Page 36 of The Lady's Companion
“I’ll promise no such thing,” she declared. “And I’ll not extricate you from webs of your own weaving.”
“That’s an answer worthy of Jesusa,” the bailiff said. He looked round at her. “Now I suppose I may ask if you’ve been married before!”
This conversation could become a trial, she thought, at a loss as to how to answer him. Of course he knew she had not been married before, but she wondered what he was implying, and then sighed. It would be easy to remain impervious to bailiffs, if they did not make it difficult. I do not know what to say.
She was spared the bailiff’s further scrutiny by the approach of Cora’s tenor from the direction of the manor. “Here comes Cora Skerlong’s constant lover,” David said, indicating the gig with his whip. He nodded as the man passed, and continued on slowly, even though it was nearly full dark. “He sits once a week with Cora in Mrs. Skerlong’s parlor. I do not think he has ever kissed her,” the bailiff mused.
“One mustn’t rush into these things,” Susan said.
“But he’s been courting her for five years, Susan!” the bailiff replied with a laugh. “Five years,” he repeated, his voice full of wonder. “I should have wedded, bedded, and been a father several times over in the same space that our tenor the lover has worked up to holding Cora’s hand.”
“Then why have you not, sir?” she asked, before she thought.
He shrugged and then winked at her as he reined into the barnyard. “I can’t get anyone to say yes to a proposal, Miss Hampton!” he teased. “Women are more picky in England than ever they were in Spain. Let me help you.”
If I keep my mouth shut, I may get out of this with no more embarrassment than I deserve, she told herself as she let the bailiff assist her from the gig. “Perhaps you should not persist in asking the wrong women,” she blurted, ignoring all her own good advice.
“I do not ask the wrong women,” he insisted.
“You asked me,” she pointed out It seemed perfectly logical to her, particularly since he had admitted his proposal had been impulsive. And why does he persist in referring to that silly incident? She had started to follow him into the stable, but she stopped. And why do I keep remembering such a harmless offer? She turned and started for the house. giving herself a mental shake.
“I could offer some pointers to Cora’s tenor,” the bailiff said, falling in step beside her.
Susan laughed.
“I could!” he protested, the humor high in his voice. “Jesusa used to say I couldbesarandcogerwith the best of them, and she ought to have known. Tell me what you think.”
As she thought about it later, in a lukewarm attempt at justification, Susan decided that there really wasn’t anything she could have done to prevent what happened. He didn’t exert anyforce, so she couldn’t blame his larger size. What he did do was adroitly maneuver her against the stable wall and kiss her with some considerable thoroughness. Even then, she couldn’t blame tactics. His were sound enough, but she didn’t have to stay there and let him put his hands on each side of her face and kiss her. And yet, once he had begun, she noticed a disturbing tendency on her part to let him do what he wanted.
It had troubled her before on awkward occasions that she never seemed to know where to put her hands, so she bowed to her own inadequacies and just put them around him. It turned out to be as good an idea as any, considering that her mind was turning into cotton wadding, and after all, she reasoned later, she needed something to hold on to when her knees started to melt a little. This must be a Hampton deficiency, she decided, brought about through too many years of inbreeding within the peerage and landed gentry. The bailiff’s knees seemed quite steady, so that piece of logic was sound enough. Even more to the point, he had a certain single-mindedness that she probably would have admired in another setting.
It took a mental leap later, but she decided that even when he pressed against her so tightly, his intentions were benevolent. Not only was he holding her up, he was certainly keeping her warm. She had to admit, however, that it was a strange kind of warmth, one that plonked rather forcefully into her loins and stubbornly stayed there throughout the duration of that kiss.
But later, in the solitude of her bedroom, no amount of mental cartwheels could dance around the realization that she had been kissing him back as thoroughly as he was kissing her. I hope he will overlook it, she thought. Oh, my goodness, did I really do all that exertion with my tongue? What could I possibly have been thinking?
At the time, it seemed so reasonable. Their lips came away from each other with a homely little smack that made him smile,even as she was beginning to wonder if her eyes would ever focus again in her life.
“That was, um,besar,” he explained. “I think maybe Cora’s tenor hasn’t tried that yet.”
She attempted to pull her jumbled brain back together again as he released her and continued toward the house again, as though he had only stopped to admire the evening sky. “Then what iscoger?” she asked. Conversation is in order here.
He grinned bigger than any man had a right to, and shook his head. “That’s poor Spanish for what comes later when good girls say yes to proposals. Sorry, Susan. Good night, now. Sleep tight.”
Chapter Eleven
Sleep tight, my Aunt Matilda’s blue garters! Susan thought irritably as the sky began to lighten. She sat up and glared at her pillow, turning it over to look for a cool spot. There wasn’t one; they had all been used up in a night of tossing about in indignation, embarrassment, and finally, the acutest sort of misery that the bailiff wasn’t there in bed with her,besaringandcogering.
It had taken most of the night to get to that much truth-telling, and she had to wonder at the pointlessness of lying to herself for all those idiotic hours. In the time between dark and dawn, she reviewed all of Aunt Louisa’s rigid, patient little conversations about men, and what they wanted from women, and how they went about getting it. She recalled the book (How could she forget Professor Fowler and that endless title?Creative and Sexual Science; Manhood, Womanhood, and Their Mutual Interrelations), that was passed quickly from aunt to cousin to cousin and then to herself, and the accompanying blushes and titterings. She remembered Aunt Louisa’s stiff question, “Well, do you need to know anything else?”, and the tone that dared any of them to say yes.
In particular, after her night of chewing goose down, Susan remembered that little section called “The Sleep of Love.” She rested her chin on her knees, and couldn’t resist a bleary-eyed smile as she quoted from memory, “‘The disappointed lie awake hour after hour,’” But I’m sure Professor Fowler, the old prude, did not mean what I am thinking, she admitted honestly. His disappointed maiden feels chagrin because she flirted out of turn. My disappointment comes from the fact that I did not go far enough to suit myself.
“Both-er-a-tion!” Susan said. She leaned against the headboard, plumped her pillow behind her head, and drew her knees up to her chin. She wished with all her heart that Mama had been alive to administer the sexual lecture that Aunt Louisa delivered as her duty to her niece. As much as she disliked thinking about her father, Susan remembered the fun that he and Mama had together. She wished she had a shilling for every time she found Mama sitting on Papa’s lap, or just watched them with their arms around each other, doing something as prosaic as observing the geese cross the lawn at the estate.
Sitting there grumpy and displeased with herself, she knew she could have asked Mama anything. And what would I have asked, she considered as the sun came over the hills. If I could have one question answered now, what would it be? She transferred herself to the window seat and scolded herself for not moving there hours ago. The windowpanes were cold and felt good to lean against.
“I would like to know one thing, Mama,” she said softly. “Just one thing only, and I can carry on from there. Professor Fowler’s tedious book spoke of duty, and creating children, and Aunt Louisa assured us that men take what they want and women weep. But, Mama, is sexual congress fun?”
Her heart told her it was. When she worked past all the embarrassment and confusion she had felt last night after the bailiff’s thorough kiss and her equally fervent response, one overriding emotion remained. “Mama, I enjoyed that immensely. I didn’t want it to stop, and if I had even held out my hand to the bailiff, he would be lying in that bed right now, taking up space.”
