by Martin, M.
I quickly check my e-mail to discover a picture that Matt sent me of Billy playing at daycare, which auto-expands on my screen. I attempt to conceal the reflection created on the window and glass behind me. David looks up briefly, only to look down again at his newspaper that now resembles something that should be tossed in the trash. I fantasize about showing him the picture, falling into a conversation that absolutely must happen, and yet, I can never push myself to the point of uttering the words.
“So tell me about the wedding we are going to … what’s her name again?” I ask.
“Her name is Alexandra, we were very good friends in university. She’s marrying Ben, who I also knew, but not as well, at the time.”
“Did you date Alexandra?”
“Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say date. But we were good mates for almost the entire time at university.”
“Does she live in London now?”
“Yes, they live in East London. Ben is in advertising; his father started a very large PR firm in the fifties that he now assists in managing.”
“And Alexandra, does she work? I assume not.”
“She does work. She works at an art publication called POP. Have you heard of it?”
“No, not really. Although it sounds very familiar.”
I truly wish he had told me a fellow journalist was getting married, as I probably would not have put myself in a position of meeting someone so connected to my New York life. While POP is really just a UK art publication, it also has a fashion component and likely overlapping contacts that could reach into my New York world. Given my own magazine is nowhere near as prestigious or hip as POP, I hope I have nothing to worry about.
“Well, it’s a very big deal in London, and it’s owned by Roman Abramovich, the Russian owner of Millhouse, and his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova runs the whole operation. You do know them, right?”
“Yes, of course, but just from what I’ve read.”
“Well, they’re lovely and know how to throw quite the party if you’ve ever been in Saint Barth or Miami for Art Basel.”
There’s an exclusionist tone to David when he speaks of people in his own world and me as an American, or maybe just as a normal not-wealthy woman. I’m sure he means nothing by it, but it rings condescending, especially when he makes virtually no eye contact during the explanation.
There’s little more conversation before the announcement calls out our stop in Bath, which is far more of a city than I was expecting, complete with its own large shopping street and jam-packed downtown.
Life moves at warp speed with David. The minute we step off the train, a driver greets him and takes everything, including my bulky purse, on him physically, so much so that he resembles a human mule in a full suit as he walks the terminal. Beads of sweat roll down his temple; he’s a husky man with too much hair gel and a scent that’s three spritzes too much of a fragrance from the early nineties. We make our way down the stairs and to his awaiting car that starts with a remote, and we seclude ourselves in a perfectly cool backseat.
“I’m so happy you were able to come with me.” David leans in to kiss me on the cheek. “I told Alexandra you were the type of woman I’m proud to have on my arm.”
I want to tell David exactly how I feel about him, how he makes every moment just a little better by being near. I want to tell him that I am as attracted to him with my eyes closed as with them wide open, and his hand is as comforting to hold, as his mouth is to kiss. However, I fear being the one who makes him feel too confined, too needed, and so in love with that he runs off for feeling suffocated or fearing intimacy. So instead, I sit silent and simply hold his hand tighter.
The evening sky turns to its last shade of purple before withdrawing into night as a horizon of manicured crops borders the hills. Elegant horses intersect rural roads as the car stops abruptly to let the four-hoofed traffic pass, an elegant rider on top. Ridiculously beautiful cows in all colors of brown sit within feet of white wooden fences along a narrow road barely wide enough for two cars to pass side by side. At the fork in the road is a small sign no bigger than a real estate marker with the words Babington House at one side of a tree-covered lane with a two-story cottage, long abandoned of its inhabitants.
“Is this where the wedding is tomorrow?” I ask. “It’s amazingly beautiful.”
“Oh no, this is where us poor folk stay without a countryseat in these parts. The wedding is at Alexandra’s family estate nearby.”
While easily impressed by such magnificence that appears through the windows, I mimic David and show no emotion. I concentrate on the series of footmen in my eye line who arrive to fetch our luggage, assist me out of the car, and welcome me with a glass of champagne. My eyes look away, taking in the edifice of Babington House and the manor’s sixteenth-century exterior of grayish stone gripped in greenish-aged moss and flanked in a roofline of chimney stacks that connect to the sky in a line of smoke. Sculpted but somewhat spare landscaping of hedges and potted topiary surround the motor court traced in iron lanterns lit in candlelight.
David rounds the car as I exit, grabs my hand, and takes me under the threshold into the main reception hall that smells of another century. My eyes sneak a gaze inside the series of formal rooms with creaky wooden floors and cavernous ceilings that echo in the careful steps of my knee-high boots. David proceeds to a Biedermeier desk that doubles as the reception. I peer into a cozy library with walls of glossy photography books and intricate walnut paneling that surround heavily filled down sofas where a woman sits with an e-reader under a chandelier made of antlers. We smile at each other, and she returns to her book. I move back into the hall and farther along into a cozy bar trimmed in emerald fabric walls. The furnishings are a bit busier, and inside are a collection of gents in skinny suits seated in tufted wingchairs in mint-colored mohair.
