The Lover (19 page)

Marie either did not approve of Michael resuming his former profession. Or she did not approve of Anne.

Or perhaps she had never approved of Michael.

The previous owner had been a man of title. Of respectability.

Every man has a price.

So, too, did every woman.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. "Where did she go?"

Marie retrieved the feather duster from the floor, face composed, emotionless. "
Je ne sais pas
, monsieur."

He bit back a curse. "Did you talk to her?"

"Non."

"Did Raoul?"

"Je ne sais pas."

I do not know.

Michael couldn't decide if she was lying or telling the truth.

Gabriel's words in the early morning mocked him:
You can't have both, Michael
.

Pivoting, he strode through the hallway, heartbeat outdistancing his strides.

Where the bloody hell was Raoul?

"Raoul!" he roared down the narrow stairs leading to the kitchen.

The butler appeared at the foot of the steps. He clutched a linen towel and a silver serving platter. At another time Michael would have found Raoul's astonishment humorous. Suave, sophisticated Michel des Anges had never before raised his voice to a servant.

Raoul raced up the stairs, face creased in convincing concern. "Monsieur!
Pardonnez-moi
, the footmen and I, we were just polishing the silver—"

Michael cut off his apology. "Where is Mademoiselle Aimes?"

"She is gone, monsieur."

Had
Raoul
been bribed?

He clung to his self-control. "Where?"

"She did not say. I hailed a cab—"

Michael stalked out of the front door.

No pedestrians loitered nearby. No men disguised as street sweepers or chair menders or vendors lurked about.

There was no one guarding the town house.

His first thought was that Gabriel's men had been killed.

He prayed they had. But he knew they had not.

Too late he understood Gabriel's taunting remark that he was God's messenger.

But it wasn't God who had sent him.

Gabriel had not placed men to guard either the town house or Anne.

Every man has a price
, Michael had told Gabriel.

He wondered what Gabriel's price had been.

Anne stared at the flickering circle of light reflected on the ceiling and tried very hard not to think about the probing fingers that were not Michel's. A gas lamp hissed and popped in the silence. It heated parts that were never meant to be so exposed.

She had sworn never to visit a physician. Never to let a doctor prod her, to hurt her as her parents had been hurt.

Yet here she lay on a padded leather table, dressed only in a voluminous white gown, with her feet secured in metal stirrups, being both prodded and, if not exactly hurt, certainly being made to feel uncomfortable.

"I am going to introduce a speculum into your vagina, Mrs. Jones. You will feel a bit of a pinch. Please try to relax. It will be only a moment longer now."

Anne winced—yes, it pinched—and wondered if her Dover housekeeper would mind that she had borrowed her name.

Her fingernails dug into the unfeeling leather.

The speculum was harder than glass. Colder.
It did not belong inside a spinster
.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, urging her to run, to scream. Anything to escape the indignity of what she was enduring.

She thought of Michel. What had he thought when he woke and found her gone?

She thought of her parents' former London physician, and his blistering censure when she had asked him to measure her for a device that fit inside a woman to prevent contraception. His nurse, while escorting her out of his office, had whispered the name and address of a gynecologist, that new breed of doctor who specialized in a woman's intimate health.

Dr. Joseph Atwood.

What Michel had called a "device," the gynecologist called a diaphragm.

Her parents' former physician had ranted that prophylactics harbored the ruin of womankind in particular and society in general. Dr. Atwood had acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a woman to request a contraceptive device.

And perhaps it was.

If she, plain, dowdy spinster, sought a feminine form of protection, how many other women did?

"You may sit up now, Mrs. Jones."

Anne snapped her feet out of the stirrups and sat up.

The gynecologist leaned over the gray metal counter beside the examination table; his tweed frock coat strained across his shoulders. Metal clinked on metal. Running water splashed. Deftly he grabbed a folded white towel and dried his hands. Tossing it into an open canvas hamper, he turned and smiled.

His hazel eyes were kind. Nonjudgmental.

As if he had not noticed her lack of a wedding band.

"I will send in my nurse to assist you."

There was no need for assistance. She did not wear a corset.

"That is not necessary," she said, gripping the edge of the table.

"Very well. Please join me in my office when you are ready."

His departing footsteps a decisive dismissal, he exited the small examining room.

Anne swiftly pulled on her underclothes. It seemed days instead of hours since she had dressed in Michel's bedchamber while he lay sleeping, impervious to her intention.

Would he be pleased at her initiative? she wondered.

Hurriedly she buttoned her black wool bodice.

Her fingers trembled.
Her whole body trembled
.

With victory—at overcoming her fear.

Or perhaps she trembled with humiliation—at exposing her body to a man other than Michel.

Or perhaps she merely trembled with anticipation at the thought of Michel's flesh inside her with no rubber to separate them.

A mirror hung on the door.

Anne's cheeks were flushed.

She almost looked pretty, she thought. Wisps of hair escaped her makeshift bun. It softened her face.

Deftly she pushed home loosened pins. Setting the black, featherless hat onto her head, she secured it with the hat pin.

Heels echoing tinnily on the wooden floor—hesitant rather than decisive—she grabbed her black gloves and beaded reticule off the shiny metal counter. Taking a deep breath, she swung open the door.

Dr. Atwood sat at a massive, black marble-topped desk, balding head bowed. Overhead, a gas chandelier spit and spewed. A window framed the desk and the physician; outside, the sky was an unrelieved gray.

