by Pamela Morsi
Her chin high, her courage feigned, she walked over to the small table and set her hat upon it. She looked at the chairs and thought to sit down, but she wasn't sure. For the first time since walking through the door, she looked at Mikolai. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
"I suppose I should make up the bed," he said.
Gertrude nodded. "Yes, yes, of course, I'll help you. We should make up the bed."
She hurried, with as much grace and dignity as she could muster, to the far side. They faced each other across the width of it. Allowing themselves only one intense questing look before they began, they industriously rolled out the cotton bed tick. It was old and much mended, but had been recently beaten and was as full and fluffy as if it were new. The sheets were mere hemmed cotton and were unstarched. They had, in a manner, been pressed, and once stretched and tucked appeared sufficient enough for their purpose.
"There," Gertrude said with finality as she smoothed out the last wrinkle. She glanced over at Stefanski, who also appeared rather pleased with their joint handiwork.
As the moment lingered, their smiles faded. With great concentration Gertrude clamped down on an overwhelming need to fidget.
"This is all very disconcerting," she admitted quietly.
"Miss Gertrude, if you have changed your mind, I—"
"I haven't changed my mind," she assured him hastily. "Unless you have."
"Me? No, no, Miss Gertrude, I haven't changed my mind."
"That's good then," she said.
"Yes," he agreed. "It's very good."
Silence enveloped them once more. Gertrude glanced down at the round jet buttons that adorned her shirtwaist. She had chosen her costume with the knowledge that she would be removing it. The idea of standing in front of Mr. Stefanski in her camisole and petticoat was suddenly quite real and infinitely daunting. She steeled the trembling in her jelly legs and spoke sharply.
"Perhaps I should undress now," she said.
Mikolai stared at her mutely for an instant and then spoke up hastily.
"Perhaps we should talk first."
"Oh." Gertrude was not at all sure about the appropriate preliminaries, but agreed gratefully.
Quickly he came around the bed and offered her his arm. It was not more than two steps from the bed to the table, but they took them with the formality of entering a cotillion, her gloved hand resting upon his sleeve.
"Please be seated, Miss Gertrude," he said.
She did as she was bid, centering herself somewhat precariously upon the wobbly panel-back chair. He seated himself opposite her and a very respectful distance away.
Her hands had begun to tremble so she clasped them together tightly.
"Mr. Stefanski, I really don't know—" she began.
He held up a hand to quiet her. "Of course you don't, Miss Gertrude," he said. "It is my duty, both as the gentleman and as the partner of wider experience to ... to make this go well."
His words relaxed her considerably. He was going to take charge. She needn't do anything but follow his direction.
He cleared his throat. "I fear, however," he continued, "that it may not."
Gertrude's eyes widened with concern.
"Have I done something wrong?"
"Oh no, no, Miss Gertrude," he assured her quickly, leaning forward in his chair to grasp her hand. "Please do not think that. It is nothing that you ... oh no, it is me. I—" He released her hand, straightened once more in his chair, and began pulling at his left eyebrow. "I do not believe that I have ever been so nervous with a woman in my life," he admitted.
"I am nervous, too," she said.
"Well, you certainly should be," he told her, his brow furrowed with concern. "This is, after all, your first . . . your first ... ah, participation in such an ... an act. But I have ... I mean, on numerous occasions, and I . . . well, I just feel differently about you."
She sat silently in her chair.
"My experience has been with . . . with women who were more . . . more experienced themselves. I have never . . . not with a . . . well ... a virgin ... not since . . . since my wife."
"Oh yes, of course." Gertrude nodded slowly, reminding herself to continue to breathe.
"I'm not sure that you really . . . that you really should do this," he told her.
Gertrude's chin came up defensively. "You are not attracted to me," she said evenly.
Her words seemed to catch him off guard. He hastened to correct her impression. "That's not it at all! I am very attracted to you, Miss Gertrude."
