Forever and Ever (14 page)

Some time or other, he’d taken off his waistcoat. Now he stood up and took off his pants. She watched him, mesmerized, thinking that if she hadn’t known him, known how gentle he could be, his big, powerful, utterly male body would have frightened her. It unnerved her more than a little as it was, but her trepidation was wedded so perfectly with sexual anticipation, she liked it. Thrilled to it.

She sat up to shrug out of her night robe. Jack’s scorching gaze made her skin burn everywhere. She held out her hand and he took it, and put his knee on the side of the chaise. She started to move over, make room for him beside her, but he smiled, and lowered himself, and lay on top of her. “Ohh,” she breathed, so glad they weren’t going to wait. She curled her legs around his, rubbing the hair on his calves with her ankles. “I love this,” she told him, touching him with her hands, starved for the feel of him. Kissing him was like a compulsion now, a thirst she couldn’t quench. Everything they did was just right, everything was natural.

Her head fell back when he came into her; the shock of it, the unbearable intimacy made her gasp. She felt his mouth at her breast, and the deep, premonitory shudders started over. As good as it had been with him the first time, this was better, because she wasn’t new at it anymore. She was experienced. She knew how it would end.

She felt the end coming when he slid his hand under her body and pulled her up tight against him. Braced on one forearm, he drove into her deep, deep, and she was possessed, lost. She cried out, “God!” and “Jack!” and words that didn’t make sense, grinding against him, her body arcing back like a bow pulled taut. The climax came slowly, teasingly—
is this it? is this it?
—and then took her all at once. Blind and breathless, she let it have her. She heard the echo of someone’s hoarse voice, huffing ecstatic groans she could scarcely imagine coming from herself. She felt drenched with pleasure, utterly sated with it, there wasn’t an inch of her body that wasn’t pulsing with it.

Jack made a low growling sound in his throat. All his muscles contracted. She clutched at him—he pulled away from her. She felt him slipping out of her body, and she moaned at the loss, “Oh, no, Jack,” such a sad abandonment. But he wrapped her up in his arms and surged against her, and she knew what he was about when she felt his stunning, powerful release, the lunge of his hips, the hot liquid rush against her belly. She could hear him grinding his teeth, and it thrilled her to think that she knew exactly,
exactly
what he was feeling in this endless instant of time, “Darling,” she called him, holding his spent, panting body close, layering exhausted kisses across his damp forehead. “Oh, Jack, I love you. God help me, I do.”

His head came up. “I love you, Sophie. I swear it.”

He said the words as if he didn’t think she would believe them, as if she needed convincing. But how could she doubt it? It wasn’t in her to disbelieve. Not this, not Jack. She had no idea what was going to happen next. She only knew that she would never, ever regret this night.

***

It came to him while he was watching the ceiling in Sophie’s bedroom lighten from black to blue, then gray. The answer.

The shrill chirp of morning birds grew louder in proportion to the brightening light, and it pleased him to think that the solution to his dilemma was becoming clearer in proportion to both of them. Of course. How simple. Why had it taken so long to see it?

She stirred, pressing her cheek against his shoulder, clicking her teeth once. He smiled at her, at his arousal, at everything—and turned his head on the pillow to kiss her, just a soft brush of his lips across her brow. She sighed in her sleep. He whispered, “Love you,” and he could swear she smiled.

He would tell her who he was and ask her to wait for him, until he made something of himself. Then they could marry.

She’d do it. She would. She loved:him—
loved
him. She’d said it at last, the first one to say it, much braver than he. But he’d had some idea that he was saving her, protecting her by not saying it. Stupid of him; love was too precious to hide, regardless of how noble one might have decided the motive for hiding it was. Now everything was clear to him. He would confess to her his deception, which she would eventually understand and forgive—his mind skated over the details of that—and then he would go to London and make his way. His fortune. The Rhadamanthus Society could stake him in the beginning, and he would enjoy writing for them, helping them formulate progressive labor policy. But eventually he’d save enough money to resume his studies, and then he’d return to the law, his first love, the dream of his youth. His family’s goal for him. How many years would it take—three, four? It would be hard to wait, but Sophie would do it, and her faith in him would make it easier.

