Victorian Passions

  Complete Collection

  Alice K. Cross

  Copyright 2012 by Alice K. Cross

  Matinee Masquerade

  Paris 1887

  Charlotte stepped through a graceful gate and onto a pebbled terrace. As she made her way under the winking leaves of a long row of perfectly sculpted trees, she glanced about to see if anyone was watching her. The garden was crowded with young couples, nurses with perambulators and grey-haired men with newspapers, but none of them seemed interested in her.

  She took a deep breath and tried to relax. But just as she did, a man who might be about her father's age--were her father alive--approached her. "Pardonez-moi, mais quelle heure est-il, s'il vous plait?"

  For a fraction of a moment, Charlotte stared at the man in shock, uncomprehending. But, recovering herself, she drew her watch from her pocket and checked the time. "Presque midi, monsieur."

  "Merci, monsieur," he said and scurried off.

  Charlotte released a tense breath and reached into her breast pocket for her cigarette case. He'd called her "monsieur." He had not shouted at her and alerted the police. He had not sneered. None of the things she had feared this morning as she had made her plan and dressed had happened. She pulled nervously at the cuffs of her jacket sleeves and brushed the front of her new trousers with a careful hand.

  Charlotte was not like most women. She was like no woman she had ever personally known, though she had friends who not only indulged, but quietly encouraged her eccentricities. Most had eccentricities of their own. But none of them had ever tried what she was trying today: to walk through the Tuileries Gardens on a Sunday afternoon masquerading as a young gentleman.

  After years of cursing her hair, she had finally cut it off. An actress friend found her a barber willing to give her a short men's style and a tailor to alter a men's suit to fit her. She lit her cigarette, smiling to herself at what good fortune it was to know actresses.

  A small child ran past Charlotte, surprising her, while a nurse chased after, with a carpetbag and an elaborately dressed doll.

  "Sylvie!" she called to the child, who paid no heed, only stopping when she came to a group of women with children of similar ages sitting together under a large chestnut tree. The women chatted while the children played.

  A few yards away from them sat a young woman alone.

  She was the only woman Charlotte had seen in the park who was neither attended by a gentleman nor attending a child. In her lap sat a large board upon which she seemed to be sketching the group of women and children.

  She sat in the sun, a large-brimmed hat shading her face. She wore a deep crimson dress with a black belt and cuffs that ended well above her wrists. She did not seem to notice that anyone watched her until Charlotte stepped close enough that her shadow fell on the edge of the woman's paper.

  She looked up.

  Charlotte smiled at her, emboldened by her success with the man who had wanted to know the time. "Puis-je regarde votre travail?" she asked, wanting a closer look at the woman's drawing.

  "Comme vous preferez," the woman assented, but returned her attention to her work.

  The sketch was nearly complete and the woman reached into a bag for several tubes of watercolor paint.

  "C'est bon," said Charlotte, who liked art, but did not produce it herself. "Vous etes une artiste?"

  The woman glanced up again. "Oui," she held out her hand, "Je m'appelle Lenore Woods." Her French was accented much the same way Charlotte's was.

  "Vous etes americaine?" Charlotte asked.

  "Oui, Cincinnati."

  Charlotte opened her mouth to blithely rattle off her name, but before she spoke, remembered that she was supposed to be a gentleman. "I'm from Boston," she said instead.

  "Et vous vous appelez..?" the woman asked, squeezing a tube of paint onto a palette.

  "Manning."

  "Well, Miss Manning, it's a pleasure to meet you," Lenore Woods said. "But I must get on with this before the sun moves too far."

  Charlotte stared.

  Miss Woods smiled. "Did you think I didn't know?" she asked.

  "I--" Charlotte began. "No one else seems to know," she finished quietly.

  "Well, I'm accustomed to quickly appraising the essential qualities of things," Miss Woods explained.

  "Oh."

  "But that is not to say I am not intrigued by your audacity. It's a wonder you don't fear arrest," Miss Woods said with a little smile.

  Charlotte still said nothing. Now that she was nearer, she could see that Miss Woods had dark hair but grey eyes, fair skin and the sort of striking features that would shift from sharply pretty to classically handsome as she aged.

  "Call on me sometime, Miss Manning?" The woman reached into her bag for a moment and brought out a card.

  Charlotte retrieved a card of her own and handed it to the woman.

  "Charlotte." She smiled. "Hotel Continental?"

  "Just there," Charlotte pointed across the gardens. "I don't mean to be in Paris longer than the summer," she explained.

  "It's been interesting to meet you, Charlotte Manning."

  "And you, Miss Woods," Charlotte returned.

  "Lena. Please," the artist replied with a smile.

  Charlotte smiled back. "Lena," she said.

