by Anya Delvay
Truth be told, I would give it all up to have David in my life, in my bed, once more. Yet, even though I know I could still have him, I cannot back down.
Perhaps there is a streak of honour in me as well. Or is it simply stubbornness that makes me refuse to respond to his flowers and letters?
Imogene clutches my hand briefly, and I know what is happening even before I turn my gaze back to the ball and see how close David and Miss Frasier will pass to where we are sitting. I have refused to hide, to slink about in the shadows as though ashamed, but I will admit to avoiding this meeting for as long as possible.
Everyone in our vicinity stops to watch the encounter, hoping for a salacious bit of gossip to pass along. Not by a twitch of an eyebrow will I provide one.
Ignoring David, I look at Miss Frasier and see the glint of triumph behind her arrogant façade. With a slight smile on my lips, I acknowledge her, my expression a silent reminder that although I have retreated from the fray, her war is far from over. I know she understands when a rush of colour stains her cheeks.
“Lady Bledsoe, Lady Gillingham.” Elegant as ever, David makes a leg, first to Imogene and then to me. “Wonderful to see you tonight.”
“And you, Harrington,” Imogene replies in her frostiest tones, “Miss Frasier.”
What is there for me to add? I meet David’s gaze but only long enough to return his greeting. In his eyes, I glimpse something indefinable that makes my heart stumble in my chest. Thankfully the orchestra strikes a note, announcing the start of the next dance.
“You will excuse us, won’t you?” Miss Frasier asks, turning to smile up at David. “I believe the next set is about to begin.”
“Oh course,” I reply. “You young people go and enjoy yourselves.”
If the act of looking at a person could cause murder, I would be dead twice over. I had always teased David about the difference in our ages, although he is only two years my junior. Apparently he no longer finds my bamming palatable. As for Miss Frasier, she is right in thinking my words condescending.
Genuinely amused for the first time in days and days, I wave them off with a bright smile, which I do not allow to fade, even after they have turned to take their places on the ballroom floor.
“Oh, my dear.” Imogene’s fan beats the air in double-time, a sure sign of excitement. “Such a look she gave you. Bad form, when she has so obviously won the day.”
Has she?
As David stands across from Miss Frasier, an image of him with arms uplifted and tied to my bedpost invades my mind. It is not the memory I cherish most but seems the one that returns most often to my thoughts. There were nights of tenderness, of pure passion during the two years we were together, and others of exploration and unbridled lust. Before David I had only heard whispers of things such as flagellation and cunnilingus, glimpsed woodcut prints illustrating them, but had no such experience. With him I felt safe and willing to experience every conceivable way for two people to find pleasure. As our association deepened, I learned to read his moods, anticipate his desires, as each mood seemed to need a different method of expression.
Looking around the ballroom, I wondered how many of the women there could count themselves as lucky as I have been to know a man so deeply, so thoroughly.
“Smile, my dear,” Imogene whispers, fan fluttering wildly, “or they will think you are sunk in melancholy.”
I laugh and lean in closer to whisper in return, “Little do they know I am wondering who next to take as my lover.”
She laughs with me, sending me a slanting, sideways look, and the ball continues winding its way to a customary end. Even having flirted and danced and pretended to accept a rather risqué suggestion put to me by a handsome, if inebriated, gentleman, I leave alone and am glad of it.
The flowers and letters cease, and if in the privacy of my boudoir I am despondent, no one outside of my lady’s maid, who is forced to wash a preponderance of handkerchiefs, knows it. I accept as many invitations as ever, have the customary number of callers, allow the same intimacies as I did before. There is no one but myself to blame for the hollow ache inside. I never allowed myself to even dream David would be mine in any other way than the one he was, but the hope had inveigled its way into my thoughts anyway. Obviously I had allowed the length of our affaire to dull my better senses.
David’s marriage to Miss Frasier goes as planned, and they leave for a wedding tour of the Continent. By the time they return, I promise myself, all will be forgotten. Already the new pattern of my life has begun to emerge and can only improve with time.
