ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  “I watch the girl with the crescent moon on her shoulder constantly now. Was she always this reserved and withdrawn, or has what my husband done to her caused her to be this way? Master, they all call him, or rather, Mas’er, these uneducated brats who have never learned how to speak. No wonder he likes them, he is a brute himself. Mas’er, Mas’er; if I were a betting woman, I would say that that is what gets him going, that feeling of dominion, of being a lord and—oh how I hate to say it—Mas’er.

  I have opened my eyes to things that I did not want to see before. The whole ugly truth is now apparent. I heard him in the parlor, having a conversation with Richard Lee, talking about how luscious the little girls on the field are, how they are put there by the devil himself to tempt the man into a life of sin. Mr. Lee, to his credit, kept quiet; as a God-fearing man himself, I suspect he does not want to indulge my husband.

  But there is something else, something I wish to close my eyes to forever, but cannot. The girl with the crescent moon. I have seen the flat slope of her belly begin to round, and it has brought back that night, that terrible night. I am caught between my sympathy for her and my utter rage at the situation. How dare he? How dare he? It is not enough that he makes light of his infidelity to me to our neighbors, but now he has gone and impregnated one of our girls? The scandal of it, oh!

  More than that, however, more than that, I have investigated and found that the girl has a mate, Big Jim they call him. I have seen him, a giant of a man, like our chestnut tree; what must my husband have felt like there inside her after a bull like that? I do not know how these creatures go about it, but I imagine that if he is anything like me, the rage that he feels now that the girl has quickened might well kill my husband.

  Would that it would.

  November 22nd. I watch him while he is out in the field. The way the sun gleams on his dark shoulders as he is coming back to his shack. I know why they call him what they call him. He is so powerful, so broad in his shoulders. The way he tucks his shirt in at the waist, the way that his body tapers in the middle, why, he is a sight to behold. And I know he must do anything I ask. That great big beast, and he must do my bidding or else I will get the overseer to pull his whip on him. I wouldn’t mind a whip myself every now and again, but I’d wield it gently, stroking it along the length of him until he asked me for more. More and more and more. That large man, that man who is double my size, why, he might split me in half…

  December 5th. And today he nearly has. I pulse and throb from where he entered me last night. I was right, he could not say no to me. The crescent moon girl’s baby was born today, a little half-breed that whose parentage we will never be able to fully discern. It is her stigma to live with, and if she grows up light, mine.

  I called him inside on the pretense of offering him some lemonade after a hard day’s work; he was suspicious at first, and I cannot say I blame him. He followed me into the house, hesitantly, and then when I got him into the parlor, I locked the door behind us. He lunged for it, but I hid the key in my chemise and told him to get it. He looked like he felt trapped at first, but I sat down on that little ottoman and lifted my skirts.

  ‘Go on then,’ I told him, already wet just from the sight of him. ‘Take me. I promise I won’t yell.’

  It took a bit more commanding, but finally, finally, those glorious haunches of his bucked in rhythm as he pumped me full of his seed. Oh the ecstasy I knew then! The visceral reality of it all! When my muscles clenched around him and my legs branded his hips, I yelled despite my promise.

  ‘Big Jim!’ I cried, over and over. ‘Fuck me, fuck me Big Jim!’ “

  Here Ezrah breaks off, unable to read any further. His head is reeling with what he has just learned, and he cannot bear to speak it aloud, despite the fact that both Selema and Jeb are staring at him with the biggest eyes in the world. They are new eyes, eyes that see Ezrah in a way that they have never done so before.

  That full bottom lip. The dusk on his skin, sure as a sunset, and the curl of his hair, coarse and strangely soft at the same time. They bate their breath, holding it as if not breathing will keep the terrible secret inside.

  “Ezrah,” Selema begins, reaching out a hand to him, but he pushes her away and drops the papers behind him on the chair. One of his fists lunges out and punches the wall, startling Jeb and Selema with its violence. And then, most terrifyingly of all, a low chuckle emanates from Ezrah’s throat as he leans his forehead against the wall, resting both palms against the flat surface, a man forever condemned.

