Page 14 of Lady Mariel’s Scandalous Love

Chapter Six

“I’ve set up this room for you, so that you have your own private study in which to work, and a place to lock the book, and anything else you need, away, when you are not here. Do let me know if you need anything more.”

Mariel looked around the small room, which was well fitted out with a couch, a table, some chairs, a bookshelf, and a large desk, with a number of lockable drawers. The desk was placed to one side, where the light from the window would fall on it for the majority of the day. It would do very well, as a place to work on the translation. Selina moved past her, and went to settle on the couch.

“It will suit very well, thank you, Dash.” She went to the desk, and dropped into the chair, then looked up at him with a smile. “Now – the book, please – I can’t wait to see it!”

He laughed at her eagerness, then came to stand beside her. She was acutely aware of his proximity, of the heat and scent of him.

Leaning past her shoulder, so close that they were almost touching, he produced a key, and unlocked one of the drawers, then pulled it open. Inside lay a leather-bound book, its covers worn with age, and the gilt which had once embossed it worn away in many places. Mariel reached in and lifted it, almost reverently, and placed it on the desk before her. Selina rose, and came to stand on her other side. Mariel felt oddly like an actor, or a magician, as she opened the book under their watchful eyes.

The front paper was beautiful – thick parchment, with marbled swirls of fading colour. She slowly turned the pages, considering the title, and mentally translating. It said, if translated colloquially, rather than directly – ‘A Manual of Instruction for Achieving Pleasure of the Body by Diverse Means’. She licked her lips, and turned more pages, until she came to the first illustration.

Even with her previous exposure to explicit pictures, this one made her blush slightly. But she leaned forward to study it, as did Selina, looking over her shoulder. Dash reached forward again, over her other shoulder, and delicately traced a finger over part of it.

“The work is of the highest quality. These curling decorations around the edges suggest to me that it is a copy of an original from Persia, or nearby, for they resemble Persian script – although I don’t think these actually are script. The solid frame drawn around some of them also evokes the Persian style, as does the way that the people’s faces and hair is presented, and their clothing – where there is clothing, of course.”

“So, you think that this work is a copy of an original which may have been in Persian, but that the artist did not know that language?”

“Exactly.”

“I think that I agree – for some types of the Persian language are written using the same letters, almost, as Russian – and those decorative swirls could almost be Russian letters – but are not close enough to actually say anything. If you look at the text on the page, the letters are far more structured and upright – less swirly. Oh! I am going to enjoy doing this so much!”

She turned more pages until she found another illustration. She studied it, struggling initially to determine exactly what the people depicted were doing, and then felt her cheeks heat a little again as she worked it out. This illustration had a caption beneath it, and Mariel read it, the Russian words coming back to her slowly.

There were, however, a couple of words that she did not know. Whilst she had expected that to be the case, for some things, she was faced with the dawning realisation that there would likely be far more words she didn’t know.

Words for things that grandmothers were not at all likely to teach a ten-year-old girl – words for parts of the body, which were not discussed openly in polite company, and more. Words for, most likely, objects – like the ones that she had found in the secret room in the Fortescue Grange library, for which, annoyingly, she did not even know the English words!

She swallowed. This was going to be extremely educational, and far harder than she had at first thought. Dash cleared his throat and spoke quietly.

“Do you… do you think that you can translate it?”

“Yes – although it may take rather a long while.”

He gave a sigh of relief.

“I have provided a stack of good quality bound journals for you to transcribe into, and this section of the desk is stocked with many bottles of ink, and dozens of pens – enough, I hope, to keep you well supplied. There is also a large bag of sand for drying the ink, in the bottom drawer.” Mariel looked up into his face, and felt something pass between them as her eyes met his. He reached out, as if unaware of what he was doing, and gently traced the side of her cheek with a finger, before letting his hand fall back to his side. Heat shivered through her at that touch. “Thank you, Mariel, for being the person that you are, and for doing this for me.”

“It will be my pleasure.”

As she said the words, she realised how easily their meaning might be taken a second way, and she saw his eyes light with amusement – obviously he had noted her unintentional double entendre too.

“I most certainly hope so…”

On that note, as Selina gave a little strangled snort of laughter, he turned away, and Mariel felt suddenly acutely aware of everything around her. She turned her attention back to the book before her, and began.

~~~~~

They had taken to spending some hours of each day at Longwood Peak, with Mariel working diligently on the translation, and Selina keeping her company, as, officially, a chaperone.

In reality, Mariel doubted that Selina would make any attempt to limit what she chose to do, at all. When Mariel took regular breaks from the translating, her head positively spinning with the images which filled her imagination, not just from the illustrations in the book, but from what the words described, they discussed not only the book, but the broader subject of Dash’s collection. Both Selina and Mariel were convinced that his collection contained many things, beyond books. He had only mentioned books – but Mariel could not imagine him stopping there – his fascination with the erotic most likely meant that he had collected objects too.

Selina agreed, and they had both developed a burning desire to see more of that collection – they just had to work out where it was kept – for Dash seemed determined to keep them isolated from all of it but the one book. Obviously, he was still coming to terms with the fact that they did not have the same attitude to such things as most women of the ton.

But, after a week or more, what Mariel found even more frustrating was her lack of words. As she went through the text, she could work out, usually by context, and sometimes with the assistance of the illustrations, what object, device, or activity a word referred to – but she still could not write it correctly into her translation, for she did not know the English words for those things. And a text which ran ‘the man then inserts his (missing word here) into the woman’s (missing word here)’ simply was not clear, nor did it arouse quite the same emotion in the reader as it would with correct words in those places.

For working on this translation definitely aroused emotion! And produced the kind of dreams from which she awoke feeling heated and aching.