If I continue to remind myself of this, it will be so.
Chapter Four
“As one gets older, it becomes evident that time is not just unkind but a tyrant.”
Sitting naked before her dressing table, Imogene pulls at the skin of her neck, stretching it up toward her ears in an effort to smooth away the wrinkles. It is a futile gesture, and not only because we both know as soon as she lets it go, the thin flesh will fall, sagging, back into place. Her mother, to whom she bears a striking resemblance, also shows her age just there. I don’t believe I’ve seen the duchess’s neck in lo these last ten years.
“Don’t be silly, darling.” Naked also, I stand behind Imogene, placing my hands on her thin shoulders and meeting her gaze in the mirror. We are a study in contrasts—me with my dark short hair, her fine blonde tresses almost to the floor, fragrant and still a little damp from her bath. Unlike me, and many other ladies of the ton who cut their hair to facilitate their wigs, she powders her hair, hiding the silvery strands just beginning to show. “You will always be beautiful. It is in your bones.”
Imogene snorts delicately, but a little smile tilts the edges of her lips. “A simple thing for you, whose skin is as firm as the day we met, to say. You do not have to resign yourself to wearing all-encompassing chokers and high lace collars for the rest of your life.”
Bending, I press a kiss to her hair and let my hand slide down to curve around her neck. “Perhaps you will start a new fashion. Covered here”—with a sweep of my hand, I caress her throat—“and then bare to here.” Using both palms, I inscribe arcs from her shoulders to just above her pink nipples. “You do have the most enticing bosom.”
She leans back against me and closes her eyes. “Is it still enticing, Marianne? Sometimes when I look at those toothsome young girls, I ache for the days when I looked that way.”
“You were beautiful when you made your debut but even more so now.”
It is the type of lie loving friends tell each other—the kind that causes no harm, for both know it for what it is. Imogene smiles and covers my hands with hers.
“You are so good for me, darling.” Her voice has grown husky, and her nipples begin to contract. “Whatever would I do without you to buoy my spirits?”
“Do your spirits need buoying, love?” I slide my hands a fraction lower, so the tight peaks slip just beneath my palms. “What more can I do to help?”
Her only reply is a breathy laugh and the guiding of my hands to completely cover her breasts. As I take over, tweaking her nipples, drawing patterns on the soft pillows of her flesh, she relaxes against me, eyes still closed.
No doubt she is pretending the hands touching her are not mine, just as when our love-play moves to the bed and she is sucking my cunt then fucking me with a dildo, I pretend I am with someone else.
We are lonely and, though widows, not immune to scandal. But no one thinks anything of our spending the occasional night at each other’s home, and it is a relief to find pleasure in another’s arms without fear of recrimination. As children we explored our bodies together. As debutantes and then newly married ladies, we shared what sexual information we could. It is only in widowhood that we have become full-fledged lovers, but because of our long friendship, there seems no harm in it.
If it is not ideal, or completely satisfying, neither of us expresses it. Sometimes one is forced to weave with the available thread.
Imogene bites a pillow, spreading her thighs as wide apart as she can. Working the dildo deep into her cunt, I tease her—setting a pounding rhythm and then slowing—until she writhes and curses. Her clitoris is distended, the little hood pulled back by my fingers. I gently blow on it and she curses again, hips rising as she bows back against the bed.
“Damn you,” she almost growls. “Fuck me properly.”
I blow again, and she bites the pillow to muffle her moan. I am being cruel, keeping her on the edge of release, but I know she loves it. If not properly satisfied, she becomes insatiable, and I have no urge to spend the entire night in sexual escapades. If she remains in this stage of anticipation for a longer time, she will be exhausted when she finally spends and less inclined for more. Yet I am restless, already tired of the game.
Leaving the dildo in her, I rise up on my knees and reach for the harness.
