An Ignorance of Means Read online

  She shivered as his eyes traveled from her elegant coif to the toes of her shoes peeking from under the elaborate gown, and she moved toward his raised hand. His gesture was inescapable and absolute, like the rope pulling a cow to the slaughter chute.

  The terrible image made her shudder, and she pushed it away to focus on Robert's eyes.

  She was almost somnolent during the service, lost between the break with her parents and the happy future with her husband, but was quite awake with joy when her new husband lifted her veil to kiss her, took her hand, and turned her toward the assembled company to present her as his new wife.

  The rush of well-wishers crushed her against her husband, and she felt his arm steal around her waist. She turned her face up to his and looked into blue eyes made all the paler in contrast with his dark hair.

  "Are you happy, my love?" he asked.

  "Yes, I think I am. I feel crowded, though," she whispered as they tried to parry the good wishes of the people surrounding them.

  "I have you," Robert said, pulling her closer to him with one strong arm.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Robert smiled at Catherine's quick intake of breath as their carriage approached Lac d'Or. He took her hand to kiss and murmured, "If this makes you gasp, I do not know how you will react to the interior of the house. We all know that what man's hand makes is far more beautiful than what nature can give us in her primitive way."

  When she stepped down from the carriage and allowed Robert to lead her up the wide gray steps, Catherine held her breath in anticipation.

  She was not disappointed.

  Two servants in elaborate livery opened the front doors. Each white-wigged butler wore a velvet coat in a dark blue she would come to know as "Picard Blue" and dove-gray trousers and hose above patent leather pumps. The red piping on the lighter blue vest was symbolic, Robert later explained, of the blood his family had to spill to keep the house through more than a century of struggle. The thought of men fighting and dying for this piece of land was far from her mind, though, as she found herself turning slowly, trying to take in the soaring ceiling of the foyer, the intricately carved moldings along every architectural edge, and the flickering glass jewels that made up the elaborate chandeliers in the entryway.

  "It is more than I dreamed of, my dear husband," Catherine breathed.

  Robert's tiny house in town was only a bit less modest than Catherine's childhood home. The exterior was a pale cream, bland against the dirty sidewalks of the city. The interior was serviceable, with walls painted instead of hung with fabric or paper. Simple draperies covered the generous windows. The furniture's profile was less ornate than the topiaries scattered at the corners of the Picard estate. Perhaps Robert has chosen a simple domicile for lease while he was in town working, but the contrast between the simple yet expensive ensemble his mother wore when she greeted her future daughter-in-law should have given Catherine an idea of what she would find once Robert brought her home to his estate.

  "This is how I am accustomed to living. How you will become accustomed to living, I hope." Robert's eyes twinkled at her wonder.

  She might never become used to such grand expanses of polished wood and fine Oriental rugs under her feet or tightly woven wall coverings in gold and silver. Catherine asked if it might be difficult for Berdine, Robert’s mother, to share such a beautiful home. She had spent many years as the sole jewel in a luxuriously decorated chest and might not like making room for another woman.

  As if he heard her private thoughts, Robert gestured as a line of trees along the drive and said, "Just beyond that reflecting pool is a tiny cottage I have built and outfitted solely for my mother’s comfort."

  Catherine couldn't comprehend everything Robert was telling her. She would be mistress of this house, a house big enough to fit three or four houses like her childhood home within its sturdy, expansive walls.

  "And tonight," Robert continued, "it is only you and me, my love. We will enjoy the comforting embrace of my familial hall. I have instructed the servants to leave us a cold dinner in the salon and to not disturb us until they must return to make preparations for Maman's arrival tomorrow. Are you hungry, my dear?"

  Robert's eyes blazed instead of twinkling now, and an answering blaze rose inside her. The flame that had occasionally burned blue during their courtship was back.

  "I don't think I could eat a bite, mon mari."

  "Then I have an idea. Let me show you to your bath." As he spoke, Robert led her up a curving staircase. The treads were covered with a material so soft that their feet made no sound whatsoever as they rose to the second floor. Down the hall to their left he led her, indicating a room where a tin bathing tub stood. Thick towels hung on freestanding racks behind it. In one corner, a thick jug with a tight-fitting lid stood near the cast iron stove. On a curvy rack obviously intended for coats, a lacy peignoir hung. "You'll find everything you need. Through that door," He pointed to an egress near the back of the room, "is our own little nest. A sitting room and our chambres beyond it."

  Trembling, Catherine moved into the room, and Robert shut the door behind her. Alone for the first time all day, Catherine shuddered with relief. The melancholy of leaving her home was a throbbing, dull ache overlaid with the tense anticipation of her wedding night. What if Robert was unhappy with her once they were alone together in their room? He had been so kind to her throughout their courtship, generous and understanding with her if she forgot herself and committed some faux pas. He might not be so kind once they were alone, and being alone with a man was a situation she had less experience with than being his dinner partner at someone's soiree or partaking of the family meals they had enjoyed with their parents.