She didn't believe him. "I do understand, Mr. Stefanski," she said quickly. Rising to her feet, she grabbed her hat. Her cheeks were flaming with humiliation. "I am so sorry to have inconvenienced you."
"Miss Gertrude, you misunderstand," he insisted.
"No, I understand completely," she said. "Please let us speak no more of it. I know that I am neither young nor especially fair."
"That is not—" Mikolai was becoming increasingly agitated. "What I . . . Damn it! I forget my English when I am upset. Miss Gertrude, I—"
"Please let us just forget it all, Mr. Stefanski. It is certainly not your fault that you do not find me attractive."
She was walking now. Her head high, her heart breaking. The poet said "better to have loved and lost." Gertrude was thinking that it was better to have always wondered than to have found out the truth. She had offered herself to a man, freely, with no question of vows or ties, and she had been refused. She wanted to cry. She wanted to screech. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. She wanted to get out of the room.
She reached the door and grabbed the handle. She had only managed inches of a peek outside before it slammed shut loudly. Mikolai Stefanski was leaning against it.
"Please, you must not think what you are thinking," he said.
"It is no fault of yours, Mr. Stefanski," she said bravely.
"You misunderstand," he said. "That is my fault."
"I am quite all right. And you must not reproach yourself," she said. "You can in no way be blamed for not . . . for not wanting me."
"I do want you."
"There is no need to spare my feelings, sir."
"I am speaking the truth."
"Please just let me go."
"I cannot while you believe this . . . this lie."
"Mr. Stefanski, please, I—"
Her words were halted abruptly when he grabbed her black gloved hand and pressed it against the front of his trousers.
"Oh!" she cried.
"My body does not lie, Miss Gertrude," he said evenly. His voice was very quiet in the still, silent room. "Can you doubt my desire for you when you feel with your own hand the evidence of it?"
Gertrude did feel it. The hard, formidable length was pulsing against her hand through the layers of fabric that separated his flesh from her palm. This was a man. A man, the way a man was built. It was bigger, harder, warmer, more real than she had expected. Now she knew at least. She knew what it was to touch a man.
With sudden realization she saw that he was no longer forcing her to that intimate touch. His clasp upon her wrist was gentle, easily broken. Yet, her hand had not moved away, but rather she had conformed her palm to the shape of him and was tentatively though deliberately exploring him.
Horrified, she jerked back her hand and turned her back to him. Her thoughts were flying too wildly to grasp. She trembled with anxiety, or was it excitement?
"See, it has already happened," he said quietly behind her. "I have disgusted you."
"You?" She turned to look at him askance. "Not you. It was me. I touched you."
"I put your hand against me."
"But I kept it there."
"Did you?"
"Well, yes, I—" She turned her back to him once more and fell silent. "You have not disgusted me, Mr. Stefanski," she said quietly.
"I still fear that I might," he told her. "I have so little experience with ladies . . . ladies such as yourself."
"How is it with . . . with the other type of ... of women?' she asked.
"Well," he said thoughtfully. "It's a game of sorts, I suppose. We tease each other a bit and then we just pull up her skirts and get at it."
The image his words conjured up brought Gertrude to blush. Disconcerted, she returned to the table and placed her hat upon it once more. She was not leaving. Not now. She was not leaving now.
"What about your wife?" she asked. "Surely the first time with her must have been more . . . more solemn."
He did not answer immediately. She glanced up to see his expression lost in thought, his face pained.
"Forgive me, Mr. Stefanski," she said quickly. "Of course this . . . this is nothing at all like your wedding night with your late wife. I cannot think how crass I am to suggest that this assignation be in any way similar to the uniting in wedlock of a man and his wife."
Stefanski's expression returned from the past and he fixed his eyes upon her thoughtfully.
"I was very drunk on my wedding night," he said quietly. "I was very drunk and very young. I don't remember too much of it. But I vividly recall that my bride cried for an hour at least after the deed was done. And she called me a . . . I'm not sure how to say it in English. She said I was a 'big, sweating hog.' I would not wish, Miss Gertrude, to give you justification for saying the same."
