Carol Emshwiller by Report to the Men's Club (epub)

Author:Report to the Men's Club (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

PREJUDICE AND PRIDE

All those old-fashioned ways of holding back on sex until you can’t stand it that the lovers are still apart. Why don’t they call out to each other instead of waiting till the door shuts between them? Why don’t they turn around at the last minute and do what they ache to do? Why keep holding back, as though for the reader, that the reader should read on and on, faster and faster, skipping pages to the next part where the lovers (yet again!) do not say that they love each other? And he, Fitzwilliam, having glimpsed her ankle…or not even that, focused, rather, on her long, pale fingers as she plays, and of course rather well, the piano-forte. Her fingers make him think of her body, though he can hardly dare to let himself do so. He can think of other women’s bodies, but not hers. The thought of hers is too much for him to bear.

And she…reads his eyes, though she hardly dares to look straight into them. His gaze turns her stomach as though upside-down every time she almost looks at his face. Of course she doesn’t think about his body. But, yes, she does, though doesn’t let herself know she’s doing it. And she sees more than she admits to herself, her eyes lowered, looking just there. But after all, she is a country girl. She can’t be ignorant. They have horses. (Seeing them, with their sex down, almost to their hocks sometimes, used to frighten her when she was a child.)

Then there is that left ankle he has glimpsed, and the other also. When they finally do marry, he will fondle her pale, narrow feet. When they finally do marry, it is assured that he will get an erection at the proper times, for even the lightest, slightest brushing of his hand over her (as yet covered)—and almost as though by mistake, though they both will know that’s not so—breast will be enough.

Afterwards, at breakfast, they will stare into each other’s eyes, she, by then, daring to look at him.

They are rich, and the servants will bring a breakfast of the rich: Eggs, sprats, ham, tea with cream, a sweet yellowish bread with raisins…But they will hardly eat any of it. Instead he will kiss all ten of her fingertips, and then back again, all ten, in the other direction. Then each knuckle. (He will have said that her fingertips touched to his lips are all he needs of nourishment.) When he kisses, and for several seconds (how warm his lips are), the palm of her hand, she will feel it up and down her spine.

This will all have taken place in the garden on a spring morning, they having been married in the spring.

Of course at first they don’t like each other. Except there is always this electricity that passes between them. Thank goodness he keeps getting invited to places where she is visiting, and vice versa, he, so proud and mysterious, with mysterious, dark, Roman good looks, but with the bright, light eyes of the Picts.

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