They’d descended, red and shiny, down a man’s cheek and along his neck. Parts of his shoulder had also been burned and then lower, his left side, down to his hip.
She’d dreamed of that unknown man, scarred and wild…pleasuring a woman. The female’s soft curves moulding to his harsh, hard contours, limbs trembling, breaths panting. The woman arched, writhing beneath…
Rosalind brought her hands to flushed cheeks. From her childhood memory of Lucas Mainwaring, she’d pictured a pale, thin child, but her mind had frozen him in time, and when she’d heard he was a guest at the house party, she had expected to meet a poet-like, slender Apollo.
The man pointed out to her had been a muscular Atlas: shoulders stretching his jacket to impossible limits, easily the tallest there, hair no longer the golden-yellow she remembered but a dirty tarnished blond, brushing past his collar.
He’d changed dramatically.
And she’d crumpled to the floor upon recognising the passionate, scarred man from her dream: his body pressing, his mouth, hips, eyes… It was him. They were one and the same. Lucas Mainwaring.
Twice now she had dreamed of him – once long ago in a nursery as a child and now a few months past, as a woman…and most definitely a man.
Rosalind turned from the fire, suddenly too hot, and sat on the bed. She let herself fall back into the dark-green coverlet and listened as she always did to calm herself: the maid bustling in the hallways, humming as she went; dogs barking near the stables; the light patter of rain in the courtyard. Silent noise.
When her mother had died, Rosalind had no longer been protected from her father’s rage or his blustering violence; he’d thought her unnatural and called her a witch, because as long as she could remember, she had dreamed…
Not every night, not even every week. Sometimes, months could pass with no dreams at all, and she would wake each day with the hope that the curse had left her. But it never did.
At some point, shewoulddream…and repeatedly. But she always recognised these dreams as different. They were too lucid, somewhere between wakefulness and sleep – always in bright colour and sharp detail, even if the meaning was not. Above all, she felt the emotions course through her – fear, love, hate and, sometimes hope.
Initially, being a child, she had considered the dreams normal, but as time went by, she noticed they frequently came true: Alice, the maid, was with child and dreading it; Daniel, the baker boy, fell in the ice and drowned; her father kissing his…sister-in-law.
She found that although the events often came to pass, the outcome could be influenced, if she realised what the dream meant soon enough. But sometimes she dreamed of strangers, and she would search the faces in crowds at market or in shops wondering if she could help, warn or perhaps…smile at their coming good fortune.
When she reached fourteen years, her father said he’d had enough and he would be sending her away. To somewhere that could help her. She remembered the endless journey from Yorkshire to Surrey, with only a surly maid to tend her. She remembered the rough hands pushing her into a bare room.
“Oh, a child to keep me company. Hello, sweetie,” an old woman had said, rising from a small cot and rubbing her skeletal hands in glee. Even back then, Rosalind had straightened her spine and glared at the crone. “And a strong one, I see. Good. We’ll rub together well. Can’t stand pathetic, whining, milk-faced chits and neither could Shakespeare, he tells me.”
The cackling old crone, or Mrs Tadlow as she was called, was a patient at Ingleford Lodge. A respectable name for what Rosalind soon found out to be an asylum. Her father had interned her in a madhouse; she’d been abandoned.
Surprisingly, the crone became a caring, surrogate mother.
Mrs Tadlow spoke to the dead. They visited her, everyone from Plato and Shakespeare obviously, to her dead husband, Bertie, but quite frankly, who was Rosalind to argue with these pronouncements?
Compared to some patients, Rosalind had been…fortunate. Ingleford Lodge was a private asylum, and most people interned there belonged to wealthy families who wanted to hide their indiscretions. Some truly needed help. Others, often women, were merely unlucky enough to fall prey to greedy families or bullying husbands.
Rosalind had been afraid, so very afraid. Mrs Tadlow had warned her about the lascivious guards and that the best deterrent was to be mad…mad and dangerous. She’d heard the grunting in the night of the guards with other patients – willing or not, she didn’t know. But they never touched her or Mrs Tadlow. The old lady put the fear of God into them, telling them she could see their dead mothers behind them and as for Rosalind, well, after she told a guard to watch out for his right hand, she’d never been touched again – such a vicious dog.
Noise. Grey. Bad meat. Smell. Groping hands. Noise.
That was how Rosalind remembered those days. The Lodge had given her a dislike of many things: anything at all in grey, relentless noise, cabbage…and men did not rate highly either. Benedict was the only man she truly felt at ease with. She stretched her fingers out over the bed coverlet, letting the soft silk soothe away the memories once more.
Freedom was now the most beautiful thing to Rosalind: to step out of a room; to walk in the hills; to wear bright red, green and blue; to eat sugared almonds until she grew the size of a dumpling; to say no.
And no is what she would continue to say to Benedict, bless him.
He needed a wife, that was true, but she had rarely seen him with a woman. She’d heard rumours of female lovers, but he had never actually courted anyone that she was aware of. Considering his love of horses, he would probably prefer to marry his favourite mare than one of the many debutantes.
Why Benedict had insisted she have at least one London Season, she wasn’t sure. Good friends – that was the only thing to come out of it. She’d never previously had people like Clara and Lucy to talk to. Women of her own age, people who didn’t know of her curse and accepted her as normal although she would never be able to tell even them all of her secrets.
A witch. That’s what she’d be branded and in the background, the asylum always loomed. If anything was to happen to Benedict, and her curse became known…it didn’t bear thinking about.
The shutters rattled as she slowly uncurled herself from the bed and debated not changing for dinner. It was so cold, and Ben wouldn’t notice.
Her stomach grumbled in hunger and she crossed to the dressing table. Thin cheekbones and deep-green eyes stared back from the mahogany toilet mirror. Her long, auburn hair needed fixing up again and so she reached for the brush and pins. Lucas hadn’t recognised her from their childhood; no acknowledgement had crossed his face at the house party.
When he arrived at Stonebridge, would he see little red-cheeked Rosie from the nursery? She had changed dramatically, just as he had.
The fire spat, drawing Rosalind from her thoughts.
Dumplings. Who could dwell on the past when they were on the menu? The cold be damned, she’d wear her brilliant emerald gown, tease Benedict about his horse and say something awful to shock Mrs Mereworth.
A normal, peaceful evening before the forthcoming arrival of Lucas Mainwaring.
