Page 18 of My Lord, Lady, and Gentleman

Susanna shrieked. “You broke down my door!”

“You didn’t give us much choice, darling,” said Clayton, as they set the urn down beside the east wall. “Ignoring our knocks and entreaties to be let in. I’m just relieved that was far more robust than it looks. The next option was tied sheets and a rock to break the window, and dangling from a great height is not at all the thing.”

“The latched door wasn’t a significant clue that I didn’t want to see either of you?” she replied waspishly.

“Well, we needed to see you,” said Joseph.

“Why, dear husband? Do you require funds for a lover’s jaunt to the seaside, perhaps? You know where the key to the safe is. Destroying my door was quite unnecessary.”

“Susie—”

“D-do not call me that,” she choked out around the boulder now lodged in her throat. “Pet names are for those in love, like my mother and father were. Not us.”

Joseph flinched, but he walked toward her bed, Clayton right behind him. Oh. This was altogether too much. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone to pick up the pieces of her shattered heart?

“I need to apologize,” he said, as he sat on the side of the bed near her feet.

“We need to apologize,” said Clayton firmly as he dragged her dressing table stool over and perched on it. “I can only imagine what you are thinking of us right now.”

“Why?” she said hoarsely to Joseph. “Why have you lied to me all these years and pretended you cared, when you truly wish to be with a man?”

“It’s difficult to explain. And you’re a lady,” he said awkwardly.

All at once her tears dried, as a fierce wave of anger swept through her. “Don’t you dare. I bloody well am not! Just because I have a fresh title and dress well…you put me up on this bloody pedestal as though I’m some delicate miss from a ton ballroom, when I was mostly raised in the warehouses of the London docks!”

“Susanna—”

“No! You hush and listen. After my mother died, my father buried himself in work. So I spent my days watching people. Dockhands. Clerks. Sailors. You think I haven’t seen things? I know sometimes men love other men. Or, lust after them at least. You could have told me. Then I least would have understood why you bedded me so rarely…”

Her husband’s shoulders slumped, and he rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Because that’s not the case. Or at least not the entire case. I do care. Very much. And I want you to be happy. Secondly…it is difficult to explain because I don’t really understand it myself…I lust after men and women.”

Susanna stared at him blankly. “What? How can that be? Why can’t you make up your mind?”

Clayton sighed. “A fair question, but I am the same as Joseph in my lusts, and honestly, I am just attracted to both. Always have been. Pretty breasts and broad chests. Cunts and cocks. For years it caused me a lot of confusion, and I asked myself that very question: why couldn’t I settle to wanting one sex? My parents tried to assist by cleansing the male attraction out of me. It didn’t work. No matter what, the desire for both remained. So eventually I decided to just accept it.”

She reeled back, her mind whirling. “Cleansed you? Like you had a fever?”

“Indeed. It was…it was not pleasant.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she whispered, shuddering at what he might have endured. Rabid did not begin to describe those who took it upon themselves to judge and punish others based on their own rigid beliefs. “But you and Joseph lied to me. You’ve been meeting in secret.”

“No. We haven’t.”

Joseph shuffled down on the bed and tentatively took her hand. “What you saw…that was our first kiss, I swear. Everything else has been with you. And that is the way we want it to be. The three of us in bed together as a real ménage. The only difference being that Clayton and I would touch and kiss and fuck the way we each do with you. That is…if you agree.”

“A real ménage?” repeated Susanna slowly. Her mind had turned to mud. It was simply too much for one day, seeing them kiss and her world upending, and then this startling but seemingly sincere explanation that people could lust after both their own and the opposite sex.

“Yes,” added Clayton, more serious than she’d ever seen him. “I would never forgive myself if I ruined your marriage. And I know being a trio asks a lot of you and Joseph. Few will understand, and the potential for scandal and trouble is high. But…I am selfish and want so much more than a few stolen interludes. I’ve never felt this way before, and it’s not one or the other, it is both of you. Equally important. Equally precious. If however, you don’t feel the same, or if Joseph and I being lovers will cause you distress…I will…I will walk away.”

Her mind and heart recoiled violently at the thought. Before Clayton, she and Joseph hadn’t truly connected. Now they talked. Now he touched her affectionately and called her Susie. Now she knew the intense ecstasy of being pleasured by two men at once. Could she really go back to that unhappy half-life of the past? Yet would she be comfortable with the two men touching each other—and more— in front of her? It might be entirely irrational considering what Joseph had witnessed being done to her, but would Clayton bedding him be arousing, or make her jealous? Not to mention the scandal when London society found out they lived as a trio. The men could be arrested if it was thought they bedded each other rather than merely both bedding her. The importing business could suffer. Clayton might be shunned as an artist. It was so much to contemplate.

Susanna sat up on her bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I need some time. To think about this.”

“Very well. Where will you sleep?” said Joseph. “Since we, ah, redecorated.”

“I’ll lock away my valuables and take one of the guest chambers. And arrange one for Clayton.”

The men looked disappointed, but she squared her shoulders against it. Only time alone would help her make the right decision. But make it she would. Her future happiness depended on it.