The sun was up when his eyes opened again.
So, it seemed, was Augusta. He felt for her beside him, but found only rumpled sheets. He sat up, blinking out the blur from his eyes, only to see her sitting quietly in a rocking chair in the corner, still as naked as the day she was born.
The smoke-dulled light coming in through the grimy window fell upon her breasts and stomach in rays. Her eyes were shut but she held in her hands one of her necklaces, which she fingered somewhat compulsively.
‘Are you not cold, my love?’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Come back to bed.’
‘We should leave,’ she said. ‘I tried to dress, but you brought me only gowns. Nothing else.’
‘Ah,’ he said, realising his mistake. Not the worst mistake, as far as he was concerned. Rather a fortunate one, really.
‘It is as well that I never wear crinolines,’ she said. ‘Nor should I attempt to ascend any ladders or steep stairs.’
‘No.’ He chuckled, then the consciousness of everything they had endured in the last few days swept over him and he swallowed a strange impulse to sob. ‘Did you sleep at all, pet? Please, come back to bed.’
‘I did not sleep,’ she said, rising carefully and taking slow steps towards the bed, her hands reaching out before her. ‘At least, not in any restful sense. I did drift into horrible half-waking nightmares now and again. I thought Mrs Shaw was here.’
‘Oh, my darling,’ he said, helping her on to the bed before taking her in his arms. ‘We need never see her again. Never.’
‘That is why we must leave London as soon as we can,’ she said, submitting to his stroking of her brow but still stiff in every sinew. ‘I will dread every minute we spend here until we can make our escape.’
‘Even if those minutes are spent in my arms?’ he whispered, feeling that they had at least time to renew their passions before he went out to convert some jewels into gold sovereigns.
She sighed and put her lips up to be kissed, an invitation he accepted with relish.
‘I feared I may never see you again,’ she said, gathered close now to his chest. She began to cry and he kissed each tear. ‘I thought I would live imprisoned in darkness forever.’
‘I could never resign you to such a fate,’ he said. ‘You should have had more faith in me.’
‘I wanted to. I wanted to believe you would come. But I didn’t dare.’
‘I am with you now and will stay with you always.’
‘You truly love me. I don’t think I understood that before. I do now. I am so blessed, even in all my misfortune.’
James pressed his lips to hers again, giddy with a sense of endless possibility. They could go anywhere and live as they wished. All their ties were undone and they could drift on the wind or find a purpose and pursue it.
But for now, one overwhelming purpose suggested itself to him and it could be achieved in this very bed.
‘You know I love you,’ he murmured into her ear, loosening his fingers to caress her neck and shoulders. ‘You know it. Come to me.’
‘Have we the time …?’
‘We have nothing else, except each other. Let us give ourselves, let us be one.’
‘I do feel one with you,’ she replied, clasping the back of his neck. ‘I do.’
His kiss was deeper this time, his tongue probing her as if to ensure that she realised how very far inside her he intended to go. There was something spiritual about this embrace, something more profound and more serious than he had experienced before. It was a kiss of renewal, the unlocking of a door into the future.
Augusta began to shuffle down, laying herself on her back and pulling him over her. They slipped, entwined, beneath the sheets, tugging them out from beneath the mattress as they rolled and writhed.
James propped himself up on an elbow and held her down with one hand on her stomach.
‘Let me look at you,’ he whispered. ‘Look at what I almost lost.’
‘Look at what you shall never lose again,’ she said. ‘Oh, how I wish I could do the same.’
‘You do not miss much,’ he said modestly. ‘But you …’ He breathed deeply, drinking in her sensuous contours and the ripe bloom of her skin after their caresses. He put his hand to her breast and allowed it to trace each curve, as slowly as he could, watching her chest rise and fall and her lips part, wet and swollen from kissing.
‘Nobody could touch me the way you do,’ she said, arching her back to meet his fingertips the sooner. ‘The lightest brush of your hand makes my blood rush. It is like some sinful magic trick.’
‘I have no idea how I do it, if so,’ he said, bending to breathe, as gently as he could, over her fattening nipple. ‘But your magic is the stronger, for I am aflame before I even touch you.’
She rubbed her leg along his calf and up his thigh, hooking him into a close embrace. He lay above her, his hard length prodding at her hip, as he kissed her into sweet pliancy. He was bent on ravishment, both knew it, both welcomed it.
With the hand that was not cupping a breast, he reached beneath her and took a firm grasp of one curved buttock.
A little mewl passed from her throat to his mouth.
‘Hmm?’ he queried, breaking the kiss for a moment.
‘It is still bruised,’ she said. ‘From … Do you remember?’
