Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
elizabeth
In the wake of it, I was shaking.
My thighs were shaking, and my body was sheened in just a hint of sweat as he lay against me, within me.
It was wordless now, though there had been words earlier.
I had thought, perhaps, it wouldn’t happen at all, because of all the words, the way they seemed to come out awkwardly, the way the gravity of what we were doing seemed to weigh heavily on the anticipation of the act.
We were in the second floor of an inn not far from the sea. There were windows all around two of the walls, and through them, we could see the horizon, see a hint of the sea, far off there, reflecting back the lights of the city.
The talk went on and on.
“I do not wish to hurt you,” he said.
“I have heard that there could be pain,” I said, a bit concerned. “I have heard there is something that gets torn. Can you not be gentle about it?”
“No, of course,” he said. “I am only saying, we don’t have to, Elizabeth.”
“You don’t wish to,” I said.
“I wish to,” he said, adamant. “I think you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“We have neither of us done it!” I exclaimed. Then I became worried, concerned. “You were not lying to me about that?”
“Obviously not,” he said. “No, I’ve never done it, but I have… I have been parts of conversations, bawdy conversations in the company of other men, and I have seen books, filthy sorts of books that—”
“They have books about it?” I interrupted, electrified and also a bit horrified.
“Let’s just agree I know more about this than you,” he said. “I want you to be quite assured that you wish it.”
“What if we were married?” I said. “If it were our wedding night, you would not be giving me some way out of it.”
“Certainly I would!” he cried. “I do not wish to hurt you, Lizzy.”
But when it happened, there wasn’t any pain.
When it happened, that part of my body was slick and swollen and ever so sensitive, for he had done magically lovely things with his fingers that had brought me to ecstatic and bursting heights of wondrousness.
(Though he had needed some coaxing and direction from me to know quite the right spot and the right pressure and the right pattern. “There?” he had whispered. And, “Guide me, Lizzy, I wish only to please you.” And, “I could touch you this way for hours.”)
When it happened, I had felt as if my body had been ever so relaxed, as if all my muscles had gone liquid within me, and that I was simply open and loose and fluid, gasping and pleasured, lost to the sensation he had wrought in me.
Then, after that flood of pleasure, he prodded me, sliding deeper and deeper, and my body made room, accommodating his intrusion, seemingly made to be intruded upon in that way, made to take him, to hold him, to surround him.
And now, it was done, and I was shaking, and my body was like the ocean itself after a wild storm, calm in the wake of the agitation of the intensity that had worked its way through me.
I reached up to touch his face, and our gazes met, and it was as if we were looking into each other, inside each other.
He kissed me.
I sighed into him.
“You’re all right?” he breathed. “I am ever so sorry. I should have taken more care. I got… distracted. Your body is perfection itself. I should have ascertained if I was hurting you.”
“No,” I said, caressing his face, feeling luminous and happy and good. “No, it didn’t hurt.”
He rubbed our noses together, shutting his eyes. “Lizzy, I… I thought I loved you before, but I—”
“Let’s go home, Fitzwilliam,” I said, my hands spanning his broad, bare shoulders.
He pulled away to look into my eyes. “That’s what you wish?”
“You wish to please me, don’t you? You wish to please your wife? Take me home. Let’s be married.”
He gave me a wry smile.
I lifted one of my own bare shoulders. “I think we’ve been married for some time now, in fact.”
He chuckled. “Yes, perhaps we have.”
fitzwilliam
The next day, we were in the process of stealing a carriage to take back with us as we journeyed north when everything went rather badly.
It was morning. The sun was high in the air. In this part of France, we had noted that every Thursday there was a mid-morning rain shower. Once we got further into the north, we would avoid the rain. But now, the air was humid, and there were clouds in the sky, clouds that would grow darker and heavier as the morning dragged on.
We usually stole carriages under the cover of night.
But this morning, we were giddy on each other.
I wondered at myself, wondered why I’d waited. I had told myself it was about honor, about the idea of having a covenant between myself and God and the state and society. And of course, with her, a covenant with my wife.
But it had been clear, last night, when she’d seized my hand across the table and said she wanted it, that I’d been waiting for her.
She hadn’t been ready to be mine, not all this time.
I wasn’t entirely sure what had shifted, not exactly, but I thought I recognized it. It was a shift that I had observed in others, a shift that I had made myself, but a long time ago, when I was quite young and my father died and I inherited everything, all those responsibilities.
The shift was just a difference between wanting to conquer the whole world, see everything, have everything, explore everything, have nothing but possibility ahead of yourself and with this moment when a person realized that having nothing but possibilities meant that one never got anything at all.
A possibility was a promise of something, but if one kept all possibilities, one never got what each possibility promised.
One had to commit, to accept a path.
It meant closing things off, but it also meant reward.
She was not like me. She’d never had a boyhood full of curiosity and exploration, never had years at university on her own. She’d been under the strictures of family obligation and societal expectation her whole life. She’d needed a little time to explore her possibilities.
But everyone got tired of that, eventually.
Everyone wanted something real, not just a promise.
So, that was why it had been right, I thought.
I didn’t know.
Maybe it hadn’t been anything nearly so noble. Perhaps it had simply been that I was not going to be able to spend another night with this woman in my arms whilst I was hard as stone without giving and having her.
Maybe I was simply making up some rationalization for giving in to my own lusts.
But even if so, I thought we were good for each other in that way. She was curious and open and excited and I could stand not to be so closed-off, truly. I could stand to have a bit of her personality rubbing off on me. Similarly, I could be there to protect her, to hold in her tendencies to wildness and rebellion. I could be her anchor.
We were made for each other.
Except, I did not protect her, not that morning, not at all.
I was gazing at her, as I was securing the horses to the carriage, just looking at this beautiful woman whose body I had seen the night before, every curve and dip of her, every secret place. I had delved inside her, and she was right here, her eyes bright as she tucked strands of her dark hair behind her ears, and then there was a shout.
“Thieves!” called the voice. “Back away from the horses.”
I moved too slow.
I didn’t move at all.
I should have put my body between theirs and hers.
But I did not.
And there was a loud noise, a crack of a sound that rent the air.
A gunshot.
And then she fell down, and there was a stain of blood at her temple, just above her one of her eyes, which was wide open but no longer bright. No, it was dull, and I screamed as I held her lifeless body in my arms.