Rakes and Radishes (16 page)

Henrietta reached out for him. “Kesseley—”

He jerked away from her, her hand falling in the dead air. “Enough. I don’t want to hear anymore.” He turned on his heel, heading back to his chamber to lock these people out.

But Henrietta followed him up to the landing.

“Leave me alone,” he growled.

“Listen to me!”

“No.”

“Let me speak!”

“No.”

“We left the p—”

He spun around. “Don’t you ever do a damn thing I ask you?” He bellowed so loud, he heard his own echo through the house.

She halted on the last stair, biting down on the edge of her lips. But, as usual, she didn’t know when to stop. She followed him into the hallway, managing to capture his elbow.

“Listen!” she said.

Her touch felt like the burn of steel scraping across flint. Large black spots blurred his vision. Grabbing the wrist of her outreached arm, he bent it into his chest, backing her into the wall and pinning her there. The candle fell from her other hand and clanked on the floor. He snuffed it with his slipper.

Her uneven breath felt warm on his neck. He could feel her body rise against his. That familiar desire swelled in his sex and he chuckled, low and deep. Tangling his fingers in her curls, he tilted her head up to meet his face. He pressed himself against her, feeling her soft breasts flatten on his chest, her belly against his groin. Then lowering his head, he tasted that silky skin under her lobe. The scent of cinnamon, brandy and the smallest whiff of lavender perfume made him dizzy and intoxicated and wild.

His lips brushed her skin. “Say, ‘I love you, Edward,’” he whispered.

She didn’t. She just stood so still, she didn’t even breathe.

“Say, ‘Kesseley, you could be handsome if you tried.’”

His lips nibbled downward, to the shallow indentation where her collarbone met her neck. He could feel the swell of her breasts. They were so close and so supple. He sunk his lips into the soft mounds.

“No,” she whispered, putting her hand over his mouth.

He rose up, laughing. “Now there’s the Henrietta I know. Go ahead, scream at me, slap me, tell me how you thought I was your friend.”

Her lips opened, and she drew her hand back in a half-hearted attempt to follow his orders.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

Her hand met his cheek with the force of an unsure caress. “You disappoint me, Henrietta. You—”

Henrietta rose to her toes and put her lips on his. She could just reach his lower lip, but she held on, leaning into him. Pressing her contours into his body, like a small animal trying to burrow itself into the dark earth. No urgency, no crushing desire, but something tender, tentative and gentle. She tasted him, explored his lips. Her light touch tickled his skin, and he couldn’t contain his urge to kiss her deeper, more thoroughly.

His fingers slid down her small neck, brushing her collarbone, over her breasts to her waist. He hugged her tightly, pulling her up, pressing down on her mouth. She surrendered easily, letting him inside.

He gently showed her how to explore him with her tongue.
Like this and this…

She followed his lead, her arms tightening around his neck.

A warm tear rolled into his mouth—she was crying. Kesseley’s heart melted. Every flimsy wall he’d built between them in the last days came crashing down.

“Tell me you love me,” he whispered, then kissed her chin, her jaw, her neck. “Tell me you feel something.”

***

Henrietta froze. The truth sang inside her. She shook her head, resisting it.

I love Kesseley? It can’t be!

She yanked herself free, stumbling backward against the wall. The world swirled about her. Kesseley, all along it was Kesseley. The country bumpkin who never wanted to leave his small village, his fields, his livestock. Who probably never once opened a book of poetry or dreamed about moonlight reflected on the gentle waves of the Seine. Who thought the paintings of chickens and dogs in his parlor were masterpieces.

This can’t be right!

But her body, separated from his, ached with cold and longing, where a moment before she had been warm, full…

Complete.

He reached for her, ran his thumb reassuringly over her knuckles. “Come,” he whispered.

“No! No, I c-can’t!”

“Hush, come back to me.”

“No.” She kept her back to the wall. Edward’s handsome face flashed through her mind. He was the man she had wanted, or had until this morning. Or perhaps never had. She didn’t know anymore. She didn’t know anything. She needed time to think.

Yet her body surged recklessly on. Her most feminine part throbbed with some wanton desire to feel him inside her.

“But you weren’t the one I wanted!” she cried.

Oh God, did I say that aloud?

The hallway became heavy and chilly, as if the frigid waters of the North Atlantic flowed between them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching into the darkness, “I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t say anything else,” Kesseley warned, his deep voice harder and colder than she had ever imagined it could be. “I’ve had enough. I want you to stay the hell away from me.”

Even through the blur of emotions and thoughts whirling inside her, she knew she didn’t want this.

