Hugh and I were punting far upstream on the Thames when we talked the Cornwall matter over, and we let our boat drift idly to the shade of the riverbank. Hugh was very tense and somber. I tried to lighten his mood although I myself felt beclouded on what was otherwise an enchanting, sunny afternoon filled to the brim now with the caroling of birds and the ceaseless chatter of the insects. I took off my flowing hat, let my black hair cascade over my shoulders and unbuttoned the first few buttons of my shirtwaist, affording Hugh a fine view of the swell of my breasts. I knew he was affected because I saw his response-it was quicker and more thoroughgoing than ever before. I wanted to touch it through the fabric of his trousers, but I dared not do so. I could not restrain myself, however, from staring at it, nor could I check the sigh that escaped my lips. “Clarissa-”
“Yes, Hugh?” “Must you go about unfastened?” “It's terribly warm.” “By this point, Clarissa, I could have an orgasm simply by looking at you.” I felt a terrible oiliness churning within me and I knew that my pubes were slick with secretion. “I don't want you to have it that way, Hugh.” It occurred to me I wasn't doing a very good job of lightening his mood. “Oh, hell,” I added, smiling one-sidedly, “have it any damned way you like-it's not the end-all and the be-all. Just take the damned thing out of your trousers and play with it and then squirt it into the Thames-there isn't another punt on the horizon, so nobody could possibly notice.”
His somberness broke and gave way to laughter. “There's not another female,” he said, “in all of England who would speak to me the way you just have.” “And so you love me.” His laughter subsided. He looked at me gravely and said what he had never admitted before. “Yes,” he said. “I love you, Clarissa.” My eyes must have been shining from the hint of my tears. Nevertheless, I spoke prosaically enough. “Then there's nothing hideous to a summer separation-we can be married in the fall,” I said. “I realize that, Clarissa, but I don't want you going through an entire summer feeling sexually suppressed and therefore very possibly resentful-you might end the summer by hating me.” “I don't think that likely, Hugh, but we needn't take chances…” “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” He gazed at me speculatively.
“Yes, Clarissa, I guess I do. A vivid memory can be of great help in retrospect.” He took a long breath. He gazed at me with the most beautiful yearning I have ever seen on a man's face- as if he must without a single error commit me to memory. But there was a strange element in his eye, a kind of abstractedness that made me feel misgivings. But I was at sea with respect to those misgivings-I had no reference point. What could my anxiety be about? I had absolutely no idea. But what I did feel was that I could wait for a summer to pass before occupying the same bed with Hugh, and I said so. He shook his head, demurring. “No,” he said, “it's too much to ask. I've delayed this long enough, Clarissa. I will take you home now and tonight you will come round to my rooms. Doubtless you can satisfy your parents about your prospective absence by a pretext-say, the London Symphony will be playing for the first time a composition by Elgar, which in fact it is, and that you absolutely must hear the performance.” “All right, Hugh.” “The real performance will take place at Number Sixteen Gimquarles Street-it is just off St Paul's.” “Yes, Hugh, I know.” “I will expect you at eight.”
“Yes.” Quite suddenly, then, Viscount Kinsteares was very jaunty. His merry air had something of the impishly bawdy to it. It was as if-in the light of what eventually occurred-he had cast all caution to the winds, that he had decided to yield to the Devil, after all. His jaunty air struck terror to my soul-and I had absolutely no inkling why.
8
“My man, Heeg,” said Hugh Kinsteares, “is gone for the evening-we shan't be interrupted, not at least until eleven of the clock, when Heeg returns… Is that satisfactory, Clarissa?” I was standing by the window, peering out at the mutedly gaslit city and at the bulk, not far off, of St. Paul's. “Indeed,” I said, curtsying. “We shall couple under the beneficent shadow of St.
Paul's.” He smiled, but not at all jauntily-that mood had vanished. Despite the smile, the man's face was melancholy. His concentration searched every part of the room, as if to anchor each attribute-even a grisly Hogarth engraving that Hugh had framed just above the fireplace. “My Lord,” I said, “you seem faintly dispirited.” “Do you think so, Clarissa? Then I must seek your apologies -we have here no occasion for dispiritedness. On the contrary, we celebrate our prenuptials. Is that not so?” “Aye, My Lord.” I crossed over to the man, my hips swaying, and put my arms about his neck as I leaned backward, my belly, however, continuing to be in contact with his, and our loins, roughly, on the same level. I was a tall girl, as I think I've remarked on before, and lacked only a few inches to equal Hugh's. “Oh, my God,” Hugh said, “you are incomparably seductive.” He roughly plucked at my decolletage and brought forth my teats whose nipples he then addressed himself to.
With one hand I stroked the curly blond hair at the back of his neck, and with the other the quite elongated staff through the material of his trousers. I was for several moments in a state of bliss, and I realized that in a little while, if I persisted, I would be in a state of ecstasy because, while the viscount sucked at my nipples, he had lifted my dress and skirts and was tantalizingly playing with the short curly hairs of my mount without venturing further. His breath was labored but he managed to convey how much he adored me, worshipped me, loved me. “Incomparably seductive,” he said, raising his head, “and fantastically beautiful…” It was at that moment that he touched what I am pleased to call the most excitable semiburied tissue in the whole of the human anatomy, excepting the prick, of course. My knees threatened to give way. I was alarmingly liquescent-and I did not wish to achieve the heights without my mover-and-shaker paralleling me. “Hugh,” I said. “Yes?” “I want to undress and lie down with you.” “Of course, Clarissa.” He still breathed stertorously when I went-to the bathroom, which only led me to think that the viscount rarely, if ever, must have exercised in the sweep of his twenty-one years. The supposition did not trouble me and I therefore took it no further while I rapidly moved to the state of nudity. When I reappeared before him, I must have seemed magnificent. He sharply sucked in his breath several times as his eye traveled the length of me-from my face helmeted by jet-black tresses to the largesse of my high-nippled breasts, and then to the region of the essential female where the hair curled as if ebon foam. There was the bloom of my hips and the fruit of my arse. I rippled, I was sleek, I was all velvet as he showed me his own broad-shouldered elegance after he had led me into his austere, practically ascetic bedroom that had nothing more in it than the simplest of beds, an unprepossessing highboy and a small face mirror resting on its top. I sucked in my own breath sharply when he revealed the reach of his apparatus. It was snakelike, but with no touch of the venomous as I was to learn of another later in the evening. Crooning, cooing, I took the hooded, warm-skinned creature into my mouth, playing with it, teasing it, drawing upon it as though through a straw until Hugh, paling, fell back upon the bed. Had I attended his pallor, I would have quit the game instantly, but I was too caught up in the overwhelming reverberations of my own senses-I had my beloved, I had my beloved, I kept repeating to myself. I shook my breasts as if they were barbaric bracelets, and Hugh leaped upon them with feverish hands, twirling them as if he would strike a primitive fire from them, and my little moans in a little while were tributaries to a scream as Hugh mounted me, a curious foam at the comers of his mouth. Shrieking triumphantly, I guided him in and he proceeded to dart at my roots-as if to cut them off, or scalp me, or punch a hundred holes in me. I screamed again and again. There was a wild, crazed expression on Hugh's face-not unusual in the circumstances, I thought; but what I did not notice was the slackness of his jaw and an increasing stupor to his eye, as if he were about to go blind. And, just before I was about to have an orgasm, Hugh Kinsteares suddenly became rigid and abruptly ceased all motion and lay heavily atop me. There was a good deal of white foam about his lips. “Hugh,” I whispered. There was no response.