He felt euphoric in the wake of the decision. He thought of kissing her until she woke up, and then telling her. Now the secret was almost intolerable, worse the closer he got to being rid of it. To be himself with her, to hear her call him “Connor”—simple pleasures, never to be taken for granted again.

But she was sleeping so sweetly. And the secret was so complicated. Better to tell her in the morning, when they were fresh and had all their faculties.

Or was it?

Yes.
He
needed to be fresh, that was certain. He might want
her
drowsy and uncritical. But what he had to tell her would be hard, no way around it, and he was going to need all his wits to do it right.

He slid down lower in the bed, bending his knees when his feet hit the footboard. He wasn’t comfortable this way, but he wanted Sophie’s head next to his. Wanted to feel her soft breath on his cheek. He couldn’t get enough of her, and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. Tomorrow—today, rather—if he did everything right, he wouldn’t have to.

***

But they overslept.

A sound woke them both at the same moment, and at first there wasn’t a thought in his head except how pretty the sun looked on her hair, splashed across their shared pillow. They smiled into each other’s eyes. Then the sound came again, like wood banging on wood—and Sophie shot straight up in bed like a spring.

“Maris!”

They scrambled out from under the covers, both of them nude, and stood, frozen, on opposite sides of the bed, gaping at each other in silent panic. He didn’t know who started it, which one of them laughed first, but it wasn’t long before they were pressing their hands to their mouths to stifle helpless, uncontrollable mirth. “Shh! Shh!” they kept commanding each other, to no avail. Sophie darted around the bed, pink-faced, snorting. “Get dressed!” she hissed at him. “I’ll tell her to go down and get me some coffee—she’s on the steps, sweeping, she does it every morning— Hurry, get dressed!” She snatched his shirt off the floor and threw it at him, found her dressing gown, shoved her arms through the sleeves, and yanked the belt tight, then ran out of the room.

He was tying his shoes when she came back. The hysteria was over; she’d recovered her composure. So had he. “She’s gone down to the kitchen. Go straight out the front door, Jack, and she’ll never know, but you have to go
now.
”

“We have to talk.”

“Yes, but not now!”

He stood up, went to her. “When?” She looked blank. “This afternoon. In the garden.”

“Yes, yes, all right.”

“Two o’clock?”

She nodded—then shook her head violently. “No, I forgot, I’m having a tea party this afternoon!”

He cursed. “Tonight, then.”

“Yes, tonight. Oh, Jack,
please
go now.”

He hated this. There wasn’t even time to kiss her. She went with him as far as the staircase, and hung on the post at the top. Excitement, nerves, tenderness, they were all in her beautiful face. He pulled her into his arms for a fast, hard hug, thinking of all the things he wanted to say to her, things about the future as well as the past, how much he loved her, what last night had meant to him. No time. “Tonight,” he whispered, and she said it back.

The sixth stair creaked so loud, it sounded like he’d stepped on a cat’s tail. He glanced over his shoulder at Sophie. She was all eyes, both hands covering her mouth, face turning red again. So much for his dignified exit.

In the open front door, he couldn’t resist a last look back. She was sitting on the top step, bent over to see him, her arms crossed over her knees. She mouthed something and blew him a kiss. Outside, sprinting down her worn gravel drive, it came to him what she’d said: “I love you, Jack!”

XII

“I said, we were right, it’s startin’ to rain.”

“What?” Sophie looked up from the teaspoon she’d been polishing for the last few minutes. “What, Maris?”

The housemaid heaved a sigh. “For the third time—good thing you moved yer party inside, because ’tis blackenin’ up and startin’ to rain.”

“Oh.” She glanced out the parlor window. Maris was right; the sky, which had been blue all morning, was filling with great, rolling storm clouds, and the first drops of water were already hitting the glass with loud, smacking thuds. “Yes. Good thing.” She went back to her spoon, missing the white roll of Maris’s eyes.

