Ch. 10
Hello:
Here is another chapter! Not much happens but it is fun to draw out the excitement a bit, for my own amusement and hopefully for yours, too.
-Emma de los Nardos
The Squire was smoking his usual tobacco pipe, his large leather boots resting on the hearth. His son cradled a tumbler of liquor and sat stroking his beard, newly sprouted for the winter season. Roger had made up a fire early that night; the days were growing shorter and the two men had more time to sit together in the evenings.
The Squire was accustomed to his son's company and did not say much; the two men had always been more alike to each other, just as Osbourne and Lady Hamley had been a pair. Roger did not have the Squire's temper, but he did have his father's open friendliness and sincerity. Not for the first time, the Squire reflected on how wrong he and his wife had been to have doubted that Roger would turn out well.
"I am glad, my boy," the Squire said, "That you have not made the mistakes that I have made, nor Osbourne's mistakes, may God rest his soul." Roger laughed.
"You must think me a very strange man indeed, Father, if I had made no mistakes at all!"
"I'm not saying you didn't make a mistake with that baggage of a Miss Kirkpatrick—Mrs. Henderson, I mean. But that's all over and done with. She is safely married and so shall you be soon, to a more deserving young lady." The Squire smoked contentedly on his pipe. "I only regret that I shall have to meet with the doctor's new wife again. 'An engagement is an engagement,' she told me, when your mother was dying and she said that she could not spare Molly. The spite of that woman! I'm not surprised her daughter took after her."
"Whatever her faults," Roger said, "I hardly think Cynthia has her mother's spite. If anything, she is careless and fickle. But I would rather not talk of Cynthia just now, if you do not mind."
"Me mind? Why, when did I ever say that we should talk about Mrs. Henderson?" The Squire looked aghast. "No, my boy, I thought that we should talk about Molly tonight. I think she is a topic of conversation much more to your liking, eh?" If it was possible for a man to blush under a beard, Roger might have done so then.
"Yes, Father. I do like her. Very much."
"Good, then. I will be so happy to see one of my sons happily settled." Roger shifted in his seat and took another sip of his drink. His father continued. "There is something that I have been meaning to talk to you about, my boy. I was getting to thinking again about the night that I was married. Now, I know that it was a long, long time ago, but I don't suppose that things have changed that much since then between a man and a woman. Now, tell me, Roger, what experience have got you in that realm?" He narrowed his eyes and looked carefully at his son. Roger looked his father back straight in the eye and said,
"I have not done anything to dishonor Molly nor with any other woman."
The Squire harrumphed. "In that case, you are less like me than I had imagined! I could not help chasing a skirt before I was married, but I swear I never looked at another woman once your mother was my wife. Aye, but she was a sweet woman, too! But Roger—please don't tell me that, with all of your Cambridge studies, you don't know how to read a woman's body?"
Roger stammered out a reply: "I—I don't know quite what you mean, Father."
"I will tell you what you ought to know, Roger, and what I wish that I had known before I had met your mother. First—" the Squire paused. "Women are sensitive creatures. They don't like a man coming upon them unawares and grabbing at her all of a sudden. You have to woo a woman slowly. Kiss her and hold her and tell her she's the fairest of them all—it won't be a lie with your Molly!—and then kiss her some more and let her kiss you back. One thing that I've learned is that a woman can want a man something powerful, if you give her the opportunity. Before you bring her to your bed, let her hold you, as well, and touch you and see you. You don't want to scare her with the idea of your large part pressing into her wee thing—you want her to see you first and get used to the idea, like the natural thing it is. Then she will be the one asking you for it, and not the other way around." The Squire smoked on his pipe while Roger stared into the fire, relaxing with his father's frankness.
"Second, a woman doesn't like a man having his pleasure when she can't have hers. Better to give it to her first. Then, she'll be more amenable to letting you have yer own way sooner or later. Touch her little button all soft-like and she'll light up just like a candle!" The Squire chuckled, reminiscing. "I cannot say enough for taking it slow when you break her maidenhead. Give her the better part of her pleasure aforehand. Best to have her ready and waiting for you-wanting you is more like it—than have yerself tossed out of your chambers on your wedding night! That has happened to some good men that we both know—I won't name names—and there's nothing like a sour wedding night to start a marriage out bad. Not that I expect that you will have any troubles, Roger," the Squire said sagely. "But there is no shame in waiting a few days or weeks or even months before—how does the church prior say it?—consummating a marriage, especially when you have no plan for babies." Roger smiled.
"No, I hope we can wait some time before children arrive, Father. I intend to bring Molly to Africa and to South America with me, if she takes to sea travel."
"So no need to rush, my boy! As long as you can hold yourself back a little while longer."
Roger sighed. "I am afraid that that will be difficult to do, Father." The Squire looked at him in surprise.
"Ah, ye're that far gone, are ye?"
