Crimson (8 page)

The newlyweds were given official permission to spend three nights in the estaminet at La Chapelle. After a wedding meal of red wine, rabbit casserole, and a blackberry tart that cost Billy a fortune in cigarettes, he led Elinor upstairs.

The bedroom, papered in bronze chrysanthemums, contained only a few sticks of furniture; by the light of a flickering candle, Elinor saw a large feather bed. She looked away from it, partly out of embarrassment, partly out of fear, and stood in the middle of the room, still, stiff, and silent.

Billy grinned at his bride, opened a second bottle of wine, and unbuttoned his tunic.

Elinor was hypnotically aware of Billy’s musky smell and the light blue flash of his eyes as he lifted her in his arms. Without speaking, he carried her to the bed and laid her on the quilt. He pushed her skirts up, then slowly slipped off her shoes. Next he removed her blue satin garters and peeled silk stockings from her pale legs.

kissed her bare feet, sliding his tongue between her and licked them. His kisses crept up her plump S. Elinor lay rigid with embarrassment. Billy untied the drawstring of her bloomers and felt low; softly he stroked her navel, then moved downward. lowly he pulled down the bloomers, until Elinor’s white y and blonde hair were revealed to him. Impeded above her waist by a wrinkled mess of clothing, ““Elinor felt trapped and alarmed. She clamped her eyes shut as her entire body blushed with shame. Even though Billy was moving slowly, it all seemed to be happening so fast.

Carefully, cares singly Billy unbuttoned her blouse, then unbuckled the belt from her narrow waist and removed her skirt. He pulled the string of her underskirt and lifted off her chemise. When, finally, she was completely undressed, Billy paused to touch her breasts and lightly pinch her nipples, just enough to excite her.

Still Elinor kept her eyes shut. Had they been open, she would have seen Billy undress like an eight-armed Indian god, hurling his clothes to the floor.

Billy was fascinated by the whiteness of Elinor’s skin as she lay naked in the soft, golden candlelight. He was enchanted by her heavy, beige-tipped breasts and the slender waist below it, which then swelled again to a rounded belly, above pale thighs.

In the quiet candlelit room, there was no sound, not even of breathing. Elinor was so tense she could not draw a breath.

Billy laughed and whispered, “You are a beautiful and voluptuous woman. I’m going to make you realize that and enjoy it before the night is over.”

Again he began to caress her slowly, his eyes open to watch her reactions: the soft, fleshy mysteries of a woman’s sensuality were no secret to Billy.

Elinor shrank from her bridegroom, squirming slightly beneath his touch. Her head tried to pretend that it didn’t know what was happening to her body.

He tickled her stomach with his moustache and slipped his tongue into her navel and then licked upward until she f8t his breath scented by her own body against her lips; to her, it tasted scandalous.

Gently he breathed into her ears and her mouth. His lips sucked at her eyelids, her cheeks, her chin, and her lips; his tongue tickled her white throat. Softly he bit at her breasts, then her buttocks. Inch by inch, his hands and his mouth discovered her body, leaving no secret place unfound. Subordinating his pleasure to hers, Billy slowly led her into a new and thrilling but frightening world.

She felt his fingers travelling delicately over all of her body … touching, probing, sliding into every shadowed crevice, until his hand finally moved towards the division of her thighs. At the bottom of her triangle of blonde hair, his index finger located the little bump no bigger than a pea and he started, gently and rhythmically, to rub it.

Slowly Elinor relaxed. Her body surrendered to the pleasure of Billy’s touch; it seemed to melt, no longer controlled by her’ and then it lifted, taut as a bow beneath his fingers, and her spirit soared.

Panting, bewildered, she opened her eyes. Above her, in the candlelight, she saw Billy’s smiling, triumphant face.

“That’s only the begirming,” he promised.

“Now let’s have a look at you.” He bent his head towards her belly, and his fingers slipped between her legs.

“Open your legs,” he whispered.

Elinor stiffened at this command, so totally contrary to her strict upbringing.

“Please,” Billy insisted.

His strength demanded her submission. She must surrender this, and with it her moral responsibility. Had she not just promised to love, honour, and obey him? 6o Quivering as she moved her legs slightly apart, Elinor felt timid and guilty; her heart pounded with anxiety. She felt unbearably vulnerable.

