Whit said, “And what is it you like especially about that one painting?”
“Well. The paintings are all very joyful. I like how the Chinese present sex as a happy, creative occasion, and not one to be tolerated with gritted teeth. As for this particular one. The Chinese are so inventive—see how they employed this wooden protuberance in the swing’s seat?”
Major Ashbury made a motion to request the pillow book, so Belle handed it to him. She was gratified when realization swept over his face, and he reddened. He swiftly handed the book to Whit as if it were a turd. Now Belle knew. Major Ashbury was one of those prudish men who humped for their own enjoyment, and their partners probably tolerated it with gritted teeth. It was too bad. He was so very handsome. What a shame.
Whit said, “Yes, these are things that are commonly accepted in the Orient and even in Europe, but are practically unheard-of here.” A sly look came into Whit’s eyes. “The ingenuity they’ve invested in this swing gives me some crafty ideas.”
For some reason, this mortified Major Ashbury even further, for he got to his feet and took his hot brandy to the fireplace, even grabbing the poker and rustling the embers. Belle admired the athletic globes of his ass in the buckskins, but thinking of him as an old lady potato-head in matters of sex quashed her interest in him. She looked back to Whit, who was studying the pillow book.
“Crafty ideas?” she prompted, knowing it wasn’t appropriate conversation for a maid.
Whit’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, I can see where one could replicate this position.” But when he looked back to the major’s stiffly hunched shoulders, Whit’s conversation, too, petered out.
Belle went on, “You mentioned treatment for hysterical paroxysm.”
“Yes, indeed! I think you could benefit greatly from it.”
At this, Major Ashbury turned to face his guests, now seemingly intrigued.
Belle asked Whit, “Would it be possible to try this treatment tonight? Unless you have other more pressing things to do, related to the campaign.”
Whit stood eagerly. “Not at all. Huntley is just composing a speech to give to the battalion tomorrow, but we’re hampered by the rain.”
“And the inactivity of the commissioners,” Ashbury added.
“That, too,” Whit agreed. “We must do this in your room, if you don’t mind. The hospital tent is entirely inappropriate for a female patient.”
Belle said, “Of course.”
Ashbury was taking a few long strides toward them. “But,” he sputtered. Then he laughed, as though trying to lighten the mood. “Hysterical paroxysm? And what might that be?”
Whit squiggled his silken eyebrows. “I don’t think you want to know, Huntley.” He chuckled and took Belle’s arm to guide her from the room.
But the major was curious now. “This ‘treatment’—you may go, Miss Belle. The doctor will join you shortly.”
As was customary with the business of men versus women, the woman was whisked from the room before the really interesting conversation took place. So Belle, holding her warm teapot and her pillow book, pretended to stalk toward the kitchen, but sidled back to the study door to listen.
“This treatment,” Ashbury said. “Might it involve the same sort of medical massage you practiced on me?”
“In a way,” Whit said. “But for a woman suffering from hysteria, the treatment is much more focused. Massage of the arms and shoulders, for example, doesn’t help.”
“Belle is hysterical? Does she have fits like an epileptic?”
Whit didn’t bother hiding his chuckle. “No. The fact that hysterics don’t become incontinent during their spells like epileptics do, and they don’t fall down as epileptics do, has led some skeptics to accuse hysterics of malingering.”
“If the treatment is the same as what you performed on me, I can understand where some women would malinger!” Ashbury sounded genuinely angry. If he was such a Mrs. Grundy as he appeared to be, it would stand to reason he’d be smoking about such activities under his own roof.
“Don’t worry, Huntley,” Whit soothed the major. “I’ve performed this hundreds, probably thousands, of times. It’s an accepted and very common practice, back east anyway. Don’t you have any interest in your maid becoming less hysterical?”
Ashbury snapped, “She seems perfectly sensible to me!”
“Do I detect jealousy on your part, Major Ashbury? Perhaps you’d like to witness my technique so you can improve your own skills?”
Ashbury sputtered, “I’ll do no such thing! And my own skills are perfectly skillful!”