“What’s wrong with you?” the maid asked curiously. “Yer a million miles away from here. Didn’t you sleep good?”

Sophie kept her head down and said she’d slept fine.

“Well, I’m going down to start them biscuits you like so much. Mrs. B.’ll be here any minute, so there’s plenty o’ time yet for her to do the quince pie and whatnot. Yer doing the flowers, right?”

“Hm? Mm hm.”

“Miss Sophie.”

“Yes?”

She put her hands on her hips. “For the Lord’s sake, go upstairs and lay down fer half an hour. Believe me, you could use it.”

Sophie put the spoon down and reached for a fork. “Nonsense, I’m not tired at all. Go ahead, I heard you—you’re making biscuits and I’m doing the flowers. There’s no rush; we’ve got an hour and a half before they come.”

“Don’t forget, you have to put clothes on.”

She looked down at her night robe, back up at Maris. “I won’t forget.”

After Maris went away, Sophie wandered over to the window to look at the rain. It still might clear up; it was one of those changeable days, cloudy one minute, sunny the next. She wished she’d extended invitations to this tea on any other day but today. How could she keep her mind on her guests? She couldn’t even polish silver. She was a wreck.

What if she made Jack a partner in Guelder? Or—what if she simply gave him the mine? She could accomplish that easily enough just by marrying him: a woman forfeited all her assets as soon as she said, “I do.” It sounded mad, giving him the mine, but he would surely stay then. Not for the money—he wouldn’t care a straw about that—but for the responsibility. He wanted to better himself, make something of himself. This business with the Rhadamanthus Society or whatever it was called was just one opportunity. She could offer him another, much better one. He wouldn’t have to go
down
in the mine if he hated it so much. Just run it, with her. He could even make some of the improvements he was always harping on, ladders and ventilators and such things.

The rain stopped. She turned away from the streaky window and walked out into the hall. For a long time she stood still, staring back into the parlor without seeing it. What was it she was supposed to be doing? Oh, flowers. But she hadn’t finished the silver, and she’d left the dirty polishing cloth on the tea table, the tea service only half-done.

Suddenly she put her hands on her cheeks and squeezed her eyes shut, the better to stand the shock of anxiety that jolted through her like an electric current.
Marry Jack?
Had she gone mad? She couldn’t, couldn’t; the idea was insane.

Maybe the reason didn’t do her credit, but she was honest enough to admit to herself what it was. If she married Jack Pendarvis, her place in society—which she had taken for granted all her life, her right by birth and by talent, by grace and intellect—would be forfeited. Wyckerley was tiny, but she had grown up here; this provincial village was her whole world. In truth, she was used to being one of the three or four gentlewomen at the top of the social pyramid. Cousin Honoria would disagree, but Sophie recognized no one above herself except Anne Morrell and Rachel Verlaine. If she allied herself with Jack Pendarvis, she would lose her place. She would be nobody, less than nobody, because of the height from which she’d have fallen. It was unthinkable.

What, then? An affair? She sagged against the archway, hopeless. She wasn’t a secretive person. If she and Jack continued as they were—assuming he would even agree to it, which was doubtful—the strain of constant concealment would wear her down, and either kill the passion between them or cause her to make a mistake and reveal herself.

Catastrophe. She’d be a fallen woman—she’d have to go away. She would disgrace her father’s memory.

There was only one solution. She would have to give him up.

Empty-headed, she walked through the house to the sunroom, out to the terrace, down the wet path to the garden house. She found her apron and put it on, found her cutting shears and basket and carried them to the annual border at the back of the garden. China asters would look pretty on the tea table. Nasturtiums for the sideboard, stocks for the tall vase in the foyer. The smell of the cut stalks was sharp and reedy; the juice made her fingers sticky.

Maybe she would make bouquets for the ladies, flower gifts for them to take home. Wandering over to the perennial beds, she cut more blossoms, sweet Williams and love-lies-bleeding, larkspur and pinks, wallflowers, gillyflowers, and Canterbury bells. The rain had made the heads heavy, the stalks plump and full. Sweetness perfumed the humid air. Should she cut dahlias for the glass bowl on the bannister? Her basket was full; she’d have to . . . She’d have to . . .

