Cry for Passion (21 page)

“Rose is my wife, sir,” he merely said. “Regardless of what you may think of me, I insist you speak with the respect she is due.”

“Rose is my lover,” Jack reciprocated. “And I have nothing but respect for her. It is you, Clarring, I question.”

“I have told you everything you need to know.”

As her barrister, but not as her lover.

Jack asked, simply, “Why?”

“I have no doubt my wife has told you the answer,” the younger man returned stonily.

But Jack was not referring to his lack of sexual attentiveness.

“Why won’t you divorce her?” he elaborated.

“She’s my wife.”

Jack understood James Whitcox. He needed to understand Jonathon Clarring.

“Does it excite you, thinking about your wife with another man?” Jack asked.

Emotion flitted across Jonathon Clarring’s unlined face; he was so young Jack wanted to weep.

“No,” he said.

He spoke the truth.

“Do you fuck your fist,” Jack probed, “imagining the sexual acts she performs with another man?”

“No.”

Again, he spoke the truth.

“Do you get hard, Clarring, thinking of another man filling your wife with his seed?”

The calm inside the blue eyes splintered.

“I love her,” ricocheted off crystal and bronze.

Jack had succeeded: He saw the man who had dreamed and laughed, but whose dreams and laughter had been stolen by the mumps.

Rose had said the love Jonathon Clarring bore her was each day killing him: Jack now saw the pain she had seen, living with him for twelve years.

“I love her,” Jonathon Clarring repeated. The unadulterated pain inside his eyes dulled but still remained. Calmly, quietly, he asked, “Can you say the same?”

“. . . ‘Sam’wiches! ’Am sam’wiches! Fresh ’am . . . !” filled the silence . . . fled the silence.

By Jack not answering, he betrayed Rose as surely as did her husband.

“You’ve forced her to live alone for twelve years, Clarring,” Jack said instead. “Those are not the actions of a man who loves his wife.”

The pain Jonathon Clarring had inflicted upon Rose shone inside his eyes. “What I do or do not do is strictly between my wife and me, sir.”

Jack’s nipple burned with the memory of Rose’s kiss.

“What kind of a man, Clarring, forces the woman he loves to seek love with another man?”

“What kind of a man, Mr. Lodoun, humiliates a woman in a court of law and then takes her as a lover?”

Jack would not apologize for his actions in a courtroom.

“I did what I had to do.”

“As did I,” Jonathon Clarring returned.

Underneath the pain in his sky blue eyes, Jack read castigating guilt—an emotion with which Jack daily lived—and a determination that chilled his bones.

Jack did not know Jonathon Clarring, but he did know that the man who gazed at him now was not the boy with whom Rose had fallen in love.

“Why won’t you give Rose her freedom?” Jack pressed. And wondered anew: Would James Whitcox have granted Cynthia Whitcox a divorce?

“I will answer your question,” Jonathon Clarring offered, as if they were two businessmen, he a stockbroker and Jack a client, “if you will answer mine.”

Jack’s loyalty remained with Rose.

“Which question is that?” he asked neutrally.

“Does my wife love you?”

The past juxtaposed the present.

James Whitcox confronting Jack. James Whitcox questioning Jack.

Did she love you?

Jack had not answered James Whitcox. But he answered Jonathon Clarring.

“No,” he said flatly.

There was no triumph in Jonathon Clarring’s gaze, only that grim determination that filled Jack with foreboding. “Who does Rose love?”

Pain knifed through Jack. His pain, not that of Jonathon Clarring.

Rose had said she felt loved when Jack was inside her body, but she had been very clear from the outset: “You.”

But Jonathon Clarring had already known the answer to his question.

“I have always known my wife would take a lover, Mr. Lodoun,” jolted through Jack.

A pulse beat inside his temple. A matching pulse pounded inside his cock.

Inside the younger man’s eyes burned the knowledge of Jack and Rose’s carnal love.

A love he desired, Jack saw, but which he deliberately suppressed.

“Just as I have always known it is I to whom she will return.” Between one blink and the next, the dark desire inside Jonathon Clarring’s eyes died. “And that, sir, is why I will not divorce Rose.”

Chapter 22

“Shall I bill your address, Mrs. Clarring?”

Gaslight danced on the woman’s hair, turning dark brown into auburn red.