It was going to rain.

The faint, singsong grind of carriage wheels drifted up from the street; it was interspersed by the muted shouts of vendors and the scratch of a steel nib scribbling across paper.

A small, rose-colored tin sat on the gynecologist's desk near his elbow. Beside the metal container sat a flesh-colored wax model that reminded her of an etching in her medical compendium. It looked rather like—

Scalding heat flooded her cheeks.

It was a model of a woman's interior organs.

He glanced up at her approach. "Please be seated, Mrs. Jones."

Anne perched on the edge of a black, wing-back leather chair, carefully averting her gaze from the sculpture.

The gynecologist held up a rimmed, circular piece of rubber in his left hand. "This is a diaphragm." He reached out, and touched the wax mold with his right hand. "This is a woman's cervix. The diaphragm fits over the cervix—here, and here—rather like a hat. In order to prevent conception it must be positioned prior to sexual congress and left in place a minimum of six hours afterward."

She squeezed her reticule. Never had her parents' physicians spoken so frankly. "Yes. I understand."

"A woman's vagina is shortened when she draws her legs up." He placed the circular piece of rubber on his desk; it blindly stared up at her. "A diaphragm is more easily positioned either while squatting or else while standing with one knee elevated and the foot resting on a stool or a chair."

Anne jerked her head up. His directions were all very well and fine, but… "By what means does a woman introduce the diaphragm into her… person?"

"By the aid of her fingers, Mrs. Jones."

It could have been a twinkle in his hazel eyes. Or it could have been Anne's own embarrassment that colored her vision.

"I see."

Dr. Atwood handed her the small, rose-colored tin. "Your diaphragm is enclosed. Do you have any further questions?"

Anne accepted the tin box and stuffed it inside her reticule. Metal collided with metal.
The tin of French letters
. She stood up in a rush of wool petticoats and skirt. "No, thank you. You have been most helpful."

He extended the sheet of paper he had earlier been writing on. "You may pay my secretary."

Four women occupied the gynecologist's outer office: three patients and one secretary.

They were all younger than herself. Two of the three were obviously pregnant.

Anne tried to imagine the three patients—their shoulders were squared, spines the required three inches away from the back of the hard leather chairs they sat in, hands folded over their reticules—petitioning the doctor for a diaphragm.

She could not.

She tried to imagine them enjoying a man's sexual embrace.

She could not imagine that either.

The secretary—auburn hair free of silver—smiled. She wore a gold band on her left hand. "Please come back, Mrs. Jones."

Anne forced down a twinge of guilt.

She didn't enjoy lying. No matter what the circumstances.

Nodding her head, she grabbed her cloak off of the coatrack. Six umbrellas stood to attention in the umbrella stand.

At the end of the dimly lit hallway beside the stairs, caged doors jerked open. Two women stepped out. Heads close, they conferred in soft whispers as they passed Anne.

Feeling suddenly very daring and modern, Anne stepped inside the metal cage and nodded at the gold-braided, dark red-liveried man.

The lift down took her breath away.

It had been many years since she had ridden an elevator. With each passing second she felt lighter.

She smiled.

She felt elevated.
Elated
. Not at all like a thirty-six-year-old spinster. As if all the years of disease and death had been magically erased by a circular piece of rubber.

Outside the office building the air was saturated with humidity. Carriages of every size and description sped through the street. Men and women crowded the sidewalk; they looked neither left nor right as they hurried past each other.

Unlike her, they carried umbrellas. Folded. Bullets pointed down. Prepared for inclement weather.

As Anne was prepared for the man who was her lover in deed if not fact.

She realized with a peculiar pang that the words she had written to her solicitor in order to lay his worry to rest were true: she had never before been this happy.

Anne was suddenly assailed by an overwhelming desire to see Michel. To replace the gynecologist's touch with his.

If she hurried, she could find a cab before the rain broke.

Running down the steps, unconfined breasts bobbing in a most unspinsterlike manner, she darted around a group of soberly dressed men—medical students perhaps; the hospital was only another street over—

Searing heat exploded between her shoulder blades. Breath escaping her lungs in an audible whoosh, Anne catapulted forward into the street, arms flailing to regain her balance.

Sound and motion erupted around her. From the Clarence cab bearing down on her: "Git th' 'ell out o' th' way, ye bleedin' cow!" From the very air surrounding her: Big Ben bonging.

She had a startled image of the cabby standing up in the box, shouting. His black hat flew off of his head, as if tossed by an invisible hand. Immediately a shrill whinny snared her attention.

Anne stared into dark eyes rolling in a white sea of terror.

The horse pulling the four-wheeled cab was fully aware of the imminent collision of woman and equine. Unable to stop it.

As Anne was unable to stop it.

She was going to be trampled underneath its hooves
, she thought in a paralyzing flash of clarity.

The horror of pending death was chased by numbing disbelief.

She simply could not die now.

She wasn't wearing a corset.

She hadn't tried out the diaphragm.

Images darted through her head, a summary of her life.

She saw her parents' former physician, his bloated face purple with outrage:
You are an insult to your sex, Miss Aimes, and you insult me by your presence
.

She saw Michel, his face illuminated with morning sunshine:
Stay with me. Or we will both regret it for as long as we live
.

She saw her mother, her arthritis-crippled hand reaching out.

Beckoning.

Beseeching.