Chapter 8: Bath

I had not visited Bath before, and when I saw the elegant and gracious buildings which make up the greater part of the city I was most impressed.
The Crescent and The Circus are rightly considered jewels in Bath's crown, but the Roman baths and the Abbey church have also much to recommend them to the historian, and lovers of antiquities and architecture.
Rob Crawshay drove Matilde, Molly March and me to Bath. I had given the staff at Queen Street three weeks holiday, save Rob who would return to London the next morning after delivering us to Monmouth House.
He was to have sole charge of 18 Queen Street in my absence. "You may ... err ... entertain during my absence Rob, just be discreet with your ... umm ... assignations."

"Discretion is my middle name, Major. Rest assured no unseemly behaviour will be seen, or even heard."

I included Molly March in the party as she too deserved a holiday, and being in the company of genteel ladies in a great house she would be able to assimilate the duties of a ladies maid. I gave her over to Matilde to instruct her in the necessary skills.
Zinnia, Colonel Slade, Krish Armityge and Patrick Jane would also be visiting Bath at various times during the season. I had invited Patrick as I sensed an interest between himself and Matilde, and when thrown together at the various events during the season the interest, on both sides, might be strengthened. Caroline had made it plain Matilde's triumph in Maidstone would be furthered in Bath by a much larger set of young men, all sprigs of the nobility, calling, and dancing attendance, on her. Patrick might well find himself pushed to the back of the queue for Matilde's attention and company.

Monmouth House was a fine Palladian styled residence which dwarfed Ashford House. The East Wing had been designed as the guests' accommodation, and here Matilde had her own sitting room, for receiving visitors, and a bedroom: out of bounds to visitors, especially male visitors. Molly March had a small bedroom adjoining Matilde's suite. I had a suite of a study and bedroom located in the main part of the house, across the corridor from Caroline's suite of bedroom, dressing room, and separate nursery, where John-Jarvis and his nursemaid slept. Caroline's arrangement of the accommodation presaged us spending most nights together, far from the proximity of the other guests.

The invitation was gratefully accepted the first night of my stay. I tapped on Caroline's bedroom door half an hour after we had retired to our various chambers, somewhere near ten of the clock. On her husky voiced 'come in, Elijah' I stepped through the door and entered paradise.
I shall not relate everything we did to each other during the night. Suffice it to say that after obtaining her first resounding climax of the night, by the skilled use of my tongue, lips and fingers, Caroline repaid the favour. We then joined our bodies in the way that lovers do, and it were if we had never been apart.
The night of loving was as passionate and wonderful as in the White Hart – no – it was infinitely better, for I fell asleep with her wrapped in my arms, and when I awoke at first light we still lay beside each other.

She held her son – our son – at her breast, and had just finished giving him suck. Caroline smiled down at me when she felt me stir against her. "I hoped not to wake you, Elijah, but John-Jarvis would have had I not brought him into bed for his breakfast." She took him from off her teat and put him over her shoulder, while gently rubbing his back. It didn't take long before he belched, and I was immediately taken back to Chateau Blanchard, watching Mimi do the same with her son Jean-Woodrow.

"Shall you hold your son, Elijah?" Caroline said.
Her smile of proud happiness making her look even more beautiful.
I sat up, and she handed me the replete baby. I held him carefully, marvelling at his perfectly formed tiny fingers and hands, the softness of his skin, and smelled the mingled scent of baby, milk and Caroline. For a minute or two I just sat with my son, still and warm, cradled in my arms, until a snore announced Master John-Jarvis had fallen asleep.
During those few minutes I experienced the most tranquil, most proud, most perfect moment of my life. To hold your child for the first time is the very apex of a father's pleasure.

"I'll take him now, my love." Caroline took the sleeping child from me and carried him through the connecting door to the nursery and disappeared.
I heard quiet voices, and then Caroline returned. And slid into bed.

"Well, Major Greenaway, it seems last night's exercise went well, and we rediscovered our skills." I kissed her tenderly, attempting to convey all the love I felt, for her and our son, through my lips. For some minutes we just allowed our mouths and tongues to say, silently, how much we adored each other.
She broke away, giggling. "However, it may have been only a happy coincidence, and I think we should carry out further research to test the hypothesis we really have regained, and retain, the dexterity for pleasuring each other." Before I could heartily concur she had mounted me, and we spent the next delicious hours on manoeuvres.
During the next three weeks Caroline and I spent most nights with limbs entwined. Sometimes, after returning late and tired from an evening at a ball or a concert, we would forgo the delights of spending the night together; but made up for any shortfall in satisfaction and gratification by re-doubling our efforts the following night.

You might wonder how I could be given a three week furlough, not long after having sick leave from the bureau on account of the wound suffered in France? Well, I was in Bath on duty – some duty I hear you scoff – but true. Plots against the Monarchy, or the Kingdom, were still being fomented abroad, and many foreigners frequented Bath during the Season. Minor German princelings with their entourages, some members of which may have been contaminated by Republicanism or Rousseau. Spanish, French, and Italian aristocrats, many of whom supported their fellow papists in Ireland. All these perceived threats needed to be monitored, and any hint of a plot reported to the bureau. Colonel Slade and Patrick Jane would take their turn in listening and watching, while Krish Armityge, no longer a member of the bureau, had agreed to act as Matilde's guardian when I returned to London.
Although most nights were spent together in Caroline's bed in public we maintained a polite but cool distance from each other. I was merely the guardian of the young woman the Dowager Countess of Hungerford had graciously invited to Bath for the Season, and as far as the general public knew that was the only social intercourse between us. The servants at Monmouth House were not privy to what happened in Caroline's bedroom because Domina acted as chambermaid in Caroline's suite as well as nursemaid to John-Jarvis, and I made sure to be down for breakfast well before Caroline.
The Bath newspapers were not so numerous, or as scurrilous, as the London news sheets, and although some of the more popular London gossip writers attended the Season enough scandalous activity was ongoing in Bath to keep their pens busy without speculating on a widow returned from Bermuda with a child begat by her late husband.