by Clare Flynn
‘We don’t need to undress,’ she said. ‘It won’t take long. Shall we lie down together and then I can help you?’ She was blushing again. ‘I mean I can do my best to make it easy for you, as at least I know what to expect. We can get it over as quickly as possible.’ She climbed up onto the bed, her back against the wall of the hut and motioned for him to join her. ‘We could just lie here a while, until you’re ready.’
Merritt started to move across the narrow space then stopped. He wasn’t going to let it be this way. He was determined to make it mean something for him, if not for her. This afternoon might prove to be the only time in his life he made love. If he couldn’t have Hephzibah, he wanted no other. He couldn’t control whether or not she became pregnant, he couldn’t control the fact she had chosen him just to impregnate her, but for these few stolen moments he could take control, he could do what he could to make it memorable and beautiful.
‘Stand up,’ he said, his voice husky.
Hephzibah looked surprised but slid off the bed. ‘You’re not going to back out are you, Merritt? Not now.’
He reached for her and pulled her towards him. He looked into her eyes, uncaring that he was giving away his true feelings. He reached up to stroke her hair and gently pulled out the pins that were holding it up, letting them fall to the floor. He kept his eyes on her as her hair tumbled loose around her shoulders. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with alarm.
‘Don’t speak,’ he said, placing his fingers for a moment over her lips. ‘If we do this, we do it on my terms. I am not a machine you can switch on and off. I have to feel something, see something, see you.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘And I’d like you to see me too.’
Carefully and slowly, Merritt began to remove her clothing. Hephzibah stood in front of him, shivering slightly, but she kept her eyes fixed on his, evidently accepting that she had no choice. As each item was discarded, revealing more of her, he ran his hands slowly over her body, feeling the alabaster smoothness of her skin. He could hear her breathing growing more rapid. When he touched her bare breasts her nipples hardened under his hands and he dropped his head and took one of them in his mouth, running his tongue over the aureole. She gave a little gasp. He raised his head to look at her, afraid she would tell him to stop, but she started to unbutton his shirt. Moving slowly, terrified that at any moment the other might call a halt to what they were doing, they continued to undress each other until their clothes lay in a heap on the floor.
Merritt drew her naked body to his, holding her against him and as he felt, for the first time in his life, the feeling of skin upon skin, he gave an anguished cry, then before he could stop himself, his mouth was on hers, his hands tangled in her hair. Her mouth opened to his and he felt her warm breath mingling with his, her tongue seeking his. He lifted her into his arms and moved with her to the narrow, hard bed. Her hands and arms were all over his body, touching him, stroking him, causing him to tremble with a joy and hunger he had never before experienced.
As he entered her, he looked into her eyes, drowning in them, feeling at last that he was whole, that until now a part of him had been missing. Her hands gripped his buttocks and she groaned with pleasure as they fused their two bodies into one entity. She moved under him, responding to him, matching her movements with his. Merritt had never experienced such undiluted pleasure before.
Sweat pooled on their skin between them. He felt her legs gripping his sides, then wrapping themselves around his back, squeezing him tightly, taking him deeper into her. He bit his lip, trying to hold back the release he knew would be coming and felt her hands reaching around his torso pulling him further into her, as if she wanted them to be joined like this forever. Their movements grew faster and more urgent. She was moaning now, little frantic gasps of pleasure. At last, when he could hold back no longer, he eased his head back and looked at her and she nodded and closed her eyes. As they climaxed, she clung to him like a drowning woman holding onto passing wreckage, and then she gave a long sigh as her body juddered under his.
They lay crushed together on the narrow pallet, as the sweat dried on their naked skin. Merritt pulled the blanket over Hephzibah and held her close. They lay there in silence, matching their breathing to each other’s, trying to restore it to a normal rhythm. As he held her he stroked her hair and touched her face.
‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘I know that has worked. I felt it. Just then when we... you know... I was certain that we have made a baby. It felt so different.’
‘Different?’ he looked at her, uncertain, unsure of himself now.
‘I can’t explain it. I just know. We have made a baby. I have never been so sure of anything in my life. Thank you, Merritt.’
Merritt turned away and lay on his back, looking up at the wooden ceiling, where a canopy of dense spiders’ webs decorated the beams. ‘But it was also pleasurable for you?’ he asked, struggling to cover his nerves.
‘You know it was. I didn’t expect that. Not at all.’
He bit his lip. Don’t ask her to compare me to her husband.
‘I have never known anything like that in my life before,’ he said. ‘You must realise now that I love you. I have always loved you, Hephzibah. But you were blind to it. You were blind to me.’
Hephzibah nodded. Her eyes sad. ‘You’re right. I didn’t think of you in that way. Lying here with you now I still find it hard to believe what we have just done. How it felt.’ She smiled and stroked his cheek. ‘You’re an unexpected man, Merritt Nightingale. A man of hidden qualities and hidden depths.’
Merritt felt a surge of joy and turned over to face her, putting his hands behind her head to draw her into a kiss.
