The Slightest Provocation

by Pam Rosenthal

  He wanted her throat now; she could feel coarse hairs pressed against her lips. Breathing deeply through her nose, his darkest, mossiest smells. She could smell-no, she could taste-the salt of his sweat and (ranker, saltier) the semen coursing up from him; it would overwhelm her, spill out from her lips…

  No it wouldn’t. For she was taking him. Take him, drink him, breathe him, swallow him, have him, drown in him. Wash up to shore now, in his lap.

  She heard his contented and very self-satisfied sigh just as she’d begun to think she’d really be a great deal more comfortable next to him on the bed, rather than collapsed all on the floor between his legs, on that not-so-nice little rug.

  “Come up here.” He stretched out a hand. They arranged themselves somewhat charily, for he still had his boots on, and there wouldn’t be any servants to change the linen.

  “You’ve got many too many clothes on.” Her voice came out a bit muffled, for she’d whispered it into his shirt, where his neck met his shoulder. She raised her head. “Well, it’s not very fair to me, is it?”

  “Are we playing fair?” One of his hands was cupped over her quim, the tips of his fingers moving slowly over the place where the lips met, and sometimes straying down over her thighs.

  “You aren’t,” she told him. “Not at this moment. Not… oh, my word, Kit.” For there are moments when the smallest, simplest fingertip touch-from a lover who knows just where-is all that’s needed. She nestled into his side. How lovely, she thought-in some last moment when it was still possible to think. She spread her legs, stretched her back and arms, and took up all the room she could. To enjoy it completely.

  “I should apologize,” he said sometime later, “for how things went in Calais. It wasn’t the right way to meet each other after so long.”

  “I expect you should,” she replied. “Are you? Apologizing, I mean.”

  “More like saying I should.”

  “That’s like you. Are you going to tell me about what you’ve been doing since you arrived here? Oh yes, and who was the man that Peggy saw anyway? Will you tell me any of that?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Yes, I think so. Sometime. Not right now.” She raised her head. “Because right now it’s time to get you out of your clothes,” she told him. “Sit up.”

  She straddled his legs. He kept his face cool and noncommittal as she unknotted his neckcloth, unbuttoned his shirt, and rose on her knees to pull it over his head.

  Hesitating now, for in truth she was fearful of what she’d find. And it did come as a shock, how long and livid the scar was, the stretched and puckered flesh snaked from shoulder to collarbone and almost to his neck.

  She tried to hide her dismay, to keep her voice light and her expression unconcerned. “Well, I expect we’re both a bit worse for wear.”

  Too late for her to offer comfort.

  He shrugged. “Worse for not knowing how to stay out of harm’s way, one’s first real time in battle.”

  Nor would he offer any comfort to her.

  She slid back and off the bed, standing on the floor in front of him again. Chin tilted and hands on hips. “And about them boots, Major Stansell? I’m good with boots, you know, sir.”

  Coyness and posturing didn’t suit her, but it was the best she could do at the moment.

  He shrugged, almost grimaced, and managed a smile instead. “Yes, I do know. You’d have made a good batman. Well, come on, then, be quick about it. There’s a good fellow.”

  Even when he hadn’t cared much about clothes, he’d liked a good pair of boots. And so she’d gotten good at boots, in order to have them off him quickly.

  She knelt at his feet while he braced himself against the bed. Gripping the toe of his right boot with her left hand and the heel with her right, she gave a light tug, being sure to pay close attention to the angle of her hands and his foot. The boot slid off easily, and she grinned up at him.

  “Nothing simpler. The left boot now, if it please my lord major.”

  But the left, in the inevitable way of an intractable world, refused to budge. She shouldn’t have been so cocky over her first success. Nor allowed herself a dizzying breath of the leather’s oily perfume, darker and more redolent as her palms grew hotter and more slippery.

  For that matter, she shouldn’t have stolen that little glance up at him, his eyes so calmly fixed upon her breasts, which would continue their stupid fleshy jiggling, the harder she tugged at the damn, bloody, sodding left boot.

