The Eleventh Year (13 page)

I don't want to go to supper, she thought, and went to the adjoining double door that connected her sitting room with her mother's bedroom. Lady Priscilla was already at her vanity, twirling a piece of blond hair back into a knot. “I'm tired, Mama,” Lesley announced.

“You haven't done anything today. You missed the hunt.”

“You know why I didn't go.”

“Do you want supper in your room?” Lesley could read the concern in her mother's tone.

“That's too much bother.”

“Then I'll have Cook send up some tea and crumpets. And maybe some broth. Mutton broth tonight.” Lady Priscilla smiled briefly, and Lesley suddenly felt immense relief at her mother's discretion, at her reserve. Could it be she's guessed what I feel for Justin? she wondered.

“Well, then, it's all settled.” Lady Priscilla stood up, sighed, and wrapped an evening shawl about her dinner gown. If she knows, what does she think? Lesley asked herself.

Alone, she sat by the window, and presently the butlers came out to turn on the front lights, and the gardens were bathed in a yellow glow. Her grandfather's house breathed comfort, a word so terribly at odds with war that it made Lesley feel almost sinful.

A small knock resounded, and she answered, “Yes, Sylvia.” The chambermaid with her tea. The door opened, and Lesley thought: I should have turned the lights on in here for her. But outside there are such lovely colors….

The tray pushed itself forward, and she stood up to help the girl. But to her amazement, it was not Sylvia who was wheeling it in, but Justin Reeve. Lesley felt the beating of her heart and a sudden tensing of her body. She hadn't pinned her hair up since her bath, and was wearing her lace-trimmed nightdress, with no jewelry at all. She hadn't even dashed Shalimar behind her ears.

She wanted to ask why he was there, doing the maid's job, but it was so obvious that she said nothing, her tongue dry between her parted lips. For a second she remembered how shocked anyone would be at his presence in her room, particularly given her state of dress. Then she was excited by it. Her first time with him alone in a room that was private….

He was laughing and coming to her, extending his hands. “I gave Sylvia a gold coin and told her ‘Happy Christmas!'” he stated. “You should have seen the look on her face.…Then I gave her another coin to make her swear that no one would share her Christmas news.”

Lesley didn't have time to think about how incongruous they were, he in his dark-gray pants and dinner jacket, ready for supper, she in her mint-green nightdress, her hair undone. He was pulling her toward him and wrapping both arms around her. Beneath the filmy cloth she wore nothing, and his hands wandered up and down her back, exploring. She allowed her mind to float from reality to give herself up to the dream of her senses, those fingers caressing the soft material covering her bare skin. Beneath her room resounded the muted laughter of dinner-table conversation—beneath them, and continents away.

“We're all alone, Lesley,” he was whispering into her hair. “We're going to close the double door and lock it, and your mother will assume you've gone to sleep.”

She could smell him, feel him, more than she could distinguish him in the dark room illumined only from the outside. He seemed haloed by the golden glow of the garden. She clung to him, frightened. What had he said? What was he intimating? She wasn't sure now that she was ready for this, because there was still so much they didn't know about each other, so much of their past that they hadn't revealed.

“Justin…”

“What, darling?”

He was unbuttoning his frock coat, and she felt the tensing of her own body. He was behaving as if this were his room, their room, a wedding chamber. But what do
I
want? she asked herself, panic-stricken. She wanted him, she wanted to be near him, to hold him, never to let him go. Did she want him to marry her? Yes, she thought, I suppose I do. Yes,
yes,
this moment was right, and she did want what he wanted, right now.

“Help me,” he said to her. His voice didn't sound the way it normally did, but was low, tremulous, throaty. She reached out at that moment toward the appeal of this voice, because it made things happen inside her, sending her stomach into knots, her heart racing. She went to him as he was sitting on her canopied bed, a young girl's bed, and he took her numb fingers and placed them over the buttons of his dress shirt. She understood what he was asking her to do, and felt embarrassed at her ineptitude in these matters. So she concentrated on the buttons, small pearls, easy to slip behind the eyes of the buttonholes.

