“Which were delivered to my neighbor’s house in error,” said August. “The garishly illustrated volumes were very nearly passed along to his youngest daughter. Needless to say, the man was not pleased.”
Arlington and Townsend looked half amused, half horrified. Warren looked irate. “I don’t care how Minette found out about you and Esme,” he said. “I don’t want her over there, and I don’t want you over there either. You have to give her up.”
“I don’t have a choice,” August retorted. “As I just said, Esme’s given me up, not that it’s any of your business.”
“You married my sister. It’s my business.”
“Gentlemen,” Townsend stepped between them and gestured for calm. “Let’s not growl at each other. August, will you have a drink? Tell us, how is married life treating you? How are things at Barrymore House? Your father?”
“No change,” August said shortly. He accepted a drink from Townsend.
“That’s a shame,” said Arlington. “None of the treatments have worked?”
“No. He suffers now from terrible disfigurements, great pains, and feral madness. When he escapes his keepers, he stumbles about the house, groaning like an animal. My mother can’t bear to look on him, he is so grotesque.” It was probably more than they wanted to know, more than anyone would ever want to know, but he could only confide such things to them, and so the words spilled out with a sort of relief.
“A sanitorium, perhaps?” said Townsend.
“It’s too late for that. It’s...too late.”
“I’m sorry,” Arlington said, a sentiment echoed by Warren and Townsend.
“And Minette doesn’t know what to think,” said August. “She doesn’t understand. I’m sorry, Warren, but she’s such an innocent.”
“She
was
an innocent,” Warren replied.
Arlington frowned at the blond earl. “They’re married, Warren. You must come to accept it. Will you hold it against August his entire life?”
“Yes, if he makes her miserable, and continues to consort with courtesans.”
“I was
returning the books
,” August said through his teeth. “I didn’t go with any intention of sleeping with her. For God’s sake, it was three in the afternoon.” Lies. He was lying. He’d desperately wanted to sleep with Esme, although he couldn’t have managed it to save his life. It was Minette who haunted his dreams, Minette who fired his fantasies. It was Minette who felt smooth and voluptuous and perfect in his arms. “I am not making your sister miserable, either. You and Josephine weren’t blissfully happy at the start, were you?”
Arlington barked out a laugh. “He’s got you there.”
Warren tugged crossly at one of his cuffs. “Wait until you marry, Arlington. You’ll have the worst time of any of us, deservedly so, after all your taunting and holier-than-thou lecturing, which amounts to nothing whatsoever, since you’ve never actually had to wrangle a wife.”
“Let’s go join the ladies in the library,” Townsend said, cutting in. “Otherwise I fear we shall come to blows. Will the lot of you be staying for dinner?” He frowned, glowering at each of them in turn. “You’re invited if you can manage not to snap off one another’s heads.”
*** *** ***
Minette gawked, staring over Josephine’s shoulder at a spare drawing of a lady sandwiched between three astoundingly virile gentlemen. “What is she doing?” Minette asked. “Why is her head down there?”
Josephine giggled. “Oral pleasures.”
“Oral pleasures? It looks like a lot of work to do with one’s tongue.” Minette held the book closer, but she still couldn’t figure out where the lady’s tongue actually
was
.
“There are all sorts of things one can do with one’s tongue during love play,” said Aurelia, as Josephine dissolved in more laughter.
“And gentlemen expect this? To be caressed by their wives’ tongues?” Minette was rather taken aback by the drawings in Lord Townsend’s collection of erotic books. She wasn’t inexperienced. She wasn’t a virgin, and she’d been kissed more than once, but she was puzzled by just about everything she saw.
“Gentlemen enjoy a great many things that would surprise you,” said Aurelia. “Josephine, I wish you would stop giggling. This is important. If Minette is to capture August’s attentions, she must—”
“Must what? View the most perverse collection of leaflets and sketches in the world? Honestly, Aurelia, where did Townsend procure these?”
Aurelia gave a sigh. “It’s probably better not to ask. And don’t think Warren doesn’t have a collection like this also. Sorry,” she added as Minette shuddered.
