It’s been three months.

Three months since my marriage to my beloved man, Jeffrey Lilley. Three months since I walked down the aisle, aching with nerves, feeling the eyes of every single one of my family members and dearest friends. I could imagine it, even as I marched: stumbling on a spare bit of brick, or biting my lip so that I bled, or grimacing during my vows, having forgotten what it was I was meant to say. All of it seemed tremendously scary—and then it was over.

Then, I was allowed to begin the rest of my life with the man I love.

I awake beside him much earlier than he rises, turn my face, and look at him, amazed at my luck. I don’t know what being on high decided to gift me this man; I only know that I will love him as well as I can, every day of my life until this gorgeous life I’ve been given is over.

Only yesterday, it was publicly announced that Sampson and Florentia have been forever sentenced to prison for the murders of both Brooks and Alfred. As a result, it seems as though the gossip has still more power than ever before. Louisa arrived yesterday afternoon, her cheeks tinged red, and told me not to go to town. “The people will demand anything they want of you. They’ll pick at you, ask you what you think. I would stay home if I were you.”

Louisa has only just been married to her dearly beloved, Zachary. I find her gazing in the distance frequently, in a sort of daydream. When I ask her about their relationship, she clams up a bit, embarrassed, and says only that it’s beyond her wildest imagination.

I suppose that means only that she and Zachary have a beautiful life in the bedroom. Perhaps one day, I’ll find a way to ask these specifics of Louisa. Do you suppose it’s too forward? It shouldn’t be. Louisa and I have always told one another everything. I should think that these strange in-betweens shouldn’t be outside the boundary of that. Besides. I never want to lose her dear friendship, just because we’re old married women now.

Imagine us at twelve, considering ourselves now. We spoke of marriage continually. Why did we spend so much time dreaming of what it would feel like to grow older?

Now, we’ll have children, and assuredly, they’ll be obsessed with this concept, as well. Time. It uses us up so swiftly, and yet, we’re so hungry to be used.

Ah! That’s good. Perhaps I should be a writer, the way Jeffrey is always saying.

At this moment, Charlotte heard a scratching towards the far end of the library. She lifted her head from her diary to watch a little mouse rush from a teensy hole in the wall, towards another on the opposite side. She smiled inwardly. Throughout the previous few weeks, she’d watched this very mouse nip across the library, seemingly investigating every crevice. She hadn’t had the energy to explain it to Jeffrey, as she feared that he would find a way to rid the library of mice. She rather liked them.

Charlotte considered the afternoon ahead. Jeffrey currently spent lunchtime with Peter, as the two of them had decided to open up their own business. Charlotte longed to meet the fabric owner, as the pair were in the midst of planning a perfect dress for her mother’s birthday. She thought again of what Louisa had said about going to town and shook her head with resentment. No. She wouldn’t allow these horrendous people to force her away from the errands she so desperately wanted to run.

When Charlotte informed the stable hand of her plan to go to town, he scrunched his face up and begged her not to go.

“They’ll surely bombard you, My Lady,” he said. “I don’t want you to go through that.”

But Charlotte was resolute. The stable hand grumbled as he prepared the horses. Charlotte removed and then readjusted her gloves, her brow furrowing. Was she making a reckless decision?

When she arrived at the fabric shop, she jumped down onto the cobblestones, then righted herself and glanced about. Immediately, she regretted this glance, catching sight of another married woman she’d met several years before, one who’d courted alongside her at the age of twenty. Regina.

“Darling Charlotte!” Regina cried. She pressed her hand towards the side of her hat then crept towards her. The sound of her heels clacking across the cobblestones chilled Charlotte’s blood. “I wondered if I might catch sight of you today. All the town’s abuzz with news of this strange mystic,and also Sampson, and your role in the matter.” Regina dropped her chin slightly and made her eyes bug out. “If I’m not mistaken, Sampson was always quite taken with you. He used to hunker in the side of the ballroom and watch you …”

Charlotte’s throat tightened. “This would have been rather good to know when it happened, Regina.”

“In any case, it’s strange how it all occurred, isn’t it? Everyone is dying to know. When you first went to the mystic, what exactly did she say? Someone told me that she actually suggested your cousin would die, even before she and Sampson murdered him in cold blood.”

Charlotte fumed. Did this woman actually think that this was the sort of thing you said to another person? The sort of thing that made them feel grateful for the existence of communication?

“Well, is it true?” Regina demanded.

“Have you ever gone to see a mystic?” Charlotte asked.

Regina seemed perplexed at the question. “I absolutely have. I saw Florentia herself.”

“And what did Florentia tell you in that little room alone?” Charlotte asked.

This gave Regina pause. She turned her eyes towards the ground. “I don’t suppose that’s any of your business, is it?”

“Then why on earth do you think asking me about my reading has anything to do with you?”

