The Passions of Emma (54 page)
He came up to her but he didn’t touch her, except with his eyes.
Eyes that were brilliant with pain, and life. “It’s an extraordinary woman you are, Emma Tremayne. You keep giving me things that are irreplaceable.”
Eyes that were brilliant with pain, and life. “It’s an extraordinary woman you are, Emma Tremayne. You keep giving me things that are irreplaceable.”
Her gaze fell before the rawness of the feelings that lived in his eyes. “I loved her, too, Shay,” she said.
He touched her then, gathering her within the circle of his arms. She laid her palms on his chest, feeling him breathe, feeling his heartbeat, feeling him live.
“I know you did,” he said. “I know.”
Feeling him hold her close.
When they moved apart, Emma felt lighter, as though she were floating up in the coved glass ceiling. She took his hand and pulled him over to another canvas-draped figure.
She said nothing, but she watched his face carefully as she lifted the shroud. It was a pair of hands, hewn out of granite, a man’s hands carved to life-size and curled into fists.
“Now you needn’t fear that I’ll ever exhibit it,” she said. “Neither Mama nor Mr. Alcott would ever allow me to exhibit my work. It isn’t the done thing. Great Folk don’t put their talents on display, only their possessions.”
Shay was walking all around the sculpture, staring at it with eyes that were a little wide and wild.
“He’s more brawn than brain, this fellow,” he finally said.
Emma hid a smile. “He’s yourself, Shay McKenna.”
“Aye, I can suppose that. God save me.”
“They’re only your hands, God save you. Someday I might be doing other parts of you.”
He peered at her from around the sculpture’s thick, rope-veined wrists. “What parts of me?”
“All the marvelous, delectable parts of you. I’ve been practicing them since first I saw you—that day of the fox hunt.” In truth, she’d only dared to do his hands so far, even in clay, but she enjoyed teasing him. His ears were turning red.
“Are you after telling me you had me stripped naked in your mind’s eye when you hardly knew me?”
“Didn’t you do the same to me, in your mind’s eye?”
“Neverrr,” he said, exaggerating his brogue. “Well, might be I lifted up your skirts and took a wee little peek at your ankles. In me mind’s eye.”
Laughing, she backed up until she bumped into the turntable where she did her clay modeling. She sat down on it, spinning herself around, and lifted her skirts, spreading her legs wide, like a vaudeville chorus girl. “And what do you see in your mind’s eye now.”
“I see a shameless hussy.”
He stopped the whirling turntable by grabbing her waist with his big hands. Her knees fell wider apart and he came between them. He bunched up her skirt and petticoat around her waist, and his hand moved up the long muscle of her thigh to the slit in her drawers.
He lowered his head and pulled at her lower lip lightly with his teeth. “You’ve a few delectable parts of your own.”
“No, they are yours. All yours.”
He let go of her waist and pressed his palm to the back of her head to kiss her deeply. His tongue thrust, slowed, then stayed, filling her mouth. He ground his hips against her. He was hard.
She flung her head back, her eyes opening wide onto the glazed panes that spun above, fracturing the light into a kaleidoscope of whirling blue skies and yellow suns. He pressed his lips to the throbbing hollow in her throat and his voice thrummed in her blood. “Emma, Emma, Emma . . .”
Sometimes when her dreams wore off and she awakened to the winter that was her life, Maddie Tremayne would be seized with such a restlessness she couldn’t bear it.
She would torment herself by throwing off the bedclothes and lifting her night rail, so that she could see the wasteland of her body and revel in her hatred. Her hatred of life and of God. Her hatred of herself.
But even hatred and self-pity palled after a time. Then, if the weather was fair and Mama was not at home to scold her for making a fuss, she would ring for a footman to carry her and her chair downstairs and for her maid, Tildy, to push her around the garden.
That day she had intended to venture across the lawns to the small promontory that overlooked the bay. But then she saw a shadow of movement behind the glass-paned wall of the old orangery.