  When had she begun muttering to herself?

  “Now, now,” he chided her. “Can’t allow my batman such indecent vocabulary. Filthiest language I’ve heard since I poked my head in on the Penley sisters having their tea.”

  She snorted. “Don’t make me laugh, Kit, or I’ll never get this damn thing off you.”

  There was nothing for it, finally, but for her to straddle his outstretched left leg with her derriere indecorously turned toward his face. She sighed and he laughed at her. Let’s just get this over with, she thought.

  She held tight to the infuriating left boot.

  He’d pulled the stocking from his bootless right foot. “Less slipping about this way,” he explained, as he propped the sole of the warm and lively foot against her bum.

  He wriggled his toes a bit. “Now, when I count three…”

  She and the boot would both have gone flying across the room if he hadn’t caught her around the middle-hands squeezing her breasts; mouth against her neck; cock hard and impatient once more.

  She might lose every remaining shred of dignity if she were to continue rubbing back against him so crudely. She dropped the boot onto the floor and he loosened his hands from around her.

  “Let’s do this properly,” he said.

  He made short work of pantaloons, drawers, and his other stocking. Gloriously naked at last, he took the briefest of moments to preen for her before sweeping back the quilt with an extravagant flourish that made her giggle, and putting out his hand.

  She took it. “Dance for me,” he said.

  Nodding silently, moving slowly, while the years swirled and dissolved around them.

  He propped his head against the pillows and put a hand on each of her hips. His broad chest, coarse whorls of black hair interrupted by the vicious scar, rose and fell with his breath as he prodded her to straddle him, to open herself and grasp and envelop him. Not that much prodding was necessary-his hands, her hips, the pulse in his throat and the flesh rising and stiffening at the apex of her vulva, were all caught suspended in an aching sweetness of shared movement and slow time.

  Rising, she almost lifted herself off him. He shuddered, whistled through his teeth. She lowered herself as slowly as she could, coming back to rest against him, her arse against his hips and belly.

  More quickly now: she arched and curled her back, stroking herself against the length of his cock and molding herself around its thickness. Gasping, she watched the lines his features took, mirroring what her own must look like, eyes black and opaque, pupils distended as though drugged, mouth loose and slightly open. Thoughtful, almost meditative.

  He moved slowly beneath her, just the smallest arching of his hips keeping time with hers.

  Dance for me.

  In Constantinople, she’d watched a pasha being entertained by a suave-hipped dancing girl. Behind the curve of smoke from his hookah, he’d seemed almost bored by the painted eyes, veiled face, exquisite bare feet below ankle cuffs tinkling with tiny silver bells. But Mary had caught a slantwise view of his hand-the one not holding the hookah-compulsively opening and closing upon itself, in perfect rhythm with the drums.

  She’d pled a megrim and hurried back to her hotel. Her companions had supposed her offended by the spectacle, and Matthew Bakewell had begged her pardon the next morning, for exposing her to it.

  Kit would have known better than to beg her pardon.

  She raised her arms, stared down as though over a gossamer face veil, wiggled her shoul
der blades, and felt her breasts raise and bounce in rhythm. He couldn’t look completely serious; well, it was a bit ridiculous that he and she could take such delight in their shared, crude, dancing girl fancy-ridiculous and absurd, childish and really rather marvelous.

  He touched her nipples with cold fingertips. She gasped, moaned, and would have made a botch of the rhythm if he hadn’t taken it up for her, moving his hips and thrusting his cock up higher within her, with vehemence and perhaps a little more heat.

  But suddenly, there wasn’t a rhythm anymore. Nor a dance. There was only flesh and breath, muscle and movement and blood coursing beneath the skin. The oriental fancy had dissolved. There were only-they were simply-Mary and Kit once more. The notion that they could have imagined themselves anyone else was quaint and utterly nonsensical.