“Because of you, Sampson wanted to murder these poor people …”

“Come now. Sampson didn’t murder anyone for reasons that weren’t monetary,” Charlotte emphasised.

Ah. She’d said too much already. Regina and Charlotte faced off for a moment, while three other women across the street looked on. Charlotte spun around, gripping her skirts, and hustled into the fabric shop. When she entered, three other women blinked over at her, looking at her as though she was prime rib.

“Charlotte! Remarkable to see you,” one of them said. Charlotte couldn’t have named her and questioned if she’d ever seen her before. “We were just discussing Florentia, that dreadful mystic, and wondered if you might be able to elaborate on what we’ve heard.”

Charlotte baulked. She glanced towards the far end of the room, panicked, just as the fabric store owner stomped out from the back room, glared at the other visitors, and demanded that they leave. “If you can’t be on your best behaviour with one of my most treasured customers, then I require you to leave,” he told them.

The women side-eyed one another, muttering complaints. In moments, they left the store, leaving Charlotte with a sour taste in her mouth.

“It never truly ends, does it, Charlotte?” the fabric store owner said, exasperated.

“I suppose it will. Someday,” Charlotte said.

“You’re much braver than I. I imagine that I would tear every one of them to shreds, verbally, of course. We don’t need another murder around here,” he said, his eyes shining. “Your mother was just in this morning. I don’t think she knows about our present.”

“Good. I don’t believe anyone has ever properly surprised my mother,” Charlotte said.

“I’m glad to be the first,” he returned.

“By the way. Louisa’s wedding gown was simply divine. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen something better. That fabric …”

“It was something your mother insisted I bring into the store,” the man returned. “I couldn’t have sold it otherwise. All those months I resisted your mother’s advice, out of some sort of pride …”

“I understand it. I’ve resisted my mother’s advice for years for similar, petty reasons.”

Together, they went over the design for her mother’s dress, agreeing on various cuts and stylings. When Charlotte left the store thirty minutes later, she did so with a lighter heart and a slight smile between her cheeks.

The moment she stepped onto the street, still more onlookers stared in her direction, hungry for gossip. Luckily, she was able to step into her carriage hurriedly. “Drive on!” she told the stable hand.

He did.

“How was it? I nearly came to rescue you when that initial woman bombarded you.”

“It wasn’t so bad. I have to find a way to stand up to them, regardless. I know that eventually, I’ll be able to go to town without it. I just don’t know when, and the waiting has been gruelling.”

In actuality, of course, there had been a silver lining to Charlotte’s inability to spend much time in town. She and Jeffrey had poured their hearts and souls into the early months of their marriage. As a result, Charlotte felt as though they were interconnected in ways that she’d never before thought were possible.

Beyond that, their dark life of sensuality had elevated considerably. It was nothing she could discuss with anyone else, yet she held it close, burrowed in it, knew how inherently lucky she was. She had a hunch that many, many women across England hadn’t the sort of man who could give such pleasure.

When Charlotte first spotted the mansion in the distance, she laughed inwardly. She no longer thought of the place as “Jeffrey’s.” Rather, the sweeping trees out front, hungry for springtime leaves, and the brown gardens out back, aching for sweet summer; the sweeping moors, the hundreds of windows, the beautiful front porch—it all seemed to belong to her, to call out to her. As Charlotte had lost the habit of leaving, she’d forgotten how sweet it was to return home.

It was the best feeling in the world.

When she entered the mansion, the butler delivered a sterling smile and said, “Lord Lilley is seated in the parlour. I’m sure he would love some company.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said.

“I trust your trip to town was without problem?”

It was clear that everyone at the estate worried about Charlotte, about her mental state during this trying time.

“It was fine,” she said, her voice flattening. “I’m sure it will be even finer as time passes.”

Charlotte leaned against the doorframe between the corridor and parlour, watching as Jeffrey gazed out the window at the grey afternoon. Winter was chilly that year, gruesomely so, and he’d placed a blanket around his legs. Both hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

How grateful Charlotte was to find the man she loved, seated there, quietly gazing at the loveliness of the day.

Charlotte slowly inched towards him and settled herself at the side of the couch beside him. Jeffrey turned and gave her a big smile. His eyes reflected hers.

“You look as though you have a secret,” she told him.

“My secret is that I’m terribly happy you’re home,” he said. He placed the teacup on the tray before him and leaned towards her, dotting a kiss on her forehead.

“Was town okay?” he asked, leaning back.

“As fine as fine can be,” she said.

“So, terrible.”

“A bit.”

“I wish we could move far, far away,” Jeffrey said.

“And allow that horrific mystic to change our lives still more? No. I won’t allow it,” Charlotte said.

