“Would you mingle yours with mine?” I teased.
“That is different,” he said quickly. “You are mine and…” He sighed. “I cannot explain it.”
“We mingle our fluids all the time,” I said.
“Oui, because…” He regarded me seriously. “It is love. If you and I were to fuck the same woman it would be acceptable; but if it is not you, I wish her to be clean and… I would rather she be virginal.”
“You need not explain,” I said. “It is a thing of intimacy, and I am quite pleased you wish to share that with no one else: that you hold it in such regard.”
“I do,” he said earnestly. “You are the only man my Horse ever wishes to be intimate with.”
“Thank the Gods,” I teased.
He smiled at last.
With all the talk of jism and intimacy, my cock had at last stirred, despite my aching head and empty stomach. I ran my hand down his chest and belly to find his member flaccid, but he held my hand there and covered my mouth before I could pull away with regret. His hand was soon upon my organ, and shortly after that he was within me, and we laid siege to Heaven with slow deliberation. When the holy light at last broke upon me, I finally felt I was ready to rise and meet the day.
“I so needed that,” I murmured as I crawled from beneath him and out of the hammock.
He lay there, sated, and smiled up at me happily. “As did I.”
I considered my clothes. It was still raining. I tried to recall if anyone in the house was not part of some faction that considered my bruises to result from either my madness or Gaston’s. I thought it likely Christine and Agnes were innocent of speculation, and perhaps Rucker. Would they notice or care if I did not choose to hide behind finery on this rainy day? I decided I did not care.
“I will dress when and if we go to the church this day,” I told Gaston as I stood in the stable doorway and surveyed the rain-soaked limestone of the empty atrium.
He began to laugh. “Else you will strut about naked?”
“Aye, and proudly,” I teased, and located a pair of breeches and a tunic. The canvas was still rough upon my tender chest, but the thought of being swathed in damp linen the entire day made me find it preferable.
“So, what shall we do?” I asked. “What need we do? How late in the day is it?”
“Past midday. The rooms are clean and ready. Father has moved upstairs. I asked Vivian if she wished to move to the guest room, and she said non.” He shrugged. “Christine has asked if she should dress for church. We should possibly brave the Theodores’.”
I smiled at his evasion. “What did you tell Christine?”
He took a deep breath and regarded the ceiling. “That I would think on it, and see how you were feeling.”
“How do I feel?” I asked with a grin.
“You feel it is entirely too much effort this day,” he said without emotion.
I chuckled heartily. “And I am hungry.”
He dressed, and we scurried through the rain to the cookhouse. Our servants were not there, but we found dried meat and some apples, and my stomach felt they would suffice.
We crossed to the relative dryness beneath the balcony and went to the parlor. Vivian seemed pleased to see us. I was in fine spirits, and found amusement in surprising her, by dropping to kneel on the floor in front of the settee where she sat and resting my elbows upon her knees.
“I want you to move upstairs,” I said.
She rolled her eyes, but sobered to contemplate me. “Will it be mine alone?”
I nodded.
“With the baby,” Gaston added.
I shrugged. “Yours and Jamaica’s,” I amended.
She grimaced at that. “But…”
“You will learn,” I said firmly with a smile. “Perhaps you should accompany us today to the Theodores’.”
“Oh, Lord,” she sighed. “It is raining, and… I should move upstairs.”
“I do not see where any of those issues are mutually exclusive,” I said with a grin. “We will move you now.”
“Will you move the chain?” she said dryly.
I sighed as I looked to the bolt we had put in the wall. “Do you feel it is necessary?”
She froze, fear deep in her eyes as they peered into mine, and then she looked away with guilt and pink cheeks. “Aye,” she breathed.
My humor fled in the face of compassion. “Do you still crave it?”
She nodded. “I think about it all the time,” she whispered.
I looked about the room. “Aye, well, you have little else to do. That is why you should tend your own child, perhaps. It will give you something to do and focus your thoughts.”
“I am afraid I will do something stupid,” she said.
I was too, and in the face of that, my first thought was flippant: And then Gaston would strangle you. But I held my tongue and looked to him instead, to see who he agreed with.
He was regarding her with compassion, and at my gaze he sighed and rolled his eyes, and came to sit beside her on the settee.
“Babies are somewhat forgiving,” he said kindly. “They must be, because many of us live and many of our mothers were fools.”
“I do not wish to be a fool,” she said seriously.
“Then you must learn,” he said.
She nodded tightly.
We released her, and I went to borrow a cloak and pattens from one of the women. Sarah was in her office busily writing at her desk, and as she was so huge with child that rising from a chair presented difficulty, I decided to leave her well enough alone. Even over the rain, I could hear Henrietta chatting with Christine in the doorway of what had been our room. I did not wish to speak to the bride, and thus appear healthy and capable of attending church. Thus I stealthily went in search of Agnes. The girl greeted the knock on her door with hopeful teary eyes, and seemed disappointed when she beheld me.
“We need to borrow a rain cloak and pattens for Vivian.” I smiled kindly. “And Gaston said you quarreled with Christine.”