Slowly she parted her legs. Billy’s interest seemed curiously objective, and his eyes narrowed at the corners, as if he were a connoisseur examining a hothouse orchid, an exotic flower surrounded by pale pink, fleshy leaves and nestled in a soft blonde bird’s nest.

Carefully he pushed her lips apart and continued his clinical exploration. He lowered his head and licked her, until once again Elinor’s body ignored her mind and ecstasy triumphed over shame.

Billy raised his head and looked up at her.

“Now admit that it isn’t so bad,” he muttered as he slipped his hand, between her thighs.

By the time his hand reached its goal, Elinor was once more quivering with fear. Billy’s fingers softly probed her moist warmth until his middle finger met less resistance. Insistent, he pushed. Eventually his finger found the small opening and worked its way inside, enlarging it, with minimal pain to his bride. Elinor whimpered as he won his gentle battle.

At first she felt panic as he entered her. With his body stretched upon her, Billy lay still and reassured her with gentle kisses until she relaxed.

“Like this,” he whispered, and his hands twisted her hips in a circular motion.

Slowly her body took up the motion. In silence, Billy controlled each movement, each twist. Limbs entangled, they writhed in a leisurely, horizontal dance as they explored each other. Through the night, they slid from one side of the feather bed to the other, sometimes moving slowly, sometimes lunging swiftly, as their hunger for each other mounted and then was satisfied, only to grow again.

At times, he crouched above her like some great triumphant beast, looking down on his conquest spread out Wow him.

She felt that the entire world existed only as a vague two-dimensional blur. Only their crumpled nest of pillows and sheets, and the pungent male body on top of her sliding, slipping, thrusting inside her were sharply in focus, three-dimensional, and real. She could not think beyond this erotic joining of their flesh in the dimly shadowed, voluptuous bed, perfumed by their bodies.

Sometimes he lay beneath her, cradling her breasts in his hands, feeling her soft flesh quiver against his lips, and she sat panting upon his stomach as his strong hands held and rotated her hips. He gripped her to control her movements, so she could not move as she wished, could not move except as he wished.

At first she had’ demurely crossed her arms to hide her breasts, but eventually, flinging her arms high in abandon, she rode him like a plunging dolphin, until she fell forward, exhausted, and her breasts rubbed against the damp hair of his chest.

By morning, her flesh was bruised in places, like an overripe pear, and these pale contusions marked her as the property of Billy as surely as a cattle brand.

She was besotted, enchanted, in love, completely in Billy’s thrall. Like lightning, he excited, frightened, and fascinated her.

That morning, momentarily disoriented, Elinor sleepily lifted her head from the pillow. Then she remembered the night, and she buried her face in the bedclothes. Her face grew hot as she recalled how Billy had manipulated her senses and rendered her boneless and helpless beneath his touch.

Then she realized that, in the billowing warmth, of the feather bed, she could feel no body next to hers.

She sat up. Billy her husband was leaning out of the open window. He was stark naked. For a moment, Elinor looked through lowered eyelashes at his cropped fair hair, his strong neck, his long back; she gazed admiringly at his long, lean legs the left foot still bandaged and his muscular buttocks, so different from her soft, pliable flesh. Throughout her life, this private peek at Billy’s body was frozen in her mind, and at the memory, Elinor would melt, and forgive him anything.

During the first weeks of her marriage, Elinor slid slowly, agreeably, voluptuously into sensuality.

What had originally attracted Billy to Elinor as much as her beauty and exuberant energy was the innocence that she had protected so firmly, and to which Billy had responded with classic male determination.

Having destroyed that innocence, Billy now sought to artificially rebuild it, for the pleasure of again breaching it. At first Elinor refused to re-enact her timid virginity so that Billy could theft pretend to break her in as he had on their wedding night.

“Why can’t we undress before we go to bed, as usual? don’t understand why you want me to playact,” she protested. But then she grew to enjoy his little fantasy.

