#5000word

He knew, after her rounds at the Dieu, home-visits to varied families scattered through the poor tenements of Paris’ winding, teeming labyrinth—that particular day, managing a woman whose labor started too early, an infant spilled prematurely from the womb, dying in hours of its first gasping mewl—the little doctress could be found in the lively, familiar ambience of the Ambsley’s tavern, the Hammer and Anvil.

It was a gathering which never failed to entertain—a ruckus mess of debating, imbibing, often wild dancing, well into the night.  Tom Paine was fond of such plebian amusements, drawn as much to the riotous air of the public house, as the Englishman was, of late, by the liberated Scottish woman.  She was, as with her brother, and Dr. Beaulieu, a known fixture adding to the conviviality of the Ambsley’s eclectic patronage, never shying from disputing the most recent cases seen in the Dieu, brazenly declaring her opinion of ignorant administrators, and poorly run government bureaucracies, whilst downing enough ale to drown a small pony. 

On that evening, Paine had excused himself earlier than his usual custom.  Thomas Jefferson, the other of the two Thomases, as they were affectionately regarded, stayed on, playing the gallant, available to escort the spirited Scottish lady-physician home, when she was ready to depart, some hours after the Englishman’s exit.

She had largely been successful, through the summer, evading his attempts to isolate her in lone encounters.  That night, however, Mr. and Mrs. Ambsley insisted Caroline either take an escort to catch the Coach back to Meudon, or stay over on a spare pallet, not about to let her brave Parisian streets after dark.  Trapped by the conventions of etiquette, Caroline was no more able to gracefully decline the Virginian’s company, than she could avoid taking his eloquently offered arm, still preserve decorum.

They stepped out the door into the early September night, inhaling of a clean, brisk breeze touched by autumn chill. 

Her gaze hooded, she kept her eyes carefully ahead, refusing to look at him.  Within moments, away from the boisterous tavern, she unhooked her arm like she had been touched by a hot brand.

He kept his chatter purposely light, a brief, mournful spur in his heart, recalling the years of their relaxed familiarity, jovial bantering mixed amid their stimulating converse.

Caroline responded with dexterous reserve.   Entertaining his topics, she offered nothing extra to the conversation, keeping the correct amount of space between them, as they strolled through the dark, damp streets, never glancing in his direction. 

She must have been distracted.  Alone in his company, paying no mind to where he led their leisurely course, it was only when they paused before the façade of an elegantly turned-out house, which stood back from its courtyard gate, that she looked up sharply, catching his eyes. Alarm crossed her face, registering their locale, the lamp hanging from the entrance-gate, illuminating the street in a translucent mist.

“I should have known!” she exclaimed with low-voiced wrath, rounding on him. “Gods, I had almost believed you finally exorcised yourself of this horrid infatuation, Thomas!”  Distressed, she pushed him back, intent on storming-off down the winding byway.  He caught her wrists, firm but not ungentle.

“Tell me you don’t want this, Caroline.  Tell me this doesn’t burn in your blood as well,” pitched deep and entreating.  “After that night, the Opera masquerade—“

“When you would have used me like a whore?” She looked up at him furiously, though her voice was tarnished with incredulous hurt. 

So finely boned was she, his fingers encompassed her entire wrist, that if he pressed hard enough, squeezed tight enough, he could break the bones of her forearm without undue effort.  She didn’t struggle against his grip, he noticed. 

Drawing her near, he said gently, “I would never have followed through, Caroline. Not when I realized the state you were in,” words raw with desolation he had meant to keep enchained, well-concealed from her furious scrutiny.

A short despairing laugh, she yanked back her hands, his own falling to his sides.

“Good night, Thomas.” Upon that brusque finality, she edged past where he stood in the same moment he stepped more squarely in front of her, forcing her to halt.  

Her gaze bored a hole into his chest, stubbornly refusing to look up.  He imagined the heat of her anger tearing his heart out, from that place where the organ pounded with fear and desire.

