relief too soon.

Nymphomania,the chapter heading screamed in dark script.An ungovernable desire for sexual contact and congress .

Well. It was possible there was a hint of familiarity in that. Though she smiled at the thought, her amusement faded as her eyes crept over the page.

Nymphomania, sometimes known as erotomania, is the most insidious of all the feminine disorders. It begins with restlessness and creeping warmth. Insomnia.

Confusion. Then the building desire for physical stimulation which becomes a preoccupation with thoughts of marital relations.

“Oh, no,” Sarah breathed. “Oh, my Lord.” She pressed her fingertips to her lips, hard.

Nymphomania? Was that the strangeness that had been crawling under her skin for days?

Though marital relations may occasionally occur more often than once a week in a healthy relationship, a nymphomaniac may encourage sexual congress every night, perhaps even multiple times in the same twenty-four-hour period. Morning or midnight, it makes no difference to this pitiful creature. Her obsession has nothing to do with duty or even procreation, and her affliction endangers the husband’s health as well. Without the natural damper of expected wifely modesty, a man will succumb to his basest lusts. Her insatiable demands force him to engage in unnatural acts involving alternative stimulation of the genitals as he cannot otherwise satisfy her urges.

She dropped the book, threw it, almost, so that it bounced off the wall before landing back at her feet. Despite that she could see it lying on the rug, the feel of it lingered on her fingers. Sarah rubbed her hand against her skirts, desperate to remove the phantom stain.

Unnatural acts. Yes, she had done that, had tempted her husband into it. Not only that, but she had reached her climax three times in the space of a few short hours. Shewas insatiable. What had seemed so pleasurable now seemed fraught with danger.

What did it mean? If this was her illness, could it be cured? Would it worsen?

Heart pounding, she stared at the blue cover as if the cloth had suddenly begun to ripple with dark life. Her symptoms were laid out so clearly, so vividly. Whatever else she would read seemed certain to be just as true. The very reason she needed to read more, and yet her hand would not obey the order to reach down and grasp the book.

“Do not be so cowardly,” Sarah whispered to herself. But it seemed as if her marriage—

indeed her whole life—might hang in the balance, teetering on the delicate edge of one page in a book. “Coward,” she said again but still could not lean down. Instead, she leapt to her feet and began to pace.

There was no reason to think this particular physician was right where others were wrong. Hadn’t she just read a book asserting that women should feel pleasure and desire?

Indeed, that author claimed that female climax wasnecessary for conception and marital harmony. She’d stopped feeling ill about her desires after that. In fact, just moments ago she’d been happy.

Sarah scrubbed her hands over her face, hoping the pressure would rub away her confusion, but nothing changed. Nothing but the shifting view of the rug as she paced back and forth.

Yes, this doctor had treated her mother, and perhaps that lent his words a certain weight, but her mother hadn’t improved. She’d declined. Dr. Whitcomb was no demigod.

Sarah stopped and turned slowly toward the book. She stared it down.

She’d deceived James into this marriage. She owed him at least the courage to discover if her deception had been harmless…or horrendous.

CHAPTER 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 Loreleienjoyed 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.”