The next morning found the breakfast table abnormally full. Tom and Mary were deep in conversation at the far end, teacups clattering against saucers as they discussed the best location for the new garage, and Robert, Edith, and Cora were ensconced comfortably at the other end—attempting as best they could to hold a quiet conversation over the chatter of business occurring beside them.
Edith, though she interjected every few comments, was pages into a letter, perusing intently as her parents continued to discuss their respective plans for the day. They both looked up at her with some interest, however, when she paused at the end of the letter and heaved a great sigh, resting the words against the table in mock defeat.
"Is something the matter, darling?" Her mother smiled reassuringly, and raised a brow in question.
Edith only shook her head. "No, not particularly, Mama."
"—You do look rather glum," her father added, peering over his teacup.
"Just business," she answered, holding up the letter. "You see I promised to review this book in the magazine's next issue, or at least consider reviewing it, but—and you'll think me rather foolish, now—I seem to have lost it."
Robert frowned. "You lost it? However did you manage that?" he asked blithely.
Cora, frowning too—though for an entirely different reason—gulped a sip of tea, feeling the warm liquid sting her mouth, and then smiled wider, her features frozen in near horror as Edith began to regale her parents with the story of a Mister D. H. Lawrence's new novel, a most inappropriate tome that she was tasked with reading and possibly reviewing. The Sketch wasn't likely going to publish the review, of course, but Edith wanted to at least read it before giving the final say. She continued on, then, talking about the author and the hullabaloo that the book had been stirring up in London.
Cora felt her face tingle, a blush creeping just below the surface, as she remembered the letter, remembered the words tucked into her illicit novel.
Nevertheless, we shall move forward…and hope that The Sketch, a long supporter of our press... Enclosed, please find one of the first copies signed by Mr. Lawrence…
Edith was still talking. Cora, not daring to cast a gaze upon her husband, stood suddenly, the room feeling endlessly warm—endlessly warm and entirely too small for anyone's comfort—and muttered something about an early meeting at the hospital.
She was out of the room before Edith could inquire further, and before Robert could notice pink-tipped ears that matched his own.
By the time the tea was served in the library that afternoon, Cora was in rather a state. She'd turned over the library twice, the upstairs sitting room for over an hour, and even—in desperation—her bedroom. Nowhere—it was nowhere to be found.
And the words, oh how they turned over her head.
a wild, craving physical desire.
quiver of exquisite pleasure
It was the moment of pure peace for him, the entry into the body of the woman.
Oh!
Cora felt the teacup settled in her lap shake, her unsteady limbs no fit place to rest.
"Mama?" came Mary's voice, questioning, vaguely interested.
"I'm fine," Cora assured, waving her hand in a display of nonchalance.
Mary only raised a brow and turned her attention back to George, who sat on the floor beside them, prancing his wooden horses across the carpet as his mother smiled benevolently at him. The girls lay on the carpet, too, a few feet off, Sybbie working intently on a puzzle as Marigold looked on raptly, wide-eyes admiring her older cousin.
The inhabitants of the library were blissfully occupied, and for that Cora was endlessly thankful. It made her escape from the library much easier. Though even the brief respite of silence in the hall was short-lived. For just as Cora rounded the corner toward the staircase, she caught sight of Anna at the foot of the stairs, too, holding a—a stack, yes, a stack of books in her arm. And piled at the top, mocking her, beckoning her, sat the little brown book she'd torn the house apart in search of.
"Anna!"
There was no time for decorum, and Cora strode toward her destination with a kind smile plastered across her face, willing herself not to shout in excitement, or horror, perhaps, at the reappearance of the damned book.
"Milady?"
Cora smiled again, if not a bit manically this time, and plucked the book from its tenuous place, tucking it under her arm as she explained, "I've been looking for this—it's a—a new manual for the hospital."
If Anna knew that her words were untrue, the maid's face displayed no knowledge of it. She only bobbed her head in response, and readjusted the rest of the books in her hold. "Mrs. Hughes found these in the library, Milady. She thought they were Lady Edith's. But I'll return them to the library, then?"
"No, no, Lady Edith's room is fine," Cora answered, already standing at the foot of the stairs, poised to make yet another escape. "I—I'll just take this one with me. I've not the faintest idea how it got mixed in with all the rest."
