Chapter 57
Annabelle
When I return from the counting house that afternoon, I find my husband at his new desk.
I left him a surprise—and I am very curious to hear if he obeyed my order.
Late last night after Alfred went to bed and I was still looking over my ledgers, the notion occurred to me. And I was so excited. The idea felt like a way around my body and its constraints.
“Good afternoon, Alfred,” I say, and he looks up from his book.
Not a bawdy one. Something by Dickens, it would seem.
I hope it means he long ago completed the task that I left for him.
“Good afternoon, Annabelle.”
“Did you find your morning productive?”
“Yes, I wrote a new story,” he says. “I hope you will read it.”
“I look forward to it. Did you find my note?”
“Ah, yes,” he says.
“Did you read the story I left you?”
“Yes. It was very gratifying.”
“Did you obey my order?” I glower.
“Tell me, Annabelle,” he says. “Did you really know our first time together that my cock was too large for the letter?”
I flush.
It was foolish, perhaps, for me to choose that particular incident to narrate. Especially since I was not fully honest. I did not include that I saw no problem with the letter being too small, because I wanted to get with his child.
“The best stories contain embellishment.”
He narrows his eyes.
“I don’t think it was an embellishment.”
“No?”
“No,” he says, smiling. “The letter broke after all.”
Here, without realizing it, he hits too close to the truth.
“Did you follow my order?” I repeat.
He smiles. “I don’t believe you ordered me to tell you whether I did or not.” He looks down at the paper I left him. “No, you said I can tell you about it on your return. Perhaps I did or perhaps I did not.”
“I order you to tell me now.”
“Wife,” he says. “You once could order me however you pleased. But don’t you think our relationship has grown since then?”
His tone is teasing, but it still irks me. I want to know if he self-pleasured. If my scheme to keep him worked.
“Tell me.”
I lean over the desk, catching sight of the paper I left him.
A strange stain coats it.
I pick it up and then realize—it is coated in cum.
His cum.
To my surprise, I flush hot.
It isn’t the intense flame that I am used to, but it is something. More than something.
“You did it,” I snap. “Just as I commanded.”
“No,” he says. “You merely ordered me to please myself. But I did more. I came all over your little story. Because that’s what you do to me, Annabelle. For you I am depraved.”
Without thinking, I raise the paper, to where his cum dries on the page, and bring it to my lips.
And then I taste it.
His own mouth falls open.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t tempt me if you do not want—”
“I do want,” I say. “Now.”
He growls and rounds the desk.
He kisses me, opening me with his tongue, stoking what flutters inside of me.
To my delight my body warms and begins to demand more.
I push Alfred onto the desk. Then I put myself between his legs and set about to kissing him deeply and thoroughly, luxuriating in the warm desire that courses through me.
I can have him right here, right on this desk—wouldn’t that be the best way to christen it?
Then dimly, through my haze, I realize that something is wrong.
While Alfred kisses me back, there is something unsure in his kisses, something slow to respond. And when I press myself to him, there is no hardness in his trousers.
I draw away from him in confusion, looking into his face, my hands falling around his waistcoat.
There I feel a crinkle of paper. Without effort, my hand slips into the pocket and out comes a broadsheet.
When I see the image on it, I shut my eyes tight.
Stupid. Absurd.
I have seen many such things over the years and I have learned to laugh at them.
But this time when I open my eyes I can’t laugh.
“Annabelle,” Alfred says. “I am sorry—"
I look into his face, which has gone rather ashen.
The image is a terrible one. It shows me, fat and leering, pouring wine down Alfred’s throat. Forcing him to bed me. To marry me. Seduction a la de Lacey reads the caption.
I drop the broadsheet as if the paper itself is aflame.
And then I realize what is happening. The scales fall from my eyes.
I was so focused on my own lack of desire that I failed to notice my own husband’s.
Over the past three weeks he made no overtures.
I merely thought he was being delicate, given my condition, given what I told him on the night I instructed him on how to pleasure himself, but now it all appears different.
The broadsheet.
The lack of responsiveness to my touch.
The story that I told him about George Garrison and Terrence French—how could I expect him to want me after that?
To love me? Yes, I told him about Frank Holster, but in that story I was young and na?ve.
Even I can see that Frank Holster was not my fault.
But with Terrence and George, I was no victim.
How could I expect my purehearted husband to understand such a thing?
I thought perhaps he could, but I see now how foolish I was to expect it.
No, he has tired of me—but not because of the reasons I supposed.
He has tired of me because he finally realized what it meant to be with the notorious Annabelle de Lacey. He sees me as I actually am—as depicted in the broadsheet that he kept in his waistcoat.
I step back from him.
“Annabelle, what is wrong?” Alfred says.
“I understand now,” I say, anger and humiliation growing within me. “I apologize for forcing myself upon you.”
“Forcing yourself—Annabelle don’t be ridiculous.”
The words rise to my lips and I say them before I can stop them. I want to hurt him. And this secret is the only one I have left. If he hates me now, I can make him hate me more. If he is going to reject me, I can reject him first.
“You should know that I was not honest in that little story,” I say, gesturing towards the papers I left for him this morning on his desk.
“You are right. I knew the letter was too small. I had a plan. I once told you that I was going to bed you and dismiss you from your post. But I left out a crucial detail. I wanted an heir. And you were handsome and weak-willed and I decided that I would get a child by you. That I would get with child and then dismiss you from my life.”
His face contorts in pain.
“Annabelle,” he says. “I don’t understand.”
“I will admit that you tempted me, Alfred,” I say, blinking back tears, trying to keep my tone cold. “I needn’t have married you. But I see now the wisdom of my original plan. I have gotten what I needed from you. You are dismissed.”
“Dismissed?” Alfred hisses. “I am not some employee that you can fire, Annabelle. I am your husband. I bear your name.”
“I want you out.”
The tears have started to fall. I cannot allow him to see me this way. Distraught over him.
I turn and run towards the door.
“Annabelle, wait,” he shouts.
But I am gone, having hurried down one of the darkened halls of the townhouse, and out into the street.