by Matilda Hart
The tomcat ambles straight past me, ignoring the the proffered scraps of tart. Evan laughs, doing his commoner impression again, ‘He knows better than to befriend the likes of us, Lassie.’
I flick the larger bit of crust at the cat’s retreating tail but miss and have to spin around and look innocent when it hits one of the redcoats square in the back.
Evan who is also doing his best to look innocent is desperately trying not to burst into laughter and I find it contagious. We sit, shoulders shaking in silent laughter for several minutes while the redcoat, seeing only the cat and assuming it has brushed him with its tail turns back to his friends and continues talking loudly about a whore he met in Newcastle who was as good with her feet as she was with her hands, and better than most women with those.
Moira who being on the other side of the table saw nothing of what happened keeps asking what on earth we are finding so funny, and if it is her she shall have words with my father about my conduct.
Eventually we all pile out of the teahouse and I take my last chance to get Lord Atwater alone by catching him at the door. I take his hand firmly in mine and in a confiding way say, ‘I really don’t feel I have interviewed you nearly as severely as I should. After all if you are too take my sister away I will be so much happier if I know what sort of hands she is in.’ He starts a little at my touch, which I take as a good sign a man doesn’t fear a woman he feels nothing for. I have slipped my fingers between his and I hold him back a little as the rest of the party begin to pull away.
He is so close, we are skin to skin and I can feel the heat coming off his coat, smell the hot butter on his breath, the masculine smell of sweat. He is completely still and looking at me quizzically, amused as if sharing this intimacy is a joke at everyone else’s expense.
They all continue to walk away. I am a little out of breath as I begin, ‘So, tell me, Lord Atwater – Clayton,’ the correction works no better this time.
‘Shall we catch up with them, Miss Beckham,’ is his reply. Stiff and courteous, just as controlled as my own voice. I feel so intimate with him, but still we stand here holding in our fancies which I wish we could simply blurt out.
Evan turns around and calls back for us, and Clayton snatches his hand away guiltily. Well he might, my own thoughts are of that hand roving across my body as in Donne: before, behind, between, above, below.
But already he is hurrying to rejoin the party, Evan putting one hand on his shoulder and pulling him into a conversation. I stand a little longer, longing with my whole body for his. Despite the cold air I feel sweat on my palms and thighs, while my cheeks are burning hot and red. For a moment I have that urge to yell, that I had up at the lake, to cut loose and to scream at the top of my lungs: scream what I want from him, what I want to make him do. Instead I pick the hem of my skirt up so as not to traipse it through a puddle and I walk briskly to catch up with the others.
Chapter Five
Moira pulls the same hair brushing trick that evening – snatching hard at the tangles to hurt me as I discuss the day’s failures regarding Atwater with her. Now that she is no longer aloud the hairbrush to beat my legs as punishment she exacts her sense of righteous retribution by this far more subtle means. It has almost become a game, I see how far I can push her and she sees how far she can injure me without giving cause for a more formal complaint.
‘It comes as a blow,’ I say to Moira, as I lay out the events of the day. ‘But I really don’t think I have moved him nearly enough. He blows so hot and cold. He practically ran after Evan that evening, and after he had been so imploring with Claire about being allowed to dance with me.’
‘That’s not what I saw at the dance or in town. He’s very much love with your sister. And you are an absolute beast for trying to hurt her like this. Besides what sort of man would throw off his betrothed like that? Certainly not the sort that any girl worth her salt should ever want in her marriage bed.’ Her words have a sort of logic to them that denies all sense of passion, of romance. How like the old.
‘I have no intention of hurting my sister.’ Of course I can be spiteful sometimes, I am aware of that, but to spite my sister like this is beyond even me. There is only the truest and purest of feelings in my heart. ‘Moira. Have you never loved a man because he was bad?’
‘Goodness no, Lady Alice. My husband – Lord Jesus see that his soul rests in peace, and God unite me when my own time is passed – was a perfect gentleman, even if he wasn’t of your sort of stock. He leaned a little too much on the demon Drink, but he was faithful to me and raised our children with kindness. In fact, I can count the number of times he raised his hand to me on no more than ten fingers.’
‘But what of romance? I want exactly the sort of man whose passion for me is stormy enough, and whose heart is bold enough to risk disgracing both of us with a passionate affair. Perhaps an elopement.’
‘Fie, girl. If you talk on like this, I’ll not listen to any more of your sinful thoughts. You can brush your own hair.’ She stands to leave and in defiance I pick up the hairbrush. ‘You reap what you sow,’ are her last words before she leaves for her quarters.
I struggle with the hairbrush, undoing the curls and plucking out the pins which have held it all in place all day. I notice that there is still that smell – distinctly – clinging to my hand from when I held him. I can’t help but think of the prostitute the soldier talked about. What it would be like to handle a man in that way. For him to handle me, to have that smell be all I could smell, his skin all I can see and feel.
I am holding the handle of the hairbrush so tight that my knuckles glow almost white in the dimness of the room. It is not a case of wanting Clayton. I need him. There is nothing else in the world for me but him.
