“No what?”
“No, it’s alright. Nothing of importance happened.” Just the birth of her sexual self.
“Your chin is red.”
“That doesn’t mean anything?” Her gloved hand covered her chin, whatever redness sat there was a delicious reminder of how his cheeks had rubbed, rough against her skin as he’d kissed her senseless.
“It means he kissed you.”
She smiled despite herself. “I might have muttered poetry.”
“That good?” Marsden smirked and settled back against the bench. “I’m still going to have a word with him.”
She ignored him. He’d settle down after a sleep. He looked pent-up. Firmly wound. Her interruption had clearly stopped things too soon.
His fingers tapped a rhythm on the carriage bench beside him.
“Do people mutter things…like poetry?” Seph asked.
Marsden huffed. “If you’re lucky. Poetry, song, lewd words, curses, and pleas. Guttural cries…”
Seph held up her hand. “Enough. I see. So, nothing too odd then?”
“Barking is known to add to the moment.”
She leaned over and slapped his knees with her purse. “Now you go too far.”
“Have I?” He laughed and the tension about her mutterings with Ilya, eased. Somewhat.
“How do people face each other after a tryst?”
“Ah. Your nothing has suddenly become a tryst. I am definitely having words with him.”
“But really what does it mean? How should I behave when I see him next?”
“Seph, a man like him…” The light from the buildings and lamp posts they passed outside flickered over Marsden’s face, would be flickering over hers as well. Neither would truly be able to read the other’s expression. “You can’t expect more than what the moment offers.”
“I know that!” Frustration rolled through her. She knew it. Of course, she did. But what was wrong with sitting with the pleasure just a little longer. Surely a person was entitled to bath in the illusion of it for a little while at least.
“Then just be yourself. Don’t let it be any more than the pleasure it was.”
Minutes passed before he spoke in the silence where she knew they both recalled the other moment of the evening, how she’d last seen him.
“He’s right.” Marsden said.
“I was a married woman, nothing I saw shocked me.”
Marsden shook his head and gave his rather lopsided grin. “The old Duke never did that in his life.”
She blushed. “I am not naive. I have read Sappho.”
His eyes softened making her scowl at him. “But you are, Seph.”
The carriage slowed and turned.
“Well I don’t want to be.” She rearranged her cape. “Tonight, was exhilarating, exciting. I feel alive. As if I was sleeping for years and am just now starting to wake up.”
Marsden said nothing, a look on his face, one that said he was happy for her.
The lamp light cast shadows as the carriage bounced and swayed across cobbled streets. Their eyes met and she smiled. They had been friends since childhood. He’d been the first to kiss her, a young neighbor with dark Heathcliff hair and moodiness, who was not all bravado but a real friend.
Seph lifted an eyebrow, even in the flickering light he would be able to read her.
Marsden groaned and rubbed his face. “What? What do you want to know?”
“I just wondered...the gag…the tied hands? I don’t understand…”
He was visibly conflicted.
“Marsden.” She gave him a little nudge with her slipper.
“You should never have married that old man, Seph.”
“Would things have been so different? I don’t see what you did being part of the ‘stiff upper lip’ bedroom activities most wives face.”
His face softened. “No. No it wouldn’t have been too much different.”
Bother. He saw too much, knew too much of what her married life had been like.
When her husband passed there was not a lot she could recall to miss about him. He was often not home, worked late. There were no real shared interests. He thought whatever she did was quaint, her poetry was useless. She’d stood by the grave, dried eyed, and threw the first handful of dirt. Sobbing mourners followed, sisters, aunts, his infirm mother. They each lamented a man who was generous with his money and able to hold the world and all its realities at bay—who would do that for them now? As each shovel load of dirt incarcerated him below the ground, it was as if the weight of years lifted from her shoulders and the sun finally broke through to thaw a long-forgotten girl.
What had she done with the newfound freedom? Not much. Until tonight.
Seph gave his leg another nudge with her foot. Marsden shook his head but that all-to-frequent indulgent look was on his face and she knew she’d won.
“It’s not uncommon to play games, we all play games in the salons and parlors, it’s much the same, only exceedingly more pleasurable.”
She swallowed; her face hot as warmth rushed over her skin.
“And you like it…playing these games?”
His teeth shone white in the soft light of the carriage. “What do you think?”
“Darn it,” her voice was strained. “I haven’t had sex at all…”
He laughed. “I am sure you have had plenty of sex…what you saw was a glimpse into a world where people take their pleasure and their fantasies seriously.”
“The domain of rakes and libertines, I take it.” Of the Russian.
Marsden lifted and dropped his shoulders. “Take a lover and find out.”
Lover.
“Maybe the Russian?” He suggested looking at her a little too intently.
Now it was her turn to groan, Ilya was far, far too dangerous. “He irritates me.”
Marsden grinned with that annoying, knowing look of his.
“What did he do after he whisked you away from my scandalous vignette?”
If her face had not flushed before it certainly did now.
She waved her hand around in a bored meandering gesture. “I think he thought it was a kiss, but I couldn’t tell.”
“Ha!” Marsden barked a laugh. “Anything else. You looked rather flushed when I saw you.”
Seph widened her eyes. “If he did, I can’t rightly recall. Something that made me quote the weather.”
Marsden barked a laugh. “Cruel, Seph, cruel.”
The carriage rocked as the silence settled. The streetlamps they passed casting small bursts of light. A weight pressed against the center of her chest, a heaviness that thickened. She’d married as her father had requested, to an older man who made few demands in bed. He died, a winter flu that went deep into his lungs. She was still of childbearing age, could still have a family, but the trouble was she already knew too much about married life to want to be a wife. The men who were decent were boring and the men she liked she wouldn’t trust. Yet tonight showed her she was hungry for more and she’d have to either find a compromise or stay exactly where she was.
“You like him.” Marsden said from the other side of the carriage. “Why not have a dalliance?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t.”