Grahame, Lucia

by The Painted Lady

  I handed him the vial.

  But he seemed not to understand me, for he merely took it from my fingers, replaced the cap, and laid it upon the table beside the lamp.

  He unhooked his leg from the arm of the chair and stretched out both feet.

  “Would you mind?” he said, with just a trace of his old diffidence.

  I unlaced his shoes and slipped them off. He curled his toes and smiled at me, perhaps somewhat more warmly than before.

  I did not smile.

  The silent night held its breath.

  With a somewhat moody and restless air, he then stood and wandered about the room. He lifted one of the panels of lavishly flowered chintz from the window where I had stood earlier, gazed outward for a moment or two, and at last let the hanging fall back.

  Next he strolled over to the bed, raised up Mrs. Ward from among the pillows, shook his head slightly as he examined her for a moment, and then lifted his eyebrows at me and his hand to his mouth in a pantomime of a yawn.

  Against my will, a smile forced itself to my mouth. Well, how not? There was something wickedly amusing in his expression.

  He let the virtuous matron fall and filled his arms instead with the pillows where she had lain. These he brought close to where I still knelt, now with my arms folded about me. He laid the pillows before the hearth.

  “Lie down,” he said.

  With mingled reluctance and eagerness, I unwrapped my arms and attempted to arrange myself as modestly as possible among the lush hummocks of pale blue satin. I expected my husband to reclaim his seigneurial position in the chair, but instead, rather to my surprise, he removed his coat, laid it upon the chair, and lowered himself to the thick carpet at my side.

  Regrettably, my unprincipled flesh still felt poised to welcome his touch; however, it was not to be. Slowly he removed his tie and loosened the high collar of his white shirt. The fear, or perhaps the wish, that he might bind me interestingly with the tie shot across my incorrigible mind. But he did not. He merely watched me quietly and thoughtfully, until I longed to snatch his coat from the chair and cover my persistent blushes.

  “What is the trouble?” he said at last.

  I shifted my posture slightly in a futile effort to better conceal myself amid the pillows.

  “Ah,” he said. “You feel yourself to be insufficiently clothed. I have something for that. If you’ll go to my bedroom, you will find a small carved wooden box upon the mantelshelf. I’d like you to bring it to me.”

  I didn’t move.

  After a short while, my husband sighed, pulled out his watch, glanced at it with a frown, and threw an inquiring eye at me.

  Thus rebuked, I stood up uneasily and took a step toward my dressing room, hoping to gain it, and a dressing gown, without interference.

  My husband, alert as a serpent, shot out his hand and caught my ankle firmly.

  “That’s not the way,” he said.

  “But it will be cold out there,” I protested, not wishing to voice my real objection.

  “Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully. “I think it may invigorate you.”

  There was nothing for it but to reveal my true concern.

  “But… what if… if someone should…?”

  “No one will see you,” said he rather impatiently.

  Still I could not move.

  “No one will see you,” he repeated, now with a real edge to his voice. “No one is even remotely close by. It is one of the great pleasures of being the master of this house. I can depend on everyone to do exactly what I tell them. Even you.”

  This was a curious remark: My husband’s behavior toward his servants had never given the smallest indication that he actually savored the power of ordering them about. In fact, despite the veneer of calm assurance, I had always thought his air suggested quite the opposite.

  But my husband was proving that still waters may indeed run very deep, and I knew it would be unwise to provoke his anger.

  I stepped into the dim passage that led from my rooms to the gallery and made my way, under the haughty painted stares of countless generations of Camwells, along the gallery’s polished oak floorboards to my husband’s rooms, in which I had never set foot.

  If I had harbored any curiosity about his unknown bedchamber, there was hardly enough light now to satisfy it. The gas was low and the fire unlit. The chilly air from the open windows nipped at my skin.

  I made my way to the mantelshelf and found the ornate little box. It was no more than four inches square and fastened with a little brass lock. Trying to envision a garment made of gossamer so fine that it could be folded into that tiny chest, I shook the box gently and heard a muffled jingle. I could have speculated all night on what lay inside, but I decided to return to him quickly and put an end to my curiosity and the charade.

  My husband lay comfortably in the fire glow, resting on his elbows with his legs crossed. He lifted a lazy hand to take the box.

  “The key is in the pocket of my coat,” he said.

  I found the tiny object and gave it to him.

  Then, once again ensconced among the warm satin pillows, I watched him unlock the box. He drew out a piece of cotton wool and unrolled it to reveal a glittering tangle of delicate chains hung with miniature bells.

  “Hold out your hand,” he said.

  I extended my arm. Slowly he glided his fingertips along the inside of my arm from elbow to wrist two or three times; then he brought them to my shoulder and traced the whole length of my bare arm. Slowly, slowly, he repeated those light, hypnotic strokes as I eased back among the pillows. My eyelids drifted downward. Just as I let them fall shut, persuaded that nothing in all the world could ever really destroy my peace again so long as that gentle, rhythmic touch continued, he clasped a tinkling bracelet around my wrist.

  “Now the other hand,” he said, and fastened the second flimsy manacle.

  He got to his knees and moved along my body.

