CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Saturday Night, July 1st
Queens Hotel
His socks squished inside his ruined shoes. Murdoch trudged up the steps behind Julia, barely noticing, his gaze fixed on the damp dress clinging to her backside and the lovely pendulum motion as she ascended. A matron descending the same steps shot him a disgusted look and an actual harumph. He merely smiled at her innocently, keeping his thoughts concerning the dirty minds of busybodies to himself.
I am only retrieving my hat.
She collected her post from the desk then took him up the stairs and into her third-floor apartment - a bedroom and bath separated from a sitting/dining room by glass doors. He was astonished at how much of her exuberant personality was evident after only a brief residence.
"May I offer you a sherry? Or brandy?"
She was right there, a glass in her hand for him, standing so close her breath whispered on his cheek. He jumped a fraction as if touched by a spark, irritated with her and himself. Her hair had dried into soft kinks and ringlets, her blouse had lost all its starch, leaving it translucent along her bodice.
"No, un...no thank you." He raised a hand, stepping two paces backwards, aware of a charge in the air between them, luring him closer.
She stepped forward right along with him. "No? Are you sure? After what we have been through, a strong restorative is just what the doctor ordered."
She took a drink, her lips and tongue caressing the rim of the glass. He closed his eyes briefly and declined: "No, Doctor. I think not." He saw her eyebrows arch - Was that mockery? A challenge? He noticed his heart racing, and his lungs pumping rapidly. "Not because of prohibition," he said, the pulse at her throat beckoning him.
"Are you sure? I think we both deserve to relax - for goodness sake, we could have been killed an hour ago. Now the two of us are here, having survived an ordeal. Don't you feel just so...alive?" She stroked his lapel. "Besides, you promised me we were going to celebrate. Why not indulge?"
Her eyes were locked with his, offering more than indulging in alcohol. "That's enough, Julia. I don't drink because I can be a nasty drunk."
Her gaze was unwavering. "I don't mind a little roughhouse…"
Something slipped a little inside of him. He pulled her towards him, his head mere inches from hers. "What do you think I am?" He flashed her a half smile. "A tommy keen to show you a good time? An uncouth character who will be impressed by your breeding, your social standing or your medical degree? I am not beneath you, Doctor Ogden."
"No. I never thought you were," she paused, taking a sip of her drink. "You are an enigma who intrigues me, and it certainly couldn't have passed your notice you are a fine specimen of homo sapiens. I am a red-blooded woman...you are a red-blooded male..." her voice was low and husky as her hand trailed down his chest.
He closed his eyes, ignoring the lonely ache, the yearning, the coiling anticipation in his belly. Once upon a time he'd very much been that sort of male, but that was before the war, before Liza had ….
"If you need entertaining, surely your sister could introduce you to any number of city bachelors offering excitement," he hissed, determined to push her away before he suffered yet another rejection. Even assuming it is men you want. She was already laughing at him - he thought it sounded bitter.
She stepped closer. "Today's woman is not meek and quiet. No pious walk and conversation! I believe women have the same intellectual constitution as men and the right to the same culture and development, and that led me to becoming a doctor," she hissed back at him, eyes twin three-thousand-degree flames. "If the mundane was all I was interested in, I'd have married some insufferable twit from a fine family my father vetted for me..."
No words came to him so he merely nodded.
"You chose to be a police officer though you could be something else. I am doing some good in the world where I am now." She still appeared offended and trying to justify her position.
"Until someone or something better comes along. Justice demands dedication, not a dilettante," he said.
"I'm no dilettante!" she fired back. "I took this job at the morgue so I could be of use, so I could help. And I have helped!"
"But you're not planning to stay on, are you?"
"Oh - so you care, do you?"
"I care that my cases are not thrown out because you will be unavailable to take the witness stand when we eventually get to court, because you've gone off to somewhere better or gone and gotten yourself killed."
"It's not my fault some inebriated reveler swamped our boat tonight. Don't be so dramatic!" Her hands found her hips for emphasis.
"You could have drowned!"
"I can take care of myself…"
Without prelude she placed her lips on his, shooting a tingle along his carotid into his chest. He broke it off, his heart pounding, the slow escalation of desire overtaking him.
"Take care of yourself?! You are constitutionally unable to restrain yourself," he gasped. She was inches away, eyes still blazing, hands still perched upon her hips, her beautiful, brilliant, radiant face, so full of strength and challenge, and he thought about how unfair it all was.
Julia seemed to just light a fuse in him.
He grabbed her and kissed her roughly, pyrotechnics erupting in his chest, sending sparks surging in his body, out to his fingertips. "You have been trying to seduce me since the hour we met. Well, the laugh's on you. You have picked yourself out a eunuch!" He forced her hand to his soft crotch, his flesh crackling with energy where she pressed on him. Instead of struggling against him, she reached for his long dormant manhood, which, like the rest of him this past week, came alive under her touch.
