The Furies (46 page)

Louis knew Rothman’s kept a telegraph operator on duty in Boston until midnight five days a week, and until noon on Saturday. His mother paid the operator’s wages.

Michael pulled a chair up to the table, noted the time of the query on a pad between the sounder and the transmitting key. He wiped his fingertips on his trousers, then began to operate the key, a horizontal knife switch that opened and closed the circuit to form the dots and dashes. Louis walked quickly to the door—the interruption provided a good excuse—but Michael had trained himself so thoroughly in Mr. Morse’s code, he was able to keep sending his message and swing around to look at Louis at the same time—

But Louis was already out the door. As he shut it, Michael’s golden brown eyes fixed on his, puzzled—

He suspects something,
Louis thought, flushed again.

All at once he resented Michael’s curiosity. The young Irishman
was
just an employee, not a member of the family. It wasn’t his business if Louis had decided to—

To—

He couldn’t even complete the thought.

Did he have enough nerve to go ahead? If only he hadn’t made those rash promises to his classmates—!

But he had. So there wasn’t much choice, was there?

All right, he’d take the first step and see what happened.

He stole into the darkened dining room. At the sideboard, he pulled out a decanter of whiskey. He’d tried whiskey before, surreptitiously, and destested it. But he’d heard whiskey made a person bolder. He un-stoppered the decanter, tilted it and let a little of the liquor trickle down his throat.

He winced, wiped his eyes, shivered in the darkness as the telegraph key went silent on the other side of the dining room wall. He listened. Heard Michael’s footsteps. Then silence. He’d evidently returned to his chair. Somewhere below, rattling crockery told Louis the servants had concluded their meal—

Except for Kathleen. She would be finishing the bedrooms: lighting the gas, plumping the pillows, arranging the coverlets—

One more swallow of whiskey set his head to aching faintly. He drew a deep breath, returned the decanter to the sideboard and, after a soft belch that burned his throat, started for the rear hall.

As he climbed the steps, the brief headache passed. He felt warmer. Almost bold. What did he care if Michael Boyle wondered about his behavior? What did he care what anyone thought? His mother was a wealthy woman whose money permitted her to do anything she wished. He was no different—

He felt the stiffness again, without shame. He’d have a juicy tale to report on Monday.

Louis stole along the second-floor corridor toward the spill of light at the open door of his room. As he approached, he could hear small sounds: the rustle of bedding, Kathleen humming—

He squared his shoulders and pressed his palm to his mouth to hold back another belch. The whiskey had produced a feeling of confidence that enabled him to smile as he turned in at the bedroom door.

He was on the point of speaking when he noticed the curve of Kathleen’s hip. She was leaning over the large bed, adjusting the covers. Her shiny black skirt shimmered in the glare of the gas. Snow ticked against the far windows.

The sight of Kathleen bent that way, the curve of her buttocks accentuated by her posture, brought him to full and painful rigidity. He knocked on the open door.

Kathleen screeched and spun around. One hand flew to the bosom of her dress. She had coppery hair all but concealed by her cap, a blunt chin and heavily freckled cheeks. Her mouth was full, her eyes pale blue. Her black dress and over-the-shoulder apron fit her ample breasts snugly.

“Good evening, Kathleen,” he said, taking a step inside but blocking the door.

“Good evening, Master Louis,” she said, still red in the cheeks. “You came in so softly—startled me half to death.”

“Thinking of something else, were you? A gentleman friend?”

The girl was obviously stunned by his directness. “No, sir, I—I don’t have any—” She swallowed. “I’ll be finished in a moment.”

“Good,” he said, pivoting away. Kathleen’s eyes had a peculiar, almost alarmed look. She hadn’t missed the telltale bulge of his trousers.

Louis strolled to the window. His palms itched as he stared out at the snow-dusted roof of the mansion next door. But he didn’t really see it. He saw only Kathleen’s body—

“All done, sir. I’ll be going now—”

He turned around. “Close the door.”

For a moment she appeared not to understand. She took a hesitant step backward. “Master Louis, did you say—?”

“You heard very clearly what I said. Walk to the door and close it.”