Gertrude swallowed the strange emotion that caught in her throat. "I am sure you will not," she assured him softly.
His eyes were deep and fathomless as he looked at her. "You understand that I must touch you, caress you in places that are very private," he said.
She nodded bravely, but her blood was pounding through her veins and her stomach was suddenly filled to the brim with the fluttering of butterfly wings.
He stepped toward her. With great formality he raised her hand to his lips. "I will try to be gentle," he promised.
She nodded.
Slowly he turned her hand in his own. He looked at her once more, as if giving her another chance to flee before he bent to kiss her wrist. It was a gentleman's kiss, light and respectful. The thrill of it pulsed through her and brought a ripple of sensation to the flesh beneath her clothes.
His strong, callused hands smoothed up her arm to the delicate buttons on her gloves. Unslipping them easily with two large masculine fingers, slowly he began to pull down the glove, unveiling the pale, smooth skin beneath it.
"You have very pretty hands, Miss Gertrude," he said. "I think of your hands often."
"You think of my hands?"
He nodded. "I think of them writing stories and digging in the garden."
She smiled lightly, pleased.
He leaned forward and whispered close to her ear. "But now, forever, I will think of them caressing the front of my trousers as you did a few minutes ago."
"Oh my," Gertrude said. She found it suddenly difficult to catch her breath. Tingles of startling gooseflesh crept down her throat all the way to her bosom, the tips of which tightened perceptively as if his hands had touched them instead of his words.
He relieved her of her other glove in the same manner he had taken the first and left it to lie with its mate on the scarred little table, next to her silk braid hat.
"Please tell me if you become frightened," he said as he reached for the button at her throat. "I do know how new this all must be for you."
Gertrude's arms were stiff at her side as she felt him unfastening her shirtwaist. "It is all new," she said. "But it is not as if I have not thought about it, this, many times."
"You've dreamed of having a lover?" he asked, his pale eyes observing her keenly.
She had dreamed of him. "Yes, I have. Not always for myself. I ... I rarely allowed myself really to imagine . . . to imagine that," she answered shyly. "But I have often dreamed for my heroines, for them there have always been men to love."
Her buttons undone on her shirtwaist, Mikolai began to pull it out from the confines of the skirt. He tried to smile. "I don't think the hands of the gentlemen who made love to your heroines ever shook as mine do now," he said.
Gertrude looked up into his eyes and felt compassion for his fears. She pushed his hands away and, keeping her eyes straight upon his own, slipped her bodice off easily and draped it thoughtlessly across the back of the chair. She stood before him now, her shoulders bare save for the two wide ribbons of white satin that held up her camisole.
He hurried out of his own coat and vest and allowed them to lie where they fell. He gazed at the half-dressed woman before him like a starving man might view a twelve-course banquet.
"Oh, Gertrude," he said as he stepped toward her. "You must be able to hear my heartbeat. It seems to be clamoring like a blacksmith's hammer."
"And mine also," she said.
Gently he caressed the naked, exposed flesh of her shoulders. "You are so smooth," he said.
"Thank you."
"I haven't kissed you yet."
"No, you haven't."
"I think I will."
"Please do."
He took her chin in his hand and bent his head slightly at an angle and leaned toward her. Eagerly she pursed her lips and raised her mouth to his. He hesitated. With the pad of his thumb he softly rubbed against her lower lip.
"Open your mouth, Gertrude," he said. "I want to kiss you as a lover, not as my maiden aunt."
She relaxed her puckered pose and he moved in closer. "Open your mouth," he said. "Just a little bit. Yes, that's right."
He placed his lips upon hers so gently. Yet the firm pressure as he sucked her mouth against his own set off tingling fires from her scalp to her toes.
He relinquished the kiss but pulled back only a hairbreadth to question her. "Do you like my kiss?" he asked.
