Bitter Eden Read online

  Her first few lessons in this attitude were devastating. But she hardened and learned to recognize when she had the advantage and when she did not. Her dream was tarnished, but she held on to it. She could no longer enter Albert's world as the innocent she might have, but Rosalind was now equipped to enter it shrewdly and calculatingly and desperately.

  She remembered clearly her one and only conversation with Albert's mother.

  "The difficulty with you, Rosalind, fortunately is not characteristic of your class. You've no idea of your place. What you aspire to, by enticing my son, is a way of life for which you have no talent nor comprehension of its meaning or ways. You'll not marry my son, and you will see that it is to your benefit as well as his.

  "Though you do not realize it, I am doing you a service by forbidding this marriage. You would not be happy. You'd not fit in, nor would you be able to entertain or mingle with the sort of people with whom Albert will spend his life. Find yourself a suitable man and end these yearnings after a station for which you are so totally unsuited." Mrs. Foxe had dabbed a lacy, perfumed handkerchief under her nose. Ostentatiously she had straightened her already straight back, as though rising above the atmosphere she found herself in. Her tailored mauve silk afternoon gown rustled richly at her every move. The woman's skin was •milky white, her hair freshly and expertly coiffed.

  Rosalind had stared at her, unwittingly rude. It was difficult to acknowledge that this woman was real. She seemed more like a character from a story book, come to life to sit and talk to Rosalind. It was several seconds before the meaning of Mrs. Foxe's words had penetrated Rosalind's consciousness, and when they did she had felt belittled. Her coarse wool dress—that fit too tightly across her bosom and pinched her already tiny waist so tightly she'd have red marks on her skin when she removed it—seemed to grow tighter and tighter, more and more obviously a garment designed to incite men's lusts. Unable to defend herself with language to match Mrs. Foxe's, and not ever thinking that she might use her father's ruthless abuse of her to gain sympathy, Rosalind had reacted in the only way she knew to defend herself against the truth.

  She became hostile, her resentment coated by a sweet coyness in her speech.

  "What if Albert disa'grees with you, Mrs. Foxe? Suppose he sees me as suitable? Suppose he'd like his friends to see me at his table? I am not so bad to look at, you know. Suppose Albert defies you?"

  "He won't," Mrs. Foxe had said with firm resolution. Her face wore an unyielding expression of self-assurance.

  Rosalind's hurt had flared into hot anger. "You're so bloody sure of yourself! You don't know everything about Albert! I could tell you a thing or two!"

  Mrs. Foxe's head had gone back, retreating in disgust as she looked at Rosalind through lowered lids. The lacy handkerchief slowly wafted scent as she moved it under her aristocratic nose. "I am sure you could, but it wouldn't be worth hearing, nor would it be anything the downstairs maid couldn't tell me. Let me ask you about some of the things that do count. When did you last dine out with Albert? When did you last go to the theater? What was the last party you attended together? Have you ever received so much as one invitation to any of the better houses in the parish ... or even in London? Shall I answer for you? Shall I tell you of the invitations Albert has received, or the parties he has attended and with whom? No, I shouldn't wish to humiliate you. You see, Rosalind, you are the love of Albert's life—behind doors. That is all it is now, and all it ever could be."

  There had been little Rosalind could reply, and as if in confirmation of Mrs. Foxe's accusations her anger flamed hotter, and the crude, coarse language of the tavern leapt to her mind, robbing her of her last vestige of hope to answer Albert's imperious mother.

  The conversation had left her shaken. Though Rosalind had spent hours practicing before a mirror the

  proper way for a lady to sit, to move her body, to talk with her eyes and fan, and though she had read every book she could lay hands on so she could be "educated," Mrs. Foxe had ignored the fruits of her efforts as thoroughly as she had discounted Rosalind's natural charms.

  Rosalind had been properly chastised and numbed. Was her dream so unattainable? Was there no one who wanted her honorably? Would she finally be forced to know that what Rufus said was true—that her body alone could bring her satisfaction, and little enough at that?