Fright shone in her eyes. She shook her head. “Sir, that isn’t proper—”

“I don’t care what’s proper. I want you to close the door!”

He moved toward her. His hand shook as he raised it to her left breast. She closed her eyes and shuddered. With his other hand fisted and quivering at his side, he touched her breast with the back of his hand, then pressed upward.

Kathleen appeared on the point of tears. “Please, Master Louis, may I leave?”

“You may not. I’ve been taken by your looks ever since my mother hired you, Kathleen. I’ve wanted to talk to you—get acquainted—”

Her eyes opened, tearful and angry. “And what else, sir?”

“Oh, don’t act so innocent. Don’t tell me you’ve never had a man before—”

“Jesus and Mary be my witnesses, I have not! I’m a decent person—”

He guffawed, his dark eyes like black stones. “Come on! No Irish wench from the Five Points stays decent for long.”

“That’s a nasty thing to say! I’ve taken no man, and I won’t till I’m properly wed by a priest.”

“I think you’re going to change your mind very shortly, Kathleen.”

“You’ve been at the whiskey!” she exclaimed, pulling away from the press of his hand, “I can smell it. The whiskey’s the reason you’re saying all this—”

“I’m saying it because I like you.”

She lunged for the door. “I won’t stay here another—
ah
!”

She cried out when he caught her forearm and dragged her back, stretching out his leg to catch the door with his toe and set it moving. Softly, the door clicked shut.

He maneuvered against her, his hands slipping around her waist. He drew her close. She shook her head and muttered incoherent syllables. She tried to pull away from the stiffness thrusting against her skirt but he held her fast, working his fingers in the fabric of her skirt—

“I ask you for the sake of decency, Master Louis, stop this—”

“I won’t”—he put his mouth near her left ear, aroused all the more by the tickling touch of her hair and the lace of her cap—“because I know you’re like all Irish girls. I know what you really want—”

“You don’t! It’s filthy of you to accuse me of—”

Angry at her protests, he slid his mouth across her cheek and found her lips.

At first they were cold and unyielding. She continued to struggle. But after a moment he felt a little heat.

He laughed, a soft, harsh sound. He held her tight as he pushed his tongue between her teeth.

Her tongue touched his for a fraction of a second. Then, as if realizing her own feelings were getting out of control, she wrenched her head away.
“You mustn’t do this! If your mother should find out—”

“She won’t. We’ll be done before she’s home.”

“I swear to you, I’m a virgin—”

“We’ll remedy that.”

He slid his hand down the front of her apron and pressed, feeling the curve of her belly. He moved his hand lower, his head all at once throbbing from the whiskey. The gaslit room seemed isolated, cut off from the real world. And the pressure between his legs had grown unbearable—

When he tried to thrust her back onto the bed, she broke away again, slipping around him toward the door. She’d nearly reached it when he called out,
“Kathleen!”

Slowly, she looked back. Her blue eyes widened at the harshness of his face.

“What—what is it?”

“Do you want to be arrested for thievery?”

Her mouth shaped into a horrified
O.
She could barely repeat the word.
“Thievery!”

He gestured to a bureau, where he kept loose change. “I’ll say I found you rummaging through my belongings—searching for money—unless you do exactly as I say.”

“Oh, God, Master Louis, you wouldn’t—”

“I would unless you undress and lie down on the bed, Kathleen.”

Her eyes grew hateful then, so hateful that he was terrified, tempted to let her go and be done with it.

But she hid the hatred, begging, “I need this position. I’m the only one of the McCreerys old enough to work—”

“Very well. If you value your six dollars a week, do what I say.”

“You—you imagine you have a right to demand—”

“I
do
have the right.” He wiped his perspiring upper lip. “What’s it to be, Kathleen? The six dollars—or a charge of thievery? It’ll follow you wherever else you try to work—”

She started crying, the tears dampening her freckled cheeks as she glanced helplessly from one side of the room to the other. Seeing how she weakened so easily, he laughed aloud.

“You”—her voice was ragged—“you’re only a child. Not even fifteen—”

Flushing, he said, “I have a man’s cock, if that’s your worry.”