She was on her knees in the soft dirt, squeezing wet loam between her fingers, weeping. She couldn’t stop. It frightened her; she never lost control like this. Tears clogged her throat, blinded her, ran down her cheeks in rivers. The sound of her own choking sobs shocked her so thoroughly, she finally subdued them. In the breathless, shaky aftermath, a strong certainty entered her heart.

She couldn’t give him up. The consequences didn’t matter; nothing mattered. She was lost to him, and she would bear whatever it cost to have him. She loved him. She wouldn’t give him up.

An exhausted calm drifted over her. She wiped her hands on her apron, climbed to her feet. She’d been wasting time; now she’d have to hurry—she had guests coming in less than an hour. Good: the sooner they came, the sooner they would go away, and then Jack could come to her. It was all she could think of. Hurrying up the path, she started sifting through lies she could tell Mrs. Bolton, to get her out of the house again tonight.

***

Connor didn’t go to the mine that day; that part of his life was over. But he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. Jack was in bed, having one of his bad days, so there was no one to talk to. The time between now and six o’clock stretched before him like a dry, featureless track winding into the desert for a million miles. Nothing made him more restless than wasting time, but when he tried to use these empty hours by planning ahead or simply looking into his own future, his mind filled with chaos. Nothing was clear and distinct except memories of Sophie, last night.

Too late to debate with himself whether he’d done right or wrong by taking her to bed. What mattered were the consequences. Making Sophie his lover was going to change the course of his life, in ways he couldn’t foresee. His plan to tell her the truth about himself, which had seemed so brilliant in that unreal hour before dawn, looked fraught with peril in the clear daylight. But there was no help for it, and no alternatives. Before anything else could happen, that exceedingly unpleasant duty would have to be gotten out of the way. He still couldn’t contemplate the possibility of failure. Sophie was gentle and kind and sweet; he would rely on those qualities, as well as her tolerance and fair-mindedness, and in the end she would forgive him. He just wished it was over with. As much as he dreaded it, he could hardly wait to tell her everything, so they could begin again on level ground, without secrets.

But mostly he just wanted to see her again. Five more hours—eternity. Love was an extraordinary feeling, and in his case it seemed to be comprised of equal parts euphoria and anxiety.

He heard a tap at his door. Not Jack—he never knocked first. Barefoot, buttoning his shirt, Connor came off the bed and crossed to the door.

The girl in the dim passageway looked familiar, but he didn’t recognize her until she took off her wide straw bonnet. Small and pixyish, her rather wild black hair almost hid her piquant features. “Mr. Pendarvis?” she said in a soft voice. “I’m Sidony Timms. I brought you yer mail—’twas out in the box.”

Surprised, Connor took the envelope she handed him, noting absently that it had no sender’s address. Something from the Rhads, then. “Thank you.”

She blushed, and looked down at the hat brim she was mangling with her thin fingers. A moment passed.

“Would you like to come in?”

She had a dazzling smile. She flashed it gratefully and moved a few feet into the room. There was only one chair. He gestured to it, but she shook her head and mumbled, “No, thank you.” More hat mangling. Finally she looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry for bothering you, but I was wondering if I could ask you something. It’s about Connor.”

He passed a hand over his face. Wheels within wheels; for the first time it dawned on him that unmasking himself would mean unmasking his brother as well. “What is it?”

“Oh, sir, I’m that worried about ’im,” she said in a rush. “I know he’s sick, but he won’t ever talk about it; and the times I ask him straight out, he turns snappy and gets mad at me. But I have to know. I care for him, Mr. Pendarvis,” she said simply. “Will you please tell me if he’s very, very sick?”

Her small, clenched hands and worried eyes moved him, and brought him to another unwelcome realization: his lie to Sophie wasn’t the only potentially hurtful fraud perpetrated by the Pendarvis boys on innocent Wyckerley women. As gently as he could, he told the girl the truth. “You know that he was a miner until a year ago.” She nodded. “He contracted a consumption of the lungs, and since then he’s been unable to work. He’s seen two doctors, and they both said they don’t know what his prognosis is. Whether he’ll recover or not,” he explained when she looked blank.