He tried, but everything prior to the traumatic experience at Cremorne seemed to have slipped from his mind.
‘Show me.’
He knelt up and turned her on to her stomach. On her bottom, dark bruises traversed both cheeks, in familiar lines. Dear God, how long ago that seems now – a lifetime distant. And yet he had applied these fading cane marks only days before.
‘I did this,’ he said, tracing them with a fingertip.
‘You know you did.’
‘Sometimes I wonder at my capacity for cruelty.’
‘How is it cruel, if it gives me pleasure?’
He nodded – not that she could see it – and felt gratitude for a world that provided women who enjoyed being whipped, mysterious as he found such inclinations. He had been caned as a boy and never found the experience remotely enjoyable, from first to last. Perhaps if a lover had done it? But no. Even then, he would avoid what he recalled as a near-unbearable pain.
‘It gives you pleasure,’ he repeated softly. ‘Did the doctors see it?’
‘They did. They took it as further proof of my madness, that I should wish for a man to do this to me.’
‘Would they consider the man who did it mad?’
‘No, of course not. They would consider him quite normal. They said as much when they examined me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, one to the other, “Well, one can’t blame a man for wanting to stripe this pretty posterior, can one?” And his fellow laughed and agreed with him.’
Egregious deviants, thought James hotly. How did they dare look at Augusta’s rear with such lascivious intent? Such rights were reserved for him alone.
He stroked her cheeks with reverence, then leaned over them and kissed each bruise, tonguing the succulent flesh as he did so. Augusta sighed and quivered beneath his attentions. He was conscious of her scent, wafting up from further down, and knew that she would be well prepared when the time came to join with her.
‘I wanted to tell them,’ she said tremulously. ‘That no other man but him I love would be permitted such licence. That it is not madness but love. That I would wrest the cane from the hand of any other and break it across his face. It is for you only, for you, oh my love, oh.’
His lips had ventured into the crease between her bruised cheeks, which he now held apart, the better to lick and kiss his way downwards towards his eventual goal. She held her legs wide apart for him, showing her eagerness to allow him anything he wanted from her.
Holding her thighs at the top, he had his tongue dance around the little opening he would be filling at his leisure without quite penetrating it. She wriggled and sighed, but he did not grant her what she angled for, moving lower again, for she would be rewarded for her patience when he reached his destination.
The very same place that had been the locus of the doctors’ attention.
He sat up quickly, suddenly nauseous at the memory of what they had intended for that sweet, wanton little bud between her lips. He held his forehead for a moment, staring down at his lover’s clitoris.
‘My love,’ she said, a little anxiously. ‘Are you well?’
‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘what operation those doctors intended to perform?’
‘Oh, please, don’t let’s talk about it. Please.’
‘Then you did?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Dearest love.’ He exhaled long and shudderingly. ‘It gives me pause to think what might have—’
‘Then don’t think it,’ she urged. ‘All is well and they cannot touch me now.’
‘But to think that it is done at all. That there are women …’
He tried to calm his chaotic breathing.
‘They think they are helping those women,’ said Augusta.
‘God.’
‘Try to forget,’ she said, and she lifted her bottom a little and pushed it towards him, which did indeed have the required effect.
He grasped her hips and returned to the feast, establishing himself fully between her lips before licking and sucking and kissing all that lay within them with the relish of a starving man.
The point of his tongue flicked at her clitoris, enjoying its roundness and tenderness and the way it swelled with excitement because of what he did to it. The squirming of her thighs under his hands aroused him even more and he held them firm, keeping Augusta placed where he could achieve the most devastating effect.
Her moans were coming thick and fast, signalling the imminent approach of her melting into ecstasy. He wanted to drink of her, bathe his tongue in her essence, roll it in his mouth like a fine wine.
When she came undone, his name was upon her lips and he crushed his face up against her hot, wet quim and growled. That anyone should have sought to tamper with this, when it belonged to him, was not to be borne. They would have to kill him first before any man laid hands on this delicious morsel.
‘I must couple with you,’ he muttered, removing his damp cheeks, their whiskers matted with Augusta’s juices, from their place of refuge. ‘At once.’
‘Take me,’ she whispered.
He seated himself swiftly, screwing his eyes shut at the exquisite tightness of her and the wet heat that enveloped him.
Her moan of pleasure added to the thrill. He bent and kissed it out of her mouth, lying quite still inside her in an attempt to head off a premature peaking.
Images of the surgeon’s blades glinting under the gaslight jets kept his blood down. He contemplated them at leisure, trying to fix them in his mind’s eye when he moved into a pattern of slow thrusting.