Part member’s club and part open-to-the-public hotel, there’s an element of elitism in the air mixed with sounds of The Strokes and the ever-present thump of traversing footsteps through the main hall. Outside, the grounds come to life once more, as spotlights illuminate an endless lawn and outlying buildings, including a small chapel with a steeple immediately next to the main house. It feels like a house party where you don’t know any other guests, but you really would like to meet them all. Everyone is fashionable and tucked deep into their own tête-à-têtes, looking up a second as I pass in my boots and jeans and flared black blazer, but then directly back into the depths of their conversations.
David returns, grabbing me from behind with a bite on my upper ear.
“Room key in hand. What do you say we head inside,” he whispers in my ear and then follows with another bite.
“You lead the way.”
The grand hall of the main house becomes quieter on this side. A cluster of heavy, old wooden doors leads to our own with a cumbersome deadbolt that David masters in a single attempt to unlock. He leads me inside and through a narrow hallway with a bathroom and into the bedroom with an alcove of three elaborately tall picture windows. At the center of the room, an ash-white four-poster bed is covered in a satin canopy next to a roaring fireplace. My eyes scan for our luggage tucked nicely on a stand side by side beside a white marble console with a sink.
My mind drifts to the idea of a bath or a change of clothes, but David’s hands grip both sides of my waist and force me onto the bed. The bed is so fluffy that I actually bounce as he drops to the floor and begins to pull off my boots, first with one zipper and then another. He doesn’t remove his coat or even his shoes as he strips away my jeans and then heaves me forward with a deep kiss while pulling my jacket off from behind.
“I want to taste you,” he whispers in my ear. He removes my blouse, unbuttoning with his hands underneath me, grabbing my breasts, and wrestling with my bra that he unclips on the first try. I lie there unwillingly, leaping to my feet and onto the bed while grabbing the upper sla
ts that support the canopy of the bed. Swinging a bit, I feel almost liberated with the warmth of the fireplace taking away any coldness on my breasts. David intersects my body with his face, and from above; I see only the top of his head and clothed body.
He enters me from behind with his tongue, abruptly and intensely, a tingling and almost euphoric feeling as he pries deeper while fingering me with his thumbs and spreading me apart as if trying to reach the deepest parts of my being. I yearn to see and touch his body, but alas, I let him simply devour me in this moment where I feel neither unfit nor average, but as the most wanted of women desired by a man who is nothing short of anatomical perfection. I cry out without control; he goes deeper and deeper inside me as the longing to have him inside me almost becomes overwhelming.
Finally, David rises and rips off his blazer and shirt. He stands there in his unzipped trousers and shoes fingering me as I hover above him still on the bed. Finally, his shoes come off and then his pants. He is standing there wearing nothing but his tall socks that he removes and then wraps each one around my hands on the bedposts. The socks are tight around my wrists, the bed is creaking, and I flail like a captured woman about to be ravaged by her conqueror. David vanishes from the room for just a moment and returns with a bottle of lotion that he holds in his masculine hands as I fall back onto the bed.
Slowly, from the foot up, he massages my body while manipulating his fingers inside and then outside, slowly sending me into frenzy while watching him bounce up and down as I alas yearn to have him enter me. He works his way up my body, finally making his way to my nipples, tense with anticipation, and then my mouth as he looks eye to eye with me. He then gets just close enough that I feel his hot breath on my face. He hesitates to kiss me, instead, he licks my neck and face before devouring my mouth with his own. He pulls on my hair, more aggressively than before. I feel his hard body pressing on mine before rounding around my back and then thrusting himself inside with a tip of my body and then in and out with all his might again and again and again.
His face has a focused stare while inside me, under a contorted brow and a vein that pops out of his left temple as if his mind and body are fully engaged. He never closes his eyes, studying my movements and reactions to him that fill the room in a soundtrack of desire and ecstasy. I climax in an arduous cry as I feel the warm sensation of him exploding inside me.
The following morning, I awoke to an empty bed still so fragrant with the smell of him on his pillow next to mine that I hold it against my face and inhale as much as my lungs will fill. The room is dark but for narrow slices of light that filter through the closed curtains. I pull off the sheet and make my way to open and see what the day holds before me. With a forceful heave, I push the blush-colored drapes open, and just beyond is a panorama of an almost neon-green lawn and bright blue sky with but a faint rejected cloud lost in the distance. A series of sun loungers line the perimeter of the garden, well spaced from one another as if each guest desired to be completely alone.
The scent of coffee lingers from a silver carafe on a large tray that sits on the coffee table. I plop onto the sofa and pour some coffee into a dainty white porcelain cup next to a small plate of pastries that I push to the side and cover in salt as not to be too tempted. A note sits on the tray, as well.
Been gone riding with the boys, back before midday, signed David.
In the meantime, I linger over the Soho House magazines that include more articles by more artists and actors than actual aristocrats do, as well as various edgy magazines that have probably sat in the room for years without actually being read. I wander over to David’s bag and lean in to pull out his worn shirt, already picked up from the floor from last night and tossed in his bag, still with that incredible scent. He wears size thirty-two boxers, Dior Homme makes his pants, and his scarf is Hermés. His simple duffel bag is Tumi, his socks are made of cashmere, and he keeps his shoes in trees, even when he’s traveling.
