Chapter 8: Family Approval

Joyce knocked on the door of Lady Anne’s bedroom. She waited and knocked again. She opened the door and looked in. The bed was not only empty; it was undisturbed, and there was no candlestick on the night stand. She walked down to where Samuel was outside an equally unresponsive door.

“You had better allow me,” she said. She tried Lord Lionel’s door, but it was locked. She and Samuel exchanged knowing grins. “Well, I shan’t let the tea go to waste,” she said. She drank it down. “I think they’ll ring when we’re wanted.”

“And we’re clearly not wanted now.” They turned towards the back stairs.

The Tarletons, by the time they had all breakfasted and retired to a sitting room, had decided that Anne and Lionel were not going to join them.

“Marriage is all very well,” James said. “This looks like Lionel is taking advantage of her.”

“Well,” Stroud said, “Anne has been singing a good deal of late. And she did choose him. You have to live with your choices, your choice of marriage partner is among the most difficult to change.”

“Are you regretting your choice so much?” asked Lady Minerva.

“Not for an instant, dear, but that shows my good judgment in the first place.”

“After all,” Lenora said, “Anne is in his room all this time. That seems to suggest that she does not regret her decision. Lionel seems a very nice man, and all that, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who could impose his will on a Tarleton very long. Or is Anne an exception.”

“I wish, dear,” Lady Minerva said, “that you wouldn’t listen to servants’ gossip.”

“Well, I find it often more accurate than the gossip of the ton, and often friendlier, too. Everyone belowstairs is pleased that Anne married happily.”

“And,” Stroud said, “although Anne is far sweeter than the other three, that merely masks her stubbornness. She has decided that she can get her way better by making others her friends. She was always the youngest and smallest, you see. She couldn’t very well wrestle James into doing her will.”

Charles decided against commenting that she seemed able to wrestle Lionel into doing her will. His father still had ways of making his displeasure felt.

“So, if she is in bed with Lionel this instant, we can assume that she is being very sweet to him, and getting her way.”

“That’s all very well, Lenora,” James said. “The morning, however, is not an appropriate time for some activities.”

“May I have that statement in writing, Milord? I’ll wager that Anne paid her calls the morning after her wedding.”

“Well, the wedding night is special.”

“The real difference is between your picture of your sister and your picture of your wife,” Lenora said. “Dorwich’s sister should be above all the temptations of the flesh. His wife, on the other hand, is there for the specific purpose of being tempted.”

“Still, Lenora,” Charles said, “temptation is not the worst way a husband can treat his wife. There are husbands who expect their wives to follow their orders.” Charles had mixed feelings about James. There was family loyalty, family rivalry, the history of growing up his brother’s henchman and then following that reputation to Cambridge. He certainly was pleased that their marriage was happy and that Lenora behaved almost like a Tarleton. Brian, Deborah’s husband, was a dry stick and rather hen pecked.

“I made the same point to Lady Jennifer Strickland, Lenora’s aunt,” James said. “I can remember making it to Lenora during one waltz, as well. Bullies are not men who are used to getting their ways. Bullies are men who are used to not getting their ways and are frightened of continuing in that pattern.”

“This was during a waltz, dear?” Lady Minerva asked. “I wonder what waltzes you had in which discussing marriage was seemly. Tell me again the history of your courtship.”

“I proposed to Lenora in her father’s library,” James said. “We had our first kiss shortly thereafter.”

“That would be a much more likely claim had I not witnessed you spending an inordinate amount of time with her in a maze which you know like the back of your hand.”

“Every single word of what he said,” Lenora affirmed, “is true.”

“Which, said of a report by James,” his mother said, “implies that the sentences are not.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lenora said. “James, the truth is so much less than what they all suspect. Couldn’t we tell it straight?”

“As your husband and master, I command silence.”

Lenora took that as permission. That was not something James would say if he truly desired her silence. “My father had two libraries, you see. One in London, and a much more extensive one in Surrey. The rural library was rather my refuge when I was in the country. One day, James escorted my aunt to Walton Hall, and I hadn’t heard that he was there. He went into the library to read, and took a window seat for some reason.”