  A deep breath stilled her shaking hands, and she was able to undo the buttons running down the front of her traveling frock. Unwrapping her dress, her chemise, her thin lawn undergarments, she shed her clothes like Salome shed the veils and poured steaming water from the pitcher into the tub. A tray on a marble-topped vanity held a variety of soaps. She lifted each bar to her nose, inhaling the scent of roses, almonds, lemon. She took the bar that smelt of citrus with her into the tub. Sinking into the water, she leaned against the backrest and closed her eyes.

  The pure water that covered her felt soothing. At home she might have added bath oils, but here she let the pristine liquid itself surround her pale, voluptuous body. Every inch of skin from her collarbones to her toes was cradled by the warm, barely moving fluid.

  The peace was short lived.

  Mathilde had spoken to Catherine about what her new husband would expect. The description she provided didn't shock her. Having grown up with a broad selection of books, Catherine knew the mechanics of reproduction and how a man would make himself one with a woman. What made her blush was Mathilde's almost breathless account of how the physical joining of two bodies might bring a spiritual union as well.

  "This man will hold you close and speak sweetly to you," Mathilde had said, her eyes averted as she counseled her daughter. The expression on her face revealed that her own experience with lovemaking had been only the sweetest, and her soft words instructed but did not alarm Catherine. "He will want to touch you in special places. This will feel...wonderful. Let him explore. Close your eyes and enjoy being so close to him; it will be the closest you will ever be to being part of another human being."

  Catherine had tried to turn away and end the conversation, but her mother persisted.

  "The feeling will become very intense. You do not want to run away from it. Run toward it." Mathilde pressed her daughter's hands between her own and said, "You will not want to talk of this to anyone, and we will most likely not speak of it again, but you must know that no matter what others say, this experience can be miraculous."

  In the tub here in Robert's house, she tried to let her mind go blank and not think about what it would be like to be that vulnerable, naked, held close in such strong arms. But she could only stay in the tub so long as the water would
hold its heat. Eventually, she stood and reached for one of the large bath sheets. She wrapped herself in the fine white linen and picked up a comb to run through her hair.

  Down? Or back up in a twist? She decided to let her honey hair hang down her back and ran the comb through it until all the tangles from the day's travels were gone. Only then did she unwind the linen and reach for the pale ivory silk and organza peignoir. The undergown of silk flowed down her body like the water in the tub, and the organza robe crossed in front to frame her cleavage. The material of the trousseau was almost the same shade of her skin and emphasized her pink nakedness underneath.

  She looked for a mirror and then laughed at her own vanity. Looking in a mirror was only a way to postpone meeting her husband for their first night together.

  Trying to neaten up the room, although she knew the returning servants would clean up behind her, she folded the bath sheet and draped it across its stand. She hung her clothes on the rack where she had found the peignoir. Finally, she could find no more little chores to keep her from meeting her husband. Catherine took another deep breath, a breath as deep as a swimmer might take before plunging into a cold pond.

  The door into the sitting room was cracked open, but the room beyond seemed very dark. Catherine moved toward it anyway and took the knob in hand to push the door open and enter the room where her husband waited.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The door Catherine pushed open whined softly. Beyond it, Robert relaxed in an upholstered chair whose frame sparkled in the dim candlelight. While Catherine was robed in soft, luxurious fabrics that contrasted with her traveling clothes, Robert had only abandoned his haberdashery and still wore the fawn-colored breeches and loose white blouse he had worn since their departure from the wedding site. The generous cravat on the shirt was untied and the yoke open, revealing a tanned and muscled chest.

  Catherine froze.

  Her first sight of her husband's bare chest mesmerized her. His throat was barely a shade lighter than his well-sunned face, and the skin there smooth. She took a few steps toward him, and her hand moved forward without her conscious will, reaching out to stroke his exposed chest. Caught between her instinctive desire and her nervousness, she dropped her hand, hesitant to make contact.

  The light twisted Robert's smile in an almost cruel way, revealing a man she had yet to meet. The malice she perceived made her clutch the thin robe more tightly around her. But as soon as she saw the unfamiliar expression, it fled.

  "Robert?"

  "Yes, my dear? How did you find your bath?" Robert leaned back in his chair, sipping the amber liquid from the glass in his hand. "I hope you found everything you required."

  Catherine nodded. She stood in front of her husband, and he watched her. She waited for a sign that she should move toward him, but he continued to sip his drink.

  "The water, it was warm enough?"

  Again, she nodded. Still he reclined in the chair. Would he offer her a seat? Should she sit on the bed and wait for him to come to her?

  "Pardon my manners, leaving you standing, but you are so beautiful I cannot help but admire you the way I might admire a piece of statuary." Setting the liquor on the table beside him, he asked, "What do you imagine is going to happen?"

  "I don't know what you mean," she said, lowering her eyes. A flush rose up her bosom and across her face. She did know, as much as she could know, that is, from the brief conversation with her mother. Now, in the same room as Robert, divested of the everyday habit that had kept him at bay, she wondered if what she knew was true. Robert had been so kind, but the strange smile made her worry that she maybe didn't know him as well as she thought she had. Her mother's experience was the only she had heard of, and her parents had always had a bond that seemed unique.

