A Gentlewoman's Predicament (2 page)

“Try it. It’s my own special infusion of spices. I think you find it both soothing and invigorating,” says Monsieur Chamfleur. Or Ambrose, as I suppose I must think of him. I feel like telling him that I find him both soothing and invigorating, too.

The spiced Madeira is delicious, and all the more potent for my nearly empty stomach. I was too nervous to eat before I came out.

I drink deeply and find that I’ve all but emptied the glass. Clarence takes it from me, and seems about to refill it when I wave him away. He puts it aside, retires to the far end of the room and sits down on a hardwood chair.

“Please, Mrs. Harewood, won’t you tell me what’s been troubling you?”

Ambrose reaches for my hands again and folds them into his.

The room is warm, and I feel so comfortable now that I open my mouth…. Then I remember that Clarence is still with us.

“Don’t worry. No secrets from Clarence. He’s my most trusted associate and he assists with the therapies.”

“Therapies?”

“Yes, of course, my dear lady, there are therapies. How else could we help resolve intimate problems?”

Indeed. I glance at Clarence, and he gives me a small nod, his merry face serious for once.

I return my attention to Ambrose. His expression is composed, serious and professional. And yet, somehow, far back in his eyes, a demon twinkles.

What is this place? What
new
predicament have I got myself into?

Still his fingers gently stroke mine, slowly and soothingly. I imagine them touching me elsewhere, just as slowly, just as soothingly.

Ambrose doesn’t prompt me, but suddenly I find myself pouring out my story. The words are halting at first, then rapidly grow more fluent. I blush like the very devil, but still I can’t stop myself, and I describe the deficiencies of my marriage bed, my confused feelings, my sense that there should be more, so much more.

And my dogged determination to ensure things are better, the next time round.

“I want to be sure that I know in advance how to please my husband…and…um…that he knows how to please me in return. Mr. Harewood was not at all diligent in that quarter.”

“And did you receive no pleasure at all from him?”

Ambrose’s face is still calm, his demeanor attentive. Did I imagine that naughty gleam in his eye, I wonder? He seems all sober and thoughtful now, and to my shock, I feel bitterly disappointed. I suddenly want wickedness, and daring, and seduction, and something that I don’t yet quite understand.

“None. Just discomfort…and certain female friends hinted that there would be rapture, transports of bliss, helpless passion.”

“Quite so. Indeed there should be.” Ambrose makes a gesture, and Clarence efficiently provides me with more Madeira. Just a few sips, but I’m grateful for the richness and the spices.

“I can help you, Mrs. Harewood. Indeed I can.” His voice is softer now, almost a whisper as he leans close and allows me to smell his intoxicating shaving lotion. “But first we must examine you to see if there’s anything physical amiss.”

A thousand questions and protests speed through my mind. Is Ambrose a physician? And if not, how outrageous and inappropriate is it for him to lay hands on me?

Whirling hot blood rushes to my face. “Examine me?” My senses teeter and tilt as the blood seems to rush to other places, too, making them agitated. The tips of my breasts, the pit of my belly, my secret recess.

“Why, yes, of course.” Ambrose’s smile is gentle but his brown eyes are shining like dark stars.

What is this place? Who is he? Who are they?
I ask myself, aware that Clarence is hovering still, close by.

“Don’t be shy, Sofia. You’re safe here. No need to worry.” Ambrose’s fingers have slid under the sleeve of my frock and are stroking, stroking. “Come on, my dear, let’s be off with all these heavy, constricting clothes.”

So this is how it happens?

He urges me to my feet, and it’s off with my bonnet, my jacket and my boots, followed swiftly by my bodice and my skirts and petticoats.

Both Ambrose and Clarence handle my clothing with smooth efficiency, and I wonder vaguely just how many other nervous gentlewomen they’ve cleverly undressed in this warm room.

Denuded down to my corset and bustle, I shudder and sway as if in a fever—especially when Ambrose slides his fingers down my throat and across my bosom and beneath the edge of the sternly laced garment.

“Dear God, this is like armor! How can women possibly feel free and experience pleasure while trussed up on monstrosities like this? I suggest that when you get home, you fling it on the fire.”

