Chapter 25: Julia, the Widow

"This woman I am sending you to is an old friend of mine, but she's not very old; just foolish. Her husband, her second husband, is a preacher, Anglican, Church of England, you know what I mean, the King's bunch." The Madam fluttered about, pressed a sealed note into my hands, gave me directions and shooed me on my way. "Do what you can for her," were her parting words.

Julia Marshall might have been thirty-five, perhaps forty but I doubt it. She was slim and quiet. Her home, a modest manse next to a frame church, was tidy and also quiet. We sat in her parlor while she read Madam Von R--'s note and then she looked up at me and wrinkled her brow.

"I don't know what you can do," she said. "My husband is simply a beast, a foul,..." She put her hands to her face, crushing the note to her cheeks.

"Where is he?" I asked, tempted to take her in my arms. Despite having her hair primly tied back and dressing in a rather old-fashioned, high-necked manner, she was obviously a fine looking woman.

"Over there," she said. "He's teaching some boys to work at the altar."

"Are you here alone?"

"There's my daughter. She's over there too, practicing on the pianoforte."

"You could introduce me as a friend, friend of your uncle or some such thing, paying an unexpected visit."

She nodded and stood. I tucked her hand in my elbow, and she smiled up at me and leaned her head briefly to my shoulder. Her daughter met us along the path, a fair-haired copy of her mother, lithe and lovely. She curtsied with a wide smile and said to her mother, "He's about done."

We walked to the back of the small church. "He serves three parishes, earns three wages, none of them very much." A youngster came from the back door, flipping a shilling in the air and skipping down the path. He saw us, pocketed the coin and ran. Odd behavior, thought I.

Her husband proved to be a soft, fat man of middle years, balding and wattle-chinned. He looked up at me with distain and barely touched my hand when we shook and were introduced.

"How did it go?" his wife asked as we walked back toward their home.

"Slow, slow," he said. "I'll have to work them harder before Easter."

"But that Rogers boy just left," she said.

He grunted.

After an almost-silent meal, he departed in his light buggy, off to another of his curatures. The woman made me a map of the area, and I trailed after him, found a tavern and asked a few questions as was my habit. By nightfall, I was back at the small home of the Marshalls, told the woman that others shared her opinion of her husband, and asked how she had come to wed him.

"My husband died very suddenly and impecuniously. We had nothing except a few acres of scrubby ground, my daughter, she was ten. That was five years ago. He performed the funeral services, ate at my table and begged my hand before the lamps were lit."

"Hardly proper," I said, raising an eyebrow.

She smiled. "That's what I told him, but he was insistent, and I was, well, desperate would not be far wrong." She took a deep breath. "So, after a decent interval, about six months, I married him and moved here. He sold off my husband's land at once."

"Is he often this late?" I asked.

She nodded. "He will not be home. When he is not here by sunset, he never is."

"Where does he go?"

She shook her head. "He does not tell me, will not."

"Where do you want me to sleep?" I asked, quite innocently I thought.

She smiled and stood. "Come," she said, and she took me up to her bedroom. "The girl sleeps soundly," she whispered as she stood in my arms, face to my chest, "but we should be as quiet as we can be."

I bent and kissed her. Then we undressed without conversation and slid under the quilts, both of us wearing only our skins and our smiles. After a bit of fumbling, kissing, licking, petting, sucking and grabbing, she arched her body to mine and whispered, "Take me."

We meshed, side by side, gradually and steadily, snorting with eagerness, and we enjoyed each other deeply and juicily. She pressed her face to my shoulder when she came, stifling her outcry, and I clenched my jaw when I pumped out my pleasure in her, jolting us both when I did. We fell apart shortly and lay holding hands.

"He seldom mounts me," she sighed, "and then for just moments, just a poke or two. I don't think he likes it."

"Fool," I said.

"Yes," she replied.

"You think he may be seeing other women?"

"Perhaps," she said quietly. "Perhaps, but I don't think so."

"I'll do some more scouting tomorrow."

"Um," she said, as I spread her legs apart and reentered her, holding her hips and arching my back. Then she said "um" several more times, each a bit more insistent and finally gasped out and shuddering sound that I quickly covered with my mouth. The bed made bit more noise being pumped up and down rather than from side to side, but we managed to find a tempo that was so gentle yet persistent that we did not hear any noise except each others breathing. She came again, spasming deeply, and I soon joined her, swelling and exploding.

There were purple steaks in he sky when I awoke next to the minister's luscious wife and rose to massage her slit with the head of my fierce erection until she was sighing and dripping. Then I speared her, and we rolled over and back and thudded together until we were sated with her legs wrapped about me and my arms about her. She finally pushed me off and staggered to her feet, looking for her discarded shift and smiling in the sunrise. I lay back and relaxed, pleased with myself and the world.

Her husband arrived while the three of us were at breakfast, complaining of the cold rain that had just about stopped falling. She fed him, and he trudged off to his church. I did more nosing around the various villages, learned very little and returned about supper time. The women were busy so I was sent to fetch him.

The same boy as the day before was coming down the path from the back door and again he was spinning a coin. I grabbed it out of the air, and he shouted, "Hey!"