She grabbed my arm and towed me inside. “She is such a bitch!” she spat. “I am not staring at her every moment, and I did not touch her in the night. I lie awake all night so that I do not. We have not been friends since I told her. I should not have told her. Now all that I do is suspect.”
I pulled the girl to me and embraced her until she ceased to struggle and began to cry: all the while murmuring reassuring things.
“I understand your pain,” I said when the worst of it had passed.
“Is it ever this way?” she asked.
I sighed. “If the one you favor does not favor you, aye; even if they do not share your sex, but especially if they do.”
“It is so unfair.”
“Aye, it is,” I said. “I feel Christine is a very confused girl on many fronts.”
“She attests I am the one confused,” Agnes said bitterly, her ire returning. “She says I cannot possibly know I favor women, as I have never been with a man.”
I grinned. “That is a commonly held sentiment, and it is utter shit.”
She gave a heavy sigh and spoke with more sadness than anger. “We were so close… before. She was so kind to me. We did everything together, and I dared not tell her and… And then I did when I thought she would marry you.”
“My dear,” I said quietly, “you would have been miserable not telling her.”
She nodded.
“Take comfort in that it is unlikely it will go as poorly as it can between boys,” I said.
She frowned and turned to look at me. “Is that what happened with… your cousin?” she asked with trepidation.
I nodded. “For the most part, but, Shane favors men as much as I. We… actually were lovers for a time, and then… my father poisoned him against me.” I realized that was true: I had thought it to be the other boys we had associated with; but nay, it must have been my father. “Shane became obsessed that what we did was wrong, yet he would not stop doing it, and it caused grea
t turmoil in his soul and he turned that anger to me. He blamed me for causing his lust. So he would drink until he could battle it no more and then he would come for me.”
Tears welled anew in her eyes, and she came to embrace me.
I sighed and held her, as it seemed – instances of bravado aside – I could still not speak of the matter without threatening to moisten my cheeks. And despite my new perspective toward Shane’s ambitions, and my protestations that what had passed between us was only a divertissement to him, I could not hide from the old knowledge that he had been tormented by his change of heart: tormented such that he chose to torture me to ease his own suffering. My father had wounded both of us.
“And now you have Gaston,” Agnes was saying as she released me.
“Aye, and I thank the Gods daily for that.”
She awarded me a perplexed frown. “You always say things like that, as if you are a pagan or a heretic.”
“I am very likely both.” I grinned. “I have long been enamored of the Greek and Roman view of the Gods as opposed the Christian one. I cannot say I believe in them as some men believe in God or Christ, but I feel there are beneficent entities watching over us.”
“Many call those angels and saints,” she said without challenge.
“Aye, I prefer to think of them as the Gods of old.”
She smiled. “Like Pallas Athena, or Jupiter, or Apollo.”
I nodded. “Just so. Have you read Hesiod or Ovid?”
“Nay,” she sighed.
“Speak to Mister Rucker and see if he can procure copies.”
This brightened her mood. “Aye, I will.”
She did indeed have an oilcloth cloak and pattens and was happy to lend them to me. I returned downstairs and found Vivian and Gaston waiting impatiently. My matelot raised an eyebrow as I approached.
“We had to discuss why she quarreled with your bride,” I told him in French as Vivian donned the pattens.
His frown slipped away and he nodded with understanding. “Why?”
I gave him a brief account of Agnes’ complaints. He sighed when I finished, and Vivian was glaring at us.
“If I am to live with you two,” she said as she swirled the cape over her shoulders. “Promise me you will not ever be yammering on in French.”
We headed into the mud filled street, and I wished I had pattens as my bare feet sank in ooze to my ankles. “I will promise nothing of the sort,” I said.
“Then I will be forced to learn French,” she said over her shoulder. Her tone was as haughty as it had been when she drank, but I sensed amusement under her words.
Gaston’s grimace was quite sincere, though.
“We must keep some things private between us,” I teased her.
She snorted. “You keep a great deal private between you already. And Jamaica will speak English.”
My matelot was actually becoming angry.
I waved him off. “Lady…you are in no position to make such a demand. The child will be well-educated and speak both languages.” I wondered how long it would take me to relinquish calling her Lady Marsdale, much less anyone else.
She rolled her eyes and paused to award me a flippant curtsey. I chuckled, and Gaston sighed with annoyance.
We went to the Theodores’ yard and knocked on the back door. Hannah frowned at us with surprise when she opened it. “My Lords, Lady,” she said quickly, and then looked down at our muddy feet and sniffed.
“There is only one Lord among us now,” I told her as she produced a bucket for Gaston and me to rinse our feet. I pointed at my matelot.
She gave us a perplexed frown that seemed to question why we would bother her about such a distinction rather than why the distinction need be made. Then she knelt and assisted Vivian in removing her pattens.
“This is Hannah,” I told Vivian, as I doubted they had ever met.
Hannah nodded respectfully and Vivian nodded tightly and seemed to relax, until Rachel stepped onto the back portico. Then my wife tensed again, though her eyes were hungry upon the baby Mistress Theodore held.
“Lord Montren, Mister and Mistress Williams,” Rachel said smoothly.