“Your brother and his wife came by with the baby,” Jeffrey said. “He spoke with me for a long while. I grew exhausted at the conversation. Told him I didn’t know when you’d be back. He departed a few minutes later.”

Charlotte chuckled. “He seems to want to build a better friendship with me, now that I’ve grown up and got married.”

“But have you grown up at all?” Jeffrey asked.

Charlotte considered this. “I do feel as though our lives are much quieter than they used to be. I suppose I’m grateful for that. We can just sit here. Speak in whispers. There’s a good deal less violence.”

Jeffrey placed a hand on her shoulder, drawing her towards him. She nuzzled her head across his chest.

“We’re going to make so many memories in this house,” Charlotte breathed. It was something they always returned to: building images of the gorgeous life they wanted to create. Charlotte pointed towards the corner and said, “Our daughter will probably fall down over there as she learns to walk. She’ll stub her toe and scab her knee, and I will cry because I’ll hate so that she’s in pain. You’ll comfort us both as we weep.”

“The thought of it makes my heart break,” Jeffrey said. “But over there, you see? By the piano? That’s where our son will scribe his first music piece.”

“He’s a musician?”

“Indeed. One of the best in the county,” he said.

“That’s remarkable,” Charlotte said. “And we support him.”

“Completely. We believe he’ll be able to play for the queen someday, such is his talent. I imagine that he’s a bit sheepish about it, as he’s not as good as the other boys at, say, sporting events, things like that. But we both tell him that his talent is so singular that he must honour it.”

Charlotte beamed. “And our other daughter?”

“How many children will we have, anyway?” Jeffrey asked.

“I don’t know. It stands to reason that we’ll have at least eight. Perhaps nine?”

“You think that’s reasonable?”

“Indeed.”

“Then I suppose we’d better go through with it. I don’t want to disappoint you,” he said.

He dropped his chin and kissed her tenderly. Charlotte’s stomach performed flips as their kiss turned from sweet to something else, something passionate, charged. Jeffrey’s lips moved away as he studied her face. Slowly, his hand stretched across her stomach; his fingers tickled against the edge of her nipple beneath the fabric of her gown. Her lips curved as the dark juncture between her thighs opened, grew wet.

She couldn’t resist him.

She flung herself up against him, drawing her hands over his chest and opening his shirt. Her fingers fluttered over the coarse hairs of his chest as her mouth opened wider, taking his tongue. His hands slid up her thighs and settled one either side of her pussy. A finger flickered towards the darkness between, catching her clit and rubbing softly, slowly. She stopped short, overcome with pleasure. Her breasts spilled from her dress and hovered near his face. His lips found her nipple and sucked her softly, then harder, until the pain and the pleasure of it shot through her. She pressed her pussy harder against his hand and felt herself yield against him, coming erratically and then heaving against his body, collapsing. Her arms wrapped around his neck as a single tear dropped down her cheek.

Her hand found his cock: rock hard and veiny, surging beneath his trousers. She unbuttoned him and withdrew it and dropped between his legs to wrap her mouth around it and taste him, taste all of him, feel the droplet of cum as it pressed against the back of her mouth.

He couldn’t take it a moment more. He lifted her and spread her against the couch, right there in the center of the parlour—where proper lords and ladies were meant to sit and take their tea. His cock pressed into the darkness between her thighs as he made love to her, his eyes wide open and gazing at her. Her lips opened as she gripped him and kissed him still harder. Her heart burst against her ribcage, and she felt completely filled, in love with him and everything he was. His hand gripped her breast, and he thrust harder, forcing the parlour sofa backwards.

“I suppose the staff knows to leave us when they hear such things,” Charlotte breathed, laughing.

“Do you think they think we’re monstrous?” he whispered.

“I hope so. I hope they gossip about it,” Charlotte said.

He laughed. This was something they’d recently cultivated in their sessions: they liked to make one another laugh, tease one another just before they made one another come harder than ever before.

“Are you going to come already?” she asked, arching her brow.

“Don’t be foolish. I’m a trained professional,” he said with a laugh.

“Is that so?” Charlotte lifted her waist, opened her lips still wider, so that he could thrust even deeper—an event that made him cry out with shock.

“You are trying to trick me,” he said.

“Perhaps.”

They caught one another’s eye for a long while, their mood growing increasingly serious. Jeffrey kissed her tenderly once more, then slowed down his motions, making love to her in a way that translated everything, made tears sneak from her eyes. A long while later, they both came simultaneously, Jeffrey thrusting hard and then holding onto her, so that they continued to be one for as long as possible.

When they finished, Jeffrey held her quietly as they both gazed out the window at the impossible grey light of a wintry afternoon. Both simmered with love and gratefulness for what they’d fought for and what they were allowed to keep.

“Let me stay in your arms forever,” Charlotte breathed.

“I’ll never let you go.”

THE END

---

Readers who read this book also liked