“Portia is one of the many people who are regularly invited to the usual receptions, and we’ve known each other for years. By ‘we’ve known each other’ I don’t mean that we are friends or anything, though. There was that kind of familiarity that you can have with people who are in the same environment as you. Then, once she and her friends reached the so-called ‘marriage age’, she started being around more and more often. She served herself on a silver platter, I could say. Harring and I have never been particularly keen on settling down early, and I’ve always preferred to keep my love affairs outside the circle of regular acquaintances, just to avoid fostering gossip.” Ashford pauses to make sure I’m listening. “Anyway, there’s a ‘but’: Portia is an attractive girl and, although I have my self-control, I’m not a saint. A glass of wine too many and a suggestive invitation from her were enough to make me abandon my principles. It went on quite a while, and maybe it escaped my control, even though I thought I could handle the situation. I took advantage of her interest in me just for fun. Besides, she seemed to be okay with it, or so she said. However, we were always together at events and, for some reason, I ended up being her partner at every evening. If you consider that my mother encouraged what she thought was a real relationship, you’ll understand that Portia must have taken this idea of marriage very seriously. And, perhaps, she told many others. I never made her think that it could be a possibility, but she probably had her own strategy: she was trying to make sure that everyone considered us a couple, even if we were not. She believed that, if everyone started telling me: ‘You and Portia are a lovely couple’, ‘Portia is a woman to marry’, or ‘When are you getting married?’ I would eventually drift into it. Her hopes were destroyed of course, when she learned that I had married another woman.”
Actually, I don’t know if I like what I’ve heard. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it, and thinking that he actually had a relationship with her bothers me quite a lot.
“Why are you frowning, now?” Ashford asks, lifting my chin with two fingers.
“Thinking of Portia in your bed makes me uneasy,” I admit.
“If it makes you feel any better, we’ve never been close enough to share a bed.”
In my mind, I picture wardrobes, storerooms, the stables, hallways, the two of them standing against a wall, and God knows what else. “No, it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Doesn’t the fact that I’m here with you mean anything?”
“Maybe,” I say, elusively.
“Any other questions?” He asks, making me straddle him.
“You don’t miss Portia, then?”
Ashford presses my hips against his. I can feel his arousal. “What do you think?”
I lean over him and bring my breasts close to his face. “That you like what you’re looking at.”
“Let me prove it to you,” he murmurs in a slightly hoarse voice, before sinking into me.
72
Ashford’s Version
“You look different,” Harring comments during our foil practice.
“It could be because I got a bit carried away.”
“It was about time! Welcome to the club!”
“I feel strange, but in a positive way.”
“Drugs have this effect, at first.”
“You’re a prick,” I say.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he replies.
“Apart from feeling as if I had the hormones of a fifteen year old, I would say that everything is more or less fine.”
“You’re talking to someone who has never really left puberty, so feel free to let off steam.”
“I would like to stay in bed with Jemma all the time, and when I’m not, I think about when I will be. My thoughts are rather unidirectional.”
“You married a goddess! I would be surprised if you didn’t spend every single moment of your day groping her.”
“It was different at first,” I try to justify myself.
“Yeah, you looked like a plaster bust from the National Gallery, with that ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here’ kind of expression on your face. It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“Things have changed.”
“Yes, they have. She looks way more confident. And you’re listening to your lower half, at last,” Harring says, pointing his foil below my waist. “I must admit that I had started to fear that you wanted to become a monk, even though you kept yourself busy with Portia…”
