When Madame Cosem finally spoke, she did not speak the words that Stanley had been hoping to hear.
"What did they say? Please tell me what they said,” pleaded her gullible patron as soon as he noticed her beginning to emerge from her trance. "Madame Cosem, what did the spirits say?" He gave the woman no time to answer and so she sat in silence again until the overanxious Duke ceased his incessant babbling. When all was quiet, Madame Cosem shook her head gently in an attempt to give the illusion that she was not quite over the affects of contacting the spirit world. Stanley was just about to prod her for a reply again when she opened her mouth and revealed to him what those in the invisible realm thought about his engagement.
"Stanley, I hate to be the one to deliver this news to you, but the spirits say that you should not go through with this marriage." Any trace of anything resembling a smile immediately fled from the face of the Duke and was replaced by an odd look of confusion mixed with denial.
"What... What..." he stammered, unsure what he would say if he managed to get past that first word. "What do you mean?"
"The spirits say that the marriage is not meant to be" Madame Cosem told him. "They say that it is not in the stars, nor will it ever be."
"But I'm in love" protested the shaken Duke, more than a little displeased by what he was hearing.
Madame Cosem adjusted herself in her seat and asked Stanley "don't you think this is all happening rather fast? As of this moment, you have not even told me who you are engaged to." She was right. The Duke had carefully avoided mentioning the fact that he was about to be married to a member of his cleaning staff. Now it seemed like he had no choice but to fill Madame Cosem in on everything; perhaps if he did that, she would be able to discuss the matter further with the creatures of the other side and hopefully lead them to a compromise which would see him married to Marisa. His mouth began to dry up as he tried to squeeze out the name of his fiancée.
"Pardon me?" Madame Cosem said sternly in an attempt to get the Duke to speak up. It was quite evident by this point that the Duke had his reservations about revealing the full details of his engagement.
"Marisa" he finally choked out in a barely audible voice, which couldn't have been heard by somebody in the next room, let alone the next world.
"Who is Marisa?" demanded the psychic, as if it were important.
"She's... She's..." Stanley began to stammer again and stared down at his feet as talked, as if he were a schoolboy who had just been caught drawing dirty words on the blackboard. "She's one of my maids."
"One of your maids?" gasped the legitimately appalled Madame Cosem. "That is why the spirits say you cannot marry her. The say she has no love for you. All of her love is for your money."
"No, I don't believe it,” said Stanley in denial, blocking his ears as though it would prevent him from hearing what he had just heard.
"The spirits do not lie" Madame Cosem told him, "The spirits do not lie."
After a near-thirty minute breakdown in his study with Madame Cosem attempting to calm him, Stanley finally found the strength to rise from his seat and gather the woman's absurdly large payment before she left his absurdly large home.
"Remember what the spirits have said" she told him as he unenthusiastically lead her back through the halls of the manor and to the front door, "you absolutely cannot marry that girl."
"Thank you for coming today, Madame Cosem" muttered the Duke, a little sarcastic, a little heartbroken.
"I am sorry today had to go as it did" said the woman as she exited the manor, "but just remember, the spirits have a reason for everything and you will find love when you least expect it." Without uttering a reply to the final comments of the mystic, the dejected Duke shut the door of the manor to allow himself some time to be alone with his thoughts.
Standing in the garden of Stanley’s home, Madame Cosem could not help but feel a slight tinge of guilt for her starring role in destroying the happiness of the Duke and dashing his dreams of an idyllic future spent with the love of his life. The sky and the trees and the birds that inhabited both seemed to be aware of the culpable amounts of sorrow and guilt radiating from the manor and adjusted accordingly in a prime example of pathetic fallacy. The song of the birds ceased playing as a heavy rain began to fall from the skies, raindrops sliding off the downward facing leaves of the trees which bore an eerie resemblance to a man hanging his head in melancholy. Yes, nature was accompanying Stanley on his dark and unpleasant journey. It also joined the phoney medium in her feelings of guilt and responsibility. However, nature did not join Madame Cosem in any feeling of remorse, most likely because she had no such feeling. Of course, the woman was not particularly proud that her lies were the sole cause of Stanley’s unhappiness, but she knew it had to be done if she were ever to be made his wife. In order to become Duchess, it was necessary to eliminate all other contenders for the title. No, she had no remorse.
