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“I know,” he said. “It’s going to be hard for you. And I’m learning too—about you, and about how we can both get what we need.”
As he spoke, he tightened his hand’s grip on mine a little, as if to tell me that I could beg and plead all I wanted for him to take care of me the wayIthought he should. None of that, his hand seemed to say, would change the way he knew he had to act, as my husband—as the man I had agreed, for some reason, toobeyat least for this week in Rocky Falls.
I felt my face crumple. Tears prickled in the corners of my eyes.
“Ricky,” I said, his name coming out more as a sob than a comprehensible version of my gorgeous, muscular new bridegroom’s name. I felt another word start to rise to my lips, and I pushed it down—far down.Sir.
No. No way. I only called him that because… because he made me. He gave me no choice, in that horrid little private room.
He leaned close again and kissed me. Just like when he had kissed my hand a moment before, Rick kissed me now in a way he hadn’t before. He had kissed me plenty of times, of course, some of them long and open-mouthed and so forceful that they had taken my breath away. He had never, I realized, done it with such self-assurance. He had my left hand in his right already; now he put his left hand up to cup the back of my neck and so to hold my face in place for his kiss. I couldn’t force down the little whimpering cry I gave up into his mouth as he opened my lips with his and gently entered me with his tongue, that way.
I closed my eyes, thoughts and feelings roiling inside me. I stiffened, wondering if the driver was watching us in his rearview mirror. The thought that Rick didn’t care at all about that made the strange mess of emotion and sensation within my head and my chest seethe more violently.
To my mortification, my hips gave a little jerk as the kiss continued. Rick let go of my left hand and moved it to my chest, taking gentle but very possessive hold of my left breast, his fingers around the curvature of the little peach, his thumb on the nipple. I felt it stiffen against the fabric of my bra, and that made me sob again, with shame at my helplessly wanton body’s unwelcome response.
I tried to pull away from him. I felt certain Rick would loosen his hands’ grip on me when he felt me resisting, but he didn’t, not at all. He held my neck and my breast more firmly, and he kissed me harder, telling me without words that he would make the decisions about these intimate moments, from now on.
When at last he broke the kiss, I realized that the limo had come to a stop.
“Didn’t want to disturb you folks,” the driver said, “but this is the New Modesty office.”
* * *
“Mr. Williams,” the well-dressed middle-aged woman said. “Mrs. Williams. Welcome to Rocky Falls—and to the New Modesty. I’m Florence Purdy, your New Modesty counselor, though really we like to say that everyone in the town is happy to give you all the advice you need—and some you probably don’t. You can just leave your bags behind Joan here’s desk.”
She nodded to the pretty receptionist, just about my age, who had on a modest dress that reminded me of pictures from the 1950s.
“Amanda,” the older woman said, “you’ll call me Mrs. Purdy. Mr. Williams, you’ll call me Florence if you like.”
She led us, still speaking, past Joan’s desk and down a hallway to her office. I didn’t have time to interject or even to signal to Rick my confusion at her telling me what to call her as I kept up with her brisk pace.
“I like to make sure new wives have clear guidance on that—call that advice you need but probably think you don’t.”
Mrs. Purdy gave a tinkly little laugh as she turned toward what must be her office door, casting a glance back at me over her shoulder.
“There are a lot of things folks around here take for granted,” she said as she opened the door and then stepped back to let us go first, “that a young bride coming to town for the first time usually doesn’t understand. Calling older people Mr. and Mrs. until they ask you to do otherwise is one of them—old-fashioned manners are important in Rocky Falls.”
I tried to keep a little smile of gratitude—fake gratitude, obviously—on my face as I walked past Mrs. Purdy into her office, and to maintain eye contact. Part of me didn’t know why I should care—but part of me couldn’t stop thinking about Rick’s opportunity, about the limo, about first class on airplanes going to exciting places.
And how it all relates to my lesson in the private room. To my newly dominant husband putting me over his knee to discipline me in the old-fashioned way of Rocky Falls.
I turned quickly into the office and made for one of the two chairs in front of Mrs. Purdy’s desk, to keep from letting her see the color that had just mounted into my cheeks.
“Thanks very much, Florence,” I heard Rick say as he came in behind me. “That’s really helpful. I know Mandy is grateful, too.”
I sat down, frowning deeply, the blazing fire in my face only getting hotter.
“Is she now?” Mrs. Purdy asked, her voice so unexpectedly severe and judgmental that it made me grip the arms of the chair. Rick sat down next to me, and Mrs. Purdy went past to sit in her own comfortable-looking desk chair, to face us across her immaculate green-blottered desk. On the blotter she put the tablet from which she had read our names when she had greeted us at the curb, her attention fixed downward as if to make certain the tablet went precisely where she intended it to go.
Then she raised her gray eyes to meet mine, her face betraying none of the sweetness I had seen on it at first. Instead, she regarded me with the kind of sternness I remembered from the classrooms of experienced, no-nonsense teachers. The kind of teachers who frightened you, but taught you the most.
My tummy seemed to flip over.
“Amanda,dear,” said Mrs. Purdy, emphasizing thedearwith such stress that I knew she meant it to patronize me, “are you grateful?”
My jaw went slack. Before I had time even to contemplate an answer, Mrs. Purdy had shifted her attention to Rick, and her smile had returned.
“Forgive me, Mr. Williams,” she said. “Really it’s for you to decide whether Amanda’s behavior warrants any correction. But, as I said, I’ve found it’s very important when a girl arrives here as a prospective resident, whether married or single, to make the town’s expectations clear.”
