Blooming: Veronica (15 page)

“A lie,” she screamed raggedly.

He stood well within reach. She could easily have pulled his cane out from under him again. But she was without that kind of mercy now.

She grabbed his coat with both hands and pulled him near, reeled him right in.

Then she did it.

He had opened his mouth, a liar about to speak more lies, when she plunged her tongue in, kissing him in a way she longed to be kissed herself and had never been.

She spared him nothing. Not her frustration, not her rage, not her contempt, not her sadness and pain.

Not her humiliating lust.

Oh, yes, she was nothing but lust. Her pussy, as men so quaintly referred to that area of a woman’s anatomy, was an exposed nerve ending that clamored for surcease.

She bunched her hands on his shoulders, muscular shoulders she knew now, and slanted her jaw. She ate at his mouth with a vengeance, gleefully inflicting her ravenous hunger on him. See how he liked it.

Outrage set her to trembling. What caused his shaking?

Disgust. What else?

Breathing hard, she broke the kiss to glare at him. “You know nothing about newlywed passion, sir.”

“I suppose I deserve that cut.”

“You deserve that and more. Be prepared to receive it.”

“What? A duel at dawn, perhaps?”

“Worse. Intimacy.”

“We have been intimate, madam. Our conversations cover a wide range of intimate topics. We kissed—”

“I raped your mouth, forced myself on you. I want more. Sir, have you ever been with a woman?”

“I am with you now, am I not?”

“Stop being deliberately obtuse,” she snapped. “Have you ever bedded a woman?”

“Years ago, yes.”

“So we did not always repulse you?”

“Certainly not. Not then. Not now. I love women. I explained about my tit fetish. The act disappointed me, not the partners.”

“Is it your leg? Can you…”

He finished the dangling sentence for her. “Fuck?”

Very nearly coming at the offensive word falling from his staid lips, all she could do was nod.

“Yes, I can fuck. My lameness might distract from the aesthetics, but it does not interfere with the mechanics. I have been with enough women to know I found the experiences with them wanting. And to elaborate on my answer to your previous question—something was lacking with my male partners as well. I felt nothing. So I gave them up. Both genders. As to touching, as I never start anything I have no intention of finishing, it made sense to avoid physical contact whenever possible. I cannot be any plainer here. The issue is neither my leg nor my sexual orientation nor my gonads. Unfortunately, the issue goes deeper. I am disconnected from people.”

“Do not, please do not tell me you admire barnyard animals a little too much.”

He laughed outright. “Bestiality has never been one of my many vices.”

“How, then, do you accommodate your manly needs?”

“Looking,” he said in irritation. “Paid voyeurism allows me release from a safe and impersonal distance. I told you so already.”

“Just checking to see if you can keep your stories straight.”

“What—”

“You have been forewarned, sir. I am challenging you not to a duel but to withstand my enforced sexual company, as I must now suffer your asexual marriage. What looking is to you, your cock will be to me—a safe outlet for my womanly needs. Since you admit to philandering both ways, I shall expect your loins to perform on demand.”

He started to protest, but she refused to listen to any more of his lies or to give credence to anything else he had to say.

She stormed to the adjoining door and held it open for him. “Go, sir. You have business to attend to, and I must prepare myself for the rest of my sterile life.”

“Before I depart, I should tell you—”

“Good heavens!” She threw her arms up in the air. “More bad news. Well, go on. Spit it out.”

“I am returning to Boston tonight. Business calls me away. We shan’t see each other again until the party next week.”

“Go. Leave me on my honeymoon for your business in town. I could not care less. But why should I attend a function where everyone will gossip about me?”

“Why not give them something to talk about, something truly sensational?” He stared deeply into her eyes. “Say hang the consequences, and reveal your true self.”

“I have already said hang the consequences, and see where that sort of devil-may-care attitude landed me—in an unconsummated marriage with you.”

He started away, his cane clicking against the polished floorboards. “We shall meet at the house party at seven sharp. My driver has the address and will bring you along in the carriage. I shall arrive on horseback straight from Boston. Riding always clears the cobwebs after I work. Wear the costume in the box on the bed.”

