La Principessa

“Why do you always want to play chess?”

“Check. Because I always win.” Mary bends over the board red hair falling over her sunburned cheeks. She bites her lip and advances her queen. Cutler sorely misses his queen at this moment, and curses this oversight that allowed it to be taken by a pawn. Some upstart pawn overthrew his queen!

“What’s the challenge in that?”

“It’s not about challenge. It is about achieving the intended result—that is, winning. Now, so long as my methods yield the same results, I shall continue to use them. Go to the well until the well is dry. When the well is dry, find a new well. Check.”

They’re sitting crosslegged on his bed, the chessboard situated between them. He wants to knock it over—sending chess pieces flying across the room—then he’ll fuck her vigorously. But after she’ll say that he did it to prevent himself from losing.

“How do you know I’m not just letting you, knowing that when you achieve said results you’re more inclined to be amiable toward me?”

“Because you would never lose at something willingly, Cutler. Even if it does mean that I’ll let you shag me. Check mate. Now, what have I won?”

“You already have me.”

“Well, if I’ve already got that, then it would be rather silly for me to ask it of you.”

“Then what do you ask?”

“Your wig. It makes you look like one of those pale, snuff-snorting society gents.”

“Well maybe I am one of those pale, snuff-snorting society gents.”

“You’d like them to think you are, Cutler, but underneath that callous exterior I can assure you, there’s a decent man…no matter how ashamed of him you are. Now, your wig sir.”

He smirks and plucks out the hairpins securing the wig. He peels off the coiffed mass of course horse-hair, revealing a soft mat of deep brown hair, moist with perspiration.

“Satisfied?”

“Not nearly. It’s flat and sweaty because that wig doesn’t let your head breathe.” She leans over the bed and ruffles his hair. “Ah, much better. You look rather fetching with your natural hair, so why do you insist on wearing that dreadful thing?”

“So that I look older, in order that people might think I have something wise to say.”

“The old dictating the fashion of the young. My, how backwards our times are.”

“Yes, and even more backwards is that fact that we know that our times are backwards. Normally, that’s the prerogative of historians studying us two-hundred years from now. Here.”

He extends his arm intending to hand the wig to her.

Mary recoils, laughing. “Don’t even think of giving that ratty old thing to me.” She swats it away like a particularly disgusting mosquito, puffing a suffocating cloud of white powder into the air.

Cutler coughs.

“Are you all—“ she pauses, noticing that a thin layer of powder has settled on his face, and laughs.

“What?”

“Oh God, your face! Now you do look like one of those pale, snuff-snorting—“

“—Shut it!” He says, with more mirth than authority. He learned long ago that he can’t order Mary around like one of his lackeys. She’d laugh and berate him for being such a controlling bore. And if he insisted in his I am the law tone, she would roll her eyes and say something saucy about compensating for his stature. He likes a woman who isn’t intimidated by him. A woman who equals him in pride and shrewdness. It makes him feel as if there is something to be won when he fucks her. And yes, it is fucking.

Love-making is something slow, deliberate and boring—rather like dancing a minuet. Tightly choreographed, in three quarters time, devoid of passion—in summation, so chaste that you often forget that you’ve got your prick in a lady’s cunt.

Intercourse is something that Anglican priests perform with their wives—fully clothed and through a hole in the bedsheets. Is that why they call it holy?

But fucking—that’s surely what God intended for coitus to be. It’s like he’s hidden his divine secrets deep inside your woman and it’s justbarely out of reach!—And it drives you absolutely mad. Consequently, the sex is hard, bruising, heady—a primordial spiral into bestial frenzy where inner-monologue is hacked to spasmodic monosyllables screaming FUCK and FUCK and FUCKFUCKFUCK as you plunge unthinking, unyielding into the burning embrace of salvation. Fucking is like opium, Cutler reflects, a world you only know when you’re there.

Spending himself inside Mary is like a victory, like he has conquered a particularly powerful army. Somehow, it’s gratifying to see that self-satisfied independence melt into moans, and need and sweat.

It’s nice to have a strong person who needs you—even if it’s just for an orgasm.

Cutler loathes those simpering little society girls who shove their affections upon him, coveting his titles yet recoiling from his character. Even more, he loathes the fact that one day he would be compelled to choose one for a bride. Yes, Mary excites him and keeps intellectual pace with him, but these things just won’t do in a wife. A wife is meant to be as a wall painting—pretty and silent. Anything else would undermine him in his business affairs. If he is to conduct himself with the cool-headed authority required of his post and of his station then he can’t be made to look like a cuckold by his wife. But his mistress…

“We should play another round.”

