A House East of Regent Street

by Pam Rosenthal

  Today she was entirely another woman.

  The line from the play drifted, half-remembered, through his memory. Age cannot – damn, how did it go? – nor something stale… her… her – wait, yes, he had it now – her infinite variety. Walking slowly toward her, he felt himself smile, for the rightness of the words.

  She’d pinned her hair out of the way, but curly tendrils of it had loosened in front of her ears and at her nape. He moved behind her, buried his mouth in the back of her neck, reached his arms around her and underneath the apron to squeeze her breasts.

  She made a low, appreciative sound in her throat, relaxed against him, and then tried to free herself from his grasp. He tightened his arms about her.

  “I was afraid you’d be late,” she said, “and that the sauce would boil away. And I wasn’t sure…”

  He held her more closely, feeling the warmth of her against the front of his trousers.

  “Let it boil away,” he whispered.

  She wrenched herself free and whirled about to face him. “Are you daft?” she asked. “Do you know what I spent on the cream and butter?”

  “I’ll cover the loss,” he said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she replied. “You can waste your money however you please, but I won’t have you wasting food.”

  She dipped the spoon into the pot. “Taste it,” she demanded. “Does it have too much pepper?”

  She could have flavored it with brimstone, he thought, for all he cared. He’d lift her up, lay her down on the table, spread her legs, find out – the only way it really mattered – exactly who she was today.

  If she would only stop waving that spoon in front of him. To get the blasted thing out of his face, he tasted the sauce in it.

  Blimey. “Did you cook this?”

  “Of course I cooked it. I live with a Frenchman, remember. We haven’t much money, but we eat well. The pepper?”

  “The pepper is fine. The pepper is perfect. The whole thing is perfect. And that other flavor – orange peel, is it?”

  Extraordinary. As was the smile she now bestowed upon him, of a quite different sort than any she’d given him thus far. But then, it was a different sort of pleasure she was offering. He watched the curve of her arms as she reached to untie the apron from around her neck. He’d thought he’d only be buying sex from her, but it seemed he’d been wrong – odd, how often she made him feel like an ignorant boy again. You think you understand what a man and woman can share, she seemed to be telling him, but you don’t know the half of it.

  “I enjoy cooking,” she said.

  She brought the stewpot to the table. The peignoir seemed to change colors as she moved, shading from gray to blue, lavender to the same fleshy pink as the mussels.

  “Well, sit down, then, in this big chair over here,” she told him. “We’ll use the bowls for the stew, after we’ve finished the oysters.”

  Two huge bowls, the oysters still in their shells, a loaf of fresh bread, and a pitcher of ale. There were also quarters of lemon and butter melted over a spirit-lamp. He sank down into the seat she’d motioned him to.

  “Here’s an oyster knife for you,” she said. “And you can toss the shells into the bucket.”

  It takes some concentration to eat an oyster: to grasp it in one’s palm, swiveling the knife to open it, taking care not to slice through his hand instead. And once he had it open, to be sure not to slop the oyster liquor, pooled in the shell beneath the little creature he was about to swallow.

  Which saved him from the necessity of making conversation. Coward, he chided himself, but there it was – he’d bought the right to fuck her every way he could think of, but he was shy about conversing with her across the table while they ate. What could he say, anyway, that she’d find interesting? Nothing, probably. He fell silent, for fear of seeing her eyes glaze and her face fall into delicate, polite lines of boredom.

  Well, she wasn’t a delicate eater anyway. No more than he was.

  And so he simply cut and slurped his oysters, taking time, between twists of his knife, to watch her lips greedily sucking in the gray flesh, the tops of her breasts shimmering above the pale silk of her peignoir, the lines and hollows of her throat moving slightly after she tossed back a shell to get at the liquor and swallowed with gusto.

  “It’s a very pretty wrapper you’re wearing,” he told her.

  She’d torn a large chunk of bread from the loaf, and was mopping up the brine and butter that had gathered at the bottom of her bowl.

  She nodded her thanks, chewing all the while.

