Chapter 55
Annabelle
Three weeks later, I am beginning to feel better.
My nausea has gently subsided. And I have begun to enjoy London again.
I go to the counting house almost every day for a few hours, conferring with Veronica and my other employees.
I am even a little less stern, which Veronica disapproves of and the other women seem to appreciate.
Unfortunately, however, my desire for my husband has not returned.
Alfred is a resolute gentleman on the subject, never even raising it. When I bring it up to him, he tells me not to worry.
Our days pass with such harmony that I begin to understand why people marry in the first place. In my earlier life, I was unable to comprehend why people would lock themselves into such a prison by choice.
Now I begin to comprehend it.
If you thought it could be like this, with this easy companionship, this acceptance and intimacy, then you would desire it.
Alfred and I have fallen into an easy routine of meals, journeys out for shopping or the theater, and we have even gone to a few dinner parties hosted by trusted friends.
The only other shade over our life together is my residual guilt over my original plot.
I still have not told him the truth—that I always intended to get with child by him.
Whenever I find myself accepting that I will never tell him, that it is no matter, the guilt resurfaces again, and I yearn to be free of it.
Nonsense, of course.
On one occasion, we visit a store that sells garments for children, including babies, and pick out little clothes for the child in my belly. I tell him it is too soon for such things, but Alfred says we will be restrained. We will pick only one item each.
When I find a little knit set—a cap and a gown—a soft, tender feeling pools in my belly.
I admire my husband more than ever. Nevertheless, all of this easy intimacy and admiration does not translate into that fire I know so well.
I would fear that I am bored of my husband, that I am truly a wanton that needs masculine variety, but it is not true. I have tired of lovers before, and the cardinal sign is finding their company irksome. But I want to spend more and more time with Alfred.
Indeed, the idea of bedding a man other than Alfred is abhorrent to me. It disgusts me. Where my lust for my husband usually resides, I feel only a pleasant blankness.
No, I know it is a symptom of the pregnancy itself. It is connected, somehow, to what is happening inside of me and the ailment that makes me tired and nauseous.
And I am terrified that I will lose Alfred because of it.
He has reassured me that he is willing to be patient.
But how could that be true? Under normal circumstances, I would not understand a relationship between lovers without frequent tupping.
No, I fear that Alfred is merely too sweet to tell me the truth.
That as the days wear on and I remain cold, he will lose interest. That soon he will want to pursue other women. He has suffered enough deprivation in that regard, after all. I don’t want to be another cause of it.
And yet I can’t abide the idea of him with another. As the days pass, I try to inure myself to it but fail.
One day, when Alfred is speaking with Mrs. Swanson about the menus for this week, I slip out of the house and into a fine furniture shop in Piccadilly.
I feel a desperate churning in my gut that had nothing to do with pregnancy and everything to do with wanting to keep my husband.
I spend an absurd amount of coin and try to swallow my desperation.
A week later, we are sitting in the little drawing room that has become our favorite for retirement. Alfred is reading and I am looking at numbers for a new investment opportunity—a ceramics factory in Staffordshire—when a knock sounds on the door.
Alfred answers it, and upon entry the footman addresses him, “Where should we put the delivery, sir?”
My husband looks to me in confusion.
“In here,” I tell the footman.
In moments, the footmen and the delivery men have the desk through the door.
“Here?” he asks.
I nod.
They set it down, I give a few coins to the delivery men, and they all depart.
Alfred turns to me.
“What is this?”
He approaches the desk tentatively, but his eyes have grown large. It is a beautiful piece, all golden, shining wood and embossed leather. Much finer than my own.
I approach the new piece of furniture, unable to look at him.
“It’s a desk. I wanted you to have something to write on. A place of your own.”
He runs his fingers over the smooth line of the tabletop.
“It’s beautiful, Annabelle. It’s far too fine.”
“No. You deserve it.”
“Thank you,” he says. “I will use it.”
“You are very welcome. You promised to write me something after all. Now you will have no excuse.”
It surprises me, in fact, that he hasn’t done so yet.
He smiles sheepishly. “Well, I have been working at something—when you go to the counting house. But I am not sure if it is—if anyone else will see the value in it. I am not confident in my writing.”
“May I read it?”
He nods and walks to a side table. He pulls out a sheaf of papers from beneath the books and hands it to me.
I begin to read.
I stand before her chair, completely at her mercy.
“Does your little green book explain how a man can please a woman with his mouth?”
I close my eyes. It is humiliating that she knows that I have such a book, that I read it, that I sit there hard and aching before it but unable to sate myself.
“Yes.”
“So then you know of what I speak. I will teach you how to do it. But first, I want you to see me bare. Have you ever seen a woman bare?”
“No,” I gasp, too hot with anticipation to even feel embarrassment at yet another lowering confession.
“You won’t touch me until I tell you. And you won’t frig yourself, do you understand?”
My head bobs. The truth is that I’ll do whatever she says. Whatever keeps me here in front of her. Whatever will allow me to see her bare.
She bares herself to me then. And every fiber of my being yearns towards her. She is everything that I have ever allowed myself to desire in a woman—and yet more. She is my tormenter—and yet an angel.
Her breasts and core in particular attract my gaze. And if it weren’t for the fact that I need to drink in the beauty of her face too, I would never be able to stop looking at that dual bounty.
I am in agony. I wish, with everything in me, that I could spend.
My gaze meets hers.
“God help me,” I curse.
“There is no God here, Mr. Saintsbury. Tell me. Do you plan to marry one day?”
“Yes.”
“What I am about to teach you, your future wife will appreciate immensely.”
I stop reading, even though there is more.
My mouth falls open.
“It is us.”
“Yes,” he says nervously.
I imagined it would be some tawdry sort of fantasy—a story about a barmaid and a lonely traveler, that kind of thing.
I am flushed.
While it is not my usual desire, it is something like it.
“It is our first—time.”
It is incredibly erotic to read it from his perspective.
“I hope you are not affronted,” he says, eyeing me nervously.
“No, of course not.”
“I wanted—well, it was what came to me when I tried to write something. I’ll never forget that day, Annabelle. Or any of the others.”
I look at him.
“I haven’t forgotten any of it either.”
“And I wanted you to read how I see you. It felt important to me after—”
He breaks off, and I am not sure what he means.
“After what?”
He sighs. “I shouldn’t have said—”
“Please do.”
He gives me another wary look.
“After you told me the story of George Garrison.”
That was not what I expected.
“What do you mean?”
“You asked if I could still love you.”
I flush again but this time from embarrassment.
“I was overset.”
“No, you don’t understand.” He moves towards me and takes my hand. “You don’t have to defend it. But I started writing and I realized that I wanted you to see this—how I see you.”
I can understand why. It is a powerful thing.
I wish more than anything that I could feel the desire that I want to feel.
That I know I should.
Instead, I can only look down.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “May I read the rest?”
“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”
And I do, glorying in every word.
Alfred says that he loves me.
But it is a different thing experiencing that love as he feels it.
The story ends as our first encounter did.
With me coming on his tongue and then him coming in his trousers.
When he describes the mind-splitting bliss of that orgasm, I suppress a moan of frustration.
In any other state, I’d be crawling towards him across the floor.
Instead, I just read the fragment again and again.
When he leaves the room, I trace the words, committing them to memory.