  For some time after that Rosalind had been wary and vulnerable whenever she met a man who had come from the landed classes. Mrs. Foxe's words were always with her. She couldn't bear the thought of another of those wealthy spoiled men saying he loved her and yet mocking her efforts to be like him.

  When she first met Peter Berean, she had thought him a laborer. He had no pretensions, and often as not was dressed no better than the other patrons. His only mark of distinction was that he was always immaculately clean. She was immediately drawn to him. He was safe—no better than she—and if she had to be "sold" for a night's pleasure, better to a man who was handsome to look at and sweet to smell Before long she had convinced herself she wanted to be known as his woman. Not a girl she knew would fail to be monster-green jealous. And while that was not so good as changing her name to Foxe and riding through town in a beautiful gown and an elegant carriage, it wasn't so bad either.

  Peter's courtship, however, had thrown her into greater self-doubt than ever. He didn't paw her. He didn't bargain with Rufus to use the upstairs bed-

  room. He behaved as she imagined gentlemen were supposed to behave: as if she were a lady.

  Rosalind alternated between delight as Peter resurrected her dreams of "being someone" and fear that if he didn't pull down the bodice of her blouse it was because he didn't find her appealing.

  Then, worst of all, she discovered he wasn't what he appeared to be. He was James Berean's son. Next to the Foxes, there wasn't a more secure or admired family in the parish. She panicked and tried to stay away from him. Failing that, she tried to seduce him. Failing that, she burst into tears and poured out her heart and innermost secrets to him, telling him everything except her love of Albert Foxe. That one corner of longing she kept private, but the rest of her miserable life she told to Peter, thinking to drive him away before he chose to leave her.

  Peter asked her to marry him.

  Two days later, after a painful attempt to convince Albert he should defy his mother and marry her, Rosalind accepted Peter's proposal in a fit of angry revenge directed at Albert. Once betrothed, she began to hunt for motives that would make Peter as crass and dishonorable as the other men she had known. She found one possibility and clung to that as though she needed the means to continue thinking herself unworthy and worthless.

  After listening to the laborers talk of Peter, Rosalind decided she was a "cause" to him. She convinced herself that it had been only Peter's brash idealism that had brought him to the point of marriage. She thought she understood him, but she had drawn the wrong conclusions from the right facts.

  He liked causes and claimed to hate the traditions that held a man or woman to one class or another. He was a self-styled revolutionary, picking bits and pieces

  of radical thought and putting them together in his own way. She decided he thought himself a hero and she was to become his heroine—a fittingly pathetic damsel for Galahad to rescue. Let him use her as he would; she had her own reasons for marrying him.

  They married and Peter took her home to a family Rosalind trusted no better than she trusted her husband. She entered the Berean family a stranger, and through her defensiveness remained a stranger. She was stubbornly certain that at the back of the Be-reans' pretended good nature was a quiet laugh repeated over the joke that she was Rufus Hawkes's daughter aspiring to a station for which she had no talent.

  She suffered their imagined mockery with a bitter pride. She had climbed from the cellar of her former life and was now a member of the landed gentry and secretly the mistress of the youngest magistrate in the parish. The Mrs. Foxes and the Bereans of the world could sneer, but Rosa
lind Hawkes Berean was only one step away from being of status equal to the Foxes, and her hold on Albert was now far stronger than that of a downstairs maid. It gave her a dreadful sense of accomplishment, bitter and vengeful in its headi-ness. But still it wasn't enough. To Rosalind, the day she'd feel proud of herself, free to be liked by herself and others, was the day Albert Foxe recognized her as a lady, and admitted he should have married her . . . would marry her if she'd have him. To be whole she had to have what he and his mother had denied her.

  There were frightening times when she doubted her own desires. Then she would wonder why she let Albert near her. He wasn't half the man her husband was. And while Peter had not been her first true love, he was a loving man. He cared for her and though she hadn't been able to bring herself to trust him, he said

  he loved her. He made her laugh and forget for a time the demons that plagued her. And he made her wonder what might be coming next in their lives. He talked of great plans, of sea voyages and successes. Most of all he talked of leaving the hop farm and being on his own.