“No! I—”

The slam of his door reverberated like a gunshot.

It seemed like her body stopped working. She wasn’t sure how she got back to her chamber. But once inside, her legs gave way and she fell on the floor. What had she done?

Go back to him,
that little voice pleaded.
Go back and let him take you to his heart. Go, before everything is lost.

In those seconds, Henrietta knew forever waited in balance. It was all so fast that she couldn’t think.

Was this it? Was this love? This terrifying feeling engulfing her? Surely not.

Could she be happy in Wrenthorpe? Discussing crops and parasites, having the parson for dinner, those countless stained green coats of Kesseley’s, waiting upon the mail like some rescue boat from the world. Everything so familiar it wore like a rut in her heart. No mystery, no wonder.

Except one.

What waited in Kesseley’s arms in that large mahogany bed? She could almost feel his weight upon her, like a blanket smothering out everything but the feel of his lips running under her jaw, his strong rough hands gentle upon her. Could this be enough to keep her at Wrenthorpe, not make her gaze at the stars wondering how she could be content with so little when the world was so large?

But what was the world? London? It only disappointed her. Was there only more disappointment out there? Where was the world? Seven continents and seven seas or his lips caressing hers?

The philosopher and lover fought mercilessly for hours, until sleep finally came, hushing the thoughts racing through her mind and laying a soothing hand upon her sore, embattled heart.

Kesseley slammed the door behind him. He sank into his desk chair and hung his head in his hands.

Before him was his ledger of estate business and miscellaneous correspondences, all neat nice rectangles, precisely folded paper, pens lined in the inkwell.

In a smooth motion, he shoved it all into the air. Papers and books fell like flapping bird wings. The notes she had written him, the cutouts of hats and cravats, her scrawl mingling with his neat hand and straight columns. One by one, he gathered them and threw them on the coals, watching them burn. When smoke began to fill the room, he just opened the windows and kept going, crazy to eradicate every evidence of her from his room, from his life. The last item, the cloth-bound diary she had given him to tell her about London and his future wife. For a moment, he considered keeping it, indeed writing all the details of his wife and giving it to Henrietta as a mean and spiteful gift. But he tossed it too. He just couldn’t care anymore.

All that was left was his, scattered about the floor. He moved the papers with his foot until he uncovered Volume III of
The Mysterious Lord Blackraven.
He picked it up and returned to his desk to read. He had only a few pages until the end and a whole night to fill, desperate to keep his mind from wandering back into the hall, reliving the scene over and over. When he had finished, he began again at the beginning. Reading word for word, focusing so hard his eyes hurt.

At some time during the night, Kesseley must have fallen asleep at his desk, for Baggot awoke him at some merciless morning hour holding his stained, limp clothes on his arm. Kesseley rubbed his face. A slanting indentation ran across his forehead where he had rested on the book’s edge. He had fallen asleep on page one hundred and sixty-seven.

Baggot, being rather unsteady in his older age, looked at the papers and ledgers strewn about the floor and walked over them.

“Now look, a nice yeller jacket,” he said, holding up a green coat.

Kesseley shot up, unable to bear one more second of this charade. “For God sakes, man, it’s green! Green! Not yellow!”

“That coat’s as yeller—”

“—as the day you were born, yes, I know,” Kesseley finished. “I’ve had enough. My new valet is arriving today with my new clothes. You will make him feel welcome.”

Baggot’s big trembling lip started to droop down, getting ready for a good, guilt-inflicting pout.

But Kesseley had no more patience. “Do as I say or find employment elsewhere.”

***

Henrietta stayed in her chamber long after she had dressed, sitting on the carpet, wrapped in a shawl in front of the coals, warming her feet. Her heart felt battered. She couldn’t see Kesseley just yet. Everything was too raw and sore. She needed to think, calm herself, return to rational thought.

She heard his door close and the echo of his gait coming down the hall. She stopped breathing. Would he stop? Would he knock at her door? Would he ask her to talk?

Please don’t! Please don’t!

He walked past her chamber without even a pause or hesitation, continuing down the stairs. Instead of the expected relief, her heart ached more, like it could burst forth and fly to him like a homing bird. She rushed to the door, but then stopped and sank her teeth into the edge of her thumb.

Let him go.

She slid down the door, crouching on the floor and resting her head on her knees. The front door closed. She felt cold.

Eventually, she picked up herself and cautiously made her way downstairs to see about Lady Kesseley.

It was a terrible error. Kesseley sat at his mother’s desk in the parlor.

