by Sophie Gee
Teresa turned to her with a knowing air. “If I were betrothed to Clotworthy Skeffington, the second son of a footman would seem a glittering prize in comparison,” she pronounced.
“Wortley is not without attractions,” Martha replied firmly. “He is likely to be sent abroad as the English ambassador if the Whigs ever come back into government. To France or Germany perhaps, or to Turkey—a novelty even for Lady Mary. I am sure she thinks of that when she considers Wortley’s suit.”
By the time the carriage arrived at the Blount girls’ house, all three girls were shifting restlessly about, telling each other how tired they were; how eager for bed; how cold the night was. Arabella said good-bye to Teresa and Martha with scarcely a glance in their direction, and began to rearrange the rug around her chilly form.
When she got home at last, shivering and yawning, she handed her cape to the bleary-eyed servant who opened the door and hurried upstairs. She decided not to ring for her maid, wanting to avoid the impertinent questions that Betty always asked when woken late at night. Arabella pushed open the door of her chamber, where she was greeted by the sight of Shock dozing in his little basket beside her bed, and a fire in her grate that flickered low but companionably, like a friend who had stayed half awake to welcome her home. But rather than calming her, these sights restored the spirit of willful determination, which had been quenched by the sight of Lord Petre reaching out to stroke Lady Castlecomber’s hand.
They had spoken so intimately, though only briefly. She had been shocked, and yet the shock was accompanied by the jolt of something unexpected. Mingled with the pangs of jealousy and wounded pride had been an illicit attraction. She longed to act as they had; she longed for their disdain for propriety; their careless sophistication; their casual liberties that gave away a long-standing familiarity. Charlotte Bromleigh was the eldest daughter of a wealthy Catholic family, but Charlotte’s father, whose Roman sensibilities were of a worldly kind, had decided to remove his daughter from the small, closed circle of eligible popish gentlemen to which everybody believed that she belonged. He had arranged her union with the Protestant Lord Castlecomber, lately the inheritor of an Irish peerage, in need of money to restore his estate. Lord Castlecomber, who cared little for the niceties of religion, had been willing to wed the rich, handsome daughter of one of the oldest families in England, and Charlotte Bromleigh became the wife of a peer.
Arabella liked to believe herself impervious to jealousy, but now she acknowledged that she felt envious of Lady Castlecomber. In part she envied the security that marriage had given her; the knowledge that her wealth and position were assured. But truly she was jealous of Charlotte because Lord Petre had traced his finger across her wrist. The intimacy of their relationship was palpable. When she had seen him reach across to Charlotte tonight, Arabella had suddenly realized that she wanted him to do the same to her.
Lady Castlecomber was married, however; Arabella was not. A single woman without noble birth had no real liberty. Yet how could a match to a man like Robert Petre be achieved? Arabella had met his mother, and knew her to be a cold, determined woman. She had been charming enough to Arabella as a young girl, but she would be ruthless in protecting her family’s position, and no sentimental consideration would persuade her that her son should marry a girl with less than ten thousand pounds.
Then again, Lord Petre was of age. Though he might disoblige his family, they could not actually prevent a match of his choosing. She checked herself again. She had seen that Lord Petre already had access to every pleasure and gratification. What would make him marry Arabella Fermor?
Lord Petre liked the way Charlotte Bromleigh bit his shoulder when she had an orgasm. She didn’t make much noise, but when he put his hands on her thighs, which were tucked in tightly and gripping his torso, he could feel the tremor in her muscles. The sides of her waist were still hot from her laced stays. He pulled himself up, and spilled onto her stomach.
Charlotte laughed at him. “If my husband were in town, you could have spent inside me,” she said. “I’d far rather that a son of yours should inherit the title than one of his. But then he’s a suspicious dog, so he’d probably find us out.”
“Oh, I like your belly just as well,” he answered. “If we were to change things about now I would miss the old ways.” He pressed the full weight of his body onto hers, and lay there for a moment. When she became short of breath he rolled off her with a smile.