  “But I’ve seen quite enough of it,” he said. “And not enough of you.”

  “I’ll get breadcrumbs over the front of me,” she murmured. “I might even spill some of the butter. I can be a dainty eater when I want to, but it doesn’t feel natural. Comes from being hungry as a child, I expect. Philippe was shocked when he took me on. I’d learned to sip champagne elegantly enough, but as for food – he had to teach me table manners, and I still forget them sometimes.”

  She put down the bread, wiped her fingers on a napkin, and obligingly removed the peignoir. He tried to control his breathing while she loosened the drawstring of her shift. But he couldn’t stop himself from reaching across the table, tugging the muslin cloth down to uncover her breasts.

  “Yes,” he told her, “much better.”

  Especially when she leaned over to serve each of them a bowl of mussels.

  “I didn’t make a lot of it,” she told him. “Didn’t want us getting full and sodden. The oysters would have been enough, I expect, but that’s not really cooking, is it? And the mussels looked so good when I went to the market this morning – I chose the biggest, freshest ones; a person gets what she pays for after all, and I… well, I felt like cooking something today. Philippe doesn’t have much of an appetite lately.”

  She looked a bit shy. He hadn’t expected her to be shy about anything. “It’s an excellent stove,” she added softly. “Very easy to control the heat.”

  They finished in silence. “It was splendid,” he said. “And your table manners seem quite adequate to me. Come here, and let me see more closely.”

  He licked off a few crumbs from her breasts, like a cat grooming its young. She purred under his tongue.

  “Were you often hungry as a child?” he asked. “Or was it just during the hardest times?”

  “We had nothing but the hardest times,” she told him. “But you don’t want to hear about that.”

  He supposed not. In any case, it wasn’t what he was paying her for. He supposed they could have talked about it while they’d been eating, though. Odd, he rarely talked of his childhood in Lancashire. It was as though his real life had begun when he’d become a sailor.

  “We’d better go upstairs, hadn’t we?” She leaned down to kiss him lightly on the head. “It’s getting late. Let me just fill a pitcher with hot water from the stove. And – ah yes – some of those towels that I left to heat there too.”

  Silently, he followed her up the dark back stairs to the entryway.

  “The Elastic Bed is another flight up,” she told him. “I put my gown and cloak in that bedroom as well. I hope the stairs are not a hardship for your knee…”

  They’d gotten as far as the next landing when he told her to stop.

  When she’d started up the stairs, she’d found herself idly trying to calculate how many heavy pitchers of water she must have carried to the upper storeys, her first years in the house. Too many to count, she decided – and anyway, was there anything to be gained from dwelling on the past? Better to concentrate on the present, on questions like whether he was looking at her arse as he climbed the stairs behind her. Or what a ninny she was for hoping that he was looking, even if she wasn’t at all confident that her body could still justify such sustained scrutiny. Perhaps she would’ve been better off after all, calculating all those gallons of water. In any event, she wished they could get it over with, climb the stairs at a bound – but t
hat was impossible, with his bad knee and his cane.

  Too bad she wasn’t still wearing her dressing gown. But, as with so many things, she hadn’t had the luxury of choosing. She’d tried to put it on again before they’d left the kitchen. But he’d told her to leave it off.

  If she’d been cleverer, though, she might have thought to ask him to precede her on the staircase. which was what, finally, she wished she had done – just as he called out to her.

  “Stop, please.”

  “Is it your…?” She had been going to ask after his knee, when – a bit belatedly – she realized that of course it wasn’t his knee that had caused him to make that request.

  “Put down the pitcher and the towels,” he told her. “There’s plenty of room for them on the floor, at the landing. And now kneel down on the third – no, the second step from the top. That’s right, you can rest your head and arms on the carpet. But better push the pitcher further away, so there’s no danger of upsetting it.”

  The specificity of his demands rather thrilled her, demonstrating, as it did, that he’d been thinking with some precision about what he wanted. But unfortunately, it also demonstrated that he didn’t remember – or worse, had chosen to ignore – the terms of their bargain.

