Whiskey Island (44 page)

At what price?

Bloomy had baked a sponge cake earlier in the afternoon. Lena had intended to top it with canned peaches and heavy cream, but she was trembling too badly now. She sprinkled it with powdered sugar instead, sliced it into ragged pieces and set the best of them on a dessert plate.

She had to take him the cake or lose her job. This she knew. But what else must she do? Keep him company as he ate it? Yield her body when he had finished? At what point did she say “enough” and accept the consequences of being sent away in disgrace? The loss of a generous income, Terence’s beloved education, the death of their dream to bring the Tierneys and her mother to Cleveland, even the hope of their family’s survival in Ireland. Their parents were old and infirm. Terence was crippled.

Was she young and healthy enough to bear anything, even this, in order to save them all? Would she burn in hell with James Simeon at her side? She prayed that she would be spared the choice, that Nani would appear in the next minute to save them both.

The bell jangled impatiently. She carried the plate into the dining room and set it in front of him. Then she stepped back. “Will that be all, sir?”

“Lena, the most curious thing just happened.”

She waited, afraid to respond.

“I caught sight of Nani. I’d dismissed her for the evening, but apparently she was on her way to the kitchen to have a cup of tea with you. And here I’d thought she’d be safe and snug in her parents’ home by now.”

Lena knew he must have dismissed Nani for the night once more, and this time the maid had been given no choice but to leave. Had she defied him, her job would have ended.

Nani’s intervention had been a small hope at best, but without it, Lena was like a watch whose spring has wound down, with no one on the horizon to wind it again.

“I’m sure you sent her on her way,” she said tonelessly.

“I did at that. She has far too few opportunities to be with her family. I’m surprised you tried to detain her.”

“May I go for the night, sir? Will there be anything else?”

“I don’t believe we’ve finished, you and I, Lena.”

She nodded. Then she turned and went back into the kitchen. There was little cleaning up to do, but she did it as she waited for him to join her. He took his time, not so much to give her a chance to leave, she thought, but to make her wait for what she knew would happen next.

When he finally stood in the doorway, he was smiling broadly. “Take your hair down, Lena. I’ve wanted to see the whole length of it since that day in December when my sleigh raced yours. I remembered you, you know, remembered and waited for you to reenter my life. I knew it was fate, and I was sure you remembered me, as well.”

She stared at him.

“Take it down.”

She had only that small rebellion left. “I’d rather not.”

“Then I’ll do it for you.”

She didn’t back away as he approached, although every nerve in her body screamed to run. “This is the way it’s to be, then, sir? Here in your kitchen with your cook? There are women who do this for a living. Any one of them would be better at this than I.”

He began to pull out the hairpins. “They are whores.”

“And what will I be after you’ve finished with me? If you mount me as your stallion mounts your mare, it won’t be by my free will. It will be because I must let you or lose everything.”

“You may call that whoring, my dear, but I call it business.”

He was upon her now, his liquored breath pouring over her face like Whiskey Island’s fetid wind.

She tried one last appeal to his honor. “Whatever pleasure you take tonight will be stolen from another man.”

He laughed. “I call that business, too. After all, he’s a man who no longer has need of what I steal from him.”

With a small cry, she closed her eyes and stood rigidly in place. She would give him nothing. The rest was up to the devil himself.

28

D
ays, even weeks passed, and things at the Simeon mansion were exactly as they’d once been. Then, when his wife went out for the evening, Simeon sent the other servants away on some pretext, and Lena was left alone to dread what would happen next.

Sometimes he waited for the end of supper, as he had that first time. Then he would find her in the kitchen, throw up her skirts and fling her against a table or even, once, the still-warm stove, forcing himself inside her as she endured him, tight lipped and rigid above his grunting body. He took particular pleasure in the way her body repelled his, as if this was one more assurance that he didn’t share Lena with her husband.