“And do you like my mouth?” she asked, continuing their conversation.
Kissing it, he could feel her teeth upon his tongue.
“Yes, it is very fine,” he murmured, and kissed her again. Wriggling out from his embrace, she began to move down the bed. He felt a tingling of excitement as she put her hand, and then her lips, around his cock. Oh, but he liked this the best of all, he thought, as he saw her looking up at him.
Afterward, they sat together. Charlotte was lying on her back, and he traced the outlines of her nose and eyelids and cheekbones with his fingers.
“I don’t believe that you hate your husband so much as you pretend, you know.”
She sat up, surprised by the remark. “Oh, I don’t hate him,” she replied in an offhand voice, leaning back on her arms. “I am indifferent to him. Of course when he comes to fuck me I do worry that I’ll catch the clap from one of his whores. But otherwise I don’t mind marriage. I never expected that I would marry somebody heavenly like you,” she added, catching his eye.
He looked at her, trying to picture married life with Charlotte. They would have been easy with each other, he thought, but he knew that their ease existed because they felt no urgent desire. Although their relations were forbidden, and therefore deliciously enjoyable, he never felt a sick rush of temptation or an exhilarating release of abandon when he was with her.
“I think it would have been very pleasant,” he said at last. “I fear that none of the women chosen for me by my family will be endurable. What am I to do about it, Charlotte?”
She pushed her hair away from her face and smiled frankly. “You will do, Robert, exactly as we all expect,” she answered. “Marry the person they want you to, and seek your pleasures elsewhere. It is an excellent system, in successful operation for hundreds of years.”
“But suppose that I wish to take my pleasures from marriage?”
She laughed. “Then you must expect a very much less pleasurable existence than you are presently used to. But all this goes very much against your character,” she added. “To a lady’s ear it sounds as though you are falling in love. Can this be so?”
“I should be a fool to fall in love, as you perfectly well know,” Lord Petre said after a short pause.
Her reply was ready. “I know that you are not a fool, but I did see you looking foolishly at that shepherdess at the ball tonight. Why was she carrying a bow?”
“She was not a shepherdess,” he answered, conceding her suggestion. “She was Diana, goddess of chastity.”
“Then it is a costume whose significance you would do well to remember,” Charlotte rejoined, “because she looked to me very much like Arabella Fermor—a woman to whom you owe some care.”
Now he sat up, too, and looked at her reproachfully. “I would not have expected you to take the lady’s part in this, Charlotte,” he said.
“I take Miss Fermor’s part because I see in it a reflection of what my own circumstances might have been,” she answered with more severity in her voice than before. “Arabella has not the security of great fortune or noble birth.”
“Oh, Arabella can take care of herself perfectly well,” he answered quickly. “I need not concern myself with that.”
She frowned, and he thought that she would argue with him. But her face cleared, and she shrugged. “In the interests of preserving good humor between us,” she said, “I will accept that you are right. Indeed I will say that Arabella’s handsome face and composed manners are enough to frighten off all but the most determined suitors.”
“Do not forget that I am lucky to have him as my husband,” she replied seriously. “I could not have you in my bed if I were unmarried. I should be bent entirely upon safeguarding my reputation from attack.”
He stretched out again beside her, and put his arms around her waist, kissing the outside of her thigh.
“You will never be safe from attack, Charlotte,” he said. “Your face and breasts and thighs offer more temptation than any man can withstand.”