"Oh yes." Her voice was breathy with excitement and her chest was tight.
"May I embrace you when I kiss you this time?"
"If you like."
"I would very much like."
He slipped his arms around the thin shield of eyelet and cambric that covered her and pulled her tightly against him. Once more he brought his mouth down to hers, tasting and teaching as she trembled against him.
Reluctantly, but without haste, he broke off the kiss again. His eyes were dreamy, lusty, as he gazed at her.
"I can feel your bosom against my chest," he told her.
"I suppose so," she said.
"It's a very soft bosom, Gertrude," he said.
"I suspect that it is supposed to be that way."
"Yes, it is wonderfully soft. But not all soft. I can feel the hardness of your nipples through my shirt."
"Is that supposed to be that way?"
"Oh yes," he answered. "It is supposed to be just that way."
He kissed her again, more thoroughly, more confidently. He allowed his hand to roam more freely along her back and down, down, past the waistband of her skirt to the curve of her buttocks. He clasped her there and pulled her commandingly against him.
His lips left hers and traveled a scorching path to the tender flesh of her neck. "What do you feel of me?" he whispered against her throat.
Gertrude gasped for air, not certain that she could speak. "I can feel ... I can feel your body," she answered.
"You can feel it," he said. "And is it soft or is it hard?"
"It's hard," she whimpered. "It's very hard."
"Do you like feeling it against you?"
"Yes, I think that I do like it."
"Do you think you would like it inside?"
"Oh, please, Mr. Stefanski, don't tease me anymore. I think I do want it inside me."
He pulled away from her then, but his movements were sure and swift as he found and released the fastener of her skirt. It dropped to her ankles, but she didn't have time to step out of it, he grasped her behind her knees and lifted her up into his arms. She wrapped her hands around his neck as he carried her to the rusty iron bed.
He hesitated a moment as he held her above it, as if savoring a special
treat. Then, gently he placed her in the lover's bower they had prepared. He followed her down upon the soft cotton tick and wedged his knee between her thighs.
"Oh, Mr. Stefanski," she whispered.
"Yes, Miss Gertrude" was his answer.
He kissed her then. Passionately. Thoroughly. Feverishly. I was not a kiss as the others had been, a tasting of one mouth upon another. This kiss involved his whole body and incited her. His hands were everywhere, coaxing, pressing, caressing
His breathing was at a pace so quickened, it was only surpassed by the haste with which he was pulling at he camisole. When the ribbon strap on that garment ripped, it sounded as loudly within the room as if a cannon had been fired.
He stopped immediately. Mikolai stared into her eyes. What he saw there she didn't know, but he released her and sat up on the side of the bed. He stared off into space and seemed quiet determined to get control of his accelerated breathing.
He turned back to her finally, much subdued and very apologetic. He smoothed her cheek gently. "I'm sorry to tear your clothing," he said.
"It's not important. I can easily mend it," she told him.
"Would you allow me to buy you a new one?" he asked.
She didn't answer, but her cheeks pinked brightly with embarrassment. A single man buying a woman's underwear was as scandalous an action as a decent woman could imagine
She almost giggled at her own thoughts. Certainly lying half dressed in a rented bed with a lover sitting beside you was much farther beyond the pale. Somehow, it didn't seem very shameful at all.
Her laughter relaxed him. He looked at her somewhat sheepishly.
"You may buy me anything you like, Mr. Stefanski," she said. "I would be honored to accept a gift from you."
He smiled. Clearly he was once more in control of his passions. "I would consider it a gift from yourself if you would call me by my given name."
"Mikolai," she said quietly.
He reached up to gently touch her face, taking one short brown curl of her hair and twisting it around his finger.
"Let us take this a bit more slowly," he said. "I don't want to frighten you."
"I wasn't frightened," she assured him.
"Perhaps I was," he answered.
A long moment passed between them as he looked at her, warmly, lovingly. His haste and his passion thrilled her, but the regard in this long, friendly look pleased her also.