Eros Element by Cecilia Dominic Read Free Book Online

father’s study and touched one of his pens, feeling pride in the student he’d written the recommendation letter for that morning. Hearing her mother humming in the parlor across from the study made Iris drop the pen and sneak back into the hallway.
    Adelaide sometimes spared a smile for her only child, but Mrs. McTavish always had an air of loneliness about her, especially when Irvin was away on expeditions or spent long hours at the university. Of course she hadn’t confided anything in Iris, but always having been a sensitive child, Iris knew her mother wasn’t happy. She tried to be good, but she seemed unable to avoid getting in trouble, which usually meant getting dirty. So when Adelaide’s mood lightened, Iris wanted to know why. Would she at the wise old age of twelve be a big sister? With babies being as messy as they were, she would have something to excel at, and maybe her mother would finally approve of her lack of squeamishness and ability to tolerate soiled things. So Iris had followed her mother around all day at a distance, watching for a chance to get in her bedroom without getting caught. She could have waited until the evening, when her parents would be at the opera, but she was curious now .
    So once Adelaide was safely ensconced in her bath, where she would be for at least forty-five minutes, Iris tiptoed into the bedroom and headed for the dressing table, which should hold objects that her mother touched every day and would be exposed to bedroom thoughts. As luck would have it, Adelaide’s wedding ring sat in the center between two tortoiseshell combs. Iris licked her lips, and a thrill of excitement edged the cramping pain from her consciousness. She held the ring between her forefingers and thumbs, a technique that seemed to give her the clearest pictures.
    Instead of a fat, dimple-cheeked baby, Iris saw a handsome young man. Now an unfamiliar feeling between her legs, heat and pressure, made her cheeks go red simultaneously with the sensation the blood ran from her head. Then an image of her father and hatred and resentment and worst of all, the itchy, burning sensation of contempt like a poison oak rash in the middle of her chest. The last sounds she heard before she fainted were the clattering of the wedding ring on the floor and its rolling away guided by a groove in the wood.
    She woke to smelling salts and the concerned faces of Sophie and Adelaide, to whom Iris had to confess about her courses starting. Her mother strapped her into a corset the following week, but Iris couldn’t blame it for the stifling sensation she now had at the thought of her gift. Now the girl who played in the dirt became the one who wore gloves all the time, even when she ate. The only good thing to come out of it all was that Irvin allowed Iris to help him more at the office, where she got the faint sense of past stories from the objects he brought back from his digs.
    As for Iris, she vowed never to marry because she couldn’t bear the thought of touching her husband’s things and finding out he loved another and pitied her or worse.
    Grange House, 07 June 1870
    Iris caressed the leaves of the tomato seedlings. Her heart hurt for her father. He had to have known of Adelaide’s indiscretions, but he wept at her funeral two years before as a heartbroken husband should. Iris tried not to touch his things at the time because his emotions were too much to bear on top of her own conflicting ones—relief that Adelaide and Irvin would no longer suffer because of each other and sadness for herself because of the limitations her gender put on her, specifically the pressure she would be under to follow in her mother’s unhappy path.
    And now it begins… For what else could Jeremy want to speak with her about? She wondered if he would find her so attractive if he knew how her mother’s and then her father’s medical care had drained the family’s coffers. He came with