“Yes, and what shall be the prize should I lose.”

“When you lose I shall ask for you your waistcoat. After the next round I shall ask for your breeches and then—“

“You know you’re only giving me incentive to lose as quickly as possible.”

“And then you will look rather silly completely nude in the company of a fully dressed lady. Think of the scandal it would cause you—not to mention the bafflement it would cause the town.”

“I have, and I know just the way to eschew it.” He lunges over the chessboard between them, and pounces on her, pinning her slender wrists under his palms. They’re so sweaty she could easily slip out, but she doesn’t, and he knows she won’t. “Nothing is baffling about a man and a woman nude in each other’s company, and this way we’re both scandalized. And anyway, this is far more expedient than ten games of chess. I do have to get you home before the week is out.”

“You’re a scoundrel.”

“You love it.”

She smiles, “I know.”

Her cool breath whispers on his hot neck. Even fully dressed, Mary looks wanton. Ginger hair flared out like corona, lips swollen from her nervous habit of gnawing on them—which drives him to distraction, but he has to admit that the swelling effect is rather pleasing to him. With his weight crushed against her, her breasts are so immodestly exposed that they threaten to burst out of her corset. The familiar flame smolders in his groin, mewling for flesh. He barely suppresses the impulse to dry-thrust against her stomach. Cutler lowers his head to taste her and—

*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*

“Milord, someone to see you.” his manservant Robert announces through the closed door.

“Coitus Interruptus!” he shouts in frustration. “Who the bloody, sodding hell is it?”

Robert pauses, as if unsure whether or not to proceed. On the one hand, his employer seems rather angry at the intrusion, but on the other hand he is demanding to know who the caller is…

Frustrated, Cutler shouts. “Out with it!”

“Captain Norrington, sir.”

“Norrington? Tell him that any business he has with me is to be discussed in my office during business hours and not at my bloody house on bloody Sunday!”

“Very good sir.”

Robert’s footsteps retreat at double-speed down the hall.

“Now, where were we?”

“I was just consenting for you to ravish me against my will.”

“Ah yes, now I recall.” His hand creeps up her dress, toward her warm—

“Milord.”

“What now!?” he growls.

Robert’s voice swivels up in pitch. “He really is most insistent Sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s pulled out a pistol and he’s threatening to—“ A great commotion breaks out on the other side of the door, Robert yelps.

“To what?” Cutler yells, doubting that Robert can answer and except that he hasn’t heard a discharge, would be fearing that Captain Norrington had already followed-through with his threat.

The door bursts open. “—To kill myself!” He’s got the muzzle of a flintlock pressed firmly under his chin. Mary scrambles into a sitting position, trying to preserve some semblance of propriety.

“Well then do mind the carpet. Bloodstains can be so stubborn.”

“You should know.”

“Yes,” he says dangerously. “I do.”

Norrington laughs, a mad sort of mirth. “Are you going to talk that way in front of your tart.”

“She is not—“

Mary pipes, “—I am not a tart and just because every woman in Port Royal spurns you for being a drunken reprobate doesn’t mean that you need to take your frustrations out on the whole of the fairer sex.”

He smiles distantly. “Your name’s Mary, is it not? You know the dominant faith in this world is based on the virginity of your namesake, but you know what I think? I think she was just some upstart Judean whore who spread her legs like marmalade on toast for some big, strapping Centurion. Then when she finds that her belly’s swelling, she chocks it all up to an immaculate conception from God. So Christ is some bastard half-Roman. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that women don’t try that excuse more often, after all the last time it worked we got a New Testament.” He pulls a foggy bottle of rum out of his pocket, and quickly realizes that he can’t uncork it and still hold the flintlock to his head. After a moment of hazy deliberation, he pulls the cork out with his teeth, drops it to the floor and knocks back a heady volume.

“Captain, we shall adjourn to my study. The floors are hardwood and easy enough for my servants to clean so you may end your life there.”

“I’ll be back momentarily, Mary. You stay here.”

“Cutler—“

“Stay here!” he barks, and regrets it immediately. He never raises his voice, not even to the most exasperating of lackeys, and certainly never in her presence. Yelling means that you have lost control, not only of yourself, but of the situation. It yields the advantage. It is a desperate paroxysm of force that reveals weakness. He’s just so frustrated with Norrington’s impertinence and he only wants to spare her from further abuse.

