Drives. Strolls with Lavinia leashed at her side and Lady Lutton walking six paces behind. Calls where she and Phineas sat in the drawing room and he looked at her constantly and asked questions and waited patiently for her answers and seemed delighted with the words she said, no matter how few and ugly and stuttering they were.
And the words became less stuttering in time, proving to her that the stutter was largely a function of her nerves. The lisp, of course, was unchanged. Her tongue still thrust. Heresseswere stilletheth.But he understood the few words she gave him.
Of course, he didn’t understandher. He couldn’t. He was so far apart from her in so many ways.
So at ease. So content.
So . . . shallow.
But that judgment didn’t affect her lust for him. Not one whit. Alone in her bed at night, he was still the man who came to her and touched her and called herdarlingandgood girland told her that her quim was sweet and wet and ready for him. He was still the man on top of her in her mind, thrusting into her and telling her she was lovely and he had to have her.
In the daytime, however, in the world outside her head, there were no more intimacies that could lead to a bed. He still kissed her when they were alone in the drawing room. Sometimes sweet, affectionate kisses. Sometimes long, hard kisses that took away her breath and that he would end abruptly with apologies. And then he would take his leave immediately after that.
She grew not to like the passionate kisses because they meant he would go away. But yet she still craved them and couldn’t stop herself from putting her tongue in his mouth.
But he did not touch the intimate places on her body. And she did not reach for his cock even when she felt it hard against her when they kissed.
Because she knew whatever happened when she was naked with him again, it wouldn’t be a fuck. It would be something else. And she wasn’t sure she was ready for something else.
So, yes, it was the courtship she had wanted as a girl. But she was a woman now and her womanly needs were not being met by this rogue, acting as if he were a somewhat of a gentleman.
He took her to all the art exhibitions, all the museums, with Lady Lutton again nearby, but not too near.
He threw sticks for Lavinia and constantly petted the hound, even rolling on the carpet with her in the drawing room, and Caroline could see what a doting father he would be. Phineas would get down on the floor in the future nursery and tumble and tickle. Did he indulge in this horseplay with Lavinia to demonstrate just that to Caroline? But he never seemed miffed when he got covered in dog hair, even though he was unfailingly garbed in the most impeccable fashion.
“Dashwood says I need to buy stock in a brush company now,” he said, grinning, as Caroline clucked and tried to get the fur off the back of his superfine tailcoat with her fingers.
He even got in the habit of coming by just after dinner and taking Lavinia out alone one last time on her leash when it was dark and it wouldn’t do for Caroline to be walking the streets of London.
But not everything Phineas did was perfect. In the first few weeks of their engagement, he would quote Wyatt or Sidney or Burns or Donne. The quotations were often paraphrased and when she ventured to ask him more about the work the quote had come from, it was obvious he had not read the poem, only memorized the little bit he had spewed back to her.
She was relieved when he stopped speaking verse to her. Obviously, he was doing it to impress her, but Phineas had enough words of his own. Better to belovelyanddarlingthan to be the object of hisvegetable loveora dish for the gods, as she was when he was still quoting Marvell and Shakespeare.
But she was not relieved about the reason he stopped quoting poetry. She had inadvertently put an end to his pretense herself when he had greeted her with a line fromTwo Gentleman of Verona. He had grinned as he said, “To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue.”
Obviously he did not mean to be cruel and he thought it was a compliment for her. But she knew the context of the line and recognized it as an aspersion against well-spoken women everywhere. And couldn’t he sense how much she hated her own stumbling speech?
She came back with her own quote from the play:That man that has a tongue, I say, is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
It had been the perfect riposte on her part. A sharp piece of wit she felt sure she would never come near again.
Her quote was from the same play. He had referred to a woman. She had replied with a quote about a man. And of course, there was a double meaning. She was punning on the two ways he had induced her to marry him—his words and his tongue on her quim.
But it had been lost on him. He smiled uncertainly. She repeated it, sure her lisp and her stammer had been the problem. Still no recognition. Then she explained it to him, clumsily.
“Oh, Caro,” he said and laughed and laughed. Perhaps too hard and for too long. “You are so clever.”
He never quoted poetry to her again.
He would never understand her.
She was marrying a man who would never understand her.
Perhaps that was for the best.
Twenty-One
During the three months of his engagement to Lady Caroline Haskett, there were times when Phineas looked at Caro and his breath was taken away by the fact that this beautiful woman had both agreed to marry him and allowed him to know her in the biblical sense. And then there were times when all he could see was a distant and unknowable stranger.