“The light was better,” James said. This was a good story, and he had only deprived his family of it out of stubbornness. If it was to be told, he would have the pleasure of telling his part. “It was getting on towards dusk.”

“I had just come from a discussion with father. I had agreed to the Season, but had repeated that I would only marry for love. Father said that I should allow love to find me, which it would not if I kept hiding away in the library. Did I expect Lord Lochinvar to come through the library window and carry me away? Both Father and I are fond of Walter Scott.”

“We know, dear,” Lady Minerva said. “At least we know about your fondness.” After all, she had named her first son Walter. That was James’s first son, too, and that Lenora had her choice for the names of both children told her something about the wife her opinionated son had chosen.

“So, with that jest in my memory,” Lenora continued, “I’m sitting in the library when a stranger comes in through the window. It was just James coming from the window seat, but it was startling nevertheless.”

“She sat there with a knife in her hand. She was using it to cut pages, but she clutched it rather tightly.”

“He was a large man, however handsome. He had surprised me and he spoke coldly to me.”

“Now, m’love,” James said, “I was speaking quite politely to the woman I saw. You weren’t dressed as a lady, and I had no idea that you were the daughter of the house. Admit that I courteously honored your station as soon as I learned of it.”

“That you did. The library was my normal place in the hall, and, while my father -- and my brothers when they were home -- took books from there, nobody else lingered there. The new guest, although he was only reading Scott and one volume at that, seemed to inhabit the place.”

“The greatest attraction of the house, of the entire county, was this beauty. I soon learned where and when to meet her. We got into conversations.”

“Flirtations, you mean,” Lady Minerva said.

“Not at all,” Lenora said. “From my perspective, at least, they were serious conversations. My father and my aunt were in the process of telling me what I should do. Nobody seemed to give any thought to what I wanted -- nobody except the sympathetic London Earl. I thought he was sympathetic at least.”

“Meanwhile,” said Stroud, “he was plotting to seduce you.”

“Meanwhile,” Said James, “I was quite decided that seducing her was beneath my honor. I don’t deny that I was attracted. I was also attracted by the conversations themselves. Lenora thinks. She thought back then, and the conversations were better than most I had at the clubs. They were miles above what I had with the empty-headed chits of the ton.”

“I have told you,” said Stroud. “Nurseries are not filled par la tette mais par la queue.”

“That’s all very well,” said James. “But I wanted to have breakfast conversations with someone worth conversing with. After all, you had an intelligent wife; I didn’t think it fair for you to deny me one. Then, one night, I had a revelation. I woke up seeing that all my problems had one solution, and so did all of Lenora’s problems. If I married her, I could fill the nursery at Dorwich House and stop your nagging. I could have in my bed the marvelous body for which I had been lusting without betraying her honor or -- for that matter -- my own. She was, after all, the daughter of my host.”

“See how tender my brother is of your honor, Lenora,” Charles said. “He forwent seducing you while he was your father’s guest.”

“And, most of all,” James continued, “I would have that marvelous mind against which to whet my own mind. It would solve Lenora’s problems, too. She was dreading the marriage market and the Season. Well, she could avoid the Season, and she would not have to fear the marriage market. She had intellectual interests which might put some possible suitors off. I already knew of those interests and would encourage them. Admit it, love, I have encouraged your study of natural philosophy.”

“You have bought the journals that my father had bought in previous times,” Lenora said. “You’ve also filled my nights with entertainments that distract and my belly with babes that totally replace the attention that I used to apply to them ... Very well, I admit that I haven’t seen another man that would bear with such interests in his wife.”

“And so,” James went on, “I marshaled my arguments, waited until we were both in the library where nobody else ever intruded although the door was always open. There, with us looking out the window almost as far from the door as possible, I proposed and kissed her.”

“These can’t be done at the same time,” Lenora said, “but James didn’t leave any time between them. Really, you know, maidens are less often surprised by kisses than their swains think. I was totally astounded by his, however. I slapped him and fled.”