Minette knew her brother was no celibate—Josephine’s giggling testified to that—but it was difficult to imagine him, or Josephine, or Townsend and Aurelia, or anyone participating in these carnal and abandoned acts. She turned the page, to find a couple teasing one another’s sexual parts with ostrich feathers. The lady’s expression was one of transported bliss. The gentleman stood ready to impale her with his massive shaft. Had August’s been that grotesquely large?
“Are all gentlemen made this way?” she asked, pointing at the protuberance. “So thick and distended?”
“They exaggerate the size in these books,” said Josephine. “Just as all the women are tall and voluptuous to an extreme.” She looked at Minette in puzzlement. “I thought you would know... Well, I’m sure it’s none of my business, but I thought you and August had already...”
“We did, once,” said Minette with a sigh. “But it was dark, and I don’t remember it very well. I mainly recall that it felt quite wonderful for some time, and then all of a sudden hurt very awfully. I’m certain he didn’t mean to hurt me, but he’s not, you know, small, as small as perhaps a man ought to be, and so it was quite a squeeze to fit.” She buried her flaming face in another book. How was she to entice her husband when any thought of sexual congress made her stammer and blush?
“It gets better,” said Aurelia. “The first time is always an awful squeeze. But then you become used to that filled-up feeling and it comes to feel rather grand. Did he touch you other places, and make you feel warm and excited?”
“Oh, yes.” Minette’s cheeks were about to catch fire. “He knew just what to do. He was so much more confident than me.”
“Well, he’s had more practice,” Josephine said with an unladylike snort. Aurelia gave her a silencing look, which Minette very much appreciated. She didn’t like to think of August’s other women, women like Esme, who were more sensual and experienced than Minette could ever hope to be.
“I think our encounter must have been awful for him, because he hasn’t touched me since,” said Minette.
“Oh, my dear,” said Josephine, stroking her hair. “It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with August’s mixed-up feelings about you being a sister. Warren isn’t helping, I’m sure, hovering over you like a protective hawk. August will do his duty eventually, and when he does, he’ll be sorry he held you at arms’ length for so long, because you are warm and beautiful and accepting and perfect.”
“Yes, and you won’t need to depend on a repertoire of lewd tricks to capture his heart.” Aurelia turned to the next page, featuring another thrusting, exaggerated organ being serviced by an eager—and naked—servant girl’s mouth. “I mean, they are nice tricks to know, and it’s good to be informed, because men enjoy all sorts of abandoned things. Ladies too. None of it is wrong.”
“No, none of it is wrong,” agreed Josephine. “As long as you and your husband enjoy it.”
On the next page, an amply figured woman sat on a gentleman’s face, while she stroked another woman’s quim. The man’s thing was sticking up, thick and swollen, with drops coming out of the tip, and the one woman was pinching the other’s breasts. “The thing is...” Minette narrowed her eyes at the drawing. “I don’t understand how any of this makes babies.”
Josephine erupted in another bout of laughter, so Aurelia was obliged to clap a hand over her mouth. “Josie, hush. Do you want them to come and discover us? We ought to put all these books away. Townsend doesn’t mind me looking at them, but I’m supposed to ask his permission first.”
“Put them away?” cried Minette. “But I still don’t know how to make August want me.”
“Oh, goodness, you didn’t expect to learn that in
these
books.” Aurelia took her hand. “Listen, dear. Marriages take time to sort out. You mustn’t believe it’s some lack in you that—”
The door swung open, and four gentlemen, including her husband, entered the library. All four regarded them, huddled on the floor around the open cabinet, with piles of bawdy volumes and drawings spread out in a scandalous display.
Townsend grimaced as if he meant to look stern but couldn’t quite manage it. “Why, I believe the ladies have stumbled across my private collection of books.”
“You keep them in the
library
?” asked Warren.
“You said they were talking about babies and nurseries,” August accused. “And here they are, leafing through your illicit novels.”
Aurelia hurriedly closed up the books and collected the drawings into a pile. Minette thought one of them ought to speak, and make some excuse, but what excuse could they make? They were handily caught in the act.
“Is that what those were?” said Josephine, pretending surprise. “Illicit novels?”
“Josephine Bernard!” snapped Warren. “Don’t make it worse. It’s obvious what the three of you were doing.”
“Reading?” she said in an innocent tone.
