Cry for Passion (38 page)
Jack saw his face reflected in glass; there was no glass where Rose and Jonathon Clarring should be reflected.
Rose had not shot her husband, he realized; instead she had destroyed the image of the girl she had once been.
Ignorant of men.
Silvery rain slanted through empty square panes.
“I will always mourn the love we had,” Rose continued, voice devoid of the emotion that lashed jagged glass and pelted oak wood, “but I am not responsible for your pain.”
Clattering footsteps slid to a halt behind Jack.
Jonathon Clarring did not move.
“I do not forgive you.” Protesting voices drifted down the hallway. Rose and Jonathon Clarring were impervious to all but each other. “From this day forward, you are not my husband.”
Metal impacted wood.
“You are dead to me, Jonathon.”
Cold, wet wind buffeted his cheeks; simultaneously a newspaper whipped past him.
“You cannot hurt me anymore,” Rose said.
Jack knew differently.
Rose would always hurt for Jonathon Clarring, just as he would always hurt for Cynthia Whitcox. But he would love Rose until their pain went away.
Just for a moment.
Rose turned in a swirl of crumpled black wool.
“Take me home, Jack.” Her eyes were so bright a blue they hurt him. She walked into his arms. “Please.”
Other women must have said please to him: He could not remember them.
Jack cradled the vulnerable nape of her neck and buried his lips in soft, clinging hair.
He had almost lost her.
Squeezing shut his eyes, he inhaled her scent, of roses and the unique spicy-sweet fragrance that was hers alone. His heart skipped a beat, feeling her hands slip inside his coat and the heat of her arms hug his waist.
It could have been a sound—or it could have been the utter lack of sound—that abruptly lifted his head.
Sky blue eyes snagged his gaze.
On Jonathon Clarring’s face was the realization of what he had lost.
Rose loved him, but she did not choose him.
“The Court of Appeals rescinded the Queen’s Bench ruling,” Jack coldly asserted. “No man will ever again be able to imprison his wife.”
Jonathon Clarring showed no reaction.
Jack held Rose close for one painfully short second before letting go. “Let’s go home.”
They stepped out of the den; a constable stepped inside.
A lone masculine voice drifted down the hallway.
Rose halted, forcing Jack to face her: Puzzlement darkened the brightness of pain. “You said he had the legal right to force me to live in his home.”
Jack tucked a trailing curl into a hairpin.
Anxious gazes prickled his skin.
The men and women who stood outside the front door could wait. Jack would no longer deny his need for Rose.
“The law is a living body,” he explained; his hand trembled. “It can be changed, and now it has.”
“Because of you,” she said.
“Because of you,” Jack corrected her.
And Jonathon Clarring, her husband. And James Whitcox, the husband of his former lover.
She closed her eyes, lashes a dark fringe on pale cheeks, and leaned into his touch. “I wanted to kill him.”
Jack did not know how he would react if he were held a prisoner, simply because of legal entitlement. “Did he hurt you?”
Pain knotted the bridge of her nose.
Jack smoothed away the tiny furrow.
A small hand reached inside his wet coat and tunneled inside his waistcoat. “He said one day the contraceptives would fail and I would get pregnant.”
It was a possibility.
But Jack did not say what she already knew.
He cupped the back of her neck and forced up her head.
Rose opened her eyes and met his gaze. “He said he would not divorce me, because as long as we’re married he would have the custody of any child I might have.”
Jack’s fingers tightened until the pain of his touch replaced the pain Jonathon Clarring had caused. “A separation will give you all rights to your person, as well as to any child you should choose to have.”
Sharp fingernails dug into his bare skin. “But Parliament still will not grant me a divorce.”
“Someday, Rose”—Jack took the pain as well as the pleasure she gave—“I will win you a divorce.”
“When the laws change.”
Jack did not apologize for Parliament.
“Yes.”
“Because another woman is abducted by her husband,” Rose assayed.
Or beaten. Or mutilated. Or murdered.
“Yes,” Jack confirmed.
Sudden tears drenched her eyes. “There is no difference, Jack.”
Jack sucked in chill, moist air. “Between what?”
She held his gaze. “You cannot have a splendid fuck unless there is passion.”
His eyes suddenly burned with her tears.
Rose lowered her lashes and firmly tucked his shirt back into the waistband of his trousers. “I think I killed the nurse.”
“How?” he asked alertly.
“With laudanum.”
Jack would not regret the death of the woman who had aided Jonathon Clarring, but he did not want Rose to suffer any more pain.
“Is she in your”—but it was not her bedroom; their bedroom was in a small, cozy row house filled with furniture they had chosen together, he still boneless with orgasm, she entranced with the pleasure she had given him—“where he kept you?”
“Yes.”
“Stay here.”
Reluctantly Jack pulled free of Rose and took the stairs two at a time, footsteps muffled by a rose-patterned wool runner.
The faint odor of roast beef drew him forward.
Her bedroom was papered in roses; there was no sign of Rose in the overly feminine decor.
The nurse—a woman in her late fifties, starched white hat designating her profession pushed low on her forehead—was slumped in a green velvet armchair. The round oak table beside her held an empty plate. Opposite the setting, a napkin covering the plate did not hide congealing food.
A low snore accompanied the drum of rain.
Distastefully, he felt the pulse in the nurse’s neck: It was strong and steady.
She would live.
Quickly he exited the bedroom that had brought Rose nothing but pain.
Rose was surrounded by her family: five brothers, five sisters-in-law, her mother and her father.
Six women and six men—coats dripping water—flanked the front door.
Jack met hazel eyes that were black with shadow.
A woman in a red silk gown briefly stood between Jack and the man who was her husband; slowly she faded in the flickering gaslight and encroaching night.
James Whitcox stood beside the woman he loved. Jack took his place beside the woman he loved.
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Copyright © 2009 by Robin Schone.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schone, Robin.
Cry for passion / Robin Schone.—Berkley Sensation trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-02504-8
1. Marriage—Fiction. 2. England—Fiction. I. Title.
End Notes
1. Sometimes fact is more incredible than fiction. Well, actually, it often is, which is why I write historical fiction. I wrote in my “Acknowledgments” that Cry for Passion was inspired by the real-life case of Emily Jackson In re Jackson. The annotated statements in Chapter Forty-one were taken directly from this case, as reported in Justice of the Peace, And County, Borough, Poor Law Union, and Parish Law Recorder, Volume 55, March 28, 1891.
2. Emily Jackson’s family actually did “picket” outside the house of Emily’s husband: I thought it would also be something that the Men and Women’s Club would do for one of their own members. The following poem is fiction, written by me through Jane Fredericks. It is Jane’s tribute to Rose, and it is what Rose hears in disjointed sentences while she is imprisoned in her husband’s house.
Free the rose
that blossoms and grows,
free of the blight
that is every woman’s plight.
Free the rose
to flourish in a meadow,
free in the beauty
that is a woman’s liberty.