By now, Cutler would have had Norrington arrested for public drunkenness, breaking and entering and—erm…some capital crime—sodomy!. He’s a navy chap, he has probably engaged in the time-honored naval tradition at some point. Then through his influence in with the local magistrate, Cutler would see that justice is administered with the utmost severity and discrimination…

That is if Norrington weren’t the best privateer in the Caribbean. Not that Cutler really cares a whit for pirates, the Spanish, or even Spanish pirates, so long as the trade routes for the East India Company are secure, and through the Captain’s efforts, they have been. In addition, the off-the-books profit made from Norrington’s salvages has been…substantial. Most privateers are essentially undisciplined profiteers who undervalue their prizes, as it were at least in their reports. Naturally, this grievously reduces Cutler’s 10% share in the profits as lieutenant governor. But Norrington, with his deeply engrained military background is a godsend for three crucial reasons. First, as an officer he was accustomed to reporting to superior officers honestly and in full. Consequently, embezzlement is not an issue where Norrington is concerned.

Second, his experience as a commander of dispirited, underpaid sailors was excellent training for a privateer captain. Privateering crews were essentially commissioned pirating vessels, and thus—shockingly—they were crewed primarily by pirates…who didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the law—or at least the hangman’s noose. Thus these types were predominantly coward pirates. Roguish in lifestyle yet timid in battle. And of course they come with all of the baggage of a pirate crew. A general inclination toward thievery, a capricious relationship with authority and a penchant for desertion. Privateers would just as soon desert to pirate vessels as hunt them. But Norrington—his force of character inspired unheard of loyalty and discipline in his crew.

Most privateer captains, quite frankly, were little more than criminals and were generally disinclined to tend to the responsibilities of commanding a ship, details like logistics, tending to the health of the crew, ship maintenance—so that when the ship docks Cutler is the one who is forced to deal with a disgruntled band of diseased, malnourished scurvy cases. But James Norrington was cut from finer cloth. He possesses a profound sense of duty and honor which inspires the men to follow him. They are assured of his management skills, so they aren’t of afraid of him embezzling their cut of the loot—making their expeditions far more profitable to them than piracy. In addition, his crew is probably the most healthy among the privateering set. Fruits and vegetables are part of each sailor’s daily rations, and there is always a ship’s doctor on board—even if Norrington has to pay him out of his own pocket. [A doctor is a luxury on such vessels, whereon the closest they normally have to a doctor is a ship’s carpenter to perform amputations.] This is a shrewd investment on Captain Norrington’s part, and one which Cutler appreciates as a businessman, as it dramatically reduces disease and mortality on the ship, meaning he has more able men at any given time and healthy men are less prone to mutiny. Cutler has to admit, aboard his ship, Captain Norrington conducts himself with the utmost discipline and pragmatism—though his conduct in his personal life is a different matter entirely.

Which leads to the third advantage Cutler enjoys from Norrington’s services—the man has become such an abject fatalist that he has developed two traits which are supremely advantageous to his employer. One, he has developed marked workaholic tendencies. Two, he is such a wretched drunkard that he demands little wages beyond what would buy him enough rum to remain thoroughly drunk during his brief jaunts on shore.

Yes, Captain Norrington is indispensable—but Cutler would never let him know it. If the man knew his own value, he might actually strive to make something of himself. In fact, Cutler has enough M.P.’s in his pocket to secure a decent naval appointment for Norrington. But no, Cutler likes him just where he is. He’s too great an asset to the profit margin.

Cutler brushes past Norrington, not making eye contact, and briskly leads the way to the study. The captain follows with a rolling gait, which is most decidedly not a residual effect of his sea legs.

Robert is nowhere in sight. He must have fled from the madman with the pistol. Cutler sighs. And he came so highly recommended. It won’t do to have a skittish servant in Cutler’s line of work.

He indicates a leather wing chair.

“Please, sit.”

Norrington squares his shoulders and does not sit—all the while keeping the pistol trained on himself, of course.

Cutler smiles and remains standing as well. It wouldn’t do to physically put himself on a lower level than Norrington—despite the fact that the Captain towers several inches higher than him. Well, there’s nothing for that now is there.

“You are either the smartest man in my employ—or the thickest. Taking yourself hostage—very reckless! But also, very shrewd as I can’t have you arrested for threatening bodily harm unto yourself.”

Norrington takes a deep swallow of rum. Cutler’s not sure if he has been listening.

“I would offer you a drink, but you seem sufficiently supplied as it is. Oh and you may put down your pistol, you have my attention.”