But I need a plan. It has simply been insufficient to find time with him, he needs a push, something daring and romantic that will make him see me differently. As a woman in my own right, not as the sister of his fiancé. While we are forbidden to each other, I will become more desperate for him and he will continue to hold back.
It strikes me that this is very like the Arthurian Romances, with me and my sister cast in the roles of Lancelot and Arthur, Lord Atwater: our Guinevere. No doubt Evan would point out that the story does not end well for any of the parties involves, but then again, I doubt he has read Mallory.
The thought of Evan’s disapproval cools me somewhat and I find that I am much more tired than I expected, exhaustion hitting me in a wave. So much effort over the last few days and still nothing to show for it. If I want Clayton to be mine, I will need to take things much, much further. I need to give him that push, force the issue more aggressively.
My bed sheets are cold when slip between them. The bedwarmer sits by the fire unused. Perhaps I should have faked an apology and let Moira finish her tasks but I’ll be damned if I grovel now, so I shiver a little beneath the bedclothes and think of Clayton to warm me.
He must be lying in his bed in the East wing, lying alone and perhaps thinking of what it would be like not to be alone for the night. Perhaps he is thinking of me, imagining me slipping silently down the corridors of the house and pushing open his door. Imagining how he would act surprised and resist for a moment, before breaking down and saying: I have always wanted you, Alice. Since the moment I arrived at your house, I knew I had chosen the wrong sister.
He would rise and kiss me, and I would feel the heat of the fire against my bare back as he lifts my night gown over my head throwing it to the floor and gripping my hair, pulling back my head to look up at him as his other hand tilts my chin and his mouth meets mine…
I wonder how he imagines having me, taking me as if I were his wife. Touching the parts of me which modesty and religion have forbidden to all but the married and the fallen.
He is a poet. He would be tender, I think. But passionate, and romantic. He would read poetry to me as I sleep beside him. His own compositions which have always been secretly about me.
In the mor
ning he would declare his engagement over and we would ride to Gretna Green in the morning to be married…
The seeds of a plan begin to form. The ride tomorrow seems like a perfect situation to provide Lord Atwater with a new way of seeing me. To recast our roles, make him the dashing knight again. Render myself the Guinevere.
It will take some careful timing, but all the pieces are already moves into position on the board. Only the presence of Claire on tomorrow’s ride offers any sort of complication. But if I make a point of leading the route. Her beside me… Yes, that would put Evan near the back and…
I cannot wait until tomorrows ride out to the tor.
Suddenly every hair on my body stands erect, my skin rising into goose pimples: there is a noise in the corridor. Something or someone bumps against my door, then moves on. ‘Moira?’ I ask, quietly. But the only reply comes from the pendulum of the clock. It was too clumsy, too heavy at first and then soft as if compensating, as if listening for a response. It is the sound of someone attempting to sneak somewhere.
The options are limited. This corridor houses me, Claire, and – for as long as she is hiding out here, away from her husband and children – Jane. Perhaps this is the reason Jane is away from her domestic obligations. Does she have a lover? Evan is staying in the house, have I got it wrong. Is he interested in my other sister. It would certainly not be the first time a Beckham strayed…
The fire is burning low, so I make my way to the door with the poker in hand – after all it is dark and there are more criminals in the North than elsewhere – and open it a crack. Listening for any movement in the corridor, I strain my ears, for what may be an intruder, may simply be an illicit dalliance. My breath is shallow and I have to work hard to keep it quiet. Even so, it feels as if each breath is loud enough to raise the dead, or at the very least to echo off the walls and wake my sisters.
Every sound seems amplified in the dark. Including the gentle creak of a foot on a loose board down the corridor. From the sound of it, whoever the interloper is, he is round the corner where Jane and Claire sleep.
I slip into the corridor and walk past the empty childhood rooms of my brothers who now sleep with their wives in another wing. Whoever it is who is out at night, is definitely round the corner, I can see the glimmer of a lamp of candle carefully covered, and when I pause I hear the sound of a doorknob turning gently, squeaking a little despite the obvious care with which it is being handled.
At the corner I stop again and listen. There are no windows in this corridor and so there is almost no light, I can see nothing but I know these halls so well, that I do not miss a step, or hit a creaky board.
There are whispers around the corner and when I peek around I can see a man, silhouetted by the fire within one of the bedrooms. In the dark it is hard to judge the distance to the little crack of light but it looks like Claire’s. Then a woman speaks and confirms it: it is Claire’s voice which says, ‘Come in quick my love. Before someone sees you. What are you thinking?’
The silhouette slips inside and my hope goes out. For a brief moment I thought it was Evan that Claire was letting into her room, but instead it was the face of Clayton I saw illuminated by the fire. The door closes and once again total dark reigns around me. All the darker for the aching jealousy I feel. There she is, enjoying precisely the situation I had fantasised about just a few hours ago.
Or was it minutes? Time drags so strangely in the witching hours.
