Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Long past midnight, Thomas heard a knock on the door of the library.
Harry opened the door. “My lord, it’s me.”
He had drunk heavily last night, risen late, spent the afternoon with a bottle of claret, had already gulped six glasses of whisky, and was seriously contemplating downing the rest of the bottle. His chair was tilted back, and he had his boots up on the table in the center of the library.
“I have the fire in my bedchamber and poured the cordial, but you didn’t come,” she said as she crossed the room. “So I had to find you in order to thank you.”
He said nothing.
“For the mirror.”
The mirror. He had forgotten. What a stupid idea. She had really wanted some book. He waved his hand in surly acknowledgement.
“Having used the mirror, I think your description quite beautiful does not really correlate with my understanding of aesthetics. There is vertical symmetry, I suppose. Vertical if I lie flat, that is, which was how I was positioned. If I were standing, it would be sagittal symmetry, wouldn’t it?
I always find symmetry pleasing myself, but is that enough to constitute beauty? ”
He snorted. What was she going on about?
She stepped closer. “Oh, you already have a drink. Do you want to bring it up to my bedchamber?”
“No,” he said brusquely.
Harry clasped her hands in front of her. “May I have some of that?” She nodded at the whisky.
Thomas let his chair’s front legs crash down on the carpet. He leaned forwards and discourteously filled his own glass again before sloppily filling a second one for Harry.
Harry took it and licked around the rim of the glass.
“Mmm. It’s strong, isn’t it? And illegal. Are you drunk?”
“Yes.”
“When you didn’t come to my bedchamber tonight, I tried to have a good think about why you didn’t.
You weren’t at dinner either, which was odd.
I wondered if perhaps I had done something wrong.
” Her voice quavered. “I have a habit of doing wrong things and only finding out much later that I’ve done something wrong.
It’s a bit like transposing some variables right at the beginning and only finding out three pages later that you have to start again. ”
Thomas grunted.
“But now I see it’s just because you’re drunk.” She smiled nervously. “I am much relieved.”
She sat down across from him, took a swallow of the whisky, and sputtered.
“Yes, I’m drunk,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed.
He gulped at his whisky and eyed her. She sipped and looked around the room.
“This is a nice library, Thomas. I can see why you didn’t come upstairs.”
Silence.
“And it’s only fair, after all, for me to come to you, to a room of yours, once in a while.”
Silence.
Her voice shook a bit more. “I thought it was customary for the husband to come to the wife’s room, but we needn’t follow that custom, need we? After all, we have broken so many other rules.”
In his drunken haze, he realized she was carrying on about his not coming to her bedchamber tonight because she was hurt. He had hurt her. And scoundrel that he was, he was glad he had hurt her. Because she had hurt him.
“What you—” He stopped. He forced his tongue, thick with whisky, to form the words clearly, if bitterly. “What do you think you might have done that was wrong, Harry?”
“Well, I thought—” she started and then changed tack suddenly. “What difference does it make? Clearly, I am wrong about being wrong. You didn’t come to dinner and you didn’t come to my bedchamber because you are drunk. That’s like being sick. So you didn’t come.”
“But, Harry,” he leaned across the table towards her, “why am I drunk?”
“Why are you drunk? Besides the immediate cause of ingesting too much alcohol?”
Thomas put his head back and laughed. “Oh, yes, Harry, that’s the how, not the why.”
She sat in silence. He finished his glass of whisky and put the glass down and reached for the bottle to pour another.
Her hand grabbed his wrist.
“The why is that I have done something wrong. And I know what it is.”
He pulled away from her grip on his wrist. “Good,” he spat. He poured another whisky. He was near to passing out, thank God. He would be able to forget his cruelty towards her tonight. He drained his glass.
For Thomas, what happened next was confusing. And horrible.
Harry came around the table and pulled his chair out.
“Ooof,” she said and knelt in front of him and started unbuttoning the front fall of his breeches.
“I see now it is quite unfair I have been the only one experiencing pleasure. And you have not gone to London, as of late.”
“Harry,” he tried to say.
She spoke over him as she struggled with the fastenings.
“I was like that as a child, you know, not seeing that my little sister wanted my doll or my older sister was angry when I had spilled something on her dress. But Mama Katie worked with me to get me to notice those things. She said being me was a lot like being an actress. But if I learned my cues and my lines, I would be fine.”
