His One Woman

by Paula Marshall

  He discovered Aunt Percival and Marietta in the main salon. Marietta’s face bore the stigmata of tiredness far more than Sophie’s did, but then, she had been the one who had displayed the spirit and the energy to get them to the place where he had found them. It lit up when she saw him, and his own pleasure was such that he thought that he might as well be carrying a banner saying ‘I love Marietta Hope,’ so plainly was his affection for her written on his face.

  ‘Jack!’ she greeted him. ‘I’m so pleased to find you here.’ She turned to Avory Grant, who was standing beside her, having made his way back to Washington after his regiment had broken and fled the field. ‘I was just telling Avory how gallantly you rescued Sophie and me.’

  ‘No gallantry,’ said Jack. ‘You were rescuing yourself when I found you. I was merely the master of the chariot on which you travelled the last part of the journey home.’

  Avory nodded his approval. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, ‘that one might trust Marietta to do the right thing; she makes a habit of it. She should have been leading the Army.’

  Jack was not sure that he felt happy at hearing another man, who was a possible rival, praising her. The admiring attention of both men had brought a lovely flush to her face which hid her tiredness and improved her looks.

  How could anyone call her plain? thought Jack. She makes Sophie look like a characterless and importunate kitten. Avory was thinking the same thing. He was also, somewhat ruefully, registering that Marietta only had eyes for Jack, and that his own hopes of winning her were vain.

  Marietta was aching for Jack. She wished them all away: Avory, Aunt Percival and the crowd around them. She wanted to be in a place where they only knew each other. In some way the journey from Manassas had sealed whatever had already lain between them and had made it deeper and stronger. They had both learned how transient and fleeting life was, and that the opportunities for fulfilment in it must be grasped, not lost.

  As though he were aware of what lay between the lovers, Avory said, relinquishing his last claim on Marietta, ‘You will wish to be alone to talk over what passed after the battle. I am sure that Aunt Percival and I will be only too happy to excuse you.’

  Etiquette or no etiquette, Jack and Marietta needed no second invitation. With a grateful ‘Thank you,’ Jack led Marietta away. Aunt Percival—she had known Avory since he and Marietta had been children together, and was also Avory’s distant relative—turned to him and said, as kindly as she could, ‘It has been like that with them since they first met.’

  Avory nodded. ‘I was too late. I can only say how pleased I am that she has found happiness at last—I can only wish that she had accepted me all those years ago.’

  ‘You were both too young then,’ said Aunt Percival, still kind. ‘You had to grow up, and unfortunately, when you did, Jack had found her first. He is a good man from what appears to be a remarkable family.’

  ‘Her father told me the other day,’ Avory said, ‘that his brother is a member of the British government and has a title. Better than that, they are, I understand, both clever men. On the other hand, if he does not treat her properly, be sure I shall always be there for her.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that you need have any fears for her future happiness,’ were Aunt Percival’s last words to him: brave words which she was to remember later.

  ‘Supper,’ said Jack, when they had left the others. ‘Let me take you into supper.’ He told himself that he was the true son of his father, to whom food had always been important.

  ‘Supper,’ agreed Marietta, laughing up at him. ‘I do believe that the only time that we did not talk about food was on the way home from Manassas.’

  ‘Too busy eating humble pie,’ said Jack obligingly. ‘We had gone there for a victory and it turned into a rout.’

  The smile left Marietta’s face. She looked around the supper room at the gaily dressed crowd eating and drinking. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I feel guilty about being here and enjoying myself—junketing, as the British say. On the other hand I also feel that it is important that we show the flag and are not down-hearted. There will be other battles and we shall not lose them all, I hope.’

  They were neither of them hungry so they soon moved out of the supper-room and on to the terrace where they were, for a time, alone. The moon was already high, and Jack found that her nearness, as well as the scent of lily-of-the-valley perfume and Marietta mingled, was heady enough for him to take her into his arms. He began to kiss her.