“There’s Emma,” she said, looking back at Tildy over her shoulder, “working on her sculpting.”
“Should we go an’ see if she’s looking for company, miss?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Maddie didn’t want to intrude if her sister was deep in her work. It wasn’t that Emma would be rude; she’d be oblivious, and that was somehow worse.
And yet, and yet . . . Maddie had awakened that afternoon feeling so wretchedly lonely. No, more than lonely—she felt empty. As if a harsh wind had blown through her while she slept and scoured out her soul.
And then it didn’t matter anyway, for Tildy was pushing her down the garden path, past the pots of geraniums and onto the terrace that ran alongside the orangery’s south wall.
Tildy saw them first and gasped, jerking the chair to such a sudden stop that Maddie tipped forward and had to grab the armrests to keep from falling out. Maddie uttered not a sound, for she’d lost all her breath.
Emma was with a man, a man Maddie had never seen before. A rough, working man by the look of him, him in his shirtsleeves and with his ragged hair, and his worn corduroy britches . . . his britches that were pushed down around his thighs. Her sister’s hands
were pale against the darker skin of the man’s bare buttocks as she squeezed the taut flesh almost savagely.
were pale against the darker skin of the man’s bare buttocks as she squeezed the taut flesh almost savagely.
Emma was leaning back across some sort of table, and the man was standing between her legs. Emma’s shirtwaist and camisole gaped open, exposing her breast, and the man was sucking on her nipple, pulling at it with his teeth. And then the man’s hips began to pump and thrust, hard, so hard the table rocked across the floor.
Emma’s head was thrown back and her mouth was open wide, and Maddie thought she could hear her sister panting, but then she realized it was the wind blowing through the birches she heard. That, and her own ragged breathing.
Tildy tried to turn the chair around, but one of its wheels was stuck in the crumbly mortar between the brick tiles.
“No!” Maddie said harshly. “Leave it stay.”
Tildy moaned. “But, Miss Maddie, we shouldn’t be watching this, surely. ’Tisn’t decent.”
“You hush up and do as I say.”
She watched, she watched it all. And when it was over, Maddie Tremayne’s heart pounded as if she’d been running, and sweat pooled beneath her breasts and trickled in runnels between her corset stays.
But when she spoke her voice was steady, resolved. “I wish to be taken back to the house now.”
Moaning again, Tildy wrenched at the chair and finally got it loose. The wind seemed suddenly to have died, and now all Maddie could hear was the clicking of her wheels.
My wheels, she thought. My wheels are the only sound my life makes. Even my heart makes no sound because there’s no one to hear it beat.
I
t was a cloudy afternoon, and the lamp had not been lit in the bedroom where Emma Tremayne lay on the white iron bed with her Irish lover.
t was a cloudy afternoon, and the lamp had not been lit in the bedroom where Emma Tremayne lay on the white iron bed with her Irish lover.
Outside a foul sort of wind blew, a storm wind with a yellow edge to it.
“I’m going to be having to leave Bristol,” he said.
She could only lie there as if winded, lie there and think, In a moment I will breathe again, in a moment I’ll go on living. All I need is a moment, a moment . . .
“Donagh says he has a cousin in New York, and this fellow says he can get me a job working the docks that’ll make me far more money than I’m doing here with a fishing dory I don’t even rightly own.”
She was lying beside him, in his bed, and he was telling her he was leaving her.
She breathed; she breathed again. She was learning, growing up. She didn’t ask, she told him. “I’m coming with you.”
“Emma.” He stroked her hair, following the length of it where it curled down around her breasts and over her hip. She knew now why he’d let her come here this afternoon, with Father O’Reilly having taken the girls to a church party and only little Jacko in his
cradle for a chaperon. Somehow, what they had was already over, and she hadn’t known it.
cradle for a chaperon. Somehow, what they had was already over, and she hadn’t known it.