He did not look up or acknowledge her, but Lady Kesseley rushed to Henrietta, taking her hands and clutching them, as if Henrietta were coming to rescue her. She looked so much older in the morning light. Severe lines cut circles under her reddened eyes and along her mouth.

Kesseley wielded a letter opener, slicing the envelopes in one fast motion, his gray eyes scanning the contents.

Lady Kesseley made a plea to Henrietta. “Kesseley says we must go to a ball tonight. But I am unwell.” Was she trying to find an ally? Did she think Henrietta would stand up for her?

Kesseley answered before she could speak. “I’m sorry if respectability sickens you, Mother, but you are going and staying in the ballroom the entire evening. You will chat with the other mamas, then thank the host and hostess for a wonderful ball.”

He delivered this speech calmly, while penning a reply. A gold and diamond ring glinted from his long white fingers.

“Kesseley! You’re wearing a new ring!” She didn’t realize she had spoken the inane words until they were already out of her mouth.

He glanced up, the morning light reflected in his eyes. Heat rushed over her.

“Yes, my father’s,” he said, then returned to his work.

She wanted him to look at her again and never turn away.

Oh dear God, she was in love—truly in love—with Kesseley!

***

The sky was one heavy, gray cloud ready to open up and unleash on the city. The footman looked at Henrietta questioningly as they ventured out to the park. Drizzle stuck to their clothes and hats. Even Samuel seemed hesitant, never straying too far from Henrietta.

The park was empty and the large trees lining the paths swayed and rustled in the wind. Old leaves and trash blew around them.

Oh please be here!
Henrietta pleaded silently.
Please be here. I need you.

Coming deeper into the park, she saw a lone man by an easel, his hands flying, lashing a tempest of color on to the canvas. She let the footman walk Samuel to the edge of the Serpentine, then came to stand beside Mr. Elliot and his painting of a swirling incoherent mess of gray, black and blue.

“You captured it,” she whispered.

“You shouldn’t be out here today. You might catch a chill.” He wiped his hands on a rag and walked over to his bench, taking a long sip of steaming chocolate. “Go home.” He waved his hand as if shooing chickens away.

“But I love Kesseley!” she cried. “And I’m frightened!”

He looked up at the sky. The tops of the waving trees disappeared into the clouds. “Real love is terrifying, my dear.” Some private thought held him for a moment, but he shook it off and began to root about in his satchel. “Dates?” he said, holding out a branch of big, wrinkled dates.

Henrietta refused. “You are supposed to say something wise about how I don’t really love him. That it’s a delusion, like—like with Edward.”

“Oh, no, you were always in love with Kesseley.”

Henrietta flung up her arms and let out a small cry. “Then why didn’t you say so!”

“I didn’t know before. But it’s obvious now.”

“No, it can’t be possible to be in love with someone your entire life and never know it! My parents are mathematicians, for goodness sake. I am very intelligent. I would know.”

Mr. Elliot thought this was quite funny. He patted the bench beside him, inviting her to sit.

“Let’s say you’re a young tree and you grow beside another tree in a big field. Maybe it’s a bigger tree that protects you from the wind or a smaller tree growing too close to you. Either way, years and years go by, just you and the other tree, so close your branches reach into the others and sometimes you can’t tell which leaves are yours. Now if we were those trees, we might say that other tree gets on my nerves, taking my space, stealing my light. But you’re just a tree, and that’s the way it’s always been. Then one night a storm blows the other tree down, taking down your limbs and ripping up your roots. Now you slump over the dead tree, trying to grow back the half of you that died with it.”

Henrietta waved her hand, shaking her head. “My brain is too tired for metaphors. What are you trying to say?”

“Usually love bursts into two people’s lives, a big wave, wiping away everything that came before. But for some people, they were always together even before they even knew each other. It’s hardly perceptible until a hard wind blows, but no matter what happens in their lives, even if they marry different people, leave or even die, half of them is still with the other.”

Henrietta dropped her head into her hands, pressing her temples. “And you think this could be the case? And Kesseley will marry someone else, and I will die carrying this in my heart?”

“It is possible, yes. I cannot give you happy endings.”

These weren’t the words she expected to hear. It was supposed to be like
The Mysterious Lord Blackraven
: when the light is the dimmest, the hero rescues the heroine and all that happened before—the bitter words, hatred and misunderstandings—washes away. Now, everything was suddenly so big and inconceivable that she couldn’t hold it.

Mr. Elliot looked up at the threatening sky, the wind beating his wild hair about under his hat. “Have you told Lady Kesseley about me?”