Incongruously Rose remembered that light had reflected off the gynecologist’s balding head.

Three men now knew her intimately.

Rose took a deep breath. “I’ll pay now, thank you.”

“That will be”—the comparably aged woman squinted down at the gynecologist’s hastily scrawled notation—“three . . . four . . .” A surprisingly throaty laugh escaped her. She flashed up a rueful smile at Rose. “I keep threatening to send him back to school to learn how to write so others can read his script. That will be four shillings one pence, please.”

Rose dug out a half crown and two shillings from her reticule and neatly lined up the silver coins on the wooden desk. “I appreciate you taking me in like this.”

She had arrived just as the doctor was seeing the last patient for the day.

“Not to worry.” Gold flashed on the woman’s ring finger; Rose instinctively thumbed over the bare spot on her left hand. “My husband enjoys his work. We’re taking the children to the Zoological Gardens, but they don’t feed the lions and tigers until four, so it worked out well.” Head rising—gaze warm—she extended her hand. “I think you and your husband will quite enjoy the cap, Mrs. Clarring.”

But it was not for her husband.

Rose had the odd sensation that this woman who glowed with the love she bore her balding gynecologist would understand the need that had brought Rose and Jack together.

She stuffed the receipt, a threepence coin and two copper pennies into her reticule. “Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.”

Sunlight streaked the corridor outside the dark cherry door that locked behind her. Before her a black runner marched downward into a lighted stairwell.

The small rubber cap—cheaper than a leather phallus—squeezed her cervix.

Inexplicable fear stabbed through her: She could not take those stairs.

Rose pressed a finger-smeared button beside a white-enameled lift.

The grumble of metal coiling around metal instantly responded.

A dark shadow climbed enameled mesh.

“Smashin’ outside,” the lift man cheerfully observed through painted wire.

“Indeed, it is,” Rose responded politely.

The lift halted, a jarring clank. Simultaneously, the darkness behind the wire moved: A gate slammed open.

Shadow turned into a red uniform topped by auburn hair: “Goin’ down?”

The lift man was a boy . . . a very handsome boy who could barely be more than sixteen years of age.

“Yes.” Rose dubiously stepped up four inches into the wire cage. “Thank you.”

The boy slammed shut the metal gate; mottled light shone through the wire mesh. “This be me first day on th’ job ’ere.”

The elevator dropped: Rose’s stomach dropped with it.

“You’re doing very well,” she lied, fingers slipping through cold wire and tightly gripping.

“Ain’t just nobody they ’ire t’ wear this uniform. I be a man now, m’ da says.” The lift came to a jarring halt. He threw back the gate to unfiltered sunshine and stepped aside. Frank admiration glowed in his clear, young face. “Got me a break comin’ up. Buy ye a cuppa?”

Unbidden pleasure rushed through Rose. It had been a long time since a man had flirted with her. Even longer since one this young had done so.

“Perhaps another day,” she said gently.

Gingerly unlatching her fingers, she prepared to step down five inches; instantly a white-gloved hand appeared, steadying her.

“Sure,” the boy said, cheer undiluted by rejection. “Ye’re just lettin’ me down easy-like. M’ da told me ’bout ladies like ye. Th’ pretty ones ’re always taken, ’e said. ‘Mind yer ’eart, boy,’ ’e said, ‘else they’ll steal it away an’ leave ye wi’ nuthin’ but a great bleedin’ ’ole in yer chest.’ ”

Rose gained the tiled floor on a lilting laugh.

For a second she didn’t recognize the source of the laughter; abruptly she realized it had come from her.

Breath catching inside her throat, she glanced up at the junior-aged gallant who held her hand.

Fleeting memories joggled her thoughts.

A Sunday rather than a Saturday. A swaying boat rather than a caged lift.

A sky so blue it had hurt to look at it.

Or perhaps it had been Jonathon’s eyes she had gazed into.

“Someday, sir,” Rose said, blinking into focus bright green eyes that sparkled in the sunshine, “a pretty young woman is going to come round and knock you off your feet.”

A young woman who believed that love precluded adultery. As Rose had once believed.

He winked, warm fingers gently pressing before releasing her hand. “Can’t be as pretty as ye.”

“You’re a shameless flirt.” Rose reached inside her reticule and retrieved a threepence coin. “But a charming one. Enjoy your break.”