“Tell me,” tortured utterance, “tell me you don’t want this.”

“I don’t want th—

“No.  Look me in the eyes, Caroline,” he commanded with rapid-fire desperation, willing her to match his poignant sincerity. 

Silence.  Her breath, shallow and fast.  Had she been fearful, too?  Perhaps scared of being overpowered, sensing the draw of his passion, body responding even in denial? 

“Move out of my way, Thomas.”  There was an edge of panic beneath the Scotch doctress’ calm. 

He stepped closer, looming over her.

“Look me in the eyes, and tell me you don’t want this.” He was unaware, the smoldering compulsion alive behind his irises, something sensed in the weak aura of lamplight diffused by the dark mist. That part of himself, a mind scintillating and scorching, would have smothered a lesser being than she, a woman far more determined in her own presence, than most, to proclaim her separate insight, no less honed than his, capitulating not from intimidation nor fear, but grace and a well of her own loneliness, sequestered and locked away through the years. 

She stood straight, proud and unyielding before his threatening intensity.

“Tell me you don’t want this, and I will never mention this between us again, will wash the spring, and the memory of spring from my mind, and will so cleanse myself of you--your bewitchment--for the rest of my days, Caroline.”

And in a tired voice, resignation rarely ever heard from her, she said on the cusp of sudden, rising sorrow, “Is that what you want, Thomas?  For me to be your whore?”

“Caroline.”  In that single word, her name, something bade her glimpse up, then, black irises deep as the vast night, traveling over his face. 

He was scared, hesitant to look down.  He might lose himself in the mystery of what he knew those eyes held for his soul. 

Redemption. 

Salvation--a void where he found an echo, mirror of his own spirit. 

The dark length of the street stretching out behind her would be the dark well of despair if she left him now.

“Thomas, look at me,” her turn to command.  He complied, prompted by the fatigue coloring her sorrow, blinking, disoriented in the moment, disarmed by the gravity of her dark gaze.  

What she saw scrawled across his visage must have hit a tender nerve.

“Oh,” the faint word escaped. She swallowed, eyes restless over his face.  A pondering quiet, before she baldly admitted, without meandering preamble, “You’re right. I want you.  I am tired of fighting this, of fighting you.  But this road, if we travel down it, will not be what you wish.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he confessed, closing the remainder of space separating their bodies, clutching her shoulders, large hands coming up to cup her cheeks, claiming her, seeking her lips like a man starved of his life. 

My dear wife died this day…

She made a convulsive, spastic motion only once, fighting his embrace, before she relaxed, yielding completely, a small sob in her sigh.  Tipping her head back, his lips roved over hers, pliant, delicious feel of her tongue across his mouth, left them each breathless, shaking.  Dizzied, Caroline’s hands hovered in a fluttering disorientation above the Virginian’s broad shoulders, gently descending to his back, fingers climbing up, wrapping into the satin long-coat, arms reaching around his torso to stabilize her balance.

Tenderness flared to need, driving passion obliterating all but the immediate hunger.  Bodies locked against each other, molded together, kisses became quick, crushing and hot.  Thomas groped for the keys to open the gate, their course to the second floor of the newly rented apartments, a quest of fumbling caresses, fingers and nails clawing, scratching, teeth, not always gentle, nibbling, then nipping at sensitive flesh, biting and bruising. 

Low, his growl, soft against her neck, lost to their warring mouths and tongues.  They fell over each other, in a frenetic, scuffling progress, taking them to the breadth of the doorway.

Carline pushed him up against the oak-sided frame, groping, running greedy fingers up along his thigh, suede breeches smooth.  The sigh dragged from his throat was a rumble of frustration, forgetting to lock the door—the express command of the landlady—their tangled forms, clattering up the steps, lurching against each other in drunken ardency.

The halls of L’Fiege’s flat were deserted at the hour they arrived.  Thomas circled a taut arm about the doctress’ slim waist, topping the last step to the second floor together, Caroline clinging, nails buried in that space between his shoulder blades, feeling the play of muscle in his back with their frenzied motions.  His hand rustled amid her petticoats, tracing, cupping, pressing through the cloth, into the contour of that precious space between her legs.