Boot steps came toward the study door, so Belle skittered back to the kitchen to deposit her teapot. She managed to get down the hallway to her own room before Whit saw her.
Belle liked this room. Airy and spacious, with a view through tall windows of rolling, green, oak-studded hills, it was much better than her room in Missouri, when she lived with Ned. In Carthage, they lived on the town square near their livery and inn. Her view out her bedroom window mostly consisted of horse’s hindquarters and tails. They had dreamed of building a house like this in California, with unimpeded views over hills and valleys. California was every American’s Manifest Destiny, where one could live freely, exactly as one chose. Right now the rain pounded so relentlessly several impromptu lakes were filling up in the lime-green valley. Belle closed only the sheer lace curtains because she loved the diffused light filling her room and wouldn’t need to light a lamp.
She was peeling off her shirt and skirt when Whit came silently in the door. He held only a folded-up sheet and a green glass bottle, and he smiled reassuringly at her.
He said, “I’m sorry I didn’t admit to Huntley that I knew the pillow book was yours. But that would be to admit we’d talked about it. I thought if I could surreptitiously purchase it back from Huntley—”
“Oh, no, you did the right thing!” Belle surprised even herself with the fervor of her feelings for the doctor. He seemed to possess the knack for consistently doing the right thing. But then, that was a good quality for a physician to have. “The major seems a bit of a lump when it comes to anything slightly bawdy.”
As he floated the sheet down to cover her bed, Whit threw his head back and laughed. “Well. He’s had about a hundred ‘wives,’ so he can’t be such a dull tool, can he?”
“Whit. Having a hundred Indian ‘wives’ does not mean he’s educated in matters of European refinement. You’ve spent years in Europe. I am sure you’re a much more experienced man in these matters, though you may not have had a hundred savage wives.” She was surprised to hear herself call her former sisters “savage,” but it was true in the primal sense of the word. Indian women were very basic in their sexual doings. They didn’t feel the need to heat things up with inventions or implements, as far as she knew.
Whit smoothed the sheet down and uncorked the bottle. A cloud of lilies wafted over to Belle, perfumed like a rich forest floor. “But haven’t you been married once, Miss Pennington?”
“I have hardly been ‘kept’ or loose, Doctor!” When Whit made a soothing face, Belle felt bad about her outburst. “I did have a beau prior to my husband. He was French, and we experimented with the French way of doing things. It was he who gave me the pillow book. So I was understandably a bit disappointed when I wed and things were not quite as…”
“French?” Whit suggested.
Belle giggled with relief. “Yes, not as ‘French’ as I imagined they might be.”
Whit gestured at the bed. “Well, this technique—quite simple, really—has been known to provide vast relief. You may lie on your back.”
Belle clambered onto the bed. She hadn’t been telling Bud the entire truth when she said she hadn’t slept well on this bed. This bed was heaven compared to her bearskin in her ochum, which she had never gotten completely accustomed to. She just hadn’t been sleeping well, had been bothered by hysterical and lusty feelings—almost all involving Dr. Whitney. And now he was about to put his h
ands on her in some manner! It was thrilling to the utmost, and gooseflesh prickled her calves and arms as she arranged herself flat on her back, eyes closed and hands at her side as though pushing up daisies in a battlefield.
Whit sat next to her at thigh level and said quietly, “Women often feel more relaxed with a pillow and arms above their head.”
She did as he bade, and waited with fluttering heart.
“It will help you to relax and not speak, and perhaps think of the images in your pillow book.” Whit’s voice was warm, friendly, and professional. “Perhaps the one with the swing. That seemed to hold the most appeal for you.”
So she thought about the couple on the swing, the man impaled up the anus with what she had discovered was called a dildo during a visit with Ned to St. Louis. A bookseller, again a Frenchman, had scared her by surreptitiously showing her a box containing an elephant’s tooth carved into the shape of a hulking, leering penis. She had scurried away since she was with Ned but had returned the next day alone, when the bookseller confided in her that it came from some primitive African country called Zanzibar. Again she had scuttled away shamefully but had never forgotten that dildo.
