Romancing Miss Bronte (47 page)

Charlotte was not a stranger to sexual gratification. She had discovered it during those days at Roe Head and satisfied herself quietly, shamefully, shuddering silently in her bed, alone, at night. She had found it impossible to confide in anyone, impossible to speak of darkly powerful urges of such a private nature. All her life she had heard passions of the flesh condemned as vile and wicked, and during those days, as she succumbed to her sexual desires and fantasies, she felt herself falling away from God. She had cloaked her fears in terms of a spiritual struggle and written dozens of letters to dear, pious Ellen, who had bade her to pray and seek strength and courage from God.

Yet something in her rebelled against this doctrine. Even as a girl she had let her imagination skirt around the perimeters of desire. She knew her body could respond to the fantasies of touch, of hands and lips.

Now she was married. It was her sacred duty to render this pleasure to her husband, but the reality of a man’s flesh was something for which she was absolutely unprepared.

She sealed the letter quickly and began a second one to her father. She was still writing when Arthur returned.

She removed her spectacles and rose swiftly when he came into the room.

“My dear, you’re absolutely soaked.”

“It’s pouring out there, and blowing a gale,” he said as he sloughed off his wet greatcoat and gave it to Charlotte to hang on the back of a chair to dry.

“I was just jotting off a note to Papa to tell him we’ve arrived safely.”

“Very good.”

“I’ve given Bangor as our next mailing address. I said we should be there by Monday.”

“That’s our plan. But we’ll see how the weather is.”

She returned to her desk and picked up her pen.

Arthur removed his waistcoat and the clerical collar, and when she next looked up he was in his trousers with his white shirt open at the chest. Stripped of the decorous trappings of the church, his physicality became strikingly apparent.

He was pouring a glass of port from the bottle the maid had brought up.

“Here, my darling,” he said as he set the glass in front of her, then poured one for himself. There was an air of impatience in his manner. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on her letter.

“I ran into a most obtuse man at the stables. A Manchester clergyman. He asked where my curacy was, and when he learned I was from Haworth he claimed to know your father. Said he’s here with his wife and was planning an excursion tomorrow to Caernafon. Proposed that we share a cab and see the sights together.”

“Oh dear,” Charlotte said with a look of horror.

Arthur pulled up a chair, straddled it, and leaned against the back. “I accepted.”

“You didn’t!”

He watched her with an intense gaze as he sipped his port. “I thought it might please you.”

“Arthur, you wouldn’t.”

He reached out and touched her cheek, and his blue eyes darkened.

“I will unless you put down your pen,” he said sternly.

Her hands trembled as she lay aside her pen and stopped the ink bottle.

“Now drink the port.”

She took the glass, her hand still shaking.

“Go on, drink,” he said. “It will calm your nerves.” When she had obliged him, he said, “Now let down your hair.”

“Would you at least allow me the decency of turning your back?”

“Not yet,” he said gently. “Just do as I ask.”

She had never liked her own body. Even now she could not think of it as an object of desire, and as she removed the combs and the hairpins and shook out her hair, she did not dare to meet his eyes.

“I’m not pretty to look at,” she whispered.

There was a brief but solemn silence while he struggled to express something deeply felt.

With a touch of his hand, he lifted her chin so that her eyes met his.

“From the first day we met, you have been for me an object of indescribable fascination. But I know that’s not your meaning. You speak of conventional beauty. But has that ever mattered to me? Have you ever seen me shy away from you, or turn my gaze from you? Have you not seen—and felt—the effect you have on me?”

She felt herself blushing hotly.

“Here, give me your hand,” he said. Timidly, she offered it to him. Her fingers were chilled, and he slipped them inside his shirt, to the bristling hair on his warm chest just over his pounding heart. “There, feel that. Is that not answer enough for you?”

Then he released her hand.

“Now, take off your things and get into bed. I’ll sit here by the fire and drink my port. I’ll not come to bed until you’re ready for me.”

