Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

  Meanwhile Maggie was managing a successful business and enjoying herself and being a reliable correspondent! He couldn’t even remember when he’d last written to his mother. Two weeks? Three? Did she even know he was at Throckmorton?

  He drew a blank piece of paper toward him. My dearest mother...

  The letter was quite ordinary for half a page, and then he wrote, I’ve met a woman. I don’t

  He looked at the paper, not sure how to finish that sentence.

  I don’t know if I ought to tell you about her; she isn’t respectable. But I respect her nevertheless, and I like her, and she’s beautiful. She’s Jewish and runs a faro bank. Would you still receive me if I married her?

  Married her. It looked insane, in black and white.

  He had never thought it was a question he would have to ask his mother. He’d assumed he would either marry a young English gentlewoman, or he’d be a confirmed bachelor with an inseparable friend (also English and of his own class) and never have to discuss the matter with his mother at all. Even if Mrs. Radcliffe-Gould heard rumors, she would never breathe a word of it to him, any more than Lady Throckmorton said a word about Clement’s house parties. Simon had no idea if she knew what went on, and preferred it that way.

  This couldn’t be hushed up or discreetly ignored. Maggie was too well-known, too memorable. And besides, what would he do? Ask Maggie to eat pork and say she used to be a governess when they went to Yorkshire? She would tell him to go to hell.

  If he did marry Maggie, would his children be strangers to their cousins? How would he explain it to them? Would it be disloyal to Maggie to go home by himself, and see his family? If he did, would it be home as it had always been, full of love and cheer, or would he be too angry to enjoy it?

  Could he raise his children as Jews, and see them despised and reviled?

  Why on earth would Maggie want to marry him, anyway? And on so short an acquaintance? Yet now he couldn’t stop, even though every fancy brought another obstacle with it. He imagined her brightening his rooms, sharing a mug of chocolate in the morning and buttering their toast as he pulled it off the toasting fork—and then he thought that she wouldn’t want to leave the club, or Meyer, and besides a gentleman with a wife was supposed to rent a house and hire a housekeeper, or at least bigger lodgings and a maid-of-all-work.

  You would like her, he wrote anyway, suddenly convinced it was true. Lively, but with her feet on the ground. His mother was also very fond of cards, but he thought it wiser not to mention that. Nothing is definite, and may never be

  He should burn the letter. Now, before anyone saw it.

  Maggie poked her head in the door. Simon jumped. Hastily putting a period to his sentence, he signed and folded the letter without sanding it.

  “How are you?” she asked. “I—I just wanted to make sure that what happened earlier was all right with you. I don’t think we broke any rules, but...”

  He felt a rush of gratitude—but it was not gratitude, he admitted to himself. It was infatuated adoration.

  * * *

  Simon laughed, his face lighting up. Maggie’s stomach tightened and swooped as she remembered his hands on her breasts, and the way he had walked away from her. She had pretended afterward that St. Aubyn’s hands and mouth were his, that St. Aubyn’s cock was his when he pushed it into her mouth. But even with her eyes shut she had sensed every difference between them. She could distinguish their breath, even, and the shape of their hands.

  Also, St. Aubyn had talked a lot.

  “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before at one of these parties,” he said. “I was a bit shaken, honestly. Are you all right?”

  She sat directly in front of his library table, propping her head and arms on the back of the sofa, and contemplated her answer. “I don’t know. I enjoyed what happened, in a carnal sense. But...I don’t know what to do. At first I only wanted to bed you, and I supposed I’d enjoy whatever you condescended to give me. But I...it’s inconvenient and a little embarrassing, but I think I’ve developed a bit of a tendre for you.” That was an understatement. How big did an understatement have to be before it was a lie? “I want anything you wish to give me, but perhaps it isn’t prudent to take it. One can’t always be prudent, but if things go much further, I’ll start to really be hurt that you don’t wish to give me more. And that wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”

  His laugh sounded like mostly nerves this time. “How can you come right out and talk about things like that?”

