by Noelle Mack
I felt my spine stiffen. I would not. My hand seized the ring and I knocked three times slowly as Thomas had specified. Someone on the other side slid the cover from a peephole in the door that I had not noticed. The faint sound drew my attention to the eye that looked at me for a long moment, greatly magnified by the bulbous glass. Cold and green, there was something reptilian about the eye and a blackness in its depths. With a tiny click, the peephole was closed again, and the eye's owner opened the door.
The man had but one. The other was covered by a patch of black silk that emphasized the aristocratic cut of his features. He bowed to me and gestured me inside. I entered with a feeling of trepidation, noting the luxury of my surroundings. The man led me to a parlor and said in a low voice that the mistress of the house would be down to see me.
I took the opportunity to study my surroundings. Red and black were the dominant colors, and the effect was oppressive. The windows were completely covered by several layers of drapery. The outermost ones were of the darkest shade, progressing in gradations of scarlet that were the color of flame at the center. Each window resembled a fireplace, to draw a polite comparison—or the mouth of hell, if one wished to be rude and honest.
So it was here that Anne lived. I scarcely believed it. Her sunny nature would be dimmed—she could never be happy in a house like this. Thomas had said that she had recently purchased it. He had done what a male relative was expected to do in the way of assisting her. Perhaps she had bought it with furnishings intact and was about to undertake its renovation. That explanation seemed satisfactory.
The man with the eyepatch reappeared with a glass of whiskey, offering it as if he knew that it was what I liked. No doubt Anne had told him of my preferences. I took a sip, cheered by its warmth going down. It put me in mind of summer days with her. However brief our affair had been, the memory of it would always be fresh.
I had been too young then, I mused, to truly appreciate her, or even to know her, for all my puppylike adoration. And as the years had gone by, I came to realize that she had held back much. The peculiar circumstances of her guardianship were still not clear to me. She had been married off in a hurry; I had always hoped that she had married well.
Thomas had informed me that she was a widow. I imagined her in the modest attire she had always favored, more expensive now perhaps. He'd said in an offhand way that her late husband's estate had been managed well enough and surely the income from her
I sipped my whiskey, becoming aware of noises overhead. Footsteps moving across the floor, then coming down the stairs—I rose when Anne came into the room.
She was beautiful, more beautiful than I remembered. The years had been very kind. The roundness of her face had matured into an elegance that a young woman could never have. Her hair was still honey-blond but swept back from her face and pinned up, adorned with a diamond clip. She moved gracefully toward me, her dark-hued gown rustling over the floor, and I set down my glass with a bang that nearly broke it.
With joy, I rose from my chair and held out my arms to embrace my first love again.
No, her dress was not exactly modest. Her deep décolletage revealed her breasts as she never would have done in more innocent days. The wonderful sight stirred sensual memories. Without further thought, I kissed her—and she returned the kiss with passionate skill. With wonder in my heart, I thought to myself that she could still teach me a few things about love. Never, save with Xavi, had I been so intensely drawn to a woman, so eager to give pleasure as I had been on my one night with Anne Leonard.
Xavi's face faded from my mind as I pulled away from Anne to look at her face, touching a finger to the dear lips that had first kissed mine. Then I saw the spark that had enlivened her eyes fade away.
"What is it, dearest?" I asked. "Are you not happy to see me?"
"Of course I am, " she said, patting my shoulder.
"Thomas told me that you were living in London now and that you had been widowed. I hope you do not mind that I sought you out.”
"No, not at all. You have turned out very well, Edward. Are you happy?"
"Yes, I suppose so.” Her question was simple but the answer was not. I could not tell her that I was madly in love with the wife of a married man, and that Xavi made me very happy indeed.
"Life in London must agree with you." She raised a hand to my chest, resting her fingertips there for a fraction of a second. "You must have an excellent tailor. He fits you to perfection.” The light sensation of her touch went directly to my cock, as did her next words. "Yes, you are a handsome man and a masterful one.” Anne—
"Perhaps I should have married you.”
Her tone was dry and she avoided my eyes. I thought to distract her by asking to see the rest of her new house. Then I hesitated. Perhaps she only wished to chat for a while and it was rather late at night. Still, her letter had specified the hour and here I was.
"I would like to talk to you, Anne. So much has happened since we parted—and you went away to be married.”
She made no immediate reply but took my hand and brought me into a room filled with dark furniture and more scarlet draperies. There on a sideboard stood crystal decanters of whiskey and port on a silver tray, along with glasses to serve both. The glass of whiskey that the man with the eyepatch had brought to me had come from here.
The way the chairs were drawn up around the tables suggested a party about to take place, but we were quite alone. I pulled out a chair for her and she sat, gracefully tucking her dark gown under her bottom.
"That was a very different life. It is over, " she said.
"Was he kind to you?"
She held her head high. "No. Please sit down.”
I did, keeping a polite distance, even though I wanted to pull her into my lap and kiss her madly.
"What happened?" I regretted the question immediately. I should not have brought up the subject at all—former husbands make for dreary discussions.
"I would rather not say.”
