Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

And, truth to tell, her conversation seemed mighty sophisticated for a girl of her age and somewhat at odds with her youthful beauty and apparent simplicity. She even asked me about the murders in the Tower, which Newton had told her about, and it was quickly clear to me that she was not the modest white violet Newton had led me to believe she was. Indeed her discourse was so lively that I soon formed the impression that her intelligence was almost equal to his own. Certainly she had as much desire to experiment with life as he — perhaps more so, as I was about to discover. But while the garden of her mind was laid out with the same symmetry and logic as her uncle’s, much that was planted there had yet to grow to maturity.

“Mister Ellis,” she said finally, “I should like you to sit beside me.”

I drew my chair close to her, as she asked.

“You may hold my hand if you choose,” she added now; and so I did.

“Miss Barton,” I said, encouraged by our proximity, “you are the loveliest creature that any man ever beheld.” And I kissed her hand.

“Dear Tom,” she said. “You kiss my hand. But will you not kiss me properly?”

“With pleasure, Miss Barton,” I said, and, leaning forward, kissed her most chastely on the cheek.

“You kiss me like my uncle, sir,” she admonished. “Will you not kiss me upon the lips of my mouth?”

“If you will permit it,” I said, and kissed her rosebud lips most tenderly. After which I held her little hand and told her how much I loved her.

She made no reply to this declaration of love, almost as if she already knew how much I loved her and took it as no more than her due. Instead she spoke of the kiss, with such forensic choice of language as one might have used to plead in an English court of law.

“That was most enlightening,” she said, curling her fingers in mine. “Brief, but stimulating. You may do it again whenever you wish. Only this time, longer please.”

When I had kissed her again, she exhaled most satisfiedly, licked her lips as if enjoying the taste I had left there, and smiled brightly. And I smiled back, for I was in heaven. In England it was not at all unusual for young women to take the lead in sexual matters, often with the connivance of their parents. Once or twice I had bundled with a girl in the presence of her mother and sisters. Yet I had not expected one so angelic to be quite so forward.

“You may feel my breasts if you wish,” she offered. “Come, let me sit on your lap, so that you may touch them more easily.”

So saying, she stood up, untied the ribbons that laced her corset, and, baring her breasts, which were larger than I had supposed, sat down upon my lap. Hardly needing a second invitation, I gently weighed these bubbies in my hand, and kneaded her nipples, which seemed to afford her no small delight. After a while she stood up, and fearing that I might have gone too far, I asked what was the matter.

“The matter, sir,” she said, smiling, most lasciviously, “is that.” And she pointed to the unmistakable evidence that I too had enjoyed the experience; and kneeling before me, she touched my privy parts through my breeches and asked that she might look upon them.

“I have seen my brothers,” she said. “But only when they were boys. And I have never seen the privy parts of a man who was ready for love, so to speak. All that I know, which is very little, is from a book,” she added. “Aretine’s Postures . Which raises as many questions as it supplies answers. And I should like very much to gaze upon Priapus, now.”

“What if Doctor Newton should come into the room?” I said.

Miss Barton shook her head and, through my breeches, squeezed my cock most affectionately. “Oh, we won’t see him again tonight. Not now he has started to think upon that cipher. He will often cogitate upon such problems all night long. Once Mister Bernoulli and Mister Leibniz suggested a problem to him that kept him occupied until dawn. During that time I spoke to him, entreated him to go to bed, offered him some cider, and yet he paid me no heed at all. It was as if I had not been there.”

“But if Mrs. Rogers should disturb us,” I protested.

“She has gone to bed,” she said. And then: “You studied for the Law, did you not, Mister Ellis?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then you will know what a quid pro quo is, sir.”

“Indeed I do, Miss Barton.”

“Then what about a quim pro quo?”

I grinned and shook my head that she did know such a word. But amusement turned to surprise and ecstasy as she lifted her skirts and suffered me to fondle her belly, thighs, and cunny parts. And pressing my mouth to these, I licked her from stem to stern, which drew such gasps from her lips as I thought would wake the house; but each time I tried to draw my head away, she gripped my hair most tightly, and held my mouth there until she was done.

So that when finally I unbuttoned my own breeches to show her my prick and suffered her to look upon me, I was as mighty a figure as ever I have been in my life. So that Miss Barton marvelled that such a thing as human lovemaking were possible.

“To think,” she breathed, squeezing my cock in her fist, “that so large a part of a man can go inside a woman’s quim.”

“One might as well wonder that woman do give birth to infants,” said I.

“Yet how vulnerable it is,” she continued, marvelling. “How tender wounded looks its head. As if it has been struck hard about the face. And yet how frightening also. For it seems almost to have a life of its own.”

“You say more than you know, Miss Barton,” I said.

“The seed emanates from the small fissure, does it not?” she asked.

“It does and will if you are not careful,” I said.

“Oh, but I want to see the ejaculate,” she insisted. “I want to understand everything.”

“The ejaculate is most phrenetic,” I said, “and I cannot answer for where I would fetch off.” Feebly, I added, “On your gown...”

“Perhaps if I gathered it in my mouth,” she said; and before I could forbid it, she had taken my whole member into her mouth, after which I was quite incapable of resisting her further anatomical enquiry of me, for so it did feel, until I had fetched off in her mouth. Which to my horror, she swallowed.

“Catherine,” I said, withdrawing my privy parts from her cool hands, and doing up my breeches again, “I cannot think it safe that you swallowed that.”

“Why, Tom, dear, it is quite safe, I can assure you. There is no danger of being brought to bed with a child. A woman’s womb may be of her belly, but it is not connected to her stomach.” She laughed and then wiped her lips with a kerchief.

I drank a draught of cider to try to calm myself.

“That was most instructive,” she remarked. “And most enjoyable. I am most grateful to you. And in truth, now that I have seen and tasted a man’s cock in all its glory, there is much that doth seem clear to me.”

“I am very glad of it, Catherine,” said I and kissed her forehead. “But the only thing clear to me now is how much I do adore you.”

For a long while we sat in front of the fire, holding hands and saying very little. I would kiss her and she would kiss me back. And thinking us to be as intimate in all things as it was possible to be with another human being, I now made a terrible mistake.

A mistake that perhaps cost me my life’s happiness.

After we were seated again, and we did converse again, I think, again most businesslike, she did turn our conversation to the plays of Mister Otway: in particular The Soldier’s Fortune and its sequel, The Atheist , which, she and I being both Whigs ourselves, neither of us had liked particularly well. If I had left things there, it might have gone well enough between us. In time, we might even have married. But then I made some remark to the effect that I knew not how any man could remain a Christian who came into close contact with her uncle’s opinions. At which point Miss Barton seemed to form the impression that some great insult had been done to him, for she withdrew her hand from mine immediately, and the colour she had worn since our bundling quite drained away in an instant.