  ***

  Lena crushed the letter into a ball and tossed it into the floor. She took a fresh sheet of writing paper and tried again.

  Dear Miss Manning,

  No, they had said they would call each other by first name. She drew out a third piece of paper.

  Dear Charlotte,

  Meeting you today was such a delightful surprise I am afraid I may not have been...

  No. Another sheet of paper. Another beginning.

  How did Charlotte Manning take it into her head to go about dressed as a man, hair cropped off like a lunatic? Lena had been to plenty of masquerade parties as a girl in which some of her friends had worn their brothers' suits, jackets hanging loosely on their shoulders, wisps of hair escaping bowler hats. But that was childish play. This was a grown woman whose suit clung to her handsomely, with as perfect a fit as the hero of some romantic drama.

  Lena wanted to see the woman again. She wanted to know more about her.

  ***

  The waiter and sommelier called Charlotte "monsieur" throughout dinner. The trouble came when she began to approach the lobby desk to retrieve her mail and remembered that she was not Charlotte anymore--not to all appearances, anyway.

  She frowned to herself and changed course for the elevator.

  Once in her room she rang a bell for service. A maid appeared at her door within a minute.

  "Sil-vous plait..." Charlotte began with only a slight falter. She asked the maid to retrieve the day's mail for the room and bring it up.

  It worked. In a few moments, her letter were in her hand. One from a friend in London, two from her sister in Philadelphia and a small one, with no transatlantic stamp, but instead a red spot of sealing wax, stamped "LVW."

  The tiniest smile crossed Charlotte's lips as she opened it and read.

  Dear Charlotte,

  I wished to say what a delight it was to meet you in the park today. I fear I was distracted with my work at the time and may have seemed cool. But I assure you I look forward to making your further acquaintance. I hope you can find the time to call upon me at home in the coming days. I will strive to make up to you in hospitality what I may have lacked in warmth this afternoon.

  Sincerely

  Lena

  ***

  Charlotte reread the letter twice. She hadn't found Lena cool. She had found her...mysterious. Charlotte wanted to know more about her. She wanted to spend a quiet hour alone with her, she realized.

  ***

  Two days later, Charlotte was standing in the parlor of the apartment Lena rented for both living and working.

  The walls were hung with pictures from just below eye level to well above it and up to the very ceiling. "Are these all yours?" Charlotte asked Lena just arriving at her elbow with sherry.

  "Most of them."

  "You are a real artist." Charlotte said it as though she was only now realizing it was true.

  Lena smiled as if she'd caught Charlotte in a friendly trap. "You're surprised," she said.

  Charlotte blushed. She had underestimated the woman. "Do you have a dealer?" she asked.

  Lena nodded. "Etienne Bruchaud--in the rue l'Arbre."

  Charlotte had not heard of the man, but she made a mental note to visit his gallery soon. And for the next hour, Lena stood by her shoulder, explaining the paintings. Most of them were of women with children--nurses, mothers, elder sisters--in dark, spotlit interiors or breezy open air settings. There were a few formal portraits.

  "They're good," Charlotte said.

  Lena heard the respect in her voice.

  "Better than some I bought last week in the rue Laffitte."

  "Are you a collector?" Lena asked.

  "My father was," Charlotte said. "I suppose maybe I am, too."

  ***

  More than two hours later Charlotte stood stalling by the front door.

  "It was a privilege to see your work," she said. "And it has been lovely talking with you this afternoon."

  "And you." Lena ga

ve Charlotte her hand.

  She took it and kissed it slowly, watching Lena's face as she did.

  Lena said nothing, but a tiny smile crossed her lips. She took her hand away gently and opened the door, but before she could go in, Charlotte touched her shoulder.

  "Lena--"

  Lena turned back to face her again, half in, half out the door.

  "Do you like the theatre? Or the opera--a symphony concert perhaps?" Charlotte rushed through a list of possible places she might take Lena.

  "I have a different idea," Lena said. "I'll come by your hotel tomorrow around four. Can you be there?" She smiled a tiny, inscrutable smile that Charlotte could not read.

  Still, she answered quickly. "Of course. How shall I dress?" She hoped she would not need evening clothes. It would be a feat to get them by tomorrow.

  "As you are now will be perfect," Lena told her, and her smile seemed warmer.

  She went through the door and closed it behind her.

  ***

  "I'm going to paint you," Lena declared. She had brought her easel, canvas and paint box to Charlotte's hotel suite. "Here, in this parlor. I wanted to wait for the late afternoon sun. I think dusky and mysterious is just the right note for a portrait of Charlotte Manning habille' en homme, don't you?"

  "You're serious?" Charlotte asked her in surprise. She had thought they were going to go out somewhere.