“Awww, ye don’t ’ave t’ do that, ma’am.” He pocketed the silver coin. “But I thank ’ee. May’ap ye’ll be back later? I be off at five.”

Rose remembered the uncomplicated days of laughter and courtship, when love and sexual satisfaction had in her naivety gone hand in hand.

She gazed up at the boy poised on the threshold of manhood, his natural advantage enhanced by the five-inch lift of the cab. “Do you know, I am tempted.”

His thin young face flooded with undisguised pleasure. “Really?”

Rose smiled. “Really.”

“ ’Ey!” he called behind her. “I’ll be ’ere! M’ name’s—”

The revolving door cut off the boy’s name. The sincere admiration in his eyes followed her out onto pavement that sparkled in the sunshine.

Pulling on black leather gloves, Rose rounded the corner of the quiet off-street. Immediately she was swallowed in a sea of prodding umbrellas and bouncing bustles.

This was the heart of London, the business district.

The crush and rush was oddly exhilarating. They didn’t care who she was—those faceless, nameless men and women who pushed and shoved to get where they wanted—and neither did Rose.

Breathlessly she stepped out of the human locomotion into the path of the London Stock Exchange. The massive building formed a triangular island surrounded on all sides by a clamoring sea of noise and motion.

Back stiffening, Rose stepped inside the financial palace. Instantly London receded.

Fractured light illuminated a black-and-white diamond-patterned marble floor.

Rose glanced up, heels hollowly echoing: The tall, domed ceiling was glass.

A clutch of men wearing dark wool coats and felt bowler hats leaned against a rectangular column, voices a rumbling murmur. Rose did not recognize their faces: They could be clients or stockbrokers.

Regret danced on shimmering rays of sunshine: The London Stock Exchange was as much an enigma as the Houses of Parliament.

Squaring her shoulders, Rose determinedly followed a line of black diamonds.

A man wearing a dark gray hat and coat detached from a bank of bronze elevators and strode toward her, heel taps louder than hers.

Rose slowed . . . footsteps faltering . . . womb clenching in recognition.

Underneath the flapping gray coat the man wore black.

They were not the same clothes he had worn the night before, she thought on a painful surge of tenderness.

And then there was no room for thought.

Jack Lodoun stepped in front of Rose, a head taller than she, so close she could smell warm wool and the distinct aroma of spice and roses. Underlying the three familiar odors was the unmistakable scent of his flesh, a scent that could not be manufactured or duplicated.

“What are you doing here?” Rose asked, mouth so dry she could not swallow.

Deep between her buttocks she felt the faint presence of his ejaculation.

“What are you doing here?” he rejoined, voice expressionless, face clean of stubble, eyes darkly shadowed by the brim of his hat.

“I came to see my husband.”

“So did I.”

The rubber cap squeezing her cervix palpitated, as if it possessed a heartbeat.

Rose forced out the words. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him I was your lover,” he said unapologetically.

Rose had the curious sensation that the floor tilted.

“No,” she said. Or maybe she only thought she spoke.

She had not wanted Jonathon to learn this way. Not from the man with whom she had cuckolded him.

Rose stepped around Jack.

Only to find her way blocked by Jack.

“He won’t divorce you,” he said flatly.

“You had no right,” she said, corded silk cutting through her leather glove. And again stepped around him.

Only to again be blocked.

“I’m your barrister.” Shimmering sunlight framed his shadowed face. “I have every right.”

“The fee I pay determines your rights,” Rose lashed back.

Rights jolted up to the glass-domed ceiling.

The gazes of men crawled on her skin like electricity. The pain that blossomed inside Jack’s eyes cramped her stomach.

“Don’t go to him,” he said. “Stay with me.”

“He’s my husband.”

And Jack had hurt him.

“And I’m your lover.”

And Jonathon had hurt Jack.

But she had not vowed to love Jack. She had not betrayed Jack in the most fundamental way a woman could betray the man she loved.

Rose stepped around the barrister. He did not stop her.

The ornate bronze lift on the far right was open.

Hurriedly she crossed the marble floor, reticule swinging, bustle bouncing, heel taps echoing.

If only she could walk faster. If only she had not flirted with the lift boy.

“Afternoon, ma’am.” A burgundy-uniformed man heartily welcomed Rose. “Which floor?”