Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Tessa had not reached the advanced age of six and twenty without picking up some small bits of carnal knowledge.
Secondhand, of course, and all of it in the last six years.
As a rector’s daughter, she’d found most people reticent around her.
The boys she’d felt her belly flutter over kept their distance, and the girls she’d been allowed to have tea with minded their manners better than she did.
She’d been too embarrassed to ask Remmy.
The body and its topics of conversation had always seemed forbidden between them, as if they’d both known, without saying so, that to acknowledge such things would change everything.
They’d been right.
She left the stables without caring what direction she walked in. She simply needed to walk off this energy Remmy had left inside her.
Thank heavens for Lady Chattaway, who’d spoken frankly with Tessa about the pleasures of two bodies together.
The mechanics of sexual congress.
The natural consequences of it.
That it could be done in a variety of ways.
Including under one’s own power with a clever hand and a vivid imagination.
That women, when with the right kind of man—a selfless man, Lady Chattaway insisted—could find many delights in the act.
Because Tessa met Remmy the Rake as more of an equal. In knowledge if not in practice, and for some reason, that was important to her.
Over the last six years, she’d coasted her hands over her body in the dark of night, touched and teased, but she’d never produced anything more than gentle, frustrated buzzing.
Until now.
Remmy had ruined her.
Or brought her to life.
Remmy who’d supported her, saved her. Remmy who’d loved her when no one else would.
Of course it would be him who’d pushed her past the point of fruitless buzzing.
The breakfast table had made her deranged. How could he be so different and so himself at the same time? How could he kiss her breasts then flirt with another woman the next morning? Tessa used to have all his attention. She’d followed him to the stables as much to regain that as to figure him out.
But Remmy was right—neither of them were as they used to be, and it solved nothing wishing things were. The only person to ever love her was gone, replaced by the thoughtless kind of man who cared for only one thing—the reckless pursuit of pleasure.
The rectory appeared before her like a good scolding for that particular wayward thought. The red brick, the clean windows, the climbing ivy—all of it scowled in disapproval.
She’d not meant to wander in this direction, but it was an excellent reminder. Remmy meant nothing with his kisses, rakes never did. And trying to figure him out was a distraction from her own problems. She had a choice to make.
The front door opened.
And there was her mother, looking just as Tessa remembered from the last time they’d met face to face.
“Good morning, Mother.”
“Tessa.” Her mother’s first word to her in six years. Those two syllables landed almost deafeningly in Tessa’s ears.
“May I come in?” she asked. “I should like to speak with you.” Though now she did not know why or what she would say.
There had been days she’d wanted to scream and nights she’d cried herself to sleep; birthdays had passed with letters sent across the sea when Lady Chattaway had held her tight and shushed in her ear. As a mother should do.
A pause stretched between them like their silent half decade. Then her mother turned to the side, making enough room in the frame for Tessa to enter.
She did. Everything the same inside as well. Neat and clean and sparsely furnished. Dust did not even dare to float in on sunbeams.
Her mother led her to the kitchen where she silently prepared a pot of a tea as Tessa sat at the old, time-worn table.
When her mother slipped into the seat across from her and they both had steaming cups fogging the space between them, her mother said, “Your father tells me you are considering marriage.”
Inhale. Exhale. The tingle of lemon on her tongue. “I am. To a Mr. Tilbury, a vicar from Surrey.”
“Your father says he is a respectable man. He says you have lived a respectable life with Lady Chattaway.”
Tessa almost laughed. Her mother’s harsh inspection of every visible inch of Tessa’s self helped her swallow it whole. Her mother seemed to think that if she looked hard enough, she’d be able to discern some sign of hidden sin.
Could she see the stable and window seat on Tessa’s skin? Could she see Tessa’s lies in the slant of her mouth, the fluttering of her lashes?
“What is different now?” her mother asked.
“W-what do you mean?”
“You were not yet ready to marry Mr. Grimsby. And you shamed your family in refusal. What makes you ready now?”
She wrapped her hands tightly around her cup, but the warm porcelain could not warm her. Funny, that. The day was already hot, the lightness of the morning air bowing to the summer sun.
“You weren’t desperate enough back then,” her mother said.
She took a long sip of her tea. Six years had carved new lines into her face, fine and delicate, the merest curves around the corners of her mouth, the line between her brows drawn with the lightest ink.
All that visible from the slanted plane of her face because when she set her cup down, she studied its contents, neck bowed between high lace collar and the fine orange curls. “It’s good to know desperation.”
A rather hard thing to say.
“Do you?” Tessa wondered. “Know desperation?”
Her mother’s head whipped up, her knuckles around the cup going white as bone.
“Did you marry Papa because you were desperate?” She’d never had the courage to ask such questions before, to make such challenges.
She’d been her mother’s child—soft and scared.
Now she felt more like Lady Chattaway’s daughter—bold and brilliant as a sun, the sort of woman who let a rake ruin her in the stables.
“I married your father because I was clever.” A pause, during which she did not say Unlike you.
Didn’t have to. It rang clearly enough between them without a voice.
“I was an orphan. Nothing and no one to my name. I knew more desperation in a single second than you’ve known your entire life.
” The grooves around her face deepened. “Dire circumstances force the correct choices.”
“Or they narrow your options, and you must believe you choose correctly.” A way of surviving.
“Mother…?” The soft, morning-fuzzy voice from the doorway turned them both around. Tessa’s little sister stood in the frame, head titled to one side, a yawn hidden behind a small, pale hand. “Who’s this?”
Oh. Oh, there she is.
Tessa’s heart squeezed. I’m your sister, she wanted to say.