“Not here,” fevered moan, she begged softly, her lips leaving a trail of moisture down his jaw, undoing his cravat with tearing fingers. “Not here, or I truly will be no better than a whore.  Please, Thomas,” she whispered again. 

He had no words, groaning, a man in agony. They faltered down the hall, clutching against each other, banging against a railing, careening to crash into the opposite wall, lightheaded by the rush, driven by dark need, a smothering rapture that had nothing to do with gentle loving, only a torment, now unleashed and seeking fulfillment.  

They came to the door of their quarters, hand behind his back, trying to work the lock at the same time, succumbing to Caroline’s eager kiss, pulling his head down, to reach his lips, heat on her breath, straining, melding her body against him.

The latch released with a blessed click.  They tripped past the threshold, Thomas slamming the door shut, falling on each other with a rabid fervor he would never have recognized, been horrified to name in the light of his renowned self-possession.  

That room, in L’Fiege’s residence, would ever be the single, private witness to their indulgence.

Same apartments, where the American ambassador sat alone in his private torment, over eight weeks later.   Lost, deep in his conscience, elbows on the edge of the great desk, polished wood, dark sheen in the lamplight.  Clasped in his hands was the slither of silver from which the fiery luster of onyx and scarlet glazed across the frozen rose-petal, dangling in ember-like brilliance. 

There were no letters between them. 

Thomas knew, as did Caroline, any relation one wished to keep from prying eyes and nosy couriers did not find its way onto paper.  Such correspondence overflowed with embellished phrases, pretty flirtations, and was allotted to married women, or stoic widows with cultured chivalry.  It was what one did here, in Paris, amid the high-minded society of noble ladies, and salonnieres—a part of etiquette and expected manners.   

By mutual assent, the American ambassador and his little Scotch doctress damned themselves to the fringe of some hell, where transgression offered the only shelter away from the stewing chaos of the Dieu, the violent spates ruling the Parisian streets in the night, and the threat of an international War was never far from the worried faces of courtiers and delegates assigned to Versailles.

What they shared had no business being revealed to the wider world. 

Bring me back the Spring, Caroline, he entreated that first night their forbidden lust reestablished itself, at the onset of early September.

My dear wife died this day…

But Spring was no more…

Thomas realized that only after, unable to contain his rampant ardor in those immediate moments the door to their apartments shut behind their grappling forms. 

Still standing, hoisting her skirts, he lifted her against him.  Caroline’s arms wound around his neck, fingers clawing into his hair, undoing the silken queue, tangling, their mouths bound in kisses possessive, moist, drugged passion, her legs twined about his waist, hips and thighs locked in intimate congress as he took her against a wall.

The memory of her breathless sighs fresh in his mind, he thrust deep, her cry harsh, head thrown back, eyes fused shut in that moment might have been pain or pleasure, convulsing, clinging to him, to each other.  The last, shuddering ecstasy passed in a wave of molten heat, a draining of physical release dissipating all too quickly, leaving him unsteady, faint, forehead against the wall for support, as he refastened breeches, getting his bearings, desperate for air, inhaling in long breaths. 

Caroline slid from his slack touch, sinking down in momentary, perspiring exhaustion, drawing her skirts over her knees in an angry motion, eyes on the floor, the plush oriental carpet covering the expanse of the bedroom.

Joy filled his heart.  She was still drawn to him, still wanted him as her lover. 

On a small accent table sat two beautiful, silver-luster goblets. He had special ordered the vessels, admiring the elegance of antique metal-craft.  Based off an ancient Roman design, flaring, wide rims tapered into short stems, fused to sturdy square bases. 