“But is it serious?” She swallowed hard, but she had to whisper to say, “Might he die?”

“It is serious. I pray he won’t die.”

She bowed her head. He almost took her hand, for comfort, and to tell her that they were feeling the same pain. But she looked up then and asked haltingly, “Does he ever speak to you about me?”

He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “He . . . well, he . . .”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, red-faced, turning quickly and heading for the door.

“Wait. Miss Timms—”

“Thank you for speaking to me!”

“Wait.”

But she wouldn’t wait, and she was quick as a rabbit; rather than run after her and embarrass her even more, he let her go.

Alone again, his thoughts were black and unpleasant, and exactly twice as guilt-ridden as they had been before. He tore open the heavy brown envelope from the Rhadamanthus Society for a diversion, and carried the contents to his bed. The director’s short letter on top confused him; he had to read it twice before the message sank in. “Time ran out for our bill, as you know, but we decided to circulate the report now in order to begin shoring up support for the next session. Again, we are grateful to you for your conscientious labor and dedication, and look forward to working more closely with you in the near future.”

Under the letter was a thick pamphlet, cheaply bound in cloth-covered paperboard, the
RS
logotype centered in gilt letters, and below it, “Journal of the Rhadamanthus Society, Quartus II, A.D. MDCCCLVII.” Dread congealing in his stomach, Connor opened the pamphlet. There was his report.

It was the centerpiece of this quarter’s journal. He had titled it, “An Investigation of Mining Hazards in Cornwall and Devonshire,” but the society had renamed it, “Englishmen in Danger: A Factual Account of Deplorable Conditions in Copper Mines by an Eyewitness.” They’d ranked the three mines he’d worked in and written about, and Sophie’s came out the second worst, between Wheal Looe and Tregurtha. It was all there, a coldblooded indictment of the heat and the ladders, the bad air, the medical inadequacies. There was even an implication of financial collusion between Sophie and her uncle, because his store was the only source of mining supplies within ten miles of Guelder. Connor hadn’t written that—and some of the words in the rest of the piece weren’t his either. They’d taken the basic facts and embellished and dramatized them, adding a tone of high moral outrage. They even criticized a “High Church vicar,” without naming him, for allowing “these deplorable circumstances to take place” in his village without taking steps against them. Connor had mentioned the social makeup of St. Giles’ parish, its population and so forth, including the fact that it had two churches, Anglican and Methodist. The journal’s rewriters, all radical Wesleyans, had seized on that, but hadn’t bothered to include the fact that the Methodist preacher had never “taken steps” against abuses either. Nor did they mention that two years ago, Christy Morrell had gone down in the mine alone and saved Tranter Fox’s life.

As horrified as he was, Connor had to admit that the piece was effective. Devastatingly so. It would do exactly what the society intended—arouse the average workingman’s ire, at the same time it moved recalcitrant Commons members to act on the reform bill Shavers would offer in the next term.

By rights, Connor should feel glad, victorious. He’d struck a blow against the forces of greed and negligence, those faceless owners and adventurers who might finally, because of his work, be held accountable for a thousand men’s deaths, including his own father and two of his brothers. What he felt was cold fear.

***

“Everything’s all right, isn’t it, Sophie?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”

Anne Morrell accepted the small glass of Madeira Sophie handed her, shook her head at the plate of biscuits she offered next. “I don’t know. Nothing, no reason.”

But Sophie wasn’t fooled. Her shrewd friend had spoken softly, and she’d waited until they were out of earshot of the others before asking her gentle question. She’d noticed, of course, that Sophie’s eyes were puffy and her manner, although she was trying hard to concentrate on the things her guests said to her, was distracted. But as close as they were and as much as she trusted Anne, she was incapable of confiding in her now, and not only because the circumstances prohibited it. She was in the center of the most difficult dilemma of her life, and until she found a solution, it would remain literally unspeakable.