“It’s not your attention I want, Milord. I’ve come here to kill myself.”

“What can possibly be wrong, Captain? Business is splendid. Tuesday’s salvage fetched a five-hundred pound profit.”

Norrington cocks the flintlock, and presses the muzzle more firmly under his chin for emphasis.

“You suicidals. You can’t just be respectable and take some arsenic in the privacy of your own homes. At least then you won’t leave such a frightful mess of brain matter and blood. Even better, why don’t you just dig a ditch in the churchyard and bury yourself sparing us all the trouble of disposing of you. No, you just have to make spectacles of yourselves. But you don’t intend to kill yourself. After that display in my bedchamber I theorize that you hoped that I would do the job myself, in which case you are a craven prat. And no, I will not indulge you.”

Was that a look of disappointment, Captain?

“Well, then I have one question for you—don’t mistake, this is not sympathy…merely curiosity. What has inspired this outburst? Ran out of money, sobering up, spurned by yet another pretty girl who’s disgusted by you?”

A hitch.

Ah, I see.

Norrington drops the pistol. Cutler flinches, afraid that it will discharge and shoot him somewhere vital. He curses himself for being such a coward—or at least showing it.

“I can’t bear it here! I need to go back to sea immediately!” he bursts suddenly.

“And wh—“

“—I though I was done with her! She already killed me!—now she’s kicking me in the stones for good measure.”

His voice is strained, probably on the verge of tears. Now that Cutler knows that the matter is Norrington’s personal triviality, he’s waiting for the opportune moment to chastise the captain for his conduct and boot him out the door.

“Elizabeth!” he wails like a wounded animal.

Cutler wonders if the neighbors can hear. Granted, Norrington sounds like a man being tortured, which would definitely ameliorate the respect in which they hold Cutler. On the other hand, he’s screaming Elizabeth which they might mistake for a cry of passion…a weeping cry of passion. Then they may mistake Norrington’s voice for Cutler’s and believe that then they’ll regard him as some molly who weeps in women’s arms. That simply won’t do. He needs to calm him down before he can send him off.

“How is she kicking you in the stones?” He’s not terribly proficient at this comfort notion. He’d prefer to gag him. Much more efficient—and far more satisfying.

“She wanted me to marry her!”

“Well, then she has finally come around. You should be quite content,” Or at least stop sniveling like a woman.

“No.” More rum drains down his throat. Cutler notices that he doesn’t screw his face when he drinks. Maybe he’s becoming like one of those gnarled old salts at the taverns with the permanent whisky faces. A horrifying thought. “She doesn’t love me. She’ll never love me…not that I care! That trollup! That—whore! That—“

“Yes, I understand that you question her virtue, now get to the point.” Despite himself, Cutler is now quite curious—but that doesn’t mean he’s any more patient.

“Well, her last fiancé died last month of—”

“—Yes, I heard. Go on.”

“And her father just suffered an apoplexy last night—the old sod is likely to give up the ghost at any moment…And she doesn’t have any family, so she asks me to marry her so that the crown doesn’t absorb all of her assets.”

Oh god. Cutler’s breath catches in his chest. If he believed in a god, he’d call this a godsend. But as it was he knew that fortune was a temporary mistress, and one must seize the opportunity to turn her into something more permanent.

Like conquest. But he’ll have to act quickly.

“…And she’s pregnant! She should be charged with abuse if it’s cursed with its mother’s pigheadedness.”

“Captain.”

“—an evil harpy, she is. No—a succubus! Sucks men’s souls straight out of their co—“

“—That will be sufficient, Captain.” He raises the volume of his voice, but without shouting. Still in control.

“Captain, I’ll have a job for you by Tuesday. I’ll trust that you will refrain from further disgracing yourself. At least not in public. Remember, I have my reputation to consider and your misconduct reflects poorly on me as well.”

He lowers his voice. “I gave you your employment when you were nothing more than a filthy exile fresh from Tortuga, Captain. Do not give me cause to regret it.” He finds that it is better to insinuate threats rather than to say them outright. It frees the poor unfortunate’s imagination to contemplate all manner or horrid things that Cutler can do to him. And he’ll probably imagine far worse than Cutler would actually administer…which is exactly what he intends.

Norrington is unmoved. He’s stared down death’s throat too many times to be jarred by the nasal threats of a soft-handed businessman. Additionally, Cutler lacks a vital element for seriously threatening Norrington: something to threaten.

