Mermaid of Penperro Page 20

  Matt shrugged. “You can hardly blame them. Times are hard, and there’s something appealing in the idea of Penperro having a protective mermaid.”

  “I’m beginning to think that Konstanze herself would enjoy playing the role full-time.”

  “She’s overcome her misgivings?”

  “With a vengeance. It’s as if all along she was a brilliant butterfly, trapped inside a smothering white cocoon. It’s unnerving, watching her come out.”

  “Her mother was on the stage, and her father,” Matt reminded him. “It shouldn’t be such a surprise that she enjoys her part in your scheme.”

  “If you met her you’d understand my confusion. There is something confoundingly innocent about her, despite actions contrary to that notion.”

  Matt gave him a long look. “It sounds as if you have been spending a lot of time thinking about her.”

  “Too much time,” he admitted, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve got enough to worry about without throwing that into the mix.” He was having a hard enough time accepting what he had done with Konstanze on the shore—he wasn’t about to discuss it with Matt in the Fishing Moon over pints of cider. The worst of it was, he didn’t feel half as ashamed of himself as he knew he ought. His feelings for her were making it harder and harder to see the error in helping her to betray her cruel, elderly, and blessedly distant husband.

  When he’d come to Penperro he’d promised himself never again to be the villain. It had been an easy enough promise to keep, until Konstanze came into his life. He’d also promised himself never again to let a woman so distract him that he let his friends, his family, and his business fall by the wayside. Yet at this moment he could barely manage to shove thoughts of Konstanze from his mind. Even while he devoted his attention to business, there was a part of his mind making love to her.

  “You heard about the close call with the seaweed wagon, I presume?” Tom asked, trying to drag his mind onto another topic. In the back of his imagination Konstanze, naked, was lying in his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck.

  “Clemmens and the others are lucky not to be in jail right now, and their wives, too,” Matt said.

  “It was sheer bad luck for Foweather to stumble across them like that.” Clemmens and some farmers and their wives had been down on the shore, transferring goods to a wagon heaped with seaweed. When Foweather had come across their early morning activity and asked what they were up to, they had quite legitimately claimed that they were collecting the seaweed to fertilize their fields. Clemmens was a fisherman, however, and had been forced to claim he was there to help his friends. They were fortunate that the seaweed had been slimy enough that Foweather had not searched it.

  “His movements seem more random than they were before the mermaid,” Matt observed.

  Tom sighed. “Yet another unanticipated consequence. I think he is becoming so obsessed that he cannot keep to his usual methodical methods. Wherever he is, he thinks the mermaid may be someplace else, and he has to go check.”

  “It would be more convenient if he’d stick to a regular schedule,” Matt said dryly.

  “It would be more convenient still if we could write the schedule for him. We could land boats in broad daylight if only we could be certain where he was going to be,” he said, remembering Konstanze’s ridiculous suggestion to smuggle in the middle of the day.

  They were both silent, contemplating the problem.

  “Even two or three hours would be sufficient,” Tom said. “Especially if the boats knew several days in advance—especially if it were to be the same two or three hours each week, like, say, on a Sunday morning.

  Matt seemed to understand the direction of his thoughts. “Foweather doesn’t come to church, except sporadically. Do you have a way to insure his presence?”

  “I’m thinking it’s time our mermaid went in search of her soul.”

  “How’s your toe?” Konstanze asked, unable to think of anything else to break the silence that weighed heavily between her and Tom. He was walking beside her, taking her to Talland Church for a rehearsal of her next appearance as the mermaid. Hilde walked a few paces behind, urged to come along by them both, as if neither trusted their actions if left alone together.

  “It looks terrible but feels fine. I meant to thank you for that.”

  “Don’t mention it. I was happy to be able to help.” She couldn’t contain the smile that pulled at her lips, recalling his fainting spell.

  “Don’t laugh,” he said, casting her a stern glance from the corner of his eye.

  “I would never.” They continued on in silence, and she wondered if that incident upon the shore preyed upon his thoughts as strongly as it did upon hers. During the day she was apt to dwell on his amorous attentions with a fair trace of longing, but at night as she lay in bed, unable to sleep, demons of thought would come and plague her, scolding her for her sins and laughing that she had already begun her short, quick descent to hell.

  As a runaway wife she supposed that some would say she did not have much honor left to lose, yet it did matter to her that she was not yet an adulteress. In thought she was perhaps already guilty, but she could still cling to the technical truth of being innocent in deed.

  She had once thought it would be no hardship to live a continent life, abstaining from the intimate attentions of men. She had never guessed how wrong she was. Was she now to live out her days plagued by unfulfilled longings, or should she toss honor and caution to the winds and give in to her body’s desires?

  This would all be so much simpler if she were free to marry.

  She cast Tom a sideways glance, wondering what manner of husband he would make. Hilde had said he kept a comfortable house and that he appeared to be well respected by the townsfolk. People liked him.