Turning her head, Imogene watches me buckle the leather straps around my waist and lifts her hips to aid my retrieval of the dildo from her cunt. As I fit it to the harness, she grins.
“Now, finally, I will get the fucking I need. You never can restrain yourself when you have that contraption on.”
“Really?” I settle the artificial cock over my mound and thread the straps between my legs so it will not shift.
She nods and licks her lips, watching as I grasp the leather oblong and slide my hand along its still-slick length as though it is real. “Once you don it, it is as if it becomes a part of you. You fuck with it on as though you can feel the sensation of it inside me.”
“Perhaps,” I reply, grasping her ankles and pulling her farther down on the bed, “I should have been born a man, and only when I fuck like one am I complete.”
Imogene laughs and holds out her arms, but I shake my head. I want her on her knees beneath my driving hips and tell her so. She complies with alacrity, and I surprise her by bending to flick my tongue against her turgid clitoris. With a high keening cry, she spends, and before she can recover, I slam the dildo into her cunt, riding her hard, thrusting into her again and again. The trembling of her body, the muffled shrieks and moans, tell the tale of her once-more escalating lust.
I am close to release too, for I have positioned the thin leather straps, made to sit at the crease between my thigh and labia, between the lips of my cunt instead. The friction is hard, painful, the sensation similar to when David would use his hand or a paddle on my cunt until it burned, became so sensitive I would afterwards spend at the gentlest touch. The leather rubbing over my anus is also sublime, allowing me to pretend he is fucking my arse at the same time.
Reaching beneath her, I find Imogene’s clitoris and pinch it, hard. She arches her back, shrieks and pushes back to meet my next thrust. The violent coming together of our bodies causes a burst of agony between my legs, and I cry out with her in shared delight.
I do not stop thrusting and pinching until, boneless, she collapses onto the bed, taking me down with her. For the longest time, we do not stir, still intimately joined, my body covering hers, creating a heated cocoon for her to recover in.
I am just contemplating moving when she speaks.
“I saw Lord and Lady Harrington at Thurgoode House last eve.”
How I wish those words do not make my heart jump, but they do. Keeping my voice level, however, is something I have perfected over the years.
“Oh? Not surprising they are back in town, what with Michaelmas Term about to begin.”
Imogene kisses my arm, the soft brush of her lips raising goose flesh that scampers away from the spot and across my body. “Lady Harrington was as haughty as ever, but there is a new edge to her coldness. Perhaps the marriage state suits her not.”
Rolling off of Imogene, I unbuckle the harness, tossing the dildo aside. “We, who have been there before, know it is not always what we expect.” My cunt throbs, sore and needy, and I blink against the tears gathering behind my eyes. “We are told marriage was created in heaven, but it really is created, or destroyed, here on earth.”
Sitting up, Imogene reaches to hug me. I remain quiescent in her arms, neither returning nor truly spurning her affection. “How can you be so sanguine about it, Marianne? You may be able to fool society, but you cannot fool me. I know how fond you are of David.”
I smile. I cannot help it. Fond seems the wrong word, but I will never seek a better, not even within myself.
“’Tis true I was fond of his attentions.” I push her away gently, until she is once more supine. “But time, the tyrant, pulls the sting from all wounds. And you have helped, immeasurably.”
She has no opportunity to reply, for I have straddled her face, and already her tongue is moving against my labia, parting the tender lips to find my aching clitoris.
“Gently, darling,” I whisper. “Gently.”
But although I tremble and strain until I find release, inside I am cold, empty.
Would that the tyrant steal from me my memories along with my youth.
The decision to leave London and visit my diverse family is not one I make lightly. To others, and even to myself, it will appear I am running away. Yet what else can I do?
I have seen David and his lady several times. Although they both smile and are as cordial as ever, neither appears happy. Annabelle seems brittle, as though the slightest pressure will cause her to shatter. David is even more severe, now cold where before he was merely stoic. Why this causes me pain, I refuse to contemplate. I only know to watch them makes me want to scream.