Steadily, the contours of her body overtook his grim imaginings and he gave into his desires, seeing instead her breasts, glistening with perspiration, and her flushed face, lips parted in rapture.
He was inside her again and it felt like a wedding night as much as a renewal. But he should not think of wedding nights …
‘Say you are mine,’ he urged, speeding his rhythm and moving his fingers to her clitoris. ‘Say it. You are mine.’
‘I am yours,’ she said, pushing herself on to his fingertips and grinding her hips. ‘There could be no other … none … no other …’
She clasped her arms around his neck and buried her face in it, her tongue pushing at the malleable flesh beneath his earlobe in a way that drove him half-wild.
‘Dear God!’ he exclaimed, feeling a chaos of sensation swell his lusts still further, inducing him to speed up to fever pitch.
She fixed her lips to his neck and sucked.
He rubbed at her clit in a frenzy until, yes, there it was, she was there, it was safe, he was ready …
He poured into her, his vision whitened and his body overtaken by the force of the pleasure. He had thought to last longer than this, but no power of man could have held off such a surge. She clung to him, her lower muscles milking him dry, while he kissed her face all over, until his breath faltered and his voice ran out.
He lay on top of her, feeling his heart hammer against hers, fearful of crushing her yet so sapped he wondered if it were even possible for him to raise his head.
‘Tell me you love me,’ she whispered, her fingers in his hair.
‘I love you.’
‘I know it.’
‘Oh,’ he exclaimed, suddenly struck. ‘I should not have …’
She reached down to where they were still connected at their cores and stroked the inside of his thigh.
‘It does not matter,’ she said. ‘Not at all. It is not the first time, after all.’
‘We are not best placed to become parents, my love.’
‘Not yet. But we shall be. Once we are across the ocean and have our little house by the sea. Our children will be fisher folk.’
It was a picturesque prospect but James could not prevent misgivings. How easy would it be, truly, to live overseas as man and wife with children to provide for?
Too late to ponder alternatives now, though. The deed was done.
Gathering reserves of strength, despite continuing lightheadedness, he withdrew from Augusta’s close inner embrace. He saw his essences spill from her, making a whitish pool on the sheet beneath her bottom. The beginnings of life. He shuddered, then lay back down at her side.
‘How shall it be between us?’ he asked, voicing a question that had nagged at him intermittently since Augusta’s recovery from the refuge.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We came together as master and servant, although it was at your bidding and the power was always yours. Or Mrs Shaw’s, I suppose. How do you propose we continue?’
‘In the bedroom or in general life?’
‘Both.’
She yawned and nestled closer to him, resting her hand on the matted hair of his chest.
‘My love, I have said that I am yours. I am at your disposal, in all ways.’
‘Then I am to decide?’
‘I prefer that you do.’
He thought about this.
‘I cannot. Not at present,’ he said at length. ‘While we travel, I propose that we conduct ourselves as conventionally as possible. We must convince those around us that we are a married couple of some means, perfectly ordinary in every way. It is easier if we do not attract attention by any oddity of demeanour.’
‘You are right,’ said Augusta. ‘But when we are in France …’
‘When we reach our destination, we will know better how we want to live. There is no necessity to decide such matters now.’
‘I agree with you, but I will confess to a hope that you might not retire your rod.’
He laughed and kissed the top of her head.
‘Permanent retirement is exceptionally unlikely. Now, we must wash and dress and I must make a visit to Cheapside with one of your bracelets. Money must be raised for our passage.’
They washed each other with tender thoroughness, then dressed individually, Augusta again bemoaning her lack of underwear.
‘I will buy you some,’ he said. ‘While I am out.’
‘I wish I could come with you. I will fear for you.’
He strode over and took her in his arms, kissing out the tremor that had seized her.
‘There is no need to fear, Augusta. I will make haste.’
‘What if you should be seen by—’
‘Nobody will seek us. They have their money. They will be content.’
But James could not avoid a little flutter of anxiety on stepping across the threshold of the inn with a diamond bracelet in his inner coat pocket.
If anybody had decided to pursue them, they might have a watch on the railway stations and their environs. He put his head down and walked through the steam that enveloped the area until he came to London Bridge and crossed it at a fast pace.
From the opposite embankment, Cheapside was quickly attained through the winding, narrow streets of the old City. He kept his coat wrapped close to his body at all times, wise to all the pickpocketing tricks one could fall prey to. Luckily the day was bright with no trace of fog and such conditions often sent the thieves to their beds where they would lie in wait for dusk.
A likely jewellers was quickly located and the deal done with as much bold face as he could put on it. They probably thought he was a fence or a ponce, but it wasn’t to be helped.
