The Acquisition of Memories. Chapter 15- Coming to His Senses: Taste
As Elsie sips her wine again, she sees a slight movement from Charles out of the corner of her eye that she is sure is the tip of his tongue running languorously across his bottom lip as he observes her keenly. Elsie smiles the smallest of smiles into her tilted glass and keeps her eyes drilled to the action on the stage. As she lowers the glass, though, she makes sure to delicately lick a small drop of wine from her own lower lip that she has purposely allowed to pool there. She is rewarded with the distinct sound of Charles drawing in a quiet and short but shuddering breath.
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Charles' eyes close at the sight of Elsie delicately licking the wine from the lips that he himself has now tasted, albeit on only a few occasions, and still quite chastely. Except, of course, for that rather demanding kiss Elsie pressed to his lips on the train earlier today. But even her heavy kiss that afternoon on the train was not all that Charles desires, for indeed he wants far, far more. The wet trace of her tongue along his lower lip evaporated far too soon and did not leave him with enough of the taste of her. He wanted to chase after it, hold onto that strange and unique sweetness for longer.
Charles tilts his head back slightly to draw a clear breath deep into his lungs from the warm and pressing air of their private room above the theatre of the masses, trying to control his responses to his wife's actions. His mind whirls vigorously and he wonders, not for the first time today, if Elsie is actually aware of what she is doing to him. He has to think that she is knowingly flirting with him, what with the way she carefully averts her eyes from him, as she did in the Hansom cab earlier. All of this is new, and so unlike anything he has experienced with Elsie before.
Of course, he has always been aware of her small movements around him from day to day- those things that are just a part who she is. Some of them he has grown so accustomed to that they barely register in his mind anymore- things like where she is standing at any time in proximity to him so that he can quite easily move his bulk around her in tight corridors and stairwells and not actually brush against her unnecessarily. Their dance of practised unison and ultimate propriety.
Yet, there are other mannerisms of Elsie's that he has been intensely aware of for years and actually finds himself willing them to happen in his presence. Things like her utterly beguiling habit of lightly sucking the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth, tasting it with the tip of her tongue, it seems, when she is worrying about something, or when she is hesitating to say something the right way to him, and especially, when she is perplexed or wondering about something. All of these reasons, in turn, make him want to hold her protectively to him and assure her everything will alright; or huff at her to just be out with it for heaven's sake, because he knows that she will never actively try to hurt him; and especially, it makes him wide eyed with want for her because he always loves to know what she is thinking. And at any of those times, all he has really wanted to do is kiss that part of her lip to free it from her teeth so that he might then taste it fully, and so that all of her thoughts and feelings will pour into him and so that he may answer her softly, or even urgently, with all of his thoughts and love and desire pouring back into her from his own silent lips. Even so, he has always felt sure, in those moments of pleasant torture for him, that Elsie is actually quite unaware of just what that little mannerism of hers is doing to his runaway mind and to the blood coursing through his veins.
Tonight is different, though. He feels that she has to know what she is doing to him. For, even this little flick of her tongue to recover the last of the rich wine from her lips lingers in a way that he has never seen before- and he has seen similar before- many times- as they have shared wine in his pantry of an evening. At those times, however, he has always felt that it too is an unconscious action on Elsie's part, merely a function of drinking something in a ladylike manner. Yet for Charles, even that simple act has captivated him, to the point where he has sought out certain wines to serve the family, in the hopes that there will be enough remaining at the end of the night for him to share it with Elsie and fulfil certain sensual pleasures that he has vividly imagined, but was always forbidden to act upon.
For it is tonight, in this bewitching moment when he sees the last, lush drop of red wine upon Elsie's lips- in that heart-stopping pause before she languidly drinks it away- that Charles realises something with the same intense clarity he experienced earlier that day on the train. Charles now knows that he has actually been trying to whet his appetite for her over quite a few years through his own, almost obsessive, passion for fine wines. He knows now that his drive to maintain one of the finest cellars in the country has gone well beyond the standard demands of his work as a butler. He has actually chased down the finest wines for the house in the hope that it will give him some way to live vicariously a life that has always been denied to him due to his commitment to living, and even dying, in harness. In the bottles of wine that he has carefully selected, and stored lovingly and safely, and decanted and tasted only at such times as he has studiously determined that they are most ready to be indulged in- in all of that routine and meticulous effort- he knows now that what he has really been searching for is her- searching for her essence and the taste he has imagined to be on those lips that he could not touch- just as he has tried to trace that perfume of hers in the air and substances around him, but which can only ever really belong with her. He has kept searching because he thought that he might somehow taste her embodied within the finest of wines he could access and that it would somehow be enough for his lot in life.
He feels that even if he did ever find that wine that would speak most clearly to him of her, that it would stretch him to an absolute breaking point if he were to give it up to the family and they were to drink it and not truly appreciate it for all that it embodies for him. No, he does not think he could serve a wine such as that to the undeserving (heaven help him for even thinking of the family in that way). No. No, thinks Charles. If he ever found such a vintage that truly held the taste and the vision of what Elsie means to him, he knows that he would not be able to share it with anyone, and he would guard it jealously. He would find a way to buy up every last bottle for himself and keep it locked in some private cellar of his own, just as the cellar of his heart has locked away all of his desires for her, behind the heavy door of duty and propriety- accessed only when he could share a small part of his foolish soul with her safely- as in those rare times when he was truly ready to- in his pantry or her sitting room, late at night when the rest of the world was asleep. Those are sacred times to Charles. Times when she alerts him, through the brushing of her skirts against her legs and the tinkling of her chatelaine, and the openness of her kind gaze, that it is safe for him to come out from his cold cellar and enter her own inner sanctum, her trustworthy heart. Elsie. The keeper of his secrets.
