He didn’t respond in any way, didn’t look at me, didn’t react to the sound of my voice. At this close range, I could see that he wasn’t one hundred percent English. It was my guess that he was from somewhere in the Mediterranean, for his skin was dark and his eyes dark and he had a mop of black hair. Maybe he didn’t speak English.
“Excuse me, but you—” When he still didn’t look at me, I said, “Oh, the hell with it” and turned around to walk off. What did I care if he did or did not speak English? I had more important things to do than pant over the gardener.
But as I turned away from him, he then…I can hardly believe this even now. He dumped the contents of his wheelbarrow on my feet. On my feet, on the bottom of my pretty dress, up the front of my dress.
I just stood there and looked down at the mess that was me. Of course there was no question of what was in the wheelbarrow. Manure. What else? Only it wasn’t good American manure that you buy at the nursery in plastic bags. This manure hadn’t been baked to take bugs as well as the smell out of it. This manure had been hauled out of the stables, thrown in a heap, and allowed to “ripen” for a few years. It was now “ripening” around me.
“Look what you have done to me,” I managed to say. “Look at my dress.”
That man just stood there and looked at me. I could see that he wasn’t deaf, and if he didn’t speak English it didn’t matter because manure is manure in any language. His black eyes were twinkling and he had the tiniest bit of a smile playing on his mouth.
He had done it on purpose! I knew it as well as I knew…Well, better not go into that, since lately I didn’t seem to be too sure of much of anything. Contact through hostility, I thought. He’s some redneck foreigner, fresh off the boat, who has no idea that I am the lady of the house and should be treated with respect. From the look of him he might be from a country where the men think any woman out of the harem is worthy of a man’s abuse. Wherever his origins he seemed to think that his looks allowed him to get away with anything.
When he just stood there looking at me, saying nothing, I decided to forgo my manners. Forget that this was Edwardian England and I was called Lady Something or other. After a quick glance about to see that no one else was within hearing distance, I let him have it. I told him what I thought of him. I used language I’d only heard on cable TV comedy routines and never said out loud before.
From the light that left his eyes, I was sure he spoke English, and I don’t think he knew all the words that I did. I was willing to bet that no woman had ever said anything to him but the word “yes.”
When I felt that I’d told him what I thought of his manners and his ancestors, I finished with a little lesson in democracy. “You’re in England now and this country is almost as free as America. You cannot treat a woman any way you want.” Even to myself this sounded wimpy but I was weak from hunger and fatigue.
To tell the truth, I felt like crying. I was hungry and I was alone, not only in a foreign country but in a foreign time period and I wanted to go home. Where was Jamie? Where was my beautiful Jamie I had written about and had loved for centuries? Why wasn’t he here to rescue me? All my paper heroes were there to rescue the heroine when she needed him.
To my utter horror, I could feel tears prickling behind my eyes. The smell of horse manure wafted around me and this dreadful man was still staring at me in silence. Another second and my tears would be running down my cheeks.
“I’m going to tell my husband about you,” I managed to whisper, knowing I sounded like a child. With my chin held high, I turned away and started to leave.
I’d gone about two and a half steps when the man’s voice stopped me.
“I, madam, am your husband.”
For the second time in one day, I fainted.
10
What happened next was something I don’t want to remember. The horrible, silent man who said he was my husband tossed me over his shoulder and carried me up the stairs. I couldn’t help remembering that Scarlett got carried in Rhett’s arms and he made love to her later. I was up for that. This man was a throwback to a Neanderthal but he was rather sexy. And he was my husband and he was Jamie—I think.
But he tossed me on the bed, left the room, locking the door behind him, and minutes later the gray-haired doctor appeared again and I got to see what an Edwardian gynecological exam was like. I wanted to hobnob with the king but instead I get a historic pap smear.
Let’s just say that it was done under the covers with as much politeness as such a thing can be done, with as little embarrassment as possible. I knew what the problem was. Fainting twice in one day probably meant that Lady de Grey was pregnant. Now I knew why she’d disappeared. I somehow didn’t think she and her dark, hostile husband spent lazy afternoons in bed, so if this Catherine was pregnant, it was by another man.
When the doctor, with his hands involved in the examination, gave me a startled look, I knew I was on the mark. No doubt everyone knew of Lady de Grey’s approaching divorce and here she was pregnant with another man’s child.
I’m sure I turned red with embarrassment but the doctor said nothing as he closed his bag and left the room.
My maid came to me, took off my corset (thank you, Lord), and put me in a lush dressing gown. Then she brushed my hair down my back and left me to wait, no doubt for him.
So what was I to say to a man who had just been told that his wife who hadn’t slept with him in heaven knows how long was pregnant?
By the time he came to my room I am ashamed to say that I was very nervous. I don’t like promiscuity. I always believe in one man at a time, both in my books and in my life. Maybe what happened to me in this life is what taught me that lesson.
“You have made me the laughingstock of England. Why?” he asked, his dark eyes glaring at me for a moment before he turned away to stare out the window.