  So far he hadn't done anything about these dreams. There was always an excuse. His father needed him. The laborers' problems required his attention. But at other times he swore he would be off to France to learn firsthand what the Frenchies had in mind with their bourgeois monarch. Off to America to have his own hop farm, maybe a brewery too. There was no telling what was fact and what was fiction with the man.

  For all she knew he really was Captain Swing. It was within belief. As Meg often said, and annoyed her by the saying, Peter liked to play at life. Rosalind knew she was included in Meg's estimate of Peter's sincerity, and that was what rankled.

  Meg had an innocent way of indicting Rosalind. Had she known the hours of discomfort and soul-searching she caused, Meg might never have told Rosalind that she spent a good deal of time spiting herself with her wild impetuous actions. But she had said it, and it had struck in Rosalind a target Meg knew nothing about.

  The most impetuous act Rosalind had ever committed was beginning the affair with Albert. Even to herself she could not justify continuing it. She had nothing to gain. Albert had already made that abundantly clear. And she now had a great deal to lose. She could wind up back in her father's tavern. Peter was easy-going in most things, but he was quite capable of giving her the beating of her life before he tossed her out of his home. While she counted on Peter's desire for

  things to be happy and cheerful, she also knew that if he ever turned his back on her, he would never look her way again.

  These possibilities frightened her. Yet at the end of the thread of morbid speculation was the hard knot of decision that told her she would not end the affair. She cringed at this; she could not look beyond it The fact that she carried it on—urging, encouraging it with an impulse that had begun when Albert rejected her and had grown since into a compulsion—was humiliating and frightening.

  She did things and she didn't know why. She didn't really dislike Natalie. But why Albert intended to marry the girl, Rosalind would never understand. It negated all she knew about him. Rosalind throbbed with life; her blood coursed through her with a fury that had to be expended, and Albert liked that. Why would he choose to marry a delicate, childlike creature like Natalie and leave Rosalind behind? Surely family lineage and property and politics could not mean so much to a man that he'd deny his own love, his own body, Rosalind thought, and felt the sick sinkings within at the realization that she might not know or comprehend the ways of Albert's class after all.

  Was that why she had never been able to get over Albert? Was that the reason she clung to him, teased him, taunted him so that in this minor way he would never completely leave her, and always leave some hope that his mother was wrong? She had to admit she spent as much time thinking about Mrs. Foxe as she did about Albert. She was never completely sure if she was having an affair with Albert or one against his mother.

  But then Rosalind seldom knew what she was for and what she was against. Even before she met Albert, she knew that someday she wanted to marry

  someone like him. Her dreams of herself, which were frequent, were all dreams of wanting, so fierce that the night didn't end them, nor the day temper them.

  It was very late when Peter came to bed that night after Callie's arrival, but Rosalind was still awake wrestling with her doubts. He turned to her, stroking her hip. She lay still and he kissed her neck, then, thinking she was asleep, turned away.

  It was a long night for her. Sleep wouldn't come. Peace of mind was distant. Fear of always being chained to Albert warred with her jealous fear of losing Peter's patient love. He slept untroubled the few hours left to him, and Rosalind listened and tried to take comfort in the even sound of his breathing.

  "Did you really think she was that pretty?" she asked in the morning darkness as he began to stir.

  "Who? What are you talking about?" he muttered groggily, and then opened his eyes peering into the murky room. "Are you still thinking about Callie?"

  His humor was good, as it was most mornings. He stretched and yawned, wishing for summer months when he didn't always rise and go to bed in darkness.

  "You don't think she is prettier than I am, do you?"

  "She is different Anyway she is far younger."

