Cry for Passion (7 page)

Both his thighs and his calves glinted with red-gold fire.

Unerringly her gaze focused on the sex that jutted out of dark, wiry brown hair: It was both longer and thicker than the man in the postcard.

The blue veins striating Jack Lodoun’s flesh pulsed. Unlike the bloodless flesh of the man in the postcard.

A pulse leapt to life deep inside Rose’s breasts . . . her womb . . . her vagina . . . her clitoris . . . her eyes.

The plum-shaped head suddenly flushed a dark red: It jerked, reaching out to Rose.

Rose’s breath hitched inside her lungs.

A drop of liquid pearled inside the tiny urethra—as if squeezed out by an invisible hand—and elongated to form a crystalline thread that shimmered, first in shadow, then in light.

Long seconds passed, he standing naked, she nakedly gazing at his sex.

Tentative, tapered fingers grasped the swollen shaft that was engorged with blue veins.

His sex was longer than his fingers. Thicker than his fingers combined.

He lifted the heavy flesh in his left hand. He kissed the tiny urethra with his right hand.

Rose’s fingers clenched into fists.

Even as she watched, clear, shiny liquid crawled down the small cleft that cleaved the crown of his penis.

It was not seed that he cried, Rose realized—heartbeat accelerating, womb contracting—but desire.

His legs—long, muscular legs that were covered in fine, red-gold hair—shifted . . . parted. Gaslight poured between his thighs and cupped his testicles.

More confidently, the long, tapered fingers smeared glistening essence down and around the thickly swollen crown . . . ducked under a rim of foreskin . . . traced blue veins . . . circled pale flesh that graduated into dark red.

Rose felt the smooth skin. Rose felt the slick friction.

Rose felt the deepening desire.

Making a fist of his left hand, he gently pumped.

Up . . . down. Up . . . gathering more moisture . . . down.

Rose clenched her thighs, vagina weeping at the pleasure Jack Lodoun took in his touch.

With his fingertips he teased the small opening that cried crystalline tears, while with his left fist he steadily pumped. Up to the crown . . . down to the dangling testicles aureoled by gaslight.

Fingers caressing.

Fingers stroking.

Fingers pumping.

She wanted to speak of how utterly beautiful he was—touching himself—but she had no words to describe what she was witnessing.

Rose had seen naked men in the form of statues and paintings and photographs; neither marble, paint nor chemically treated paper compared to skin caressed by light and shadow. To flesh that cried for sexual expression. To human need that burned deep inside the body where moral and marital obligation did not penetrate.

The swollen glans jerked underneath a probing fingertip. Rose’s clitoris jerked in sympathy.

Soughing breathing interspersed the hiss of gas and the crackle of embers and the slick rub of skin.

Something was happening . . . something that quickened her breathing and heated her skin.

His fisted fingers tightened. Rose tightened her two fists until her nails bit into the palms of her hands.

Abruptly the fingers that rhythmically rimmed the tiny opening to his urethra leapt downward and cupped the testicles that had drawn tight and close to his body.

A small, stifled groan snapped her gaze upward.

Jack Lodoun’s head was thrown back, eyes squeezed closed in—her heart contracted in empathy, even as her vagina convulsively clenched—agony.

Rose saw on his face the joy he had experienced, loving another man’s wife. She saw the loneliness he now escaped, living on the memories of the pleasure they had shared.

His penis pistoning deep into her vagina. Her vagina—crying with need as his penis now cried—welcoming . . . embracing . . . treasuring the flesh that filled it.

One man. One woman. Two bodies. Two heartbeats.

Each straining to achieve that moment when they would cease to be two, and in their shared pleasure, would become one.

It was an intimacy Rose had dreamed about but had never before experienced until now, watching a stranger love another woman with his hand.

Without warning, the clenched eyelids snapped open. Purple-blue eyes pinned Rose.

First came the orgasm. Then came realization.

Rose was not the woman he loved. And the woman he loved was dead.

Silently she rose and left Jack Lodoun to his grief.

Chapter 7

“Hats off, strangers!”

The police inspector’s traditional bawl ricocheted off white marble, stained glass and encaustic tile.