“Oh Lady Kesseley! Speaking of unhappy endings—” Henrietta stopped herself before she blathered out the whole sordid evening.

Mr. Elliot’s eyes pierced hers. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you told her about me?” he asked again, more plaintive than before.

“Good Lord, no!”

The man took another date, smashed it between his fingers and pulled out the pit. “Miss Watson, there is something you need to do,” he said without looking at her.

“What?”

He ran his thumb along the hollow insides of his date. “You have to tell Lord Kesseley you love him. I don’t know if your love or your life will be as you want it. But you must tell him you love him. This is the most important thing.”

“He hates me now. I hurt him so much. I’ve done nothing but hurt him. He is so angry.”

“Anger is a hard thing. It could take years or a lifetime to burn out. Still you must tell him, for your sake. Else the regret will destroy you.”

She didn’t like his words. They seemed so resigned. “Regret? Is there nothing I can do to make everything right, nothing at all?”

He gazed at her, that wise look gone from his face. Suddenly, his eyes were as lost and yearning as hers. “Are there enough words for all the years you hurt someone else? For all the pain and suffering you inflicted?”

Her throat tightened, tears swelling under her lids. “Is this all the advice you have? This, this is hopeless.”

“So we are back.”

“Back to what?”

“This day. This river. All we really ever have.”

“It’s not enough! I must make this better. I must make him love me again.”

“Miss Watson, for all your striving, all your schemes, what have you gained?”

She refused to say anything. She refused to admit she had lost more than she gained. That she was powerless. She couldn’t.

***

The sky couldn’t wait one more block for Henrietta to get home before letting go of all its rain. Drenched, she hurried to her chamber, tore off her wet bonnet, pelisse and shoes. Then she dove under the blankets and curled into a tiny ball, trying to warm her chilled body. Noise penetrated her little cocoon—the sharp cries of people on the street hurrying in the rain, the rattle of traffic, the closing of mews doors. She wrapped her pillow around her head until she could hear just the sound of her breath moving in and out of her body.

She loved Kesseley. She had always loved Kesseley. Why did the realization strike her with the same fear as a physician telling of her impending death?

You must tell him you love him. That is the most important thing.

Why?

Would she end up like Lady Kesseley, desperate to recall the feeling of being loved and wanted, concealing her indiscretions in vacant rooms at parties?

Henrietta hugged her knees.

She imagined herself back home on those flat, tilled fields of Norfolk stretching to the horizon. If she left Rose House and walked down the rows of wheat, some of Kesseley’s old barns would rise up, with Wrenthorpe even farther in the distance. Inside the barns, heavy iron tools were mounted on the walls. Pigs sniffed in between the wooden slats. Horses stomped the ground, swishing their tails, picking up straw with their lips. The dairy cows stood patient, their large udders drooping as they waited to be milked.

This was Kesseley’s world. Could it be hers?

She rolled over and imagined herself out in the lawn behind Wrenthorpe, her belly swelling in the family way, a matronly lace cap on her head. Kesseley would crouch on his boot heels holding his hands out, ready to catch their daughter as she took her first, tentative steps. Their daughter. He always said he wanted girls. Their children would adore their father, for he would set them on his big shoulders and take them around the farm, as wild and unkempt as himself, then let them climb the hay stacks or ride the goats.

A small smile lifted her face and radiated through her body, like the sun warming her skin in the summer when lines of corn-filled wagons left the village for the ports.

They would marry in the late spring, while Virgo and Hydra still lit the night sky, at the altar of the stone village church where her mother’s grave lay just beyond the stained glass. A wreath of red poppies on the grave and crowning her veil. Kesseley would stand before her in his black breeches and coat, all worn and crumpled, somehow endearing him even more to her. His wild locks would fall about his lovely gray eyes, twinkling like sunlight striking quartz. The old vicar would ramble on and on in his usual way and several of the village men would fall asleep.

Hours after the “I do,” Kesseley—no, Thomas, as she would call her husband in his chamber—would lay her upon his bed, letting his hand linger on her cheek, promising to be gentle to his new bride, but then kissing her like last night—unbridled, almost obscene and thoroughly intoxicating. Good Lord, they might never leave his chamber for the entirety of their married lives!

Yes, she must tell him she loved him and plead for him to forgive her. She knew now. It was so very clear. Surely he would see it too and forgive her for everything. She would tell him before the ball tonight, wearing a beautiful evening gown, flowers in her hair and her mother’s pendant around her neck. Later at the ball, they would laugh and dance, their beautiful secret glowing in their eyes.