  He had meant to be gentle at first, but her response to him was so immediate that all caution, all holding back because he knew that in the lists of love she was untried, flew away at the first touch of her tender lips. She was warm and comfortable in his arms as though that was where she was always meant to be.

  He kissed the cleft between her beautiful breasts before slipping her dress down the more to reveal them. She made no demur at all, clinging to him the harder, finding from she knew not where exactly what a woman should do when being embraced by her lover. His desire for her and hers for him was so powerful that they could have fulfilled their passion there, on the terrace, all decorum, all rules of conduct, ignored.

  What saved them from committing themselves completely was the sound of other guests coming through the glass doors. They sprang apart and began to re-order their clothing, pretending that they were admiring the garden and the beauty of the warm summer night.

  ‘You will visit me tomorrow?’ she asked him while they strolled back into the ballroom. ‘I am home again: you will not have to run the gauntlet of Sophie and the Hopes.’

  He took her hand in his to kiss her farewell. ‘Be very sure that I shall. My time in Washington is nearly at an end and I intend to make the most of it.’

  If there was a double meaning in his words, then so be it. Having tasted for a moment of the sweets of mutual passion, neither of them could wait to enjoy them again. Both of them were unaware of the eyes trained on them: Sophie’s were jealous and vengeful ones, Avory’s sad and regretful, while Aunt Percival and her friends agreed that it was time that such a sterling treasure as Marietta Hope should find happiness at last.

  Marietta was alone when Jack arrived the next day—or rather Aunt Percival tactfully removed herself when he was announced. ‘You don’t want an old woman making a fifth wheel,’ being her trenchant comment to Marietta. ‘I’ll go and arrange for tea to be served.’

  It was pleasant to be with Marietta again without either Sophie or her aunt to be considered, Jack thought. He had sternly told himself to behave properly when he was in her own home, but the sight of her did dreadful things to his composure. By her expression Marietta was suffering from the same affliction.

  Nevertheless, as the servants came and went with the tea, they behaved themselves. ‘We’re just like an old married couple,’ was Jack’s remark when they had gone, which set Marietta choking over her tea cup.

  ‘I don’t feel like an old married couple,’ she said when she could speak again.

  ‘Nor I,’ said Jack. He looked naughtily at her over the rim of his cup. ‘Dare I suggest that we meet somewhere where we are not likely to be interrupted at any moment? I learned this morning that I shall be leaving for New York tomorrow—with the Presidential Committee’s blessing. I am to work with Ericsson on his newly designed iron-clad, the Monitor, in both an official and an unofficial capacity. I have the feeling that the Patriarch would approve of my double duties. More to the point, I feel that we have much to say to one another privately before I leave.’

  Marietta put down her tea cup and said in a prim voice, ‘I suppose that you might have some suggestions as to where this important conference should take place?’

  ‘Only one,’ said Jack. ‘I fear that I must ask you to visit my rooms—tomorrow.’

  ‘Fear,’ said Marietta, raising her eyebrows. ‘Are you sure that fear is the right word here?’ She was discovering in herself a previously unknown ability to flirt with a gentleman in a man
ner which could only be described as suggestive. Now, wherever had she learned to behave like that?

  ‘Hope,’ returned Jack. ‘I hope that you will agree to visit me there. Is that better? After all, hope is your name.’

  ‘Much better,’ said Marietta. ‘We are agreed, then?’

  ‘As ever,’ said Jack. He wished that the Patriarch had lived long enough to meet her—his one woman; there was no doubt of that.

  ‘We must behave ourselves,’ she added.

  ‘Of course,’ Jack said, giving her a wistful smile. ‘I would not wish to do anything that you would not wish me to do.’

  There was a double meaning in this, too, but Marietta ignored it. Where Jack was concerned, all the rules which had governed her quiet and orderly life seemed to have disappeared. She could hardly wait for tomorrow afternoon to come so that she could do that dreadfully wrong thing, be alone with a gentleman in his lodgings, but she did not tell him so.