And across all those years of sharing the remains their long days and their late nights together, Charles has felt the nearest to her when he could watch her taste something of a wine that he had so carefully selected- the ones that held just a note of what he dreamt about as the taste of her kisses. Though, not so close that he felt driven to sequester every last drop for himself- for never has he find such a vintage, but at least the ones of great quality that he could still wrench himself to serve at his Lordship's table. Yes, those were the nights for which he has longed. He has longed to watch that lusty wine- that close but always unequal match for Elsie- watch it swirl in the glass and across her lips as she sips it slowly and appreciatively. And her acknowledgement of the quality of his choice is a statement of undying affection for him, such it has seemed to his lonely heart in those moments. And all the while, Elsie was always blissfully unaware of what heavenly torture it is for him to watch her drink of something that he imagines is somehow made from the fruits of her own hidden body.
Those nights, sometimes he would avoid talking too much, just so that he could watch that syrup sit on the lips he so longed to kiss. He would imagine how it complimented her skin and her scent and her flavour. He imagined how the taste of her lips would actually add the finest finish to the wine, and that the wine would mask none of the intensity of her own heady flavour. He knows now that nothing on this earth could compare to that- and if he could ever be granted the right to taste that mingling of the vintners art and the offerings of her soft lips, he would not be able to stop himself and he would drink of her lush body and melt into her and drown inside her soul.
And so on those nights that he had actively tried to engineer these scenarios in his favour, he would actually have to wage an internal battle of wills against his desire for her. Oh, how he struggled to stop himself from reaching out to touch her back then, when it was not his place to do so. But over time, and especially since their day at the beach- on those thick and magical nights in his pantry he has tried, when possible – and never in an obvious way (he hopes) – to lightly brush the backs of his fingers across the pads of her fingertips as she took the wine glass of her liquid beauty from his hand. Sometimes he would slightly curl his hand outwards and into her palm as he relinquished the glass to her grip, just so that he could devour a little more of her delicious touch.
But tonight-this time- he is sure that Elsie is making a conscious decision to not look at him when she eases her tongue out to sip the wine from the indent of her lip. At least, not until he has looked away, when he senses, even if he does not clearly see it, that she has glanced his way from beneath her dark lashes, with a certain glint in her eye that seems to acknowledge the powerful, but near silent, reaction she has wrought from him. And then he senses her nibbling at her lower lip in that way she has- Gods! It was different again!- and it nearly undoes him. There is a tentativeness to the action this time, but it is all done with the most knowing of intents. Yes, he is so sure of it now- Elsie is aware of her charms and she is playing a lustful game of hide and seek with him. Charles is utterly enchanted by this painfully slow and somewhat coy revealing of her desire for him. He wants nothing more in this moment than to slide his hand to her soft neck and pull her towards him, bridging that small space between their heads as they pretend to watch the play, so that he may lick and kiss and nuzzle the remains of the wine from her lips until it has disappeared completely and all that he can taste is - her.
But he knows he will not. For Elsie's subtle seduction tonight seems a more than fitting entrée into their married life, and Charles will not deny Elsie this chance to reveal what she is ready to reveal to him in her own unique way. He really cannot imagine that the courting of their desire for one another could play out in any other way than through this restrained performance of longing. Yes! In this moment- where want and access are in such fluid variance- he feels like he does at the Abbey, surrounded by exquisite beauty for so long, but none of it quite his to hold onto and treasure. This is all familiar territory to him. His inner life has been deeply moulded by the fact that duty and service demand that he cannot have that which he most desires in the entire world. The only thing keeping him from total despair tonight is the sweet knowledge that he will actually, finally, get to hold onto Elsie fully.
And so it somehow makes strange sense to him- that the taste of her that he so craves in this moment- in that slide of her soft, pink tipped tongue over her honeyed lips- that it is all still held just out of his reach, even though it is he who has placed it at such a distance tonight in the first place. He is now assured of his decision to withhold from touching her beyond the requirements of his duties as a gentleman, for Elsie is matching him! She is revelling in all this elegance and finding herself at home with it, and with him, and so he knows now that she will indeed be more confident with him and attuned to receive his particular attentions tonight- that she will understand his intent and accept what he has to offer her.
Tonight is a big night for them- the carriage and the play, and the private box and all of the royal treatment, and the hotel- all of it is just so right. And Elsie's seduction is so absolutely and maddeningly right! It has style! Elsie has true style- a style that Charles plans to match, for he is a man who is far from being tired of life! Tonight, he knows, in the studied movement of her lips, in the shadowing of her glance towards him- that Elsie is calling to him- like a siren- and he knows that the longer he can continue to deny himself, and deny her too, the longer that he can resist finally touching her, and tasting her lips, and holding onto all of her charms, the sweeter will be their final, intoxicating embrace.
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A/N: A guestie wanted to know from the last chapter if they had met the Princes yet. I assumed they meant the Astaire's, which indeed they did and maintained correspondences with Bertie, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and George over many years. As for Charles and Elsie- well… they are fictional characters- but I am working on it! ;P Probably next chapter. :)