With that abrupt instruction, he escaped through to his own room, closing the connecting door after him.

Chapter Eighteen

Seven days later, at a few minutes before seven, Talbot was back from his publishing trip to Boston and mingling with his North Shore acquaintances, neighbors from nearby estates for the most part.

The mingling was not going very well. Business-related socializing he could handle—he would do anything to sell books—but conversation for the sake of trivial party conviviality left him…well…speechless. The most he could do was try to stay awake while he awaited the arrival of his bride.

An arrival she would make on her own.

This would be her first public exposure after her Boston scandal, and he had his fingers crossed for her. People could be cruel in their commentary, whether the victim of their gossip was within earshot range or not. Offering her a crutch, which was what an arrival on his arm would have amounted to, would have been charitable in the short term but no favor in the long haul.

Despite her female-emancipation rhetoric, Veronica had yet to learn how to stand on her own two feet, to be her own person…to fend for herself. Only upon acquiring those skills would she find true independence. And so he had forced her to arrive alone, the first step in a long journey to real freedom.

As for him, he would have preferred a quiet evening spent at home with his bride, perhaps playing chess if she knew the game, or teaching her how if she did not. For the most part, he lived like a recluse, books and their production taking up most of his time, his inventions the rest.

Conversation bubbled like a fountain of effervescent champagne around him, all the gurgling wasted on him. He drank little of the chatter and listened less, with only half an ear at most. As Horatio Biggins waxed poetic about a new hound in his hunting kennel, Talbot went over in his mind the argument he had enjoyed—yes enjoyed—having with Veronica before his departure. Without revealing his occupation, which would only distress his wife and maybe even thwart her full recuperation, Talbot had been as honest as he could be about his life…and his sexuality.

The way he looked at it, youth was for adventuring. In the quest to discover himself, he had undertaken various activities, sex among them. In truth, he was not opposed to sleeping with either gender. He simply favored machines to both.

That was not to say he was apathetic to desire. The opposite held true. His sex drive was enormous, which explained why he had given up intercourse years before. He wanted sex all the time. Morning, noon, and night. Too much was never enough. Driving his promiscuity was a relentless search for a pairing that would leave an indelible imprint on him.

None ever had.

So he walked away. Not for years had he slept with anyone. And not from want of opportunity. Was it too conceited of him to admit that his lovers, not legions but enough, still lusted after him a decade after he took up the banner of celibacy?

Conceited or not, they did, if only in his mind.

Coupling should include an emotional component, and it never had gone beyond the physical for him. The lack of meaningfulness only left a deeper hole inside him than the one there already, a crater neither gender could fill. Hollow and yearning, he had withdrawn from all occasions of touch.

Men. Women. He shunned all forms of congress beyond the occasional superficial handshake. No playful kisses. No claps of camaraderie on the back. No warm embraces. Apart from his recent scuffle with Rowe, he had not resorted to back-alley brawling to release his pent-up frustration. He refused to accept a pale substitute for meaningful sex.

Then into his life had come Veronica. His wife’s kiss had meant something to him. With his lovely bride, he felt far too much. He had never desired a woman sexually as much as he desired his wife.

Now what? After she declared his penis her fetish, what was he to do?

Veronica had made her position abundantly plain. His bride intended to pursue him sexually. Only a cad would refuse her seduction, and he was no cad.

“Mrs. Talbot Bowdoin.”

At the butler’s announcement, his wife swept down the three stairs into the sunken ballroom, her beauty turning every man’s head in the room, including his own. In a gold mesh aesthetic-style tunic worn over an ivory-toned shift, she resembled a Pre-Raphaelite work of art. Any number of portraits painted by artist John William Waterhouse sprang to mind. Unfettered by a corset, a medieval-style kirtle emphasized her tiny waist while a gold ribbon encircling her forehead highlighted her loose warm brown hair.

Talbot raced to meet her.