  The thought of their private meeting on the morrow enabled them to behave as decorously as even the most severe book of etiquette could wish. Aunt Percival came in shortly before Jack left, and he told her of his coming visit to New York.

  ‘We shall miss you,’ she said, and sincerity rang in her voice. Here was the one man to whom she would give her charge without compunction, for she still thought of herself as Marietta’s guardian. She might not have been so happy had she known of their coming secret tryst, for neither of them mentioned it, and when Marietta left the house on the next day Aunt Percival assumed that she was making one of her regular visits to an old friend and relative.

  ‘Comfortable, but not luxurious,’ was Marietta’s verdict on Jack’s rooms. He had taken her bonnet and placed it on the dresser which occupied one wall. He had a spirit lamp with a kettle boiling on it, a tea-pot and cups and saucers ready for her. There was even a plate of small sweet biscuits on the table before the sofa. Everything, indeed, seemed orderly and proper—except the inward emotions of the two principals in this impromptu tea party.

  Actually drinking the tea compelled them to behave themselves as though they were in the Senator’s best parlour. If Jack had thought at all of what might happen when Marietta visited him, he might have imagined them engaging in some light and amusing conversation after which he would ask her to marry him. Once he had done so, they might perhaps indulge themselves in some light and juvenile lovemaking guaranteed not to frighten an untried maiden lady in her late twenties.

  At first everything went as he might have imagined it would, for Jack had absolutely no intention of seducing Marietta and she was equally determined not to be seduced. Even their brief bout of passionate lovemaking on the Van Horns’ terrace had not warned them of how strong their feelings were for one another.

  Matters began to go wrong—or was it right?—shortly after the tea was drunk and the biscuits eaten. Jack moved the table away from the sofa and sat down beside Marietta, who was glowing as though she were in her late teens. First the strong wind through which she had walked to Jack’s lodgings, and then the combination of tea, biscuits, Jack’s exciting presence, and the knowledge that she was doing something daring, had all combined to excite her. Her eyes shone and her voice trembled.

  She looked so enchanting and inviting that as soon as Jack had sat down beside her he could not stop himself from turning towards her and taking her in his arms and kissing her. The kiss began as an innocent, friendly one, but as a result of Marietta’s enthusiastic response to him it rapidly turned into something more passionate.

  In an instant they were lost.

  She was so warm and welcoming in his arms that Jack could not restrain himself from stroking her intimately, only to discover that beneath her prim dress she was not wearing stays or any of the usual carapaces which ladies saw fit to put on beneath their dresses. This knowledge excited him so much that he went on to become even more bold and definite.

  First he unbuttoned the high neck of her walking dress and pulled it down so that he could get more easily at the treasures which it hid. Far from preventing him from unveiling her most private self, Marietta assisted him—not only by undressing herself but by undressing him.

  She removed his stock: next his shirt took on an abandoned air when Marietta briskly unbuttoned it so that she might return his caresses with interest. All of this was accomplished without the necessity for speech, unless broken and breathless endearments, freely offered to one another, could be counted as such.

  Given that Marietta’s previous lovemaking had been confined to a few chaste kisses offered by Avory, it was surprising how quickly she mastered the basics of it, and at times took the lead herself. It could have been a matter for debate which unbuttoned the other the more readily, their clothing seeming superfluous to the matter in hand.

  There was no doubt, indeed, where their ultimate destination lay. They saw and felt only each other as they struggled, mouth to mouth, across the room and through the door into Jack’s bedchamber.

  Marietta, whose body vibrated as though it had been invaded by a thousand butterflies, suddenly felt the bed behind her knees through the thick fabric of her dress, and then she was on her back on it, Jack above her, his hands busily removing her remaining clothes. What shook her most in memory afterwards was that she could not wait to be free of them, she wanted him so.