  Shame rushed her. “How can you rich ingleses never talk about anything?” she snapped.

  “Centuries of practice?”

  She couldn’t stay angry. She liked him too much. “Other people talk about things more than you’re used to.” It came out rather flat, though she’d tried to be kind. “And I’ve worked at not letting shame rule me. I’m not in my teens anymore, ready to do anything to avoid a moment of mortification. Maybe I talk too much, but I only want to understand what’s really going on. I find it’s less embarrassing in the long run than fumbling about in the dark.”

  She felt a hypocrite suddenly, trying to set herself up as wiser than him. Just last week, for the millionth time, she’d thought about asking the shop-girl she always talked to at the Portuguese bakery to have tea with her, and felt too much of a fraud to do it. “And I don’t talk about everything I should, anyway. You know that. There are a lot of things I should tell Meyer that I haven’t.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re right, fumbling around in the dark is the most uncomfortable thing in the world. But...I...How can you simply accept that you want people to be cruel to you? Isn’t that something to be ashamed of? Isn’t it...isn’t it like turning over a rock in your mind and finding a mass of sunless crawling blind things?”

  Her cheeks burned and her gorge rose. She didn’t know how to push sick shame like this back except with anger, and she didn’t want to be angry when he was so clearly speaking of himself, not her.

  “I’ve wondered that myself,” she said at last, her voice sounding unnatural and thick to her own ears.

  He leaned forward. “I’ve imagined violating you,” he confessed in a low voice—earnest, even apologetic.

  Oh God, she was on fire.

  “I wanted to treat Clement roughly sometimes, too. Shouldn’t I be ashamed of wanting to harm someone I love? Love ought to be kind. Not cruel.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, ignoring her stab of jealousy at the word love. “But here is what I do know. I want to be humiliated and ill-used. Not all the time. Only in bed. I can’t stop wanting it. So what’s the good in worrying about it? I—I tell everyone I’m Jewish.”

  He looked confused.

  “And I am,” she insisted at once. “But...I didn’t know it until I was six years old and we came to England. My mother didn’t know it either until a few years before that, when her own mother was on her deathbed. My grandmother’s family pretended to convert so they wouldn’t go to the stake. My grandmother married a Catholic, and she married my mother to a Catholic. And then my mother....she was twenty-three. She’d been a good Catholic all her life. She lost her mother and discovered she was Jewish on the same day. When her husband died too, she decided to come to England where she could really be Jewish. I’m so proud of her for that. But she never—she could never quite bring herself to do it. She doesn’t go to synagogue. She never learned any prayers or songs. She follows the tradition of fasting on Mondays and Thursdays, and twice a year she has a terrible attack of conscience and spends a week crying and begging me to go to confession with her so we won’t burn in a fiery pit for eternity.”

  She fought the urge to insist again that she was Jewish. He was a Gentile and he didn’t care. He didn’t think she was a fraud and if she said it, it would only show him that she half believed it herself. “Do you know how I met Meyer? I was in Duke’s Place trying to get up the courage to go into the Great Synagogue.” She hadn’t even known that unmarr
ied girls usually only went to the Great Synagogue on Purim and Simchas Torah. She’d never heard of those holidays. “He thought I was a street-walker and picked me up.”

  It annoyed her that he was obviously more shocked by that than by anything else she’d said. “Well, we think it’s a charming story. Anyway, I meant that this is something that I know about myself without room for doubt: I like men to humiliate me. And anything you know about yourself, for sure, is precious.” You had to cling to it, be proud of it even, because people would try to take it away from you.

  He let out a long breath. “You really don’t think it’s different? I... I was ashamed of liking men, at first. It took me a long time to accept it. But in the end I could, because it was obvious that it did no harm. This...”

  “What’s the harm?”

  “I’m afraid it comes from real anger, real resentment. One shouldn’t resent one’s friends. One shouldn’t be angry at one’s friends.”