  “I guess I don’t have a sister after all,” he finally says, and picks himself up off the wall. “It’s the oldest story in the book, is it not?” he says, shooting Selema a terse glance before he walks over to the attic door. “The story of no parents at all.”

  * * *

  “It’s not so bad, Ezrah,” says Jeb an hour later, wrapping his arms around the darker man. “Your mother took her revenge, and it sounds like her revenge was sweet after all.”

  “She asked me not to read it, and now I know why. I know why, and I wish for any God who ever existed that I had followed her dying wish.”

  “Shh. The truth is better. The truth is what makes you free,” Jeb says, touching a tender hand to Ezrah’s face. The great manly cowboy does not often show his feelings, but it has been a day of trials and tribulations for them all, and Ezrah allows himself to sink into the familiar embrace of the red-haired man, hoping that that particular version of home will erase, for however brief a period, this nightmare.

  “It was not the truth,” comes a small voice from the edge of the bed.

  Both men look up, startled. Selema is perched there, looking at the hands turned palms up in her lap. The bed undulates beneath his weight as Jeb makes his way over to her.

  “What is not the truth?” he asks sharply.

  She does not look at him as she speaks. “What I told you before, it is not the truth, at least not the whole truth. Before he died, Big Jim told me, he told me what happened in this house. Not about my mother, but about why he left. I never knew about…Ezrah’s mother, but I knew that the Master of this house had a special interest in the slaves. Even…”

  “Even what?” Ezrah asks, making his way to the foot of the bed to sit by her side, her, this woman who was family to him and then snatched away in the blink of an eye.

  Selema sighs deeply. “He said that the Master started lookin’ at me wrong. The way you should never look at a child, no matter how ‘advanced’ they are. He told me that he did not want what happened to my mother to happen to me, and until today, I never knew what that meant,” she finishes, choking back a sob.

  Ezrah and Jeb flank her on the bed, and each man wraps an arm around her. Their sidelong glances reveal a throaty little sparrow in her sweetheart-cut dress, the blossom of her breasts blooming into a stem of a neck, cocoa-buttery and lovely. A pulse beating beneath it rapid as a hummingbird’s. One look passes between the three of them, and a silent contract is signed. Selema is not nervous. Instead, she rises from the bed, turns, and stands before them cool as a lake, with one ripple going through it—desire.

  She might not have imagined it as such, this excitement of hers bleeding into something far more dangerous, pulsing through her veins like fire, the ebb and backwards flow of it taking her body by storm. She reaches her arms up above to release the butterfly pins that hold her curls in place; they tumble down on her neck, framing her face in a kind of primordial beauty, the type in which there is no place to hide, no modern inventions of clothing or rouge, just the truth of yourself in plain sight. The lushness of her plump bottom lip gives her a childlike air, one that is somehow not at war with her full woman’s body. Everything is in its place, perfectly as it should be.

  Selema kneels and extends her arms forward, palms up, a silent question that is amplified as she lowers her eyes. She might as well be shouting.

  The men stand before her, hesitant. Jeb unbuckles his pants, and Ezrah follows suit. There has
never been a third player in their games, but as Selema wraps a hand around each cock, they realize how wonderfully sinful it is to include another. It takes a bit of concentration at first, working the penises in tandem, but Selema manages. She is kneeling between the two men, pumping them with her hands, slowly at first, then faster and faster, alternating that plush mouth of hers from Ezrah’s cock to Jeb’s, allowing her lips to wrap around the meaty flesh of them until they are rocking their hips against her, spurred on by the hungry little noises she is making in the back of her throat.

  They are loved, in the strangest and most familiar way possible. Aroused by the ministrations of the sensual woman below them, the old childhood friends push down the shoulders of her gown until the banana-shaped breasts beneath it are visible, the darkness of her large nipples stark in the light of day. She is fantastically ripe, wanton with her green eyes looking up from either cock.