  She remembered how, long ago, one of the women servants at the old Percival plantation had told her what men and women did in the act of love, and how it had horrified her. The servant had given a fat laugh. ‘Oh, you’ll want it, right enough,’ she’d said. ‘When it happens to you, you’ll see.’

  And now she did want it. Oh, let him not be a gentleman and stop, I could not bear it. He is all I want—and this—for her body was suddenly free of clothing, and was his for the taking.

  Jack was beyond being a gentleman. The long weeks of continence, of seeing her, of suddenly wanting her, and not being able to do anything but hold her hand, had brought him to this. Her face, called plain by others, was never plain to him: he saw her bright intelligence, her wit and her gallant spirit shining through it. He loved her so much that he could almost have killed Sophie for her mockery of her cousin at the Van Horns and before that, when she had tried to demean her after Marietta had saved her at Manassas.

  Her body, divested of its clothing, was as beautiful as he had thought that it would be. All of the rules which he had made for himself, of respecting untried, unmarried women, were cast to the winds when her passionate responses fuelled his, until, linked together in mind and body, they climbed the mountain to where joy and fulfilment waited for them both.

  They had celebrated their first happy meeting over their mutual delight in food and drink, and now it was their bodies’ deeper demands which they obeyed on their last meeting before Jack left for New York.

  Afterwards they dozed off, with Marietta’s head on Jack’s chest. She woke up to find that Jack now had his head on her stomach and was kissing it gently, doing improbable things with his tongue. The butterflies which had undone her earlier when she had first arrived at his lodgings were undoing her again.

  Jack suddenly raised his head and looked up at her.

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he told her earnestly, ‘any of it. It is all quite wrong. I never intended to seduce you, things just got out of hand. You must believe that, Marietta.’ Having said that, he started to seduce her again, so that even her toes curled up as a consequence of the sensations he was creating in her errant body!

  She felt a wild desire to laugh immoderately, to do a delighted jig around the bedroom; instead, she said to him, equally earnestly, ‘Pray do not stop now, on my account. The deed is done.’

  Such odd feelings were coursing through her that she found speaking difficult. ‘We may as well continue to enjoy ourselves,’ she gasped out at last, ‘since we seem to deal so well together…oh…oh…oh…’ Speaking suddenly became impossible: gentle groaning seemed to be in order.

  After a
few moments of bliss Jack lifted his head again to say wickedly, ‘It is all your fault; you should not be so beautiful. It leaves a poor man no defence.’

  ‘There is no need to resort to empty flattery to excuse your behaviour,’ replied Marietta severely. ‘I am well aware of my own lack of looks. I can only be surprised at finding myself where I am, doing such impossible and improper things. Oh, please, don’t stop,’ she begged him when he looked up again. ‘It is far too late for repentance. I am well and truly ruined!’

  ‘I was not referring to your face, although you have a very nice face,’ said Jack, before addressing himself to her nether regions again, ‘whatever that cat Sophie says of it. No, I mean your body, Marietta. How fortunate I am that I am the only man to see it—you would be knocked down in the rush to get at it if it ever received as much exposure as your face. Your legs, my darling, are superb,’ and he proceeded to favour them with his attentions, too.

  Marietta thought hazily that this was all quite different from what she had occasionally pictured might happen to her. She had expected a decorous wedding night—if she ever married, that was. How was a decorous wedding night ever possible? Could this…this…experience…ever be decorous? This wild and irresponsible lovemaking without benefit of clergy, after matters had got out of hand so quickly once they had drunk their tea, came as a considerable shock to her.

  Was tea taken alone with one’s lover an aphrodisiac? She had, by accident, come across the word once and had read about it with some disbelief. With savages, powdered rhinoceros horn seem to be involved, but she could hardly believe that Jack had fed her that. Really, though, all that aside, the biggest shock of all was her own willing and gleeful co-operation in her downfall.