Sweet Agony

‘You think being alive in 1865 would give you peace?’

‘I think at the very least I would fit in more than I do here,’ he says, though I don’t think he means to. At least I don’t think he means to sound so despairing about it. After the words pop out he seems to make a little tutting noise, and it isn’t aimed at me. It’s aimed at himself. He let out some dark hint of who he is, and it irritates him.

It irritates him so much that he immediately tries to get rid of me in what may be the most ludicrous way possible. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you, farewell,’ he says, as though we just finished on a pleasant note and he is now up and shaking my hand.

Despite the fact that we are both still seated.

And he hasn’t asked me a damned thing.

‘But you haven’t even interviewed me yet.’

‘Of course I have – I enquired about your reading habits.’

‘That hardly constitutes an interview.’

‘Very well then, tell me what you would expect of an interview.’

‘You should ask me my name.’

‘Assume that I have.’

‘Molly Parker.’

‘I see. And then…?’ he asks, and here’s the best thing:

I think he genuinely has no idea.

He needs me to tell him.

‘Then you tell me yours.’

‘Why? I’m not interviewing for any position.’

‘So you want me to go around your house calling you something I just made up,’ I suggest, and practically hear him shudder. It almost makes me want to do it anyway – think up ridiculous monikers and have him be disgusted by all of them.

Snooty McBogtrot, I could call him, then I have to suppress a laugh.

Twenty-two years of never having anything to laugh about, and suddenly it overwhelms me to the point where I have to hold it off. I have to use both hands.

‘That sounds like the very worst thing I can imagine. You may call me Mr Harcroft.’

‘Seems rather unfriendly and impersonal.’

‘I think you will find that I am a rather unfriendly and impersonal man. You will also shortly discover that I am singularly exacting, ruthless in my attention to detail and completely without regard for any and all emotional whims. I brook no challenges to my authority and expect to be deferred to without exception when it comes to the precise system I use to govern my household,’ he says, then quite obviously waits for me to be horrified. The problem is, though, that if he is, he will be waiting for ever. I don’t know how to be horrified by all of this. It seems so strange and fantastical that all I can do is marvel at all of it, from the seating arrangements to his furniture right the way through to his every odd word.

He governs his household, I think.

Is it any wonder I say what I then do?

‘So I got the job then?’ I ask.

After which there is a silence so delicious I could grab it in my hands and eat it alive. He honestly thought I would balk at that, I can tell. He even tries to go one better a moment later, with his directions as to what I should do next. ‘You will be sleeping in the attic,’ he says, as though the attic is his version of the top of a terrible tower. He wants to be the evil wizard who has somehow imprisoned a princess.

But he has to know he can never be. My life before was the prison: this is the escape. And it continues to be, no matter what he says or does. ‘Go there directly and remain until your duties begin in the morning,’ he tells me, and the very last thing I feel is fear. I fizz with the idea of finally seeing his face instead. I wonder and wonder about how a man who uses the word ‘miscreant’ will look, and am actually disappointed when I turn and find he has already disappeared.

Though even that soon fades.

There are other delights to uncover – like the pictures on the walls on the way up the narrow staircase, each one creepier than the one before it. I think they might even deserve the label gothic, which sounded so exciting to me when I first read about it that I secretly dyed a net curtain black and wore it as a headdress in the middle of the night. Now I get to live amidst it, in the form of faded photographs of old bearded men who could well be his ancestors.

He has ancestors.

And if that were not exciting enough, there is the room I am supposed to stay in. Does he understand how exciting this room is to me? I imagine he could never do so, since this is his ordinary and everyday life. But to me none of this is ordinary and everyday. The very presence of a brass double bed is enough to place it outside those boundaries. Even the mattress crosses the line, because at home I used to sleep on folded-over towels and two sleeping bags.

Certainly I’ve never had anything like this.

Nor have I had experience of a room that just belongs to me. I have no concept of drawers that I can just stuff with my things – to the point where I can barely fill one of them, and then only because of my two big jumpers. And though the window is more of a skylight, it lets in the dying glow of the day like nothing I’ve ever seen. I stand on the bed just to look through it, and see all of London spread out before me.

I see my life, as it could really be.

Chapter Three

I try not to feel too excited when I wake up. It seems best to keep my expectations low, considering some of the things he said and did the day before. I mean, no one could possibly call him a pleasant person – he confirmed that much with his laughter and his insults alone and even if he hadn’t there have been other signs.

Like the uniform he has hung up in the bathroom for me, swaddled in plastic and so ominous-looking that I take a step back when I see it. For a second I think someone is standing in there waiting for me, and want to scream. Then I realise the someone waiting for me is the person I am supposed to be, and almost do it anyway. Somehow, I suspect I’m going to fail very badly at this. The stockings are silk, which I am almost certainly going to snag, and the shoes have the sort of heels I can never walk in.

