“As a matter of fact, I think it’s disgusting – ”
“Yes, yes,” Pemberly interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “So, can you bend your rule if she falls in love with you for ‘good and charitable deeds’?”
“I told you, I have no ulterior motive.”
“When did you turn into St. Francis, taking care of all the little birds and domestics?”
“She’s a talented young woman. She’s not even supposed to be a servant. Something happened, and her parents sent her here. Her aunt and uncle work for us.”
“Of course, of course,” Pemberly clucked in mock sympathy.
“What?” Evan scowled.
“Your tale sounds like just the type of book I want to publish: virtuous young heroine, sent to the house of a cruel and lascivious master, who robs her of her virtue…”
“I think that’s your biography you’re speaking of.”
Pemberly frowned, as though just now realizing the truth. “By Jove, I knew it sounded familiar.”
At just that moment, Marian walked into the room, shy and unsure of herself. Even in her plain black dress and white smock, with stray strands of hair poking out of her cotton bonnet, she looked beautiful as wildflowers picked fresh from the field.
Evan felt that familiar ache, that growing hunger.
Pemberly stared up at her, his mouth slightly open.
Evan started to stand, then remembered that she was a servant, and reluctantly forced himself to remain seated. “Miss Marian Willows, Lord Alan Pemberly.”
Marian curtsied. “M’lord.”
Pemberly turned to Evan and used an overly loud stage whisper. “I see what you’re playing at now.”
“What?” Marian asked, confused, as she looked between the two of them.
“Nothing,” Pemberly assured her with a smile, then turned and whispered loudly to Evan again. “Be absolutely
sure
to collect your fee.”
Evan threw him a savage look.
“M’lord?” Marian frowned.
“So, Blake tells me you’re quite the talented writer!” Pemberly said in an enthusiastic voice.
“Mr. Blake does me a great honor,” Marian said.
“Yes, yes, well, life does confer honors that are not always deserved.”
Marian squinted at the little man and said waspishly, “Sometimes by birth.”
Evan pretended to cough in order to hold back his laughter.
Pemberly looked taken aback. “O-ho! So it is to be a duel of wits, then?”
“I do not fight unarmed men, m’lord.”
Evan had to turn his head away to hide his hilarity.
Pemberly’s expression lay halfway between indignation and pure delight. “I say, listening to her insults is like listening to a parrot. One can almost mistake the utterances for signs of intelligence.”
“Whereas with some people, there are no signs at all,” Marian answered.
Evan started choking.
Whether Pemberly was actually annoyed, or only feigning it at this point, he turned to Evan. “I say, Blake, do you always allow your servants to run roughshod over courtesy?”
“Pardon, m’lord – I thought I was only running roughshod over
you,
” Marian said with a curtsy.
“Are you going to stand for this brazen impudence? Allowing your servants to insult a guest?” Pemberly demanded.
“I thought this was a duel of wits,” Evan snorted with laughter.
“Oh. I did not know it had begun,” Marian said, stifling a yawn with her hand.
“Enough! I shall not stoop to insult my intellectual inferiors,” Pemberly said pompously.
“If ever you stooped to insult your intellectual inferiors, m’lord, you would find no one to insult,” Marian smiled sweetly.
“I – you – ” Pemberly stammered, then turned to Evan. “All right, that was a good one, I have to admit.”
Evan wiped a tear from the corner of one eye.
“Now that we are done with the
pleasantries
,” Pemberly said with a cocked eyebrow, “what is it that you write?”
For the first time since walking in the room, Marian seemed abashed. “I… novels, m’lord.”
“Similar to what?”
Marian glanced at Evan, as though she were worried about his reaction, and hesitated.
“All I had to do to shut her up was ask her about her writing!” Pemberly remarked to Evan, then turned back to Marian. “Well? Cat got your tongue?”
“She has read a good deal of Voltaire and Defoe,” Evan said, trying to help Marian in her distress.