He approached the tableau, lifting a glass decanter full of ruby liquid.  “It’s the Lafite from Bordeaux—spicy, pungent, full aroma, they say best enjoyed in the fall,” pouring the wine into each of the goblets. “I thought here tonight, it was something special we could share--,”

“Special?” she laughed, a caustic, discordant note of shattered bells.  She raised her black gaze up to meet his eyes, halting him, as he had been about to offer her one of the lustrous wine cups. Thomas failed to notice her scowl, until that moment, how she blinked back the moisture from her eyes, sweeping sweat-soaked black wisps back off her brow.  “Oh, what a wondrous couple we make, Thomas—I the wench, and you the rake.”

There at the crux of autumn, seeing the desolation stark upon her clean-lined visage, he understood just how much the changing of the seasons, seemed to have changed the flavor of their relation.

She snatched the goblet from him, no grace no gratitude, tipping back the vintage, swallowing so rapidly she could hardly have savored the complex blend of flavors, slamming the quaff back on the small side-table as she dragged  herself up by shaky legs. 

Her cheeks were flushed from imbibing such a rich, rare wine far too quickly. 

“Where are you going?” Thomas heard himself asking, the answer self-explanatory, as she placed her hand on the door latch, readying to leave.

“Back to my home, to sleep--I have to be in the Salpetriere tomorrow.”

“You can sleep here,” he replied, moving to block her from pulling open the door. 

There, always, defiance in flashing eyes as she fed him a furious glance.

“Let me by, Thomas,” she whispered angrily, turning back to the door. “You’ve won, can’t you see that?”

“The other tenants will comment if they hear you leaving half-way through the night, Caroline.”

“I can’t think that’s quite the uncommon event, here in L’Fiege’s reputable tenement,” the doctress countered, heat in the words, stubbornly drawing the door open with more force.  “I’m a physician.  There’s nothing untoward in my being called out at odd hours.”

He palmed the paneled wood shut, the click of the latch setting her to pivoting, facing him where he stood over her.

Despair coalesced, dampening what had been his initial exhilaration of their revived attachment.

“Since when,” he recalled saying, hands gripping her arms firmly, steering her around and back, as she tried fidgeting away from his grasp, “did you ever hear of a whore being used only once in the night, la Mademoiselle Doctress?”  She gasped, a sharp, strangled sound, stung by the insult. Twisting, a dancer’s agility in her movements, she escaped the cruel clench encompassing her shoulders, stepping out of his hold, eyes boring into his face, expression rigid.

“Put your shoes under the bed, Caroline,” he commanded softly.  His tone left no room for protest.

She didn’t move, glancing past him, at the door, beseeching silently for it to open, a magical portal like those found in exotic eastern tales.

“Or will you force a physical confrontation on this?” his eyes traveling between them meaningfully, alluding to the obvious difference in size, strength, sex for that matter.

And all at once, much as she had so suddenly capitulated before the threshold of Madame L’Fiege’s grilled courtyard, she knelt, unlacing her shoes with brisk, efficient movements, standing as she slipped them off her feet, eyes avoiding his own. 

He followed her as she padded over to the bed, placed the ankle-boots beneath the four-post frame.  Lowering herself slowly to the edge of the mattress, the little doctress refused to look up, her visage pale and still as pearl, chill with contempt.  He reached out, tipping up her chin.  Caroline’s lids closed, still would not meet his entreating gaze, silent in her self-defeat, tugging her chin out from his touch.  He would have called such a move sullen, were she not trembling there, before him, in the roving lamplight, deceptive delicacy--flower in a summer’s breeze. Trembling, not from fear, but because she refused to betray emotion or weakness.

“I am not a monster, Caroline,” he said, willing her to understand. 

He hadn’t wanted things to grow tainted between them, in this fashion.

Large hands stroked along her cheeks, unpinning the glory of her hair, liquid ebony between his fingers. She lay back unresisting, as he disrobed her down to her chemise, himself as well. 

Indeed, he wasn’t a monster. 

Or so he kept insisting to himself; had he been, he would have used her in rabid carnality, discarding her after, without thought or consideration of her own pleasure. 