Jack did not watch the Speaker’s Procession that began the day’s sitting in the House of Commons. Instead he watched the men and women who for the first time witnessed the ceremony that daily occurred inside the Houses of Parliament.

He saw their awe, gazing wide-eyed at the Serjeant at Arms who bore the five-foot-long gilded mace that symbolized royal authority. But the wonder the spectators radiated was eclipsed by the raw emotion that coursed through Jack.

Rose Clarring had watched him orgasm. She had cried the tears Jack had not cried for Cynthia Whitcox.

Not when he had read about her death on the front page. Not when he had read about her funeral in the obituary.

Excitement sparked the spectators.

They saw the Speaker—trainbearer holding up the ceremonial black silk robe—follow behind the Serjeant at Arms. Jack saw a finger-pinched postcard of a naked man fucking his fist.

A low rumble of restlessness filled the domed, octagonal hall.

The chaplain and secretary who trailed the trainbearer through the East door and into the Commons Corridor disappeared behind massive oak.

The two doors would not open for another three minutes.

Inside the House of Commons, the Serjeant at Arms secured the mace on the Table while the Speaker and chaplain knelt for Prayers.

But the spectators did not know what they could not see. And Jack did not see what could come of himself and Rose Clarring.

Yet he could not stop thinking of her.

The pain that had compelled her to approach him outside the Old Bailey Courthouse. The need that had turned her blue eyes black, watching him undress.

Her resolve to gain a divorce when a divorce was impossible to be gained.

The spectators marked the time: They faced the North door. Jack marked the time with them: He faced the East door.

Johanna of Navarre, Queen of Henry IV; Henry V; Katherine, Queen of Henry V; Henry VI; Margaret, Queen of Henry VI; and Edward IV gazed down at Jack.

For every king, there was a queen. Together they symbolized the foundation of the English Commonwealth: family.

Yet inside the Central Hall there was no queen for Edward IV. And Johanna of Navarre’s king guarded the North door rather than the East.

Jack read the Bible verse that was inlaid inside encaustic tiles underneath the marble statues: “Except the Lord keep the house, their labor is but lost that built it.”

“Prayers are over!” vaulted down the Commons Corridor and through the Central Hall. Doorkeepers simultaneously threw open the galleries.

The three minutes were up. The House was now sitting.

Feminine and masculine heels pounded encaustic tiles, clattered up stairs.

Memory slashed through Jack, the image of six women and five men.

While awaiting the judgment of Frances Hart, Rose Clarring had stood in the rear of the courtroom gallery between John Nickols, a man confined to a wheelchair, and Joseph Manning, the mustached founder of the Men and Women’s Club.

Marie Hoppleworth, a spectacled woman, had rested her hand on John Nickols’s shoulder. Joseph Manning had cupped the elbow of Ardelle Dennison, a coldly beautiful woman.

They had congregated as if they had the legal right to do so.

Men did not stand with women in the Houses of Parliament, Jack reflected.

Left hand tightening around a leather satchel, he pushed away from the wall, hat and umbrella secure in his right hand.

The male spectators climbing the stairs would publicly watch the machinations of England’s most powerful club of men in the gallery while the female spectators privately observed through a brass trellis.

Unseen. Unheard.

Unrepresented.

“No, madam, I cannot accept a penny less.”

Rose stared down at the letter clenched between her fingers.

The fifty-three-year-old butler came with perfect references.

She recognized the name of his last employers. She knew that his reason for leaving their employment was valid.

The employers had leased their townhouse and purchased a manor in the country. The butler did not want to leave London where his family lived.

Rose did not blame him. It was obvious he blamed her.

She was a notorious woman who belonged to a scandalous club. No respectable servant wished to work in such a household without due compensation.

“Then I’m afraid we will not do, Mr. Tandey.” The salary he demanded was outrageous. Carefully Rose smoothed the reference before folding it. Glancing up, she extended the letter with a steady hand. “Thank you for coming.”

Curling his lips in dismissal, the man grasped the edge of the folded paper.

He would have no problem gaining future employment with a respectable household, that smirk told her.

Rose knew it. He knew she knew it.