  “Lift your foot.”

  The third little shackle claimed my ankle.

  “This one.”

  But now, instead of merely engaging the clasp of the last of my fetters, he began to stroke my leg, as he had my arm, first only from knee to ankle, then extending his tender explorations along my inner thigh. I sighed and stretched involuntarily and jingled. His hand glided back to my foot. I felt the anklet snap shut around me.

  “Now,” he said, looking down at me with a smile, “every time you quiver, all your bells will tell me of your hungers. Even if you won’t.”

  I lifted my right wrist slowly and examined it.

  By this time, I felt so captive to my longings that he might as well have hobbled me in irons. But my new adornments were not iron—they were not even silver. They had been fashioned of the most tawdry material imaginable— white brass. I do not say this with scorn: Amid all the ancient splendors of Charingworth, they seemed like a lovely little breath of life. They sang and chattered among themselves, cheerfully indifferent to the haughty disapproval of the frigid, aristocratic diamonds at my throat.

  “What has made you smile?” whispered my husband.

  I recomposed my face and did not answer.

  With a little sigh, he got up, and began to wander about the room again with his hands in his pockets. At the table beside my bed he paused and eyed the crystal dish thoughtfully. He looked at me and back at the dish. Then he uncovered it and popped one of the hard mints into his mouth.

  I almost laughed. Perhaps the poor fellow was not quite so confident as he seemed! Perhaps he imagined it was his breath which had once made his kisses unwelcome! He needn’t have worried; his mouth was as warm and sweet as a summer pasture.

  He strolled back with a sly, wolfish grin to where I lay. Then he knelt upon the pillows at my feet. He pushed my thighs apart gently and, with his mouth, deposited the mint between my legs, pressing it firmly with his tongue into the little crevice of flesh. I gasped and jingled.

  “Ah,” whispered my husband, liftin
g his head. “I think you are beginning to make your wishes known.”

  My knees tightened further; my hips rose.

  He bent his head back to me and began slowly to lick the mint. Lost in strange and delicious sensations, I pressed my knuckles to my lips. But no matter how well I muffled my cries, those gossiping bells would not be silenced.

  How sweetly did my husband’s warm mouth console the tender skin where the menthol burned with a cool, distant flame, like melting ice. Slowly, slowly his tongue eroded the little mint; his languid concentration proclaimed that he was entirely absorbed in his own pleasures. Mine, although almost uncontainable, seemed purely incidental.

  Yet I forgot everything except the promise of rapture. I could not have told you his name, or my own.

  And then he took his mouth away and, with it, the last trace of mint.

  I watched him stand up and bend to pick his tie from the carpet and his coat from the chair.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “I’m off to bed,” he said with a little yawn. “You seemed disgruntled earlier at having been… awakened. I won’t rob you any further of your sleep.”

  I rose to my knees. I could feel my face growing dark. I wanted to wrap my arms and legs around him. I imagined the faint scratch against my skin of the fine wool that covered his legs.

  I watched him hang his tie around his neck without knotting it, fold his coat over his arm, and move toward the door.

  Words of protest trembled on my lips—I couldn’t have said whether I was struggling to push them back or to force them out.

  And then, although I believed myself to be entirely petrified with confusion and dismay, the little bells spoke for me.

  My husband, whose hand had just fallen to the door handle, turned.

  “Did you say something?” he asked.

  Everything that had made him seem almost warm and approachable earlier was gone. There was not even the hint of a smile. His face might have been carved from ice.

  “Oh, don’t go yet,” I said helplessly.

  “No? Why not?”

  The four syllables I had spoken had exhausted my supply. He watched me for a short while with barely concealed irritation and then, with a shrug, turned and reached again for the door.

  “Wait,” I said.

  He didn’t even pause. He pulled the door open and stepped into the gallery.

  “Please,” I whispered desperately.

  He began to draw the door slowly shut.

  I was bereft of words, but desire pulled me to my feet and across the room. The bells made a soft clamor. I caught the door before it clicked shut.

  With a sigh of exasperation, my husband stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him. He looked at me for a long while with an expression of severe disapproval.

  Finally, he said, “I asked very little of you tonight. Would you agree?”

  “Yes,” I said, falling back from him.

  “Did I force myself upon you unpleasantly in any way?” he asked.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Did I require anything that was objectionable to you?”

  “Not really,” I said, although I had not especially appreciated being asked to fetch things.

  “And even so,” he continued, “in one or two instances, you did not show quite as much alacrity as I have every right to expect from you. You know what I am referring to, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, reviewing my little failures.

  He took a step toward me. I took a step back.

  “You have disappointed me more than once tonight,” he said. “When I express a wish, I like to see it fulfilled instantly, even with enthusiasm. I know, of course, that you are half dead and can feel no enthusiasm for anything, but I would have preferred an imitation of it, at least. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.” I closed my eyes, too overwhelmed by confusion even to look at him.

  “If I stay longer with you tonight,” he said, his words seeming to reach me through a thick mist, “it will be on one condition. You will not balk at anything I ask of you. I leave it to you. I will go now and count tonight to your account, since, although you were occasionally dilatory, you acquitted yourself well enough, for the most part. Or I will stay, on my conditions—but at your wish. It rests with you. Do I stay or go?”

