Soul

He returned his attention to her, dragging himself away from a distant drum roll that he imagined would both inspire and terrify. Her proximity was stupefying; there was nowhere he could picture himself so entranced—not even on the deck of a ship approaching a fabled harbour that promised freedom for all men. But he could never tell her that.

‘Maybe I will go, maybe I won’t. But what does emigration do to a man with his homeland burned into him like stigmata? Now Ireland may be a miserable windy corner of the world, but it’s what I’m made of and in the end it’ll drag me back, kicking and screaming, whether I like it or not.’

‘But to reinvent oneself, to escape all one’s mistakes and others’ judgements. Wouldn’t that be grand?’

He edged closer to her. He could smell her perfume: an aroma of lily of the valley and the slightly oily musk of her hair. He saw the faint scar above her lip that her husband had given her.

‘Is that what you want?’ It was almost a whisper, dangerous in its intimacy.

Marvelling at the green of his eyes, she wondered at the constrictions that kept her sitting there and him pinned to the floor. Her mouth dried as she stared at his naked throat, the feathery curls of his chest hair. To keep looking would be to touch.

‘Aloysius, I have a child to think of. I am well looked after—many would envy my social position. I have tried to forgive my husband. Instead, I find myself possessed by a great anger.’

He held his hands tightly by his sides. Otherwise, he feared they would lift of their own accord and betray him.

‘But even the practical cannot live without affection.’

And it was then that she slipped from the barrel and fell into him, catching at his clothes, his mouth, the hot shock of his tongue. She taking him, because in that first touch Aloysius heard nothing but the roar of his heart like a bagged cat under his flannel shirt. He struggled with the enormity of their actions until the heat of her breath burst all that he knew that was wrong and he forgot who he was and who she belonged to and catching at the thousands of buttons of her dress that popped under his clumsy fingertips like roasting chestnuts and her breasts, white as marble angels, falling clear so he could take them between his lips, and sweet Jesus there was no way he could stop now until his fingers found her and played her until she was wet and sweet for him, her hands at his neck, pulling his mouth down until he was buried beneath her petticoats, and the tent his brother was lying in and the tent of her skirts became one huge kaleidoscope, the lawny scent of her clawing at the back of his throat, his cock as huge as he’d ever known it, a great rod with which he could smite with just one thrust all of the indignities, all of the humiliations she had suffered. Her thighs quivering against his palms until, standing, he pulled her up onto his hips, steadying himself with one hand pressed against the dusty wall, her ankles locked behind his back.

And the tightness, her wanting, that parted for him as she lifted herself and rode him. Her small breasts pressed against his face, the wine bottles rattling in their racks faster and faster until she cried out, her cheeks as scarlet as the field of poppies he’d once lain upon, her skin a mottled battlefield of bite-marks and desperate handfuls. Only then, watching her half-open eyelids luxuriant with orgasm, her mouth swollen and bitten, the sapphire streak of her blue eyes as she tilted her face to the candlelight, did he reach his own climax and, to his great chagrin, found himself sobbing.

Back in her bedroom, Lavinia stripped off her stained dress and washed out the coal dust herself, then hid her torn camisole at the back of a drawer.

Half naked, she sat on the edge of her bed and examined her neck in a hand mirror. She touched the row of bruises he had left with his mouth in wonder, the tattoo of his caresses still echoing.

Then, trying not to think of her husband at his card game five streets away, she threw open the travelling bag she had brought from Ireland and packed a day dress, a shawl and two pairs of boots.

Walking over to the dressing table, she opened the drawer and took out the gold and pearl earrings, three necklaces—one pearl, two diamond—that she had inherited from the Viscountess, and wrapped them carefully in her undergarments.

Finally, she went to the nursery.

62

RELUCTANTLY, ALOYSIUS HAULED the bag up the steps of the old terrace. They were grimed with centuries of soot and grass widened the cracks between the stone slabs.

‘’Tis no place for a child nor a lady,’ he muttered, eyeing the prostitutes, who, sensing the gravity of the situation and awed by the luxury of the brougham, hung back in silence. Lavinia, clutching Aidan, reached the top step and rang the bell.

‘I could have driven you to a better boarding house,’ he said. He wanted to put his arms around her to stop her shivering, but it was impossible to shake the suspicion that such an embrace would be a terrible transgression.

‘And how am I to pay? I have some jewellery to pawn, but I intend to use the money for a passage to France.’

‘You are to France?’Trying hard to disguise his emotion, he cursed himself for his naivety—he had imagined they would have a future together.

‘I will find a position as a governess. And if you were with me, you could find a position also.’

‘I don’t speak a word of French.’ Aloysius was gruff in defence.

‘I will teach you.’

Gloriously relieved, he kissed her, ignoring the wolf whistles from the watching prostitutes. Suddenly, a torrent of filthy water cascaded from a window above. Aloysius looked up at the torn and faded velvet curtains as the now empty pail disappeared.

‘Still, I would rather you found a better lodging.’

‘Aloysius, it’s my mother’s house and it will only be a temporary measure,’ Lavinia replied tersely, the immensity of her actions already prickling at her scalp, feeling uncomfortably like fear.

‘Your mother’s?’

Before she had a chance to explain, the front door swung open. Meredith Murphy stood in the hallway, her dress tidy and the stray wisps of hair tucked neatly back into her coiffure. Finally, Lavinia could see remnants of the beauty her father had spoken of.