  The moment of reckoning is fast upon them; it is the disarray of her gown, bunched around her waist, the tangle of tongues Jeb and Ezrah allow themselves above her head, flicking each other’s nipples as they have long ago learned that they like that allows them a cathartic release from the day. They spatter her breasts with their cum, the double load coating their slope, releasing the satisfied moan of the two men who have finally been allowed a treat like no other.

  Laying panting on the oak floor together, Ezrah and Selema meet eyes. “I think,” he says, spreading the wetness on her left breast over the pucker tip of her nipple, “that I am very glad you are not my sister.”

  And with that, Jeb and Ezrah chuckle and proceed to rid themselves of any remaining clothing or shame.

  * * *

  “I am always pleased to see you, Mrs. Roberts, but it seems like today, there is much on your mind,” says Richard Lee to the neighbor who has come to visit.

  It is no mistake. There is plenty on this woman’s mind, but only one thought that bears any thinking about in truth. He has drawn her in with his kindness, their long philosophical talks, and she is unwilling to live in her hell any longer without gaining something out of it for herself.

  Hours later, as she lays beside the red-haired man who succumbed to her charms, she knows that she will never chronicle what has happened here tonight. Big Jim was one thing, but cuckolding her husband with another white man leaves Richard open for a fight he should not have to fight. She knows that she will not write this, how their slow-burning courtship managed to outweigh everything, including his faith in God.

  Never will she write how she asked to see his wife’s new china pattern and how he took her arm to lead her through the house. How the delicate dishes crashed to the floor as they came together in a union that was long-awaited, how he pressed her tiny body against the glass walls of the cabinet and how feverishly she allowed herself to wrap her limbs around him.

  Jeb and Ezrah’s mother, after all, is entitled to her secrets.

  THE END

  Heart of the Nobleman

  The carriage rocked from side to side while William de Mort gazed out of the open window. His eyes fixed on the castle that dominated the lush green valley. The castle’s tall rectangular keep sat safely behind a stone ring of imposing fortifications. Still, the young Baron felt unimpressed and slammed the shutter closed. “To think I inherited this... No wonder they call father, Berty the bastard.”

  ~

  At the castle’s gatehouse William stepped out of the carriage onto the cobblestones where he was met by the castle’s chamberlain. William looked down his nose at the skinny fair haired man. “And you are?”

  “I am Peter, my Liege. The castle’s chamberlain.”

  “So you are supposedly my right-hand man.”

  Peter did not possess the confidence to meet William’s cold stare. “I run the castle on a day to day basis. If you want anything at anytime, my Liege, then just let me know.”

  “My father told me that you could be relied upon.”

  “Then Baron Bertrand was a man of good judgment.”

  “That may be so. But I reserve the right to make my own judgment.”

  ~

  Walking up the damp and drafty spiral staircase William grumbled to his chamberlain who followed closely behind. “I’ve been on this land less than a week, and I’m already missing Normandy.” He shoved open the wooden door and stepped out onto the battlements of his castle. “It kills me to think that I’ll have to spend my days here...” Letting out a desperate sigh, William stared at the rain sodden and tumbledown settlement. “...in fucking England” The small town was dissected by a dark snaking river. Both halves of the settlement were joined by a stone small humpback bridge. “Such luck has made me believe that not just my father, but God himself must hate me.”

  “Cheer up, my Liege.”

  “Peter, it’s cold. It stinks. And it never bloody stops raining. Don’t even get me started on the people... they’re as ugly as sin.”

  “My Liege, I’m English.”

  “And a good example of what I am on about.” William turned to look out at the dreary thatched houses. He shook his head while his nose caught the scent of manure. “Stinks, the whole place stinks of pig shit.”

  “But my liege, at least it’s quiet. These people will not cause you any problems.”

  “I’m not sure, living in such squalor might make them desperate... and desperate men do desperate things.”

  Peter’s face lit up. “Well maybe you could engineer a town in your own image? Make it a more comfortable place to live. If the people prosper then your tax revenue will increase.”

  “Certainly something to think about.”

  “Excellent. I would suggest starting with a place of worship, one worthy of God’s name. Closer to God, the townsfolk would be less likely to sin or stray.”