On the washbasin, there’s a cloth overlaid with his toiletries, including a straight razor, aftershave by Eau d’Italie, and condoms tucked in the side of his dopp kit marked extra-large with an off branding. He uses cinnamon toothpaste that’s not obvious, a hair balm by Santa Maria Novell, and keeps a prescription for Ambien. His computer sits on the nightstand; I open to see if it’s passcode-protected, which it is, and alas, I am at the end of all things that occupy my interest in the room, and it’s not even 10:00 a.m.
So, in my sexiest and most preppy tights and fluffy vest, I pull on my running shoes and make my way outside to join the daylight and incredible countryside. I make my way quietly through the main hall and out the front door to the main circle before hitting a jogging pace along the main drive that leads to the outside road. From there, I sprint to the road; a chilly breeze hits my face from under the leaning trees that smell of morning dew. At the road, I take a swift right, away from the direction in which we arrived and into the vast horizon of farm fields where in the distance I see three horses off the main road. I run faster and faster toward them. The road narrows as a taxi zips past, and the figures become larger on the horizon, one of which resembles the tall and lean man I so adore.
A rolling horizon erupts with yellow wildflowers as electric cables meander above in the only instance I’ve ever thought overhead wire looks almost pretty. And there, as I approach, a large black horse takes a step backward, and the rider turns. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt juxtaposed by his wavy black locks under a sturdy cap with navy breaches that hug his thick thighs down to his high boots that are covered in mud.
“Is that who I think it is?” David says, his face chapped and rosy by the morning chill that makes his eyes penetrate even deeper inside me.
“Indeed, just out for a morning run.”
“What a beautiful morning. So good you’re taking advantage of it,” says a slight woman in a red blazer who emerges from behind him. She has a porcelain complexion and perfect hair.
“You must be Catherine. Catherine the Great, from what I’ve heard,” she says as I approach the bushes that separate them from the road and me.
“I am, and I hope it’s all been kind things said,” I reply.
“Is there anything else to say of you?” David interjects. “Catherine, this is Sophie Dale-Evans. She is the sister of today’s bride and a dear friend.”
I lean in to shake her hand. I find her beauty discomforting as well as the intimacy of them riding together on such a special morning. A smile is all I can muster as I tiptoe around the mud in the only pair of athletic shoes I own.
“Congratulations. You must be so happy for your sister,” I say.
“Let’s see. Sister marries rich and semi-successful city boy leaving but one sibling unwed in the Dale-Evans family. Happy wouldn’t be the first emotion, but likely the third or fourth, and I do wish my sister the very best,” she says with a smile directed to David, who responds with a smile to me.
David dismounts from the shiny black horse, jumps over the small brush to stand next to me, and plants a kiss on my lips. I bask in the attention; especially in front of this woman, knowing he would never kiss me in front of her if there was something between them.
“And this, now. You have to flaunt your romance. Am I not tortured enough today?” she says.
“My younger sister married before me, so I know your pain,” I reply. Even though my younger sister is unwed and forty pounds overweight, Sophie could use some comforting words.
“Would you like a ride on my pony, young lady?” David says, patting his horse on the snout that lingers above the fence while grabbing my fingers.
“Oh, David. You and your zingers,” Sophie laughs.
“But I’m not wearing the right clothes.”
“That’s okay, as long as you don’t fall off or try to flee, my young one,” he says.
“Really, I don’t know. Are you sure?” The idea of horses has never really
been my thing.
“Oh, come on. You can’t wait for the one on the white horse,” says Sophie, “from what my sister tells me anyway.”
“Ouch. Now is that nice?” David rebuts.
“Okay, okay. Just don’t go too fast or let me fall off,” I say while making my way over the fence.
“I promise, as long as you do what I say.”
“Today and forever more, I’m sure,” Sophie laughs.
David rises atop the horse with a single lift of his leg; his pants perfectly tailored to his body as he leans over and tells me where to grab and where to step in order to join him. He flings me in front with a singular pull, and together the three of us leave the road and gallop through the hillside.
“Try to stand when we gallop, so you don’t bounce as much, although I do like the way that feels, I must admit,” he says, straddling me from behind.
“It’s not the most comfortable position,” I say, still a bit sore from last night, although I don’t dare admit it.
“Well, practice makes perfect, my love.”
We pass a series of undisturbed lakes surrounded by nothing more than grass and onto a dramatic gated entrance with a drive longer than that of the hotel and even more punctuated by large oak trees staggered perfectly along the curved cobblestone drive. In the distance, a sprawling manor stands out against a bare horizon with wide lawn and stables busied with riders and workers. Next to the house is a large white tent I assume is the site of today’s wedding.
“See that marquee? That’s where my sister will marry today and leave me the spinster sister!” Sophie screams to us in the back.
“I’m going to double back to the road and take Catherine back; I don’t want her to get too dirty,” David says in return.