“Her slap was quite sincere, too,” James said. “She got my ear, and it hurt. I was rather pleased on the whole. It wouldn’t have been fair, considering what she had said about her wishes and her father’s, to have asked Walton first. If she reported to him, though, she couldn’t blame me. I would merely ask his permission to repeat my proposal. In the event, she said nothing. At our next private interview, she declined, declined most vehemently. She told me that I had used the wrong argument, but she gave me not the slightest clue what the correct argument would be.”

“It seemed to me, from the kiss,” Lenora said, “that he was trying to persuade me by lust. I had sworn to marry only for love. I was much clearer on those concepts and the difference between them before I had experienced either.”

“The kiss was a persuasion by lust?” Stroud said. “That must have been some kiss.”

“Well,” James said, “she did slap me, after all. She fairly-well had to. So, I needed a kiss worth the slap. Besides, I had been teased by guessing that shape from sight alone and a few decorous waltzes. I needed to feel it under my hand and full against me.”

“Besides,” Lenora said, “more than the kiss was influencing my opinion. I’d had many suspicions that he was ogling me. I’d convinced myself that it was merely my imagination.”

“James ogling a pretty girl?” Charles asked. “That doesn’t require much imagination.”

“Then,” Lenora continued, “there were all those waltzes. Before I met James, I was convinced that I was a rational woman.”

“You were a blue stocking?” Lady Minerva asked.

“She had ambitions in that direction,” James said.

“And, after dancing with him, I was convinced that I was a sensualist.” Lenora had learned long since that the way to finish a thought was to ignore interruptions from James. She could see that the rest of his family needed the same behavior if she were ever to complete a thought. “That was one worry about the Season that dissipated soon. I was not all that sensuous a woman after waltzes with other men.”

“You had waltzes with other men?” Lady Minerva asked. “I thought James monopolized you.”

“I did my best,” James said, “but I could only get one dance a night. She danced wonderfully, and she listened to my arguments, but she continued to reject me.”

“Now, I understand why he loves you so much, dear,” Lady Minerva said. “You told him no. James really needs to be denied more often. What I want to know is what happened in the maze.”

“He told me he loved me,” Lenora said, “and I told him I loved him, too. I’d known the latter for the longest time, though it had confused me at first. I couldn’t say whether I loved him or I hated him. Then he proposed again and I accepted.”

“Well,” Stroud said, “love and hate. Are they really mutually contradictory?”

“As I said, Lord Horace, I was very young then. I was certain about all sorts of things about which I have no certainty now.”

“Even so. He proposed. Even with James’s verbosity, that takes only a few minutes. Acceptance takes less. You were in that maze for an awfully long time.”

“To be precise,” James said, “I only propose in libraries. I hadn’t repeated that proposal in the dances or the maze. I did press my suit. We were in a maze, after all, we had to get to the center; we had to get back out. And, having become engaged, there needed to be time for a kiss.”

“Are you sure it was only a kiss?” asked Lady Minerva. “We always feared that you went further.”

“Well,” Charles said, “she did bleed on her wedding night.”

“I cannot persuade any of my family to ignore servants’ gossip.”

“That kiss,” Lenora said, “could hardly be called ‘only a kiss.’ As far as I was concerned, I would have stayed in his arms until full dark, and you could have sought us with lanterns.”

“And after all that,” Stroud said, “after a kiss that took an unseemly length of time concealed from all, you gallop off to Walton to ask him -- in feigned innocence -- for permission to propose?”

“Well as I told you,” James said, “I hadn’t just proposed in the maze. It’s one thing to tell a man that you’ve just proposed to his daughter and been accepted and that you want his permission for the marriage. It’s another thing to tell him that you have been pursuing her for months without a by-your-leave and that you want his approval now. Besides, I wanted an engagement. That acceptance had been a little too discreet. Then, too, my story was that I had proposed in Walton’s library; I had first kissed the lovely Lenora immediately after that proposal. That story is the absolute truth, despite my family’s invidious suspicions.”

“So, to keep your story both technically accurate and within the bounds of propriety,” Charles said, “you arranged for two proposals and two kisses in two different libraries. That is devious, James, devious even for you.” The tone in his voice was frank admiration.