There, she had put paid to it. Good. I did not want her to think I was prying.
She ran a hand over the back of the empty chair nearest her and sighed. "Business is slow.”
"What?"
She looked at me warily. "I suppose Thomas did not tell you everything.”
I was baffled but unsure of how best to reply. "Perhaps not.” That seemed safe enough.
Shaking her head, Anne rose to go to the sideboard and poured two glasses of whiskey, handing me one. "Then I will, " she said, and drank hers down without a sound.
Back in Devonshire I had never seen her imbibe wine, let alone strong spirits. She licked her lips daintily. Most women would have coughed and spluttered. Very well. So she had acquired somewhat of a taste for drink. That was no reason to judge her. Perhaps her late husband had insisted that she share his midnight tipple.
The mysterious union between husbands and wives, especially the ones who hated each other, was ever a puzzle to me. Looking at Anne's composed but unhappy face, I thought of Xavi. Even she felt bound to her husband, under obligation to the lifelong sacrament of marriage, no matter how Don Diego neglected her or raged at her or how many others he coaxed into his bed. In the act of taking her virginity, she swore, his mind had been elsewhere.
Unlike me. Schooled by an older woman, my sexual nature unleashed in one deliciously wicked night, I had learned the secret of sexual bliss well before I lost my virginity to Anne: connection. I had listened to her, loved her well, took her seriously and teased her gently. And when she gave me her body, I gave her something like worship in return.
I hoped that was how she remembered it. Anne was lost in thought. I sipped my whiskey and studied her without speaking. Was I guilty of infidelity to my darling Xavi? Not yet.
The rush of feelings awakened at that moment eclipsed all others. (I will add at this point that I did not entirely believe Xavi's wide-eyed affirmations of her fidelity to me. Surely every wif
e must go now and again to her marriage bed, if only to forestall arguments about the subject. Men are simple enough to manage when their sexual needs are met. )
Cynical thoughts indeed, I told myself, for a man who has not married and does not wish to. It was possible that Anne had spoiled me for that. When we had parted ten years ago, I knew instinctively that I would never find another so passionate and so kind.
"Will you spend the night with me, Edward?" Her soft-spoken question dumbfounded me. It had come out of nowhere but it could be said that she had only given voice to our mutual longing for each other, strong as ever. I could not say no. And so my sensual education began all over again...
Five
When I left Anne's bed to go home the next morning, I slept for hours. Awakened by Decimus—the dear old fellow seemed to think that I had died, so deep was my slumber—I bathed and dressed, I went out again to the borrowed house in which Xavi and I met. No, not to see her, but to leave a letter in the locked cabinet. My reawakened passion for Anne, my night in her loving arms—ah, I had no idea what twists and turns lay in the road ahead where either woman was concerned. But in the matter-of-fact light of day, I felt compelled to forbid myself the pleasure of sexual intercourse with my naughty Xavi for the time being.
A tactful explanation was in order. I did not mention Anne and wrote only that I could not see her, Xavi, for the next several weeks. The borrowed house seemed to echo with emptiness—I stood for a while in the bedroom, all too aware of everything we had done there behind closed doors.
When I went to the library to leave my letter in the cabinet, I was surprised to see a missive from Xavi already waiting.
Here it is—I kept it.
To look at it again makes me wonder why I bothered. It is to the point, almost curt. In it she informed me that Don Diego seemed suspicious. She thought it best to "lie low.” I wondered at the time where she had picked up the colorful language of thieves and beggars, chalking it up to the bad influence of vulgar plays and racy novels, which are every lady's vice.
(Another parenthetical note to myself: any novel, racy or not, in which the hero loves two heroines simultaneously will be thrown against the wall by female readers and never finished.)
So. I was off the hook. But that did not make me feel less guilty. In less than twenty-four hours, I had returned to my first love, a not very respectable but charming widow who was free to do as she pleased at last, and put aside my new one, the wife of another man.
Sin and guilt are relative under such circumstances, and I am no saint. Nor was Anne. Why do I say she was not very respectable?
Her house was a brothel. Nearly penniless after her husband's estate had been settled to the satisfaction of his greedy cousins, she had come to London and gone into business.
A very specialized sort of business. Anne catered to some of the richest men in London, charging thousands of pounds to satisfy unusual desires of all stripes. Her establishment was so exclusive and its clientele so afraid of blackmail that it was not even listed in Harris's Guide, a bible of the netherworld.
The hellish mood its decor evoked was perfectly suited to what went on there. I knew her as Anne; her clients called her La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The beautiful woman without mercy. Her late and unlamented husband had left her little choice. Anne had been forced to turn her own secret love of the birch into her specialty. It was a lucrative one.
She assured me that her brother was too complacent to be suspicious. Lie had never been above the first floor of her house, owing to his knees. I thought that Thomas simply did not want to know. He could figure out why his sister required so large a house near Grosvenor Square if he had to; he was a man of the world. But he asked no questions.