Before I can protest, he and Clarence attack the garment that offends him so. Bustle dispensed with, two pairs of extraordinarily deft male hands negotiate the corset’s hooks and lacing, and within the wink of an eye, Ambrose flings the entire construction across the room in disgust.

“There, that’s better.”

I gasp as his whole hand settles lightly on my breast, through my chemise. He cups the soft orb with a delicate touch, his fingers curving and caressing. I stand like a statue, shaking and confused in my just the chemise, my drawers and my stockings. The heat of the softly glowing fire is like a caress, too, warming me through my linen. A hot blush surges through my skin and through my veins. Between my legs, I feel a pulse, slow and liquid.

“You’re very beautiful, my dear,” whispers Ambrose, hand still upon me, “but you’re a modest young woman and I know all this is new to you.” His mouth is so close to my cheek that I almost imagine he’s going to kiss me. But he doesn’t. “Perhaps you’d like to retain your undergarments for the moment, to spare your blushes?”

Spare them? Too late for that. My entire body is in a state of conflagration. He’s barely touched me but I’m an inferno down below.

“Come along, Mrs. Harewood. Let’s get you settled comfortably on the chaise.”

Like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter, I let him lead me to the plush, upholstered couch and help me up onto it. As I settle into place, not knowing what to expect, I close my eyes. And as I prepare to meet my fate, Clarence’s skillful fingers ease the pins from my hair and fan it out across the cushions. All the while, Ambrose lightly strokes my hand.

What am I doing here? Why am I allowing these two men that are scarcely even acquaintances make free with my clothing and my body? I must have lost my wits or the Madeira was drugged.

But I know that’s not so. And I know this is what I’ve wanted for a long time. The thing I knew existed but was missing from my life.

When my pulses have settled, and I’ve calmed a little, Ambrose releases my hand and gets straight down to business. Slowly, seductively, he strokes my cheek, then my chin, then my throat. A moment later, he’s at the tiny silk ribbons that fasten the front of my chemise, undoing them swiftly.

Without speaking, he folds the soft fabric aside and exposes my pale body to his gaze, and to Clarence’s.

When he touches me,
really
touches me, I cry out like a child, and instantly Clarence is at my head, stroking my hair like a skilled groom calming a skittish pony. He murmurs to me, “There, there…” while Ambrose handles my breasts, gently fondling and cupping and kneading.

His actions are light, circumspect, almost respectful, but their effect is like nothing I’ve ever known. I squirm on the upholstery, my body excited, twisting and uneasy. When he increases the intensity of his caresses, I whimper helplessly. How can this be? How can such simple manipulations create such a cornucopia of delight. My late husband mauled my bosom, and I felt nothing then.

But now…now, Ambrose’s fingers are so clever, so devilish. He plucks at my nipples, playing with them in a way that feels like he’s playing with my entire body and setting light to the most divine, unknown sensations. I wriggle shamelessly, scissoring my thighs in a lewd and passionate frenzy, wanting more, more, more. Anything to assuage the rapidly gathering inner tingling.

“You see, Mrs. Harewood, you
are
a sensual woman!” Ambrose’s voice is both cajoling and triumphant, and yet an intimate whisper, right in my ear. While he still plays with my breasts, Clarence moves again, toward the foot of the chaise.

My eyes fly open.

Whatever are they planning now?

“I’ll need your help now, Clarence, if you will?” Ambrose almost kisses me, his breath hot against my brow. “I’d like you to unfasten Mrs. Harewood’s drawers and stockings, and then ease them down as far as her knees.”

“Oh, no, please, Monsieur Chamfleur, please no!”

Oh the shame, to be exposed so…. Why does it excite me and make me want to wiggle and wriggle even harder?

“Calm yourself, sweet Mrs. Harewood, rest easy.” His lips brush my skin, just for a moment. “And please do call me ‘Ambrose,’ I beg of you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Except myself, and a degree of lust and licentiousness I’ve only just this afternoon become aware of.

Clarence makes himself busy at my waist, and a moment later I feel cooler air whisper across my belly and my thighs even though the room is warm. His hand beneath my bare bottom, he lifts me, and then settles me back on the fine plush velvet upholstery. To feel it’s sumptuous texture against my naked skin is willfully decadent.

“Magnificent,” they exclaim, almost a chorus. Then Ambrose kisses my face, just once, in a kind of signal, and the two men change places.