“Well,” James said, “Walton can’t complain. He had the public proprieties, and he spends much more time in London since Aphra’s birth.”

“Father is happy,” Lenora said. “He says that he doesn’t understand James and never will. He thinks the marriage a happy one, and that is what he wanted for me.”

“Well, Lenora,” Lady Minerva said, “all of us think your marriage a happy one. Are we all mistaken?”

“I am quite happy. If some enjoyments interfere with others, that is quite the dilemma you wish for yourself. I believe James is happy, too, and I try to keep him so. If the mixture of love and lust works for us, why not believe it will work for Anne and Lionel?”

“Is that their mixture, then?” Stroud asked. “At this time in the morning, I will quite believe lust.”

“Well, as far as I can tell, as far as she can tell, Anne is in love. Is her husband? Not so obviously as Anne. On the other hand, Anne is a lovable girl. She is quite determined to be a lovable woman, and she has as great a start as anyone could. She has planted the seeds of Lord Lionel’s love for her. Do we do her any favors by digging that garden up to see if they have sprouted?”

Lady Minerva laughed. “Lenora, your marriage to James has resulted in more than children. That is a metaphor as persuasive as any that I’ve ever heard from him.” And she made the firm resolve that she would voice no disapproval when she saw the delinquents at luncheon.

Anne woke, went into her dressing room, and rang for Joyce. It was but an hour before luncheon when they finally got downstairs, but she asked for a pot of tea for the two of them in the breakfast room. They didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. What she wanted to say to Lionel is that she loved him. She feared, however, his reaction. He’d say the same, but he would be ashamed of the lie. She did feel, however, that she was enjoying marriage very much, and that Lionel seemed to be enjoying it, too.

When the tea came in, Cook was carrying it herself, and she was beaming at them both. She felt herself blushing, and she hoped Lionel wasn’t aware of the cause of Cook’s happiness. When they joined the others for luncheon, she abandoned any hope that Lionel would mistake the comments on how long they’d slept. Her brothers were not even trying to be subtle.

“Well,” mother said, “when we had company, the Grants contributed handsomely. If either of you can claim one accomplishment from this morning’s occupation, then you might have more grounds for tasking them with playing truant.”

From Lenora’s glance, Anne had her sympathy, but she didn’t try to rein in James. After luncheon, Anne went for a walk with Lenora.

Lenora wanted all the details, but she was certain she wasn’t going to hear them. “Are you still in favor of being your husband’s mistress?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. But he works to please me. I want to learn how to please him.”

“Well, there are worse conflicts possible between husband and wife than competing as to whom will please the other more. Are you fully convinced that his pleasing you doesn’t please him?”

“He suggests that it does,” Anne admitted.

“Well, without consulting him, I’ll wager that calling him a liar won’t please him. Besides, do you love him more than you did when you insisted on him, less, or just the same?”

“I think more, certainly, I love aspects of him I never suspected. The entire matter of the marital bed. Mother said that most women come to enjoy it, but I didn’t think she meant enjoy it this much.”

Lenora decided to leave that thought bubbling in Anne’s mind. She seemed to enjoy that more than many married women did, but she was new to it, too. “Well, if your love can change, then love can change. It is not one thing and an all-or-none affair. You are married, and one is either all married or not married at all. You are in love, but you are in love in various ways, and other women are in love in other ways. If Lord Lionel gives you a child or two over the next few years, I will guarantee that you will love him differently. You might not love him less, but you will not love him in the same way.”

“I can believe that. I don’t think I’m increasing, though.”

“That can take a while. Don’t be in such a hurry. Anyway, if love can have different aspects, then -- surely -- one way a man can love a woman is to wish to please her sexually. It is not all of love, even for men, but it is one aspect. So, you have a goal, that he love you. You are one step towards that goal. For the love of God, do not reject what you have been given. Allow him to please you, and express gratitude that he does please you. Then, too, you are proud of your accomplishments, riding, music, and so forth. Are you not?”

“Do you think I am too proud?” Anne asked.