  Which was not to say the man was above reproach. Beyond the obvious matter of the smuggling—about which she was no longer in a position to judge, taking part in and profiting from it as she did—was the matter of his choice in reading material. Of the four books Hilde had forcibly borrowed from his room, one was a treatise on mining, one a new book of poetry by Wordsworth, one an adventure novel, and the last was a scandalous bit of literature entitled Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

  She blushed even to think of the book. She had not read too far as yet, for the book embarrassed her even by being in her hand. Equally, she could not not read it. The heroine began the story an innocent, but a dozen pages into the novel was being initiated by prostitutes into the ways of the flesh. The author, John Cleland, had endeavored to explain each step in this initiation in titillating detail, and Konstanze was finding herself befuddled by several particulars. She read and reread the troubling passages, comparing them to her own meager experiences.

  What, for example, was the stiff, erect machine that emerged from a man’s breeches? She assumed it to be his penis, but Bugg’s had been a soft, limp thing, more like a bit of wet sponge cake than a stiff, erect machine. Was Mr. Cleland simply using his poetic imagination?

  And what of the milky effusion one character had left spilled over the heroine’s thighs? What was that?

  And the ecstatic fulfillment that the heroine had reached, touching her private parts while spying upon a man and woman engaged in sexual relations, what had that been? She had tasted bits of pleasure by her own touch, and now by Tom’s, but she had not known there was a goal to be reached in such pleasures.

  It was all quite confusing, but worse yet was that the book was Tom’s. She wondered at what depravities filled his head that he would purchase such a book, but at least it was nowhere near as vile as that tome that Quarles had given her husband, where pleasure came only from a woman’s pain. On the contrary, she had more than once felt a pulse of response as she read the Memoirs. But what was Tom doing with such licentious material? And more important, had he yet noticed that it was missing?

  “Are you enjoying the books Hilde borrowed for you?” he
asked.

  O Gott. What to say? “I like the Wordsworth poems very much, and the adventure story is most entertaining.

  He slanted her a knowing look. “And the other? I’m sure you’ve found it fascinating.”

  “I… I haven’t quite made my way through it.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought that was your usual choice of reading material.”

  “It’s not! Of course it’s not! I shall return it to you this evening, and shall be glad to be rid of it.”

  “You’re certain you wouldn’t like to keep it? I should think it made very good reading for when you go to bed at night. I keep it in arm’s reach of my bed, myself.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You are being more frank with me than I perhaps could wish. I’ll return the book to you tonight. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your entertainments. Now let us say no more about it.”

  “I don’t know what is so frank about discussing reading habits.”

  Konstanze ducked her head and leaned toward him, whispering. “The book is scandalous. I have read only four chapters, and already I am quite horrified.”

  “That’s why I don’t take part in such things, myself. There are safer ways for a person to earn a living, ways that won’t end in the worker’s death from disease. You can’t do much to change the situation if you don’t understand it, though.”

  She blinked at him. He was a social reformer, and that was his purpose in reading the book? “I find much of the subject matter beyond my comprehension. All this mention of… of… fluids and such, and machines.”

  “I’m impressed that you’re trying to learn about it. I find some of the mechanics quite confusing, myself.”

  She gave a little sigh of relief. “Truly? So it is not ignorance, or lack of intelligence on my own part that caused my puzzlement?”

  “I’ve had to reread entire sections to get the gist of what was being said,” Tom admitted.

  “I, too! There was so little that related to my own experience.”

  “I shouldn’t think there was. What chance would you ever have had to tunnel for copper?”

  She frowned. Tunnel for copper? Was that a euphemism of some sort? “If you want to call it that, although I confess I have never heard the expression. Apparently there is much I do not know about the intimate relations between men and women.”

  “Intimate…” Tom stopped walking, forcing her to as well. “We are discussing Grant’s A Treatise on the Mining Techniques of Cornwall, aren’t we?”

  It took her a moment to understand, to remember the barely glanced-at book to which he referred. Her mouth pulled down in a horrified grimace. “Oh, oh…” she said. She resumed walking, her pace quick and agitated. Tom quickly caught up.

  “That was the other book Hilde took, wasn’t it?”

  Konstanze shook her head quickly from side to side, letting out little “ohs” under her breath.

  “It puts me to sleep at night,” Tom went on. “It’s better than any number of sheep leaping fences. Was there another book she took?”

  Konstanze moaned. She felt him looking at her, searching her face in the growing dusk for some hint of an answer. She spared him a quick glance, and saw his expression change.

  “She didn’t take… I didn’t notice…” Tom stumbled. “It wasn’t the Memoirs she took, was it?”

  Konstanze cast him a helpless look. A chuckle started deep inside his chest, growing to outright laughter.

  “It’s a scandalous book!” Konstanze cried. “You should be ashamed to own it!”

  “And you should be ashamed to admit you read and reread each scene!”

  “I didn’t reread each scene! And I told you, I’ve only made my way halfway through Volume One, and that is quite far enough, thank you. You may take the vile thing home with you.”

  “And deprive you of your education? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “There is nothing in that book about which I wish to be educated. I know quite enough already, thank you very much.”

