Cry for Passion (12 page)

Her muscles throbbed and ached.

Her right wrist. Her right arm.

Deep inside her pelvis where she had penetrated her body.

She breathed black dust.

No, not where she had penetrated her body, she corrected herself: Where she had fucked her body. While Jack Lodoun watched.

Her vagina no longer belonged to Jonathon.

Purple-blue eyes black with shadow stared up from the ashes.

But neither, Rose thought—over the acrid sulfur clogging her nostrils, she smelled the rich, masculine spice that was Jack Lodoun’s scent—did it belong to her.

The sharp rap of a knocker scattered the pungent memories.

Hopefully, Rose grimly thought, the employment service had sent a butler who was a little less nice in his requirements.

Slamming shut the ash dump door—a gray cloud billowed up the chimney—she backed up out of the fireplace and hung the shovel with the other fire irons.

Her hands—they were black. So was her frock.

Rose wiped her hands on the sides of her wool skirt and answered the door.

Her heartbeat quickened. Skipped a painful beat.

The man who stood on her stoop was as tall as Jack Lodoun. But he wasn’t the man who had watched her cry out with orgasm.

Nor was it a perspective butler.

“You have soot on your face,” Derek said, navy wool overcoat and pomaded blond hair impeccable in the late-morning sun.

Instinctively Rose brought up a hand to her left cheek.

A familiar glint of laughter lit up the thirty-one-year-old man’s eyes. “Now you have more soot on your face.”

“Derek.” Lowering her hand, Rose clenched her fingers into twin fists. There was no wiping away the results of last night. “Fancy seeing you here.”

The mischievous laughter died. “Thank you for bringing Lucy home.”

“She shouldn’t have come,” Rose said, steadily holding the gaze of the man who shared the same hair color as she, but whose eyes were the pale blue of their mother instead of the cornflower blue of their father. “And neither should you have.”

His clear eyes clouded. “I don’t understand, Rose. You’ve always been so happy.”

“Have I?” Rose asked, the ashes she had inhaled swelling inside her throat.

“Divorces are difficult to come by.” Derek searched her gaze. “I hear they’re frightfully expensive.”

“I have my dowry,” Rose said. Jonathon had set up a bank account in her name when they married; he had not touched her funds. “I’ll manage.”

“Why don’t you talk to my solicitor—”

So that the solicitor could talk sense into Rose, Rose surmised.

“I have a barrister,” Rose interrupted. “He’s going to petition Parliament for a private act.”

The cloud inside Derek’s eyes darkened. “I see.”

“I would invite you in for a cup of tea,” Rose said politely, aching for the relationships her desire had tarnished, “but I’m afraid I don’t have the makings yet.”

“Lucy said you didn’t yet have any help.”

Because of the trial, his troubled gaze added. No one wants to associate with a disreputable woman. But Jonathon Clarring forgave her sins.

Why wouldn’t Rose go back home to a husband who so obviously loved her?

“I have an interview shortly,” Rose intervened before Derek put thoughts into words.

It was not a lie.

Any moment now, a man would arrive from the employment agency.

Gaze dropping away from hers, Derek lowered his blond head—gold where kissed by sunlight—and extended a newspaper. “I came to give you this.”

Her oldest brother was the type of man who was comfortable in a roomful of strangers. It hurt to see him so uncomfortable with her, his only sister.

Rose ignored his outstretched hand. “I don’t need to read any more reports of the trial, Derek.”

One had been quite enough.

Derek rifled through the newspaper, folded it to a middle page. “You need to read this, Rose.”

“Derek—”

Derek lifted his head: Pain dilated his pupils until his irises were a thin band of color. Leaning down, he kissed her cheek.

The clinging warmth of his lips penetrated her defenses.

Rose couldn’t remember the last time Derek had demonstrated his affection. She scarcely noticed the stiff newspaper he folded her fingers around until he stepped back.

“Read it, Rose.” Reaching inside his outer coat, he slipped a monogrammed white handkerchief out of a navy, pinstriped frock coat. Carefully he wiped Rose’s face . . . her forehead . . . her left cheek . . . her right cheek . . . her nose . . . her chin . . . eyes focusing on his work instead of meeting her gaze. Rose stood perfectly still, head tilted up for his ministrations, starched cotton a stiff abrasion, gentle fingers a soothing consolation. Abruptly his pain-darkened eyes met her gaze; his hand dropped, cool spring air replacing familial warmth. Derek added, “Please.”

