Free Unfinished (Historical Fiction) by Harper Alibeck Page B

his mouth shut then.
    Her fear, though, seemed outsized. She was a virgin – barely, he knew – and unworldly but very willing. Such need. Such intensity. All wrapped up in those tiny hands and incisive eyes that tempted him with the promise of something more, something so real it needed no words to grow.
    And yet he'd needed words to explain that she needn't make him leave. He’d wanted to stay. Wanted so much more.
    Cold rain nipped at the edges of his soles, a welcome contrast to the heat in his body, dimming like a candle nearing its base. James let the night's turn of season clear his head, a white blur that erased as much as it could, leaving only the etch of an ache of the unknown.

Chapter Six
    L ILITH CONSULTED THE ONLY PERSON in her world who would have the slightest perspective on the mysterious fluid: Esther. “Thank God you left the rat at home,” she announced as Esther poured a cup of coffee.
    “Dog. It's a dog.”
    “It's a rat that barks,” Lilith deadpanned.
    “Rodrigo the rat,” Esther added, holding her stomach and barely able to breathe through laughter.
    “You could just get a sewer rat from the underground and put a leash on it,” Lilith teased.
    “If I wanted a Boston rat I could just leash your father,” Esther retorted.
    Lilith collapsed into whoops of laughter. A maid scurried out, no doubt spreading the gossip tidbit. Esther didn't care. Unlike Lilith, Esther had inherited her trust already and was, as John Stone called her, “a misfit and an abomination to women.”
    But a wealthy abomination had freedom.
    Lilith was jealous, but she was also so close – less than a year and she could join Esther in wealthy spinsterhood, never needing to marry to get away.
    “Speaking of Boston rats, is your father still up to his dastardly deeds?” Instead of a rat dog, Esther plucked a small kitten from a large carpet bag. Carrying small animals about town was the least of her idiosyncracies, and Lilith's servants had learned to keep animal food on hand, though the head cook drew the line at the request for a live mouse made once when Esther brought a rather large snake into the parlor.
    “Of course, I told you about the meeting last month. I haven't seen Jack Reed around since then,” Lilith sniffed, furiously shoveling sugar into her coffee, “but Hanlon has been scurrying about like a fly drawn to horse manure.”
    “Your father is racing against the clock. Mine had no choice; at eighteen my money was mine. I just timed out in McLean.” A rare sigh from Esther startled Lilith. Her friend petted the kitten's neck and added, “Nine months is a long time, Lilith. We were only in McLean for four and look what they managed to do to us.”
    In many ways, Lilith couldn't quite remember what they had managed to do. The electric treatment she'd received at the hands of Dr. Maurice Scott had been shameful. Only seventeen and understanding little of her reproductive and sexual parts, Lilith had not understood what he meant when he described her “obvious hysteria” and need to reach “hysterical paroxysm.”
    His methods for doing so, however, became quite clear when he used a hand-held electric cylinder and used it to, as he described it, “cleanse” her of her hysterical buildup. She knew now, after reading medical journals at Wellesley, that the doctor manually stimulated her clitoris to achieve orgasm, releasing her so-called hysteria. The pelvic massage, he assured her, was the only medical treatment that could cure her; if she didn't achieve orgasm, he would need to move on to a more extreme procedure.
    Esther's treatment, however, had been far worse.
    He'd simply removed her clitoris.
    They'd confided in each other, sharing abutting rooms at the hospital, having few words to describe what was done. Esther hadn't known the medical term for the body part Dr. Scott removed, telling Lilith he'd removed her vagina, an image that haunted Lilith's dreams for years.
    Daily sessions of