When she had finished she stepped back, but he put a hand on her wrist, and she stayed near him as he shook the shirt off and looked at her. In the half-glow of the room his irises seemed black coals, burning with intensity. Then she looked at his bare chest, at the two dark nipples surrounded with black tendrils, at the line of fine hairs that went from his chest to his belt. At the belt her eyes stopped, and she swallowed, afraid of his nakedness, wanting now to ward it off.

Seeming to sense her hesitation, he unbuckled his belt and shed his trousers in one swift motion, and she turned away. When she felt his hands on her shoulders, she leaned against him, closing her eyes.
Now.
Did he think she was being shy, or coy? They had never discussed making love, it was simply happening; so maybe he thought that she was more experienced than she was and simply being a tease. But her heart was pounding, and she didn't dare speak. Whatever she would say was bound to be the wrong thing at this moment. She would have to trust him.

From behind he was undoing her nightdress, and small goosebumps prickled her skin. Tiny little electric shocks were taking place all over her body. The satin gown fell to her ankles, and then he turned her toward him, and she wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed at her own nudity or afraid of his.

He wasn't speaking. She wished he would break the awful silence of their naked bodies, but he didn't. His hands cupped one breast, played with the nipple until it stood erect, then let go, went to the other. She knew that he was examining her, measuring her. Was she as he'd envisaged?

Then he was carrying her, laying her on the coverlet like a precious package, and he lay down beside her, on his side. One hand played over her stomach, which contracted. Relax. Don't let him know you're so afraid. She shut her eyes, but he was taking her hand and placing it over something she had never felt before: his own hardness. She felt the shock, sensed the tears almost ready to spill. Oh, Justin, please—Please
what?
She didn't even know. Please
do,
and also, Please
don't.

Something was rebelling inside her now, and she almost gave into it and pulled away. But she thought: Nakedness shouldn't frighten me. He was kissing her breasts, and she concentrated on the curls of his head, on the smooth line of his muscled back.

He was going to realize she was a virgin, if he hadn't thought so before. His kisses wended their way southward, his tongue flicked around her bellybutton, continued down, stopped at the red curls of her pubis, then he buried his head in their female softness. Dismayed, Lesley writhed away. He stopped and looked at her in the semidarkness. “No,” she stammered.

“But it should give you pleasure.”

“Please, Justin, don't.”

He stared at her, his eyes unblinking. She thought: But Jamie never told me they did
this.
His fingers were gently opening her sexual parts, where he had placed his tongue a moment ago, and she had made him stop. She felt dirty. Why would a man want to do a thing like that?

“You mustn't ever be ashamed, Lesley,” he said slowly, and then he bent his head over her again, and she thought, wildly: I guess they do much more than what it takes to make a baby. She was afraid to ask him again to stop, and so she endured the soft thrusts of his tongue on the outer lips, on her clitoris—parts of her body for which she'd never even had a name. Then he kissed her stomach and her shoulders. The hard part of him lay pressed against her thigh, insistent. He, for one, was definitely not ashamed.

“I want you to enjoy it,” he said.

“But Justin…I don't
know how!”
She knew the tears were there now because her eyes stung from them. Did he think she was accustomed to sexual matters? That she'd known all along what he would do? “Justin,” she whispered. “Maybe it's wrong.…I've never—”

“You've never been with a man?”

“No.” Should she have told him before?

“The first time is always difficult, darling,” he replied very gently.

So he wasn't going to get up and leave just because she was a virgin. She felt oddly relieved. He kissed her cheek, almost like a brother, and then she knew that she was crying, because he was licking the tears away with soft flickers of his tongue. “I love the taste of you,” he was saying. “All the different tastes of you.”

She thought that she was going to die of shame. Why weren't there courses and books on what men did with women during their intimate moments? Why did one always have to enter into sex knowing less than nothing? She thought, wildly again: But there
is
something I know, and I haven't done anything about it! After Mary Rose, Emily had begun to use a pessary—

“Justin,” she said, “what if I have a baby?”