Most people who claim to have nothing are merely melancholics with no sense of gratitude. Often, they are the adolescent spawn of middle class families who, in actuality, have parents who love them, a comfortable home loaded with modern conveniences and an ample padding of money to prevent them from hurting themselves when they fall on their soft, bourgeois arses.

But James Norrington—there is a man with nothing to love and consequently (and much to Cutler’s frustration) nothing to make him vulnerable. All that the man once cherished—family, friends, honor—are absent from his existence. Even his current love affair with the bottle is tenuous, characterized by a sort of fatalistic indifference. If he’s drunk he’s content to stumble through life in a fog, if he’s sober he’s content for the clarity to fully feel the sheer breadth of his failures.

And Cutler knows better than to threaten Norrington’s person—probably the thing he holds in the lowest regard. Frankly, if Cutler one day decides to slowly and deliberately grind the Captain’s hand bones into talcum powder with thumb screws, the only person he would be doing a disservice to would be himself. For one, the man is such a masochist that he would probably enjoy the ordeal, laughing like a demon in Cutler’s face as Mercer crushes his phalanges. Not to mention that fact that he’d be depriving himself of his most profitable employee.

--But this is all trivial in light of this fantastic revelation.

“You are dismissed, Captain.” Norrington stiffens. Not a moment before, he had been fidgeting to leave (that, or perhaps it was just delirium tremors).But his eyes had wandered repeatedly to the door, so even if he had been trembling from delirium tremors, he evidently was itching to leave. But now that his departure comes as an order from Cutler, he’s reluctant to obey. How juvenile.

Norrington fiddles with the rum bottle in his hand, but the hollow swish of rum at the bottom is conspicuously absent.

“Aye milord.” He quickly turns to leave.

“—And on your way out, apologize to Mary in a manner befitting a lady of her station.”

“Certainly Lord Beckett. By the way, I really fancy the powdered visage, very aristocratic, if a bit uneven. You know, if I didn’t know any better I’d say that she’s made you go soft. Who knew that a man could be a monster ninety nine percent of the time…My apologies Mary,” he shouts through the closed door. He lowers his voice to a harsh whisper that is still decidedly audible to Cutler, “…that you’re bedding this wanker with that pithy anchovy that he calls a penis.”

He stumbles out the front door.

Cutler exhales sharply. Had he been holding his breath? His heart’s palpitating furiously, his stomach’s knotted and his lungs feel rung-dry and threadbare. How strange, that the most unpleasant sensations accompany the greatest moments of exhilaration. No matter, Cutler is about to become a very wealthy and powerful man indeed.

In one stroke (no pun intended) the governorship of Jamaica, the Swann family fortune and a substantial stake in the British East India Trading Company have fallen neatly into his lap.

Governor Swann possesses substantial hereditary stock in the company, as a result of the shrewd investments of his Great-Great Grandfather Willoughby Swann. Willoughby had been a major investor when the company was chartered in 1600. (Cutler takes a moment to curse his humble roots and the lack of foresight of his simpleton ancestry.) This alone furnished him with an 11% share in the company. But this is not the limit of his stake in the East India Company. Elizabeth’s mother, Katherine Lanyer, was the only child of Henry Lanyer, who owned an additional 7% share. When he died, the investments—as well as a great heap of other monies—were transferred to Governor Swann. That’s 18%, surely enough to make him a member for the Court of Proprietors. To date, through astute political maneuvering (bribes, extortion, manipulation etc.) Cutler has managed to accrue a 2.3% share for himself.

Astonishing. If he manages to wed her, Cutler will have an extraordinary 20.3% share, making him the wealthiest man in the company—next to the Executive Governor himself. Making him the de facto next in line for Executive Governor. He’d be the most powerful man in England. Yes, he is quite aware that there is a parliament to reckon with, but capitalism enables business interests to control elected officials through influence-buying. I shall purchase your power, and in turn you shall support my interests. Cross me and you shall soon find yourself fallen from that power.

He’ll have to marry that spoiled little bint Elizabeth Swann to get it, but so long as his pocketbook reaps the benefits, he shall be more than able to cope with the many, many drawbacks. And anyway, the advantage of a loveless marriage is the absence of love, meaning that Cutler is free from any emotional responsibility to her--though with the freedom to take his marital liberties with her. He has entertained some fairly elaborate fantasies that he would never dream of acting out upon with any respectable woman. But Miss Swann…

And how could she refuse him? Her existence is poised to collapse. Certainly, he is a preferable alternative to ruin. Or at least he would have her believe so.

