by Bianca Bloom
There were hardly any formal greetings between our parties, as it was well before Sergei had begun to loan out his time to our neighbors. But that must have been the little girl. Since I could tell even from such a distance that she was not a typical child, my heart went out to her brother.
Still, though, I recalled that money could solve most problems of the very rich.
“If you were to leave, surely Beatrice would be well looked-after.”
Elias’s feet were swung out of the stream, and now I was sure that he would leave. “Miss Morton, begging your pardon, you know little of my family.”
This was a strange accusation. Sitting stiff on my rock, I was determined not to give in. “Because your family has done nothing to welcome us to the neighborhood.”
“Be that as it may,” he began, then noted my scowl. “It was very wrong of us, and I apologize.”
After what felt like an ages-long pause, I spat at him – “Well, all right, then. I accept your apology. What of your family?”
“You have no sense of my father.”
I nodded, watching the water dry on the rock where I had immodestly spread my toes. Elias was right – in being deprived of both village gossip and Sergei’s knowledge of the Glovers, I had lost the possibility of “knowing” my neighbors. “Give me a sense of him, then, Mr. Glover.”
Elias’s voice grew quieter. “He is a brute. A great boor of a man. Do you know what I mean?”
I thought of my earlier conversations. “My mother seems to think that the word ‘brute’ is over-utilized.”
“It is the only word I could use to truly help you know my father.”
This did give me something to ponder. My own father could be a bit of an idiot, and he certainly had the arrogance of a king. But he was never violent, and while he never understood a jot of my mother’s decorating fervor, he stayed out of her way and never had an unkind word for her.
In fact, considering that he indulged his children far more than he could ever bear to discipline them (even when it came to rejecting his choices of suitors), he was on the whole not the worst father in all creation. Not by any means.
When I looked up at Elias, I thought that he was sneaking a glance at me. But he would not meet my eyes, so I made another bid for attention. His face had grown less weary as we had spoken.
“You enjoy coming to this stream, then. To have some respite from your household?”
“I do. It is an escape, one that I can usually only make in the morning, as my father stays out until all hours and rarely rises before eleven.”
Looking up at the darkening sky, I shook my head. “I wonder that you have come out so late today, then. If your father away from home?”
He smiled. “My sister Jacqueline is visiting, so I need not worry for Bea on this day. If only Jack could stay here for the whole season, things would be quite different.”
He trailed his fingers through the water again, and I watched him, wishing that we were not separated by anything – or that he would ford the troublesome moat and make his way directly to me.
For I had two feelings in me. One was that Elias and I should not be likely to meet again, and that I must seize this moment with him. And the other feeling, which was a great desire to embrace him, feeling for myself both the fine fabric of his jacket, the soft quality of his fair hair, the misshapen fall of his breeches. Indeed, the fabric appeared to be of a peculiar cut, as it was bulging out in an odd manner. I wondered if this was yet another one of the recent fashions.
With a start, I realized that I had been staring again, and struggled to change the subject. What could I speak of? Perhaps a tendency to come to this particular stream in times of turmoil in the home, a freedom I envied, though perhaps not one that would appeal to young men fond of wilder habits. Elias’s odd affection for this little body of water was familiar to me only from literature, and I told him as much.
“You’re like the priest, come to get away from his troubles.”
His eyes blinked back at me without recognition, but with a great deal of beauty. “I’m sorry, which priest would you mean? Not the new vicar in the village?”
I laughed, sure that the boy was simply dense. “You know, the one in the poem. Rusalka.”
Still no response was issued.
I groaned. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as quick to find the literary equivalent. It was difficult for me to reference the poem exactly, as mama had always told it to us in Russian. Though the boys’ tutors seldom spoke passable Russian, and our governesses never did, mama had taken it upon herself to teach us. It had always seemed unfortunate to me that our family had too little prestige to secure a proper tutor, the type who spoke good Russian, as I assumed most of them did.
Muttering the first few lines to myself as mama had taught them, I thought for a minute of translating them into English but thought the better of it. “You know, ‘Rusalka’. By Pushkin? It was published only a few years ago, so you must know it. I suppose it’s called ‘The Water Girl’ or ‘The Mermaid’ in English, or something like that.”
Still no response. “Pushkin? I don’t know him.”
My face fell. Perhaps this man wasn’t who he claimed to be. In fact, that seemed impossible. Surely the sole heir of the Glover family was bound to know the most important writers.
His costume was expensive, but that could easily have been stolen. My blood cooled. “Are you illiterate?” I asked. The boy might simply have been an idiot, like his sister Beatrice, in which case he might have no hope of ever learning to read.
Shaking his head, he looked over at me quizzically. “I, illiterate? Certainly not. But I simply don’t know your Russian writers. I’m sure that most of these foreigners are not worth reading, though some women seem to like them.”
Well then. Apparently, my life was very little, as I seemed to spend it living in a heathen family and reading less than esteemed authors.
With a great snort, I stuffed my wet feet into my stockings and shoes, striding over to the dapple grey. “Well, I suppose I am one of the women who likes foreigners, then. Perhaps because my mother is a foreigner herself.”