Chapter Three
As the sun retreated back into the clouds and darkness began to fall on the manor, Stanley sat alone in his study without a single lamp lighting the room. He sat in an old wicker chair that his great-grandfather had been given by some wandering craftsmen in exchange for a crust of bread and a drop of hot water on a cold winter's evening. The chair was usually located next to the equally old wooden writing desk which sat in the right-hand corner of the room; apparently the desk had also been given to his great-grandfather by the same duo of travelling craftsmen the following winter and so it made sense to keep the two together. On this night, however, the forlorn Duke had dragged the chair far from the desk and placed it in the centre of the room, directly facing the rustic window, which led into the back garden of the manor and provided him with a calming view of the lake down yonder. His brain thumped in his head and his vision grew blurry as he turned the events of the day around in his mind over and over again. He had been trying to make sense of the whole situation ever since Madame Cosem left the manor close to nine hours earlier but he just couldn't understand what was going on. The psychic, in whom he had complete trust, had told him that Marisa loved him not for who he was, but for the money and power that he possessed. Madame Cosem was not the only person to say such a thing, she had gotten her knowledge of his fiancées true intentions from the spirits and surely they would not lie.
The Duke ran an unsteady hand through his thinning hair. He had always believed Marisa to be uncontrollably in love with him. She had told him so herself and continued to do so several times daily. Stanley’s mind drifted over the past three years he had spent with Marisa. They seemed perfect. Those years were years full of almost constant laughter and joy and nary a tear in sight. Of course, there were tears on occasions. Sometimes, if Stanley shot down the idea of marriage in a particularly aggressive manner, the young maid would be reduced to a wailing wreck, a mass of tears and barely coherent sentences about how she was not truly loved.
"She was so eager to be married to me,” Stanley thought to himself, as various different tear-filled encounters flashed in his mind, "why was it so important to her?" At this moment, he was hit by a grim realisation: it was not a complete impossibility that Marisa was only marrying him for his money. After all, the only thing she really had to gain from marrying the Duke was a shared stake in all of his assets. His money, his homes, his possessions, they would all be partly in Marisa's name.
"Oh my god" he muttered, his first time to speak aloud since bidding goodbye to Madame Cosem, "she does not love me."
Of course, anybody who witnessed the way Marisa looked at Stanley when they were together or heard how she would speak of him when he was not there could tell that the young woman was madly in love with her partner of three years. Money didn't enter into it. All the riches in the world meant nothing to her if she could not have Stanley for her own. She was so eager to be married to him as she, like so many girls of the past and present, had grown up with the constant fantasy that she would someday meet the perfect man who would rescue her from her lif
e of loneliness and show her what it was like to be in love. A great deal of women are never fortunate enough to meet the love of their life and so when Marisa felt she had stumbled upon hers, she wanted to marry him before any other woman could steal him away from her. In the past, Stanley had never questioned Marisa's love for him, but now that Madame Cosem had planted a seed of doubt, he could not tear himself away from the feelings of fear and suspicion.
Still sitting in his study by the time the light had fully been engulfed by the moon, the jilted lover began to curse Marisa and all she had (to the best of his knowledge) done to him.
"That whore" he said in a voice full of contempt, "she stole my heart for no other reason than to steal my money." His hands instinctively balled into fists as he fell ever deeper into a rage, which could have conceivably driven him to do something extremely stupid and irresponsible. The thought that the woman who had spent the last three years meticulously planning to rob the Duke was lurking in his manor somewhere served only to make him even angrier than he already ways. Stanley imagined Marisa, sitting on the finest couch in the dining room, surrounded by soft cushions and frilled pillows and sipping the oldest wine in the manor from the most valuable glass. Stanley’s vivid imagination allowed him to see with great detail the smug smile on Marisa's face as she kicked back and placed her bare feet on the couch, something which she found quite relaxing despite knowing full well that Stanley did not appreciate feet on his furniture.