She uncurled her legs and lay down, too, turning her face upward to be kissed. “Put your hand upon my cunt, Rob,” she said. “I want you to make me spend again before you leave.” He slipped his hand between her thighs, and she mumbled into his neck, “You see; I am wet and ready for you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“And secret passions labour’d in her breast”
In the days after the masquerade ball the frost came to an end, and rain began to deluge unceasingly. Jervas walked downstairs to breakfast, tying the sash of his morning gown, his slippers scuffing on the treads of the stairs. He could hear a jet of water pouring onto the cobbles from the guttering above, but he was determined to go out, and not to allow the rain to depress his spirits. He heard a rustling from the drawing room. Looking in, he saw that Alexander was there already, leaning over a book with a sheaf of papers on a table beside him. It was only half past nine. Jervas felt indolent to be beaten out of bed by his guest.
Alexander looked up as he entered, but did not speak. Jervas walked across to his splendid fire and gave it a big, generous poke; putting his back to it, hands clasped behind him as he surveyed his guest. He could not credit the way that, in spite of his ill health, Alexander could sit so doggedly in one place, reading line upon line of Homer, barely glancing at the dictionary that he kept at one side. He noticed that Alexander did not smile at him. Surely he was not still cross with him about the business of Martha Blount and the wine. It had been nearly two days ago. He coughed.
Alexander had indeed been feeling out of sorts with Jervas since the ball, irritated by his endlessly easy manners and cheerful temper. It made him feel even more of an outcast than he already did, ashamed of his earnest labors and urgently felt ambitions. Jervas could never understand what it was to be dependent on the generosity of friends. But the thought made Alexander blush—it was because of Jervas’s generosity that he sat here now. He found that he could not help but needle Jervas, however, by making a show of his own diligence and self-discipline. Hearing his host scuffing down the stairs, Alexander had gazed down at his book with increased concentration, pleased that Jervas would see him out of bed and working. He tapped his feet upon the little footstool, and waited for his host to appear in the doorway. There he was, smiling as usual. The same smile that he had bestowed upon Martha while he filled her wineglass. Alexander did not mind Jervas’s gallantries to women, nor his joking descriptions of how charming he had been to his friends’ maids and serving wenches. But Martha Blount was different. How was she to know that Jervas was always flirting with women, never falling in love? What if she were to form an attachment to him, only to find that he did not return it?
Alexander blew his nose loudly. He had woken with a nasty cold the morning after the ball, which now threatened to linger for several days. How cross Jervas had been when Alexander asked to go to bed at the end of the masquerade. In the coach home he had sat in the corner like a spoiled child, even though the ballroom had been practically empty. Alexander had made no attempt to cajole him, but instead had pondered the strange scene in the carriage yard. The pair had been dining openly in Pontack’s less than a week before; why then were they meeting furtively in the darkness now? He could make neither head nor tail of it.
Alexander and Jervas were shaken from their reflections by a servant clattering the chocolate pot and china cups in the next room. Jervas gave a cheerful sigh, his back now warmed by the fire. He looked again at his guest, hunched in his chair, gazing down at his book. But Jervas saw that even Alexander was faltering; his finger had stalled on a line in his text.
“Ah ha! I knew you could not be as absorbed as you appeared,” Jervas exclaimed, breaking instantly into a smile. “Admit it, Alexander—for all his virtues, Homer is devilishly dull.”
Alexander glanced up and saw Jervas squinting down at him like a big hungry badger, tapping his paws on the sides of his gown. In spite of himself, he laughed, and set aside his volume.
“Oh, very well, then, so he is,” Alexander said. “But since so much pleasure comes from having read it, the reading is a necessary ill.”
The two friends stood up, and walked across the hall to the room where their breakfast had been laid out. “But you are no stranger to necessary ills, Alexander,” Jervas replied. “You already have more practice in fortitude than men whom we know of twice your age.” He threw himself down upon a chair, took a hot roll from the covered dish, and pushed it across to Alexander. “You have had your illness for so long, and yet you bear it patiently,” he went on. “Do you not dread the effects of its continuation?”
Alexander smiled back at him. “A headache, a fever, a pain in my back,” he said, “sometimes very bad, but often hardly there at all. These symptoms are nothing but the outward show of an illness that we all bear long and patiently—the disease that goes more often by the name of life.”
