Cry for Passion (8 page)

Sisters, perhaps. Or perhaps they were simply friends.

Laughter, pure and free from the taint of betrayal and scandal, trilled behind them. They disappeared behind a four-wheeled cab.

Relaxing, Rose popped an oblong crumb into her mouth: The oatmeal-coated raisin was still moist. She raised her hand—filling her mouth with cookie—and turned to lock the door.

Startled wings whirred up into the air.

“Hello, Rose.”

The familiar voice stole the sunshine and dragged down Rose’s hand.

Dryly chewing, swallowing—the raisins had inexplicably dried to the consistency of pebbles—Rose locked the white enameled door and turned with a smile.

A blue-bonneted woman stood at the bottom of the stoop. She was clearly in an advanced stage of pregnancy.

“Hello, Lucy,” Rose returned, stomach fighting to reject the cookie crumbs it digested. “Should you be here, this late in your term?”

The twenty-seven-year-old wife of Rose’s oldest brother—and mother to his three sons—smiled with maternal contentment. Gently she caressed the rounded curve of her abdomen that marked her fourth pregnancy. “The baby misses his aunt.”

“He’ll miss his mother more if Derek finds you out and about,” Rose said dryly.

“Derek wouldn’t dare hurt me,” Lucy complacently returned, “for fear of you.”

As if any of her brothers had ever heeded their older sister, all five of them taller than she by the time they reached puberty.

A reluctant laugh escaped Rose’s tight throat. “I assure you, Derek has never been afraid of anything, least of all me.”

“We’re all afraid for you, Rose,” snatched away her laughter.

Rose clenched the iron key inside her hand. “Lucy, I appreciate your concern, truly I do, but I assure you, I am perfectly well.”

Lucy had never been reticent. “Rose, many women fear childbirth, but it’s a small price to pay for what comes afterward.”

Always a woman’s life revolved around children and motherhood.

An image of Jack Lodoun flashed before Rose’s eyes.

Stroking his penis. Loving his penis.

“Do you enjoy being with my brother?” she impulsively asked, metal key biting into her fingers.

“I love Derek,” Lucy said, face glowing with happiness and pregnancy.

“But do you love what he does to you,” Rose pressed, “to give you children?”

Shock widened Lucy’s eyes.

Afternoon light glinted off the younger woman’s dark curls, turning brown into red.

Red had glinted in Jack Lodoun’s hair, Rose remembered. But not in his pubic hair.

“Lucy.” Rose took a deep breath. “I will tell you what I told my parents: I love you, but what I do has nothing to do with you. Nor has it anything to do with my brothers. I am just now setting up house, and do not yet have servants or even furnishings.” A small lie: She had basic furniture and linen only. “Much as I would like to entertain you, it is not yet possible. Please do not come back until I invite you.”

Hurt wiped away the glow of Lucy’s happiness. “What shall I tell Derek?”

“Tell him I love him.”

The hurt on Lucy’s face was not abated.

Rose descended the three steps—Lucy was four inches taller than she—and forced herself to reach out and lay her hand on her sister-in-law’s rounded abdomen. A tiny foot slammed into her palm.

“And tell him,” Rose said, keeping her hand over the baby instead of jerking it away as every muscle, every ligament inside her body demanded, “if this is a girl, that I expect him to name her after her aunt.”

“It’s not likely, after three boys.” Lucy’s nose, peppered with freckles, wrinkled down at Rose. “But if it is a girl, Derek wants to name her after me.”

“Lucy Rose has a good sound, don’t you think?” Rose suggested.

Lucy smiled, Rose’s transgression forgiven, unaware that she herself transgressed. “Lucy Rose it is.”

Rose dropped the iron key into her reticule and slid her hand through Lucy’s arm. The kick that had imprinted her palm continued to pulse. “Now, let’s get you home. We can stop and have an ice, shall we?”

Lucy grabbed Rose’s hand and tightly caged her bare fingers. “Will you come home with me?”

Rose determinedly stared ahead at the future. “Of course.”

“Will you stay and have a visit with Derek?”

Gently Rose squeezed Lucy’s gloved fingers. “No.”

Lucy was not deterred. “Derek talked to Jonathon.”

A busy intersection loomed ahead, only two blocks away. There they could catch a cab, or an omnibus.

Rose forced her left foot forward. She would make the distance.