Dexterously, swiftly, Billy turned his bride into a slave of her own eroticism. She could think about nothing else. She was still at heart a farm girl, and in bed, Billy encouraged her impudent flirtatious ness her adolescent awkwardness, clumsiness, blushing and innocent corruptibility. To Billy’s young and unsophisticated bride, this physical passion her adoring proof of love and devotion to her husband came as an undreamed-of surprise. In bed with Billy, Elinor shook and trembled and sobbed until she was exhausted, until she felt overwhelmed and ecstatically weary.

EV Icry time r felt herself fall, Billy touched her, Elino Simlintdizzily inta a void. When he raised his eyelids and the intense blue light of his eyes flashed straight at her, Elinor always caught her breath. When Billy spoke to her as a prelude to love, his voice would deepen, holding a silken note of promise and of threat. His voice alone could make Elinor’s legs tremble. And when, in this voice that reminded her of dark honey, he called her name, she felt his mouth caress her without touching her. So vivid was the sensation that she was astonished that other people in the room did not notice it, especially when the newlyweds visited his family.

Without being told, Elinor knew that, for her, sex alone could never be fulfilling. The abandonment of her body had to be combined with the passion in her heart and the devotion in her soul. For her, such a feeling of complete, abandoned love was possible with no man except Billy. Only he knew when to coax, when to tempt, when to insist. He was the only man to whom she could trust her body. She knew instinctively that there would never be another man for her.

After being shown by a maid to an impressively large bedroom, Elinor turned, grinning, to her husband and asked, “Why didn’t you tell meT Billy took her into his arms, tilted her chin up, and kissed her-tenderly.

“It would only have made you nervous.

Better you see for yourself what my family are like.”

“But why didn’t you say your folks were rich?”

Elinor asked.

“Because they aren’ tV Billy laughed.

“Look how threadbare this carpet is. See how shabby the curtains are. You’ll soon feel the dams in the sheets. And wait until you taste the sherry!”

“Then how come they live as if they are rich? And what about the silver and the servant sT “My father lost most of his inheritance through unwise investments, the silver’s only plate, and there aren’t really as many servants as there used to be; the ones that remain aren’t paid much and they eat food grown here on the estate.” Elinor shook her head. She was truly in a foreign land. It defied all logic. Here was a penniless family, living in a house stuffed with servants, in which elaborate meals were served and all the women wore pearl necklaces. Yet, as Billy explained, it was impossible to find a stamp, or anything else that had to be paid for with cash.

“And why did the man in black call your mother “milady’T Elinor asked.

“Because my father is a baronet.”

“You mean he’s a lord?” “Nothing so grand. I’ll explain the English class system to you someday when I have the strength and the time. Believe me, it truly isn’t important to us. For now, let’s forget it. Besides, we mustn’t be late for dinner. It’s the one thing my mother never forgives.” That night, after dinner, a maid helped the embarrassed Elinor to undress. Lying in a fourposter bed with blue brocade curtains, Elinor watched her bedside candle’s hypnotic flicker. As she waited for Billy to appear, she mentally reviewed the events of the long day.

As nervous as any bride about to meet her mother-inlaw for the first time, Elinor had been tense with apprehension as the pony and trap trotted from the station through a marzipan-coloured, curving land of brown and green. Suddenly, across open parkland, she had seen what looked like a grey Greek temple nestled in trees, and Billy had said in an offhand voice, “That’s Larkwood.” Already overawed, Elinor had followed the butler into the drawing room, where a group of

tweed-suited, staring people were gathered around a fireplace at the far end of the dark room. Even at a distance, Elinor realized that she was about to undergo some sort of test; she was so nervous that she was unable to link names with relationships until much later except for Billy’s mother, a faded version of Billy, who brushed Elinor’s cheek with a hint of a kiss.

Later at dinner, there was a lot of political talk that Elinor didn’t understand. She sat next to Billy’s father, and followed his example when picking up’ the silver cutlery that surrounded her plate; it was the first time she had eaten a pear with a knife and fork.

Now, lying in bed, Elinor longed for Billy to, appear and reassure her of his love, because clearly his family felt none for her. Where was Billy? Elinor slipped from her bed and quietly opened the door. Then she froze as she heard her name.

Outside, on the landing, she heard Billy’s mother speak angrily of her new daughter-in-law with words that hurt and angered Elinor.