His retreating footsteps sharply clicked against the concrete pavement. Rose watched his gold head duck inside a Clarence cab.

Cynthia Whitcox had died underneath a four-wheeled Clarence cab, Rose remembered reading.

James Whitcox had joined the Men and Women’s Club to find passion. Jack Lodoun rode two-wheeled hansoms to escape passion.

Two men grieving for one woman.

The cab pulled away, the clip-clop of solitary horse hooves as lonely in the day as it was at night.

The empty town house was dark after the brightness of the sun. The echo of her feet followed her into the small drawing room.

She sat on the blue settee, wool blocking the abrasion of damask.

The memory of cold, thick leather penetrated her.

Driving deep. Driving hard.

I, too, need someone to understand thrust home against her cervix.

Through a blur of tears Rose noticed a dark flaw in the blue damask.

The ache inside her pelvis deepened with the realization it was her desire that stained the settee.

The dildo that had precipitated the stain had cost four shillings sixpence. Jack Lodoun had left a shilling and sixpence on the table in the foyer.

Taking a deep breath, Rose stared down at the newspaper Derek had pressed into her hand. Quickly she scanned the headlines: “Parliament to Review Corn Laws” . . . “House of Westminster Plans Queen’s Jubilee” . . . “Juror Accepts Bribe” . . .

Jack Lodoun leapt out at her.

The article, a small column—titled “Private Act Denied”—occupied the bottom, right-hand corner. It was dated Thursday, the second of June.

Yesterday’s date.

Chill, damp foreboding feathered the nape of her neck.

She read the single-paragraph column:

A private act for the divorce of Harriet Maria Greffen from Justin Dwight Greffen was rejected by Parliament. Mrs. Greffen lodged to sever her marriage and gain the right to remarry. The petition read before the House of Commons charged Mr. Greffen with drunken, disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and claimed irreparable alienation and disaffection between man and wife. Barrister, QC and Conservative MP Jack Lodoun was among the overwhelming majority who voted against the private act. Lodoun said: “The law did not support it.”

Rose had the curious sensation of looking down at a blond-haired woman dressed in black.

She couldn’t have read what she had just read.

Slowly she perused the article, analyzing word by word the first sentence, the second, the third, pausing on the fourth, a complex sentence.

Rose could not get past the subject: Barrister, QC and Conservative MP Jack Lodoun.

Long moments passed before she realized the pounding in her ears came from the front door instead of inside her chest.

Chapter 13

The nearly inaudible click of a closing door skidded down his spine.

Jack was no longer alone.

He stared down at the opened Hansard Report instead of at the man who invaded his privacy. “Put Walden in the conference room, Mr. Dorsey.”

“Mr. Walden isn’t here,” the clerk said in his calm, quiet voice. “His secretary telegraphed he’s running late. It’s Mr. Stromwell, sir. He’s waiting outside.”

The black type blurred.

Jack saw not a Parliamentary motion, but Ezekiel 16:17: Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.

Face expressionless, he glanced up. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know, sir; he didn’t say.” Sunlight slanted across navy wool carpeting and turned twenty-seven-year-old Nathan Dorsey’s dark brown hair into bronze. Behind him, the discreetly closed door gleamed, honey oak streaked with gold. “Shall I tell him you’re busy?”

Jack thought of Rose Clarring, alone in a row house with no servants. Jack thought of Blair Stromwell, calling Rose Clarring a slut.

“No,” Jack said, the dull throb inside his groin seeking an outlet. “Show him in.”

“Shall I bring brandy, sir?”

Had Jonathon Clarring drunk himself into a state of unconsciousness while his wife fucked herself with the image of Jack?

“Yes.” Jack closed with a sharp thud the thick volume of Parliamentary motions. “The good Chairman of Justice likes his brandy.”

“Very good. A courier just picked up the minutes to the Men and Women’s Club, and I’ve sorted the post.” The clerk crossed the carpet and proffered a clutch of letters. “The top one is from Mr. Seaton.”

The solicitor who had referred Frances Hart’s son.