“But not a man’s heart. Not a speck of Christian kindness—”

“I want to love you, Kathleen.”

“—anything you want, you think you can take!”

“I can.” He took a step toward her.

“Don’t touch me!”
Then, less stridently: “Not—not till I’m ready.”

He stepped to the door and slid the bolt. “Just pull your skirt up and bare yourself. That’ll be satisfactory—”

He heard the bed creak as she lowered herself onto it. He heard garments rustling, then her voice again: “Will—will you be good enough to turn the gas down?”

“I don’t think so. I want to see you—”

Unfastening his trousers, he faced her, his heart hammering in his chest as he moved his gaze slowly, slowly upward along her freckled white legs.

She lay still beneath him, her eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. Louis slid between her thighs and probed, hurt at first by the roughness of her flesh.

Finally, her body changed in reaction to his presence. He jerked back and forth. Within a few seconds, his loins quivered and exploded. He felt a deep sense of disappointment—

Kathleen maneuvered her hips so their bodies were no longer joined. He rolled onto his side, stretching a hand toward her wrist as she stood up and started to lower her skirt.

The moment his fingers closed, she glared at him, miserable and angry at the same time. “I’ve given you what you wanted, haven’t I?”

“Once.” He nodded, feeling distinctly sober and angry himself. The experience had been much less fulfilling than he’d imagined: a quick abrasion of flesh on flesh, then an abrupt end—nothing worth boasting about—“Lie down again.”

Disbelieving, she shook her head. “You can’t again so soon—”

“But in a little while—Kathleen, damn you,
lie down!
”

“I must go—”

“No, we”—he yawned—“we’ve plenty of time.” It seemed that way; it seemed as if only a minute or so had elasped since he’d entered the room. “Besides, no one ever disturbs me after I’ve shut my door for the night.”

She bowed her head, knelt on the bed and stretched out, weeping softly again. He was caught in a storm of conflicting feelings.

Satisfaction because he’d had his way.

Fear that he shouldn’t have done it; he tried not to dwell on the hate he’d glimpsed in her eyes.

And a peculiar sadness that came over him because the act so long anticipated had been so curiously coarse and unrewarding.

The second time would be different. He’d enjoy it and so would she—

She lay with her back toward him. He pulled her over and forced her fingers to curl around him. She didn’t want to touch him that way—her palm was cold; she cried harder—but he held his hand over hers and forced her, staring at the ceiling as she had done earlier, awaiting the first tingle of a response from his own flesh.

A
MANDA LET HERSELF INTO
the dim front hall. She drew off her hat and cast the snow-dampened muff aside, then paused to study her face in a pier glass.

She’d be forty-nine before the year was out. She felt every one of those years this evening. The glass showed wrinkles around her eyes, and more gray in her hair. How much of that gray had been put there by her preoccupation with Stovall?

Feeling incredibly weary, she drew a deep breath and walked to the library doors. She opened them and gasped at the heat.

Busy cleaning himself on the telegraph table, Mr. Mayor paused with a paw athwart his nose. He recognized her and went back to bathing. Michael rose from the chair beside the hearth.

“Hallo, Mrs. A,” he said with his mouth full.

She was always amused by Michael’s passion for food and warmth. He never seemed to sweat, or put on an ounce of fat. She understood the reason for both cravings and seldom said anything about either—although withstanding Michael’s temperature preferences required a good deal of forbearance.

“Bad weather out there,” he went on as she came toward him. “I was growing a mite concerned. How was the lecture?”

“Douglass is an eloquent speaker. It’s hard not to be moved by what he says. His chief target was the fugitive slave law.”

Michael’s pleasant expression vanished. Amanda knew his feelings about those who championed the cause of slaves. The young Irishman would have preferred to see the same amount of time and energy spent improving the lot of his own people, who had come to the United States to escape the privation and the legal tyranny they’d endured for generations. Instead, the Irish had found tyranny of a different sort—the kind produced by hatred of foreigners. As a result, they’d found privation too.

“I told Douglass I’d send him another draft soon. Will you take care of it? A hundred in my name, and two thousand anonymously.”

At the desk, Michael jotted a note without saying anything.