Another nod. "Milady."
Sparing not one moment more, Cora bounded stairs, legs working mechanistically against any good sense, drawing her closer to her destination, prize in hand.
Silence. And, oh—yes. It was marvelous. Exhaling as she shut her bedroom door behind her, Cora felt her fingertips tingle with excitement, anticipation. Words turning over and over, driving her to distraction—now finally: relief. Settling into the window seat at the far end of the room, Cora flipped open the cover to continue where she left off. Though she failed to notice the dog-eared page in chapter twelve, the place where Robert had left off only a night earlier, she thumbed through the small text until she found her desired location once again.
And with great relish she began to read, pursing her lips and imbibing the words, rejoining Connie and Mellors as they awoke from another illicit interlude.
He looked down at her.
'Tha knows what tha knows. What dost ax for!' he said, a little fretfully.
'I want you to keep me, not to let me go,' she said.
His eyes seemed full of a warm, soft darkness that could not think.
'When? Now?'
'Now in your heart. Then I want to come and live with you, always, soon.'
He sat naked on the bed, with his head dropped, unable to think.
'Don't you want it?' she asked.
'Ay!' he said.
Then with the same eyes darkened with another flame of consciousness, almost like sleep, he looked at her…
Robert felt a gust of warm air against his wind-chapped skin as he and Tiaa spilled into the main hall, breathless and chilled from their long afternoon walk.
"Pleasant walk, Milord?" Carson inquired as he took the coat that Robert shrugged off and the hat removed from his head.
Robert, who had hardly noticed the chipper whistle coming from his own lips, grinned in affirmation. "Indeed, Carson, indeed. I walked across the west parkland to see about those old hunting sheds that I mentioned this morning, in fact. And I think one in particular will be quite suitable for guests. With a bit of refurbishment, of course."
"Very good, Milord."
"Carson, is the library cleared out?" Robert asked, running a hand through his mussed hair as he motioned for Tiaa to sit beside him. The dog listened with the brief attention befitting a puppy, stopping for a moment before frolicking off in the direction of the Servant's Hall, no doubt in search of treats. "Only I wanted to get to some paperwork from my desk," he explained vaguely, rolling his eyes at the misbehaved pup.
"Yes, Milord, I believe so. At least, I know Lady Mary brought the children to Nanny soon after tea."
Robert paused, his whistle petering off into a stream of silent air. "What?" He shook his head, then, knowing the question dumb, and rephrased, "that is, I thought Lady Mary and Lady Edith were taking the children into York for the day—for new clothes."
Carson tipped his head in disagreement and cleared his throat. "I believe that is the plan for tomorrow, Milord."
Robert, feeling his throat prickle and his collar unaccountably tight, racked his brain for the week's schedule. He turned his gaze up toward the ceiling, eyes scanning the intricate details as he tried to recall—recall anything!
But his mind was horribly empty. Empty except for flashes of sticking a small brown book into the side of the settee in the library, assured that it would remain undisturbed all day, assured that he could simply remove the offending piece of literature before anyone was the wiser.
But—oh. Oh, no. No, they'd been in the library all afternoon. And now—now his brain was full of horrid musings of an entirely different sort.
'You must take off your pyjamas too,' she said.
–a wild, craving physical desire.
'Eh, nay!'
'Yes! Yes!' she commanded.
–a wild, craving physical desire.
And he took off his old cotton pyjama-jacket, and pushed down the trousers.
–a wild, craving physical desire.
Oh!
If Carson knew that something was not quite right, his face displayed no knowledge of it. And when Robert excused himself to the library, mumbling as he removed himself, red-faced, from the hall, Carson said no more about it—disappearing behind the door to the servant's hall soon after a click of the library door sounded out.
Silence. And, oh, it was horrid—deafening and horrid. The library was entirely empty and as Robert approached the settee with great trepidation, he felt his fingers tingle anxiously, somehow already knowing that it had all gone horribly wrong.
And, indeed, as he pulled the cushion from its place, finding the space between the cushion and settee-arm wretchedly empty, Robert swore softly and felt the glorious imaginings of only the night before, and even this very afternoon, dissipating into thin air right before him—the flicker of a flame suddenly extinguished.