  He was kneeling behind her on the step now, his knees on either side of hers. She could feel him fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. Ah yes, there he was – not hard yet, well, not as hard as he’d be, and quite soon too, but hard enough for him to nestle into the cleft of her arse. Nice – she made tiny arcs with her hips, stroking herself against him, feeling him harden between her buttocks – lovely really, to be caressing him like that. A pity to have to stop before he grew harder still – a bit more with each stroke – until he was ready to enter her and she ready to receive him.

  But not so lovely that she’d tolerate such utter disrespect of her wishes in the matter.

  Lord, but she wanted him. Not like that, though. Not forced upon her.

  “No,” she said. “I already told you. Not without something to make you slippery.”

  She held herself still and squeezed her legs together. Of course, if he really insisted upon this, she wouldn’t be able to stop him. He outweighed her by a considerable amount. At a certain point, she’d have to give way.

  But it wouldn’t be what she wanted. And – as she’d be obliged to call off their bargain – ultimately it wouldn’t benefit him either.

  He laughed. “It’s all right. I do have something slippery with me.”

  “The bloody hell you do,” she told him. “You know, you’re not the first imbecile to think his spit will do the job.”

  “No, really.” His voice was warm against her ear. But what was he fumbling with now?

  He’d curved his body around hers – she liked his weight and warmth against her, the press of his arms atop hers on the landing. He brought one of his hands to her mouth, pressed his fingers to her lips. She’d learned over the years that men liked their fingers sucked – odd how each of them seemed to think he was the only one, too. But she’d be damned if she’d open her mouth, or for that matter any part of herself, under the present circumstances.

  It seemed that he wouldn’t be dissuaded, as – gently but persistently – he insinuated his fingertip deeper between her lips. A pity, she thought.

  She prepared to bite down.

  His finger tasted of melted butter.

  “Will it do?” His voice was a bit anxious. “I scooped some out in an oyster shell – hid it behind me while you were getting the water.”

  It would do quite well. “We’ll smell of it, though.” A giggle escaped her, while he lifted himself off her, to rub himself liberally with the stuff.

  “And rub me too, dear, yes, that’s right, and inside, as well…”

  A few last rays of sunlight slanted down on her through the skylight at the top of the staircase. She stretched like a cat under its warmth, arched her back under his touch. Lightly, gently (how quickly he learned!) he massaged her in the cleft of her bottom, touching, tickling and exploring her, and now (oh dear yes) creeping inside as the ring of muscle loosened to let him in – a smooth, buttery fingertip, and now the same finger, up to the knuckle. He explored her slowly, carefully – still circumspect, and wonderfully respectful of the private place she’d allowed him to enter.

  But it wasn’t a finger she was feeling now. She breathed deeply, braced her knees against the thickly carpeted stair riser; it was the head of his cock now and it was inside her. Still moving slowly, he sank into her like spreading darkness, each deliberate quarter inch of his progress seeming like a new entry, through a new door, into a new secret chamber – each secret, private, scandalous, wicked and delicious quarter inch of her.

  He stroked her, curved his body around hers, hummed and thrummed with the tremors he felt in her limbs and belly. Given the extremity of their situation, he hadn’t thought she’d respond – or even notice – when he kissed her nape just below where she’d pinned up her hair.

  But evidently he’d been quite wrong about that. Even as she moved in rhythm with the thrusts of his cock, she writhed and shuddered at the lightest touches of his mouth and tongue – even at the warmth of his breath.

  He hadn’t really believed her when she’d said she’d enjoy it. But he could feel her muscles opening and relaxing under him, and then squeezing him, hot, tight, dark.

  He could drive deeply now, as hard as he wanted to, while she gasped and screamed her pleasure, collapsing under him. And now he was gushing into her, collapsing upon her, hugging and squeezing her breasts beneath him, while his cane bumped down the staircase and rolled into the center of the house’s entryway.

  “I’ll fetch the cane.” Her voice came softly, nudging his attention back from whatever tropical climes his mind had drifted to.