  "Quite. Will you sit, just there?" Lena gestured to a little divan perpendicular to the main window in the room.

  "Let's have a drink first, at the very least," Charlotte insisted, stepping to a table covered with decanters.

  "Thank you," said Lena, accepting a glass of Charlotte's favorite brandy.

  "Go ahead and have yours there," Lena gestured with a brush to the divan.

  Charlotte obeyed, but no sooner had she done so, than she began to fidget nervously, rifling through her pockets to find her cigarette case. "Do you mind if I smoke?" she asked.

  "Not if I might have one too," Lena answered her.

  "I'm sorry--of course." Charlotte lit a cigarette at her own lips and rose to give it to Lena.

  At last she relaxed, one arm extended along the back of the divan, holding the cigarette, legs crossed, brandy on a small table beside her.

  "That's perfect." Lena smiled. "It's you, exactly."

  And she began to fill her canvas with a sketch.

  Charlotte said nothing as Lena worked. Minutes passed. An hour passed. Charlotte sat silently smoking cigarette after cigarette, and staring at the woman who stood painting her.

  Lena was only a few feet away, but Charlotte felt as if she were watching her through the wrong end of a telescope. So lost was she in her work, that Charlotte might not have been in the room at all, had she not been the subject of the painting. She had quickly forgotten her self-consciousness, the brandy and cigarettes making her soft and warm and calm to the bone. She glanced out the window, blowing smoke in its direction, then watched Lena's eyes, as they stared at her, moving quickly across her form, pouring over one part of her, then another, as the painting took shape.

  Nearly two hours had passed when Charlotte finally stood and crossed the space between them.

  "I'm not quite finished," Lena said. "And the light is perfect just now."

  But Charlotte took Lena's left hand and pulled her around to face her. "Lena."

  Lena stood still, her breath quickening almost imperceptibly.

  "I want you," Charlotte said and pulled Lena towards her, kissing her as if they had kissed every day for a year. The brush Lena held in her right hand fell to the floor, splattering rose paint on the cloth she had laid beneath the easel.

  "I want you," Charlotte repeated in a whisper by Lena's ear, "so much."

  "Have me," Lena answered simply.

  And Charlotte led her to her room and closed the door.

  Charlotte kissed Lena unrelentingly as she unfastened the long row of buttons down the front of her dress, pushed it off and let it fall to the floor. Now she spun Lena around, kissing the back of her neck as she unlaced her.

  "You smell divine," Charlotte murmured as she pulled her corset away.

  She stepped back now and made Lena stand waiting, while she drew off her waistcoat and tie, unfastened her collar and cuffs and pushed her sleeves to the elbow. She took Lena back into her arms and pulled the edge of her chemise down over one shoulder. She found a pink nipple and ran her tongue across it as she nudged Lena onto the bed behind her.

  "Charlotte, I—" Lena tried to speak, but her words came out in a hush. She moaned instead, as Charlotte's hand moved up her thigh and through the slit in her drawers. She had never been touched in such a way by anyone and she wondered if Charlotte could sense it as her fingers slipped across and inside of Lena as masterfully as Lena might slip a brush across a canvas.

  A sharp pain surprised her and she made a little "oh."

  "Have I hurt you?" Charlotte asked, drawing back a bit, better to see Lena's face.

  "No," Lena assured her. "It is only that I have never..."

  "Oh God, Lena, I'm sorry," Charlotte whispered, her brows knit with concern. "Shall I stop?"

  "Oh no...no, please don't stop," Lena pleaded and closed her eyes, surprised by the desperation for Charlotte's touch that suddenly coursed through her body.

  She moved her hips almost involuntarily in motion with Charlotte's hand and yet Lena was not sure which of them was leading and which following. She only knew that she had never imagined such a sweetness and she nearly wept when the pleasure of it was finally too much and she collapsed, spent, upon the damp linens.

  They lay there for a moment, catching their breath before Charlotte propped herself on one arm and dragged the back of her hand slowly across Lena's collarbone.

  "Are you alright?" she whispered.

  "I am marvelous, Charlotte Manning," Lena smiled broadly and sighed, taking up Charlotte's hand and kissing it.

  "Shall I ring for dinner in the room?"

  "I'm famished," Lena agreed and pulled Charlotte down for a hungry kiss.

  "Let me ring, then..." Charlotte managed between kisses.

  "It isn't food I want."

  Before Charlotte knew what was happening, Lena was unfastening her trousers and sliding them down her hips.

  "Lena, you needn't..." Charlotte put a hand weakly on Lena's shoulder, but the woman didn't stop.

  "You don't know what I need," Charlotte whispered, smiling across Charlotte's rumpled shirt as the woman gasped in surprise.

 

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