He laughed. “Then I shall marry you.”

Oh. Her forehead was drenched with perspiration, and she couldn't think anymore. He caressed her temples, her chin, kissed her on the lips. “I love you, Justin,” she whispered.

“And I love you too, Lesley Aymes Richardson.”

They lay quietly side by side, and she was almost relaxed. He threw one leg over her thighs and pressed his penis between her legs, where he had kissed her before. She put her hands on his shoulders to ward off the pain, and he said: “It won't be so bad, sweetheart. After a while it will be good.” And then he pushed himself into the inner parts of her, soft pushes, trying to make her accept him without so much pain. But there was pain, burning pain. “Don't fight me,” he said, his voice tender and reassuring.

She was reminded of being in a doctor's office. She'd been three. “Don't cry, Lesley,” the doctor had said. “It will only hurt for one second.” And then he'd thrust the needle into her arm, and she'd cried out at the suddenness of the jab. She wasn't going to cry now because she wanted him, and she didn't want to send him away. And what he wanted, she wanted, because she loved him.

Why did people make such a to-do about sex, as if this forbidden apple were such a desirable experience? He was all the way in now, and still she was feeling only pain. Then he kissed her mouth, and in the moment of kissing she forgot the pain and relaxed. Yes. I love him, I love his mouth over mine, I want to learn about these things—yes. She wound her arms around his neck and let him move inside her, until he slipped his hands beneath her buttocks and raised her toward him. It was better this way. Oh, God, I don't want to become pregnant….

“Then I shall marry you.” “And I love you too, Lesley Aymes Richardson.” He was thrusting harder, and she felt better, realizing that they were as close now as any two people ever could be, that this was a kind of consecration, the most precious gift between a man and a woman. He made a little sound against her neck, and she felt him letting go, the part of him between her legs withdrawing, pulling out. She wondered if she'd bled, and if so, what Sylvia would say in the morning. Oh, God—

“I love you so much,” she said to him, hiding her face in his chest.

Would he understand? He was winding strands of her hair onto his long fingers, and in this tender moment between them, she heard again the laughter from below, and the hoot of a night owl.

She was silent, and he whispered: “Tomorrow we shall take a ride, and then we shall make love behind an abbey that dates back to quintessential times.”

She wanted to hear him say he loved her again, and as she reached toward his cheek to stroke it and ask, she heard his even, measured breathing. He was asleep. Gently she disengaged herself, checked the locks on the double connecting door and on the one leading to the corridor, and then went to the window and closed the curtains. She wanted to wash, because she felt sticky and uncomfortable, but at the same time she needed to be with him still, holding him, warding off the outer world. So she climbed into the bed and pulled the covers over both of them, and pressed against his sleeping body.

But for hours she couldn't sleep. In the nighttime he moved, groaned once, reached over, touched her. She heard her mother coming into the neighboring suite. Then the sounds died. I am a woman now, she thought. “Then I shall marry you.” “And I love you too, Lesley Aymes Richardson.” Dawn slowly rose, piercing between the curtains, and she felt him stirring. He sat up, rubbed his eyes. She loved him so, and there he was, like a small boy brushing the sleep from his eyes….

“Darling,” he whispered, “I'm going to have to leave, so they don't catch us in the morning. Sleep awhile longer.”

He was struggling into his clothes, and she watched, propping herself on an elbow. Such grace, such beauty. No one would ever be able to paint such complete loveliness. He placed a finger on his lips, blew her a kiss, and softly unlocked the door, opened it, slipped outside.

He was gone, and only the pillow testified that he'd been there next to her for so many hours. The pillow smelled like him, a scent like no other, and she buried her face in it, suddenly very happy, ecstatic, because they had made love and they loved each other. This, then, was
it:
a miracle, a joining. “After a while,” he'd said, “it will be good.” Yes, she would go with him to the abbey, and she would be less shy. “I love you too, Lesley Aymes Richardson.”