The image of his fiancée drinking his wine and relaxing on his furniture while having a laugh at his expense proved to be too much for the Duke. He rose from his wicker chair and stormed out of his study, convinced that he would find Marisa abusing his trust in the dining room.
"We'll see how clever she is when I throw her out of this house" he muttered to himself as he thundered through the empty hallway and down the staircase, "it will be the workhouse for you!" Stanley’s various threats and vows of revenge echoed throughout the manor and he continued to sprout the absurdities until he finally arrived at the dining room.
"Get out of here, whore!" he yelled, tearing into the room like a fox entering a hen house. However, there was nobody present in the dining room to hear the Duke's command to leave but himself. The couch showed a significant lack of Marisa and the perfect positioning of the pillows and cushions suggested that nobody had been in the dining room all day.
Unperturbed and still as angry as he had been when he descended the stairs (possibly even angrier), Stanley entered the kitchen. He spent relatively little time in the kitchen of the manor as he rarely had any reason to be there, but on this night he found it more than necessary to venture to this almost uncharted area of his home. Shoving the door open with his still clenched fists, the Duke entered the kitchen and was surprised to find Marisa sitting alone at the small, rickety table, innocently drinking a chipped glass of water.
"Stan" she said, grinning from pierced ear to pierced ear, "I have not seen you all day." Stanley, or "Stan", was unmoved by the greeting of his almost ex-fiancée and stood before her like a stone statue of a frowning man.
"What is the matter, dear?" asked Marisa, noting the Duke's rather uncharacteristically sour demeanour. "You don't look best pleased."
"On the contrary, there is nothing the matter with me. You, however, have quite an unpleasant time ahead of you." Stanley moved around the room as he spoke, trailing his right hand on the table like a shark circling some poor, forgotten sailor in the middle of the ocean. Marisa chuckled nervously before asking her fiancée to further elaborate, as she did no understand what he was saying to her.
"What I am saying, dear Marisa, is that we are finished and I want you out of my manor before sunrise."
Shocked by what she was hearing though not being sure how to reply, Marisa moved a hand over her chest, as some women do when they are deeply offended by something. Of course, the young lady wasn't feeling offended, she wasn't sure what she was feeling; perhaps the reason she placed a hand over her chest was to protect her heart from any potential damage.
"Stanley... I... I..." she stammered in a voice which cracked as she spoke. "I don't know what to make of all this, is this some sort of cruel joke?"
"Oh no, my love, I would not joke about something as serious as this." This time, Stanley’s voice was at the same volume it had been when he first entered the dining room in search of Marisa. There was a part of him that would have quite liked to carry on speaking calmly in an attempt to convince the woman that her betrayal did not bother him, but his rage was such that he could not control himself. Marisa tried to speak again but she was interrupted by the booming voice of the Duke as he yelled, "I would not say something so untrue! I would not lie!" He slammed his fist to the table in a fit of anger that would rival a Greek god before adding "I am not like you!"
The young woman was now in tears. Stanley’s unexpected anger towards her coupled with the sheer volume of his yells made her extremely uncomfortable. This was topped off by a feeling of overall confusion as to what was going on and Marisa just could not keep herself from crying.
"Why are you saying these things?" she asked through sobs, the sound of her voice muffled by her hands, which she had buried her face into.
"Because Madame Cosem and the spirits revealed to me the truth about you! You do not love me, you just love my money!" Stanley banged on the table again, causing more tears to pour from the already red eyes of the maid.
"Of course I love you" she protested, "I have always loved you, I don't care about your money." Even in all his fury, the Duke could not deny that he desperately wanted Marisa's words to be true, but he just could not trust her.
"If you love me" he began, "you must prove it to me."
