The room was plain, but comfortable, with well-worn antimacassars on the armchairs. It was electrically lit, with a bright bulb hanging from the ceiling in a fringed and tasseled shade.
A maid appeared shortly to light the fire, and as I stripped off my travel stained clothes, reappeared with a jug of steaming water.
In the dining room, I was seated close by the fire and served a most appetizing supper of cold beef, pickles, and sweetbreads, to which I did considerable justice.
“Thank you, sir, that was indeed delicious,” I said most sincerely to the landlord. He was a slightly built man of about fifty, with long graying hair tied back in a ponytail, and the largest brown eyes I had ever seen.
He introduced himself as Barry Sims, and I could sense his interest in me, immediately. “Are you a widower, Mr. Sims?” I asked, after joining him in the dining room for a nightcap.
“No, I’m not.”
It seemed the good Mrs. Sims had run off with a gentleman who traveled in formal wear.
“He stayed here quite regularly for a while, and I actually bought a very nice suit through him,” he reminisced, the light from the fire reflecting in his eyes. “That all happened a long time ago. I am free to marry again, as I had her declared legally dead after seven years.”
I found this cuckolded husband with the shy manners exceedingly attractive. However, even if he had repelled me, I would still not have hesitated to use his fondness for me to my own advantage. For life is hard for a woman alone in the world, and penniless.
“You cannot walk all the way to Richmond Hill pushing a handcart in this weather,” he told me firmly.
I explained to him about my state of penury, and he offered to pay my train fare.
“I will accept your generous offer most gratefully, Mr. Sims,” I said.
It was then, sensing that some explanation as to why I had walked so far on a night like this was called for, that I told him I had recently been made a widow, and had been turned out of our home by an unscrupulous landlord.
He shook his head angrily as I recounted this sad tale, but only sadness touched his eyes.
Somewhere on the upper floor, a door closed quietly followed by heavy footsteps, and then a kitchen maid poked her head around the door and asked if there would be anything else.
“Not tonight, Daisy, you may go to bed. I’ll lock up.” My newfound benefactor’s tone sounded somewhat distracted. For all the while, he was gazing at the whiteness of my throat and caressing my breasts with a longing eye.
I could feel the desire stir in my groin. I smiled invitingly and raised my skirt slightly to display a trim ankle. Yet despite this quite blatant display of coquetry, he made no move to touch me.
He set down the brandy snifter carefully and rested his hands on the tabletop.
“You have nice hands,” I told him softly, and covered them seductively with my own.
He flushed and looked startled, and for a moment, I thought he would withdraw them from my caressing fingers. The moment passed, and the only other sound save for our tense breathing was the steady tick-tock of the mantelshelf clock.
I slipped off my shoe and rubbed my foot against his ankle, then poked it up his trouser leg and explored his stockinged calf with my toes.
While working at the brothels shy men had always intrigued me. It was with a great deal of pleasure that I set about seducing them. So it was with Barry, on that freezing winter night.
I could feel my cunny twitch and throb in eager anticipation, and my nipples quicken and harden against the sensuous silk of my blouse.
“Let’s retire for the night.” I ran my hand up the inside of his thigh so that he would have no doubt as to my meaning.
The fire spluttered and flashed blue flame and in the courtyard, a horse whinnied in alarm and was calmed by a soothing voice.
Still Barry hesitated in a state of nervous uncertainty.
“It’s been a long time for me, Hannah,” he explained haltingly. “Believe me, it’s not that I don’t find you attractive, because I surely do.”
“You need more time…I understand,” I told him charitably. Although I did add the disclaimer about that being one commodity we did not have. “For I must be away again at first light.”
“Look, I’ve been thinking about that,” he replied thoughtfully. “Why don’t you stay here for a while, you look fair tuckered out? Then you can get on the train and complete your journey once you are well rested.”
“Thank you Barry, you are kind to a fault,” I responded with heartfelt gratitude. I resolved to sharpen up my seduction skills while under this most hospitable of roofs.
* * * *
“I haven’t had a woman since my wife left, and that was all of ten years ago,” he confided to me shyly, as I sipped on an excellent brandywine in his bedchamber. It was now almost a week since I had arrived, and during that most pleasant of periods, I had insisted on helping out with the day-to-day running of the hotel in exchange for my keep.
Now, at last, I had been able to entice this most bashful of men into allowing me to join him in his private suite on the top floor of the hotel.
The light from a small, but warming fire, cast a cozy glow around the walls and ceiling, creating mysterious shadows and shapes in the dimly lit corners. “I hope I won’t disappoint you,” he added with genuine concern.
“Don’t even think about that.” I laid a finger across his mouth before replacing it with my own hungry lips.
I could hear his sharp intake of breath as my tongue insinuated itself around his own. “Oh darling,” I whispered. “Kiss me.” When he answered this plea with the chaste type of peck one reserved for an aunt, I added in no uncertain terms, “Kiss me properly.”
Just to make sure he got the message, I guided his hand onto my breasts and pressed my aroused body hard against his own.
In other cases of this sort, once the shyness had been conquered, these bashful types became veritable tigers. Barry was no exception to the rule.
“Oh God…this is marvelous…” he gasped, jiggering me to yet another blistering climax, just as the dawn’s snaky fingers poked through the casements.
“Yes it is…” I agreed breathlessly and to demonstrate my enthusiasm took his rigid member in my mouth yet again and treated it to the best tongue bathing it had ever had.
“You’re wonderful Hannah...just wonderful...” he moaned, while I cupped his tight bollocks in one hand and explored his back passage with the other.
I could feel his sphincter tense up as if to deny me entry, but I quickly overcame this obstacle and was soon stroking his most sensitive of places with deft and practiced fingers.
