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"Here, m'lady," came a loud pronouncement from a young maidservant with bushy blonde hair, emerging from the shadows of rear of the foyer. "Have you need of something, miss?"
"Will you see me back to my bedchamber, please? I'm quite ready to retire after the day I've had," she announced loudly, looking back expectantly at Lord Beckham. She hoped to see something - anything, expressed in his eyes. Instead, he simply stood silent; unmoved. She sighed.
"Certainly, m'lady," Mary exclaimed, bumbling nervously towards the stairs. Lady Havenshire follows, each of her footsteps echoing, daggered, through the hallway. She looked back once more - longingly, wantingly - and caught sight of Lord Beckham again, hoping to see anything. Please, she thought; please, just say something. Just say anything, Marshall. I thought I loved you... I want to love you.
He said nothing.
With a flourish and a humph Lady Havenshire stormed down the hall, Mary rushing along behind her. The young maidservant had a thousand questions, no doubt begging for tidbits of gossip to share with the rest of the house staff once Ms. Mulwray retired for the evening.
"M-m'lady! W-was that the man who—" Mary hurried along behind Nadia, nearly out of breath with how quickly Nadia fled the foyer. "The man who's interested in courting you? Lord Beckham?"
"You know his name, do you? Quite good ears the girls down in the maidservants' chambers have, don't they?" Nadia bit back quickly.
"He's—he's so handsome! I've never seen a noble with a face, or features, like that, not any around here, at least," Mary commented. "Do you think he's handsome, m'lady? I think he'd be quite the envy of any girl down in the servant quarters."
"Yes, he's far nicer to look upon than the normal sort of buck-teeth, cheap suit-wearing, wormish men one tends to find among the manors and dinner banquets around these parts," Nadia sighed. The serving girl giggled, certainly loving the titillation of learning something so scandalous about the madam of the house.
"Your father, when I was a little girl, he was the most handsome noble I had ever seen, but I think Lord Beckham is even more handsome," Mary chattered. They rounded a corner and Lady Havenshire pulled open the door to her bedchamber with a grunt, flowing into the room angrily, landing in a fluid, quick motion onto her bed, staring at the ceiling with a disaffected sigh. Mary entered after her, quickly pulling the door shut, hoping excitedly for a gossip session with Lady Havenshire. Instead, Nadia quickly and quite bluntly asked her own question.
"Mary, pardon the particularly personal query, but," Nadia said rather nonchalantly, "have you ever been intimate with a man before?" Mary giggled loudly, her cheeks blossoming in a bright burst of cherry-red embarrassment.
"M-m'lady! I'm..." she gasped, covering her lips. "I'm not... certain, if I am meant to answer that question, or if it's s... simply..."
"You can speak freely, Mary, in fact I prefer that you would be honest, and of course I'd never hold your answer against you," Lady Havenshire assured her.
"Y... yes, m'lady, I've been intimate with men, before," she replied, her voice full of shame.
"You've nothing to be ashamed of, Mary. You're a grown woman, and you're free to find men handsome and interesting, I certainly wouldn't hold it against you," Nadia said. "I have a... query," she continued hesitantly, "about... the first man you were intimate with. How often did you interact with him after?"
"The first man? Oh, he had been a friend of mine for some time," Mary recalled; the line of questioning clearly unsettled the maidservant, whose voice grew unsteady as she began to pick up odds and ends left scattered about Lady Havenshire's bedroom, pulling linens from the corner and idly ensuring the surfaces to be dust-free. "We've... not spoken, often, since then," she said; the manner of her speech suggested to Nadia Mary had not thought much on the subject until prompted. "...I don't see him as much as I used to."
"Do you think there's a reason for that, Mary?" Nadia pressed her, glancing up from the bed.
"I'm... not well-versed in the manner of men," Mary laughed nervously. "I suppose... some men, are simply... well, they've an idea of what they wish to have, and once they've gotten it, they move on with their lives. Perhaps that's what... my friend, thought. The other serving girls, they've... mentioned it, of how men have treated them. It's an unfortunate part of how the world is, I wager." Mary pondered, before blushing embarrassingly. "Men of the sort I spend time with, anyway. I'm certain the kind of gentleman you'd find would be quite different, m'lady. Why do you ask?"
"No reason in particular," Nadia said dismissively, though the reason proffered weighed quite heavily in her mind. She felt embarrassed herself, having such little experience in these matters; she had spent her years abroad studying, thinking, learning about the wild ideas the world had to offer, but when it came to matters of the sexes and of relationships, she found her own viewpoint quite lacking. She hadn't even considered so crass a thought before the sight of Lord Beckham had enticed her so deeply.
Had she been used?...
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"You'll never be the man you think you are, or the man you ought to be!"
Those words, fallen from the mouth of his love Anna, stuck with him; they hurt him, crippled him. He imagined that day with her; he had found her rather inebriated and in a compromising position with Lord Rossing, a man he had only ever held the foulest of contempt for. He had retrieved his love, but her actions had brought great sorrow to his heart. He asked her if she had ever truly loved him.
She said she had.
"Anna, please," he pleaded; scaling the stairs of Berrewithe Manor he followed her to her room, only to find she had locked the door shut. "I'll... I'm sorry," he pleaded, pressing his shoulder against the door, longing to feel her body against his once more. "I love you... I want to have your hand in marriage, Anna, doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Of course it does! I find that you think otherwise to be quite insulting," her voice, muffled, rumbled through the locked door.
"M'lady, I didn't—I would never intend to insult you, please," Lord Beckham pleaded.
"If you hadn't meant to insult me you wouldn't have questioned my integrity over matters so simply as an evening with Lord Rossing!" she sniped back, her voice hysterical.
"Anna, please... I'm... sorry, I..." his heart throbbing, he couldn't bring himself to break his last barrier; to let her take so complete a control over him. He had to stand up for himself, he thought... he couldn't simply let another man have his wife so thoughtlessly. But he couldn't bring himself to do it; to chastise her. He loved her too deeply, and so caught was he in her spell that nothing could break it.
"You can't even apologize properly for something so outrageous!" she shouted.