Clarence, at my head now, is just as gentle and solicitous as his master was. I look up into his periwinkle-blue eyes, almost afraid to let my glance stray toward Ambrose and his intentions, and I see Clarence’s expression is both kind and impish. He cradles me with one arm, and lets his free hand drift to my breast and take up the delightful ministrations that Ambrose began. I groan with delight while he teases and tickles me, at the same time anticipating more, much, much more, down below.

I close my eyes. Not because I don’t want to look at their handsome, fervent faces, but because I’m not sure I can bear such intense wonders in the light.

My cries increase as I feel an ethereal, indefinable pressure slide unhurriedly across the skin of my belly. In a ferment now, I could swear it’s a feather that’s caressing me. A long, stiff, resilient feather whose soft tip glides first across one thigh, then with tantalizing slowness across the other. Having tormented me thus, it returns to the plane of my abdomen, floating like mist into the pit of my navel and circling there, making me squirm on the chaise.

“Quietly, quietly…” purrs a voice so softly that I’m not even sure whether it’s Clarence or Ambrose, and as I endure the feather, I’m all the time aware of skilled fingers still at work on my bosom. A multitude of nerve ends have woken from their slumbers, in both the zones my new friends are exploring, and in others, as yet unvisited.

Between my thighs, I’m intensely troubled. If that be the word. My feminine parts are wracked by simmering heat and agitation, a wicked, wicked craving to be touched and rubbed and played with. It’s so excruciating, I want to play with them myself.

I feel confused, my head whirling, lost but also strangely safe. These must be the sensations that I dimly imagined I was missing in my marriage bed. But they’re so powerful, so befuddling, yet so beautiful. My eyes fill with tears, but I’m not sad. No, never that.

Reaching for knowledge, I almost coo in response to my two paramours.

Who respond to my silent, formless prayers.

Clarence kisses me, his tongue pressing importunately into my mouth, searching, tasting. At almost the same moment, I heave up from the surface of the chaise in delicious shock.

A finger—a stiff, warm, clever finger—pushes inside me.

Ambrose breaches my hot body in a smooth, bold action, and as his finger enters me, his broad, flat thumb settles on the tiny sensitive bead at the apex of my womanhood. Instantaneously, delight seems to pierce me like a spear, touching not just the warm, sticky crevice of my sex, but also my breasts, my lips, my toes, my heart and my very soul.

The men move in. They overwhelm me. I’m exquisitely assaulted by questing fingers and warm tongues, and by the scents of my body and the clean odors of their linen and their flesh.

The heat and the tension in my flesh soars to a sweet, unbearable pitch, building like a raw flame in my loins…and then, and then… I cry out into the kissing mouth of Clarence, when without warning, all that selfsame pressure seems to release in a great, wild rush and throb through my body in a wrenching wave so profound I almost swoon.

Goodness, what’s happened to me? Did I lose my senses?

Opening my eyes, I realize that I’m just lying here, on the chaise, my heart and my body all of a flutter. My breasts and belly are still naked and I’m cradled in Ambrose’s arms. My face is wet, and I realize I’ve been weeping.

Struggling to sit up, I look around and find that Clarence has discreetly slipped away.

“Were those the transports of delight that my friends have whispered of?” I ask Ambrose as I struggle to gather just a few of my scattered wits. The deficiencies of my marriage are now readily and distressingly apparent to me. Are all men as lacking in the sensual arts as my poor late husband was? “I confess that’s the first time I’ve experienced them.”

“They were indeed, my dear Mrs. Harewood.” Ambrose’s voice is quite grave as he moves away quickly, only to return with a little more Madeira for me. It’s cold now, but just as delicious, and very welcome. “And it pains me to hear that such an obviously sensual woman as yourself is only now discovering the joys of eroticism.”

I still feel a little stunned. I’m shocked and surprised by what I’m capable of. But in my heart, a seed of determination has been planted. Never again will I accept second best in this matter. Never again will I lie thwarted and unsatisfied while a gentleman uses me to service his own desires. If my next husband is ignorant of my needs, by heaven, I will
show
him what I require and insist he provides it!

The Madeira braces me. I square my shoulders and look into Ambrose’s intense brown eyes. My heart lifts at the look of awe and wonder there. It’s as if he saw my inner transformation.