  She couldn’t smother a laugh. “Who else would one resent and be angry at, but the people one spends all one’s time with?”

  He blinked.

  “You should try it,” she said. “Not with me if you don’t want to. But with somebody. It’s exhilarating. When it’s done right, I feel clean and new afterward. Like the light feeling after a good cry, as if all the tears and snot were in my head weighing it down.” She wished she felt that way now. She wished Meyer were here.

  “Catharsis,” he said.

  She made a face. “Isn’t that...what happens when a doctor gives you a purgative? And here I hesitated to mention snot!”

  “Well, yes. But in his Poetics, Aristotle says of tragedy...” He shut his eyes. “Pye translates it as, ‘Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an important and complete action, possessing a certain degree of magnitude, in ornamented language, having its forms distinct in their respective parts, by the representation of persons acting and not by narration, effecting through the means of pity and terror the purgation of such passions.’”

  The dry syllables tripped passionately off his tongue, a perfect blend of eager student and distant schoolmaster. Oh, that was charming. The tension in her spine eased.

  “But Aristotle’s original word was catharsis. Scholars dispute as to his precise meaning, which he doesn’t explain in any extant portion of the Poetics. Twining renders it ‘correction and refinement.’ But his essential point is that sometimes playing out dreadful things serves as a kind of medicine to the mind.”

  “Imagine my relief that Aristotle agrees with me,” she teased. “I—Simon, do you really want to treat me cruelly? Or do you want to pretend cruelty? To imagine cruelty? Harm me only as much as I wish to be harmed? There is a difference, although it took me some time to sort out, myself.” She ought in fairness to have said ‘people’ or ‘Clement’, not ‘me’. But she wanted him to think about doing it to her. She wanted him to long for it, as she did.

  He frowned down at the library table, toying with the letter he’d been writing. When he finally looked up, her breath caught. She’d thought the cruel edge to his beauty was in the clean delicate English lines of it, like an angel in a painting. But it was more than that. When he was set on something, there was a purity of purpose to him, cold or white-hot or both at once. His gaze was like the keen edge of a knife.

  “I’d endure a week of agony if it would save you a moment of unwished-for pain.” He spoke in a low voice, seemingly embarrassed by his own sincerity. “I want you to know that.”

  Her heart gave a great, frightened bound. In a novel, that would be a proposal of marriage—though of course here, in real life, it wasn’t. It was even better than You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you, which Maggie always thrilled to even though she would never marry a man who was so rude about her mother. “Th-thank you.”

  “I’d like to take you up to our room.”

  Thoughts of whether he would like Mrs. da Silva flew right out of her head. “What?”

  He dipped his quill in the inkwell and began addressing his letter. Mrs. William Radcliffe-Gould, The Rectory...

  The Rectory. She felt rather chilled. Marriage was out of the question, indeed.

  “If you think it prudent,” he added. “And—I hope we shall continue to further our acquaintance, when we return to London.”

  Her heart soared. He was telling her that this wouldn’t be only one afternoon, or even only one fortnight. That was more than enough. Much more. She didn’t want to marry him anyway. “I’d like that.”

  He grinned at her. “I, um, my letter has to dry and I have to light the wax jack and it’s all going to take a few minutes but I really want to get this letter in the post before... I haven’t written to my mother in weeks and...” He blushed. “Sorry, I’m talking too much.”

  “I like talking,” she said. “Talking’s all right.” She came round to sit on the edge of the table, sliding the elegant silver wax jack toward him. He stood, smiling down at her. She beamed back because he was going to kiss her, and it wasn’t going to be a game or for show or for anything except that they both wanted to.

  Neither of them could stop grinning as he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, which should have made it difficult to kiss properly but didn’t. His hands were on her shoulders. She could feel his ring through her dress.

  When they stopped to catch their breaths, dust motes danced for joy in the light streaming through the windows.