Anne was sure her brother did not frequent brothels, and as I said, hers was not listed. No, Thomas liked easy-going, cheerful affairs that lasted just long enough for both parties to feel comfortable and not so long that he grew bored. He preferred the company of females who loved to eat and drink as he did. As much as the complexity of women like Xavi and Anne intrigued me, I understood my old friend's delight in a sunny countenance.
Despite what she did for a living, Anne's sweet smile still appeared from time to time. I was glad indeed that it was not gone forever—she was not so hard as all that. But she swore up and down that she would never marry again. Her choice of profession would have made it difficult to do in any case.
So I felt no guilt on that score, and she would not have wanted me to. She made her own decisions and I could not dictate to her, nor did I want to. However, Anne did defer to my wishes in one way: I thought it best that our bedroom be furnished differently from the rest of the gloomy house.
It was a private retreat that we both loved, its windows flung wide open on fine days. The room needed no heavy curtains to mask what went on within, as it was on the top floor and no one could see in.
We often lay in bed after making love, watching the clouds go by during the day. The topmost branches of a tall old tree in front of the house seemed to try to catch them but they never succeeded. Thick with leaves in summer, the tree shattered the light into green-gold reflections that danced on our walls. The moon changed green-gold into silver when it rose, swelling into fullness as the days progressed.
In that room we were happy, unaware of time. It was bliss.
In my arms she became the dear Anne I remembered so well, and I loved her that way.
At other times, sitting in the parlor and taking tea, we were as proper as husband and wife. We discussed the change in her circumstances only once more—I knew that it was painful to her to have come down in the world in such a way. Yet she treasured her hard-won independence.
She scorned the least trace of pity, so I hid mine. Perhaps compassion is a better word for what I felt for her. Men control every aspect of female lives, and if women cannot or will not marry, there is no honest way for them to earn their bread. Yet I felt that the house might become a prison she could not escape.
Anne disagreed. I remember the fight. It was our first.
"It is outside this house that I feel oppressed, Edward. The city is so crowded—I am compelled to withdraw from its streets.”
"Is that healthy?" I asked her.
"I am a country-bred widow and I was a poor one when I started out, with no social standing. The women of my own class wanted nothing to do with me, and the men followed their lead. Now they only stare. Too many know me by reputation.”
"That is only to be expected, " I said patiently. She would have bridled, and rightly so, at the least hint of judgment in my tone.
"How can I make you understand?" Her voice had a poignant catch. "The eyes of others—of people on the street— are my prison. Not this house.”
I knew instantly what she meant. I could not argue.
"Within these walls, doing what I have chosen to do, I put on a mask and play my part. I am in charge—they may look at me only if I wish them to. It pays handsomely. And I have already set by a considerable sum for my old age, when I shall return to the country."
She sighed and turned her face away, and we discussed it no more.
With Xavi unavailable, I took more time to develop the business plans I mentioned, but the fortune I hoped to build seemed no more than an empty dream. I spent my free hours with Anne, who laughingly called me a libertine. She preferred an arrangement like that of my male secretary and his lifelong companion, whereby love was constant and lust might be occasionally indulged elsewhere.
She did not care if I followed my cock when it pointed to another female—in fact, she sometimes threw me at them so I would leave her alone. But she needed to know that my heart was reserved for her alone. Anne's own weakness was still for younger men, and to satisfy that, she had me. Like many a practitioner of the amorous arts, she was open-minded. As far as I knew, she was faithful to me. In her way.
Little trace of her country upbringing remained. Anne had become
sophisticated to a fault. Her establishment had been designed to attract and keep clients who were used to the best of everything, and they paid handsomely to bring cherished fantasies to life. A man who had been overly stimulated in his boyhood by whipping from a governess not much older than himself could relive the experience in every detail.
I witnessed one such session from a comfortable hiding place behind the walls of the room set aside for discipline of this sort. Anne thought it wise to let me satisfy my sexual curiosity, preferring to keep me in her house to do it. She brought me into the hiding place, which had a separate door from the main room, installed for the discreet entrance and exit of clients who liked to watch.
In it sat an armchair and next to that was an assortment of good liquor, to prime the pump, so to speak. Before the armchair was a plump cushion, should a voyeur wish to pay extra for a woman to entertain him while he observed the man being whipped. Besides the transparent mirror directly in front of the armchair, the walls of the hideaway were lined with ordinary mirrors, to double and redouble the view inside, offering a dizzying profusion of whores for the price of only one.
Anne brought me in before the next session began, and made me comfortable herself. As she would be doing the honors and not one of her assistants, I was very eager to see it all.
The gown she wore was made to reveal as much of her splendid body as possible. It was black, of some lustrous stuff, and fit like a second skin. The neck was high to give her beautiful face an aspect of sternness but the front and back had been cut out to fully reveal her bare buttocks and lovely breasts. The dressmaker's art lifted her breasts up and out, and trimmed her waist into the bargain. Anne wore high-heeled boots underneath that the client had provided in advance.
Made of glove leather, they fit her shapely calves to perfection and were so soft that the shape of her toes could be seen. The high heels added several inches to her height, enabling her to command the ardent respect of the man she would punish.