“My darling,” he loudly boomed for the sake of all in attendance before lowering his voice to a whisper only she could hear. “See there? You did it all by yourself. A grand entrance to end all grand entrances.”

Following his lead, she replied on a hush, “The new gown helped tremendously. I feel like a different person in it.” Leaning forward, she presented her cheek to him.

Veronica made for a cunning adversary. Lest he open the unorthodox nature of their marriage to public scrutiny, he had no choice but to brush his lips along her silky skin, no choice but to inhale her subtle scent.

He pulled back. “Come along now, Mrs. Bowdoin, and meet my companions.”

“I notice you do not say friends, sir.”

“Because they are not my friends, and I dislike lying.”
Even a lie of omission, like the one underscoring our marriage
. “Dishonesty undermines the character.”

“And keeping one’s distance from one’s fellow man kills the soul.”

“But the body lives on, sometimes for years,” he replied. Then, regretfully, he turned away to perform the obligatory introductions.

His acquaintances kissed her hand all around. Lucky sods.

Their prior two kisses, both instigated by her, he had very much enjoyed. He had begun to enjoy more than a few activities of late, thanks to his wife.

Which would make his ultimate disappointment all that much harder to bear, and it would occur, because it always had before, sooner rather than later in most instances, an eventuality he could count on.

Her arrival—their kiss—did not go without incident. Gossip buzzed around them like a hundred bees, the number of guests present in the ballroom. Their host, very much in tune to social cues, diplomatically signaled for the orchestra to strike up a tune.

“Shall we dance, Mr. Bowdoin?” Veronica held up her hands.

Not a request, a demand, and not one he could avoid with everyone looking on. A dip at the waist, and he was taking the devious wench into his arms to begin a waltz, his leading inept, his faltering feet clumsy. To make matters worse, they were the only couple out on the floor. All eyes were directed at them.

Considering her recent ill health, preoccupation with gossip, her “fallen woman” reputation, and his poor performance out on the floor, he would have thought her averse to making a spectacle of herself.

He thought wrong. His exhibitionist wife not only endured the spotlight; she commanded the spotlight.

“Poor sportsmanship, embarrassing me this way,” he grumbled, counting out the steps, going through the motions, incredibly rusty after years spent being a wallflower.

Her dark brows shot up. “Poor sportsmanship? How so?”

“I cannot dance due to my cane.”

“You mean your walking stick, sir. And you dance very well.”

Fiery pleasure lapped at his face. Not wishing to give his vulnerability away, he jested, “Garnet only does the cancan. Slow numbers leave her at sixes and sevens.”

She reached to his forehead as if to ease his cranky frown, and then, with a change of direction, played with his hair instead. “Tell your barber these strands are far too long.”

“I cut my own hair.”

“So as not to be touched?”

He gritted his teeth. “You found me out.”

“Not in every area. But I shall. Now, waltz me outside. The moon is made to be sighed to.”

“There is no moon tonight, madam. Clouds obscure it from view.”

“All the more reason for sighing. Now, waltz me through the French doors out onto the balcony, or else I shall scandalize this entire room with some public outrageousness.” She fluttered her lashes coquettishly.

“I said for you to hang the consequences and let your true self shine through, but I never meant for you to involve me.”

“You wed me, sir. There is no deeper involvement. Your days of detachment are numbered.”

Outside, he tried to let go of her hand, but she held on tight and began dragging him to the railing overlooking the expansive lawns and gardens.

“What a beautiful evening,” she said and then, yes, sighed right on cue.

He reined in his smile. Not that she would see it should his grin break free, not with all these thunderclouds hanging ominously overhead, but he rarely took chances. “The rain will commence any moment. I feel it.” His bad leg always throbbed in the damp.

“At least you feel
something
, sir.”

“Pain hardly counts.” And he would know.

“Pain tells us we are alive, sir. The threat of pain prevents us from foolishly placing our lives at risk. A twinge of pain is a learning tool. Take fire for instance.”

“I would rather not, madam. I would rather go inside. We can talk philosophy there. In comfort. Any minute now, the sky will open up and soak us to the skin.”