He listened to her undressing, following with his imagination the sound of her fingers fumbling with the hooks, buttons, and ties and then
drawing her chemise over her head; the rustling of silk as the voluminous skirts and petticoats fell to the floor; the whisper of muslin against her skin as she drew on her nightshirt; her bare feet padding lightly over the creaking wood floor, the old bed groaning as she turned back the blankets and slipped between the sheets.

He finished his glass of port and rose to add coals to the fire.

“Arthur, that will only make the room brighter.”

“Whatever pleases you, my dear.”

With the poker he spread out the coals. Then, in the shadows, he removed his clothes.

He crept into bed, sliding between the sheets and reaching for her.

Her entire body was trembling now.

She let out a startled gasp as he crawled on top of her and pressed his erection against her stomach; his size and the intense heat of his body overwhelmed her.

The pain was sharp but short-lived, as was the act itself. When he withdrew himself, and fell beside her, and spread his hand across her stomach, curling his fingers into the hair of her sex, she lay there in awe and disbelief.

It was done.

Cradling her in his arms, he kissed her for a long while, and when his breathing had calmed he said, “One day you will take as much pleasure in this as I do.”

When she made no reply, he said, “I promise you.”

Hot tears slid down her cheeks, but she made not a sound.

“I promise you,” he repeated softly.

The intimacy forged from that wondrous strange act infiltrated her thoughts and colored her perception from the moment she opened her eyes the next morning. She felt as if this new sexual knowledge had so changed her that it must inevitably be visible to others. At breakfast in the dining room, she flushed when the innkeeper stopped by their table to inquire if the room met with their satisfaction.

“My dear, you’ve gone beet red,” Arthur teased when the innkeeper had gone. Then he dove into his ham and beans.

She took a sip of her tea and darted a shy look at him. “It’s just a little warm in here, that’s all.”

He swallowed and leaned forward to whisper, “I’m your husband, my dear. Only I can read your thoughts. No one else.”

Charlotte flashed him a fiery look. “And what makes you think you have such wondrous powers?”

Arthur broke out into deep laughter, and Charlotte immediately realized the suggestive nature of her comment.

“Arthur!” she scolded in a quiet voice. Then, noticing how quickly his breakfast was disappearing, she said, “Well, at least you seem to have regained your appetite.”

He blotted his mouth and said, “Only because another has been satisfied.”

She shot him a look of utter shock.

His countenance softened, and he reached under the table for her knee. “Pray don’t be so harsh on me. I’m mad about you, my dear. I’ve never been so happy in my entire life. To whom can I say these things if not to you? My wife?”

A reluctant smile crept around the corners of her mouth. “It’s just difficult to hear you talk like this. For years I knew you as a man of such restraint, Arthur. So stiff and reserved.”

Arthur had a mouthful of tea. He struggled to hold a straight face while he swallowed.

“Now what have I said?” she pursued hotly, and upon reflection, she blushed again.

“Oh, Arthur!” she scolded. “You’re absolutely impossible. I can’t talk to you anymore!”

Gradually they adjusted to each other, and Arthur’s unfailing kindness and warmth, his unceasing concern for her comfort and happiness always compensated for the awkwardness of the nights. In bed she endured the
sexual act. She thought of it as indulging her husband a strange and powerful need. For her the most crucial element was lacking: the feeling she knew to be love. That emotional glue that held a man and a woman together. Without that glue, the realms of her life seemed disjointed. The rational woman told herself she was satisfied. The emotional one had been left out in the cold.

W
ere it not for the fact that they were to meet Arthur’s family, Charlotte would have preferred any place other than Ireland for their honeymoon voyage.

It was the only point upon which Arthur had insisted.

“I think you’ll discover a different Ireland from the one your father has painted for you. It’s not as savage as you imagine.” Arthur said this to her their last morning in Wales as he stood near the window, trimming his beard. He angled the hand mirror to catch her reflection; she had her chin tucked to her chest as she fastened the front hooks of her bodice. She was only just getting comfortable dressing in front of him.

Arthur smiled to himself, enjoying this furtive surveillance when she was unguarded.

“I imagine no such thing,” she murmured, preoccupied with her hooks and eyes.