I lay my plans, sending letters to my mother, sisters and brother, alerting them to my impending visit. My eldest sister is in Edinburgh, and that will be the farthest stop on my journey. I plan to be gone for the rest of the year, perhaps spending Christmas with my brother and his family. It has been a long time since I spent a Yuletide anywhere but in London.
It has taken me this long to realise, or acknowledge, how much I allowed my life to revolve around David. He is most often in London, and therefore so was I. While he went to his family seat for Christmas, I remained in town, awaiting his return, reluctant not to be there when he came back. I should feel free, but instead a pall of sadness cloaks my days. It will do me good to put some distance between us, experience some of the autonomy I so blithely ascribed to myself in the past while curtailing it for his pleasure.
Imogene is unhappy to hear of my plans but seems resigned.
“The little season will be a ghastly bore with you gone, darling.” She looks at me over the edge of her teacup. “But I’m sure your family will be delighted to see you.”
“I hope so, despite still being called the family troublemaker.”
“I wonder why that would be?”
She laughs as she says it, and I laugh along with her, for, as the youngest, I always was in scrapes, often pulling the other children into them with me. Imogene joined in on the occasions she came to visit and more often than not felt the strap right alongside me.
“Shall I stay with you tonight, to help you begin your packing?”
The look she gives me leaves no doubt as to the true reason she would visit. Sometimes I wish she would release herself from the bounds of propriety and take a lover, as most other widows do. But she fears her rather pompous son’s reaction, and since he holds the purse strings, perhaps with good reason.
Before I can reply, the door opens and Lincoln approaches with a note. Breaking the unadorned wafer to open it, I idly wonder if it could be a reply from one of my siblings. The contents send a chill down my spine, and I am forced to school my features so as not to alert Imogene to my suddenly agitated state. Refolding it, I look across at her and smile.
“Perhaps another night before I go, darling. After all, I do not leave until the twentieth. That gives us more than a week.”
She pouts, not hiding her disappointment. “I should come to stay for the entire time. I will not see you for months and months.”
Eager now for her to leave, yet knowing to revea
l it will arouse her suspicions, I turn the subject, inquiring if she wouldn’t care for us to take a house in Bath together in the new year, and spend a month or so there. This diversion works, and by the time she leaves Imogene seems happy again, excited by the prospect of our time together.
As soon as the door closes behind her, I hurry to my boudoir and read the note once more.
I must see you. Please do not deny me.
D.
Shaking, legs unable to bear my weight, I sink to the floor, skirts billowing around me. My heart thunders in my ears, and my head swims. I am hot and then cold, afire with lust and then chilled with fear. Again and again my gaze traces the words, following the curves of the letters, allowing the message to sink into my heart.
Beneath it, though, swims a shadow, a question I am too befuddled to grasp.
All the reasons I should refuse clamour for my attention but are overwhelmed by my need. What harm can there be to see him one more time? It would be just the once, for in ten days I am to leave London and, perhaps, never permanently return. My body feels suddenly alive, my mind once more crisp, as though before this moment I existed in a laudanum-induced trance.
David wants—nay, is desperate—to see me. He has suddenly realised there are needs only I can fulfill.
It is enough to make me weep, and I admit, in my weakness, I will not say no.
Chapter Five
Sanity has returned by the time Lincoln ushers my visitor into my boudoir that night, and so I am able to watch with some amusement as, with a flourish, Lady Harrington tosses back the thick veil she has swathed about her head. I am sure my lack of astonishment comes as a shock to her, just as my ability to stand with aplomb and acknowledge her curtsy must also be. It is she who pauses infinitesimally before coming forward to offer a greeting.
“I was wondering who would appear at my door this evening,” I say, sinking back into my chair, arranging the folds of my diaphanous robe around my legs. “Did you think I would not be able to discern that the author of the note I received was not your husband?”