ive been overseas, ive been having dreams

Joel, when you cup his face between your palms and kiss him, tastes of plum. You grunt against his mouth, feel his hands curl against your hips, your waist. “What?” 

You shake your head, sinking deeper against the root in defiance. 

His hand snakes behind you, feels the root and shifts you bodily to the left of it on the soft cushion of the blanket spread beneath your bodies. 

He sinks inside you, thrusts lazily. 

“This must be the last time,” you breathe, widening your legs, your knees against his hips.

He bows his head against your chest. The flutter of his hair brushes your chin. You feel the sharp scrape of his beard between your breasts, the sweep of his lashes against your collarbone. You lace your fingers against the back of his skull, eyes fluttering closed. 

“Said that the last time.” 

When it’s over, when he slips out of you, you always tell yourself it’s the last. You tell yourself you will not fall prey to lust again. 

You think of your husband, his increasing frustration that you have yet to give him an heir, the desperate way he rutted into you, a dead weight arched over your spine each evening. And Joel, faithful, faithless, guard, standing on the other side of the door, listening to your husband have you. Knowing he was there first. 

“I mean it this time,” you gasp, ignoring the pool of warmth flooding your belly, an overflowing urge to pull him deeper, swallow him whole.

Joel doesn't answer, sitting back on his knees, tugging your thighs over his, your upper body a soft slope toward the ground. His gaze flicks over you, the long, supple line of your body beneath his.

You reach for him, skimming your nails along his skin, from his hip to his chest, the coarse dark hair on his chest a pleasant scrape against the pads of your fingers. He has a scar on his stomach, a long, ugly crack beside his navel. It’s the best of them, the scars that had drawn you to him like a wolf to the scent of blood. Criss-crossed over his forearms, his knuckles, the bridge of his nose. You were drawn to the violence of it, but also the reminder that something damaged could still be beautiful, intriguing. 

The first time your husband had seen you, after your betrothal to him, his gaze had been disappointed, finger tracing the length of the scar on your cheek. The shock of his touch, the first of any man, had shocked you into silence, stillness. It detracts from her beauty, he’d pronounced, no matter. It’s not as though she can pass along this ugliness to a child. 

Joel’s hands are as gnarled as the roots of the willow tree you lie beneath, soft golden light filtering through the swaying branches, drooping in the humidity, cords of dark ivy wrapping around the trunk. 

He watches your face, the determination that settles over you like a well-worn coat. 

“Y’do?” 

“Yes,” you answer, resolve slipping already. You shift your hands to your chest and his eyes follow the movement as you unhook the eyelet clasp. “So you should take all you can.” 

Gather the memories like rain collected in drums, hope it is enough to water you the rest of your days.

He frowns, anchors his hands on your hips again, lowers himself over you, setting a steady, firm pace, fucking you slow and hard. You feel him everywhere, the aftershocks of each thrust felt in little flaming bursts from your core to the tips of your toes, the roots of your hair. Joel supports himself on one palm beside your head, the fingers of his opposite hand skimming up your side to cup your breast in his too big hand. 

He plucks at your nipple until it hardens and then leans down to suck it into his mouth, beard rasping against the sensitive skin. 

“I will, of course,” you gasp, confounded at your own insistence to have this conversation now, “release you from your post—”

He lifts his head, his face close to yours. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.” 

His voice is a growl, a low, threatening rumble. The statement is punctuated by a particularly hard thrust. Stars of pleasure burst behind your eyes, fizzling. 

You pant against his lips in time with the pulse of his hips against yours, straining to kiss him, but held back up the hand that steadies against your jaw. The lewd sound of his skin slapping against yours makes the knot in your belly curl and clench. “Joel, I—” 

You want to protect him as fiercely as he protects you, watches you, waits for you. The only way to see him safe, was to see him away, stop these trysts, his visits to your rooms after dark. 

“Uh-uh, no” he cuts you off. Then, softer, still fucking you, “Open your mouth, darlin’.” And your mouth pops open on instinct. You think he’ll pull out of you, push his swelling cock into your mouth and finish there, but he pushes two fingers against your tongue instead, sliding them against the wet, slipper pink of your tongue until you gag, chest heaving. 

He coos something you don’t hear, then hooks his thumb into your cheek, pulls your head to the side and buries his face in your throat. 

You feel like an exposed nerve, fit to bust beneath him, hating how he knows you. 

But you don’t mind being caught like a fish in a catch, a rabbit in a snare, by him. You feel safe there, held beneath him. 