“What did Jonathon say?” she asked through stiff lips that curled upward in a smile while the palm of her hand burned and throbbed.

Chapter 8

Twin oak doors closed behind Jack. The snick of a lock glanced off his skin.

Perfumed pomade and expensive cologne clogged the corridor. To his left, darkness pressed against stained glass windows. Overhead, brass hall pendants flickered and hissed.

Two hundred and nineteen men shuffled forward—joking, boasting, politicking—each one familiar with the Noes Lobby, where men met to vote no.

There was no discussion of the private act upon which they were now called to vote: Their decision—as was Jack’s—had been made before the third reading.

The body of men merged, MPs filing into a double row between two large Division desks. At the end of the corridor twin oak doors swung wide.

A masculine voice rang out: “Edward Limpton.” It was immediately followed by another voice, more tenor than baritone: “Brian Dougby.”

The two lines surged forward. Each exiting member spoke his name.

It was all that was required to vote no, and to destroy a woman’s dreams.

Jack stepped up to the Division desk and saw not a scribbling clerk, but a nightgown-clad woman with dark nipples who had opened her door to a stranger.

The clerk glanced upward, pen poised. “Your name, sir?”

Rose Clarring would damn him and Parliament for this day.

Jack gave the clerk the vote for which he waited—“Jack Lodoun”—and strode through the double doors.

The chill air inside the House of Commons did not disperse the suffocating scent of men and power. Gleaming oak beams and green-leather-upholstered benches crowded his vision.

“Lodoun,” carried after him . . . caught up with him. “Shall you join us for supper?”

“I have commitments,” Jack lied, steps not faltering.

“Right-oh!” A hearty slap jarred Jack’s bones. “Another time, old chap. Dougby, dear fellow. Go ahead! I’ll catch you in the dining room.”

But Jack had already exited the House of Commons.

In the Commons Lobby he retrieved his coat and hat, another MP among dozens more shelving their political agendas for a break outdoors. In the Central Hall MPs eager for press wooed reporters.

“Mr. Lodoun!” echoed inside the domed ceiling.

Jack kept on walking, wool coat slapping his thighs.

A man wearing a plaid reefer jacket—dark hair slick with macassar oil—stepped in front of him. “Yesterday you lost against James Whitcox in a civil suit. What do you have to say?”

Jack recalled that the lobby correspondent wrote for The Pall Mall Gazette.

“I have nothing to say,” Jack said. And stepped around him.

The reporter followed. “You lost a criminal trial to Whitcox on the twenty-seventh of April. You then resigned your position as attorney general on the twenty-fourth of May. Did you resign so you could go against Whitcox in the civil suit?”

Jack’s heels hollowly corroborated: “I have nothing to say.”

“Is there a rivalry between you and Whitcox?”

“I have nothing to say,” Jack repeated, gaze trained forward.

“How did you vote today in the act for Greffen?”

It was a matter of public record.

“I voted against it,” Jack said.

“Why?” nipped his heels.

“The law did not support it,” Jack said.

“Mr. Prime Minister,” rippled inside the Central Hall.

Jack exited the West door underneath the blind justice of royals.

The reporter for The Pall Mall Gazette did not follow; he had bigger fish to pursue.

Jack entered St. Stephen’s Hall and walked between the dead, clicking footsteps ricocheting off encaustic tile and stained glass.

Marble eyes bored into him.

He knew the name of each life-sized statue. He knew the legacy of each man.

Selden. Hampden. Lord Falkland. Lord Clarendon. Lord Somers. Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Chatham. Lord Mansfield. Burke. Fox. Pitt. Graham.

The Descriptive Account of the Palace of Westminster described them as “men to whom England owes her gratitude for their patriotism and public virtue.”

Jack had read the booklet when he had been twenty-four years old. Jack had walked between the statues as a fellow MP at the age of thirty-four.

He had been one year older, Jack reflected, than what Rose Clarring’s husband was now.

Jack pushed through heavy doors.

Rose Clarring leaned against a lamppost, face turned up to the dying sun.

Jack paused, cock flexing in recognition.

A mechanical clank pierced the monotonous grind of carriage wheels, a warning precursor: The three-quarter bells struck.

Rose Clarring’s head jerked, gaze fixing on the three-hundred-and-fifteen-foot-tall clock tower that dominated the northwestern sky.