Plus, he has to know that the whole thing is never going to fit me. The skirt portion of the dress is way too narrow around the hips, and that bodice will never contain my enormous bust. All those buttons down the front are going to pop open the moment I move – but maybe that was his intention. He wants to see me thoroughly humiliated, after failing to put me in my place yesterday. I was much too amused by him and far too talkative, and this is the lesson I get in return.

Or at least it would be usually, I think.

But then I forget that he is not usual at all. I judge him by the standard my family set, instead of the alien one he actually operates under. I think of my mum telling me to stop wearing short sleeves and my brothers jeering at my jiggly parts, rather than understanding that this is never going to be like that.

For a start, I have to speak to him through the parlour door. I knock on it and he tells me to stay where I am, rather than do anything normal like asking me in. Then, once I tell him that the uniform is never going to fit me, he lets out the most derisive little snort. I can practically see the eye-roll that goes with it, shortly followed by a sentence I could never have expected in a million years.

Though he seems to think I should have.

‘Of course it will fit you. I had it made to your exact measurements,’ he says, as though there could be no other explanation. He even seems somewhat offended that I could imagine anything else, despite how insane that is. He only met me yesterday. He must have seen me for all of two minutes. There is no way he could have done what he claims.

And I make the mistake of telling him so.

‘How could you possibly know what my measurements are?’ I ask, and receive an answer that damn near makes my hair stand on end. As he goes on, my eyes almost roll out of my head, but I cannot blame them. Who could, in light of this?

‘If you recall, I observed you walking up to my front door. It was not exactly difficult to extrapolate based on the variables at hand. You only managed to step over my gate by standing on tiptoe, which tells me that you are no more than five foot three, and once you had traversed it I could clearly see the distance in inches between each of your hips and the edges of said gate. As I know the exact width it was fairly easy from there to surmise your lower measurements, and only a little more difficult to ascertain what sort of bodice you might require. As you quite clearly wear a bra two sizes too small for you, it took me a little longer to absolutely be sure, but, judging by your relative self-consciousness, the way you hold your arms when you walk and the other parameters of your body, I believe I have the right of it,’ he says, after which I want to be appalled, I do. I probably should be, all things considered. He examined me so minutely I am surprised my skin isn’t trying to walk off my body.

But I understand why it stays on. Everything he says is so lacking in sexual intention that even my keen senses cannot detect it. No part of me suspects he is lying in order to cover up some transgression. I don’t imagine he secretly snuck into a room and measured me with a ruler, and even if I did I am not sure I would mind much. There is something so calm and clinical and clever about everything he just said that all I feel is awe.

And the awe makes me do some frantic and ill-advised things. It just builds inside me to the point where I can no longer contain it, and suddenly I seem to be tearing at the plastic around the dress. I have to see for myself if he is right, but the problem is that seeing is apparently not enough. Once I have the material in my hands – that liquid silk all lined and smartly stitched just for me – I go one step further. I start pulling off my clothes right there in the hall, so eager to have it against my skin that I barely stop to think about being naked ten feet from where he is. I do not care that he is calling through the door at me. ‘Ms Parker, I insist you answer me at once,’ he says, but I just keep going.

I even take my bra off – though, in my defence, I sort of have to. The dress has this whole support structure actually built into it, and oh, my sainted aunts, when I put it on…how can I regret stripping to nothing when I put that thing on? He was absolutely right about the ‘two sizes too small’, because after I do up some of the buttons I want to break down and cry.

I think my body breathes out for the first time. Everything feels gently held rather than squeezed, yet when I move nothing wobbles or jiggles or tries to escape. There are no unsightly lumps or bumps, and every part of it ends exactly where it’s supposed to. Even the sleeves are the right length. Even the flare of the skirt is perfect, to the point where I want to ask again how he did this.

Though I appreciate that part of it is just a desire to hear him say so. To hear him tell me all those tiny details a second time, in that voice of his like liquid intelligence. Just the thought of it makes my heart beat long and slow in my chest, in a way that seems insane. No one should feel like this over something so small. People need more than cleverness to start breathing hard and having illicit thoughts. At the very least you should have seen a face or a body or even a hand or two.

None of which is the case here.

He could be hideous, I think.

He probably is hideous, all things considered. What other reason can there be for him to keep himself hidden from me? None, I think, none, and even if there is one, his manner suggests something grotesque. He is still barking orders at me through the door. I tell him I’m just trying on the shoes and he keeps on going. He has to be an eight-hundred-year-old hobgoblin – an idea that should probably calm me down somewhat.

It should, yet somehow that is not the case at all.

Partly because I think the missing key to my excitement might be a brilliant mind.