Besides, you caught him just as often. The memory of his overwrought body beneath yours, pinched and sweat soaked, your hand around his cock, coaxing him toward a second release, sweet as you could. After raiders had attacked the borders of your husband’s lands while he was away, and gotten dangerously, perilously close to your side of the estate—well, reassurance that you were unharmed was needed. That you were there. 

It is the only time he has slept in your presence, bloodied, sweated body wrapped in your sheets. You had laid against him, afterward, breathing in the musky scent of leather and horses and gunpowder, blood and sweat. 

Now, you moan and then close your lips around his thumb, laving your tongue against the salted flesh of him, pushing one hand between your bodies to rub your cunt. 

He grunts, rubs the inside of your cheek. “Good girl,” he mutters, fucking you harder, thrusts sloppier, his breath against your neck, warm and humid as the new summer air around you. 

Your climax approaches suddenly and without warning, snaps like the crack of a wip, your body contorting with it, a warm, convulsive pulse in your center that floods outward in a blind, white haze. 

Joel’s thumb leaves a track of spit across your cheek as he pulls back, slams into your twice more before he pulls out with a pained moan, jerking his cock above your stomach. 

You shake your head frantically, pussy fluttering, sucking around the empty space he left inside you. You prop yourself up on one elbow and he seems to know what you want, shifting forward to push his cock between your lips.  

You suck gently at the tip, tonguing the leaking slit, tasting your cunt on him. Your eyes roll back, flutter shut, at the taste. He palms the back of your skill, thrusting shallowly, carefully into your mouth, until he bursts, salty and bitter across your tongue.

You swallow it down, the taste of him good and bad at once, until you gag, glad enough not to have the mess of him on you, wishing you could let him come inside you. But you are afraid. Afraid that he might see you pregnant, or, that nothing might come of it. 

He shutters above you when you push the tip of your tongue against the vein threaded along the underside of his cock, palm cupped against his balls, tugging gently, until he pulls away from your need stricken mouth. 

You try to slide away, shame and embarrassment and horror at your own desire flooding you in the aftermath as always, but he’s pushing you down again, kissing you, fitting the length of his body along yours. 

The knob of root wedges against your spine again, persistent as a toothache. This time, you barely feel it. His heartbeat is steady against your chest, beating against the cage of your ribs. Your breathing evens and quiets, sun dappling warmly over your calves. 

Joel pulls back, gazing flicking over your face, palm slotting against your jaw. “Get the idea of me leavin’ out of your head. It ain’t happenin’,” he says, as though your conversation has continued uninterrupted. 

He doesn’t like it, you know, that you could. You could decide to discard him, one day, release him from his post, reassign him, and he’d have no choice in the matter. 

You cover his hand and search his eyes, counting the rings in his irises. “It would be safer.” Exasperation crosses his face and your own irritation flares in response. “Would you let me up?” 

Joel dresses as you fling off the remainder of your clothes and wade into the cool creek, shadowed by arching tree branches, a wild canopy that tinges the air with a softened emerald tint.

The water is crystal clear, clean, round stones shifting underfoot, the current pulling at you, toward the rushing sound of falling water the creek ended in. You wash, careful to keep your hair dry, and wade back to shore. 

Joel watches you, his own expression tipped with guilt. Nothing to do with sex, nor having it with a married woman, but that you were so much his junior, under his care, protection. 

Had he made some kind of oath when he was hired, you wonder. 

It’s you who is at fault for the whole wretched thing. 

Your husband had lavished you with attention when you first married. Extolling about your beauty and breeding to visiting parties and friends, interspersed with humbling reminders under his breath that your beauty was flawed, marred by that ugly scar that could only be your fault. 

Still, you had enjoyed his attention, had romantic notions of his desperate need to see you pregnant, even if you only sometimes managed to come, even if he only ever had you from behind. But when your blood continued to appear regularly, month after bitter month, he had become sullen and distant and uninterested. You were useless to him as an empty bottle of ale, left entirely on your own for long swaths of time. 

Alone, but for your watchful guard.

Joel. 

You liked him immediately, liked the weight of his name in your mouth, like a polished marble rolling over your tongue. And, despite that like, you’re reluctant to admit now, that you had been afraid of him too. Fascinated and terrified, by this man always rooted at the edge of your vision, in the shadowy corners of rooms, outside doorways, lingering in corridors. 