I swallow my disappointment, and drawn by something deep within me – something far more compelling than mere curiosity, and something for which I do not yet have a name for – I walk towards the door measuring out the distance pace by pace. I know exactly how far it is to Claire’s door and when I reach out blindly into the black I feel the smooth oak of the door frame at my fingertips.
A quick glance around in the corridor, and a moment’s silence at the door, tells me that there no one else is moving in the house. Just me, my sister and Clayton. Everyone else is asleep but the screech owls.
I pause. I know what I am about to do crosses a line, but there is that driving force in my gut that says I cannot simply turn back now. So I steel myself, and cast the die.
The lock is cold against my cheek as I press my eye to the keyhole.
On the other side I can see Lord Atwater standing with his back to the door. From the other side of him Claire’s hands, so like my own, are wrapped around him. The two of them are angled just so, and I can see his hand in her hair, pulling it back and tilting her face up into his.
They kiss for what seems an age and I cannot breath as it happens. They are tentative at first, this may be the first time they find themselves alone in a room like this. With the bed at her back they are frames by the posts from which hang thick red curtains as if they are standing beneath a proscenium arch.
They do not remain tentative for long, her gasps become deeper and deeper when they break, as if each time they kiss she is a diver slipping beneath the water. I am furious, and compelled by the drama, drawn in. With her face hidden it could be me, in fact I almost believe it is me, like in a dream where one floats out of oneself and can watch yourself going about all the strange madnesses that inhabit the dream world.
I have to pinch myself to be sure I haven’t simply fallen asleep, and despite the very real pain, I remain asleep. But the impression that I am watching myself become stronger. I can almost feel his hands at my back, my own wrapped around him. I can smell that smell of him, feel the heat of him.
Although I cannot see his hands, I can imagine where they are from the soft moaning sound that come from the room between whispers of, ‘My love. My love,’ from both of them.
He pushes her away and lifts her hands up holding them tightly in his left hand. There is the gentle swish of cloth as he pulls her nightgown over her head with her right hand and tosses it aside. I can almost feel the sudden sharpness of the draft from the winter on now bare skin, the excitement and shame of being naked before the beloved.
She is hidden from view but I know she must look like me in the firelight, perhaps a little older, a little darker of hair, a little less defined in her nose and cheeks. But it might as well be me in there, it should be me in there. I watch how he moves, trying to commit everything to memory.
Her moans are more urgent now and she is scrabbling at his back to pull of his shirt. Her nails catching on his back and leaving a scratch. I can imagine the feel of his skin on those fingertips – her hands are so like my own, they might as well be mine – and that urgency deep within me begins to swell.
I clamp my thighs together and rock, as his shirt is flung away on top of her night gown. He stands topless in the firelight, beautiful, tall, almost willowy in build.
As his breeches fall to the floor I cannot help but touch myself through the cloth of my nightgown, pressing firmly against my sex, as if to try and keep the growing urgency inside me prevent it from leaking out into the air. Despite the cold I can feel the warm heat of sweat and sex through the cloth of my nightgown as I rub myself.
He pushes her back onto the bed and kneels on the floor. As he parts her legs kissing inside her thighs I can only wish it was his lips, his tongue instead of my hand which was touching me.
Her moans become more urgent, there are those hands – so like my own – running through his hair. I can almost feel the oil of scalp between the fingers of my own free hand which is now gripping the door frame tightly for support as the feeling of pleasure begins to build within me.
Clayton rises and moves onto the bed. I can feel his weight above me, pressing me down into the soft mattress, I hear his name said in my voice from within the room.
My hips are gyrating against my hand, I am now cupping myself completely as Clayton enters my proxy. I am no longer in doubt, it is me in that bed, me he is holding onto as he begins to slowly grind against her, gently at first, but with increasing speed and fury, she cries out a little as if in pain. Even that voice is like mine, no
wonder he fell in love with her, she is like my vessel. It might as well be me.
Her hips is bucking against him, up against each thrust down, her hands tight around his back, nails digging in. He looks strained, neck taught, muscles tense, as he thrusts again and again into her. They kiss and pet, and his hands move over her touching every part. As they thrust and thrust, I rub harder, lifting my dress to touch myself directly. My fingers are slick and wet, and I part myself gently and push one inside me with a breathless moan. The couple freezes in the bed. head swinging round to the door. Suddenly they look ridiculous, fearful children caught in the act. My sister no longer seems anything like me.
I freeze with them, listening for what it is they have heart, my blood cold in my veins and all the sexual tension of the moment, the desire for Clayton’s body vanished. It takes me a moment to realise it is me they have heard and then I really panic.
I want so much to be allowed to continue, for him to continue, for me to be able to watch him. But it is no longer me in that bed with him and the scene holds no attraction, only shame and a sordid sort of squalor.
Clayton moves, climbs off the bed, his organ jutting out in front of him.
I can’t move. I have to move. But my knees are frozen to the floor, my hand to the door frame the other no longer exciting me, but covering my modesty.