“What an excellent notion, Pope,” Jervas answered affably. “Your reading gives you a fine way of putting things. I stumble about, sometimes hitting upon the right phrase; more often than not only half-remembering what I have read.”
He stood up from the table, and walked back across to the drawing room, where Alexander heard him call out, “This talk of reading reminds me of a paper that I wanted to show you.” Jervas burst back into the room brandishing an old copy of the Tatler. “I have been keeping it for you,” he said. “It is excessively amusing—a satire upon hoop petticoats. Joseph Addison has written the piece in the assumed voice of a judge, passing sentence upon the garment’s absurdity.”
“I know it well, Jervas,” said Alexander. “A celebrated essay!”
“But you probably do not recall all the details,” Jervas replied. “Did you notice that it is extremely bawdy? Listen to this!” He ran his finger across the page to find the lines he wanted. “‘Forthwith’—I am omitting some sentences—‘forthwith the Petticoat was brought into the Court. I directed the Machine to be set upon the Table, and dilated in such a manner as to show the Garment in its utmost Circumference; but my great Hall was too narrow for the Experiment….’ Is it not amusing, Pope? Addison is making merry about the lady’s intimate parts.”
“I do see that, Jervas,” said Alexander. “It is a diverting piece.”
“You should write in the same style.”
“There is a lightness to all that Mr. Addison thinks that makes his prose seem buoyant,” Alexander replied. “But the style is not mine.”
“You are being a dull dog today, Alexander,” Jervas said. “I am determined to cheer you up. There is a piece in the Daily Courant about Tuesday’s masquerade. What a splendid evening it was. Gaiety unalloyed.”
Alexander marveled that Jervas seemed to have forgotten his dissatisfaction and crossness at the end of the night. When he became angry himself, he remained so until the matter was resolved.
But he answered Jervas by saying, “I enjoyed myself a great deal. James Douglass is an entertaining gentleman. What do you know of his character?”
“His character? I can hardly say. I knew him at school, and he was one of the brightest, brainiest lads in the place. He made his boyish fortune by marking out rings in the dirt, which we were all wild to play marbles upon. And then he hatched a scheme for the village sweet shop; he ran a kind of messenger service back and forth. It seemed a great lark at the time. Curious fellow. He has
been abroad for many years—France, the West Indies—and who knows where else.”
“His friendship with Lord Petre is unlikely, do not you think?”
“Not really,” replied Jervas. “I’ll wager that Lord Petre wants Douglass for some business he is engaged in. A joint stock venture, if I were to guess. Douglass is always to be found at the Exchange. But I hope that he will not be taken in by Lord Petre’s easy manner. These noble fellows are pleasant enough, but they never forget that you are not one of them.”
“My sense of Douglass is of a man well able to look after himself.”
“You have the measure of him there, Pope.”
Jervas turned back to his paper. “Another slave run away in London,” he announced as he turned to the public notices. “‘A negro maid, aged about sixteen years, much pitted with the smallpox, speaks English well, having a piece of her left Ear bit off by a Dog.’ Black servants are never gone long, and someone always catches them quickly, so the reward is trifling.”
He picked up his cup and put it down again impatiently. “I wonder what Hill can be about with our chocolate? I gave my footman Andrews and his sister some time away because their father died on Friday, but it appears to have brought the whole house to a standstill.” He jumped up from the table. “Will this rain never stop?” he exclaimed. “I cannot bear the rain!” He bustled out of the room to find his servant.
“It is perfectly fine again,” Jervas called from the hall. Alexander looked out of the window and saw that the rain had eased briefly, though the sky appeared heavy and sodden. A high wind was blowing, making the hanging street signs creak violently, and the loose tiles chatter on the rooftops. “I mean to have a walk before I go to the coffeehouse at noon. My kersey-coat and umbrella, Hill,” Jervas finished. “I shall be dressed in a moment.”