Thomas was frozen and did not know how to stop her.
She went on, “And I do apologize because I will need some training. But as you have seen, I learn quickly, and I will not be offended by any direction you give me since this is for your pleasure, and I am well aware I am a novice and you are expert.” She paused in her fumblings and looked up at him.
“Please do know, Thomas, I didn’t think of it not just because I am deficient in sense but because you did tell me before, on our wedding night, I could not be of service to you in this way.
But clearly you have changed your mind, perhaps out of necessity or convenience, and I am glad to help. ”
The buttons were undone, and she had uncovered his manhood.
It bore no resemblance to what she had imagined when she had first felt him in her grasp those many months ago in Lady Huxley’s fourth-best drawing room.
Or when he had gotten out of bed on their wedding night to tuck in the counterpane.
Or when he had handed her the blankets in the gamekeeper’s cottage, revealing his bulge.
Or when she had sat on his lap so many times over these recent weeks and felt that delicious hardening poking at her bottom through her dress.
Instead, it was like the organs she had seen on statues in the museum.
It was . . . not of the size she had pictured.
She did not like to say it was small, but it had certainly seemed of a larger magnitude when it had been hidden from view.
It lay against him in a nest of dark hair despite being free from clothing.
She took her hand and grasped it like a staff.
Her grasp was firm, but the organ was not. It seemed almost . . . floppy.
She licked her lips nervously and looked up. Thomas didn’t move. He seemed barely able to keep his eyes open.
“I suspect a circumferential type of friction such as that which you might encounter with entering a woman’s pelvic orifice would give the best result?”
“So stupid.”
“Thomas, shall I . . . ?” She began to move her hand along his member. “Will you tell me what to do?”
“Stop.” He seemed to have trouble getting the word out. “Stop.”
She rocked back on her heels. He roughly pulled her hand off his member and struggled to cover himself.
“Just stop.” In trying to do his breeches back up, he dropped his glass, and the glass shattered despite the carpet.
Harry bowed her head and started to pick up the glass shards.
He was angry. She realized it now. Too late.
But surely some pleasure could have calmed that fury?
Why had he not let her continue? Why had she failed when it seemed like it would be so easy?
Weren’t men beasts with insatiable appetites for release? Especially Thomas.
Her face was wet. Was it from the few drops of whisky that had been left in his glass when it fell? She licked her lips. Salty. She was crying.
Thomas stood, swaying. “Just leave it, Harry.”
He stepped forwards.
His riding boot came down and crushed her right hand with the full weight of his body. And then he fell forwards, unconscious.
Her right hand had been the one holding the pieces of glass.
Harry felt she had done very well under the circumstances.
Thomas didn’t respond to his name or her shaking his shoulder with her left hand.
She rang for Thomas’ valet, and when Jackson came, he quickly checked Thomas’ breathing and his head.
There was an awful lot of blood from her hand, but Jackson thought the blood had come from Thomas, and he kept trying to find a cut or a bump on Thomas’ scalp.
“It’s me, I think,” she said and showed him her hand. Jackson blanched and immediately called for two footmen to come to the library. He sent one footman to get a coach ready to fetch Dr. Andrews. With the help of the other footman, Jackson managed to heave a snoring Thomas up onto the sofa.
“I think he’s just drunk,” Harry said. “I don’t think he needs a doctor.”
“My lady,” Jackson inclined his head, “the doctor is for you.”
“Oh.”
Smythe showed up in a dressing gown and made Harry sit down at the library table.
“There’s still glass on the carpet,” Harry said. “Will we be able to get the blood out, do you think?”
Smythe went to fetch towels and a basin and to rouse the kitchen maid to make some coffee for the doctor.
Whitson had heard a groom getting the carriage ready and now marched into the library, red-faced and pulling on his tailcoat, quite the most flustered person so far.
Harry could tell the butler felt strongly that members of the household should retire when he did and then nothing unforeseen could happen. Harry sympathized.
“It’s not too bad, Whitson,” she said, holding up her hand, hoping to cheer him. As she did so, new rivulets of blood ran down her arm and onto the carpet.
“Yes, my lady,” he said and slid a silver tray under her arm to catch the blood.