For a moment, only a brief moment, tears cloud my vision. I blink them back. Still, I cannot speak. Luckily he does.
“And I have something to warn you of too,” he says.
“What is that?”
I cannot imagine he has anything truly alarming to share.
His current calm pains me because his indifference to disgrace cannot last. When he sees what the caricaturists and scandal sheet writers say of him, it is likely to estrange him from me forever.
Instead he gestures at my plate. “You must eat, Annabelle.”
“What must you warn me of?” I repeat, not moving to eat, wanting him to explain his words.
He takes a bite of his toast, swallows, and then speaks once more.
“It is not a matter of what but ofwho—my father of course,” Alfred says. “He will certainly come to Trescott. He will be enraged. It is the end of all his dreams for me.”
“Does that upset you?”
“I do not want to dishonor my father—and I very much shall. And he has, perhaps, driven me to this extremity. I told him I wanted to marry. Had he allowed it, he would have been spared this pain.”
I am aware that he has not answered my question, but I do not press for more. Perhaps because I fear the answer.
“And what of your mother? Is she a woman prone to anger?”
“Oh, she has been many years dead,” Alfred says. “My father remarried about ten years ago—to a woman much younger than himself. He has by her two children.”
I start at this piece of intelligence.
“How old is his wife?”
“I believe she is almost my age exactly.”
“She must have been very young indeed when they married.”
“Yes, some said, I believe,tooyoung at the time—but only in whispers. And she came with an excellent dowry, so no one could accuse my father of only being motivated by baser urges. I believethathelped.”
Indignation flares within me.
“I must make sure I understand. Your father forbade you marrying—from having contact with women of any natural, erotic kind—while he married and presumably enjoyed a woman your own age. Am I correct in my assessment?”
“Yes,” Alfred says. “Fortunately, Emily has never been to my tastes. Otherwise, it could’ve been a very cruel situation indeed.”
“Well, I’m delighted to hear that you never coveted your father’s wife,” I say. “Nevertheless, it is abominable of your father. Such hypocrisy is not to be believed, even among the clergy. Although I suppose I should not be surprised.”
He looks up at me and I see an old fragment of that yearning that I recognized in him upon our first encounters. It makes me flush withdesire so suddenly that I am taken aback.
“Come here,” he says as if sensing my reaction.
I cannot deny him. I stand and walk to his chair. He opens his arms and places me upon his lap.
In my ear, he says, “Thisis all I have ever wanted—to wake with the woman I love and breakfast with her. It is what I was made for. Let me be made for you, Annabelle.”
I can feel his hardness underneath me. I wanted to keep the heat between us out of this discussion. But when it comes to me and Alfred Saintsbury it is an impossible proposition.
I stand. He gives a little sound of objection. But I pay it no need. He will not control what happens here. I will.
“Take out your cock.”