He was a mercenary, after all. Your husband’s estate had trouble with bandits, after all. What kind of man could you expect him to be then? Brutal, to be sure. Mean, almost certainly. 

But he wasn’t. 

He was kind to children and animals, eyes softening like candle wax. 

So, you engaged him, tentatively, and he surprised you by indulging you. Your conversation and whims and perilously imaginative, romantic thoughts. He indulged you in a way your parents had not, that your husband did not, that no one ever had. 

He liked doing things for you, liked providing when it was within his ability to do so, even if it wasn’t strictly something that fell within his duties. 

It was only then that you realized how much of your husband's attention was rooted in his own vanity and lust. He had you when he wanted, however he wanted, humiliated you for your scarred face, shamed you for your inadequacy and inability to get pregnant, paraded you around when he had need of a softened presence, a jealous little treasure to wave in peoples faces. 

But Joel saw you. He asked after the books you read, played marbles and chess and cards with you until you were both sick of it. He showed you how to tend to the horses, how to wield a blade, never losing patience as you cycled through movements with a wooden training dagger, panting roughly in the sun. 

It passed the time for you both. 

You weren’t naive enough to believe Joel did any of those things other than out of a sense of obligation. 

But wasn’t your husband obligated to know you? Perhaps not. Perhaps you were fanciful and too romantic. Perhaps you should not ask for so much. 

Months passed, your womb remained stubbornly empty, your husband’s attention and attitude soured, wavered, then departed altogether. 

You touched yourself to the thought of him, cried as you came, shame unfolding around you in thick drifts. You’d avoided him, spent almost an entire week sequestered in the chapel on the grounds of the estate until the priest asked if you had something on your mind, something to confess. When you returned to your rooms in the evenings, Joel trailing your steps as was his duty, you’d touched yourself  to the thought of your husband, as though to make up for your transgression. You hadn’t managed to bring yourself to climax, frustrated with the way your mind would snap to another’s face. 

When you tried a different route, stealing into your husband’s chambers, pressing yourself into his chest, ignoring the way he smelled of other women, he’d clamped his hands on your upper arms and steered you away. Disgust pooling in his expression. 

“If I have need of you, I will seek you out.”

“I only want to please you, to feel close to you—” 

“It sickens me,” he’d interrupted, not looking at you. “To look at you is a reminder of what you have not given me. I would not have agreed to such a low bride price if I knew it would be this difficult for you to give me an heir.” His eyes had run over your face then. “I knew you were damaged, but not in this way.” 

It had been humiliating—how easily he pushed you away, didn’t want your company, sought solace in the women of the tavern in the nearby village. So you’d gone away, stupidly dressed in lace, covered by a thin silk robe, that your husband refused to even look at. Joel, ever faithful, waited in the hall. 

He must have heard, and the shame of it all had stung, nettle sharp and poisonous. He’d followed you down the corridor as your face burned hot, and only spoken when you arrived at your door. Your name was tender in his deep, gruff voice. 

Something forbidden brewed between you. It was wretched, but sweet, too, and demanding as opium. 

You had not backed away when he pressed his hand to your jaw, traced that ugly scar that marred your cheek with the pad of his calloused thumb. 

Something nameless had passed between you, vast as the sea, unalterable as wind through trees, rain from purpled clouds. 

You had willingly stepped closer, into the circle of warmth he provided. It had been too close, too familiar to be friendly, when you shouldn’t have even been that. But there had been no one around to see for once. Just you and him, pressed close in a darkened hall, orange lamp light flickering over your skin. 

“Joel,” you’d said, and the pining softness in your voice had been apparent even to you.

His lips, when you’d leaned in to kiss him, had tasted of sweetened coffee. 

It had been a night of firsts, a night plagued by anxiety that at any moment your husband would throw open the door, that you would be caught, fingernails clawing at another man’s back, but he’d made it clear that he had no need of you. 

Joel, on the other hand, had seemed only to have need of you. Desperation tucked between your ribs for safe keeping. He’d pushed into you as he held your face in his hands. It was more intimate that you were used to, to be facing him at all, let alone to have his eyes watching your expression so carefully, his thumb against that marred skin your husband hated. 

It started something dangerous between you, that gathered momentum the longer you let it go on, instead of slowing when the newness and unfamiliarity of it wore off. 

You learned from him, absorbed his attention and instruction with enthusiasm and desperate need, like a plant collecting light. With your husband, you only ever laid there, fists clenched in the sheets, waiting for him to spill inside you, willing your body to reach that peak, too, and rarely managing it. 