But also because at that moment he decides to march to the door and fling it open, and when he does I think my insides plummet around seventeen floors. They wind up somewhere just north of hell, thanks to a face he should not have. No one should have a face like that. It has to be a crime against womankind for someone to walk around wearing that weapon of mass destruction, and anyone doing so needs to be immediately jailed. Someone call the police, I think.

Though I have no idea how they might help me. I suppose they could close my mouth or maybe stop me gasping, but even if they did there are still my eyes to contend with – my enormous and no doubt wild-looking eyes that will not stop staring at him. For a second I actually consider poking them out, to spare me further embarrassment.

But I fear it may be too late. He is quite possibly the cleverest person I have ever met. There is no doubt he already knows why I am gawping at him like a drowned fish. No one could look like that and not understand – though oddly he does an excellent job of pretending. The longer this agonising moment goes on, the more disconcerted he seems, until finally I want to glance away, just to erase that hint of a frown between his elegant eyebrows.

It only makes him more beautiful.

God, I had no idea a man could be beautiful. I thought that was just something people said in stories, yet here it is in a thousand different ways. His eyes are lovelier than a lonely ocean in winter, so cold and still and pale I can feel them freezing me where I stand. I want to check my fingers for frostbite, until I realise that the idea is mad. I’m not actually cold.

In fact I’m blazing hot. I thank God I only did up three of the buttons, because the air on my back is a glorious blessing. I think it saves me from sweating, and for that I am very grateful. He already knows my eyes have been hypnotised. I would rather he stayed in the dark about my over-heating body – though somehow I doubt he will for much longer. I mean, most of his face is bad.

But his mouth is worse.

His lips have almost no outline at all, as though they were made when someone kissed against the glass of his face. Give it a moment and they would probably disappear altogether – though most of me hopes they will stay a little longer. I haven’t quite finished looking at them yet. I need a second to marvel over the middle of his upper lip, which seems to be unlike every other lip on the planet. Most people have those soft hills, one after the other. They have a bow.

He has two sharp peaks, barely visible but still definitely there.

It makes his lips seem both cruel and at the same time so utterly soft that I would give almost anything to feel them against my skin. I consider smacking my face into his, as if by accident, despite how intrusive that would be. Most likely he would fire me.

But I think it might be worth it.

Christ, am I really thinking that? I have to pull myself together – and not just because I seem to be having ludicrous thoughts. He is looking at me now as if he would probably murder me where I stood if he thought he could get away with it. His hands are twitching a little, in a way that suggests his preferred method would be strangulation.

And to my horror the only response I can come up with is: what a way to go. He has long but fine fingers, and I find myself wondering what they would feel like around my throat. Probably heaven until you began to run out of air, I reckon, and then I really have to change the subject in my head.

Though it’s a shame I do it by blurting out:

‘Sorry, I just wanted to see.’

It sounds so feeble he flinches.

Or is it more the content that makes him mad?

‘You wanted to see if I was lying.’

‘Well, not lying exactly.’

‘Then what?’

‘Maybe making things up.’

‘There is no appreciable difference between that and telling a falsehood, Ms Parker – a fact I am sure you are aware of, considering that almost keen mind of yours.’

‘Could be the “almost” part that stops me short,’ I say, then wish I hadn’t.

Now does not seem like the best time to get funny with him, no matter how much it makes my heart sing to do it. At the very least I should probably wait for him to forget I ogled him – though somehow I doubt that will ever happen. He still looks disgusted about it, halfway through this conversation about something else altogether. Or, at least, I think he does.

His expressions are nearly impossible to read.

He could be offended by my suspicions.

He might wonder how I dare to be amused.

All seems possible, when he speaks.

‘Well, as you can see, it does indeed fit, despite your every effort at putting it on incorrectly. It may come as a surprise to you, but buttons are supposed to go in their corresponding holes rather than bizarre diagonals of your choosing. Honestly it seems a wonder to me that you ever manage to get dressed at all.’

‘There are a million of them and you only gave me a minute.’

‘Of course I only gave you a minute. I had no idea you had decided to strip off and yank everything on in my hallway. You are aware you are in my hallway, are you not?’

‘In the excitement I forgot,’ I tell him, and know immediately that I used the wrong word. His eyebrow flickers the moment I say it, and I can’t stop my face heating. Most likely he sees right through me. He probably knows where my thoughts are going, and even if he has no clue his next demand seals my fate.

‘Turn around,’ he says abruptly. So abruptly I can only blurt out a startled ‘what?’

And then he says it again.

‘Turn around, Ms Parker.’

This time I obey. I go slowly, of course, most of me nervous about what he might be going to do. I’m so used to rough treatment that I think of him manhandling me out of the hall first, rather than anything sweeter or finer. I don’t imagine for a moment that this is going to feel like someone stroking a hand over my cheek as I sleep. I don’t think it will make my body buzz, but oh, God, it does.