I must say that he did funny little things to the inside of me. I always believe in keeping control with men. With Steven I made certain that I analyzed everything; I wanted to do what was good for me. But this man made me feel emotion. That’s the best way I can describe his effect on me: emotion. Now if I could just figure out what that emotion was, I’d feel a great deal calmer.
I swallowed. “I take it you mean all the men. I was…I was lonely. You’re always in the garden and—”
He whirled around to glare at me with his piercing eyes. “I mean there have been no men—as you know.”
It took me a moment to understand that one, and when I did understand, I could hardly believe it. There was only one way he could know that there had been no men. “You mean I’m a—” I smiled. “I’m a virgin?” At that thought I couldn’t help but laugh. A thirty-nine-year-old American woman transported back in time into the twenty-seven-year-old body of a virgin!
“This is a matter of jest to you?” he asked with anger.
“Just sort of,” I answered, then looked up at him. “If I’m a virgin, why do you want to divorce me?”
“As you well know, I am going to marry Fiona.”
How very modern, I thought, with more anger than I should have felt. Should I invite the harlot to tea?
While I was digesting this disgusting bit of news, Catherine spoke up, using what I had come to regard as my mouth. “But a divorce will make me an outcast. No man will want me if you divorce me.”
“Then you should have thought of that before you made all of England laugh at me.”
“And how did I do that?” I asked, growing more angry by the second. He had already chosen his next bride, his wife was a virgin and I was the one to be punished.
“With your lascivious letters!” was his enraged answer. “By telling the world you’d slept with every man in England from the king down. I will not be a cuckold.”
“A cuckold! Are you crazy? I didn’t sleep with any other men. You heard the doctor say I’m a virgin. You could tell everyone the letters weren’t true. Tell them you have proof that I’ve never slept with any man.�
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His eyes seemed to grow blacker. “Tell the world that my wife is a virgin? My wife?!”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “You’ll divorce me, make me a pariah, set me aside, knowing I am innocent?”
The look in his eyes answered that. Yes he would.
During this exchange Catherine had been hovering around, letting me know how devastating a divorce would be to her. It would ruin her life, but it wouldn’t affect him; he had the money and the title. The unfairness of it all made me very angry. I looked up at him with a smirk. “Why haven’t you taken her…I mean, my virginity? You can’t do it so you don’t want anyone to know, is that it? Have you told your lovely Fiona you’re only half a man?”
I’d never before provoked a man to sexual rage. Were I a character in a novel by some romance authors of a decade before I would have found myself on the bed with my skirts over my head, but I’ve always fought against the device of rape in romance novels. When I turned in my second novel, my editor (not Daria) said, “I’m afraid we can’t publish this because the hero doesn’t rape the heroine, so the reader won’t believe he’s virile.” I burst into tears and said, “Then I’ll have to find another publishing house because if the hero commits rape, then he’s not a hero.” This seems logical now but back then it was revolutionary. The editor did publish it but she warned me it wouldn’t sell. It did, of course, sell very well, and that editor now edits for a porn publisher.
However, this was real and I didn’t have complete control here. I put my hand to my throat and backed away from him. There was murder in his eyes and I knew in my heart he wanted to show me he could do what he hadn’t done before.
But I saw he wasn’t going to do anything. He had too much honor to hit a woman and something was keeping him from the rape I could see that he wanted to enact. Sometimes there’s a devil in me. A little forked-tailed red-skinned devil that sits on my right shoulder and makes me do awful things. I could feel poor virginal Catherine cowering inside me, terrified of this man, and I felt all the injustice of what-men-do-to-women.
I stood up straight and glared at him. “Can’t, can you?” I taunted. “If you divorce me and marry Fiona how will that help you? If you can’t with me, you can’t with her.”
I knew right away that that was the wrong thing to say. His face turned into a rage that was frightening. Where did Edwardian men stand on the wife-beating question?
He didn’t make any attempt at physical violence, I’m happy to say. He just turned his back to me but I could see he was shaking with his anger. “You go too far,” he whispered and from that I knew he had a “problem.”
I think the media in America has made us all feel too guilty if we don’t care about everyone’s problems, so even if this man was scum, I felt sorry for him. Impotence is a very big deal to men, in any time period.
I went to stand by him. “Look, sometimes these things can have a cause, you know, a physical cause or maybe it’s psychological. Maybe if you talk about it, maybe we could find the reason for your…your inability to perform and finding the cause would solve the problem. In the meantime I’m sure this doesn’t mean you’re less of a man just because you can’t—”
His laughter stopped me from going on. I really hate being laughed at. And I especially hated the smug, condescending way he was laughing at me.
“What a child you are,” he said. “What an innocent child you are.”
Smug doesn’t begin to describe his attitude. “I don’t think I’m quite as innocent as you think,” I said, beginning to get angry all over again. You should have seen the way he was looking at me! He looked like a painting on a romance novel cover—and who should know better than I what that looked like? Impeccably dressed (I hate that term!), snowy white cravat (ditto), broad shouldered, slim hipped, elegant, long-fingered hands on his hips. His gorgeous head tipped back and looking down his long, aristocratic nose at me. So smug. So arrogant. So sure he, big macho male, knew everything and little micro-waisted me knew nothing.