Much worse was the necessity of buying ladies’ undergarments. For a desperate few moments, he considered buying a bolt of flannel and sewing them himself – but soon rejected the idea as ludicrous. There was nothing for it but to march into the nearest ladies’ costumers and request a half dozen chemises and drawers.
‘My wife is blind,’ he said, in answer to the blinking stares that greeted his request. ‘We have no servant.’
All the same, the giggles from the back room as the serving girls went to seek out his order were unmistakable.
It was a great relief to be back in the street and bound for London Bridge once more, with a purse of sovereigns in his pocket and a parcel of wrapped garments beneath his arm.
The traffic was heavy on the bridge and came frequently to a standstill. James passed it all, his eyes fixed on the south bank, ignoring the stamping horses and yelling cabbies. London Bridge station, a brand new building, shone like a beacon in the distance – the symbol of freedom.
He was almost across when the most peculiar sensation crept up the back of his neck. In that instant, he whirled around, suddenly convinced that he was being followed, to see Mrs Shaw a few yards behind him.
She froze when she perceived that she was seen. Not far behind her was a stationary cab with an open door – presumably she had been travelling in it when she had seen him.
Within seconds she had sprung back to life.
‘Tell me where she is,’ she said, coming up close. ‘What have you done with her, you dog?’
‘Go back to your cab,’ he said. ‘Your business with Augusta is finished. You will never see her again.’
‘Take me to her. I mean her no harm. I wish only to speak with her.’
‘Who is with you in the cab?’
‘Nobody. I am quite alone. Look at me, a lone, helpless woman. What threat can I pose a great strapping young man like you?’ She turned her palms upwards, supplicating.
‘Have you not done enough?’
‘Have you not? We sought the best of care for Augusta, in the hope that she might recover and be able to live once more as suits her station in life. Now she is ruined. You have ruined her.’
‘Oh, you lying witch! You would have put her away forever.’
The altercation, growing heated, attracted the attention of idling cabbies atop their hansom boxes.
‘Smack ’im one,’ shouted one such helpfully, while the others joined in with catcalls and whistles.
‘Come away off the bridge,’ said Mrs Shaw levelly. ‘We are making a scene.’
‘Return to your cab. I have no intention of taking you anywhere near Augusta.’
He turned and walked swiftly on, but he knew that she followed him, and instead of going to the inn, he descended instead some stairs to the wharf below. The area was busy with building work, warehouses under construction, intended to replace those destroyed in the great Tooley Street fire of four years since.
A sense of desolation still prevailed among all the industry and James thought, with a shiver, of the bravery of his namesake, James Braidwood, who had perished in his efforts to douse the flames. He himself had watched the conflagration from the opposite bank.
Here the river was high and fetid with the summer warmth, churning in a brown swirl around the hulls of the boats moored at the quayside. Further into the midstream, the Thames was thick with tugs and steamers going about their daily business.
‘What are you doing? Why do you come down here?’
Mrs Shaw’s querulous voice drifted down the steps at his back.
‘Here I am,’ he said, sitting down on a bulwark and placing his package on his knees. ‘And here I shall stay until you go back to your cab. I am in no hurry, Mrs Shaw, and I can wait all day if necessary.’ He yawned. ‘I like to watch the process of building, don’t you?’
‘Vile wretch, do not trifle with me. If you do not take me to Augusta, I shall find her. For I surmise that she must be somewhere in this vicinity, on the south bank of the river. At an inn, perhaps? Close to a station, for of course you cannot stay in London now. It will be the work of minutes to find her.’
‘Go now, Mrs Shaw. You are very lucky that Augusta and I have decided not to prosecute the criminal acts against her. But we may change our view.’
Mrs Shaw laughed at that, throwing back her head.
Looking at her throat, James thought what a handsome woman she was, or could be, if only she were not so heartless.
‘You fool,’ she said. ‘You know perfectly well that to do any such thing would only embroil you in more trouble than you could imagine. You will rot in jail for the rest of your days, and Augusta will be placed in a nice, quiet asylum.’
‘Let us go, Mrs Shaw. We are nothing to you now. You have what you want.’
‘Almost,’ she said, coming closer. ‘Not quite. I miss my little slave girl. I had hoped to have her exactly where I wanted her, to attend to my every wish. Miss Quim needs her mistress’s discipline, you see.’
James shook his head, scorn overriding disgust.
‘You can find any number of willing girls to perform the same role, I am sure. The streets are rotten with them. Mrs Edwards’ refuge is testament to it.’
Mrs Shaw nodded at that, seeming to agree.
‘Oh, there is no shortage of little sluts, that’s true enough. Perhaps I might look up your friend. What was her name? Annie, was it?’