It had occurred to Belle that Huntley Ashbury was the biggest trader in the Sierra. Perhaps he could find such an item. Oh, that would be beyond shameful. He would discharge her from her position as his maid. Lying on her bed now, she almost giggled, but instead gasped when Whit’s large, warm hands gently eased her thighs apart. She allowed them to be eased and utterly forgot about the dildo when Whit scrunched her chemise up about her hips, then sought the opening slit in her drawers.
Of course. She knew the treatment would involve her vagina—her cunt, she’d heard it called by some base, experienced folks. Her cunt was the source of her hysteria, the central font of all problems and paroxysms, the area physicians glimpsed at disdainfully, down their noses, when referring to hysteria. Her cunt had quivered, become mushy and spongy when accepting her beau’s penis—had clenched in boredom and sometimes disgust when Ned mounted her. Lately, her cunt had been quivering again, becoming full and agitated when viewing Whit’s enormous prick bulging inside his trousers or watching his cotton shirt straining to cover the wide, powerful expanse of his shoulders, or when catching a glimpse of his collarbone—
“Ah!” Oh my, had she just gasped aloud? Whit’s broad, oily fingers eased apart the petals of her cunt, and now he slipped the longest, perhaps his middle finger, directly down the expanse of her clitoris! She jumped and tried to remain still as the cloud of lilies floated up her torso, climbing into her nostrils. Perhaps there was laudanum in that lily oil, because she felt extremely light, as though her normal workaday mind hovered somewhere up near the ceiling, completely unembarrassed by the intimate yet medical act that was taking place.
Whit’s finger massaged her clitoris in a gently coaxing manner, and Belle felt her cunt petals expanding even further as though filling with blood. Yes, that’s probably what was happening—all the blood from her brain was rushing to her pussy. Belle almost giggled at that word, pussy, another word her French beau had used. But she remained still to gain the maximum advantage from the treatment.
He massaged her in a slightly rotational manner, as though trying to find the best vantage point—for what? What was the goal here? To give her pleasure? For if that was the goal, it was working to an extreme level of bliss. Tension built in her lower abdomen. Was this the unexpended excess “seed” Whit had mentioned that engorged the uterus and needed to be expelled? Yes, yes, that must be it, so Belle wiggled her hips to encourage him to continue.
Whit diddled her more fervently on the hooded part of her clitoris that now felt expanded to the size of a small cock. Waves of thrilling ecstasy flooded down her belly, shuddering her uterus, and it almost felt as though a few squirts of this alleged seed mingled with the oil on Whit’s talented finger. He added a second finger, fiddling with her as though a concert pianist, causing her hips to fidget in agitation. Belle angled her hips to her left, as though encouraging him to focus on the right side of her clitoris’s hood, and he expertly responded to this slight instruction. Even more to his credit, he avoided the very tip where urine was expelled, for Belle knew that would have been more agony than ecstasy, instead twiddling the length of her swollen clitoris until she was holding her breath, waiting for—what, exactly?
Oh well, it didn’t really matter, and now all logical thought seemed to evaporate as she surrendered to the overwhelming euphoria Whit was coaxing from her. Her pelvis was flooded with fluid, blood, the seed he sought to expel, and if she dared breathe, she would completely ruin the fine balance he was dexterously creating with his trained manipulation of—
“Oh!” She released the enormous breath she’d been holding all in one swoop as a veritable maelstrom of turbulent ecstasy gripped her. Yes, it was a clenching, gripping, enormous spasm, as though her uterus and the inner walls of her cunt were being seized by the most frenzied wave of heaven ever imaginable! Her arms slapped down to grip the sheet in rigid fists, her hips completely lifted off the mattress as her cunt clenched as though it could break a plate! Whit continued diddling her while whispering encouraging words as the enormous spasm seemed to crest then ease off a bit, only to return with even more force, if such a thing was imaginable!