  “Apparently not, if you found it as confusing as you say.” He frowned down at her. “You did share a bed with your husband, didn’t you?”

  She made a noise of affront. “That is none of your affair. What an unspeakably rude question to ask!”

  He grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop, his expression suddenly serious. “Konstanze, did you share his bed?”

  “Well, of course I did.”

  “In, er… every sense of the word?”

  “Yes!” Konstanze was aware of Hilde standing a few feet away, watching them closely but not, for once, interfering.

  “I ask, because if the Memoirs is as confusing to you as you say, well, I just wonder—”

  “Wonder what?”

  “I wonder if your marriage was ever properly consummated. If it wasn’t, you have grounds for an annulment.”

  “Oh.” She was silent for a moment. “I think it was consummated.”

  “You think? Or you’re certain?”

  “It hurt,” she whispered. “It’s supposed to hurt, isn’t it?”

  “The first time, yes,” he said, just as quietly.

  “Then it was consummated.”

  He placed her hand in the crook of his arm and they resumed walking. “The solicitor I hired, Mr. Rumbelow, said you didn’t have any children.”

  “No. Perhaps there is something wrong with me.” She was embarrassed to be talking about this with him, which seemed silly after she had so freely swum half-naked before him, and let him put his mouth to her breast. She felt sharply the difference between being free with her body and being free with her private thoughts. With Bugg she had had great practice in keeping herself locked away from whatever happened with her body. For all the fuss that society made about physical modesty, it felt like opening one’s private, most intimate thoughts to another person—especially a man—was the far more revealing and dangerous act of the two.

  “Do you want children?” he asked.

  “Someday. Although I thought a child might make life with Bugg more bearable, I am glad now that we did not have any. I only hope I am not barren. He did, after all, have a son with his first wife.”

  “Bugg’s an old man, past his prime. There’s no reason to think you won’t be able to have children someday.”

  She tilted her head toward Tom, a feeling of wickedness coming over her as she whispered conspiratorially, “After the first few months, he rarely paid me any attention in bed,” she confided. “I thought I had done something wrong, but I’m beginning to suspect that he was too old to fully play the husband.”

  “Serves him right, the old goat,” Tom said. “So he didn’t have the energy to make proper use of the bride he’d purchased, eh? Must have driven him half mad.”

  She couldn’t fail to notice how very satisfied he sounded with that piece of information. She knew it was naughty to take pleasure in speaking with another man of her husband’s sexual deficiencies, but it was a delicious little taste of revenge.

  The first stars were showing in the deep blue sky above them, and the last hints of the sunset were fading in pink and lavender to the west by the time they reached Talland Church. A white-haired man was waiting outside the front doors for them, a shielded lantern dangling from his hand. Konstanze heard Hilde give a little growl of what could only be described as voracious pleasure. Tom’s suggestions about her maid’s romantic interests were suddenly not half so laughable.

  Tom introduced her to his friend. Hilde and the vicar obviously already knew one another.

  “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last,” Matt said. “All of Penperro has been anxious to meet you.”

  “I am equally eager to meet them,” Konstanze said. “Tom has been my only visitor since I arrived,” she said mournfully.

  Matt laughed, holding her hand sandwiched between his own. “You poor child.”

  “Enough of that,” Tom put in. “If you’re going to speak ill of me, at least wait until I’m out of earshot.�
��

  “Now where is the fun in that?” Matt asked, and then to Konstanze, “You don’t know how good it is to hear someone say she recognizes what a pest the man can be. Everyone else thinks he walks on water.”

  “In my experience he is far more likely to force a woman into the water than to risk getting his own feet wet.”

  Matt laughed again. “He doesn’t much like to get his hands dirty, either.”

  “Did he tell you about his encounter with my plow?” Konstanze asked innocently.

  “All right, enough!” Tom interrupted.

  “What plow?” Matt asked.

  “Never mind,” Tom said. “Matt, show Konstanze the bench, will you?”

  Matt exchanged glances with Konstanze, his look saying he fully expected to be told the plow story at the first opportunity. She smothered a smile. She was having entirely too much fun tattling on men this evening.

  Matt led them into the church. There were a few candles lit, barely enough to illuminate the rough, whitewashed stone walls and arches. The floor was of dark yellow and black tiles, worn and dull. The ceiling was a barrel arch of wood, carved figures protruding from the ends of beams, but it was too dark to make out what they represented. On either side ran a row of pillars and rounded arches, parallel to the center aisle.

  There was a choir at the far end and, off in the dim shadows to the left, an organ.

  Matt led them through the arches on the center right to a small raised alcove where an old bench sat, the wood blackened with age. It was more of a chair, really, being only three feet wide with sides and a back. A white silk cushion was on the seat.

  “This is the mermaid bench,” Matt explained, and lowered the lantern to the side of the bench where a two-tailed mermaid was carved, a mirror in one hand and a comb in the other. She was remarkably buxom for a figure in a church, Konstanze thought. Hilde bent down with her, ostensibly to look, but more likely to be closer to Matt.

  “Where did it come from?” Konstanze asked.