Chapter 52
Alfred
My wife has been up late looking at the ledgers she picked up from Veronica today. Now she is finally in bed where she finds me deep in a little volume from her desk.
“Which one is it?” she says, reading the title. “Ah, yes. The classic. The young girl comes to London and is corrupted.”
“It is very erotic. And romantic in its way. She falls in love.”
“Have you gotten to the birching?”
“Birching?”
“Yes, my innocent,” she laughs. “Keep reading.”
I close the volume.
“I will do so later. Reading rather pales in comparison to my present company. And I have a matter to discuss with you.”
I then unspool my domestic idea.
“You want to take care of the household?” my wife says once I am done.
“You have a townhouse in London and a country estate, Annabelle. And someone needs to oversee them.”
“We have a townhouse in London and a country estate,” she corrects. “And that’s why I have the housekeepers. One in each location as a matter of fact.”
“Yes, but having a housekeeper does not mean you can ignore everything of a domestic nature. Other than looking at expenses, that is.”
Annabelle snorts. “I beg to differ.”
“Well—”
Then I stop. I don’t want to insult her.
She blanches. “Are you complaining about my housekeeping?”
“Mrs. de Lacey,” I say, keeping my tone light. “You are a busy woman. I am merely trying to take a burden from your shoulders.”
“And you think the way I run things now is lacking?”
“No, not exactly,” I say, because it is true—there is nothing wrong with how she manages her homes. “But now that we are to have a family, our domestic life could be a bit more…personal.”
“Warm,” she says. “Not cold. Like me.”
“I didn’t say cold—and you aren’t cold,” I correct. “But the houses could be warmer, yes.”
She sighs. “Very well. I suppose I do not have any interest in domestic matters anyway. And if you say you enjoy it and think you can manage it on top of your duties as vicar of Trescott…”
“I think I shall be able to manage it. I am not exactly overrun with responsibilities these days.”
“If it suits you, I will not object,” she says. “But I wish to speak with you about two things, husband, and they have nothing to do with housekeeping.”
She turns towards me as she says the words and I begin to harden.
It has been only a little over twenty-four hours since we copulated in some form, and my appetite for her is keen.
I hope that whatever she has in mind is of a sexual variety.
I figure that actual copulation will not be possible given her pregnancy—and over the coming months, I will miss being inside her warm, tight core—but more of what we did on the train seems to pose no risk that I can think of.
“Tell me.”
“You said the other day that you were afraid to bed me properly because you feared it might harm the pregnancy.”
“I think I bedded you very properly on the train and when we first arrived in this house.”
She rolls her eyes. “Very well, you did. But you ignore my meaning.”
I nod. “Of course, I do not know what other married couples do. But I am—so—” I struggle to say it, knowing somehow that she will laugh. “—so brutishly large. It doesn’t seem safe.”
She does laugh then, but I don’t mind. The truth is that I like making Annabelle laugh. She does not do it easily.
“You are large,” she says. “But no man, I think, is large enough to reach all the way into a woman’s womb.”
I have seen drawings of female anatomy before, so I understand her meaning. And yet still I pause.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything to harm you—or the child.”
“You won’t,” she says, grabbing my hand. “And I find that I desperately want to bed my husband. But we can be gentle. If it will ease your worries.”
My cock, traitor that it is, is already hard against her hip. I suppose that my fear is not exactly rational. It springs in part from my sense that what Annabelle and I do together, and how good it feels, cannot be enjoyed without some punishment or attendant deprivation.
“You know I cannot refuse you. And that I’ve missed—”
I break off because her hand flutters to my cock.
“Are you sure you are well? You do not feel sick?”
She shakes her head. “Not now.”
I roll on top of her, pinning her to the bed, but carefully.
“Are you ready?”
Usually, I don’t take her so quickly, but it feels a very long time since I felt her tighten around my cock and it is killing me.
“Yes.”
I push up her thin night rail and find her heat with my fingers. She is warm and very wet and I need no more encouragement.
I push into her and groan at the exquisite feel of her on my engorged, bothered cock. In my worry over her condition, I managed to forget how right it is to be with her like this.
I still inside of her, still worrying about hurting her and the small life in her womb.
“Does it hurt?”
“Alfred,” she says, bringing her hand to the back of my neck. “I assure you I have no thoughts of pain at present. Please move.”
Gently I withdraw. Pleasure sears up my shaft. Her smooth wetness teases me.
“That’s good,” I laugh.
“Yes, it’s good,” she says, smiling up at me. “Now more.”
I obey. I take care though, trying not to go too deep.
She clenches around me tighter and tighter with each thrust. It appears that we are both sensitive given the delay since our last coupling, because sooner than usual we are both on the brink.
I angle myself so that I can thrust and also reach down between her legs, finding her clit with my fingers. She gasps and then she comes, her innermost muscles pulsing against my cock.
I jerk up and withdraw, coating the curls between her legs and her thighs in my seed. I have more pent-up seed than I should after only twenty-four hours—but she has always had this effect on me. She overwhelms me.
After the pleasure is done with me, I stride from the bed, clean myself, and then do the same for Annabelle.
“No need to withdraw now,” she teases as I clean her. “The damage has been done.”
“You know it is the opposite. I like seeing my seed all over you. It makes me feel like you are mine. But I wouldn’t have before—when I wanted to get you with child.”