Sometimes he made her submit to him in the parlor, or even in his wife’s bedroom, despite the possibilities of discovery. He seemed to enjoy most taking her where humiliation was highest. She wondered, bitterly, if he was capable of savoring this act with a woman who did not silently resist or despise him.

She survived by closing her mind to what was happening. After the first time, he gave her the equivalent of a week’s wages, and she threw the money into the Cuyahoga before she went home to her husband. She told Terence she was ill and went immediately to bed, turning toward the wall when he joined her, although it scarcely mattered, since Terence hadn’t made love to her since the night before his accident.

The next time Simeon gave her money she kept it. She had earned every penny, but she couldn’t bear to add it to their tiny savings. How could she use money earned in sin to bring Terence’s family and her own mother from Ireland? She hid Simeon’s gifts in a jar in her kitchen, knowing that Terence would never think to look there. She added to it after that with sickening regularity.

To survive, she shut out the horrifying episodes of submission and planned for her future. Simeon would quickly tire of her and find another woman to molest. When he did, perhaps she might find another job without him slandering her name. Better yet, the money she was saving might serve as a way out of the kitchens of millionaires. She could rent a small space and start her own establishment. Nothing fine, but a place to serve good, simple food to good, simple people and earn a comfortable living. A place where she was in charge and no one had power over her.

It would be all she ever had of heaven.

May dawned warm and lovely, and with it Julia Simeon’s plans to leave for Europe. The household was in turmoil with packing and social events leading up to the journey. The Simeons planned a bon voyage garden party, and for the week before that day, Lena and Bloomy worked late into the nights preparing. Lena had hoped that the unaccustomed activity would keep Simeon from accosting her, but the challenge seemed to appeal to him.

On the night before Julia’s party, Lena found him waiting outside when she left by the kitchen door.

“Good evening, Lena. You’re looking tired. Have we been working you too hard, dear?”

Foolishly, her defenses were lowered. Her hand flew to her mouth to cover her cry of distress.

He smiled. “You never seem happy to see me. Yet I’ve been a good employer, haven’t I? I take excellent care of that husband of yours, although surely it’s more than anyone expects of me. I even pay you bonuses when extra services are required.”

She had learned that any show of spirit only excited him. She dropped her hand to her side. “I thought I was finished for the night. It’s growing very late.”

“Not quite done, dear. Shall we go for a bit of a stroll? You can show me what preparations you and Bloomy have made for tomorrow.”

The gardens were extensive and forbidding. She trailed him through long corridors of geometrically shorn evergreens and boxwood. A portion of the original dense forest remained, huge trees that menaced more than shaded the surrounding area. Now, as darkness deepened, she felt immersed in a fairy tale, on a trip through the haunted woods to the witch’s cottage.

He waited for her to catch up. “What shall I do without my dear wife?”

“Exactly what you’ve done while she was in residence.”

He laughed. “You have a quick mind, Lena. It was one of the things I first noticed about you. Proud and spirited and beautiful. A Thoroughbred, despite your humble place in life.”

“Would you take me right here, Mr. Simeon, where your own wife will be saying her goodbyes tomorrow?”

“Lena, if I can take you in her very own bed, what makes you think a sentimental attachment to grass and trees will stop me?”

She stopped, exhaustion and despair dampening her response. For the first time, all the fight went out of her. “Then let’s be done with it. I’ll pull up my skirts so you can rut like a forest animal right here in your very own garden. Or I’ll strip off my clothes and you can throw me to the ground and take your pleasure in comfort. It’s no matter to me. My soul is damned by what you’ve made me do. So have at me and let’s be finished for the night.”

He seemed surprised. “Are you giving up, Lena?”

“You’ve won. I care nothing about this anymore. It’s one more job I do for you.”

He slapped her cheek, and her head snapped to the side. She raised a hand to cover her stinging flesh. But she didn’t say a word.

“Undress!”

She did, as if she were casually undressing for bed and no one was there to watch her. She folded her clothes as if she had all the time in the world. She didn’t avoid his eyes; she looked straight through him.

He unfastened his trousers and let them pool at his knees. “Get on your back.”

