by Johi Jenkins
He just stared at me, his eyes wide and disbelieving. His mouth opened as if to say something, but nothing came out.
I was only partly offended that he wouldn’t believe I was capable of settling down and loving someone. I added, “I want her, Thierry.”
“Are you being serious?” he finally said. “You are only eighteen. And she is… what? She cannot be older than sixteen.”
“Sixteen at the end of this month. I am being honest with you. It is true I cannot think clearly when she is near, but she is not in this room at the moment, and I still harbor strong feelings toward her.”
“You would marry this girl? This child?”
“Yes,” I said, and I had to laugh. He was so dubious. “I have been violently struck with the malady called love.”
2. Madeleine
My brother was right to doubt my declaration. I was a damaged young man, and since the onset of my adulthood I had given my family every reason to expect no love commitment from me.
I grew up in the easy position of the second and youngest son. As the eldest, Thierry was the one who was to inherit my father’s fortune, but he also had all the responsibility to get married and procreate, to carry on the Ashby name. His marriage to Madeleine was one that benefited both of their families the most, not necessarily themselves. I knew he was unhappy in his marriage, but like most people in his situation, he had learned to live with it.
Me, I had not a care in the world.
My family had some expectations of me, but for the most part I could choose to marry whomever I wanted, do as I wanted.
I chose to exercise that freedom by hiding in the baron’s conservatory one lazy afternoon a few hours before dinner, drinking a small brandy alone and thinking of Charlotte’s smiles, while the rest of the men were out shooting birds and the ladies made bonnets or whatever it was that they did. It was that sluggish time in the early evening when the men weren’t supposed to talk to the ladies; they were supposed to do manly things. But that didn’t mean I had to go shooting. So I stayed inside and did nothing, dreaming that Charlotte would find me and we would have a little sweet escapade.
“Thierry tells me you are quite taken with the eldest Miss de Mayes,” a voice said near me.
I jolted in my chair, knowing it wasn’t Charlotte come to make my fantasy come true, and quite disappointed to recognize Madeleine’s voice.
“That you plan to marry her,” she went on.
I looked up to address her, and was immediately afraid.
The look on my sister-in-law’s face was fearsome. I had seen that look before. It was a grim determination mingled with something like anger. Forbidden thoughts were plainly visible in her eyes. In a second, everything that I had assumed about her feelings, every belief I had invented about her position towards me was shattered.
This was bad.
I scrambled to my feet, as I should have, because there was a lady in the room. In the room where I had been alone moments before.
“Madeleine,” I said, acknowledging her presence, but choosing to ignore her greeting question. Charlotte de Mayes was none of Madeleine’s business, and my idiot brother should not have said anything to her.
She ran her fingertips over the exposed tops of her breasts as if absentmindedly. As if she didn’t mean to draw my eyes to her creamy flesh. Rubbish. Then she asked casually, “Madeleine? Whatever happened to Mado?”
And there, in that one horrid word, which had crossed my lips many times during one full month the prior summer, a dozen images flashed before my open eyes. Madeleine’s breasts pressed against my face. The same exquisite breasts loose and flying as she rode on top of me, a wild expression of pleasure smeared across her face as she gripped me inside of her and squeezed the guilt out of me. I saw my fingers tangled in her curly red hair. Madeleine’s naked back, my hands gripping the soft flesh of her hips as I thrust inside her again and again.
The past—it is not always really past.
***
My brother Thierry, being my older brother, had wanted to teach me everything he wished someone had taught him. He was five years older than me and would have loved to show me the world firsthand. Our parents weren’t the warmest to begin with, and throughout my teenage years I often looked up to him.
After he married and moved away with his new bride, I visited him often. He took it upon himself to shape me into his idea of a fine man. On my seventeenth birthday he invited me to London, just the two of us, saying it would be a good learning experience. He was twenty-two at the time and had been married for just over a year. He loved to tell me about his married life with Madeleine, sometimes hinting about their love life. I liked to hear his stories, which were mostly complaints, fueling the idea that I would never marry.
When we reached London he checked us in at a luxurious inn. That night he said he needed to take care of some business with a friend and left me alone in our chamber. A short time after he left there was a knock on my door.
A servant announced a young woman I did not recognize. She wore a colorful, tawdry dress, heavy perfume and abundant makeup. The servant retreated, and the woman’s initial smile upon her arrival got even broader as she appraised me. I barely knew how to behave, as I didn’t know her; nor did I have any idea why she was there. As I started to excuse myself, she quickly got to the chase. She was there to lie with me. I was not prepared for this, so I was skeptical and uneasy.
She must have noticed, because to pacify my fears she added, “The gentleman Ashby sent me.”
Ah.
Thierry had certainly not mentioned anything about this to me. Now understanding, I was nervous as to what was supposed to happen, and I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t help that I didn’t find her attractive.
“I am sorry, madam,” I told her with as much tact as I could manage. “You have been misinformed; I have not asked for you.”