“Emma . . . Sweet it is between us, surely, and because it’s sweet we can’t let it alone, and because we can’t let it alone, we’re someday going to be found out. It’s not a thing to be going on and on without costs and consequences.”
She got up and went to the window that overlooked the beach. It had begun to rain, and waves were battering the rocks and piers, even in the harbor. She laid her hand flat on the glass pane, as if she would feel the beating of the surf, the ocean’s heart, the beating of her heart. Her dying heart.
“If I come with you, it can go on and on. Forever.”
“But I’ll not be letting you come.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself, holding herself together. She felt the fear of losing him begin to build in her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes.
“It’s my Yankee money, isn’t it?” she said. “You are being such a stuck-up Irish snob.”
She turned to look at him. He had sat up and was pulling his britches up over his hips, fastening them. “Partly, aye. It’s a thing a wee bit hard to overlook, your money.”
Those eyes of his, so green, so hard, his eyes burning so hard, all of him so hard. She wanted to reach out and stroke the broken place in his nose, to kiss it. To hit it hard enough to break it again. It was nearly unbearable to look at him. It was unfair that he was the man he was, and that she loved him so much.
“Are you saying I have to give up my trust fund to be with you? Are you making that a condition? Do you think I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t? Don’t you dare try to tell me that I don’t love you enough.”
“Ah,
mhuire
.” He stood up from the bed in that way he had, a sudden yet graceful uncoiling of long and powerful limbs. “You can’t even begin to imagine what ‘enough’ would be. There’s more to loving than fucking, and more to marriage than the both of
those things. To be husband and wife—it’s a sharing. Of dreams and destinies, of histories and ceremonies, and beliefs and faiths. Of things as small as a liking for corned beef and cabbage, and things so grand as the children you come to be making and raising together.”
mhuire
.” He stood up from the bed in that way he had, a sudden yet graceful uncoiling of long and powerful limbs. “You can’t even begin to imagine what ‘enough’ would be. There’s more to loving than fucking, and more to marriage than the both of
those things. To be husband and wife—it’s a sharing. Of dreams and destinies, of histories and ceremonies, and beliefs and faiths. Of things as small as a liking for corned beef and cabbage, and things so grand as the children you come to be making and raising together.”
“But I want to make children with you. I want to be a mother to the children you have.”
He pushed the hair out of his face with both his hands. “There, and don’t you see how it’s happening already—with me talking of one thing and you hearing another. I can say to you that I’ve always been a ‘chickens today and feathers tomorrow’ sort of man, and you wouldn’t have a notion of what I was talking about. Any more than I would have a notion of what it’s like to have a million dollars sitting in a thing called a trust fund, and able to attach the word
only
to it as if it were of no more significance than this.” He picked up her black velvet hat from the paint-chipped dresser and held it out to her. Then sent it sailing to the bed and gathered up her ecru kid gloves and pushed them into her face. “Or another pair of these.”
only
to it as if it were of no more significance than this.” He picked up her black velvet hat from the paint-chipped dresser and held it out to her. Then sent it sailing to the bed and gathered up her ecru kid gloves and pushed them into her face. “Or another pair of these.”
She snatched the gloves out of his hand and threw them aside. “You are wrong. You’ve always been wrong about me in that way. You make me sound spoiled and selfish and vain, and perhaps I am all of those things, but I can change. I have changed.”
“Changed enough, you think, to come live with us in a Hell’s Kitchen tenement, maybe get a job in a mill and learn what sort of ‘plight’ it is to work at a spinning frame for twelve hours a day, six days the week?”
“But why should I have to? I’m a rich little heiress, or have you forgotten already?”
“Sure and I haven’t. So maybe me and the children could be joining you and your trust fund up in that grand silver house of yours, where even the fifteen servants will be snubbing us from the instant we walk through the back door as we go mistaking it for the front one, and—”
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