I smiled. “I take it your husband arrived home safely.”
She snorted. “No thanks to you.” She handed Jamaica to Gaston. “And I would speak to you of that.”
Gaston gave me a sympathetic look that still seemed to say that it was better me than him.
I followed Rachel into Theodore’s office.
“He’s sleeping,” she said quietly.
“I am sorry we did not escort him home last night,” I said quickly. “And I am sorry… my business gives him cause to drink on occasion.”
He had obviously told her I had renounced, but I could not be sure what else he shared with her. Thankfully, she answered that for me.
“It was not you that gave him cause to drink,” she said, “but your father.”
“Aye,” I said with a smile. “He has that effect on me, as well. Many people, I would imagine.”
She nodded, and there was compassion in her gaze. “That is not…” She sighed and bit her lip. “I would ask you a thing a wife should not,” she said at last.
“I will not judge you for it, and I will answer if I can,” I said seriously.
“Thank you. How is he when he drinks? He does not drink about me, and… Though we have been married several years now, it has not been as long as a wife needs to truly know a man’s habits – the ones he practices when he is not about his wife.”
I smiled. “Lady, in my experience, your husband drinks either when he is distraught or to enjoy the company of his fellows. He is not a poorly behaved drunk: he does not become belligerent. He is either prone to melancholy or ebullience depending on the circumstances that set him upon the bottle. I have seen him sing and dance a fine jig while intoxicated. He does not gamble or seek to consort with women in that state.” I grinned. “Or men, either.”
She sighed with relief and then regarded me quizzically. “He dances?”
“Aye, he once impressed Pete with his prowess. We were quite surprised.”
She chuckled. “I would pay to see that.”
“As I can no longer expect an inheritance, I might be willing to make such arrangements.”
This gave her even more amusement.
“Truly, you should come with him when he visits,” I added seriously.
She shook her head. “Nay, a man does need time with other men. And… In truth I would rather it be with you and yours: when he has gone off to cavort with planters, he has returned reeking of perfume. I trust him with my soul, but it bothers me that he should be forced to even know of the trollops the fine gentlemen of Jamaica consort with.”
I grinned in agreement. Her words piqued my interest and reminded me of what I needed to speak with Theodore about: I could not see him or other gentlemen visiting the brothels on Thames and Lime.
“So is she here to learn to be a mother?” Rachel asked, and jerked her head toward the back room and Vivian.
“Aye, she is sober now; and contrite concerning her past deeds; and we will watch her closely to see that she does not stray. However, I do not feel she is quite ready to take the child home as of yet.”
“She best not be,” Rachel said archly. “I will judge when that will happen.”
“Be kind,” I said quickly, and Rachel paused in leaving the room to regard me sharply. “She is… She drank because she feels she is a poor person. She has ever been chastised for her failings and…”
Rachel nodded, and I saw compassion in her eyes again.
“You were wonderful with her at the church,” I said.
She frowned. “Do you think I would be mean?”
“Mistress Theodore, you have given Gaston and me a good start on occasion, and there is no one we would less like to be scolded by.”
This set her chuckling again. “I did not think I had such power.”
“Lady,” I teased, “you are one of
only two women that Pete will not cross.”
As her laughter retreated up the hall, I heard a chuckle. I stuck my head through the doorway at the back of the room and spied Theodore lurking in the shadows of the stairs. He appeared bleary-eyed and tired yet, but awake and in good spirits.
“I heard voices,” he said.
“How much did you hear?” I asked.
“How much should I have heard?” he queried.
I considered that, and smiled and joined him on the steps with my voice low. “Your wife loves you a great deal, but she was curious as to how you comported yourself while intoxicated.”
“Oh…” he said with a sage nod and then a smile. “And you told her.”
“You dance a fine jig.”
He grimaced.
“She said she would pay to see that and we might make arrangements later,” I teased. “She also said she would rather you cavort with us than your other clients, as you on occasion returned from those outings reeking of perfume.”
He grimaced with renewed vigor. “Will, I never…”
“Of course not: she does think so, either. However, it does bring me to a question I wish to put to you.”
“What?” he asked with a very-arched eyebrow.
I sighed. “Gaston wishes to… learn of women… with me as his guide, prior to his having to consummate a marriage. The whores we have seen here do not intrigue us. Would you, in your conversations with the fine gentlemen of Jamaica, happen to have heard where finer quality whores might be found?”
He sighed, and stood to lead me back into his office. “I have… heard… of two options. The first is Widow Marsh. She is a handsome woman of middle years with three lovely daughters. They live on her deceased husband’s plantation outside of Spanish Town. In their loneliness they have been known to entertain gentlemen at their house. They will serve a fine meal, and one of the girls has a fine voice and another plays a harp. They are not whores per se, but they enjoy the patronage of several of Jamaica’s finer citizens, such that the plantation need not plant or harvest anything and they wear the finest gowns from London and the finest perfumes…” He nodded obliquely and flushed.
“Can arrangements be made of a more discreet nature, without the fine meal and harp playing?” I asked.
Treasure Page 38
