Chapters (42)
“For a man who loves horses more than women, a clean shirt will be less enticing,” I said and commanded Frankie to wash. Clean and perfumed, I arranged her against the tester with care; chaste yet ardent would be most dampening to Essex.
“Do not cut yourself,” she said, as I drew the curtains around the bed.
“If he manages to enter you, pretend great pain and I will…” I could say no more for Lord Essex arrived, trailed by his manservant. He scowled at me and I feared he would send me away, but he did not.
He yanked open a bed-hanging and I saw Frankie inside, pulling the sheet up to her neck. I frowned, worried that too much timidity would excite him. Indeed, he threw off his gown and quickly entered the bed in his nightshirt. Essex’s man closed the curtains and went to sit in the window.
“Snuff them,” I heard Essex order. Frankie, as she described to me afterward and I could hear for myself, knelt up and blew out the candles on her side of the headboard. To get to the other sconce, she had to lean over Essex. As she did, Essex pulled her down to sit on his member, already hard.
She yelped. His thrust missed and so he rolled her onto her back, pushing up her shirt so forcefully it bunched over her face. As he prized her legs apart with his knee, Frankie clawed the shirt down so that she could breathe. Essex had taken off his shirt and Frankie told me later that she snorted in surprise at seeing her husband naked for the first time.
“His member went limp,” she said.
“It will not happen if you discourage me,” I heard Essex snap.
“Why would I help a beast like you?”
I dipped my head to my sewing and the gentleman turned to look out of the window. There was no pleasure in eavesdropping on this pair.
“So be it,” said Essex in a hard voice that did not quite disguise his mortification. He sighed, as one who considered himself much maligned, and got out of bed.
“A light,” said the Earl, leaving his gentleman to close the door. Frankie sat with her knees drawn up, her head buried in her arms. When I embraced her, she was shaking. It was a long while before she stopped repeating, over and over: “How could they order him into my bed? How could they?”
That Christmas, for many, there was only grief.