A knock sounded at the door, and then Alice reappeared. (No, not Alice. Mistress Hull.)
She carried a wooden pail of water that gave off a fragrant steam and set it before the chair. Her hair was covered with a black veil, as he’d requested, and it made him instantly excited, despite his nerves.
She turned to him and bowed low, like a servant.
“You must be so tired from your travels,” she said softly. “I want you to be comfortable. Can I help you with your coat?”
She moved behind him and pressed her fingers to his sleeve. Awareness rippled through him. It had been weeks since he had felt her touch, for he had asked her to honor his celibacy until he’d reassured them both that they could be together, without doubts or guilt darkening their intimacy.
But this did not mean he hadn’t longed for her. Looking at her now, he felt he’d never burned so hot and bright.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing to the chair. “Let me ease your weariness.”
She knelt at his feet and slowly, very slowly, untied the laces of his boots. He watched every movement of her fingers, felt each tiny change in the pressure of the leather around his shins and ankles. Sliding his feet out of those shoes was one of the most pleasant sensations of his life.
He closed his eyes as she rubbed her hand over the outline of his toes above his stockings.
“How your feet must ache,” she said. “You’ve travelled so far.” Her voice was sweet, feminine, a coo—nothing like the way that Alice talked, and even less like Mistress Hull. She was the maid, who only wished to serve him.
She was good at this. At reading beneath what he’d told her to the truth of the desire. For now he understood what had made him want this. He wanted to be loved and tended and nurtured for his goodness. It was his highest fantasy.
She moved her fingertips up to his calves and untied the stays beneath his breeches to release his stockings. He could scarcely breathe.
Her hands were bare, and he liked the feeling of them on his legs.
“Place your feet inside this tub, so I can wash away your troubles.”
He did, and the water was so warm, and her hands on his toes and soles and ankles were so soft, so soft.
She smiled up at him from beneath her lashes. “Does that feel good?” she whispered.
He nodded.
It felt like mercy.
It felt like love.
She picked up a small gold cup filled with a liquid and poured it into the water. The faint fragrance he had smelled before grew stronger, filling the room with the scent of lavender and something spicier he couldn’t place.
He squeezed the arm of the chair and closed his eyes. Between the warm water at his feet and the lovely smell and the pressure of Alice’s fingers lightly kneading his ankles, he wanted to moan with appreciation.
She stopped, and he heard her hands come out of the water, and he opened his eyes. She was lifting the veil up over her head. She looked directly into his eyes and dropped it to the floor. And then she began to remove the pins that held her plaited hair in a knot at the back of her head.
A long, dark braid fell down over her breasts.
She unfurled the braid, letting strands of hair fall in waves around her.
He was transfixed by how she looked. He wanted this. He wanted this so much.
She took a phial from her pocket and removed the cork. She poured a scented oil into her hand, then massaged it into her tresses as he watched. He had to close his eyes again, because she looked so beautiful, so erotic, that if he watched her surrounded by all that loose, luxurious hair—he’d always loved long hair, dreamed of having a wife whose hair he could brush in the evenings—this would be over far too soon.
“Open your eyes,” she whispered, pouring a generous portion of the oil from his calf, to his ankle, to his big toe. And then, using a fistful of her own hair, she began to massage it into his skin. The sight paralyzed him. That long, soft hair draped over him. The whisper of her breath on his skin as she lightly kissed the arches of his feet and caressed the space between his toes. He gasped in pleasure.
The stirrings became sharp and urgent as she murmured about his poor toes, his poor shins, his hard work, his many travels, and it felt so wonderful to be tended in this way that he wished she would touch more of him.
“Does it please you?”
Oh God, help me, but it does.
“Yes,” he gasped out. He could feel his cock rising against the fabric of his shirt, dripping now at the sight of her and the tenderness and care she’d given him.
“Would you like me to bathe you?”
She was asking if he wanted more. And he did. He did.
“Please,” he whispered.
She took his hand and led him from the room into another one he’d seen—the bathing room—dark, and hot, and filled with steam. The tub was full of scented water, and there were more phials and soft cloths piled all around it.
He was utterly still as she undressed him. Each whisper of her skin on his lit him like he was a lamp. With every garment that she dropped upon the floor he felt more nude, more open. Like he was being born anew, beneath her touch. Baptized into something he’d never known before, but craved.
Neither of them spoke as she led him to the tub. He sank down and watched her as she dipped her hair into the water and bathed his neck and shoulders, then his chest, his back. She moved to his feet and washed his legs and thighs. All that was left was his belly and his cock, which was so hard, so aching, it was nearly painful.
She teased his belly, moving slowly lower, so her hair brushed along his hipbones. His muscles rippled at the delicate sensation, and his cock jutted from the water.
She met his eye, a question in her expression. “How might I soothe you?” she whispered.
