Karen Essex

  But that was only the beginning. He pulled my hair tighter until my ear met his mouth again. “Wherever there is pulse, Mina, that is where I want to be. I want to drink in the very life of you. I want to feel and know the throb of your body.” He let go of my hair, unwinding it from his hand, freeing me, but all I wanted was to be his captive. He read my thoughts and he answered me with his mind.

  I am not finished with you.

  He lifted my arm to his mouth and nipped at the inner part of my elbow and my wrist. At each pulse point, he broke my skin, and I felt bits of my essence flow from me and into his mouth. With my heart pounding inside my chest and my legs quivering, he ran his lips down the side of my body, where his beautiful and treacherous mouth bit slowly into one side of my groin and then the other, sucking to his pleasure, taking mouthfuls of me. Each time my insides tensed and then exploded with ecstasy. He turned me over so that my face was in the soft pile of leaves, and I breathed in their earthy aroma as he broke the skin at the backs of my knees. I cried out, but he paid no attention and slithered down my legs, biting me behind my ankles. I howled, arching my back in a blinding fit of rapture.

  “The sounds of your pulses are like celestial music, Mina. The body sings. Can you hear it?”

  I heard nothing because nothing outside him or outside this experience existed for me. I was in communion with him, giving myself over to him, letting my essence drain into him, and I thought that nothing of me was going to survive except what had gone into his body. Kneeling over me, he pulled my hair again, arching me toward him, and he bent down and lunged into the other side of my neck, taking his fill. I exploded inside, pounding with the bliss of immolation.

  “I am dying,” I said, the words staggering out of my mouth.

  “No, you are dying into me. And if you die into me again and again, I promise you will live forever. Do you want to live forever?”

  “I do, my love, I do. I want to be with you forever.”

  “You will not turn me away again? You will not sentence me to enduring your cycles of birth and death while I wait for you to remember who and what you are?”

  “No, my love, I am yours.”

  “We are wedded, Mina. You must leave the rest behind.”

  Suddenly, I felt as if I were being torn in two. All went black, and for some time I was lost, and I was sure that I must have ceased to exist. Then, in a flash, I was floating above my body. Looking back, I saw my mortal form on a bed of gold leaves, tiny rivulets of blood breaking the monochrome of the snow-white skin on my naked body.

  The next morning, I was surprised to wake to the sound of doves cooing outside the window and the smell of the fire burning in the parlor of the inn. Morning light streamed through the lace curtains, dappling the walls. I fully expected that when I rolled over, I would see my dream lover instead of my husband. But Jonathan was lying next to me on his side. His big hazel-brown deer eyes looked as startled to see me as I was to find him in the bed.

  We could barely look at each other as we dressed, gathered our belongings, and walked to the train station. I had asked Jonathan if he wanted to stay at the inn for a few days to regain his strength, but he wanted to go home. His mood improved as the morning wore on. The color in his face was good, and he walked with energy and confidence, carrying my valise, opening doors for me, and helping me into the train, probably doing these small things to show that he intended to compensate for his infidelity. For my part, I was grappling with the bizarre dream of the night before. I tried not to think of it, but the delicious memories crept into my mind, titillating me to the core. At those moments, I felt myself blushing against my will and I had to turn my face away from my husband.

  The rolling hills we traveled through were lined with rows of crisscrossed crops—apple and pear trees, vines of grapes, and maize—creating bafflingly precise geometries. In the forested areas, the branches on the trees drooped lugubriously like the long sleeves of Druid priests.

  Jonathan pointed to the curved roads that cut through the hillsides and valleys. “Forged by Romans, Mina!” he said. “So many civilizations have come and gone on this land—Celts, Romans, Normans, Mongols, French. Who knows how many more?” He smiled at me, but I turned away, wondering if he had learned the region’s history from his Styrian lovers. Had his sordid tale inspired my dream?