"I am afraid that I am, Father. I do not know what has come over me, for I cannot stop thinking of Molly. It has been nearly a month since she has been in London and the only thing I long for is her return and our marriage. My specimens are sorted and there is little else for me to do here in the Hall except wait for her to come back as my bride."
"And why d'ye not go to London to meet her, my lad?" the Squire asked.
"I fear that I would hardly be welcome, if the doctor knew of my visit," Roger responded.
"Oh, Mr. Gibson is a good deal softer than he lets on," the Squire said. "But when were they expected back in Hollingford?"
"Molly thought it would be no later than the first of December, but now she writes that it may not be until the week before Christmas."
"No, no, no, my boy! You must insist that Molly come back sooner! How are you two to plan the first Hall wedding in thirty years, if the bride is absent? Besides, she would enjoy that sort of thing more than you, wouldn't she?"
"I'm afraid that Molly is rather too much like me, Father, for both of our good. She has about as much interest in elegant trimmings and table garnishes as I do."
"So it will be a simple wedding, then. Much better, I say, for we still are in mourning. Though I would like those people at the Towers to see that Hamley Hall can still look fine, after all of these years."
"Don't worry, we will not let the day pass entirely unperceived by our neighbors," Roger said with a laugh.
The two men soon went in for a light supper, retiring to their own rooms immediately after. Roger made his own toilet, unbuttoning his silk cravat in front of the large mirror that his mother has used. When she had died, his father had had it moved to Roger's room. He had thought it a somewhat ridiculous object for a young man's dressing quarters, but when he considered that he would soon be sharing the wing with Molly, he reconsidered the arrangement. Molly had said that she would share his quarters with him, but it might be better, he mused, if she at least had her own dressing room, where her maid might attend her and where she might retire to if she did not desire his attentions. He hoped that this would not be the case, but Roger was afraid lest Molly rebuff him.
His father's advice had intrigued him; he had worried about Molly resisting his touch, but his father suggested that women often did otherwise, if they were handled correctly. The idea of "handling" Molly—that is, of running his hands around her, above and below, outside and inside—was dizzying to Roger. Not for the first time, he thought about an old book of poetry which he had found inside a small tome in his father's library. Apparently the men of old were not above writing about the pleasures of female flesh!
The Vine
I dream'd this mortal part of mine
Was Metamorphoz'd to a Vine;
Which crawling one and every way,
Enthrall'd my dainty Lucia.
Me thought, her long small legs & thighs
I with my Tendrils did surprize;
Her Belly, Buttocks, and her Waste
By my soft Nerv'lits were embrac'd:
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung:
So that my Lucia seem'd to me
Young Bacchus ravisht by his tree.
My curles about her neck did craule,
And armes and hands they did enthrall:
So that she could not freely stir,
(All parts there made one prisoner.)
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts, which maids keep unespy'd,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took,
That with the fancie I awook;
And found (Ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a Stock, then like a Vine.
Robert Herrick, 1648
Roger looked at himself naked in the mirror and reflected that, while his face was not as handsome as Osbourne's, he was a good deal taller, and sturdier at that. His shoulders were wide, his back was straight, and his legs were long, covered in a soft blond down. The girth of his own "mortal part," as Herrick had christened it, had formerly caused him no small pride. Yet, considering it again from the vantage of his future bride, he wondered if it might not be better to let her discover it for herself before showing it to her directly. She might be frightened at such an instrument, or fear that it would never fit where it was supposed to. In that one conversation long ago when Roger had dared to ask Osbourne about Aimée, Osbourne had assured him that a woman's part would expand threefold to let his own fit. Yet looking at himself in the mirror and considering Molly's dainty frame, he thought that he would be remiss if he did not prepare her somewhat for the challenge.
With his beard grown back again, Roger looked as he did when he had first returned from Africa, older and more solemn than those long-ago days when he had brought Molly wasp's nests for presents. He wondered if Molly would like his beard. He imagined that she might; some women preferred beards, he knew, and Molly had made mention of it once, that night when they had first seen each other again at the Towers. She had been surprised to see him and had blurted out that she had expected him to have a beard, as her father had told her. He had wanted to tell her that he had expected a plain girl and had found a beautiful woman instead, but he had been too bashful. Roger was not the kind of man to pay such compliments, which often were false and cloying. Now, he still had trouble reconciling his former brotherly affection for Molly with his present ardor. Did he love her because she was beautiful now?, he asked himself. He did not like to think of himself as a man who followed a face merely because it was pretty. But he had to admit that he found Molly's aspect quite maddening—her clear pale skin, her slender arms, the way she held a parasol or read a book, the look in her eyes when he came close to kiss him. He wanted to touch her everywhere, even those hidden areas which the poet had called Those parts, which maids keep unespy'd. Roger was determined, like creeping vine of the poem, to learn his way around every part of Molly's body, to know of the "fleeting pleasures" found within.
Roger removed his clothing and slipped into his bed. It was wide enough for two, he reflected, if Molly chose to join him. Until then, he would have to sleep alone.