Now he was all apologies, following at a respectful distance. “Miss Morton, please. I apologize. I have offended you.”
His flurries of words met with no response, but he continued to speak to me with humility and fervor. “I have spoken rashly. Please do me the honor of accepting my apology.”
For the first time in my young life, I flung myself over an unsaddled horse’s back and managed to get up without any great difficulty. I noted that I must remember to tell Sergei that my anger had made me quite strong.
And imbued with this new confidence (though still decidedly shaky in the side-saddle position forced upon me by my tediously long dress), I nudged the dapple grey into as fast a walk as I dared and headed back toward the house, ignoring the young Glover’s continued protestations of apology.
* * *
It would have been suitably dramatic to have cantered through the woods on a dapple grey. To have lost my cares in the thrill of speed, and to have left Elias looking after me, wondering what might have been if he himself were not such a great boor. Though that word didn’t seem to fit him. Perhaps, in my mind, I had better call him a fool than a boor.
Instead, I went off on the dapple grey in a rather speedy walk, which could not even properly be called a trot. Side-saddle already made the riding quite a slow endeavor, the wet hem of my dress clung to my legs, and I knew that Sergei would murder me if I were to lame one of his old but trusty horses.
So instead of cantering off, the horse and I walked out of sight. Even so, I could feel Elias’s eyes on me.
The worst thing I felt after leaving him wasn’t any kind of wound to an overly sensible soul. Miss Helena Morton, I thought, was not one to feel hurt when she was slighted by a man of the gentry – that happened often enough. No, my feeling was something much deeper and more alarming. It was a great sense of all-encompassing loss
. That very morning, I had been lamenting the way that the pleasures of the flesh felt hundreds of miles away from my own bed. And yet less than a full day passed before I encountered a man who was, at the very least, physically perfect. And for many minutes, it seemed that he might be able to know me, in all senses of the word.
What a great shame that he had such scorn for literature, for women, and for Russians. But then, I knew not to expect better from the English upper classes. It was one reason that I could stand not being a fully-accepted member of the set – they were such dreadful bores when it came to book learning. Although my siblings and I were no scholars, at least we approached books with a sense of duty. And when it came to exotic, contemporary young geniuses such as Pushkin, I had no reservations at all, and quite devoured each volume and poem that mama managed to procure for us.
But now I was simply riding home on a slow and steady horse, wondering what I was to be given for my supper. Mama and papa were only too happy to order that I be sent to bed without supper, knowing that I survived quite well all of the years in which sleeping on an empty stomach was a daily necessity, not a punishment. But Cook would find a way to sneak a morsel or two to me. I reflected, with some sadness, that all our servants had to be in the good graces of every member of the family, not just my parents. Their employment was nothing if not dependent on the mood of every single family member at any given moment. I tried to spur the dapple grey on a bit, so I could reach home sooner and be rid of these dreadful thoughts, but she ignored my sore heels and continued to walk. Even her walk made me quite uncomfortable, and I hoped miserably that we were near home.
Indeed, in spite of all the bawdy jokes about women riding horses, I had never found that anything in particular happened to the center of my legs when I was atop a horse. But the speed and escape could certainly be thrilling. Generally, in spite of the physical difficulty, I did enjoy exploring our great grounds on a horse.
That is, until I was wanted at home, which never seemed to be long after I had started. My parents were hopeless on horses, but my father was determined, and could always manage to get within earshot of me.
When my mother wanted me, she simply sent a groom after me, which was highly effective and certainly devastating. Often, she sent Sergei, as she knew I would have no choice but to obey.
“Lenotchka,” he would say, “You are wanted by your governess.”
“Thank you,” I would pant, attempting to make my horse outrun Sergei’s. “You may leave.”
He would come up beside me, easily outpacing me. “You first.”
“No, you.”
Things would go on like this for a good while until I promised to go first, and Sergei would follow at a respectful distance until he had actually seen me return and dismount. But, I reflected at length, perhaps there was some hope with Sergei. He and Dusty were the only people in the household to order me about. Sergei, due to his long friendship with my father, knew that his job was safe. In fact, he had such a deft hand as a groom that he must be well aware that finding a job would be quite easy for him, with or without a reference.
The neighbors had been trying to poach Sergei for years, apparently, and my father delighted in not giving them that pleasure. “The neighbors” were Elias’s family, I reflected – trying to take everything that they liked by force. Typical. The English upper classes thought that they could simply buy everything, I reflected, taking care of any problem with an excess of money. The thought angered me, and the reins nearly slipped from my hands – I reflected that Sergei should have to secure some that were rather easier to hold.
The English upper ten thousand were quite easy to criticize, but it did force me to overlook a few things about my own family. I tried not to think about the force my father had employed when purchasing our home. The family before us had been hanging on by their fingernails with mortgages and cuts to their staff for many years. A large reason that they were willing to sell was that my father went behind their backs, offering pay raises and additional help to most of the family’s staff. Cook had been one of theirs, I reflected, and several of the maids and footmen. Their butler had left, but he alone seemed particularly loyal to the disgraced family that sold the monstrous mansion to us.