“Some of us are quite respectable,” he said as he put away the scissors. Impulsively, he went to her and kissed her on the back of the neck.

Charlotte answered with an elbow jab to his ribs.

It was true that Patrick Brontë looked with scorn on certain weaknesses in the Irish character and had planted in his children’s minds visions of Ireland as a rural society mired in illiteracy and poverty. From the day he’d set foot in Cambridge, her father had wiped the Irish dust from his shoes and never glanced back. He rarely spoke of his ten brothers and sisters, the Prunty peasants, farmers, and ale makers, nor had he ever returned to visit them. He had left Ireland at the age of twenty-five with a
hard-earned classical education and seven pounds in his pocket, and over the next four years at St. John’s he became an object of awe and admiration for his singular ability to subsist on practically nothing. By dint of his natural gifts, a sincere and ardent faith, and steely ambition, he had overcome enormous disadvantages to achieve outstanding academic success and ordination into the Church of England—thereby earning the right to claim the most valuable prize in all of Britain: the status of a gentleman.

That his brilliant and famous daughter could do no better than a poor Irish curate for a husband had just about broken his heart.

Arthur was perhaps a little to blame for the misperception of his worth. There was much he might have said to disprove Patrick Brontë’s harsh opinions, if he had chosen to do so. But it was not in his nature. Had he been more arrogant and boastful, the truth might have come out a little earlier. As it turned out, Charlotte had to discover these things for herself. She would be forced to take the man on faith, and travel with him to a new and unfamiliar place. Arthur’s qualities would slowly become apparent, like the refracted beauties of a gem long ignored. When observed in a new light, it was found to be an object of surprising fascination.

She was certainly not expecting to be greeted by such a strikingly beautiful thing as Mary Anna.

The young woman hurried along the quay as quickly as she could, clutching the flapping ribbons of her bonnet with one hand. The awkward gait was noticed first, but then the face took your breath away.

She had tears in her eyes even before she drew near enough for Charlotte to make out their color—the same delft blue as Arthur’s.

There was a flash of unconcealed emotion when she fell into Arthur’s embrace and turned her cheek for him to kiss. “Oh, Arthur,” she murmured tenderly, “we’ve missed you ever so much.”

“Charlotte … my cousin, Mary Anna Bell.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Charlotte smiled, offering the girl her hand
and noting the sober elegance of her dress, the spotless kid gloves and silk parasol. There was about her whole person a grave air of competence that seemed designed to play down the ethereal beauty of her face.

She grasped Charlotte’s hand warmly. “Oh, Miss Brontë,” she said in a softly assured voice that could barely be heard over the clamor of the train station. “We’re so glad you’ve come.”

“It’s Mrs. Nicholls now,” Arthur corrected with a smile.

“Oh, but of course it is!” The blue eyes widened in embarrassment. “How thoughtless of me!”

Arthur saw how this small slip had flustered her, and he reached for her elbow and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“It’s quite understandable, dear cousin, since I’ve been writing to you about Miss Brontë for so many years. And then I went and changed her name.”

“And I’m so glad you did,” Mary Anna said, once again composed. She allowed her delicate blue gaze to linger on him for just a moment, and Charlotte felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.

“Where’s that big brother of mine?” Arthur asked.

“He ran into a gentleman from the Canals who absolutely insisted on detaining him, but I saw you come off the train and slipped away.”

“And Joseph?”

“He’ll join us tomorrow.” She turned to Charlotte. “My younger brother so regrets not being here to meet you, ma’am. He’s a student at Trinity, as I’m sure Arthur has told you, and he has duties as a tutor to a family in town. But he’s very much looking forward to touring the city with us.”

“And your mama?” Arthur asked. “How is she?”

“Like she always is just before you come home. Counting the days and driving the servants into a tizzy.”

Charlotte inquired about the youngest cousin, Lucy.

“She’s quite well,” Mary Anna smiled. “Rather upset at having to remain at home with Mama.”

This drew a chuckle from Arthur. “My poor dear aunt.”

“Yes, Mama’s paying for it, I’m sure.”