  "And I am old!? She isn't that much younger than

  ir

  "She is still a child," he said and thought: and terrified of me,

  "Everyone is goiiig to think she is prettier than I am. They all make a fuss over her." She began to cry softly into his shoulder. He had little patience for tears. It was Albert on whom she could effectively turn her tears, but this morning Peter didn't seem to mind.

  He didn't really want to put his foot down on the cold floor and wash himself in the even colder water.

  Momentarily he thought enviously of Frank, whose water Anna would have warmed for him. He turned to Rosalind, lifting her chin so she looked him in the face. Gently he wiped the tears from her cheeks, kissing her as he murmured softly of her beauty. Caressingly, he told her what she wanted to hear.

  "Oh, Peter, I could be all those things ... I could be beautiful and . . ."

  "You are, love, to me you are everything you've ever wanted to be/' He untied the ribbons of her nightgown. She looked at him, confused, poised between helping him disrobe her, and grasping the nightgown modestly against her. He kissed her ear, wishing himself more patient Better than she knew, Peter understood what tormented her. He knew how she was afraid to let him see her passion lest he think her cheap. He knew the damage her father had done, and he knew how the men of the tavern had misused her when she was little more than a child. Slowly, careful not to upset the balance between what she thought was "clean loving" and what she thought was "dirty loving" he made love to her.

  Beneath him Rosalind lay demure and unresponsive, her head turned to one side in emulation of how she thought a lady should behave.

  Easily and gently Peter stroked her, parting her legs. He kissed her, his mouth lingering on her breasts, teasing her nipples to hard buds. He waited, holding back, caressing her with his hands and eyes, patient for the moment when Rosalind, his imitation lady, would vanish, allowing Rosalind, his love, to burst free of her self-imposed prison to writhe in catlike ecstasy in answer to his growing urgency.

  Later, spent and happy, Peter lay beside her, loving better the smell of her sexuality than he did the violet water she bathed in. Their bodies were moist and

  sweaty under the blankets in the cold room. She snuggled close in the curve of his arm, all her fears and doubts forgotten. For these moments she was safe. Peter moved away from her slightly, knowing that any minute his father or Frank would be calling him. He was already late to breakfast.

  They don't need you this once/* she murmured, warm and sleepy, "but I do."

  Frank's loud voice shouting Peters name came from below.

  Peter glanced at the door, then at his wife. "Get up with me. Come downstairs. Well have breakfas
t and talk."

  "Stay here. Please, Peter. It's so cold . . . I'm freezing, Peter, I can't get up • • . there's no fire in the grate. Stay with me."

  Half angry because she made him feel as though he were deserting her, he snapped without thinking, "Anna keeps Frank's fire going. It is she who worries that he might be cold."

  "Anna is an old cow! You wouldn't like me to be like Anna. All she does is wait on him. She is used to all that She had five brothers."

  "And you, milady, are used to nothing but satin and silken hands attending you."

  "I hate you when you talk like that!" she burst out, sitting up and clutching the blanket close against her. Then she squeezed out two more tears and flopped back down against the pillows. "You don't really love me at all. You wish you had a wife like that cow Anna. Or Callie."

  He grinned and looked over at her a split second before he leaped onto the bed, pulling the blankets off her. She shrieked as the cold air and Peter hit her at the same time.

  "I'll yell the house down!"

  "No you wont, wife. You'll shut up and get your satin and silk backside off the sheets and downstairs with me or I'll ride you down the stairs like a piebald mare."

  "I wont do it!"

  "Then 111 take both Callie and Anna to wife and leave you crying at the gate."

  "Ha!"

  "You think Anna won't give me a hot cup of coffee? Or Callie? I could go to her room right now, and she'd be downstairs and in the kitchen before the last word was out of my mouth," he said, meaning it.

  She stared at him with equal seriousness. "You are filled with conceit, Peter Berean. Not all women are madly in love with you as you think."

  "You've put the wrong light on things. Get up. I've no more time to waste."

  She got up, but the fun had gone from the morning. He was out of sorts and vaguely angry, and she was once again in her muddle of confusion, guilt, and indecision.