"Oh?" she purred, stroking him. "Are you quite sure?" she asked, enthusiastically kissing him back.
"Oh...God…"
A whimper of pleasure escaped against his will. He felt his heart pump blood south...to where her hand caressed, his body making him a liar. Instead of asking her to stop, his hips leaned in towards her, his passion arcing upwards while he savoured her soft lips…
It had been so long, yet his body remembered fireworks...
Later, he lay across her bed, a half-smile pulling at his cheek, trying to remember the last time he'd been so whole, or so alive. Julia's head was on his chest, legs entangled with his. He also proudly noted her smile and was relieved to know he put it there. He even thought he'd like to try again...
"So, William...tell me about this eunuch? Were you mistaken?" she beckoned, looking up at him.
He kissed her. "The most recent experimental evidence suggests I was."
"Mmmm." She snuggled against him, pleasantly drumming her nails on him. He thought she was trying to decide something. After several minutes she surprised him. "Do you want to tell me?"
Did he? She is asking about another woman whilst she is in my arms. This beautiful, remarkable, bold, iconoclastic woman is asking. He shook his head in astonishment. Not only did she know his shame, he also knew her biblically now, apparently cured of one part of it… "I always assumed most women would be offended by discussing-"
Julia interrupted immediately. "I am not most women."
He liked the dangerous blue glint in her eyes. He smiled, holding her closer in his arms. "I noticed."
He was utterly amazed at himself. It was so unlike him to share anything of his private life with anyone except Eddie Cullen, and only then after realizing too late, that shutting Liza out had been a mistake. The unshakable understanding he had with Thomas Brackenreid and George Crabtree, one borne of the terror and intimacy of war, never covered this.
Could he tell anyone - let alone Julia Ogden, his brand-new lover, someone he may never see this way again - his most acute pain?
It is madness.
Isn't it?
He studied her closely, weighing his options...weighing his heart. "I always believed I valued the truth - 'The rock upon which we must stand.' It's something one of my old teachers taught me, a long time ago. Truth is what I seek through my work as a police officer because truth brings justice. Lately... I have come to understand that truth also brings great...pain."
She remained quiet in his arms. He'd been lying to so many people lately and look where it got him. Lying to myself, which was worse.
He settled her even closer, trying to slow his heart. "When I was away, in France...I saw things...and did things I never knew I'd ever be capable of."
She nodded and held him tighter. "Only the willfully ignorant would expect us, or anyone else to remain unchanged. It changed me. I saw what war is capable of. I assisted doctors who sewed those boys up, and I held their hand so they wouldn't die alone."
He nodded, glad she understood part of it, glad she had not offered an empty platitude.
"And your marriage?" Her prompt was soft, encouraging.
He was not surprised she asked - So like her to do so. His instinct was to hold back - So like me. He was naked, in bed with her, talking as if they'd known each other for years instead of weeks. He decided she deserved the truth. To be dishonest was to be dishonourable, and he was done with that, come what may.
No half measures.
He touched her hair to soothe himself. "I'd been overseas longer than we'd been married. She felt abandoned, was desperately lonely, so quite naturally she made a life of her own without me. When I returned, two things were true: She quite naturally wanted to keep her new life and I was no longer the man she'd married. For a time, I drank, trying to forget...To hide from the fact my sweetheart was repulsed by me...To forget how monstrous I was." He exhaled.
Julia remained quiet in his arms for a long while, her complete awareness on him. "Whatever… However... you fought during the war - you've chosen peace and justice now. Not a monster - either inside or out," she told him, tracing his chest with her finger. "What happened with … her?
This next part will be harder. He scanned her face. When Julia smiled at him, he could not hold back.
"I never once thought about being unfaithful to my wife. Overseas she was constantly in my thoughts, I dreamt of her...all I craved was to come home and be with her again, but when I got home… Well it was all so different... Liza was willing to...to...well, submit." He shifted, trying to release the feeling he was betraying Liza. "I never wanted my wife to endure relations as a chore. I hoped it to be mutual...as it had been before. I would never withhold from her, it's just that...The truth is she fell out of love with me, and I found I could not…not..." He couldn't say it. "That was three years ago."
Julia stroked his head, kissing his chest as she lay there. She hadn't gone running. She offered warmth, acceptance. Then she said the most extraordinary thing.
"The heart is an anarchist, forever refusing to be governed. That's no one's fault, William - that is also just the truth."
Truth.
He felt lighter than he had in ages, as if he was freed from a crushing weight he'd been unaware of carrying. He shifted and propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at the woman below him with a grin he could not keep off his face.
Truth.
He wanted her. He lightly dragged his own finger down her body, circling her nipple light as a feather before making his way down to her legs. He relished her moan of anticipation as she spread her thighs and waited for his next move.
