“Enough.” I laughed.
He swept me up in his arms with ease, although my dress was heavy and our heights were equal, and deposited me on the low and narrow bed. It still smelled of age and decay, although Branwell had spread fresh blankets over the straw. But it was better than the dovecote, or the carriage house, or the granary, or the stables. Much better than those months when our desire for warmth and desire for human heat had fought against each other, when we’d writhed against the back wall of the Monk’s House, our fingers so numb they’d felt like strangers’.
With the spring and with practice, our lovemaking had become more luxurious. Branwell no longer tore at me or ripped off my buttons. I’d have him watch me undress layer by layer, the breeze light against my skin, feeling his eyes touch every part of me, before his hands. Or we’d play a game where I’d struggle as if to get away until he held me close and wrestled me, laughing, to the ground. Our meetings were like musical variations. Whichever note we began on and whichever trills we added, we’d return at last to a familiar theme.
Branwell snaked his mouth along my collarbone and tugged gently upon my ear.
“Tell me, I command you,” I whispered, focusing on the patches of pink scalp I could see through his thick curls.
“What would you say if I told you I had at last received news from the Gazette?” he asked.
“No!” I clasped my arms tight around him.
“Yes.” He laughed and rolled over to lie in my lap, his blue eyes gazing up at me. In this pose, he bore a remarkable resemblance to Flossy, Miss Brontë’s lapdog.
“Well, what did Mr. Bellerby say?” I asked. “Do not tease me so. Did he think the verses fine?”
A month or more ago, Branwell had been in one of his brooding humors, bewailing the lack of recognition the world had shown for his genius thus far and the sad want of poetic souls in the Ouseburns, ourselves excepted.
It was in these moods of his that the difference in age between us most showed. I relished Branwell’s immoderate passion and his vitality, the energy with which he swept me off my feet, pinned me against walls, flung me across the bed. But other aspects of his youthfulness were less appealing. He sulked when we argued. He complained about writing more than he wrote. And he often gave in to fits of paranoia that Charlotte would publish a novel before he did.
Trusting that, as with Ned, exercise would do Branwell the world of good, I’d suggested that day that he ride to York with William Allison. Our coachman exchanged a box full of novels for us there each month, providing the perfect opportunity for Branwell to speak with Mr. Bellerby, the bookseller and newspaper owner. Maybe that was what he needed—something to write for. To my surprise, Branwell had agreed. The Freemasons would be meeting there that night, and he enjoyed any excuse to drink with them.
“Fine? Well, Bellerby didn’t say so,” said Branwell, pain entering his eyes for a second. “But he writes that they are to print two of the sonnets on the tenth of this month.”
“Sonnets?” My heart beat faster.
“Not those sonnets, Lydia.” Branwell reached up his hand and cupped my face.
I kissed his hand. Were I to die, would Marshall take those incriminating poems, fit only for my eyes, from their secret place—the drawer in the back of my jewelry box—and destroy them?
“ ‘Black Comb’ and the sheepdog sonnet—two the Bradford Herald published years ago.” His hand dropped as he sighed. “But it is something.”
My pulse slackened. There was no danger in these.
“It is more than something,” I said, running my fingers through his hair and staring up at the cobwebs.
It would be too risky, but much as I feared his more recent poems’ publication, there would be something beautiful in it. In having Branwell’s love for me printed there in indelible ink right in front of Edmund at the breakfast table. But then the name “Northangerland” would mean nothing to him, and poetry, if anything, even less. When he discarded the paper, clumsy, illiterate Ann Ellis would crumple it up to act as kindling for the fire, and all would be as before.
“It is more than something,” I repeated, thinking how frequently Branwell had been disappointed—in painting, the railway, his writing most of all. “But was that all?”
“Was that all?” Branwell echoed, springing up and dragging me down the bed. “No, it was not, Miss Gisborne.”
I laughed my most girlish laugh, in keeping with my childhood name.
He pulled up my skirts, mock-smothering me, and dived below them so I could no longer see him. His lips left a trail of kisses along my upper thigh, sending a shiver through me.
The sun shone warmer through the graying straw, bathing my face in light. A baptism of sorts and without an ounce of guilt now. Not this time, or any time since I had trained and guided him and since our encounters had become less about him and more for me.
Sometimes I had him pleasure me and then didn’t let him inside me at all. Sometimes we came to the brink, before I bid him leave me. And loyal subject that he was, he always did as I said. The power was intoxicating. This must be how a husband felt when first seeing his bride below him, her naked body his to own, demand, explore, tonight and every night until death or indifference.
Branwell pulled away.
I flinched with disappointment.
“Lydia—” he said, his voice quaking with emotion. I still couldn’t see his face, but I recognized the tone.
“Don’t mention ‘love.’ Not a word of it. Do you understand me?” I said.
He did that when impassioned sometimes, making this all too real and dampening my desire.
I found the back of his neck and pulled him down where I wanted him. His baby hairs were just long enough to hold onto.
Yes. No. Higher. A little lower. There.
“Don’t stop,” I breathed. “Faster, softer. Still faster. Yes.”
I arched, twisted, struggled, but he knew by now to keep going.
If only I could hold on to this moment, feel this joy flooding through me forever.
* * *
WHEN I CAME DOWNSTAIRS to the breakfast room on the tenth and saw the folded Gazette in front of Edmund’s place, that was something else entirely. I did not dare touch it. I’d smear the print with my moist fingertips and be unable to replicate the folds, as tight and crisp as those Ellis made at the corners of our many beds each morning.
Somewhere amongst those pages lurked the name “Northangerland.” And even if the name didn’t underscore the real poems, those guilty poems, it proved that Branwell had a mind, pen, voice of his own, much as he had deferred to me and to my wishes until now. A wrong word from him, whether spoken or written, in passion or in malice, could destroy me.
“No sign of your master, Miss Sewell?” I asked. Edmund was normally here before I was.
“I believe he is unwell, madam,” she answered, not taking her eyes from Ellis, who was pouring tea under her supervision.
“But now there is no room for cream!” cried Lydia, pushing the cup away from her.
She and Bessy, freed from the travails of the morning lessons that had called Mary and Ned away, were still here—Lydia reading, Bessy eating more than her fair share.
Ann Ellis bobbed in apology and started to pour a new cup.