"How can I do that?" asked Marisa. It was indeed an odd request; Stanley had no enemies that needed murdering or buildings that needed burning down and so proving love for him would be rather difficult.
"You must decide that for yourself; but if you fail, you will be banished from my home forever."
Marisa did not reply to Stanley’s final comments. Instead, she withdrew deep into thought and shut her eyes tightly to prevent any interference from the outside world. How could she possibly prove she loved a man who was all but convinced that she was a fraud?
"Come on" said Stanley; though Marisa had been silent for only a minute, he was already tapping his foot in an inpatient displeasure. "If you love me as much as you claim to, surely you must be able to express it." The young girl had never been one to work well under pressure and this was undoubtedly the most pressure she had ever been put under. If she failed to persuade the Duke that her motives for marrying him were true, she would lose him forever; and he was a man of his word.
"Come on" he said once more before adding "hurry up", which is the less polite version of the former phrase, which is already extremely impolite in the first place. Marisa let out a sigh of stress and clutched at her hair in frustration. All hoped seemed lost until she realised that there was one thing she could do. One tiny gesture which, if done right, could convince Stanley of her infinite love once and for all.
The girl firmly raised her glass to her face and quickly polished off the remaining water as if it were straight whisky and rose from her seat with a face void of all expression.
"What are you doing?" Stanley demanded to know but he received no answer. He backed away slightly as Marisa approached him and would have continued to do so had he not already reached the wall of the kitchen. Unsure of what to expect, Stanley’s mind began to jump to the worst possible scenarios. For the briefest of seconds, he imagined Marisa, angry that her plan to drain him of his riches had been foiled, pulling a knife from beneath her uniform and sticking it into his side like a Roman soldier to the crucified Christ. Fortunately for Stanley, Marisa's knowledge of the crucifixion was minimal at best. Rather than sticking any form of sharp object into the Duke's side, she took his face in her hands, much like she had done upon his proposal, and gave her honest lips to
his.
Initially, Stanley tried to resist the kiss of the woman but his feelings proved too powerful for him to put up much of a fight. His arms soon moved from behind his back to behind the back of Marisa. With one hand placed at the bottom of her neck and the other located just above her waist, Stanley pushed Marisa closer to him while his passion for her and all that she was returned with little haste. There was something about this kiss that was different to the kiss from the night before; it seemed more powerful, more driven. Perhaps it was the atmosphere in the room or all that was at stake, but Marisa seemed more determine to satisfy the lord of the manor than ever before. As she continued to kiss Stanley, her tongue swirling inside his mouth, she ripped his tucked-in shirt from his trousers and moved both hands through the garment, stopping only once she reached his chest.
Everything was moving rather fast, Stanley had and insatiable appetite for Marisa's body and he did not miss a beat when he unbuttoned that lone button of her uniform. He tore her uniform from her as she tore his shirt from him, leaving their undergarments as the only barrier between them and the intense pleasure that they so desperately craved. Again, neither of the two lovers allowed a second to go unused and in almost no time at all, every trace of clothing had been removed from both pulsating bodies. Now that the rush to undress was over, time could slow down for Marisa and Stanley. In fact, they would not have cared if time were to stop altogether; it would have provided them with an eternity to love one another.
Stanley lowered his head to Marisa's breasts and took one of her nipples in his mouth. Clutching the nipple between his teeth, he could feel that it was hard and getting harder as he bit down tighter on it. For Marisa, there were few sensations greater than that which she experienced when her lover chewed on her nipples. She touched herself as she felt the tongue of the Duke brush over the tip of her nipple. The warm breath poured out of his mouth, bringing with it traces of saliva to make her breasts glisten. Stanley’s left hand joined the hand of the maid down between her legs and stroked her as she pushed her own fingers further inside her. With her free hand, Marisa grabbed tightly onto the penis that she could feel pressing against her leg. She ran the nail of her thumb over the tip before beginning the back and forth motion which never failed to make the Duke exude noises of delight.
The Duke's Dilemma: Regency Romance Menage Short Stories Page 17