She started to respond, then pulled away from him, her body stiffening. She sat up and reached from the bed to her blouse where it lay crumpled on the floor, holding it in front of herself, covering her breasts from him.
‘I am so grateful to you, Merritt, and I know with absolute certainty that I am now carrying a child, so that means we must never meet like this again. We must never speak of this again. Do you understand, Merritt? Once the child is born you may of course see it, but I beg you to give no cause for my husband or the squire to suspect what has passed between us.’
She scrambled about, gathering up her clothes as he watched her. ‘Please, Merritt, look away. Don’t look at my body. Please try to forget what we have done. You say you love me but I am not worthy of your love. I acknowledge that what has happened this afternoon is not what I expected. I didn’t think we would... I didn’t expect there to be such tenderness. I didn’t expect there to be passion. There were both those things, weren’t there, Merritt? For both of us. That makes it special. It will make our child special. Know this, my dearest friend, that while we will never repeat this nor speak of it, I will always treasure this afternoon in my heart. Now, please wait here for a little while before you leave. We can’t risk anyone seeing us returning to Nettlestock together.’
She moved back to the bed, where Merritt lay, the blanket tangled in his limbs. She bent over him and dropped a light kiss on the top of his head and laid her hand against his cheek. ‘Goodbye, my dearest friend.’ Then she was gone.
Merritt lay on the bed, overcome with emotions. He had never dreamt that making love with a woman could be as sweet, as exciting, as emotional. The pleasure had swamped him like waves, a wonderful drowning. How was it possible that in a few short moments he could move from absolute joy to wretchedness, loss and sorrow? If Hephzibah had been blind to him before, she was now deliberately wiping him out. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
He tried to take consolation from the fact that she had been as moved as he was, as swept up by the passion and pleasure. She had admitted she hadn’t expected to feel that and he dared to think that it was not only because she had not expected it of him but also because it was something she had never experienced before. He dared to hope Thomas Egdon had never known what he had just known because if he had, how could he p
ossibly bear to be so often apart from Hephzibah? But now having tasted that intoxicating pleasure, Merritt was to be deprived of it. He buried his head in his hands. She would drive him mad. How could he live without her now?
Merritt punched the wall in sudden anger, breaking the skin on his knuckles. He sucked at the blood and cursed his stupidity. He had known all along that he and Hephzibah were meant to be with each other, so why had he hesitated in telling her? Had he made his feelings clear she might have at least been willing to give him a chance, to find out more about him, to let him court her. Surely then, as they got to know each other better, the intensity of the feelings they had for each other would have surfaced, even in her. Instead, he had let his crippling lack of self-worth and fear of rejection master him.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and quickly dressed, looking around the miserable little room before he shut the door. Oh, Hephzibah, my darling Hephzibah, my love, my life, what am I to do now?
Walking back to the village, he thought of the possibility that she was indeed expecting his child. Until now he had not really entertained that as a possibility. He had not thought past what would happen this afternoon. How could he bear not only being apart from her, but also from his own child? Merritt hadn’t thought of having his own children, other than as a vague and abstract possibility in some as yet undetermined future. Now he knew he might face the prospect of being a father without a child. You fool, you complete and utter fool.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.
(from Love and Sleep, Algernon Charles Swinburne)
The following day, Hephzibah walked along the towpath. The past twenty-four hours had been a sweet torture. She had been unable to get Merritt Nightingale out of her thoughts.
Since her liaison with Merritt she had been unsettled, veering between guilt and excitement. She was not guilty at about what she had done – she had spent too many hours beforehand agonising over her plan and had come to the conclusion it was the right and only thing to do. She was guilty about how she had felt doing it. It had never entered her head that committing adultery in this way would have given her pleasure.
It had come as a shock, a blinding revelation that she had experienced what she could only describe as physical passion with him. Hephzibah had never thought of Merritt that way. Now every time she thought of him a little shiver went through her body.
It was difficult not to make comparisons between Merritt and her husband. She pictured their faces – Thomas with the cold beauty of a finely carved marble statue, while Merritt’s face was different in some way each time she looked upon him. It was an interesting face, one that was animated, changing expression based on what was going through his head. And there was always so much going through his head. Thomas, on the other hand thought only of horses. He had the appearance of a man who inflamed passions, yet all he talked about was inflamed pasterns. Merritt was caring of others, fascinated by the lives of his parishioners and eager to help them. Thomas despised the villagers and thought their lives trivial and unworthy of his attention.
But to accept that her feelings about both her husband and Merritt had changed was to accept that she was an adulteress. Having experienced pleasure rather than pain from their encounter threw what they had done together into a completely different light. It was no longer feasible to classify what she had done as an honourable deed. She could no longer tell herself she had done it selflessly, out of love for Thomas. She knew she had been beguiled by Thomas Egdon. Acknowledging that made her ashamed. Was she as shallow as she now knew he was?