“Wonderful. If I want to publish novels in the style of boring old men, I now know whom to seek out,” Pemberly quipped.
Finally Marian found her voice. “I am a great fan of
Les Liaisons dangereuses
. Also
Le Diable amoureux, Le Sopha, conte moral, Thérèse Philosophe,
and
Les bijoux indiscrets.
”
There were a few seconds of silence. Evan looked slightly shocked.
“Those works are a far cry from
Robinson Crusoe,
” Pemberly commented.
Marian looked worriedly at Evan, who seemed to regard her in a new light. “But not so far from
Candide
.”
“Voltaire might have had something to say about that, if he were still alive.” Pemberly turned to Evan. “Do you know what he said on his deathbed when the priest asked him if he renounced Satan? ‘Now is no time to be making new enemies.’ Ha! Now
those
are final words to live by!”
Marian and Evan said nothing, just took turns looking at one other and then dropping their gaze to the floor.
Pemberly glanced back and forth between them, then finally tired of the silence. “Yes, well, this was a delight, although I think Voltaire would be a better conversationalist, even given his present circumstances. Miss Willows, was it? I will be happy to look at a manuscript of your choosing, just make sure there is more Merteuil and Valmont in it than Crusoe and Friday, hmm? I’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon. Be sure to get it to me before then.”
“Thank you, m’lord.” Marian curtsied and walked out, with one final worried glance over her shoulder at Evan.
Pemberly studied Evan carefully as he watched her go. Once Marian was out of the room, Pemberly let loose his true reaction.
“Good God, man, you look like a lovesick dog.”
Evan was startled – and indignant. “The deuce you say!”
“Not that I blame you. She’s – how shall I put this without offending your delicate sensibilities? – a fine,
fine
specimen of the female form. Ah! Alliteration!” Pemberly announced to no one in particular, as though he had found a charming surprise next to his wine glass.
“She is a servant,” Evan said.
“Yes, more’s the pity, since we both know you won’t pluck her. Would you mind if I have a go of it tonight?”
Evan’s face suddenly became dark and violently angry.
Pemberly smirked. “Don’t worry, old boy, I’m not about to embark on a suicide mission. It would seem she has eyes for only
one
of the two gentlemen seated here.”
Evan’s fury subsided. “I think you are mistaken.”
“How so?”
“There is only
one
gentleman seated here.”
“So there is! And he hasn’t filled my cup in the last five minutes,” Pemberly said, holding out his glass.
“So you will look at her manuscript?” Evan asked as he poured.
“Yes, yes, for God’s sake. You’re worse than my mother with your nagging.”
“I have to be. Her nagging never influenced you at all.”
“No, thank Heaven for that.”
“I trust
my
nagging will at least prompt you to read the poor girl’s work.”
Pemberly sighed with exasperated self-pity. “The things I do for you, Blake. And for your most excellent wine.”
Though the hour was late, Evan walked through Blakewood’s gardens to clear his wine-addled mind. The moon was full and the air was warm, humid, and filled with the perfume of flowers.
Pemberly, bless his corrupt soul, was a miracle worker. He had turned the usual dull dinner hour into a raucous affair. Not only had he prompted Andrew to appear, treat Evan civilly, and laugh uproariously, but he had even pried loose a smile or two from Lord Blake with his bawdy tales of life in London. Before he saw it with his own eyes, Evan would have sworn such a thing impossible: the old man was even more miserly with his smiles than his gold.
Pemberly recognized the monumental nature of it as well. “Tonight I have performed the Thirteenth Labor of Hercules,” he hiccupped as he dragged himself off to bed.
But once Pemberly had retreated to his room to sleep off the wine, Evan had been left alone again with his thoughts.
Of Marian.
Just seeing her would have been enough to set his mind spinning. But add to that the things she had said in the library! Not the witticisms and barbs, which were priceless; Pemberly’s tongue was sharp as a dagger, and to see him taken down was almost as rare as one of Father’s smiles.
No, the things that troubled Evan were the books.