The very second I feel him touching the buttons I slide away on a wave of something strange. Bliss, I think, but how can I know for sure? No one has ever fastened me up like this before, and even if they had I doubt they would have done it like this. I have the barest sense of unbelievably deft fingers arranging and rearranging without making contact.

He doesn’t brush my skin. There is no real sense of him.

So it seems outrageous that the non-existent contact should flood my body with heat. That it should leave my cheeks flushed and other parts of me burning. All the funny things I want to say suddenly die on my lips. I can’t tell him that he’s a supercilious control freak, when my nipples are tightening inside this infernal dress. I can’t accuse him of wanting to cop a feel, when this was the furthest thing from that.

He steps away as though he barely did a thing – and why not? He did barely do a thing. Any excitement I may feel comes from me and my apparently insane libido. Once the door closes behind me, I have to take deep breaths, and even afterwards the currents of sensation do not ebb away.

Only my dignity does that, despite my best efforts to hold on to it.

Chapter Four

I tell myself that I am not going to react in an inappropriate way to him again. He gives me no reason to, after all. He may be extremely clever and very attractive and always wear ridiculously sexy things like cravats and velvet jackets, but that is no reason to lose my head. I have to be better than that. I am better than that. I am practical and level-headed. I know that life is not a novel by Charlotte Brontë, and even if it was I would probably hate it.

I bet it was cold all the time back then, and miserable, and when you think about it Rochester seems like a complete arsehole. He abandons his first wife and sluts his way around Europe, then has the nerve to complain about it all as though the world did him wrong. Is that really the kind of man I like?

Because that is undoubtedly the kind of man Harcroft is. No one could be that gorgeous and not have treated at least one woman really badly. I bet she writes him sad letters all the time and he just laughs and tells his haughty friends at the Smoking-Leather-Whiskey club about it, even though he doesn’t go to a Smoking-Leather-Whiskey club. In truth, I’m starting to suspect he never goes anywhere or does anything. He seems to have no real job, though that could be explained by an enormous inheritance.

That he never leaves the house, however, is slightly harder to explain.

And especially when he seems so uncomfortable around me.

Sometimes he stops in the hall when he sees me coming, then goes in the opposite direction. When he wants to say anything to me he usually writes notes, some of which I suspect come by carrier pigeon. They just appear on my windowsill at the oddest times, on the sort of stationery I feel should be reserved for writing to the Queen. In fact, it’s probably too good for the likes of her.

He uses tiny envelopes, and writes my name on them in narrow but elegant handwriting – as though there could be anyone else he might want to write to in his own house. And, in case that’s not spectacular enough, he seals the envelopes with wax. Honest to God, that is what he does. Each one has a little red circle of the stuff, with what I assume is his family crest pressed into the centre.

I have to crack the seals to get at the contents, the way Anne Boleyn probably did when Henry wrote to say he was chopping her head off. In truth, when I open the first one, I almost expect it to say something similar, like ‘Due to the weird moment we had in the hall I expect you to report to the parlour promptly for your beheading,’ and I’m not far wrong. ‘I insist you refrain from making eye contact with me,’ it says, and the second one isn’t much better. That comes after I’ve just finished sweeping the hallway with one of his many brooms – so many, in fact, that I suspect he may be a witch – and it has just three words printed on card that probably cost more than my car, in ink that looks like unicorn blood.

‘You swept wrong,’ it says.

At which point I get a little bit annoyed. Not as annoyed as Anne Boleyn probably was when she realised Henry was a serial killer, but not far off. I start planning what I would say back to him, if only he would stop disappearing behind doors and bookcases and that probably fake wall in the parlour. More than planning really – my mind damn near overflows with clever comebacks and silly leaps in logic. It’s as though our previous conversations turned some faucet on inside me, and now the water is flooding everything. It gets under my guard and makes a mess of my thoughts, until finally I just have to let it out somehow.

The third note practically forces me. ‘Do you understand what sweeping is?’ it says, and then there is nothing else I can do. ‘It’s the thing I’m going to do to your face if you send me one more note about it,’ I write, in the most careful cursive I’ve ever used. I even fashion an envelope, and blob a little wax on it from the candle in the lamp. Of course I have no family crest, but somehow I feel a swirly M carved into the seal says enough. It certainly gives me a great deal of satisfaction to set my little makeshift letter on the table by his favourite chair – and even more so when he responds.

Oh, my God, when he responds.

I think it’s then that I fully understand what we are doing here. It just comes over me the second I see the first words, so willing to just go with this absurd idea. As though he was just waiting for this all along, and now finally he has me, he has me, he has me so damned hard. ‘If you can explain to me how a face might be swept I will concede the point,’ he writes, and I almost run to the desk in my room. I sit down at it with sweating palms and shivering insides and my heart nearly bursting out of my chest. He never meant to just insult you, my giddy mind yelps, and my giddy mind is right. He wants me to write back. He wants to correspond with me.