  "Has your maman explained what men and women do on their wedding night?"

  She nodded.

  "Then may I initiate our little interlude?" Although he questioned her gently, he stood and began his approach as though he needed no permission.

  The flame inside her flared, but beneath it was an ice chip of doubt. Would their coupling be all that her mother promised a newlywed's tryst could be? Or would the strange, primitive pull she felt when she looked at him sour the encounter? These were questions she was not equipped to answer.

  "Give me your hand." His voice was a command. His expression in the flickering shadows of the candles was no longer a sneer, but it was harder than she had known before. Robert's face was sinister in the way any face is disturbing in a flickering light's illumination.

  Catherine raised her hand in a languid gesture toward her husband. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. They were soft on her palm and warmed her skin as he moved up her wrist and inner arm. He paused to breathe deeply, and her own breath deepened in response.

  Robert knelt before her, and his hands began traveling up her legs, rubbing the muscles of her calves and then her thighs. He grasped her thighs, his thumbs digging into the soft inner flesh, and separated her legs so she stood with her feet wide apart. Her balance wavered, and she fell back against the wall. She felt his face against her midsection, rubbing the organza of her peignoir out of his way until the pressure of his countenance was only friction, sliding the silk of her gown against her bare skin like water against her body.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and stopped her breath in tense anticipation of what might come next. Nothing she had ever experienced prepared her for the deep wanting that rose up in her as he touched her, an emotion stronger than the fear of what he might do next. The flame she felt earlier intensified. Her knees weakened, and her hands found his head, her fingers entwining themselves in his thick hair. She wanted to push him away in fear of the strange sensations throbbing from her nether regions and at the same time pull him closer to contain the intensity that was building inside her.

  "Warm. So warm under there. You must get rid of these clothes!" His voice deepened, the voice of a man under some inexplicable compunction.

  She was his intoxicant, she realized. Her flesh, scent, and breath had made him the grasping supplicant before her on the floor. A sense of raw, primitive power gripped her, and without thinking she pulled him up to a standing position and pressed herself against him.

  "You are my virgin love," he whispered in her ear. "And I will take that gift...right now."

  Like a wild wind out of the mountains, he tore the robe from her frame and pulled down on the gown until the thin straps broke and the silk pooled around her feet. Still giddy from the sensual power rising from her complete mastery of this breathless man who was desperate to posses her, she made no move to cover herself, but opened her arms, pressing her palms against the wall and undulating against him. His hands grasped her shoulders, moved down her arms, and then circled her waist.

  Robert's groans were low as his still clad form pressed her more firmly against the wall. The silk of his shirt was damp with his sweat and the rough fabric of his breeches was coarse against her now bare thighs.

  Suddenly, he stopped and stepped back, staggering, his hands trying to brush his wild black hair back from his face.

  "This is not what I should be..." his throbbing need rendered him inarticulate. "I do not honor you by such ravishment. But I must have you. You are..." Giving up on forming a coherent sentence, he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his wide, firm lips against hers. He gripped her hair with his hand, pulling her head back roughly and forcing her mouth open with his.

  Catherine could not think. She only responded.

  And her response was to relax into his rough advances and answer his firm explorations by yielding herself and her body to him. His hands moved restlessly through her hair, mirroring the rhythm of his lips against hers.

  The kiss continued as he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the next room, where an enormous bed waited. He laid her atop the comforter and his form loomed in the darkness, arms akimbo and posture stooped like an animal c
rouching for attack. She could sense the deep desire radiating off him as he moved toward her. First he was on the bed beside her and then he was on top of her, the naked length of him pressing against her into the bed. Burying his face in her hair, he wrapped his arms beneath her. His hips thrust down to her, pressing her thighs apart.

  She felt his manhood there, and she felt the wet heat he aimed for. Catherine struggled to form words but only one came: surrender.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Before she opened her eyes the next morning, Catherine twisted in the bed, seeking some warmth in the chill dawn to comfort her aching body. She relaxed into the nest, but an ache between her legs throbbed, raw and insistent.

  The warmest part of the bed was where her husband lay beside her. She curled up against him, her still nude body molding to his beneath the heavy down comforter he had taken her on the night before.

  I am a woman now, she thought. Whatever my mother told me I must compare to my own experience and make my own judgment. I expected some union of souls last night, but we are not creatures of air, we are creatures of flesh. And science tells us that when flesh meets resistance, violence results. Closing her eyes, she felt the aches in her muscles from the collision of bodies she had experienced in the night.

  "Mon mari," she whispered sleepily, and he stirred beside her but did not wake. When she closed her eyes she saw the previous night's action in a blur. In her deepest core, she felt both a feline satisfaction with the power her body possessed and a timorous dread of the power her husband had over her. Ignoring the contradiction, she wondered what the day would bring. The thought of the servants returning saddened her. Not only was she unused to a staff, but she had liked being one of only two humans in the world last night. She wasn't sure she wanted to share Robert.