Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

Copyright © Pam Rosenthal, 2006

In March 1771, a son was born to Emilia and Walter Stansell, the Marchioness and Marquess of Rowen, at Rowen Castle, near the village of Grefford, in the southeast corner of Derbyshire.

A very pretty boy, the marchioness thought. And very like his lordship. She traced the infant’s cheek with a timid finger. He wasn’t sleeping as peacefully as he had been a few minutes earlier. Ignorant of babies as she was, it seemed clear enough to her that he’d soon be awake.

The birth had been quick, and rather less dreadful than she’d been led to expect. Her husband was delighted. Not that he’d ever been anything but excruciatingly nice to her during the ten months of their marriage, but this time his smile had seemed genuine.

And now the baby was awake, mewling piteously and waving a shapeless little fist in the air. Poor little thing, he looked hungry. No one had told her anything about feeding a baby. But then, no one had told her much of anything since she’d been wed and packed off to be Lady Rowen of Derbyshire. She’d quickly become pregnant; the only other time she’d seen her husband so happy was on the morning she’d announced her condition to him.

“Capital, Emilia.” He’d taken her on his lap and kissed her forehead. “Well done,” he told her.

She’d wanted to protest that in sad truth, she hadn’t done much of anything. But instead she put her arms around his neck and clung to him. Feeling rather like a little girl than the lady she knew she could be, she told herself that everything would be all right now.

She still told herself that sometimes, but less often.

Still, it was impossible to be unhappy with this lovely little boy in her arms. Look, he was hungry; his mouth was moving like a kitten’s. She felt the most remarkable sensation in her breasts, which had grown hard, and moist at their tips.

“But what are you doing, your ladyship?” She’d never liked the housekeeper at Rowen.

“He’s hungry… Aren’t you, pet… little Wat, little kitten…” How soft his cheek was, how vulnerable his smooth little pink gums, and what an interesting feeling in her breasts-the need to love and care for someone became palpable reality, a piquant tugging at her flesh.

“His lordship has engaged a wet nurse for Viscount Sherwynne.”

She must mean the baby, Emilia thought, as the housekeeper tugged at the bell rope.

A nice-enough-looking girl entered the room, curtsied to Emilia, and stared at the Belgian lace on her pretty bedgown. She appeared rather less interested in the baby; but then, Emilia thought, she was probably quite familiar enough with babies already. Her breasts were bigger than Emilia’s, her hands looked capable, and the little viscount seemed happy enough once he was sucking.

The milk and her tears dried up, and her menses started again a few weeks later. This was why she wasn’t to nurse the child, she was told-for his lordship wanted another son, to ensure the continuance of the marquisate, and as soon as possible.

How simple things were, Emilia thought. She remembered a joke she’d overheard, about how the London Marriage Mart wasn’t much different from the Smithfield market for livestock. It was true after all; people had probably said of her that she’d been bought like a broodmare.

She tensed her shoulders now at the familiar polite knock on the door of her bedchamber. His lordship would be visiting her almost every night, until she was indisputably with child again.

But on this particular night, before she opened her legs, Emilia wrested a bargain from her husband.

“As soon as I’ve given you another boy, you will never touch me again,” she told him. “For you don’t really like me that way. I used to feel very bad about it, but now I’ve stopped caring so much.

“Because I’ve got to care about myself-well, if I don’t, Walter, who will?” Much later, she’d be amused to learn that a great sage had first enunciated that question, as a universal statement of the human condition. More exciting, though, to come upon it as she had, propelled into the glittering darkness of philosophy by force of her desires.

The excitement had emboldened her-not only to say what she had, but (which seemed even more daring) to call her husband by his Christian name. He was thirty-five years old, just short of twice her age, and before now she’d always called him your lordship.

“It’s not that I couldn’t enjoy having you in my bed,” she continued. “I think I could have, you know, if you’d liked me.”

Eyes wary, he waited quietly to hear what else she had to say.

Her stomach twisted, for until that moment she’d cherished the faintest of hopes that he’d protest that she’d simply been imagining things. Ah, well. She took a deep breath and continued.

“Just know, Walter, that there will be other men, and if there are other children, you will give them your name. I’ve heard the gossip, after all. I’m not the only noblewoman in England in this fix. I shall manage as well as many ladies, and perhaps rather better than some have done.”

No doubt she was still addled by the exigencies of giving birth: postpartum depression, a modern reader might call it. Whatever the reason for it, her boldness might have spelled disaster, if a chance phrase had not turned the tide in Emilia’s favor.

For when she had referred to the gossip, she’d only meant the stories everyone repeated, about certain great ladies and their lovers. The ever-cautious marquess, however, had taken her words to mean that she’d somehow found out about the highly inappropriate personage he did, in fact, like very much in bed.

He masked his fear with a show of affability. For he could be quite affable, though you wouldn’t have thought so if you’d first learned of him from his nearest country neighbor, the wealthy brewer Joshua Penley.

But we will hear more of Mr. Penley later.

In any event, the marquess decided that there was nothing to be done about it. He’d have to trust his wife with his secret. He felt oddly confident that he could, for in truth, she was an unusually reasonable and level-headed young woman. Excellent at her duties: she’d overseen the estate carpenter’s restoration of some precious ancient paneling; this year she’d be supervising Mr. Brown, the landscape gardener. Had a touch for charity and good works too: the tenants and cottagers had quickly grown fond of her. Most important, she’d given him a fine, healthy heir. But babies were fragile. The marquess feared for the continuance of his line.

If she can produce another Stansell son, her husband thought, there isn’t much more I need ask of her. Just another boy, to ensure the orderly and legitimate progression of inheritance.

He didn’t relish the thought of forcing himself upon her. Why not promise her a little future pleasure then, to take as she would, quite as he would continue to do? Because lovely as she was-small and slender, with fascinating green eyes and a luxuriance of silky black curls spilled on the pillow-the unavoidable truth was that he didn’t like her that way.

He did insist, though, that when the time came she cuckold him with a gentleman (or if she must, more than one) of unexceptionable status.