“I know you did not, honey. Your brother did.”
“But I—”
“Have you ever been with a woman before?” she interrupted me.
“I, uh—no, I….” I mumbled. “I am just not interested at the moment.” It wasn’t true. I was seventeen years old. Like any other boy my age, I was very interested in having sex. I just wasn’t interested in doing it with her.
“Of course. I understand if you are saving yourself for someone.” She smiled ruefully.
Saving myself? I had no concept of saving myself for anyone. In fact, I began questioning my denial. Maybe it was best to get it over with.
But before I could change my mind, she smiled at my innocence and offered me an alternative. She said that since she had already “collected” from my brother, she could pleasure me in a less intimate way.
Half afraid of what my brother would say if I turned her down, and half curious as to what she was offering, I agreed to let her stay a while longer. She approached me with a savage desire etched on her face; slowly she untied my pants, pushed me to the couch, and went down on her knees. It turned out she was quite skilled at what she did. And so my trip to London became the first time I received oral sex from a lady of the night.
Of course my brother found out about my lack of “real” action and gave me grief for the remainder of our trip. He kept mocking me even after we returned to his house, Camden Hall; his jeering increased with every glass of wine he had at dinner. Even his wife heard about it. I felt no shame about what I did and didn’t do in London, but my brother’s words started to get to me. After days of being teased I began to curse the fact that I was staying with him. I should’ve just gone home.
But I didn’t, and bad things happened.
Madeleine’s attitude since Thierry and I had returned from London had turned from coquettish to outright flirtatious. At one point, while no one else was around, she whispered that she was glad I had not actually slept with the London woman. I was surprised by her confession, but I fully understood her reaction a few days later, one night we were alone. She crept into my chamb
er. I had locked the door, but the harlot had a key.
Unfortunately for everyone, the previous day I had had a fight with my brother. Thierry had never understood my resistance to hunting, and every time I turned down his invitations he would accuse me of lacking manliness. Normally I put up with his diatribe, but that day it was different. He had been drinking and was outright rude to me; topped with my reserves in London, he said I was just a pathetic excuse of a man, and he left to go kill his birds without me. That next morning he had gone back to town for a brief business with the same friend he had visited while we were there, and hadn’t invited me to go with him. He didn’t even say goodbye.
Of course I was insulted. But it was all her; later I found out Madeleine had been slowly poisoning him against me, to have us argue. At the time I had no idea of her schemes, so when she offered me wine during dinner I did not resist. She kept pouring as the two of us dined alone, and I gladly drank. I wanted to drink away my brother’s harassment and rejection.
Madeleine came to my chambers that night, while my brother was to remain in town. She wore a thin nightgown that was almost transparent. Her red blond hair, normally kept up in a bun, fell loosely over her shoulders. As she climbed on my bed, she reiterated that she was relieved about London. That my first time shouldn’t have been with a whore. That a lady was so much better.
She started kissing me. She was beautiful, of course. Not just any girl was fit to marry my brother, the heir to Brunsfield Park, my family’s estate. I couldn’t see past her beauty, the wine, my fight with Thierry, and of course, my own stupidity. I took off her nightgown and kissed her back. I kissed her everywhere.
She was the first woman I ever lay with.
My only brother’s wife.
***
Thierry had come back the next day, and I was relieved he was still cross with me, because I wouldn’t have been able to look at him in the eye. For the remainder of the month I stayed with him, and Madeleine and I stole a few more shameful encounters. And then I was gone. A year had passed without a single mention of the incident. We had never talked about it. Until that night in the baron’s conservatory.
Madeleine before me, I squeezed my eyes shut and looked away, starting to feel my body respond to the wild memories. But I would not allow my body to remember. Charlotte, my mind provided for distraction. Genuine love filled me, and my head was cleared of doubt, although the guilt remained.
Face blank, I opened my eyes and stared at my brother’s wife. I fiercely ignored the past; the past I had in vain tried to put behind me.
“Madeleine suits you better, Madam,” I said, with the courteous nod that I had been using to address her this past year. “A fine name for a fine lady such as yourself.”
“But it is so formal…. It has been a while since we have had a tête-a-tête.”
How I hated the expression. It had been code for our secret meetings. Why had she brought it up? What was she doing now?
It was my own damn fault, really, for assuming she would regret our dishonorable affair like I did. That she would try to put it past her. That like me, she would pretend it had never happened. God, what an idiot I was. I should’ve talked to her. I made a new rule that day: Never assume to know what a woman is thinking.
“That it has,” I said in a somber voice, looking at her in the eye. “Madeleine, what we did, it should have never happened.”
She winced at my seriousness.
I had always been the little brother. She had always had a playful relationship with me, harmless at first, like that of an older sister. Or truly, like that of what she was: my older brother’s wife. But after my first visit to their home, Camden Hall, during the days when my brother would go out hunting his birds and I refused to go using studying as an excuse, her friendship had turned slightly coquettish. For my own vanity, I had let her carry on, assuming there was no true harm. She was married to my brother. And I was a young fool.