“I think you are too self-centered in any case. I am using you for an example of the human being. You are proud of what you can do. Lord Lionel may be proud of what he can do. And one thing that he can do, apparently, is bring a new wife -- a quite recent maiden -- to sexual ecstasy. It might well be the accomplishment that gives him the most pride right now. Let him glory in it. Then, too, remember that it is an accomplishment that he can only really exercise with you. Other women are available to him, but no other chaste ladies are, nor are any other chaste ladies ever likely to be.”

“You think that I am winning?”

“I think that this is a race in which the contestants are yoked,” Lenora told her. “I think that the Grant yoke is winning.”

“Lenora, you are the nicest woman. By marrying you, James made up for years of tormenting me.”

Which, Lenora thought, was high praise from a Tarleton. She went to find James. Having condemned love in the forenoon, perhaps he could express an opinion of love in the afternoon.

Anne went to find Lionel. “I don’t think my brothers approved of how we spent the morning,” she told him.

“I fear that you are right.”

“They would say something vicious if they even saw us kissing.”

“Probably,” he said.

“Which means that we should hide in the north wing before we do.” So, they did. They tired of standing before they tired of kissing, or at least before she tired of kissing. Then he sat on her bed while she sat on his lap. They changed for dinner, and only Joyce and Samuel saw how mussed their clothes were before they did.

When Mother led her and Lenora out of the room after dinner, Anne suggested the music room instead of a sitting room. The men followed the sound of her singing and playing when they were done. Lionel joined her in a duet. She hadn’t known that he could sing, and said so.

“She married you before checking out your voice?” Charles said. “I had thought from the duet that this was why she was so insistent.”

“No,” she said, “he looks so fine, and he dances so well. I didn’t know how well he sang.”

“Well,” Father said, “dancing is the worst of all recommendations for marriage. Married couples seldom dance with each other.”

“Vertically,” James said. Everyone laughed including Mother.

“Well,” she pointed out, “one hardly has the option of trying out the other before a marriage.” That brought a hushing gesture from Mother, which was so unfair. What was a witty remark from James in mixed company was immodesty on her part. Lionel was disturbed, too, which closed her mouth. Mother was still trying to make her a good girl. Lionel wanted the shy maiden whom he had ushered into passion. She would gladly hang Mother’s good girl, but Lionel’s shy maiden was one aspect of being his woman, and she wanted -- wanted desperately -- to be his woman.

Lionel had a moment upstairs with Anne before ringing for Joyce and Samuel. The kiss was sweet, but he thought it could be sweeter.

“This was lovely this afternoon,” he said. “Now, I keep thinking that we are only delaying greater intimacy. Should we use your bed tonight?”

“Yours,” she said. “And I shall have to leave you there. I am almost certain that I’m not carrying your heir this month.” He connected her comments. He was starting to understand the Tarleton speech. It was more cryptic than Greek. Well, if she would dislike having his love during her menses, it was no dislike of him. If this was going to be their last evening for a week, he would take the effort to make it memorable. He did, and it was.

The next evening, there were guests. It was a rather wet night, and late for the country. When guests expected to go home, they never stayed as late as they would in London. He stopped outside Anne’s dressing room as had become their custom.

“This must be all we have,” Anne said after the first kiss. “It seems unfair when I get this pleasure and you don’t get yours.”

“That isn’t what it is,” Lionel began. “Well, we must discuss this some time when I’m sober enough to speak clearly. Right now, we have more important work for our mouths.” They kissed again, and he plundered her mouth. When he broke the kiss, he scattered kisses across her cheek, moving on to her ear and her throat. He returned to her mouth for another kiss, gentler this time. “Now ring for Joyce, and I’ll ring for Samuel.” She went in, and he went three doors further down.

After breakfast, he said, “I really haven’t seen all of the grounds. Anne, would you show them to me?” The ploy was transparent, but her brothers didn’t comment. A walk on the grounds was the way anyone at Stroud Hall got privacy for a conversation.

“Now then,” he said when they were far away from any ears. “I believe that you did not know about the kiss with the open mouth before you wed me.”

“That is certainly true.”

