Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

They drained the bottle, moving closely and silently together on the seat while they watched the hills and fields and the bright blue sky with its fat clouds slip by, until very softly at first, they began to laugh.

More loudly now. Raucously. Helplessly.

“I can remember when it was nothing to us…”

“Easiest thing in the world, step into a coach, slam the door behind, and go at it for hours… twisting and turning like gimlets… the longer the journey, the better.”

“Yes, and the rougher the road as well. With you sometimes suspended in the most extraordinary attitude between the seats…”

“Before I got so bashed up, I’m afraid, in battle. And you, fairly somersaulting… or is that simply a latter-day fancy of mine? Did I dream it sometime during the time we were apart?”

“No, it really happened. I was quite balletic; I could do splits like an opera girl. Once…”

“… upon a time.”

Another silence.

A long, gentle kiss, eyes opened very wide, in a shared effort to see each other as they were now.

“But you won’t object, will you,” she whispered, “if we wait until we’re in an actual bed tonight…?”

“Actually, I was going to suggest a very similar course of action. Mary?”

“Ummm?”

“What else is in that basket? I’m excessively hungry right now.”

Bread and meat, strawberries and Stilton, eaten from each other’s fingers. The fields and meadows, grown greener since the recent rainstorms, slipped by outside the carriage window. Stone walls separated the fields; hawthorn grew in profusion alongside. The landscape growing hillier, more picturesque as they proceeded; limestone would give way to gritstone, meadow to moor, as they made their way north toward Wakefield, in Yorkshire.

Her head on his shoulder, they peered together out the window, at the blues and greens, browns and grays, ubiquitous creamy hawthorn and occasional brilliant sprinklings of late spring flowers.

“ ‘… Till we loved.’ ” She murmured the words from the poem. “ ‘Were we not wean’d till then? But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?’ ”

He stroked her hair.

“ ‘For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere.’ ”

Even a room that jostled and jolted on its springs, rolling over a country road that (at least from the point of view of a pair of travelers forced to admit themselves indisputably past their first youth) could well do with a bit of improvement and repaving.

The sun had long set by the time they’d driven into the main square at Wakefield. Two inns; they chose the George. The one across the square, where the coaches stopped, would be noisier.

Neither place was probably the best in town, but Richard’s aunts the Misses Raddiford lived fairly close by. Anyway, they were convenient to the road home to Derbyshire, in case they wanted to leave in a hurry… At least that’s what Mary imagined Kit’s thoughts to be, as he told Mr. Frayne to stop and Belcher to inquire about food and lodging.

A pity, they agreed, that they’d wasted a night squabbling and throwing things at each other at that splendid inn at Calais. Still, this place wasn’t completely dreadful, and they were impatient to step down from the coach and stretch their unsteady legs. A comfort to have the landlord bustling about, in deference to the elegantly lacquered vehicle with the Stansell crest, griffon rampant, done in gold on the door.

And if they themselves could hardly measure up to the splendor of their conveyance-looking, well, exactly as they felt: a less-than-perfectly groomed couple who’d clearly spent an eventful day out on the road-it took only another extremely haughty glance from Lord Christopher to keep Mr. Frayne respectful and obsequious.

“It’s hypocritical of me, I expect,” Mary whispered, “but I’m grateful to you, with me so disheveled and no maid to help sort me out.”

Perhaps the Misses Raddiford might spare a girl to help, if tomorrow’s encounter were not an absolute disaster. Kit had promised to send a message tonight, requesting to speak to Richard.

“I’d planned to wait until tomorrow to do it. But the sooner the better.” Spoken in his firmest, most responsible Major Stansell tone of voice, though he’d kept his eyes trained on some distant point beyond Mary’s shoulder when he’d said it.

Belcher reported that the bedchamber was small but adequate. The sheets were dry and it didn’t appear that Lord or Lady Christopher would be sharing the sagging bed with anything that crawled about or bit at their ankles.

Ensconced atop the coverlet with Mary’s writing desk on his lap, Kit scribbled away while Mary struggled to pin her gown into a semblance of order, pained groans and muttered imprecations issuing from their separate sides of the room.

“Well, that’ll simply…”

“… have to do.”

“I shouldn’t like to do it every day, but…”

“… Please, oh, please, my lady, may we go down to eat, at long last?”

One might, if one were charitable-as well as ravenous after one’s day’s journey-characterize the pickled salmon and lamb chops served with grayish peas as “honest English food.”

Good enough, in any case, to fill one’s belly with, if one ate it slowly-well, one had to chew the lamb slowly-leaning across the yellowed linen, gazing into each other’s eyes across the table.

At any rate, one didn’t have to make excuses for the ale. Or the pudding, from early gooseberries. Topped with Devonshire cream the landlord had brought out when Mary asked, demurely and yet with a certain earnestness, if there might be a little of it in the kitchen.

“Traveling with you”-Kit’s eyelids flickered dreamily in the candlelight-“one would at least be sure of getting whatever was best to eat that night.”

Mary opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again.

“You were about to say, Lady Christopher?”

She smiled to make her single dimple show, but only shook her head.

“And are you quite finished down here?” he asked.

“Quite. Down here.”

“Ah.”

“I’ll take the candle, Lord Christopher.”

“I’ll have to follow you very closely, then. The staircase is most narrow and uneven.”

And so he did. With his eyes and even (it seemed to her) with his breath. One could become extremely self-aware, she thought, of the movement of one’s own legs and thighs, hips and arse, as one climbed the rickety steps with someone following so close.

So aware of how one occupied the space around oneself that one couldn’t help but sway and even wiggle a bit, in a less than seemly manner.

He caught her at the doorway to their room, arms about her waist, hips and thighs and belly and cock pressed through his clothes and through hers too, hard against her arse.

“We never…” he whispered. “I was afraid I might hurt you…”

“I’m still a bit afraid,” she whispered, “for all that I trust you…”

“Not tonight,” he breathed rather than said it.

“No.”

They’d let themselves into the shabby little bedchamber and closed the door behind them as she pronounced that no. Both of them, meanwhile, noting that some Rubicon had been crossed, and some future plans laid. Some other night, perhaps, if there was ever to be another night like this one.