by Porphyro
what the goal might have been.
But perhaps Lady Loverly was only trying to do what she had, at every reception, told her guests she was trying to do: To remind these young wives, all of whom had set their lives upon a demanding ladder of social ascendancy, just how fortunate they already were. With a description so erotically blunt none of her guests could ever forget it, Lady Loverly may have been opening her heart in order to impress upon these young wives what is really important in life, finding a love mate. The old spinster knew her guests were all socially ambitious young women who were disposed to emulate whatever persons of a Loverly's social stature might do. Perhaps she was trying to show them by example that passionate, totally absorbing sexual love is not something a socially respected lady need eschew. Perhaps, in a crafty and wise manner Lady Loverly intended for these young women to do exactly what every one of them did after hearing the spinster's erotic account of long lost love.
As each young wife was being chauffeured home her thoughts at first were preoccupied with what Lady Loverly had divulged. But soon, and inevitably, her thoughts widened to consideration of the abundant explicit erotic details with which these revelations had been made. These young women were all from the segment of society where such explicit and graphic sexual details are seldom, if ever, heard among women. As each recalled Lovely's descriptions she wondered in amazement at them. Then she was aroused by them.
Because the Coffee, Cake and Chat receptions were always scheduled in the late afternoon, each of its young mother guests had been required to make provisions for the care of her children while she attended. Some of these arrangements, such as sending the kids off to spend the day at Grandma's, were originally set up so the children would be out of the house for the evening. But even in those cases where their absence had been intended to be short, it wasn't difficult for a guest returning from the Loverly party to make adjustments to extend it. With her children's care attended to, each wife repaired to the master bedroom suite which was a central feature of the common Loverly Downs grandiose house plan. There she prepared for her husband's immanent return from work.
The orchids she had been given when leaving the reception perfectly fitted the central role these flowers had played in Lady Loverly's revelation of her lost love. So it isn't surprising that each of these turned-on young women used her flower gift to decorate her master bedroom. Next she bathed and either dressed in the sexiest lingerie she possessed or she remained undressed. Then she lay in wait, literally, for her husband's return from work. When he did, the surprised and delighted man was subjected to what can only be described as a conjugal seduction among the orchids.
Nor was this seduction the only one attributable to Lady Loverly's romantic confession. Each wife had returned from the party with an ample supply of coffee or tea with which to brew herself many memory stirring cups of the exotic beverage she had drunk at the gathering. And when from time to time she did, the spices which made the drink as distinctive as it was delicious recalled the reception at the Loverly castle, recalled the grandam's explicit erotic descriptions of her meetings with her gardener lover, and aroused anew the beverage drinker's own libidinous urges. These, in turn, always led to another husband seduction. The effects of Lady Loverly's chats, therefore, were as long-lasting as they were delightful to the young married couples residing at Loverly Downs.
X
Loverly Downs became an enormous success, a prosperous bedroom community filled with successful and contented people. The husband and wife pairs who had chosen to make their home in the new suburb were delighted with their choice. Indeed, everyone who had had any association with the development was pleased at Loverly Down's outcome.
One group, however, didn't share this general satisfaction, the nearby city's domestic relations lawyers. These professionals had expected the community to bring them a bonanza of business. Normally it would have. As these people and sociologists well know, unlike the general impression, infidelity is not the main cause of marriage breakups. By far, the principal blame for that major social and personal disruption belongs to domestic money problems.
Couples, under the influence of incessant sophisticated scientifically designed and therefore highly effective advertising, are led to stretch themselves to the very edge of solvency. Continuous concern that any tiny disturbance might carry them over the financial edge breeds anxiety. And this anxiety leads to more and more unpleasant exchanges between a man and woman who at one time had sincerely sworn to love and honor each other. As the sociologists and divorce lawyers well know, it is the bitter bickering engendered in this way that leads to the marital infidelity which then is the immediate cause of the breakup.
Loverly Downs is a paradigm of the kind of community where such financially induced divorces are common. It had been an economic stretch for every couple in it to be able to afford one of its oversized grandiose houses. Yet, as the domestic relations lawyers disappointingly discovered, for some unknown reason this particular community had far fewer of such breakups than expected. Could the unknown reason have been the frequent conjugal seductions provoked by Lady Loverly's erotic disclosures? Could the couples in Loverly's eponymous community have been led by the old spinster's story to substitute erotic passion for marriage breaking bickering about bills? Or could Loverly Downs residents have been led by the Coffee, Cake and Chat revelations to rediscover what many young married couples seem to forget after the first few years of marriage, the erotic passion underlying and bonding the marriage union? And most beguilingly, could all of this have been the crafty plan of the last of the Lovelies? Was it all her devious way of insuring that her family's permanent monument would indeed be permanent, and would be an enduring tribute to the family name?
Nobody will ever know, for while the last few Loverly Downs houses were being completed Lady Loverly died. One night she passed away peacefully in her sleep. There wasn't a shred of evidence the death was anything but natural. Moreover, she was known to have had a cardiac condition which could have caused her death. She might have been operated on for it. However, since she suffered no symptoms nor discomfort, she had declined to undergo at her advanced age the risks and discomforts of such surgery. Thus, it seemed apparent that she had died from a heart attack. Her physician so concluded and so reported on her death certificate.
Nobody doubted this. But the firm of Loverly legal retainers, who were the designated executors of Lady's will, were too compulsively thorough to allow any ambiguity whatsoever to possibly ever exist about the death of so important, and so wealthy, a client. So with funds from the estate they hired a world-renowned pathologist to conduct a complete postmortem. Notwithstanding the firm's assurances that they were simply being compulsively thorough, Loverly's physician was miffed by what seemed to be an act casting doubt upon his competence. He was smugly pleased, therefore, when the star pathologist unequivocally confirmed his conclusion. Lady Loverly's partially clogged cardiac arteries had closed up completely, causing her death.
The cause of death was all anyone was concerned with. But the Loverly's law firm had ordered a complete and thorough postmortem, so that's what the star pathologist provided. One thing he felt to be particularly relevant was an examination of how well the hip fracture which had caused Lady Loverly's retirement to the estate had healed. And in conducting the examination of this part of the body the pathologist had routinely reported a routine finding. The information it conveyed was completely normal and unexceptional in a woman like Loverly. It was also personal and of no relevance to Loverly's death, so the law firm executors never allowed it to be publicly reported. Therefore, no woman who had attended one of Loverly's Coffee, Cake and Chat receptions would ever learn it.
This piece of information was buried in the pathologist's report. It consisted of a two word incomplete sentence, a simple and short explanation of an incidental finding in a large list of other similarly incidental, inconsequential findings. It merely said, "
Hymen intact." Miss Lucinda "Lady" Loverly had lived and died a virgin.
END
