A Gentlewoman's Quartet. Portia Da Costa
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these two men that are scarcely even acquaintances make free with my clothing and my body? I must have lost my wits or the Madeira was drugged.
But I know that’s not so. And I know this is what I’ve wanted for a long time. The thing I knew existed but was missing from my life.
When my pulses have settled, and I’ve calmed a little, Ambrose releases my hand and gets straight down to business. Slowly, seductively, he strokes my cheek, then my chin, then my throat. A moment later, he’s at the tiny silk ribbons that fasten the front of my chemise, undoing them swiftly.
Without speaking, he folds the soft fabric aside and exposes my pale body to his gaze, and to Clarence’s.
When he touches me, really touches me, I cry out like a child, and instantly Clarence is at my head, stroking my hair like a skilled groom calming a skittish pony. He murmurs to me, “There, there…” while Ambrose handles my breasts, gently fondling and cupping and kneading.
His actions are light, circumspect, almost respectful, but their effect is like nothing I’ve ever known. I squirm on the upholstery, my body excited, twisting and uneasy. When he increases the intensity of his caresses, I whimper helplessly. How can this be? How can such simple manipulations create such a cornucopia of delight. My late husband mauled my bosom, and I felt nothing then.
But now…now, Ambrose’s fingers are so clever, so devilish. He plucks at my nipples, playing with them in a way that feels like he’s playing with my entire body and setting light to the most divine, unknown sensations. I wriggle shamelessly, scissoring my thighs in a lewd and passionate frenzy, wanting more, more, more. Anything to assuage the rapidly gathering inner tingling.
“You see, Mrs. Harewood, you are a sensual woman!” Ambrose’s voice is both cajoling and triumphant, and yet an intimate whisper, right in my ear. While he still plays with my breasts, Clarence moves again, toward the foot of the chaise.
My eyes fly open.
Whatever are they planning now?
“I’ll need your help now, Clarence, if you will?” Ambrose almost kisses me, his breath hot against my brow. “I’d like you to unfasten Mrs. Harewood’s drawers and stockings, and then ease them down as far as her knees.”
“Oh, no, please, Monsieur Chamfleur, please no!”
Oh the shame, to be exposed so…. Why does it excite me and make me want to wiggle and wriggle even harder?
“Calm yourself, sweet Mrs. Harewood, rest easy.” His lips brush my skin, just for a moment. “And please do call me ‘Ambrose,’ I beg of you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Except myself, and a degree of lust and licentiousness I’ve only just this afternoon become aware of.
Clarence makes himself busy at my waist, and a moment later I feel cooler air whisper across my belly and my thighs even though the room is warm. His hand beneath my bare bottom, he lifts me, and then settles me back on the fine plush velvet upholstery. To feel it’s sumptuous texture against my naked skin is willfully decadent.
“Magnificent,” they exclaim, almost a chorus. Then Ambrose kisses my face, just once, in a kind of signal, and the two men change places.
Clarence, at my head now, is just as gentle and solicitous as his master was. I look up into his periwinkle-blue eyes, almost afraid to let my glance stray toward Ambrose and his intentions, and I see Clarence’s expression is both kind and impish. He cradles me with one arm, and lets his free hand drift to my breast and take up the delightful ministrations that Ambrose began. I groan with delight while he teases and tickles me, at the same time anticipating more, much, much more, down below.
I close my eyes. Not because I don’t want to look at their handsome, fervent faces, but because I’m not sure I can bear such intense wonders in the light.
My cries increase as I feel an ethereal, indefinable pressure slide unhurriedly across the skin of my belly. In a ferment now, I could swear it’s a feather that’s caressing me. A long, stiff, resilient feather whose soft tip glides first across one thigh, then with tantalizing slowness across the other. Having tormented me thus, it returns to the plane of my abdomen, floating like mist into the pit of my navel and circling there, making me squirm on the chaise.
“Quietly, quietly…” purrs a voice so softly that I’m not even sure whether it’s Clarence or Ambrose, and as I endure the feather, I’m all the time aware of skilled fingers still at work on my bosom. A multitude of nerve ends have woken from their slumbers, in both the zones my new friends are exploring, and in others, as yet unvisited.
Between my thighs, I’m intensely troubled. If that be the word. My feminine parts are wracked by simmering heat and agitation, a wicked, wicked craving to be touched and rubbed and played with. It’s so excruciating, I want to play with them myself.
I feel confused, my head whirling, lost but also strangely safe. These must be the sensations that I dimly imagined I was missing in my marriage bed. But they’re so powerful, so befuddling, yet so beautiful. My eyes fill with tears, but I’m not sad. No, never that.
Reaching for knowledge, I almost coo in response to my two paramours.
Who respond to my silent, formless prayers.
Clarence kisses me, his tongue pressing importunately into my mouth, searching, tasting. At almost the same moment, I heave up from the surface of the chaise in delicious shock.
A finger—a stiff, warm, clever finger—pushes inside me.
Ambrose breaches my hot body in a smooth, bold action, and as his finger enters me, his broad, flat thumb settles on the tiny sensitive bead at the apex of my womanhood. Instantaneously, delight seems to pierce me like a spear, touching not just the warm, sticky crevice of my sex, but also my breasts, my lips, my toes, my heart and my very soul.
The men move in. They overwhelm me. I’m exquisitely assaulted by questing fingers and warm tongues, and by the scents of my body and the clean odors of their linen and their flesh.
The heat and the tension in my flesh soars to a sweet, unbearable pitch, building like a raw flame in my loins…and then, and then… I cry out into the kissing mouth of Clarence, when without warning, all that selfsame pressure seems to release in a great, wild rush and throb through my body in a wrenching wave so profound I almost swoon.
Goodness, what’s happened to me? Did I lose my senses?
Opening my eyes, I realize that I’m just lying here, on the chaise, my heart and my body all of a flutter. My breasts and belly are still naked and I’m cradled in Ambrose’s arms. My face is wet, and I realize I’ve been weeping.
Struggling to sit up, I look around and find that Clarence has discreetly slipped away.
“Were those the transports of delight that my friends have whispered of?” I ask Ambrose as I struggle to gather just a few of my scattered wits. The deficiencies of my marriage are now readily and distressingly apparent to me. Are all men as lacking in the sensual arts as my poor late husband was? “I confess that’s the first time I’ve experienced them.”
“They were indeed, my dear Mrs. Harewood.” Ambrose’s voice is quite grave as he moves away quickly, only to return with a little more Madeira for me. It’s cold now, but just as delicious, and very welcome. “And it pains me to hear that such an obviously sensual woman as yourself is only now discovering the joys of eroticism.”
I still feel a little stunned. I’m shocked and surprised by what I’m capable of. But in my heart, a seed of determination has been planted. Never again will I accept second best in this matter. Never again will I lie thwarted and unsatisfied while a gentleman uses me to service his own desires. If my next husband is ignorant of my needs, by heaven, I will show him what I require and insist he provides it!
The Madeira braces me. I square my shoulders and look into Ambrose’s intense brown eyes. My heart lifts at the look of awe and wonder there. It’s as if he saw my inner transformation.
“That…that