He had thought of her all this time as an innocent, a young woman with no knowledge of the world, a naïf whose advances toward him were the play-acting of a child.
But those books!
Le Diable amoureux,
or
The Devil in Love,
was actually little more than a fantastical romance. But
Les Liaisons dangereuses
was scandalous, with its tales of wanton seductions used as weapons between dueling aristocrats.
Le Sopha
was the ribald tale of a man reincarnated as a sofa, who then relates the various sexual consummations that take place upon his new form. And
Les bijoux indescrets,
or
The Indiscreet Jewels,
was about a magic ring that made women’s… um,
privates
talk so they could tell the stories of their sexual escapades.
Editions had floated around boarding school and university, with everyone desperate to get their hands on a copy. Evan knew from his own experience that, behind the solitude of a locked door, one hand soon found its way around something else, as well.
The idea that Marian had read these things – much less
enjoyed
them and
emulated
them in her own writing – raised a storm of emotions in Evan.
First and foremost, it excited him. He saw that as a fault within himself, but the truth could not be denied: the idea of her reading those books… and what she might do to herself as she read… aroused him terribly.
And distressed him terribly, too. Her innocence was one of the main reasons he had not touched her.
If her innocence was only an illusion… what then?
He knew ‘what then’: it would be even harder
not
to touch her.
She was still a servant in his household, though.
But… if she had read those books… and if
she
did not care that she was a servant… why should he follow his damned rule anymore?
He walked more quickly down the garden path and untied the cravat around his neck. He was finding it harder and harder to breathe.
He supposed the vicars and priests of the world would have looked upon her as some sort of fallen woman, corrupt and sinful. Actually,
most
men would – and the more ‘respectable’ and ‘moral’ the men, the more savagely they would condemn her.
But why should Evan judge her any more harshly than himself? Or more harshly than he would judge a man, for that matter? Men did whatever they pleased in secret, then harangued women publicly for the exact same actions.
Likewise, men put women on pedestals all the time, then excoriated and despised them when they turned out not to be immaculate statues of marble, but humans with earthly desires.
He had seen it innumerable times. After a while he realized that men were often petty, insecure children, and that they feared women. They feared the power that women had over them, whether the women knew it or not.
And the only way to regain power over a thing one fears is to tear it down and revile it.
Evan had enjoyed women and their desires too much to ever do such a thing.
Although the power one particular woman had over him now was becoming too much for him to bear.
As he walked through the moonlight along the garden path, he suddenly heard a voice cry out in panic, “Who’s there?”
Her
voice.
Evan froze.
He wanted to say nothing, to turn and run in the opposite direction –
Actually, no, he wanted very much to stay and do things that would make the author of
La Sopha
blush.
Which is why he knew he
should
turn and run in the opposite direction.
“Who is it?” she asked again. He could hear the fear in her voice.
“Marian, is that you?” he finally asked, though he already knew it for a certainty. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded slurred from all the wine.
“Mr. Blake!” she gasped.
She stood up from a bench half-hidden by a rosebush. The moonlight spilled over her skin like milk, and glinted off her hair like silver.
His heart hammered against the anvil of his ribs.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“I… I was just out for a walk,” she said feebly.
“As was I,” he said, his mouth dry.
“I will leave you to it, then,” she said. “Forgive me for interrupting you.”
“Actually…” he said, and tried very hard to stop himself.
He failed.
“…would you care to join me?”
He swore he could see her tremble in the moonlight.
“If it pleases you.”
“It… would please me very much.”
She walked towards him tentatively. He offered his arm to her, and she put her dainty hands upon his sleeve.
He knew it was ridiculous, offering to go on a walk with a servant girl. What would the gentlemen of London say, if they could only see him now!
A fool, and a discredit to his family name!
He also knew that it was scandalous – a midnight walk with any woman, servant girl or not.
But he forgot all that when she touched him. The pressure of her arm on his crackled like electricity, and pierced to the very core of his desire.