  “My world would be immeasurably better if we could look each other in the eye,” he said. He took my chin with his hand and turned my face around to meet his. “I want you to know that I love you, and that my love for you is far above these horrible and decadent acts in which I have participated. I can be a good and faithful husband if only you will give me the chance. Men can be tempted, Mina—that is why we must have the love of a good woman. Otherwise, it is too easy for us to get lost.”

  I turned away from him, looking out the window at the rows of crops on the hillsides in lines so perfectly straight. Humans were capable of goodness and perfection, but our behavior seldom matched those qualities. Was it our destiny to sling stinging betrayals at each other? I thought of Lucy and wondered if she had lost her mind and confessed her sins to Arthur. Lucy had seemed possessed by the same passions that had consumed Jonathan and left him howling in the fields of Styria. How could that be love? And what about me? A man had made dark, unnatural, earth-shattering love to me in my dreams on my wedding night, but he was not my husband. What bizarre part of my psyche continued to invite these scenes?

  Mr. Darwin demonstrated that we—male and female alike—were descended from wild animals. Women, held high in men’s esteem and given the task of living up to a higher moral standard, seemed as capable as men of bestial behavior. Jonathan claimed that the women seduced him. It made sense, I suppose. It wasn’t as if men evolved from beasts and women evolved from angels. But if women too gave free rein to our base wants, as I did in my dreams, what would happen to our society? There would be no order in the world. And I craved order. That is what marriage, particularly ours, was supposed to provide—blissful, predictable order against the chaotic and unpredictable nature of human life.

  “You must give me time,” I said. “In time I believe I will be able to forgive you. After all, you are my husband.”

  Time. What was time? Time is a river that flows both forward and backward. How could that be true?

  He took my hand. “Your response is more generous than I deserve, Mina. I need time too. I am not worthy of you. I must find a way to purify myself.”

  We both must purify ourselves, I wanted to say. But I did not think that I could carry through with an explanation.

  Part Four

  EXETER AND LONDON

  Chapter Ten

  Dearest Mina,

  How I wish you were here with me, though you will be edified to know that in the past weeks, your commonsense voice has been ringing in my ears. Unlike you, I was one of Miss Hadley’s worst students. I did not listen to her wisdom, or to yours, and now I regret what a fool I have been, though it appears that I have an opportunity to remedy the wrongs I have committed.

  I have been a horrid creature to Mr. Holmwood. His father passed away just after you left us at Whitby. Arthur went home to tend to business, and when we reunited in London at the beginning of this month, he returned to me as Lord Godalming. Lord Godalming! This is the individual whom I have treated so badly, whose gentle affection I ignored in favor of the bolder stroke of crude lust. He arrived at the house in Hampstead with a gift for my mother and a corsage of orchids for me. He asked to be alone with me in the garden and presented me with his grandmother’s diamond ring, which is absolutely dazzling. On one knee, he asked me to make him the happiest man in England and then gave me a lovely note from his mother, expressing the hope that we would immediately set a date for our wedding. “I am eager to have you as my daughter and to instruct you in the duties that accompany the title of Lady Godalming and the many joys and responsibilities of life at Waverley Manor.”

  Any sane woman would have sunk to her
knees in happiness, but I did the opposite. I told him that I was in love with Morris Quince and waiting to hear from him. Arthur smiled a very sad and knowing little smile, and at first I thought he was smirking at me. But he took my hand and said, “Miss Lucy, you are not Quince’s first victim. He has seduced many a pretty and chaste girl, and for some reason—perhaps to overcome his inferiority as an American—he always sets his sights on the women I most admire. I hold you blameless. But if you are waiting for Morris Quince, you will see your hair turn gray and your life pass you by before you hear from him.”

  Mina, he said this with such tenderness and understanding that it melted my heart. You were correct: Morris played me for a fool. Arthur told me that Morris came to him before he left England and taunted him with our affair! How could I have been so blind? You saw through the man, but I was entirely caught up in his wicked web of deceit. I would have bet my life—and almost did—on Morris Quince’s love for me. What fools we mortals be!