Their coupling could border on violence, savage indulgence that left marks to be concealed in the morning light.  The little Scotch doctress gave back with equal vigor, biting teeth, scrawling nails, pinching in sensitive areas along his loins, pressure bordering on pain, returning the bruises he might leave across her thighs, her forearms, blemishes or contusions upon on her white throat.

It was how they claimed each other.  Yet, tenderness, some unspoken sentiment the Virginian, the lady-physician, each recalled from that lambent, sun-kissed, wine-washed spring along the Mediterranean, brought them to a cusp, where, in the end, they clung together, a sudden, slow-drawn sweetness neither admitted past the ephemeral rapture of climax.

It was stirring, that first night after the lamp finally guttered into darkness, letting his hands wander over her stiff limbs, lips and tongue modeling the movements of fingers, seeking out the sensitive, secret flesh of a woman’s body, softness, damp mystery, taste and scent, filling his senses.  He was a mature man, not requiring the gratification of immediate release, well-satiated from their first, wild coupling, though arousal grew to a throbbing insistence in his groin once more, as her reluctant sighs rose, changing into a huskier, soft moan, when she finally yielded to his roving hands and mouth. Willing or not, the reticent little doctress was left shaking in those final moments, limp against his chest as he held her, gentle, letting the paroxysms shudder through her form.  

In the morning, midst of their respective toilette, he exerted his own will once more, eyes catching on a supple calf, trim ankle, as she rolled up her stockings, hem of her skirts trussed above her knees, one foot planted on the edge of the bed, the other on the floor.  He caught her from behind, his fingers trailing up her partially exposed thigh.

“Please—“, she started, plaintive, “—not now—“, plea falling into a hapless little cry when he eased her back on the bed, hands a persistent, compelling weight on her shoulders.  A sharp catch of breath, her only sound, submitting to the pleasuring he worked upon her in the night.  Then, drawing above her, finding release in that moist recess between her legs—a man’s salvation and his ultimate weakness. 

She turned aside, gently almost, when he tried, in the aftermath of loving, to brush her lips, a sweetness wakened, soothing the despondent bitterness from the night past. Until, in that one small gesture of rejection, Caroline had deprived him of any illusion this was an attachment of born of rapture or happiness. 

Resting his forehead against her cheek, feeling the rise and fall of her breasts crushed to him, already laced into her stays, her pale skin damp from recent exertions, he had whispered in her ear, tone tender, words poignant in their disintegrating hope.

“Do not put the burden of guilt upon me for this not being what you thought I wanted, Caroline.  I only wished for the spring; you…you chose the bleakness of winter instead.” The small, seizing sound in her throat told him his words scored, tore at a vulnerable mark she tried to keep locked away, shielded.

Methodic, how her breast rose and fell, refusing to respond, cheek turned aside, staring at the wall as though she might escape into the hunting scene with the oil-born figures galloping across an expanse of tree-fringed greenery.

He waited for another few seconds, seeing if she would say anything, in his mind, heart, a silent plea that she would turn, hands coming up to his face, fingers brushing his lips as she had done so spontaneously, ardently, in the wine-drenched dew of spring, laughter a warmth pebbling his skin when she teased him unwitting.

She stayed like that though, supine, head turned aside, hair tousled, needing to be refastened into its usual bun, petticoats rumpled, stockings readjusted, garters to be retied.  Stayed like that, motionless even as he completed his own grooming, bending over to buckle his shoes, a last smoothing to his waistcoat, a last troubled look where she lay on the bed, the rise and fall of her breast the only indication she was a woman of flesh and blood, rather than a machinist’s fantasy of automata.

He had to let her go.

Tom Paine was right, Paine was always right, ultimately.  He had to let her go.

You need to free her Jeff—something of her is drowning, leeched away by this…thing, this relation.