He was the fourth such butler she had interviewed with a like mind.

Sniffing, the man tripped out of the drawing room.

Rose sat back in the too-soft, velvet-upholstered armchair and stared at blue damask.

Purple-blue eyes blackened by shadow stared up at her.

Is your husband here with you today? invaded the dead silence.

She squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the memory.

Jack Lodoun relentlessly pursued her. Look in the gallery, Mrs. Clarring. Do you see your husband?

No.

Why not?

He’s not in the courtroom.

Is he waiting outside? squeezed her throat. Shall we call him in?

No, he’s not outside.

Why isn’t your husband in the courtroom with you, Mrs. Clarring?

“Because in Jonathon’s eyes, I don’t exist,” Rose whispered, eyelids opening, dry eyes confronting the truth.

But she had not been able to say that, penned on all sides by strangers: the judge, the jury, the witnesses who gobbled up her every word.

She had not been able to say that there was no one to whom she could turn for comfort, save for the other members of the Men and Women’s Club. But they did not need her, either. They had found comfort in each other, one man for every woman, Rose the odd woman out.

Unbidden images blotted out the blue damask settee.

Red gold hair glinting. Ruby-tipped flesh glistening.

Rose had not known that a man’s sex cried for passion. But now she knew.

She knew how Jack Lodoun needed to be touched. She knew where Jack Lodoun needed to be touched.

She knew to what depths Jack Lodoun had penetrated the woman he loved.

Jealousy for the deceased woman—more bitter than bile—flooded her mouth.

Four distant bongs permeated the faint rumble of carriage wheels.

The Houses of Parliament, she remembered, sat at four in the evening.

Rose stood.

Her stomach growled.

She realized she had not eaten since snatching a coffee and a pastry before visiting the employment office.

Afternoon sunlight danced on polished oak.

Rose walked in reverse the steps she had walked seventeen hours earlier.

Bronze, cherry and brass gleamed in the shadows.

A lone black cloak and bonnet occupied the foyer.

There was no sign of the man to whom she had opened her door, and from whom she had then demanded he open his trousers. It was as if the night before had never happened.

Rose buttoned her cloak and settled the black bonnet over her upswept hair.

For long seconds she studied her reflection in the oval, bronze-framed mirror that hung above the foyer table.

Sunlight gilded her blond hair and blushed her pale cheeks.

She was, indeed, a woman who deserved to be loved.

The thought did not banish the shadows inside her reflection.

Unable to hold the dark gaze inside the mirror, Rose reached into the top drawer of the foyer table for her reticule, grabbed instead last evening’s edition of The Globe.

The drawing of a woman stared up at her, eyes black with lust.

Gentle blue eyes superimposed the charcoal eyes.

Did Jonathon look at the picture in the newspaper, she wondered, and see the innocent bride Rose had once been? Or did he see an adulteress, as Rose’s father had seen?

Gentle blue bled into purple-blue.

Rose saw the gray-wigged, black-robed man who had shredded her reputation. Rose saw the bare-headed, black-suited man who had eviscerated her emotions.

Rose saw the naked man—light dancing on sharp collarbones, shadow pinching beaded brown nipples—who had gifted her with his sexuality.

Jack Lodoun had not once condemned her for wanting to be a woman rather than a mother.

Forcefully Rose crumpled the newspaper: It crunched.

Puzzled, she smoothed out the wrinkled print.

Cookie crumbs pelted the naked cherry table.

A smile streaked through Rose: Giles, the butler, had not forsaken her.

Warmth permeated the chill foyer.

Later she would clean up, but not now when the sunshine beckoned.

Tapping the remaining crumbs out of the newspaper into the palm of her hand, Rose grabbed her reticule out of the drawer and flung open the white enameled door.

“There you are, darling!” riveted her.

But the feminine voice was not familiar.

Rose surreptitiously glanced to her left at the mustard yellow house that adjoined her robin’s egg blue house.

A woman in her thirties—Rose estimated she was close to her own age of thirty-three—stood on the stoop of the neighboring row house and hugged a woman who was comparably aged. Together, arms linked, they descended the short steps and crossed the sun-dappled street.