She sighed and lowered herself to the ground, stretching out and staring up at the stars.

He covered her, and she waited. She felt his hand on her breast, tugging, kneading painfully, pinching at last in hopes of coaxing a moan from her.

She didn’t moan. She counted stars and thought about all the nights she and Terry had made love. The act was not the same. This was a perversion of it, a sacrifice. She could endure both this and the flames of hell to bring those she loved to safety.

“Bitch!” He slapped her again.

Surprised, she closed her eyes and the stars remained. She felt him trying to enter her, but he was soft and unable to gain access. She found this oddly humorous, since every other time he’d taken her he had been like a schoolboy with his first whore. Laughter gurgled in her throat.

He unleashed a string of terrible curses and slapped her again; then his hands wrapped around her throat and his thumbs began to press steadily into the hollow.

She gasped for air, and her eyes flew open. She bucked wildly and scratched at him, trying to make him release her, but he only pressed harder. She looked into his eyes and saw triumph, and as the night began to fade, she finally felt him stiffen against her.

She awoke alone, with sweet air filling her lungs, but her throat burning and swollen. Dizzily, she sat up just in time to see his fully clad figure disappear around a hedgerow. Coins, many more than usual, glistened on the grass at her feet.

She touched her throat solemnly and knew that, at last, she had found Simeon’s weak spot.

And next time, she might die if she made use of it.

Terence had not made love to his wife for months, yet he wanted to more than he wanted to breathe or eat or even walk without a cane. At first, in the depths of despair, he had not considered the possibility. Every movement caused pain, every touch spread fire to his limbs. He had known just how deformed and ugly he was, and fury had taken the place of desire.

But once healing had begun, once exercise and determination eased the pain in his leg and provoked the slightest rippling response in his arm, desire had returned. And once the floodgates had been opened, he had thought of little except holding Lena again.

He was not the man she had married, and he never would be. His cheek was permanently scarred, his leg still twisted, his arm nearly useless. Yet Lena didn’t seem to find him ugly. When she helped him bathe, she lingered tenderly over his injuries, exclaiming at how much stronger he was growing, how much straighter his leg seemed since he’d taken to using it frequently.

He thought she looked for excuses to touch him. At night, as he lay awake wanting her, she snuggled against him in her sleep, as if the thought of him was not abhorrent. Once he had turned and carefully laid his arm across her breasts, and she had sighed and slept more deeply.

He had never been afraid to approach her, not even on their wedding night. She had always given herself willingly and with enthusiasm. Now he was afraid it would be different. He was afraid that his newly budding confidence would be destroyed if she turned him away.

And what if she didn’t turn him away, but the accident had affected his ability to love her? Desire had disappeared for so long that he wondered if this part of him, too, had been forever injured. Now the desire had returned, but had the skill?

Although he sometimes questioned her when she came home in the evenings, Lena rarely spoke about her work at the Simeon mansion. He knew that she was working late this week in preparation for tomorrow’s party for Mrs. Simeon. He was growing more adept in the kitchen, and he had tried to help by having supper preparations finished each night when she returned.

As he waited for her to come home this night, he wondered what she would say if he took her to bed after supper instead of reading to her. Rowan had already come and gone and wouldn’t return until late. She would be tired and might welcome an early bedtime.

But would she welcome what came with it?

He was pondering this when he heard her footsteps on the walk. Even the shuffling sound of them proclaimed her exhaustion. He vowed to work even harder at his studies so that soon he could take a job in the office of Simeon Iron and Steel and relieve her of hers.

The door opened, and she stood on the threshold. She looked straight through him, as if he wasn’t there. “Lena?” He moved toward her.

She stepped backward; then her eyes focused on his. Hers were red, as if she had been crying.

“Lena, what’s wrong?”

She shook her head, but she didn’t move into the room.

He stared at her and saw what she had tried to conceal by pulling her cloak tightly around her. He hobbled forward and pulled the cloak away. Her throat was ringed with bruises.