“Yet, you enjoy it now.”

“Oh, yes,” Anne said. “You haven’t seen the orchard yet. Should we wait until we are there?”

“You are insatiable. I am trying to make a point. Since you didn’t know that you would like it, I couldn’t know that you would like it that much. The reason I did it that first time was that I enjoy it. Can you believe that?”

“Certainly.”

“Yet,” he said, “you seem to believe that what you enjoy is not what I enjoy. That is simply false. What I look for are the things we both enjoy. I believe we have found some.”

“Oh, yes. I couldn’t believe how much pleasure you have brought me.”

“And some of my pleasure, but only some, is in the pleasure that you get. So don’t worry so much about how little pleasure I get. I enjoy the kisses, too.”

Lionel considered suggesting that intercourse even during her menses might be pleasant for both of them. He decided to delay that suggestion to another time. Anne talked too openly with her mother and her sister-in-law. He didn’t want her asking their opinion. Next month they would be at Glassmere Hall, and Anne would hardly discuss this with Mother.

Anne felt that she had to proceed on what Lionel said pleased him. She had no other source of information. She remembered, however, how she had nearly to demand kisses from him to get any at the beginning. Still, he was correct that he had surprised her with the open-mouthed kiss. He knew so much more than she did, but he had been loath to open his store house to her. Perhaps he was willing now. Lenora was insistent that she shouldn’t nag, and that was simple common sense. She would be a prize ass to send all this effort seducing him and then make her conversation so distasteful that he obtained a mistress for the pleasure of her conversation.

“Lionel, mon mari,” she said. “You are so wise.”

“That may be as that may be, but I have not seen the orchards yet.” So she led him to the orchards.

“And the pear trees are in this direction,” she said when they had kissed for a while. So they went to see the pear trees and saw them -- she assumed Lionel saw them, she mostly had her eyes closed -- for a good long while. When they got back from seeing the cherry trees, it was nearly time to dress for luncheon.

After luncheon she selected a nice, sturdy chair from a sitting room. She had two footmen carry it up to her bedroom. That evening, she led Lionel into her room, sat him in the chair, and perched on his lap for the kisses. What had begun as an almost formal parting at her dressing-room door had evolved into a long period of mutual enjoyment each night. Her breasts were a little tender, but she thought that having deprived him of his major desire, depriving him of touching them would be going too far.

When her flow slowed a few days later, she decided on some visits to her old friends. She invited Lionel to go riding with her after breakfast. When they had changed, he again lifted her into the saddle. Then she set out for a farmhouse nearly a mile away. They rode beside each other on the main road so she could explain the situation.

“There are too few girls of interesting ages at any time out here to be fussy about protocol. Our only requirement was that you rode and rode well. Most farmers, of course, could not afford to support a horse for a girl’s exclusive use, and there were a few girls who didn’t ride well enough. I was one of the few that had to be escorted, especially when we rode as a group. Some of the girls thought that one of the grooms was handsome, and they used to tease me to get Alfred to ride with me.”

“A groom? And these were gentlewomen?”

“All they did was look, although Agnes -- Agnes was a regular minx -- used to get down from her horse every time she rode into Stroud-Hall grounds to get me. Then Alfred would have to lift her back on. I mounted by myself using a mounting block. Anyway, the girls who had a season are far afield. So are some who didn’t. The first one I’m taking you to see married the son of a gentleman farmer. We used to tease her awfully about him, but Mother wrote about her babe, and it arrived ten months after the wedding.”

“I’m shocked,” Lionel said. “I thought that butter wouldn’t melt in the mouths of maiden gentlewomen.”

“You had to watch your speech around us, and we watched our speech around you. We were just better at it.” She thought that ladies were better at all sorts of things than lords were. She might be a better rider than most men -- and Deborah certainly would be -- if they didn’t have to ride side-saddle. She gestured to the turn, and led the way up to the quite substantial stone farmhouse.

“Is Mrs. Martha at home?” she asked the maid who came to the door.

“It’s Lady Anne Tarleton ma’am,” the maid could be heard speaking to that gentlewoman. She must be downstairs.