She would die if this were to continue! She heard herself sobbing, “No, no, no!” although her inner mind was exhorting quite the opposite. Endless tidal waves of bliss washed over her, clutching every single muscle in her pelvis as though a great hand much bigger than Whit’s aimed to fling her over a cliff after squeezing every cell of life from her body. No, no, no, this was too much—she would surely die!
Eventually, she didn’t know how many minutes had passed, but the contractions did start to taper off. Whit seemed to know this, and he slowed his ministrations, placing his free hand over her mons veneris and rotating his fingertips to create new, squishy, shocking arrows of pleasure so acute they were almost painful, shooting nearly to the pit of her throat.
“That’s good…” he said with approval. “That’s good.”
Now Belle panted, wringing the sheet, her eyes squeezed together. “No, no, stop!” she begged.
And Whit did, giving her clitoris a few last flicks of the fingertips that nearly had her jumping to the ceiling to cling there, like a terrified cat.
It took many more long moments as Whit rose from the mattress, presumably to wash his hands in the basin, for Belle to even unclench her fists and eyes, to open her eyes. For the stars to stop floating before her vision. For her to weakly turn her head aside to view a looming Whit, looking very pleased with himself, hands on hips, an enormous erection bulging the lap of his trousers.
“Whit,” she said stupidly. “Was that…was that…?”
“A female orgasm?” he asked flippantly. “Yes, as I suspected.”
Belle said weakly, “But it was so powerful. I thought I might die.”
“Well. It would be a good death, wouldn’t it? I’m sure you know the French call an orgasm petit mort, the little death.”
She tried to laugh, or maybe she was only laughing in her mind. “Women have orgasms, just as men do?”
“I believe it’s very similar, yes.”
“And that is the treatment for hysteria?”
“Yes. And we’ll have to continue many more treatments if we ever hope to cure you.”
Belle certainly hoped there was never a cure.
Chapter Ten
Huntley was enraged like all possessed.
First, all of that pretentious claptrap about the riceman pillow book, the ridiculous swing with the wooden dildo, and worst, Whit’s “crafty idea” to duplicate the outrageous position. Then, his two housemates had vanished surreptitiously, all full of themselves with the idea they could treat Belle’s conniptions—whatever that involved—with the same techniques Whit had used on Huntley.
It was simply too much. Huntley sat at his desk attempting to writ
e tomorrow’s speech. He was so distracted with imaginings of what the duo was doing in Belle’s bedroom, he didn’t get very far.
While I do not hesitate to denounce the Indians for their murders and robberies, we should not forget there may be circumstances which could excuse their hostility to whites. They probably feel that they themselves are the aggrieved party, looking upon us as trespassers and invaders in their country, and seeking to take away their homes. It might be they class us with the Spanish invaders of California, whose cruelties in Christianizing them are fresh in their memories.
Was this too merciful a speech? Many Californians had been victims of Indian atrocities, and many were willing to adopt the methods of old-timey Spanish missionaries, who had brought in converts with the lasso.
However, after many more sips of lukewarm brandy, Huntley became restive, listening to the pelting of rain against his windowpane, and found himself wandering in the hallway by the bedrooms of Whit and Belle. He paced, then dared to press his ear to the door, and heard…nothing.
Nothing? Whit had told him that during medical massage, it was best to keep up a light banter. At least Whit could have found a metronome by now! Huntley would remember later to keep an especial lookout for a metronome in his trade dealings, but now the steady drone of rain was probably drowning out all other noise, and curiosity was making him loco. Knowing that this door could be pushed open without turning the knob, Huntley opened it an inch without making the whisper of a sound, and bobbed his head this way and that to see what was happening.
Belle was fully clothed—well, not “fully,” but she wasn’t nude to the waist as Whit had requested Huntley to be during the procedure. No, her drawers even covered her knees, so perhaps they hadn’t gotten to the shoulder massaging portion yet. And she lay on her back, legs slightly splayed apart. Whit sat on the edge of the bed at her hip level, and he was touching her with only one hand, the other hand lightly holding a different oil bottle between his thighs.
Sure as Shooting Page 10
