Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Bon jour, Monsieur Richard,” said Mistress Latour on the step. “I will see you tomorrow, non?”

“Yes,” said Richard, clapped his hat on his head and walked away up the hill toward Clifton Green.

His mind was battling to do two things at one and the same moment: William Henry had to be searched for, yet Annemarie Latour was there too, eating away like a worm. For so he saw her, instincts not awry just because his traitorous body was twitching and stirring. A lifetime around taverns had shown him on countless occasions that a man’s reason and good sense could fly out the window at the merest flick of a feminine skirt.

But why now, and why with this woman? Peg had been dead for nine months and by tradition he was still in mourning for her, ought not even to be thinking of his body’s needs. Nor was he a man who had ever dwelled upon his body’s needs. His wife had been his only lover, he had never seriously coveted any other woman.

It is neither the time nor the situation, he thought as he continued to wear out his fourth pair of shoes. It is simply her. Annemarie Latour. Whenever he had met her, in whatever situation he had met her, were Peg alive or dead, Richard divined that Annemarie Latour would have provoked this same bodily reaction in him. Thank God then that Peg was dead. The girl exuded some invisible lure, she was a siren whose chief pleasure was the act of seduction. And I am not Ulysses bound to the mast, nor are my ears stoppered with wax. I am an ordinary man of humblest origins. I do not love her, but Christ, I want her!

Then the guilt began. Peg was dead, he was still in mourning. William Henry had not been gone three months-these feelings were impious, disgusting, unnatural. He began to run, shrieking his son’s name to the indifferent winds of Clifton Hill. William Henry, William Henry, save me!

But he was back at Willy Insell’s door at eight the next morning, turning his hat around in his hands, looking in vain for Annemarie Latour. No one on the stoop, no one inside. Knocking gently, he pushed at the door to Insell’s room and discovered him asleep in the bed, his chest rising and falling regularly. He tiptoed out.

“Bon jour, Monsieur Richard.”

There she was! On the stairs leading to the garret.

“He is asleep,” said Richard lamely.

“I know. I gave him laudanum.”

She was wearing much less than yesterday, but perhaps she had just risen from her own bed: a pink lace robe, some kind of thin pink shift beneath it. Her hair, unpinned, cascaded in masses over her shoulders.

“I am sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No.” She put her finger to her lips. “Sssssh! Come up.”

Well, he was up already, just at the sight of her, but he followed her to the tiny eyrie where she lived and stood with his hat across his groin, gazing about like a bumpkin. Cousin Ann had much finer furniture, but Mistress Annemarie had much finer taste; the room was tidy, smelled of lavender rather than sweaty clothes, and was delicately fitted out in purest white.

“Richard? I may call you Richard?” she asked, plucking his hat away and staring round-eyed. “Oooooh, la la!” she exclaimed, and helped him out of his coat.

He was used to the decencies of nightclothes and darkness, but Annemarie believed in neither. When he tried to keep his shirt on she would not let him, pulled it over his head and left him standing defenseless, not a stitch on.

“You are very beautiful,” she said in a surprised tone, going all the way around him while the lace robe fell, then the pink silk shift. “I am very beautiful too, am I not?”

He could only nod, wordless. No need to worry what to do next; she was in complete control, and clearly preferred it that way. A less humble man might have balked at her mastery, but Richard knew himself a novice at this sort of activity, and had all a humble man’s pride. Let her take the initiative, then he could not be mortified by making a move she did not approve of, or might find laughable.

There were many beautiful ladies paraded around the better bits of Bristol, but voluminous skirts might hide spindled shanks or legs of mutton, and the breasts forced up by stays might sag to a suddenly spreading waist, a wobbling pudding of belly. Not so, Mistress Annemarie! She was, as she had complacently announced, very beautiful. Her breasts were as high and full as Peg’s had been, her waist smaller, her hips and thighs rounded, her legs slender yet well shaped, her belly flat, her black mound triumphantly, juicily plump.

She strolled around him again, then fitted her front to his back and rubbed herself against him with purrs and murmurs; he could feel the soft hair of her mound against his legs, jumped when she suddenly sank her manicured nails into his shoulders and pulled herself up until the hair was sliding voluptuously across his buttocks. Teeth clenched-for he feared that he would come right then and there-he forced himself to stand perfectly still while she inched around him, rubbing and cooing. Then she sank to her knees in front of him, threw her shoulders back so that her breasts reared up like red-capped, rounded pyramids, tossed her hair out of her face and grinned gleefully.

“I think,” she said in the back of her throat, “that I will play the silent flute.”

“Do that, madam,” he gasped, “and the tune will be drowned in a second!”

She cupped his balls in her hands and smirked. “No matter, cher Richard. There is many a tune in this ’andsome flute.”

The sensation was-sensational. Eyes closed, every fiber of him concentrated upon drawing this astonishing pleasure out for as long as his flesh could bear, Richard tried to store up as many different nuances of the experience as he could. Then, defeated, let himself come in dazzling colors, jerks and black velvet, his hands clutching her hair as she gulped and swallowed him down.

But she had been right; no sooner was the convulsion over than the tyrant at the base of his belly was up and wanting more.

“Now it is my turn,” she said, stalked as if she still wore high heels to the bed, and sprawled upon it, swollen crimson lips sparkling in the depths of her mound. “First the tongue in a la-la-la, then the flute in a march, and then-the tarantelle! Bang, bang, bang with the stick upon the drum!”

That was what she wanted, and that was what she got. All pretense at thought had long since gone; if madam demanded a full performance, then let it be a symphony.

“Ye’re a musical wench,” he said several hours later, utterly spent. “Nay, do not bother trying. The flute is tweetled out.”

“You are full of surprises, my dear,” she said, still purring.

“And you. Though I doubt ye learned such a varied repertoire on the likes of my poor single drumstick. It must have taken-flutes-clarinets-oboes-bassoons even.”

“Somewhere, cher Richard, you ’ave picked up an education.”

“Five years at Colston’s is a sort of an education, I suppose. But most of it I learned in making guns.”

“Guns?”

“Aye, from a Portuguese gentleman of Jewish persuasion. My master gunsmith,” said Richard, so exhausted that speaking was an effort, but realizing that she liked to chat after concerts. “He played the violin, his wife the harpsichord, and his three daughters harp, cello and-flute. I lived in their house for seven years, and used to sing because they liked my voice. My blood is probably Welsh, and the Welsh are much addicted to singing.”

“You also ’ave a sense of humor,” she said, hair brushing his face. “Very refreshing in a Bristolian. Is the humor Welsh too?”

He got off the bed and into his underdrawers, then sat on its edge to pull on his stockings. “What I cannot understand is why ye’re a lady’s maid, Annemarie. Ye should be some nabob’s mistress.”