  “I was thinking less chapel, more fully equipped tournament field.” William gazed over the rampart. He shook his head while he watched a group of peasants arguing over the result of a pig chase. “People who think catching greased up pigs is a sport... Well, they obviously need to be cultured. I’m going to introduce sword fighting, archery and jousting.”

  “My Liege, Pig chasing is a popular pastime.”

  “The only reason I can think of for men chasing pigs, is that it’s less pig-like than the average local woman.”

  ~

  The wind blew through the grand banquet hall where William and Peter sat at the long oak table. A pack of fox hounds slept on a bed of straw in front of the open fire. William twirled his dagger on its stabbing point while Peter scrutinized the court’s papers. Despite the fierce fire burning on the stone hearth, William felt a chill deep within his bones. He groaned as he stood from his chair. “Peter.”

  “My Liege?”

  “Why is it so God damn cold in here?”

  “It’s England, my Liege.”

  William walked towards the arrow slit window where an icy wind billowed like an arctic gust. “How come there’re no tapestries on these windows? Only a fool would leave them wide open like the legs of a whore.”

  “William... I’m sure your father mentioned last year’s plague.”

  “He did.”

  “Well, it wiped out most of the skilled workers while the rest ran, never to return.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “I’ve been searching the local guilds but found no weavers... None of note anyway. We need a mason and a carpenter too. I fear the castle will never be fully completed.”

  William glanced around at large stone walls and huge oak rafters. “Well, I need some colour as well as warmth. This constant greyness is crushing me. If I’m not under a grey sky, I’m looking at four grey fucking walls.”

  “My Liege, Spring is only four months away.”

  “Four..? Four..?” William’s foot twitched as he thought about kicking a dog. “Four fucking months?”

  “Well summer doesn’t arrive until the last week in March at the earliest.”

  “Get me some tapestries. I
mmediately.”

  Peter let his quill rest in the pot of ink “My Liege...” He watched William shift the dogs with his boots so he could warm his hands near the licking flames of the open fire. “The best tapestries come from the continent. They’re expensive to import.”

  “The English must have something to keep them warm... Well apart from getting drunk then beating their spouses.”

  “We’re not all raving alcoholics, my Liege.”

  William turned to face Peter. “Get me my cloak and inform the stable boy to ready my horse.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Shopping.”

  “The continent?”

  “No.” William cracked his knuckles as if readying to punch Peter’s clueless face. “I’m starting to think my father employed the village idiot.”

  “But I thought you would rather die than mix with the peasant folk?”

  “I’m bored and depressed. Seeing people worse off than myself... well, I’m hoping it may raise my spirits.”

  ~

  Dressed in a wolf skin cloak, William rode his stallion through the dreary village. The buildings were tightly packed and mostly made from wattle and daub. Despite confident that no villager would dare attack him, William’s hand was never far from the handle of his sword.

  Crossing the stone bridge onto the far bank William notice the once busy streets had emptied. The inhabitants kept out his way, running down dark narrow side streets as if they were rats. Mothers herded their children back into their simple houses while shopkeepers hid behind their stalls. Only roaming goats, pigs and chickens populated the filthy streets.

  William saw something he wasn’t expecting. Disbelieving, he wiped his hand across his face. But his eyes hadn’t deceived him. “My God she is beautiful.” He smiled at the woman who shied away, then shouted, “My lady!” But the woman ran through an open door into a ramshackle workshop.

  Climbing from his horse, William winced as his leather shoes squelched in the churned mud. Guiding his horse, he slipped and slid across the road until he made it to this wooden building in which the woman had disappeared into. Peering through the open window he raised a pleased smile. Inside the dimly lit room a thick-set woman dressed in a shawl sat at a bench, weaving a pair of trousers. But his eyes looked beyond the woman, focusing on the long tapestry which hung from a vertical loom. “Excuse me.” The woman appeared frozen in shock. She then climbed from the bench and curtsied in silence. He asked, “Is this your workshop?” A nervous elderly woman pointed to the room towards the back.