  Nothing more than what it was, and everything quite good enough. His hands, his mouth on her breasts: stroke and squeeze, tease and tongue and pull and suckle. His arms around her now, drawing her downward to grasp and hold him, beneath and within her, drenched and clinging, no music but their ragged breath.

  Chapter Sixteen

  She didn’t want to get out of bed. “Once I do,” she whispered, “I shall begin making troublesome inquiries about what you’ve been doing and whether it’s something I should approve of.”

  “By what right,” he asked, “will you be inquiring?” He said it curiously, rather lazily, his arms still tight around her.

  “None,” she said, “except I find I can’t separate out what you do in bed from what you do the rest of the time. Well, perhaps I can today. Make today a special, privileged day.”

  “I’m glad,” he said.

  “But next time…”

  “Do you want there to be a next time?” he asked.

  How odd, to be measuring time so stingily. In Curzon Street, they’d had nothing but time.

  She kissed him.

  “Yes, tomorrow afternoon. For in the morning Jessie and I will be writing out invitations to some local ladies, to discuss a cistern for the village.”

  “Cistern?”

  “There, you see, you’re curious about what I do as well. It’s natural for a couple…”

  Except that they weren’t one anymore. They drew their clothes on silently.

  “We dine at half past four today,” she said. “The young people will be returning from the ruins on Rook Hill. I must hurry.”

  He tied her stays just a bit too tightly for perfect comfort. She found that she didn’t mind. The pressure would be rather like an extension of his touch.

  She turned her neck to kiss him.

  He helped her pull the dress down over her head and did up the buttons.

  “Saturday, then. And we’ll tell each other a few things then. Unless I can contrive to make you forget what you want to know.”

  She laughed. “By all means, contrive away. I shan’t forget. Do your contriving first, though, won’t you. If we argue later, we’ll still be ahead of the game.”

  Stopping to dip her hands in clear rushing water, she drank deeply before hurrying away from the cottage. Climbing over the stile that pretended to be broken, hurrying down a footpath, leaving the outskirts of Rowen and entering the precincts of Beechwood Knolls, she felt her other selves joining with her.

  Aunt Mary.

  Provisional Treasurer of the newly organized Grefford Village Ladies’ Cistern Committee.

  Matthew Bakewell’s mistress (however did you manage it, Mary, to be unfaithful to your lover, with your husband of all people? Too complicated. She wouldn’t think of that particular self right now).

  The path had turned away from the river; the woods had thinned. The hill was a bit steep, but she managed it all right. Stepping over another stile, she made her way across the meadow to encounter a lonely Lord Ayres gazing poetically out toward the vista, his horse cropping the grass behind him.

  “Ah, good afternoon, your lordship,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  And not even very annoyed, on this privileged day, by his callow, violet-eyed presence. It was time, after all, to be Aunt Mary again. Even with her hair in elf locks and sleeves sopping water from the brook. While he was-as she’d come to expect him-all foppish elegance.

  “And the expedition? I trust you were properly moved by the spectacle of the Rook Hill ruins?”

  He shrugged-trying not to show the boyish pouts and sulks beneath his carefully cultivated demeanor. “The young ladies made very accomplished sketches. When they weren’t surveying the horizon for chance intruders, Miss Elizabeth Grandin in particular.”

  Too bad, she thought, that the girls were so pretty-it must make him feel awfully rejected. And she could guess whom Elizabeth had been scanning the horizon for-to show off to Fannie, as a marvel of the neighborhood, and a much better one than a stupid set of fake ruins.

  Poor boy, she wanted to be generous to him. “It must have been a bore for you,” she said-adult to adult, which seemed to cheer him a bit.

  “A walk in the forest like you’ve had,” he said now, “a simple, contemplative ramble, among the bluebells and butterflies, nightingales, dog roses, and wood anemones, would have suited me far better, and rested my unquiet spirit, don’t you know.”

