‘Most Spaniards think that the pace of change is too fast, that we have come too far too quickly and that it will all end, inevitably, very badly,’ Alonso had chuckled, his gaze fixed on Melody’s face and unambiguously liking everything he beheld, ‘however, you and I both know that for all the talk of progress, this is a country still mired in the throes of its first industrial revolution in which innovation, imagination itself, is stifled by the dead hand of an infallible monarchy and the Inquisition. Oh, yes, I know, we no longer burn heretics, and it is hard◦– but by no means impossible◦– to see us going back to the days of the Jewish pogroms, that I suppose, is progress of a sort. But we both know that even those provinces◦– like New Granada, or as some now call it ‘Mexico’, Cuba, Santo Domingo, the Philippine lands, even some of the kingdoms of the Southern Americas◦– who still pay lip service to the Empire, have each developed their own systems of civilization, their own interpretations of the one true Faith and that none of them can be trusted to bend the knee, let alone bow their heads to the will of the King-Emperor.’
It had been nearly midnight by then.
Melody had been light-headed.
‘I think we should stop talking now,’ she had declared, suddenly nervous. Her moment of panic came and went in a blink of the eye, washed away by a rush of pure… wanting.
The man had walked her to his rooms on the opposite side of the house from the guest quarters. In the corridor outside his bed chamber he had halted, and like a true gentleman, waited for a final, unambiguous sign.
That had been a nice touch.
She had placed his hands on her breasts and stretched her arms around his neck◦– he was three or four inches taller than her◦– and pulled his mouth down to hers.
After that things had taken their natural course.
Naked in his bed he had stroked, kissed and tickled her until she was practically wetting herself and then, very tenderly made love to her as if she was precious, fragile until she began to whisper the sort of things in his ear which were guaranteed to bring out the beast in any man.
She had fallen asleep in his arms sometime after their second lazy, greedy coupling as he nibbled the lobe of her left ear and only awakened when the first greyness of the pre-dawn began to spread into the bedroom.
‘How long have you been watching me?’ She had asked sleepily.
‘Not long,’ he had smiled, his left hand beginning to rove beneath the sheets as they lay facing each other. ‘I may not see you again this way for a long time. I wish to remember everything…’
Men are so full of horse manure!
Melody had pretended to play hard to get; he had enthusiastically taken her from behind and she was not about to complain. She had giggled when he thrust one last, shuddering time and collapsed upon her, briefly crushing her down into the mattress and lying on top of her gasping for breath.
The man’s wife really did not know what she was missing!
Alonso had watched her searching around for a shift to hide her modesty and gather up her other, wantonly strewn garments from all around the bed.
Presently, she had leaned across him, planting a wet kiss on his mouth, resisting the temptation to fall back into his arms.
‘Thank you,’ she had murmured.
‘The pleasure was all mine, Melody.’
She had straightened, looking down at him.
‘Thank you, anyway,’ she had said, giggling. ‘That was a truly lovely fuck, Alonso…’ And then she had fled like a thief in the night. Except it was getting light at the time…
And now she did not have the first idea what to say to Henrietta, whom she was as sure as she had ever been about anything in her whole life, she loved…
Melody sat down on the edge of the bed.
She shrugged: “You know more about me than anybody alive,” she sighed. “It just happens that the only people I have fallen in love with up to now happen to be women but I’m not any kind of nun… I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say…” She groaned, her head befuddled by post-coital confusion and suddenly aware of how tired and battered she felt. “God, I must look dreadful…”
“You smell of him,” Henrietta retorted, dully.
That was what you smelled like when you had been frantically exchanging body fluids with somebody most of the night.
“I’m being stupid,” the younger woman muttered and made as if to rise to her feet.
Melody reached out for her arm and dragged her back down beside her. Henrietta put up only token resistance.
The women sat close yet apart.
“Don’t tell me you slept with him because of politics,” Henrietta hissed.
“I didn’t. But I’m not about to become Alonso’s mistress or anything.”
The high excitement of the women’s first infatuation had soon been subsumed into the reality of their lives and their primarily cosmetic part in the futile mission in Spain. They were hardly ever really alone together, always watched either by the Spanish or their own people, forever having to pretend that they, and their feelings for each other, were something other than what they were and as time had gone by it had become very nearly unbearable.
It was worse for Henrietta, whom the other members of the Commission regarded as mere ‘pretty window dressing’ and generally treated, albeit with exaggerated courtesy, like a brainless teenager. Melody at least, was in some sense ‘on the team’ and had the title of CSS Liaison Officer, thereby guaranteeing she was automatically copied into the never-ending, largely ephemeral documentation the exercise generated to keep its paymasters back in Whitehall busy.
“What if you get pregnant?” Henrietta blurted, on the verge of a flood of tears.
“I won’t.”
“How can you know that?”
Melody had confided most of her secrets to her friend and thus far, to her chagrin, only very occasional lover. Henrietta was very innocent in some things; and she had made allowances as one did for somebody one cared, deeply about.
“Ten years ago, I underwent a sterilization procedure,” she confessed, suspecting that she too was about to burst into tears. “That’s the little scar above my pubis that I laughed off the first time we slept together.”
“Oh…”
“I got pregnant, I planned to have an abortion in Paris◦– they don’t ask questions if you wave a wad of bank notes at them there, but I miscarried first. Probably, because of the stress of it all. Anyway, I decided that I was never going to go through that again and spent my money on having my tubes tied…”
“You were in a relationship?”
“Sort of, it hadn’t come to anything. He was looking for a submissive little wifey and I was never going to be that. He raped me when I told him it wasn’t going to work for me…”
“You never said…”
Melody felt the first tears wetting her cheek.
“I’ve never told anybody that before, okay. I’m not a victim and I got over it,” she insisted, her face suddenly burning hot, “and talking about it is very painful.”
Henrietta did not know what to say.