The Virginian felt his heart contract, stab of remorse, rejecting the thought even as it rose in his mind, recalling that candid discussion Paine initiated, delivering the news to the Langeac, on the morning Caroline’s body fought off a raging fever burning, breaking in a river of sweat.  She was weak, and the cough, his English friend explained, was still rattling with vicious tenacity through her chest, but breathing easier. Over the course of a month, perhaps, her brother and the doctors Gem and Beaulieu, all felt confident of an imminent recovery, her body no longer suffering the fulminate pleurisy. 

Lamplight fragmented across the silver-bejeweled petal, dazzling, drawing his gaze back to the necklace suspended, wrapped in his fingers.

You need to free her Jeff.

How could he?   She sought him out, no more able than he, to sever this strange waltz of desire and darkness borne of despair.

The Virginian could not articulate that doubt to his English-born comrade.

She needs to free herself, Tom, He had rasped back, repentance without an admission of involvement.

He would not deny himself the release of ecstasy, addictive euphoria of clashing wills.  That odd fire in her spirit, leading him on, refusing him some deepest part of herself, achingly glimpsed, sipping an elusive, exotic rapture of mind and body, only when they were twined in passionate coupling. 

It was said men addicted to opium, suddenly cut-off from their intoxicating dependence, were catapulted into near-insanity—cold sweats, rigors, hallucinations, blindness, searing pain through every muscle, as they convulsed in their vomit.  Such torture passed, eventually, but what man would willingly invite that sort of misery by choice?

She was his drug, his dark Scottish rose.

His Manes.  Lianhan Sidhe, the word came to him out of shadows.

And Thomas Jefferson, for one of the rare times in his life, found himself, despite the great force of his own mind, powerless to resist bewitchment.   Caroline’s bizarre glamour, how she could be so yielding, pliant in his arms, her sighs, full of longing, husky desire, seeking escape, hips and belly, undulating with the motions of sex, lost in the throes of arousal, as he buried himself between her thighs.  And the next morning, gird herself once more, into prim semblance, a cool mettle beneath which the Scotch doctress bore the watchful gazes of her colleagues, Thomas Jefferson’s own searching look, following her movements across the room.   Gathering her underclothes, fastening the laces of her jumps, plaiting, coiling her hair into a severe-knot, readying to attend the hopeless, imploring hollowed-eyed multitudes of the impoverished, sick and diseased she faced with the exertions of her profession. 

Doctress…

Amazon and Angel, one Soul, not possible…

Thirteen days in the Bastille, submitted to gods knew what tortures and on the fourteenth--the same morning certain executions had been scheduled involving key instigators of the recent street violence--Caroline was suddenly free.  Exonerated unexpectedly, the official pardon was forthcoming, pending a final review of documents detailing claims of mercury contamination of the public grain-dole. 

She was instructed to return to Meudon, where the little Scotch doctress, her older brother and sister, shared Dr. Richard Gem’s residence. 

Caroline, being Caroline, hadn’t gone back to Meudon—not right away, at least.

Alone in L’Feige’s rented rooms, on a cold November night Thomas Jefferson tried to stave off a wave of shame, head bowing, heels of his hands pressing into closed eyes.  The conflict he managed to keep at bay in the month following from a September night consummating his dark affair with the little doctress, was also the fifth anniversary of his wife’s death.  By mid-October, the storm of hopelessness raging in his Head and Heart, fanned by the Caroline’s bold demonstration in the Ambley’s tavern, erupted, echoing the chaos engulfing Paris’ streets, rising to a pitch of violent protest.  

 You realize I’ll not be able to intervene, Caroline, should your prying fall to the wrong authorities, and the Royal Police apprehend you for provoking mob violence.  His callous words echoed their own indictment, whispered that night, short moments after the storm of their lovemaking subsided.

“The sky is clearing, and I shall away to my hermitage,” he wrote the next day, glib pretense, to Madame de Corney.

He had fled to his monk’s abode upon Mount Calvaire just before the full conflagration of dissent blazed, sweeping through the maze of alleys and plazas connecting Paris’ volatile, urban citizenry, consuming Her most wretched neighborhoods.