  “Not talking’s all right too,” Simon said. He reached for the desk drawer, and then kissed her again instead.

  It took him half an hour to seal his letter, but at long last she watched him pass his signet twice through the jack’s little flame and stamp his initials cleanly into a blob of deep red wax. Her own seal had smudged black from the flame, the wax already cracked by the time she handed the letter to Lord Throckmorton for franking.

  It might have made her feel small—thinking how many more letters he’d sent than she had, and how much finer his handwriting was—but it didn’t. Like watching Meyer deal cards, it was beautiful to see someone do something so well, because they had done it a thousand thousand times with love and care. It was intimate, as if by seeing this moment she was seeing all the others, as if she could see him as a little boy learning to do it for the first time.

  He dropped the letter on top of hers in the salver in the entrance hall, and led her up the stairs. She caught herself trying to hide her smile, as if this were a prank they were striving to conceal. As if it mattered whether anyone knew! Glancing at Simon, she caught him doing the same thing, the corners of his mouth tucked in and a careful nonchalance in his walk. “Race you,” she said, and tore up the stairs.

  He was taller and probably in better condition, but less set on winning. She passed him and burst through the door of their room with her heart racing in her throat. Laughing and gasping for air, she collapsed on the bed.

  Out of breath himself, he came and stood silently gazing down at her. The pounding of her heart changed as the air between them heated with possibility.

  “I feel foolish trying to be masterful,” he said at last. Her heart sank. Would he expect her to direct and encourage him? While she preferred that to a man who paid no mind to whether she was enjoying herself, it wasn’t conducive to an illusion of helplessness. “Would you... show me what you like?” He hesitated. “Master me, I mean? Do you expect playacting? Harshness?”

  Oh. Oh, yes. She stood, taking down her hair. “I enjoy a little playacting. But all that’s really necessary is to tell me what to do and enjoy it, while making sure I enjoy it myself.”

  His blue eyes followed her hands, dilating as she unpinned her petticoats and unlaced her corset.

  “Cruelty is nice if you can manage it—but please don’t say anything too specific or personal. I’ve learned my self-love is not robust enough for nasty setdowns, even insincere ones.” Pulling her shift over her head, she stood before him naked. He devoured her with his eyes, swallowing hard
, but made no attempt to touch her.

  The power of that coursed through her, warming her skin. “Lie down and take your cock out.”

  He stretched out on the bed, his elegant, confident hands smoothly unbuttoning his pantaloons despite his shallow breaths.

  “Make yourself hard enough to fuck me.”

  He obeyed, pumping his cock with long strokes of his fist. She watched, silent, as wetness gathered between her legs. He tried to watch her too, but at last his head fell back, pleasure contorting his face.

  “That’s enough,” she said, several strokes past enough. She climbed atop him, and without further preamble sank down onto his cock.

  She closed her eyes to absorb the sensation of him inside her, the slight pain of taking him in too fast, the soft kerseymere of his pantaloons against her calves, his body quiescent beneath her while his thighs quivered eagerly.

  “May I—” he began.

  “No,” she said sweetly. She wanted this to last, so she began with her breasts, picking them up, kneading them, toying with her nipples until she ached and glittered with pleasure. He watched her avidly, lips parted. His cock twitched inside her and his hands fisted at his sides, but he didn’t touch her or move his hips. “Good boy,” she said, bouncing once on his cock. His bitten-off gasp thrilled her. She put her fingers between her legs, gathering moisture before rubbing at her pearl. She let herself moan, his obvious pleasure driving hers higher. “Are you near to spending?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Thank God. She rose, rolling onto her back beside him. “Fuck me as hard as you can, but stop if you think you might spend.”

  He covered her at once, slamming back inside her emptiness. She reveled in the feather bed, in his coat buttons pressing into her breasts, in the powerful, controlled jerks of his hips. She spread her legs wider and shut her eyes. “Harder.”