I realized that my heart was pounding in my breast, and stopped for a moment. My face was flushed with rage, my legs braced tightly to the side, my breath coming heavily. But that was not all due to my righteous burst of resentment toward the ancient, landed families. There were other reasons that I was short of breath.
The truth was, the scene which I had left could have been quite different, if only Elias were slightly less honorable.
We could have left all talk of families, literature, and land to dull old grannies in their drawing rooms. Elias could have stood in the stream himself, lifting me up and covering me in warm kisses. Pulling me to the bank, he could have laid me down tenderly in the soft grasses.
My mind began reeling, and I felt as if I were remembering something that had already occurred, so vivid were the sensations in my wild imaginings.
He had held me, then laid me down. The sole heir to the neighboring family was young, and that made him unable to contain himself. He did not have the grace or slowness that an older man might have had, but his hands were sure and quick.
Those hands, warm and free of unsightly hair, were quick when they were pulling up the damp skirt of my dress. And they were quick when pulling up the shift that sat under the dress, supposedly to allow me a modicum of modesty.
And they were quick when undoing just enough of his own garments for an organ that I had hitherto never seen on a grown man to burst forward.
Wood and steel were the materials that this organ was most often compared with, and in my imagining, it was every bit as hard as a bedpost, with no way of surrendering to any pressure and absolutely no springiness. For this reason, our congress was quite painful at first, feeling much as my own hard fingers had felt when I had attempted to create a realistic impersonation of this organ in the solitude of my own bed.
Soon, though, the pleasure that I my lover had brought began to overtake me, as my bleeding slowed and Elias was no longer forced to be gentle. My body was nearly still fully clothed, as was his, but both our faces were turning red with the exertion.
And, indeed, soon he was unable to be gentle. His eyes widened as he whispered that he was quite near his end.
Thanks to mama’s intervention, I knew just what to do. “We must separate,” I whispered, and he extracted the hard piece of flesh from me. With expert hands, he rubbed at me and at himself until he achieved the desired result, the fruit of his labors flying high up into the leaves.
Indeed, though the few materials I had read warned most heartily that a good cleanup was to be in order after a man decided on an onanistic course, it was unclear to me exactly the length that his liquid would flow. I imagined it to be something like ten yards, for why else would these authors warn so solemnly of the necessity of cleaning walls after such a congress? Surely this meant that some of Elias’s seed would end up in the trees?
The farther my fantasy extended, the less it could satisfy. Due to the hasty and bungled kisses of exactly two overeager suitors, I was familiar enough with the early stages of such congress, but was highly unskilled in what apparently followed. What Elias would look like in a fit of passion, and how he would behave, was still essentially a mystery.
As I contemplated this particular mystery, exiting the woods, I bumped into a familiar figure walking towards me.
“I expected you about this hour, Elena Feodorovna,” said Sergei, walking up to me and giving the horse a pat. “I have informed your parents, but as you may imagine, neither was particularly thrilled to learn of your escape.”
I sighed, enjoying the opportunity to speak Russian with a man who didn’t think himself above reading Pushkin and other “foreigners” – in fact, Sergei was quite interested in literature of all sorts. “I knew they would be angry. Who
is more livid, mama or papa?”
“Elena, I hardly know. You have been away from home a great many hours.”
“Yes,” I said. “The weather was beautiful, and I had horse that you gave me. What need had I to be home?”
He laughed. “Well, you were grossly negligent of your duties, at the very least.”
I threw up my hands. “If you were negligent, horses would go hungry. Some of them would likely sicken, and none would have properly fitting shoes. If I am negligent, what changes? Not a thing.”
Helping me dismount, Sergei looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that is the trouble here, then.”
I frowned. “That I neglect my responsibilities?”
“That you have none to neglect. Or practically none.”
I started for the house, but Sergei called me back. “Wait, Lenotchka,” he said, commanding me as he had when I was small. “Walk to the stables with me. The sight of the horses may cheer you, and you shall need some good cheer tonight.”
My mind was still occupied by Sergei’s pronouncements on my laziness. “I do have duties,” I mused, “But I did not choose any of them. I did not choose this horrid business of entertaining suitors, or learning the dullest dances, or writing in perfect little loops.”
This made Sergei laugh, and his lined and bearded face fairly lit up the twilight. “Many of us did not choose our duties, Lenotchka. Do you think the servants of your father’s house chose to have the requirement of working? Do you feel that I chose my exile to this country, and I chose a situation in which I would not have enough money to live decently without spending each day caring for another man’s horses?”
It was the longest speech I had heard from Sergei in quite some time, and I felt my heart drop as I contemplated it.
“Sergei, you do not wish to work here?”
Now he was shaking his head quite emphatically. “You mistake my meaning, dorogaya. As you know, this situation is my ideal for the present. But I cannot help but wonder that the person under this grand roof with the lightest duties seems to be the only person openly complaining about her lot in life.”
