Property of a Lady(74)
I was there, though, watching the ceremony from behind a pillar in the church. She wore white velvet, with a little fur-lined cape, and carried a sheaf of Christmas roses. While they signed the register, I slipped out through the chancel door and stood in the concealment of the yew tree until they came out.
I don’t care for that Paul Pry image of myself, but it’s what I did. I stood there, on the crisp, cold January morning, and I saw those two – my Elizabeth and that man – come out through the church doors, with bells ringing and choirs caterwauling and everyone laughing and throwing rice, and my stomach rebelled and I had to turn away to be sick behind a wall, because I could not bear it – I simply could not bear seeing them together. Mr and Mrs William Lee. I think it was then, straightening up from the spasms of sickness, wiping my mouth on my handkerchief, that the black madness entered my heart.
Tonight I shall lie wakeful in my bed upstairs, imagining the marriage night, every step of the way. A firelit bedchamber in Mallow House, snow crusting the window panes outside . . . She will lie warm and soft in scented sheets, waiting for him . . .
He’ll go to her bed with a book of sonnets or some metaphysical poet’s works, and I wouldn’t put it past him to forget to remove his spectacles from his nose when he turns back the sheets . . .
April 1881
Today I sat three rows behind my Elizabeth in church and feasted my eyes on the little tendrils escaping from her bonnet and clustering over the nape of her neck. And the whiteness of her neck as it emerges from the collar of her gown . . . Is she happy with him? Is he good to her? When he bends his head in prayer, he looks exactly like a pale-brown vulture. I never before wished a man dead, but by God, I wish this one dead!
My father used to say that hatred is one of the devil’s favourite guises.
November 1881
‘Mr and Mrs William Lee of Mallow House, Marston Lacy, in the County of Shropshire, are happy and proud to announce the birth of a daughter, Elvira Victoria, on 10th November.’
Of course I should have expected that! Or did I believe theirs would be a marriage of convenience: separate rooms, separate beds, separate bodies? Didn’t I know, deep down, that the grasshopper, the juiceless bookworm, would mate with the dragonfly? Oh Elizabeth . . .
The hatred walks through my workshop and my house every night now. The only place where I can find the smallest fragment of peace is in my workshop. But sometimes even there I feel the darkness enclosing me, and it’s a darkness that whispers there are things that can be done to soothe an aching heart and burning loins, and ways to make an unwilling lady yield her body, if not her heart . . . If only I could have one night with her I believe this hunger would be quenched for ever. Just one night . . .
‘The writing changes a bit on the next page,’ said Nell as Michael paused to reach for his wine.
‘Yes. It’s the same person writing it, though. D’you want to keep reading?’
‘No,’ said Nell, ‘but it’s like opening up the cellar earlier – not knowing will be worse.’
‘There’s rather a lot still to read,’ he said, looking at the papers.
‘Are you saying we could be here all night?’
Michael turned his head slowly and looked at her. Nell had thought she was being very cool and very controlled about this, but when he looked at her in this way, a bolt of desire seemed to slice through her entire body.
‘I wish I could be,’ he said, then made a half-angry gesture, as if there was something he could no longer bear to resist, and pulled her against him.
His first kiss was gentle and almost questioning, but when she responded instantly and eagerly, the gentleness accelerated into passion. Through mounting delight and desire, Nell thought the emotion flaring up between them was so intense it was as if the air around them was becoming charged with electricity. She clung to him, lost to everything but the intense pleasure coursing through her. So, after all, those nerves and emotions she had thought gone were still there – alive and clamouring for attention.
When he finally released her, she leaned against him, strongly aware of the warmth of his body.
‘Do I apologize?’ he said, his arms still round her. ‘Would you like to smack my face?’
‘Oh Michael,’ said Nell, turning her head upwards to look at him. ‘That’s the last thing I want to do to you.’
He smiled, his eyes narrowing in the way that was already familiar. ‘I think I wanted to kiss you like that since that first day,’ he said.
‘I think I wanted it since about the second day.’
When he kissed her again, this time Nell leaned back against the settee’s arm and he moved closer until they were lying against each other, their bodies locked together. And incredibly and blessedly, there was no shadowy ghost – these emotions were so different from the ones she had felt for Brad, it was as if they were coming from a wholly different source – a source she had not suspected existed.
Eventually, he sat up, his hair dishevelled, a faint colour touching his cheekbones. ‘I should stop,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to stop . . .’
‘I got beyond that point ten minutes ago,’ said Nell. ‘I can’t stop at all now. I don’t want to stop. Kiss me again – oh God, yes, that’s good . . .’
It was natural and unforced, and it was so wildly exciting that Nell thought she might either faint or burst into tears from sheer delight. His hands on her body were tentative and then not tentative at all, and it felt as if they were melting into one another.