  “Sorry,” she added, upon regaining the top of the staircase. “I shouldn’t have mistrusted you not when you’re clearly a man of your word.”

  “No matter,” he told her. “It was a bit of a prank on my part, I suppose. And in any case you were quite right about one thing: I’m going to stink of this stuff. Well, we both are. Not to speak of my clothes.”

  “Come along,” she told him. “There’s soap in the bedroom. And… well, of course, there’s also a bed.”

  He stood docilely as she removed his coat, waistcoat, and shirt.

  He was bit less docile when she got his boots off. And he was becoming flat-out skittish when it came to his trousers.

  While she, once so expert at untying and unbuttoning – not to speak of peeling a snugly tailored garment down the legs of its wearer –felt herself growing more graceless, less patient, with every minute.

  It was because of how beautiful he looked against the bright blue wall, she thought. And even more beautiful closer up. The sculpting of the muscles in his shoulders and belly, the dark brown hair making such a sinuous line down his chest and downward, below his navel, disappearing beneath the waistline of his drawers: in truth, it took all her concentration not to rip the linen from his hips, leaving the fine white fabric in tatters.

  She reached to untie the string that held them up. A strong hand immobilized her wrist.

  “Leave it alone.”

  She stared while he made his own adjustments to the drawstring.

  “There you are,” he told her. “Loose enough so you can wash me and… and so forth. But I don’t take them off.”

  His wide eyes were fixed on the room’s chandelier. Flickering toward the window now, the molding on the ceiling. Looking everywhere but at her.

  “I was burned, one place. And then there are also the stitches the army surgeon put into me, after he decided he couldn’t get the metal out of my leg.”

  “You have scars on your back, too – from a flogging, I should imagine. Old ones. Well healed.”

  “Yes, just once, a long time ago. But I don’t care about those. The ones on my leg are much worse.

  “I was lucky i
t was just my thigh – the deck and not the mainmast, if you get my meaning. But it’s not pretty to look at. And so I’d rather…”

  She dipped one of the towels into pitcher of hot water. “Of course, if you don’t wish it.”

  Clumsy to have to wash him through the openings in the fabric. She did the best she could and dried him carefully, before taking a new towel and scrubbing herself.

  “Do you suppose I’d gawk at it or turn away in disgust?” she asked.

  He groped for an answer. “No,” he told her finally, “a woman as good at your profession as you are would never…” He frowned. “It’s just that… Well, I’ve enjoyed thinking that you like my looks, you see, even if…”

  Even if it was her job to make every man think she liked his looks. She put a finger on his lips, to stop him from saying it. “I like a naked man in bed with me,” she said. “And after all, Europe has had a terrible war. Scars – especially gotten as you got yours – are a mark of honor.”

  “Well, tomorrow, perhaps,” he replied.

  Tomorrow, she thought, there will only be three more days of him. She kissed his cheek and pulled down the coverlet, drawing him into bed beside her.

  “But we really must go.” Sighing, as she pulled herself away from him, an hour later.

  “Tomorrow,” she told him, “we can use the bigger bedroom upstairs. They named it the Royal Suite when they did it up in that fancy bright paint. Kept it for special customers. It’s another flight up, but it’s got a bigger bed. They used to keep it very elegant. It’s a very vivid yellow.”

  He laughed. “Why not? A bigger bed sounds agreeable.”

  “Tomorrow then,” she said, “in the large yellow bedroom. Third storey.”

  Thursday: The Yellow Bedroom

  It was becoming habitual, he thought, comfortable as expensive boots or a sideboard stocked with good brandy. Today the prospect of seeing her at three hadn’t interfered with his normal round of activities at all. In fact, it seemed to make him more efficient, brisker and more confident of his judgment. This morning he’d negotiated for some shares of a wool merchant’s business; he could expect a good return on the investment. His courtship of Evelina was progressing apace: Wilson had shown him a few quite likely properties in Marylebone, and today Mr. Oakshutt had clapped him on the shoulder, quite cordially, in the entryway of the big house off Cavendish Square.