He knew she was offering to relieve his desire. But he wanted something different.
“Will you sing to me?”
Her eyes widened, and then she smiled, and the smile was his lover’s smile, Alice’s smile.
She took his hands in hers and began to croon a song he’d never heard.
* * *
Oft have I vow’d to love no one,
but when I think on thee,
I have no power for to give o’re,
thy Captive I must be;
So many looks and graces dwells
between these Lips and Eyes,
That whosoever sees thy Face,
must once be made a prize.
* * *
As she sang, she began to run her hands lightly over his body, swirling the water around him.
* * *
Oft have I view’d thy comely parts
from head unto the toe,
Which makes me fry in Cupids flames,
the truth of all is so;
For when I lie upon my Bed,
in hopes to take my rest,
I cannot sleep to think on thee,
whom I in heart love best.
* * *
Her eyes were shining down at him as she sang those final lines. Dove’s eyes. (Alice’s eyes. His Alice’s eyes.)
“Shall I wash more of you?” she asked, moving her hands toward his painfully swollen arousal.
(Yes. But not yet, my love.)
He took her hands in his and kissed them. “Alice, I don’t want to make love again until you are my wife. It’s a vow I made to God that is important to me.”
She gave him a cockeyed smile that was thoroughly Alice’s. “As you wish, Reverend. I can burn as long as you desire.”
He stared at her. “Does that mean you will marry me?”
She laughed softly. “This was for you, Henry. For me, I would have married you a month ago.”
He paused, an idea forming in his mind. “What about tonight?”
Chapter 38
Elena was in a session, so Alice simply wrote her a note. “Ran off to marry the minister.”
She and Henry left the whipping house hand in hand, Alice carr
ying a single bag, and Henry nothing but the coat on his back. They hailed a hackney to a stable, where Henry rented a coach and team.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, snuggling up beside him. “Gretna Green?”
“Somewhere better,” Henry said enigmatically.
“I wonder how long it will take until an axle breaks, or we are stranded in a hail storm, or beset by highwaymen,” Alice mused, as he took the road heading south, toward the coast.
“I’d like to see a highwayman try to get the better of you,” he said, grinning. “Certainly you could out-curse him.”
“Bloody befucked right I could.”
Henry groaned, which pleased her very much.
Despite her prediction, the roads were good and mostly empty. The weather was mild. They did not encounter thieves, nor wolves, nor even a minor plague of locusts.
She was almost disappointed when Henry slowed the horses onto a wooded path leading up a hillside and said, “We’re almost there.”
At the top of the hill, the trees parted, and before them was a castle. An actual castle, pretty as something in a story book, complete with high turrets fit for a princess.
“What is this place?”
“Wait here,” Henry said, grinning mysteriously. “I shouldn’t be long, if things go to plan.”
He strode up to a heavy wooden door and pounded on it. After a moment, a man about Henry’s age opened it. He wore a dressing gown, like he had come from bed, and started in surprise. Henry pointed at the carriage. The man’s face broke into a delighted grin, and threw his head back and laughed, slapping Henry on the back.
The two of them disappeared inside.
Alice waited, amusing herself by walking about the grounds, which included a pretty little chapel overlooking the ocean on the other side of the hill. The air smelled green and rich, like early spring, and the garden was noisy with birdsong. After a quarter hour Henry called her name, and she wandered back to the castle doors, where Henry was waiting with the man she’d seen before. This time he wore the robes and collar of a priest.
“Alice Hull,” Henry said, “please meet Mr. Andrew Egerton, my dearest friend from university.”
“A pleasure, Miss Hull,” the man said, smiling at her like she was some kind of miracle.
“Mr. Egerton is an ordained minister, when he’s not lazing about playing country squire.”
“Mr. Evesham has persuaded me to issue a special license, in my capacity as a minister of the Bishop of Canterbury,” Mr. Egerton said. “I can marry you right now. If, indeed, you truly mean to marry Henry Evesham.”
“I do,” she averred cheerfully.
He grinned. “Then follow me.”
And so she took Henry’s hand and walked beside him to the pretty little chapel.
It had no organ, but that did not matter. For within ten minutes, they walked back out, still hand in hand.
Wed.
Chapter 39
Henry’s heart was full to bursting.
God was good.
In their quick conferral Andrew had agreed to give him use of the dower suite of the castle, so that his bride might have a proper wedding night before they returned to London.
Andrew had had a word with his housekeeper to ready the rooms. When they walked in the door, Henry realized his friend’s servants had done more than ready it.
The table was filled with roses and a bounty of fruit and cakes set out on crystal plates. The bed was tossed with rose petals.
“Oh Henry,” Alice said, pausing at the entrance of the room. “This is too much.”
He pressed her to his side. “It’s our wedding day, Alice. Nothing is too much.”
Oh, to have a bride to spoil. What fun.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “I’m a bit tired from the journey.”