His cock was shagging my eager mouth with what can only be described as intense enthusiasm, as I licked and drooled and sucked him to yet another blowout of an orgasm. The first weak rays of a rising sun infiltrated the highly charged bedchamber. The hot night of love we had spent there had altered its staid and chaste atmosphere forever.
“Marry me, Hannah?” he proposed with all seriousness, as I dressed with unhurried ease the next morning.
Stepping nimbly into my black lace-up boots, I swung my shawl around my shoulders and turned a flushed face towards him before replying.
I was not surprised by this turn of events, in fact, quite to the contrary. For given the gentle and lonely nature of the man, I was halfway expecting it. But, what should my response be? After all, I was already twice married, with both husbands, to my knowledge, still living. The great advantage here was that I was in the United States. The crime of bigamy had been committed in the Dominion of Canada.
I then turned my thoughts to the less legal aspects of our proposed union, contented, that the time I had spent with him, although short, had been pleasant indeed. One could not hope to find a more considerate and satisfactory lover.
This was indeed sanctuary of a kind I had never even dared aspire to, when I had been thrown out of Joseph Murchison’s mansion just a short time ago. While I was not deeply in love with Barry, I did have the utmost affection and attraction for him. Love, I told myself resolutely, would surely follow, but all in the fullness of time.
“Yes, Barry, I will marry you. You do me a great honor choosing me to be your wife, and I consider myself the most fortunate of women.”
Barry and I had agreed that for reasons of propriety I should reside away from the town for a few weeks prior to the wedding. Doubtless, there had already been enough gossip about our present situation. As Richmond Hill had been my original destination, we decided to stick with that plan.
“I’ll miss you.” He looked almost comical in his sorrow as he heaved my bags into the back of the buggy, while Buffy the fawn-colored gelding munched on a carrot.
“It won’t be for long,” I reminded him with a delighted chuckle. For it was gratifying to know that I had won the heart of one at once so dutiful and constant.
I sent Mrs. Knowles a telegram regarding my expected arrival time, and sat back to relax and enjoy the railway journey across rolling hills and flat farmlands. When the train crossed the border and entered Canada I experienced a slight twinge of unease. However, this was short-lived, and there was not another cloud to mar the wondrous blue of my horizon.
“My, don’t you look like the cat who stole the cream.” Mrs. Knowles looked me up and down with a twinkle in her appraising eyes. “Am I ever glad to see you. I’ve got some marvelous news for you, my girl.”
It was a dusky twilight set amidst a crimson sky, and the crisp snow all around us lent a sense of unreality and theatre to the scene.
“Really?” I queried in some surprise, for what could possibly have happened at Mrs. Knowles' establishment to influence the affairs of yours truly.
“A Mr. Tom Bateman from Vancouver was here looking for you.”
“Tom?” I repeated dumbly. How could that be, when he had pointedly refused to answer my telegram, even when pressed for such a response by the telegraph people?
“He left this for you in the hope that you might return here one day,” Mrs. Knowles slipped a letter from the locked upper drawer of her bureau.
My Darling Hannah:
How can you ever forgive me for letting you down so atrociously in your greatest hour of need? Even now I pray that it will not be too late for us, who were true lovers in every sense of the word. Do not believe for a moment, my love, that I would have turned from you so cruelly for it is not so. My sister, who was afraid of losing me to one whom I adored so completely, burned your letters to me, and turned the telegraph boy from our door while I was away at work. I kiss your eyelids, your lips, and your breath, now and always.
Your very own Tom
My God, that treacherous wicked little bitch, I thought to myself with such a fury that it threatened to consume me, like Phaeton on that ill-fated ride through the heavens.
If it hadn’t been for her deception, I would have escaped the misery of life with Joseph Murchison. Damn her straight to hell.
Then I brooded for a while about how others had attempted to keep Tom and I apart, first of all my maidservant, Mattie and then Tom’s own sister. Why were the fates so set against us?
When I had recovered my equilibrium, and a stiff shot of Mrs. Knowles’ best brandy helped, I sent a telegram to my darling, which triggered an inevitable shudder of déjà vu.
“I love you,” I wrote with such passionate abandon that it scared me, all thoughts of my upcoming marriage to the good Barry Sims totally forgotten. “Come to me now…lest by delay, we lose each other for all eternity next time.”
And then I waited with fidgeting fingers and fluttering heart for a reply. Which, much to my delight arrived immediately, and in the affirmative.
“Will see you in one week from today, providing there is no ice on the railway tracks. Yours always, my love, Tom.”
So began the longest week of my life. I tormented myself relentlessly with all manner of bogies about train derailments and the like. When it was finally over, and I rushed to meet him at the station, all my hopes, dreams and greatest joys were at last realized.
“I love you, my darling, oh how I love you,” I told him breathlessly, gazing with wonder at his perfect face and shining green eyes. “And I will never let you go again…ever.”
Tom returned my kiss with a fervor that matched my own, and pledged himself to me with a passion so intense it ignited my spirit.
* * * *
Fog horns bleat from the harbor, on this chilly evening in late October. Soon it will be All Hallows Eve.
From my parlor window––on clear nights––I can see the lights of Niagara Falls, Canada sparkling across the water.
Tom and I, have taken up residence in the United States. Here I remain safe from prosecution on the charge of bigamy.
We married in a tiny chapel beside the Niagara River. Our blessed union recognized as legal in this most charitable of nations.
I can feel the child stir in my belly, as I get up to throw another lump of coal on the fire. My lying in period can’t be far off.
The flame sputters blue and sends sparks flying up the chimney. All is silent save for the steady ticking of the mantelpiece clock.