“Help me put them away,” Aurelia hissed to her friend.
Minette could say and do nothing. August glared at her from across the library.
You’re not to look at any more volumes of a lewd sort. It’s not proper for a lady.
He’d said that to her
yesterday
, and mere hours later, she was caught in the act. It was only that she’d confided to Aurelia and Josephine about her visit to Esme, and the instructive books that August had taken away, which led Aurelia to reveal that Townsend had just such a collection of books, although Townsend’s books were more numerous, more visually oriented, and much more explicit.
“I don’t think we’ll be staying for dinner,” said Warren, scowling at her and Josephine both. Minette might have pitied Josephine, who was surely going to be punished when they returned to Park Street, if she was not so fearful of punishment herself.
“I don’t think we’ll stay for dinner either,” said August in a hard voice. Blast.
The Duke of Arlington watched all of this with haughty amusement. Minette had always liked Arlington, and wished he would intercede on their behalf. Couldn’t a duke tell a couple of earls what to do? Perhaps forbid them to spank their wives?
From the look on Lord Townsend’s face, Aurelia was in for it too.
“I apologize for the reprehensible smut your wives have been exposed to,” said Townsend. “Aurelia, why on earth did you get it out?”
Aurelia slid a look at Minette.
Please, please, don’t tell him it was my idea.
But otherwise her friend might be blamed.
“It was my fault,” said Minette quickly, before Aurelia could speak.
“No, it was not,” Aurelia insisted. “I suggested it. It was my fault.”
“It was my fault,” said Josephine. “It was entirely my idea. Neither of you is to blame.”
Arlington threw back his head and laughed. “It’s not the end of the world, chaps. So they were looking at some ribald drawings. All of us have done the same. Sometimes a lady’s curiosity can get the best of her, eh?” He winked at the three of them, looking so much like a piratical Viking that Minette smiled.
Her smile faded as August’s frown deepened and he crossed his arms over his chest. Minette wished she might go home with His Grace rather than her husband, who looked very irritated indeed.
“I didn’t even know you were here,” she said to him, with a touch of sullen pique.
“I’m here,” he said. “Now, stand up and tell your friends goodbye. We’re returning to Barrymore House.”
Minette took Aurelia and Josephine’s hands, squeezed them and whispered “I’m sorry.” She got to her feet, smoothing out her dress so she didn’t have to look at her brother as she walked to her husband’s side. All of this was terribly embarrassing, but surely not as awful as what was to come.
They arrived home in the midst of some crisis with August’s father. Lady Barrymore was crying, the servants were running around trying to be helpful, and Minette was ordered to go to her room.
“Why can’t I help too?” she asked. “Why am I always sent away?”
“Do not anger me further,” her husband said tightly. “Go.”
And so Minette went, slinking upstairs in shame. This was not at all how she had pictured a marriage to August, and nothing she tried seemed to make things better. All she wanted was a smile, an affectionate glance. Something besides lectures and sharply spoken orders to go to her room.
When he came to her an hour or so later, she searched his features for any tenderness, any husbandly regard at all, but there was nothing. Only irritation. She stood and faced him with her back to the wall.
“Well?” he said by way of greeting. “What have you to say about your activities at Townsend’s today?”
She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’ll begin by saying that I’m completely finished looking at lewd engravings. The lot of it is outrageous and not helpful to me at all. Why, some of it is patently ridiculous, not that I’m criticizing Lord Townsend’s tastes—”
“I told you already that you were finished looking at it,” he said, cutting her off. “Don’t you remember?”
Oh dear.
She took a deep breath. “Yes. I do remember you telling me not to look at any more naughty books. I can’t explain why I disobeyed you. Perhaps because I’ve always been curious to a fault. I don’t deny it, and it’s gotten me into cartloads of trouble over the years.” She took a step sideways as her husband approached her. “But I regret very much going against your command. I’m terribly sorry that all your gentlemen friends, including my brother, came upon the three of us behaving in such an unladylike fashion and looking at such...unladylike...” She dug in her heels as he took her arm. “Such unladylike literature,” she spit out. “From now on, it’s nothing but tracts on moral philosophy and...religion...and household management for me. Oh!”