There were a couple of lads fishing close to the confluence with one of the tributaries that fed the canal, but otherwise the place was deserted. She nodded to them and passed by. She was intending to walk towards Mudford but, without consciously thinking about it, she turned off the path and found herself heading over the hill towards the abandoned shepherd’s cottage.
The sky darkened and she looked up, wondering if there was a chance of rain – her umbrella was back in the house. But it was one of those days where one minute there was a blazing sun in a deep blue sky, then a passing grey cloud-mass blotted it out, casting shadows over the countryside before moving on.
The look in Merritt’s eyes when they were making love had shocked her and she felt herself blushing as she walked. There had been such tenderness threaded through the desire and passion he had shown her. She’d never known that with Thomas, who was an enthusiastic lover but she realised now she had always been incidental to his pleasure. With a flash of understanding she knew they had never had a true connection the way she had with Merritt, emotionally and intellectually as well as physically. She pressed her fingernails into her palms, willing herself to forget what Merritt had made her feel.
Hephzibah walked on, telling herself that she would turn back in a moment, but her feet led her along the towpath and over the narrow footbridge, across meadows and fields, up and down the long chalk slope of the hill and then she was there, outside the shepherd’s hut. Perhaps if she were to look once more on the scene it would force her to accept that what had happened was nothing more than a transaction, an expediency. The shabby surroundings of an abandoned shepherd’s temporary resting place was hardly the stuff of romance. Revisiting it would show what had happened for what it was – a sordid act that she had forced the parson into.
As soon as she pushed open the door, despite the dark interior, she knew at once that there was someone inside – and then he was upon her, enveloping her in his arms, pressing her against the door, kissing her until she could barely draw breath.
‘You came. I knew you would,’ Merritt said. ‘I’ve been waiting here for an hour.’ As he spoke, his hands were unpinning her chignon, his fingers weaving through her hair. ‘I knew you couldn’t mean what you said about us not meeting like this again. Not after what happened.’
Hephzibah tried to draw away from him, wanting to tell him that this was not her intent, but her body responded to him where her words didn’t and she returned his kisses with a fervour that surprised her. ‘I didn’t mean to come,’ she said at last, her voice low, ‘but I couldn’t help myself. My feet brought me here. I never thought to find you waiting.’
‘I have thought of nothing but you since you left yesterday. Every waking minute and all my sleepless night. I love you, Hephzibah, and I know we are meant to be with each other. I have never been so sure of anything.’
This time they didn’t pause to take their clothes off. Merritt took her in his arms and then they were against the door, fumbling with the openings in their garments. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs and arms around him and let him position her against the wall of the hut for support. She lost herself in the abandon of kissing him and cried out when he entered her. Just when she thought she could take no more, he carried her to the bed where he took his time, until Hephzibah was at the point of screaming. What was this man doing to her? How could he have this effect on her? How did her body know his better already than it knew her husband’s? Thomas’s face swam before her eyes, but she pushed the image away and looked into Merritt’s face, asking herself how she could ever have thought it ordinary and unmemorable.
Afterwards, they lay together in a mass of tangled limbs and dishevelled clothing. Merritt stroked her hair and kissed her again, this time softly, tenderly, lovingly.
‘I have never before experienced what we have,’ Hephzibah said at last. ‘It is different with my husband. I had not imagined or thought it possible to feel such pleasure with another person.’ Then, with no warning, she burst into tears.
Merritt fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped
away her tears. ‘Don’t cry, my beloved. Don’t cry.’ He folded her in his arms.
‘It’s such a mess,’ she said. ‘I’ve made it a mess. I’m an adulteress. You are a man of the church. I’ve ruined both of us. I thought I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘Tell me how you feel.’ He covered her face with kisses.
She pushed him away and sat up. ‘It’s torture. Complete torture. I did what I did out of love for Thomas and now I know I don’t love him any more. What does that make me?’
Merritt said nothing, just held her, stroking her hair and looking into her eyes.
Hephzibah was sobbing. ‘What have I done, Merritt? What have we done? I am ashamed.’
Still with his eyes locked on hers, he said, ‘I love you, Hephzibah and I will never be ashamed of that.’
She raised her face to his and this time let him kiss her again, returning the kiss, drowning in it, her arms gripping him tightly as if afraid he might disappear.
‘I was rash and impetuous in marrying Thomas.’ She gulped and buried her head in his shoulder. ‘I should have waited. I would have realised in the end that I love you, wouldn’t I? You would have made me realise it. I am such a stupid fool, blind and shallow. How can you possibly love me, Merritt, when I have been so foolish?’
‘Blame me, not yourself, Hephzibah.’ He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. ‘I was too slow to declare my feelings.’ He shook his head. ‘No, worse than that. I didn’t declare them at all. We might have gone through life without ever knowing what we could mean to each other if you hadn’t asked me to do this.’
She sat up. ‘Oh God! Do you believe I asked you to do this as an excuse to seduce you? What must you think of me?’
‘Of course I don’t think that. I know you were surprised at what we feel for each other,’ he said.