  “Stay,” I whispered.

  I swayed and jingled as he led me back to the hearthside and laid me down upon the pillows.

  “Undress me,” he commanded when we were stretched out before the fire. “Slowly. As slowly as you can.”

  I moved closer to him and began to unfasten the buttons of his waistcoast.

  He sighed.

  “Don’t rush,” he whispered. “I can feel how eager you are, but try to control yourself. Take your time.”

  It was maddening to force myself to that unhurried pace, but in the end it only sharpened my hunger. As I contemplated the climactic pleasures in store—who could have said how long it would take to achieve them?—I could not help savoring the small but no less sweet ones immediately at hand. The slight drag against my skin of the fine wool that clothed him, more teasing even than I had imagined it;the almost imperceptible fragrance of lavender that wafted from his shirt, the hands which lay so lightly upon my waist as I absorbed the knowledge that the task he had set for me was not an obstacle to fulfillment but a means of enhancing it.

  Yet I had unbuttoned only his waistcoat and his shirt when he told me to stop. He drew back from me a little. The very aura of controlled desire he radiated made me long to submerge myself in the impersonal heat and forgetfulness that his still presence next to me both promised and withheld.

  I moved perhaps a centimeter closer to him.

  “No,” he said.

  He began, in his calm, unhasty way, to remove his remaining clothing himself. I steadied my breath a little and watched the firelight move like a sculptor’s fingers over his cool, hard body.

  At last he leaned over me, but without touching me.

  “You’re so compliant tonight,” he said almost tenderly. “You must be very hungry for your freedom, mon fleur du miel.”

  I felt a twist of sadness. For an instant, I thought he had used Frederick’s nickname for me. But he had called me something quite different—a flower, not of evil, but of sweetness… honey.

  He brought his hand to my cheek and stroked it softly. I closed my eyes. Only the sudden sharp intake of my breath could have told him of the effect of that light touch.

  He bent his head. I caught the scents of mint and smoke and my own secrets as his mouth moved close to mine.

  I tipped my head back and opened my lips.

  How long I had resisted those kisses! Now I craved his mouth, wanting to savor and prolong every sensation that could melt away my frozen, imprisoning armor of misery and isolation.

  He barely grazed my lips with his.

  Then he pulled himself to his knees and gently coaxed me into the same position, facing him.

  Keeping his lips lightly on mine, he reached out and took my shoulders gently to bring me closer. My breasts brushed his chest with every long, shivering breath I took.

  “You are free now,” whispered my husband at last, releasing me, “to do as you like…. How will you use your liberty?”

  For an answer, I put my arms around his neck, sank back upon the pillows, pulling him down to me, and brought my wild mouth to his.

  I knew I was lost; his revenge was already complete. But then he betrayed himself; his kisses grew as hot and urgent as my own; his arms tightened around me, he gave a small, gasping moan, and in that instant I saw how I might turn his own unsparing weapons against him.

  With a reckless exhilaration I had never known before, I seized upon the catechism of secret lore with which my grandmother had inculcated me, the practice of which I had begun and refined with Frederick.

  As my husband’s lips and tongue melded gloriously with mine, I moved one hand d
ownward. My husband gripped my straying wrist. I caught his lower lip between my teeth and nipped it tenderly as a warning. He drew in his breath sharply and released my hand.

  I found and tested his desire for me. And then I let my hand move further, to enclose, with the utmost gentleness, the soft rounds of delicate, pendulous flesh I had never ventured to handle. I pressed my fingers there with the assurance born of the harlot’s knowledge and felt the violence of his response. I moved my fingers further.

  My husband’s arms fell away from me. His head dropped among the pillows we shared. He lay back, his eyes closed, his fine, long sinews tensed.

  An even deeper thrill began to take possession of me as I observed his efforts to master himself.

  At first the thought of going beyond this had seemed repugnant, but now the lust for power proved too much for me. I let my hand fall away and watched him press his lips together hard as if to curb a plea.

  I waited a few seconds, and then I moved downward, between his hard thighs, and bent over him. Touching him lightly with my tongue, I lifted his hips gently and laid another pillow beneath them. My lips and tongue began to perform every act my hands had rehearsed before. I listened with maddening satisfaction to his sobbing breath as I laid my hands inside his thighs and pressed them further apart.

  Nothing deterred me: His scent and his skin were fresh and inviting; to hear him groan softly and to feel him shudder as my fearless tongue explored him only spurred me on.

  And then he broke free and sat up, panting. I knelt facing him. Frozen, we stared at each other like sleepwalkers jolted from their trance.

  I watched the dazed expression ebb slowly from his face to be replaced by something like anger.

  I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, he was watching me with the cruel and wary eyes of a lion tamer.

  “Come here,” he said.

  I inched closer.

  He took my wrists and brought them together above my head, holding them in one hand. The other hand slid downward and began to play with me. He had regained his self-control, but within seconds he brought me to the limits of mine. He took his hand away. I shut my eyes again, knowing his were still open and upon me. Tears began to burn against my lashes as I strained toward him.