“I have just the thing to revive you. Wait here.”
Andrew’s late mother had been prescribed bathing during a long convalescence from a lung ailment, so her suite had a rather unusual luxury: a bathing room, with a deep soaking tub and steam troughs heated through a furnace beneath the floors. He had asked Andrew to have the bath prepared, so it would be hot for Alice.
The room was lined with pretty painted tiles and the floors were covered in soft carpets. The vents released warm steam fragrant with lemon peels and rosemary. He took some roses from a vase in the hallway and scattered the petals over the steaming tub. Feeling whimsical, he made a trail leading from the tub to the door.
He went back to fetch his wife. “Come. I have a surprise for you.”
He led her through his romantic display, enjoying her delight in the rose petal trail and the scent in the air. When they reached the bath, he turned back to smile at her, but her face arrested him. She looked like she might weep.
“Oh, don’t cry. I just wanted to bathe you, as you did for me. So you will feel as I felt. So cared for. So loved.”
“That’s how you felt?”
He nodded. And it struck him that all day, he’d not felt guilty, or sacrilegious, or perverse. He’d not lost himself in endless prayers, begging God’s forgiveness.
He’d just felt loved.
“I’m so glad,” she whispered.
“Then let me undress you.”
He took his time with it. He removed her clothes slowly, caressing her skin, kissing her in secret places he’d never had time to fawn over, like the inside of her knee, and the ticklish bit beneath her armpit.
When she was nude, and he had taken down her hair and brushed it out, he lifted her and put her in the bath. He drew a sea sponge over her until she was rosy, and massaged scented oil into her flesh. She even let him wash her hair, and smiled as he played with it, marveling that this creature, this beauty, was his to love and care for.
“Paul the Apostle was right,” Henry said. “It is better to marry than to burn.”
“Henry,” Alice said very seriously.
“Yes.”
“Take me to bed.”
Chapter 40
“Oh, Alice. Oh, sweet heaven,” Henry said, as he entered her for the first time.
“Don’t blaspheme in the marriage bed, Reverend,” she chided, lifting her hips to allow her husband to more thoroughly consummate their union.
For an unschooled man he found a rhythm easily and filled her in such a way she did not have to seek her pleasure, it simply came in rolls.
The effortless intensity of it bathed her in a kind of inner light.
It was, indeed, like heaven—or as like it as a girl as wicked as herself was qualified to say.
Henry’s eyes were full of something shining, and that certainty came over her again.
He loved her, she could see that. But he also loved this.
And castle or not, in this bed with him, she felt like a queen. For Henry’s body was among the finest luxuries she’d ever had the pleasure of consuming.
When they’d exhausted each other, a lazy smile played about his lips. A rather proud one, if she was not mistaken.
“Why Henry Evesham,” she laughed. “I believe I’ve made you into a satyr.”
His mouth twitched up shyly. “I’ve always been a satyr. I tried to tell you.”
She squeezed him. “And I thank the Lord for that.”
Henry fell asleep in her arms. When he was softly snoring, she tiptoed out of the room and found a maid.
“I wonder if I could ask the housekeeper for a request upon breakfast?”
“Of course, Mrs. Evesham.”
“An apple tart. With lots of cream and caramel. For my husband.”
She went back into the bed and snuggled up beside Henry.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Perhaps she was thanking her husband. Perhaps she was thanking God.
The only certainty was that it was a kind of prayer.
* * *
THE END
Historical Notes
Part of the pleasure of wri
ting this book was investigating the absolute treasure trove of 18th-century broadsheet ballads and folk songs that survive in the historical record, many of which are filthy, or heartbreaking, or both. In most places I excerpted from these songs as they were written, strange-to-our-modern-eyes-punctuation and all, though I did take the liberty of changing a word or two here and there for the sake of clarity.
* * *
If you are curious about the songs that appear in these pages, you can find more about them here:
* * *
The High-Priz’d Pin-Box (c. 1750): http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/32500/citation
Good Morning, Pretty Maid (c. 1750): http://www.contemplator.com/england/prettymaid.html
The Flattering Young Man and the Modest Maid (c. 1700): https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/34283/citation
* * *
And finally, a note on Methodism. Henry Evesham’s faith is loosely inspired by the writings of John Wesley and other figures members of the 18th-century Evangelical movement in England. Please note that while I hope Henry’s faith and concerns are in the spirit of the era, his version is entirely fictional. It is by no means intended as an authoritative portrait of the historical movement, nor a reflection of the Methodist Church as it now exists.
Thank You & Where To Find More
Dearest reader,
* * *
Thank you so very much for reading The Lord I Left ! If you enjoyed Alice and Henry’s story, please consider leaving a review. Your thoughts are a blessing to the community of readers looking for new books, and to authors like myself who very much want to match our work to people who will get a kick out of it.
The Lord I Left Page 25