—But the Governor’s on the brink. He could have cashed in already—then William III has filled the royal coffers to the brim in a day. No, Cutler must hurry if he is to seize this to his advantage.

“Cutler!”

Mary! Merde! Mierda! Merda! Scheiße!

“Coming.” This complicates things. No, this complicates nothing. The situation is simple. Free of emotional entanglement. An exchange. The centuries-old tradition wherein the aristocratic bachelor amuses himself with the middle class girl. He entertains her with his money and she entertains him with her body until he bores of her and moves on. Reciprocity. Then why is he agonizing?

He re-enters the bedchamber, an explanation clinging to his lips for why their acquaintance, while having been exceptionally satisfying, must come to an end, as he must marry with all possible haste and maintaining a relationship with a woman of her station would be exceedingly inappropriate.

“Your move.” Mary says immediately, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten our wager.”

“Mary I…”

“What is it? Did something happen between you and Captain Norrington? Are you all right?” She takes his hand in hers and rubs his palm with her thumb. Tenderness. He’d been raised to live without it. Personal advancement was paramount, and all energies must be directed toward it. Any personal indulgence would be based on immediacy and characterized by detachment. Mary wasn’t detachment and immediacy—though his education would have it that he was no more gratified by her than by a common whore. He knows that she gives him more than five second muscle spasms. This knowledge frightens him—but he can’t deny that he wants to be loved by a hand that touches him.

“No. Just fine. I was just saying that I need a moment to plan my next move.”

“Ah, well it won’t do you any good. I will counter your next move with alacrity.”

“Don’t be so sure.” His voice is flat and he’s staring down toward the board, but he’s too distracted to actually look at the board.

“Cutler?...”

He selects an arbitrary pawn and advances it two spaces.

She smiles and moves. He doesn’t see where. His eyes won’t focus on the board.

He moves, she moves. Heart hammers.

He moves, she moves. Stomach clenches.

He moves, she moves. Breath seizes.

“Checkmate. Cutler, a four move check mate? Are you distracted? Or are you still impatient to lose. Poor dear, I’ll not tease you any longer.”

Her hands flutter to his breeches. Blood runs acid, burning his veins—You can’t be a monster ninety nine percent of the time—!

“NO!” he barks.

“What will they think!? A single woman in a single man’s bedchamber? Have you no sense of decorum? Of your reputation, of mine!? Of course you don’t. You’re just a bloodthirsty upstart social climber willing to fuck her way into a title! Or failing that, ruin me with the scandal of it!”

By then a part of him loses consciousness, though his mouth still explodes with vitriol. He catches snatches of, “…conniving whore…” and “…social-climbing harpy…” and “…pigheaded hussy…” and a whole host of words he’d snatched from other peoples’ mouths.

He has stopped. He must have. The silence is suffocating.

She looks stricken. Appropriately, she strikes him.

His cheek burns, but his guts catch fire.

He advances toward her, an automaton, and slaps her brutally across the face. The sound of it rattles his eardrums. He doesn’t restrain himself because she was a woman. He doesn’t restrain himself because he loves her. He doesn’t restrain himself at all. For a moment his troubles have a ruddy-haired gat-toothed face to beat and batter and ruin. It is sublime.

She’s still on her feet. This enrages him. He slaps her again. His hand is beginning to sting.

She is backing up toward the door, slowly. Too slowly. She’s a thorn jammed in his side and he’ll thrash until she’s out. He strikes again.

She turns and runs out the door, face twisted and drowned in tears.

Cutler watches her awkwardly running figure through the open door. It must be hard to exert oneself like that in a corset.

His bones melt, and wilts into the bed.

The sheets still smell of her. Nothing like lavender or lilac or any other flower that women favor for their perfumes. Cutler finds that kind of artifice sickening. No, Mary’s smell was more like musk. Sweet yet strong. Heady like sex in vagina-wet grass. It never failed to perk his prick. He immediately decides that he hates it and never wants to smell it again.

“Robert…ROBERT!”

Sprinting footfalls echo down the hallway.

“Yes...” a pause for breath “Milord.”

“I’m off to Governor Swann’s. Tell Mercer to monitor Miss Swann’s post. I want every letter, from condolences to invites for tea, to cross my desk before she receives it.”

“Yes milord. Right away.”

“One more thing,” Cutler, feeling heavy in his own skin, rights himself and slides off the bed. “Wash the sheets.”

A/N: M.P.=Member of Parliament