“We enjoyed our time together. Do not lie,” she warned.
“It matters not. It was a mistake,” I told her.
She rushed forward, and I had to grab her forearms as she raised them, as if to strike me.
“Madam! Listen!” I whispered angrily. She fell silent. “Please behave. We are in good company. The ladies of the house ought to be around.”
“That is all you care about! Your little whore—”
I shook her. “You do not talk about her that way!”
“How you defend her,” she said, clearly enraged. “Yet she cannot give you the pleasure I can. She is barely a child.”
I let go off her arms and pushed her away. “Her age is of no importance to me.”
“I will tell Thierry about us! I will say you seduced me. He remembers your fight very well.”
Her words stopped me briefly. Would she really tell Thierry? He and I had made up only towards the end of that Fall the year before, on my insistence, because I had felt so guilty.
But I would not let her threaten me. I looked into her eyes and replied coldly, “Go, then. Maybe he will believe you. But then, maybe he will use that as an excuse to get out of an unhappy marriage.”
Madeleine narrowed her eyes, and without another word, she turned around and left. It was only then that I became aware of how nervous I was, how fast my heart was beating.
I couldn’t let her compromise my relationship with Charlotte. I had to act fast.
***
Madeleine barely spoke with me the rest of our trip, which was fine with me. My talk with Thierry, although it had given his harlot wife reasons to try to sabotage me, had also helped me realize I truly didn’t have to cease my attentions to Charlotte at the end of our visit. I could claim her, if she would accept my hand. And I had no doubt she would.
Our courtship was short. During those two weeks at her father’s home I languished in her affections before I made my move. I waited until the very morning of our departure, afraid that Madeleine would want to cause a scene. After breakfast I requested her presence in the drawing room. The big windows in the back provided a view of the bench on which we had first kissed. She was nervous but happy; of course she suspected my motives. I took her hands and smiled at her. She encouraged my words with her eyes full of emotion as I went down on one knee.
You are my present and my future. I cannot imagine life without you. Please, accept my hand.
Oh, Corben… yes.
It was one of the happiest moments of my life. Then we went to the baron with the news. He happily agreed when I asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The baron had come to like me these past few weeks. Of course. I had striven to show what a wonderful son-in-law I would be. Charlotte told her adoptive mother and sisters the happy news. I told my family. Everyone was pleased.
My brother hugged me; he was genuinely happy for me. He congratulated me in front of everyone, but that evening when we reached Hillside, the village where my home, Brunsfield Park, was located, he took me aside and told me how hard my life was to become sharing my house with a woman. He repeated things I would’ve never wanted to hear about Madeleine. Things he had said before but that I was happy to have ignored. Things that unfortunately, I knew firsthand. Like how she was hard to get along with, but he found joy in their intimacy, because she was wild in bed.
But his words of caution didn’t frighten me. I expected that the happiness I felt when I thought of my bride would be worth any problems that could come later in marriage. Assuming they would come at all. I easily dismissed his warnings.
Only one month later Charlotte and I were wed. We were exultant.
It would have been impossible to foresee the misery that was to befall us.
3. Bound
My father had built for me a brand new house of considerable size within the grounds of Brunsfield Park, a short distance from the Great House that would be Thierry’s one day. Camden Hall, the house Thierry had rented when he married Madeleine, was only about thirty miles from my father’s estate. It w
as meant to be a temporary place nearby for them to live while my father lived.
Of course I didn’t get the full firstborn treatment, but I was quite pleased with my lot. The house my father gave me, which they called Brunsfield Cottage, was not only a new building with more contemporary conveniences, but it was also beautifully decorated, and had ample gardens that Charlotte would love once she became its mistress. I believe when my father had first begun its construction some five or six years before, he had meant for it to be a parsonage. He and my mother had briefly entertained the idea of me becoming a clergyman, but had quickly changed their minds in the last couple of years with my showing signs of debauchery. Still, he was happy to grant me the living when I married, to keep me close by. Charlotte’s family in turn gifted us new furnishings, linens, tapestries and other commodities to fill our new house. They sent servants, a carriage and horses, anything they could think of. But most appreciated of all was a painting of Charlotte. This was hung over the mantelpiece before we even moved in.
It was this house and its brand new fixtures that greeted my beloved and me the evening after our wedding. We were giddy with excitement from the nuptials, but when the door closed behind us we both became a little nervous. I didn’t want to appear weak; I wanted to show Charlotte that she had chosen a man that would always take care of her, but inside I was trembling. We were finally together, alone in our new, large house. Our first night together.
The servants brought her possessions to her bedchamber, which was next to mine. I gave her a quick kiss, left her there, and gave her one hour before I went looking for her. A large double door connected our rooms. I knocked softly.
She opened one of the doors slowly and I almost died; she wore a white nightgown, and although it covered most of her body, it was the least amount of clothes I had ever seen her in. Her hair was down and fell in dark waves around her neck.