“Are you not so innocent, Catherine?” he said as he advanced on me, moving toward me with the unshakability of a tidal wave in slow motion. “Are you not?”
I could see that he meant to kiss me. I wanted to stop him, because part of me echoed Catherine’s fear of him. But I couldn’t have moved myself any more than I could have moved the house a few inches to one side.
Just before his lips touched mine I remembered that Nora had said, “If you were to kiss him you would feel a merging of spirits.” I don’t remember what question I had asked to get this answer, but I do remember that response.
When his lips touched mine, I don’t know if it was a merging of spirits or not, but I’d never felt the way he made me feel while kissing any other man. It wasn’t as though the kiss were confined to just our lips; it was as though our bodies were trying to merge into one. I wanted to sink into him, to become him, to blend with him in a way that was not physical so much as…as…
Oh, who cared about trying to describe it? All I can say is that when he kissed me I lost myself. I wasn’t me or Catherine or anyone else; I was just part of him.
I think my body collapsed; my legs gave way under me and we went flowing back onto the bed. I say flowing because by that time I felt more like the consistency of mercury than I did of something supported by bone. He went with me, falling down on top of me, his mouth fastened onto mine, his heavy body moving on top of me.
I had felt lust many times in my life. There were many men who’d inspired me to…well, to do things in bed that are no one’s business but my own, but they were nothing compared to this man. Desire such as I’d never known existed flooded me, filled me so there was no room for thoughts or other feelings. I was just aware of him and nothing else.
I had to have him. I wanted him as close to me as nature could achieve, and at that moment I thought that sex was not exactly what I wanted from this man. I wanted all of this man inside me; I wanted all of me inside him.
There are no words to describe what I felt for him. Maybe he felt the same about me because he was kissing my neck as though he’d die if he didn’t kiss me. I leaned my head back and the only word I fully understood was, yes. Yes, whatever he wanted. Yes, whatever I could give him or do for him. Yes to anything and everything.
His hand was on my breast; my hands were on his back, his chest, in his hair, everywhere that I could reach of him. Never in my life had I wanted anything as much as I wanted this man.
But it was then that I put my hand between his legs, and there I felt nothing. Oh, he had all the correct equipment all right, but, at the moment, it wasn’t working. At least it wasn’t working at the touch of me.
The instant I touched him, he rolled away from me and put his hand over his eyes so I couldn’t see the anguish in them. My body was vibrating all over and I felt bereft at the absence of him. Maybe I should have cared about him, but all I could think about was me.
“Is it just me?” I whispered. “Only with me?”
“Yes.” The word came from somewhere deep inside him and I knew that admission caused him pain.
Turning my head, I looked at him, and even with what I had felt, I couldn’t make myself believe that he “couldn’t” or that we should stop. I wanted to touch him. Actually, I wanted to remove his clothes with my teeth and lick all the color off him.
“Tavey,” I said and rolled toward him, placing my mouth on his chest where his shirt had come unfastened. Under my lips I could feel his heart beating; I could feel his warm, dark skin; I could feel—
He pushed me away, then looked at me with mocking eyes. “Can you not see that I do not want you? I have never wanted you. You are undesirable to me.”
I have mentioned that I have a lot of pride, and at those words my pride was hurt, but it did not rear up and protect me. I was quivering with how much I wanted him. My body felt as hot as though I were running a fever, yet no matter that he was saying horrible things to me, had he held out his hand
for me, I would have taken it.
“We can try,” I said, my body longing for his as I lifted my hand toward him. “Perhaps we can—”
He got off the bed, then stood over me, his eyes laughing, ridiculing me. “Catherine, I married you for your money and I have used that money to put a roof on my house and horses in my stable. Now I should like to put sons in the nursery and I will never get them from you. I will speak to my attorneys tomorrow and begin to dissolve this farce of a marriage.”
He gave me one last look of contempt. “And do not try such as this again. It will not work. Such behavior only debases you.”
With that he left the room, closing the door behind him.
For a few moments I was too stunned to speak. Recovering from my encounter with him was rather like recovering from a two-week bout of flu. I felt weak and helpless and tired, and inside me, I could feel Lady de Grey shouting, “I told you so. I told you so.”
Maybe she had warned me and maybe I should have listened to her, but I was feeling the beginnings of unfairness. I had done nothing wrong. I—I mean, Catherine—had done nothing but write some hot little letters and if I knew myself I—she—had written them in an attempt to get his attention. Was she as attracted to him as I was? At that thought I felt a weakening of her spirit. She loved him very, very much. Worse than that, so did I. I knew without a doubt that if he walked back into the room, I’d lean back on the bed and open my arms to him.
“But I hate him, too,” I whispered, for who could not hate a man who was going to ruin a woman’s life by divorcing her because he could not perform with her? Hate him for the horrible things he had said to me.
Nora’s words echoed in my head. “Love. Hate. It’s the same thing.”
“I love him and I hate him,” I said, and I could feel Catherine agreeing with me. “Real hatred,” Nora had said, “is the other side of the coin from love. Hate lasts centuries, just as love does.” Now, at last, I understood what she meant, and I sure as hell wish I’d never found out.