He rose at that, as if he would reach out to seize her, but thought better of it and clutched his package to his chest instead.
‘Oh, I see that she is dear to you,’ goaded Mrs Shaw. ‘Your affections are thinly spread. Poor Augusta.’
‘Leave her be.’
‘Give me my sweet little sightless whore, and I will.’
Mrs Shaw came closer now, hovering within reach of him.
‘I have told you. I have nothing more to say on the subject. Go to your friends and your allies. Leave us alone.’
‘It seems to me, Mr Stratton,’ said Mrs Shaw, moving inexorably nearer, causing James to take another step back, almost to the edge of the quay, ‘that you are all that stands between me and everything I ever desired in life. Everything.’
‘You have enough,’ he said. ‘Money, your companion, social position, respectability.’
‘Yes, and these are great things to a woman who has fought her way up in the world from nowhere at all. The bastard daughter of a hanged man.’
‘If you would like to compare inauspicious starts in life, I should tell you that I was myself born in prison.’
‘And you should die there too.’
‘No, I should prefer not to.’
‘I should never have engaged your services. You are not what I bargained for.’
‘Am I not?’
‘I thought you might be some louche older man, riddled with pox. I thought it would be easy enough to persuade Augusta that you were young and handsome, for my purposes. But you were. You truly were. I should have hired another instead of continuing with you. Somebody hard-headed and unsentimental. Not a fool like you. For pity’s sake – to fall in love with your whipping girl. What idiocy!’
‘Better a fool than a witch like you. I should hate you for what you have done but I feel nothing but pity.’
‘How dare you pity me!’ she screamed.
She launched herself forwards with a substantial shove, but he sidestepped, knowing her purpose too well. He attempted to grasp hold of her as she stumbled on the edge of the quay but it was all done too quickly, and she fell headlong into the brown, sludgy waters below.
James put his hands over his mouth and stared. The clangour of building works meant that the splash went unheard. Nobody on the quay had seen. Nobody on the bridge paid attention. He could … He looked up towards the parapet, his gaze tending longingly towards the station hotel, where Augusta waited.
But he couldn’t stop himself turning back, down to where Mrs Shaw flailed and splashed, apparently unable to swim.
He put down the package and ran towards some stone steps leading into the water, shedding his coat as he went. He left his boots on the lowest step and waded down, grimacing at the foul odour. A rat swam past as he reached chest-depth and pushed off towards Mrs Shaw, a few yards distant.
She clung and pinched, her weight almost pulling him under the brackish surface, but he managed to keep his head above water and drag her, kicking and gasping, back to the stairs.
He sat her drenched body down, asking his conscience if he ought to try and clear her airways of the rank waters, but his conscience was on his side, for once, and he simply picked up his boots and left her there. On the quayside, he ran across the coachman, whom he had intended to seek out.
‘Look to your mistress,’ he advised, pointing to the stairway. ‘She is on those steps.’
There. He had done more than most men would, and he was free, at last. Free to start anew.
Back at the inn, Augusta ran to him, then screamed on contact with his wet and slimy waistcoat.
‘Whatever has passed? You stink like the river!’
He threw the package on the bed.
‘Undergarments are hard to come by in this city,’ he said. ‘But I have got some. And now I fear I must bathe before we can make our onward journey. I have asked downstairs for a tub to be brought up.’
Augusta dressed while James washed in the inn’s tin bath, scrubbing all traces of the disgusting river from his skin and hair.
‘Did you fall in?’ she asked. ‘What happened to you?’
‘A trivial misfortune,’ he said, wielding the bath brush as if it might work on questions as well as dirt. ‘Nothing of consequence. You look beautiful, my love, in that dress.’
‘Do I? I like to hear you say it, even if I can never know the truth for myself.’
‘It is the truth.’ He put down the brush and lay back, watching islands of suds settle on his stomach and chest. ‘Something you have been ill acquainted with. Henceforth, Augusta, let us swear that we shall be always truthful with one another.’
‘Easy for me to do.’
‘And for me,’ he said. ‘You must be honest with me always about what you feel and what you wish for. We live in a world where honesty is rarely valued as it should be. Let us make our own world, from our own hearts.’
‘Oh, James. I should like nothing better.’
The platform at London Bridge Station was foggy with steam and the loud hissing and clanking of engines made conversation almost impossible, but James had never felt more tranquil or at peace than he did on handing Augusta into their Folkestone-bound carriage.
They were going away, away from narrow alleys and blackened bricks, the roar and bustle of the crowd, the cab-jammed roads, the calls of painted girls, the smell of stale beer and horse dung, everything he had ever known and called home.
Home was elsewhere now.