Jack ignored the papers, white instead of brown, bearing words instead of a dildo. “I take it he won’t be referring any more clients.”

“On the contrary.” No judgment shone inside the clerk’s clear green eyes. “He asks you to plead a case before the Courts of Summary Jurisdiction.”

A trial without benefit of a jury.

The judge trying the Hart case had been a Conservative: Had there been no jury, Jack would have won.

“For what situation?” Jack asked incuriously.

“Mr. Justin Greffen wishes to sue his wife for restitution of his conjugal rights.”

The husband of the woman to whom Jack and two hundred and nineteen other MPs had denied a divorce.

Jack studied the twenty-seven-year-old man who stood before him.

He had hired Nathan Dorsey three and a half years earlier.

There was no knowledge of Cynthia Whitcox inside the younger man’s eyes. Yet he had not once commented on the trials Jack had lost to James Whitcox.

On the day of Cynthia’s death, he had cancelled Jack’s appointments for the remainder of the week, before Jack had even been aware she’d died.

And now Jack was drawn to Rose Clarring, yet another man’s wife.

The papers inside the clerk’s outstretched hand remained steady.

Nathan Dorsey worked the way he lived: with dignity and reserve.

“Were you my client, Mr. Dorsey,” Jack observed, gaze meeting the waiting eyes of his clerk, “I would argue that the steadiness of your hand is proof you’re an honorable man.”

No pride at being judged an honorable man flickered inside the clerk’s eyes.

“Were you a plaintiff,” Jack continued, “I’d argue that the steadiness of your hand is proof you’re an inveterate liar.”

No offense darkened the clear green gaze.

“How would you plead a case, Mr. Dorsey, in which your client is a liar, a drunkard, a profligate and beats his wife?”

Justin Greffen.

“I don’t know, sir.” The clerk was bluntly honest, his gaze as steadfast as his hand. “That’s why I don’t practice law.”

Yet Nathan Dorsey—who had been called to the bar—knew the law better than most barristers: It was why Jack employed him.

“How would you plead a case,” Jack pressed, “in which a plaintiff’s only culpability lies in his inability to sire children?”

Jonathon Clarring.

Understanding dilated the clerk’s pupils.

He had prepared Rose Clarring’s file. He had watched her in the witness box.

He saw her now in Jack’s gaze.

Her loneliness. Her vulnerability.

The clerk’s pupils shrank to a small black dot.

“A woman,” Nathan Dorsey calmly suggested, “may annul her marriage if the husband has been impotent for three or more years.”

In the eyes of the law, sterility and impotence were often interpreted as one and the same.

“She doesn’t want any aspersions on her husband’s sexuality,” Jack said flatly.

“Does the husband perform his conjugal duties?” the clerk quietly returned.

Heat edged Jack’s cheeks at discussing Rose’s sexual relations with another man. “No.”

“Desertion is grounds for a separation.”

“Desertion is defined by cohabitation, Mr. Dorsey,” Jack said dryly, “not matrimonial intercourse.”

“Perhaps a judge could be convinced differently, sir,” the clerk suggested quietly, calmly, “if he believed a man willfully denied his wife a child.”

Jack studied the clerk’s clear green eyes for long seconds.

He did not have the ability to persuade a judge, Nathan Dorsey’s gaze said, still ruled by the idealism of law rather than the reality. But Jack, who had long ago traded a conscience for position, did.

“She’s no longer living in his house,” Jack said neutrally.

The law required that a woman who petitioned the courts for a separation must live with her husband.

“Perhaps, sir,” the clerk said, “the husband maintains another abode in which she may temporarily abide.”

The thought of Rose Clarring residing in a property owned by Jonathon Clarring knotted his stomach.

“Perhaps.” Jack took the letters. “Show the chairman in.”

The clerk shifted in preparation of turning, as Rose Clarring had shifted her hips on the settee.

A single teardrop leaked into Jack’s thoughts.

Would the club resume their Saturday meetings now that the trial was over? he wondered.

Rose Clarring was a passionate woman.

Would she on the morrow speak of sex using cold, clinical analogies while unabated need pulsed through her body, as it pulsed through his?

Had she even now returned to her husband who “forgave” her for wanting more than his children?

A portly man with thinning gray hair blackened Jack’s threshold.