The wonder that illuminated her face, listening up close to the bells that could be heard throughout London, fisted inside his chest.

This woman wanted to experience passion. But Parliament did not recognize passion.

Letting go of the heavy door, Jack crossed the pavement, pigeons scattering, footsteps drowned by the deafening clamor of the Westminster Chimes. Inhaling the clean scent of springtime roses, Jack grasped her wool-padded elbow on the fourth refrain.

Cornflower blue eyes shadowed by pending night turned up to his. Inside their depths was the knowledge of his sexuality.

The testicles he had squeezed. The cock he had fucked.

The woman he had loved.

“It’s very beautiful here,” carried over the clear strike of a bell.

The warmth of her skin leaked into Jack’s fingers. “Yes.”

He had once thought so.

“You were drinking last night, before . . .” Her voice trailed off. Elbow tensing, she asked, “Do you at all remember . . . ?”

Heat licked Jack’s cheeks and lapped a trail down to his cock. “Yes.”

He remembered every word she had spoken. Every flicker of shadow inside her eyes, first watching him undress, and then watching him fondle his flesh.

“Did Mrs. Whitcox love you?”

The lingering quiver of a Westminster chime died. The singsong whine of carriage wheels permeated St. Stephen’s Circle.

“Is that why you came to the Houses of Parliament,” Jack asked, voice remote, devoid of the emotion she elicited, “to enquire about my former lover?”

“I didn’t know where else to find you.” Uncertainty wiped clean the sexual awareness inside her gaze. “Is this not a good time?”

No woman had ever met Jack outside the Houses of Parliament: The raw vulnerability he had felt inside her drawing room—dressing in cold, wrinkled clothing and cleaning up his ejaculate—crawled up his spine.

“We generally break for supper around eight,” Jack said neutrally.

“You said you’d consider representation if I demonstrated that a woman’s passion is worth a man’s reputation.”

Behind Jack, sharp footsteps and excited voices pierced the grating whine of passing carriages: The spectators, as well as MPs, were breaking for the evening meal.

“Yes,” Jack said, voice distant.

He had said that.

“Did I?”

A muscle ticked inside his jaw.

He thought of the private act upon which he had just voted. He thought of the reporters who could at any moment exit St. Stephen’s Hall, each of them familiar with Rose Clarring and the trial he had lost.

He thought of Father, and the carrot of Lord of Appeal in Ordinary that he had the night before dangled.

“I see,” Rose Clarring said, shadowed face becoming a polite mask. His fingers involuntarily tightened around her elbow: She emotionally moved out of his reach. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your time. Please accept my apologies.”

But Jack couldn’t let her go.

“Why didn’t you buy a dildo?”

The harsh question underscored sharp heel taps and rousing laughter.

Rose Clarring had said she wanted to feel a man inside her body. Yet when visiting the Achilles Book Shoppe, she had purchased a French postcard instead of an object that would provide physical if not emotional satisfaction.

The stiffness of her elbow did not relax. “I wanted my vagina to be a special place for my husband.”

But Jack was not Jonathon Clarring.

A tiny pulse beat against the palm of his hand.

Her need. Or his.

“Did he ever give you an orgasm?” Jack asked, knowing the answer, hoping he was wrong.

She searched his gaze for long seconds, as if seeking inside his eyes the man who had twenty-one hours earlier exposed his sexuality.

But Jack was not drunk this night. And this night belonged to neither Cynthia Whitcox nor Rose Clarring, but to the common good of England.

“We were children,” she said finally.

Pain knotted Jack’s groin, history repeating itself.

“So your husband never gave you an orgasm,” he unemotionally surmised.

“I don’t need my husband to give me an orgasm.” The sharp click of footsteps receded. A feminine trill trailed behind the men. “I’m quite capable of doing so myself.”

“By exciting your clitoris.”

An external appendage.

Gaslight burnished a gold curl; shadow hollowed her eyes. “Yes.”

“But you don’t fuck yourself,” Jack said flatly.

“No,” she confirmed.

“But you want to divorce your husband.”

“Yes.”

“So that you’ll be free to find passion.”

The heavy rumble of a wagon rode the street.

“Yes,” Rose Clarring said, acknowledging the needs Parliament did not.

“Yet you don’t know what passion is.”

Denial sharpened her voice. “I know it doesn’t reside inside a woman’s womb.”