  I am the most fortunate of women. Unlike our poor lost Lizzie Cornwall, I will not be cast out into the streets but will become Lady Godalming. We are to be married immediately. How I wish you could be present as we always dreamt, but I know that you are with Jonathan. I do not love Arthur, not yet, but my mother says that any woman can learn to love a man who is good to her, and Arthur is certainly that.

  Thank you for all your wise words, Mina, and for your patience with me. Your good counsel has helped me to get on the right path. Love is a terrible, terrible thing. I still dream of Morris and long for his touch, but I know that with Arthur’s help, I can move past these feelings.

  Your affectionate friend forever,

  Lucy

  P. S. I will not insist that you address me as Lady Godalming!

  Exeter, 20 September 1890

  I received Lucy’s letter in Exeter, where Headmistress had forwarded it to me. Jonathan and I had settled into Mr. Hawkins’s home, and I had written to my employer that I would not be returning to my job, that Jonathan and I had hurriedly married in Graz, and that with his illness, he required my full attention and care. I apologized profusely, knowing that my absence would put Headmistress back into the classroom, which, at her age, she would not relish, but I had no choice.

  I had worried over Lucy in the weeks I was away, and I was greatly relieved to know of her turnabout with Arthur. I supposed they were married by now, and perhaps even away on a honeymoon voyage. I vowed to send her a note congratulating her and relating the news of my marriage as soon as I had the time.

  In the interim, I was busy caring for Jonathan, who suffered a relapse upon our arrival when he discovered that Mr. Hawkins was ill. After years of enduring painful ailments brought on by severe ulcers, the old man had been diagnosed with chronic gastric catarrh. He complained of a sour mouth and stomach that made eating most undesirable, turning away his meals and losing much of his body weight. His doctor advised me that the condition often caused neurasthenia in the patient, which only worsened the disease.

  I found myself nursing both men, aided by Sadie, Mr. Hawkins’s longtime housekeeper, but she too was getting up in age and relied upon my stamina. Sadie prepared the main meals, but I visited the markets to purchase our supplies. Both Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins called for me constantly, and I rushed from sickroom to sickroom with medicines, teas, elixirs, and compresses. Mr. Hawkins required ten to fifteen drops of arsenic every two hours, accompanied by soothing conversation and a specially prepared poultice to put on his stomach. Jonathan was always hungry and asking for food, and at the same time, apologizing to me for putting me through the trouble of caring for him.

  I encouraged each man to take a midday meal in the dining room, mostly so that I could sit in that lovely room and eat, rather than perch at the kitchen table with Sadie, gobbling down food between my errands. I also thought that the men might provide each other with some cheer. But Mr. Hawkins had given Jonathan the assignment in Styria with the highest intentions to advance his career and supplement his income; Jonathan’s resulting illness depressed the old man’s health and humor more than his own ailment. Jonathan too was downhearted over his uncle’s failing health, so that I was living with two melancholy people. I slept alone on a small daybed in the library. I had tried to lie next to Jonathan, but he cried out all night in his sleep, tossing and turning like some tortured thing.

  I took refuge in my daily walks in the town. As soon as I walked out of the door, the crisp autumnal air, so fresh and clean, hit my face, cleansing away the heaviness that lurked inside. I strolled down the street, looking over at the red brick houses on the hills and the rolling green of the surrounding countryside. I liked to walk past the old mill with screeching seagulls circling the water below, then on to the high street, where Mr. Hawkins kept an office, in addition to the one in London. I stopped to purchase whatever goods we needed from the markets and shops, and then turned around and repeated my steps, heading for home before the patients woke from their naps, which usually coincided with the ringing of the city’s old curfew bell at five o’clock.