  She might not have been able to keep from laughing were it not for the double infelicity of his phrasing-his own peevishness elevated to unquiet spirit rather canceling out the absurdity of her afternoon recast as a simple, contemplative ramble.

  The problem was what she might possibly offer in reply, if Unquiet spirit, my arse was forbidden to her. A simple nod was best, a wistful, respectful softening of her eyes, in deference to his unquiet spirit and the demands it made upon him.

  Yes, he liked that. “My father has a similar set of ruins at home,” he told her, “not far from the Chinese bridge the landscape gardener erected when I was a boy.”

  She laughed (for he really wasn’t so bad in his way), and he smiled his eagerness to share his contempt for his father’s boorishness. For it seemed he’d decided she was a kindred spirit, or at least a sympathetic one-especially after a wearing day of being ignored by two pretty girls.

  “But there’s nothing in our homely British Isles like the Colosseum at twilight. In Rome, you know.”

  “Yes, I imagined you must mean the Colosseum in Rome.”

  “When I was there,” he told her, “I caught a glimpse of Lord Byron, silhouetted against the pillars. I recognized him immediately, even from a distance, and hurried to pay him my regards and to invite him to dine with me. Very decent he was too, very apologetic that he’d be leaving in just two hours.”

  As Byron often did when confronted with eager young devotees. Unless, of course, he was particularly strapped for pocket cash, and in need of a good dinner.

  “A pity he couldn’t stay,” she murmured.

  “I’d wanted his opinion on some little scribbles of my own.”

  Even if penniless and ravenous, Byron would be off when the devotee was a would-be poet.

  “Still, he thought we might well bump into one another again. And more than once-after that… do you know, Lady Christopher, that we almost did bump into each other again? Several times, at some particularly poetical venue, I’d arrive to find that he’d just departed-well, the demands upon his time, you know, the exacting standards that genius must answer to…”

  The important thing at this moment was how to turn the conversation, or she’d be in for a look at those scribbles herself. Luckily, her bootlace had come loose. She bent, with a tiny sigh, to tie it.

  “But you’re tired from your ramble. Would you like to ride up to the house? I could lead you back.”

  Which was generous and even rather charming of him, if a bit excessively picturesque. And if Elizabeth’s antiquated relative were to show a bit too much ankle, perched up on his saddle, she couldn’t imagine any harm in it.

  “Yes, thank you,” she told him. And he led her back to what turned out to be an
excellent dinner-a fine sensible English version, in fact, of the marinated capon dish.

  After which she was happy to retire early.

  To hum carelessly, as Peggy wrestled unhappily with her stays-for the knot Kit had tied could evidently have held down the rigging of a warship.

  And, “No, nothing tonight. I think I’ll sleep quite well without it.”

  He’d stayed behind to watch her walk down the footpath. And then to fiddle with his neckcloth, straining to catch his reflection in a windowpane.

  She was right. Delicious as the day had been, they wouldn’t be able to continue in this way. Yes, they still enjoyed pretend fancies-and he’d already had some thoughts about the “contrivance” he’d be working up for their next time together.

  But he also very much wanted to tell and ask her things. Real things. Trivial things. Cisterns. In the army, he’d known a chap who was an engineer. Interesting to try to explain it to her, though; all quite new.

  Was that what happened when you grew up, made a place in the world for yourself?

  Years ago when there’d been no other place for them, they’d found each other here in the cottage, away from the world’s gossip, petty rivalries, minor and not so minor injustices. Curious and alert, ignorant and volatile, they’d made a place for themselves where no one knew where to find them. Running, rambling, wrestling-touching, kissing, making love-fleet and changeable as the woodland creatures in the myths.

  What, who, were they now?

  He shrugged. Time to be getting back; he patted at his waistcoat pockets to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind.

  His watch. No longer on the table where he’d left it. Must have gotten knocked off, rolled behind the book that had been peeking out from under the bed. He retrieved the watch and the book too. All the creatures of myth and legend, bound up in a witty, powerful, and thoughtful volume.