She wanted to rush the young girl, to hug her tight.
But she clung to her skirts instead. Distance had shackled her.
Time had made a stranger of her. Her sister had been seven when she’d last seen her.
Thirteen now? Fourteen? She was so very pretty in that awkward, gangly way young girls had.
Her hair darker than Tessa’s and their mother’s, her eyes deep hazel and shining.
Shining. Good. Not dulled with defeat, then. Good.
Her mother stood and faced her youngest daughter. “Come here, Verity.”
Verity obeyed, her hands clasped before her. She wore the plainest brown gown, tattered and shabby and possibly one of Tessa’s old garments. Her parents were not rich, but there was enough for new gowns. Her mother had been wearing a fashionable frock the other night at Crossvale.
“Do you remember your sister?” her mother asked Verity.
The slightest nod, eyes darting in Tessa’s direction.
“That’s her. You may greet her.”
Verity looked up, her eyes were mirrors to Tessa’s—same shape and color, same subdued spark. She’d seen it often enough in the looking glass growing up. The same desire to do, the same denial of that desire. But then—
The corners of Verity’s mouth twitched, and her eyes blazed to life.
The chain about Tessa’s heart tightened. This was why she’d really come. Not for the mother who’d thrown her away. But for the sister she’d lost.
She forced herself to loosen her grip on her teacup and smile brightly. “Good morning, Verity. I have missed you.”
The girl smiled with absolute abandon. “I have missed you as well, sister. Mother says you are soon to wed.”
“She is,” their mother answered before Tessa could even open her mouth. “She will marry a good man. Your father approves, as do I. So we have decided to allow her to come home. Remember that, Verity. Remember what happens when you disobey. And what happens when you are a good girl.”
Verity tamed the curve of her lips and but didn’t even try to hide the amusement glowing in her eyes. “I am quite aware, Mother. You do not have to worry about me.”
Tessa traced the well-worn outline of a flower on the side of her cup. “He’s not proposed yet.”
“He will.” Her mother busied herself at the kitchen again and spoke with her back to them. “And you’ll accept. This time. Because you’re desperate enough.”
Verity rolled her eyes.
“What do you like to do, Verity?” Tessa asked.
“She knits with me,” their mother said. “And she does charity work with me. And she reads the right books.”
Verity nodded. “Sometimes I can do all three at the same time. Like last month when I knitted a scarf for Mrs. Farmer. She doesn’t have one, you know, so that’s charity and knitting together.
Of course you cannot read and knit at the same time, at least I cannot do so, but Mother was reading aloud from Fordyce’s Sermons while I worked.
I think that counts as doing all three at once, don’t you? ”
Tessa nodded.
“You’re rambling, Verity.”
Verity rolled her eyes again.
And Tessa could not help but smile, a grin so wide it almost hurt, but when her sister returned it, she loved the pain.
Beneath her skirts, Verity’s feet danced, as if she had something to say. She threw a glance over her shoulder at their mother, still busy behind her.
“Sophia! Sophia!” Their father’s voice, muffled and from the direction of his study. My, how memories rushed back.
Tessa’s mother wiped her hands on her skirts and bustled out of the kitchen, mumbling under her breath.
Verity exploded into a flurry of movement and excited little huffs.
“Tessa, Tessa, Tessa! I did not recognize you. I do apologize. It’s been so long.
But it’s not your fault, I know it’s not.
Mother has been so terribly upset with you.
She never talks about you, but she always talks about you.
Without using your name.” She lifted her nose in the air and pitched her voice higher.
“We do not draw. It leads to moral decay. We do not run. We do not smile without proper reason to. We do not befriend boys.” She dropped her mother’s fake voice.
“That leads to ruination. I don’t think you were ruined, though.
Papa says you weren’t. That if you had been, the earl would have forced his son to marry you.
So really, you were banished for not marrying who they wanted, and I think that terribly unfair.
And I think myself likely to meet the same fate.
” She ended with a sigh worthy of a Drury Lane actress
“I hope you do not. Tell me, are you… friends with the Iveses?”
Verity’s nose scrunched up. “There’s a boy. Timothy. He’s an arse.”
“Verity!”
“I know,” the young girl sighed. “That is not proper language for a young lady. But it is accurate, so I do not think God would be terribly mad at me for it. Surely lying is more of a sin than cursing.”
“I… well… yes, I should think so. Though I’m no expert. You’ll have to ask Papa.”
“I do like his sister, though,” Verity said, looking thoughtful. “Aria is the right sort.”
Tessa daren’t ask what the right sort was.
Their mother whisked back in. “We must go, Verity. There’s a crisis.”
“Oh, yes, Mother.” Verity bowed her head, hid her smile.
“Let me gather my bonnet.” She turned to Tessa in the doorway, her hands clasped innocently before her.
“We take spiritual crises quite seriously here. The wicked are so very plentiful.” She left with what looked like a wink twitching in the corner of her eye.
Tessa’s mother wiped her hands on her apron. “We plan to visit Mr. Tilbury tomorrow. You will spend the day with us.”
Palms pressed into the old, worn table, Tessa stood slowly. Her mother didn’t seem able to look straight at her, but Tessa refused to look away. “I missed you.”
Her mother wrapped her hands around her waist and squeezed until her knuckles turned white, then said, “I missed you, too.” Finally, she met Tessa’s gaze. “Please choose correctly this time.” She left, but not before Tessa saw the water in her eyes.
An old wish punched like the bud of an early spring flower through the earth of Tessa’s heart. She’d never been good enough to earn her mother’s love. But… people could change. Remmy didn’t love her any longer. But perhaps her mother could.