Page 39 of The Secret Word
Clem blushed. “I was just thinking…”
She broke off, and Chris made what he hoped was an encouraging sound.
“Martha said you would want to kiss me as soon as we were alone, and—” her blush deepened—“other things.”
“Other things?” Chris was intrigued to know exactly what the knowledgeable maid may have disclosed.
“You know, Chris. Embraces and such.” She leaned closer to him and hushed her voice, as if afraid that the driver might hear. “Touching me with your hands. In… places. She said men like it?” Clem sounded uncertain.
“This man likes it,” Chris assured her. “Very much, when it is my hands and your body. And I hope you will like touching me, too. I did not want to start something in the carriage that would leave you rumpled and uncomfortable when you arrived at our house, for if I once start, beloved, I am not certain how much control I will have. I want you. Very much.”
“Oh.” Clem thought about that. “I’m not sure exactly what ‘want’ means, but…Will I like it, Chris?”
“You will like it very much,” he assured her. He would make certain of that. “In fact, you can tell me what you like most about it, and I will do more of that, and if there happens to be anything you don’t like, tell me, and I won’t do it. But not here in the carriage. Not for your first time.”
“Oh,” she said, her face clearing by the moment, and her second, “Oh,” sounded much more cheerful. “Not until this evening, then.”
“Here we are,” Chris commented, as they drew up at their own front steps.This evening?He could wait until this evening if she insisted, but he hoped she didn’t.
By the time he had helped her from the carriage, the front door was open and the servants were lined up in the little entry hall, ready to greet their new employers.
Clem went down the line, greeting the cook-housekeeper, the parlor maid, the kitchen maid, the footman (who was going to provide any valet services that Chris needed), and the boot boy, and presenting them all to their new master. She had met them all when she interviewed them for their positions, and from what Chris could see, she had done well.
Martha was there, too. Chris greeted her. He’d be keeping an eye on this one. When Clem had said she planned to keep the maid, Chris had questioned her choice. “What if her loyalties are still with your father?” he asked.
“That could be true of anyone we employ,” Clem said. “Since she and I made our bargain, she has been an excellent maid—loyal, as far as I know, and competent. She knows how I like things done. I’d like to keep her, Chris.”
She was Clem’s maid, so it was over to her. And Clem was right, of course. Any of the servants could be reporting to Wright, to Billy O’Hara, even to Chris’s grandfather. Time would tell, Chris supposed. He’d be careful not to leave anything that should be confidential where one of the servants could see it.
Meanwhile, he had a wife to kiss, and “embraces and stuff.” She had seemed disappointed that he had not started in the carriage, and he hated disappointing his wife.
Clem was dismissing the staff. How did one ask a lady if they were open to the idea of moving the consummation from the evening program to the afternoon? Especially since Martha and the footman had not left with the rest.
“Clem, would you like Martha to help you into something more comfortable?” he asked.
“I am quite com… Oh. Now? You mean this afternoon?” Fortunately for Chris, she sounded more intrigued than scandalized.
“Yes, why not?”Please, Clem. Please.
Martha gave him an approving nod, and Clem smiled. “Yes. Martha, come along,” she said. “Give me half an hour, Chris.”
“Half an hour,” he agreed, with an internal sigh. He used the time to order a tray of tea from the kitchen to be sent up immediately, and another with food and more tea in three hours.
Then he went up to the bed chamber they had agreed would be his dressing room—they planned to sleep in the same bed. He stripped out of his wedding finery, washed thoroughly, and put on a banyan—one that he’d bought only that week, since the robe he’d had for the past ten years was not fit for other people to see.
Ready, ready, more than ready he knocked on the door to their shared bed chamber and went inside.
*
Clem had expectedMartha to be full of last-minute advice, but all she had to say was, “I reckon Mr. Satterthwaite knows what he’s about, Miss. Ma’am, I mean. Just trust him, I say. If he’s the man I think he is, he’ll make sure you enjoy it.”
“I’ve heard it hurts,” Clem disclosed. Several of the married women at the wedding breakfast had been keen to share their own opinions with the bride. They had left her no wiser, since none of them had been specific. Furthermore, their views on the matter, so presumably their experiences, varied widely. At one extreme was the matron who advised her to lie still and think about something pleasant. At the other was the young wife who blushed vividly while confiding that her husband was lusty and that she loved it.
Martha shrugged. “Maybe a little sort of a pinch-like pain the first time? You know he has to put his thing inside you, right? When you swive? Once you’re used to it, it won’t hurt at all.”
His thing? What thing? Andinsideher? She supposed something had to go inside her, because after all, “swiving”—as Martha called it—was how a baby would get there, but Clem wasn’t at all sure how swiving worked, or whether she wanted to find out. She supposed it was too late to worry now. She consoled herself that Chris’s kisses felt wonderful, and that Martha, at least, and possibly her former maid, Amanda Brown, had enjoyed the experience.
And even the “lie still and think of something pleasant” matron did not appear to be damaged in any way.