  It was a pleasant enough daily diversion, though I could not control my sadness when passing the cathedral in which I had dreamt of marrying, reminding me of lost dreams and dashed plans. With the coming of autumn, I missed the school and the rooms full of giggling girls and the structure of the daily lessons. I had wanted relief from all that. Now I wondered if I had failed to appreciate the small and uncomplicated happiness that it had provided me for so many years.

  After weeks of wretched pain, Mr. Hawkins passed away one Monday morning at dawn. Though I was very fond of him, I was not sorry to see the end of his terrible suffering. He had left his home and his business to Jonathan, dividing his money between Jonathan and his aunt, so that we found ourselves in a sudden position of affluence. At the funeral, Mr. Hawkins’s friends and clients offered condolences to us and assured Jonathan that they would continue to be represented by the firm—meaning Jonathan—in all legal matters. After the services, when we were drinking tea in the garden, he looked up at the sky. “Mina, our lives should be beginning, but there are moments when I fear that mine has already ended.”

  “Darling, we have everything to look forward to,” I answered. “You are free of the fever, and with the resources that Mr. Hawkins left, we can make every dream we spoke of in Miss Hadley’s parlor come to fruition.”

  “I will try to be that man for you, Mina. I owe you that. You are truly an angel of mercy and forgiveness. But sometimes I fear that the man who envisioned that life with you is no longer here. Some monster with whom I am not yet well acquainted, some rogue with a propensity for doing the unthinkable, has taken his place. Can you be patient with me? It is more than I deserve, but I am asking it anyway. I would not blame you if you refused.”

  I promised Jonathan that I would stand by him. True, he had betrayed me, but he also suffered terribly for it. I wondered if he had not already been ill and beside himself with fever when he committed those acts, so unlike a man with his character. I should have asked his doctor, but I was too ashamed of the infidelity to speak of it. Besides, I loved him, and I saw enough glimpses of the uncorrupted Jonathan of the past to believe that with time and with love, he would return.

  The weather turned colder. By day, Jonathan went into his office to tend to business matters, but at home, though he was affectionate, I often caught him staring into the dancing flames in the fireplace looking forlorn. One evening, about a week after we buried Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan mixed some drops of a sedative into his brandy and retired early. I stayed up late staring into that same fire, wondering if it might give me some answers, until it burned to embers. I fell asleep on the divan in the parlor, and woke early covered by a blanket that Sadie must have placed over me sometime during the night. Then news arrived that morning in two hastily written letters—one from Kate Reed and another from Headmistress—that would distract me from Jonathan’s angst and forever change the course our lives were to take.
br />   Lucy was neither at Waverley Manor nor on her honeymoon. Both she and her mother were dead.

  London, 10 October 1890

  A light rain fell from the low ceiling of omnipresent gray outside the entrance to Highgate Cemetery, drizzling upon the parade of black umbrellas in the funeral cortege. We descended from the mourning coaches that Arthur Holmwood had hired to follow the garland-draped hearse, drawn by six onyx-coated ponies. A canopy of ostrich feathers covered the hearse, decorated with gold and brass emblems. Little page boys wearing formal livery attended the coachman. Through the glass panes, I could see Lucy’s coffin covered in rich, dark velvet. The pallbearers—John Seward and others whom I did not know—slid the casket out of the back of the hearse with careful black-gloved hands. It was completely unreal to me that my friend was inside.

  “It looks like it’s carrying a princess,” said one lady who reached beneath her veil to dab her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “Madam, I assure you that it is,” said Holmwood as he took his place at the head of the procession to walk Lucy to her crypt.

  I opened my umbrella, though I was self-conscious that the spray of purple foxglove on the underside might peek through and interrupt the ubiquitous black, but I knew that Lucy would have loved to see that burst of color. I tripped over my hem, upsetting the somber promenade of people in front of me. My dress of coal black parramatta silk trimmed in stiff crape was borrowed from Mr. Hawkins’s sister from the wardrobe of mourning clothes she had ordered for us. The dress had arrived in that larger lady’s size, so that I had to alter it as best I could, but it was still too big and too long for me.