“So possessive,” she murmurs.
“Aren’t you? Of me?”
I am beside her again.
Her fingers touch my forehead, and I close my eyes at the lovely sensation.
“Yes, I am. I was jealous of Miss Kemble today. Which I know is ridiculous.”
I laugh and shake my head.
“She is very nice. And very pretty. But I don’t even see other women—not like that anyway—when I am with you, Annabelle. When I first saw you, I thought you were made to tempt me. I had no idea how beautiful you would be. Or how you would look and act in a way that would tempt me so terribly.”
“Act?” she questions. “My looks I suppose I can understand. Although I have never fancied myself a great beauty. But my behavior to you was abhorrent. I was cold and sneering and superior.”
I shrug. “Maybe. But I liked how severe you were with me. You gave me no choice—and secretly I wanted someone to dominate me. To come and tell me that my agony couldn’t continue. I enjoyed feeling powerless. Like that first Sunday we had together. When you didn’t serve me wine.”
She covers her face with her hands and laughs. “I can’t believe I did that. It was so rude! So condescending.”
“It was. But it made me even harder for you. Which was an impressive feat given my state.”
“It is true,” she says. “But there is another thing I wanted to speak to you about.”
“Ah, yes, two things. What is the second?”
She rises from the bed, padding across the room to a small desk in the corner. I watch as she opens the drawer and draws out a few sheets of paper.
“These are our marriage articles,” she says. “With all the little traps I sewed up for you.”
I had forgotten all about the marriage articles.
“I don’t remember many traps.”
“Because you are too good. But I made you change your name. I made you promise to be faithful. I gave you pin money and no right to anything I own until after my death.”
“All stipulations I was happy to agree to,” I say. A strange sense of anxiety beats down on me as I see the documents in her hand.
“But they weren’t fair, Alfred. I forced you. You didn’t deserve it. It has bothered me all day. I realized it when Veronica spoke to you in the way that I once did. I realized how wrong it was. How wrong she, I, was about you. I want to make it right.”
“Annabelle,” I say, feeling a strange edge of panic. “That is not necessary.”
“It is. These articles—they should become null and void.”
Then she takes the sheets between her hands and rips them to pieces.
Instantly, my heart constricts.
“Annabelle,” I hear myself shout. “Don’t.”
But it is too late. And the foundations of my marriage lay scattered on the floor.
“Don’t you see, Alfred? We can renegotiate. We can make it fair.”
I step towards her. I am not even thinking. I hate that she has destroyed one of the documents that binds me to her. That made me hers so definitively.
When I reach her, I spin her so that her back is to me so that I can whisper in her ear.
“No, Annabelle. I don’t want it to be fair. I am going to show you, Annabelle, how much I want what was in those papers.”
“Alfred!”
I turn her around.
For the first time all night, I have lost sight of her condition, of my fear of using her too harshly. I am too stuck on the way she just decimated the agreement I made with my whole heart. “Get on the bed, Annabelle.”
She crosses her arms.
“No, you are being ridiculous, I am trying to make things fair between us—”
“On the bed—or I will put you there.”
She doesn’t move.
I advance on her.
I strip her thin night rail from her shoulders.
“Alfred,” she objects, “You are mad.”
Her skin pimples in the cold air of the room. It is nearly winter and the fire in the grate is low. But I don’t care.
I push her down onto the bed so that her breasts are pushed into the coverlet and her ass is at the perfect height for me to enter her from behind.
I am already naked—and erect again.
“Don’t move,” I say harshly.
I spread her thighs and put my fingers inside of her. She is still wet and I make her more so—she gasps as I stroke her.
When she is dripping on my fingers, I push into her warm, wet core, filling her completely. I grasp her ass as I do so, moving her in a way that suits me.
“Never speak of our marriage that way again. Never speak of yourself that way again,” I say. “Do you understand me?”
“You don’t understand,” she grinds out, her breath tight from pleasure. “I was trying to make it right.”
“I want to bear your name, Annabelle,” I say. “I want our children to bear it.”
I thrust into her roughly as I say the words.
“Truly?” she pants.
“Yes.”
“But the other provisions—they aren’t fair.”
“I don’t care. I love them. Just as I love you.”
“You don’t get to determine what is fair, Alfred. I made the provisions, and I can change them.”
“If you try and change them, then you will receive a punishment for the attempt. Don’t think you are the only one who can mete out punishments, Annabelle.”
I work her core over my cock, pumping into her in a rough rhythm that pleases me. She is so wet on my cock that there is little friction despite the violence of my movements.
“Do you understand, Annabelle? I am yours. I belong to you. Nothing changes that. If I stray from you, you may punish me. I welcome it. But I never will. Because I want nothing other than to belong to you. To bear your name. To get you with my children. That is what I want.”
I am so deep inside of her now.
“Say that I am yours.”
I thrust again.
“No.”
Fear washes over me.
“Say that I am yours.”
“Alfred, you are being—I was trying—”
“I don’t care. Say it.”
I thrust again and she moans.
“Say it and I will let you come.”
I hold myself impaled inside of her.
For a moment, I think she won’t say it.
That her disagreement is real.
But then she speaks.
“You are mine.”
“Say that I belong to you.”
“You belong to me,” she gasps.
I move my hips roughly, and then she cries out.
And I do too.
It is, in my opinion, a rather spectacular way to make my point.