Joel scooped your breasts in his hands, put his mouth on your nipples, kissed down your thighs to the backs of your knees. He put his tongue in your cunt, so surprising and overwhelming you’d had to bite back a cry. 

But each time he left, each time you parted, you were reminded instantly of how pathetic and worthless you were.

A flash of silver in the late afternoon sun catches your attention, yanks you out of the memory like a hound by its chain. 

You glance back to shore and find Joel crouched near the bank, knife slicing through one of the remaining plums. The ground beneath the willow tree is littered with plum pits and the rinds of cheese, evidence of your greed and languorousness. 

Joel holds out the newly pared wedge of plum out to you as he groans and sits. Temping you closer, back to land. You oblige, glad to be beckoned, to be wanted. You swim to the edge and cross your arms over the gray outcropping of rock he sits on. 

“It’s gettin’ late,” he says as you take it, fingers brushing together. He braces his arm across the top of his bent knee and squints at the angle of the sun, measuring it against the horizon. “We probably been gone too long.”  

You’ve been gone nearly the whole day, and though you are ignored by your husband, alone and isolated most of the time, the household staff will notice this absence. And if there is anything your husband does pay attention to, it is gossip and appearances. 

The plum bursts bright and sharp on the back of your tongue, eyes on his hands, his knuckles as he cleaves free another chunk, balances it on the flat of the blade. He holds it out to you, and instead of pinching it between your fingers, you slide your lips over the dull side of the metal and pull it into your mouth. 

He watches you, something like desire swimming in his gaze. 

Already you crave him again, a pulse between your legs echoing the darkness in his eyes. 

“Probably. But I like it here. I want to stay here,” you answer, kicking your legs in the current, juice running down your chin from the fruit. 

You allow the fantasy for a moment, a future where you aren’t trapped and Joel doesn’t leave. One where you swim together and eat fruit and have your fill of him. One where he is the one trying to get you pregnant, and it works, because he cares for you. 

It’s a fanciful daydream. Nice, in its simple pleasure. Ripe with love and promise. If women could only get pregnant by men who loved them, the world might be better for it. 

It would not, you think bitterly, help you at all, if that were the case. 

He watches you for a long moment, blue shadows growing in the shallows of the river, passing another plum slice to you, this time on the tips of his fingers, like he’s hoping you’ll take it from his hand. 

You oblige, like being fed as much as he likes feeding you. His fingers are like salt under the sweet fruit, pungent with the taste of you left behind on his skin. You like his attention, his care. 

It had been a lie, like it always was, when you said this was the last time. The notion was easier to stomach, to imagine, when he was deep inside you, impossible to separate him from you, you from him. You could resolve yourself to it then, be brave, when letting go was impossible. 

He cups your cheek, slides his thumb over your lips as you chew, then the scar etched into your skin. 

“We got some time.” 

His voice is quiet. The rush of the river and falls are only broken by the flutter of birds hopping from branch to branch, the soft snuffle and snort of your horses grazing nearby. 

You lean into his touch, unembarrassed somehow, of your loneliness and need. 

“So,” you say, turning your mouth against his palm. “Will you leave as I asked?” 

His laugh is a rumble. “No.”

“What shall I bribe you with?” You hum. “Money? Land?”

He shakes his head. “Only way I go, is if you go.”

You laugh as though he’s joking, something hot snarled around your ribs.

You imagine it again, land bursting with life, a comfortable house, your belly swollen with his child. 

“I’m serious.” He nods to himself as he says it, as if that settles it. He would not leave without you. 

It sounds like an offer, and you feel the need to reject it. 

“I wouldn’t,” you answer, maybe more harshly than you should. “I can’t.”  

A muscle jumps near the hinge of his jaw, a crackle of tension sparking to life between you. The levity slips away, like a swirl of soap down a drain. “Why? What is it that’s keepin’ you here?” 

You blink, confused by the question. All your life, up to the moment you were given away at the altar on your wedding day, you’d been told this was your purpose. To marry, to birth children. But you have been terrible at it. You have made a terrible wife. You have been unfaithful to your husband. You have not been able to conceive. 

Your husband doesn’t covet you, doesn’t seem to remember you at all outside the space between your legs. You seek pleasure and care in a man you are not married to, an adulteress and harlot by anyone’s measure. 

The purpose you’d been born and bred and educated for, has all come to nothing. 

“I am nothing,” you murmur aloud. The undulating water suddenly feels cold, despite the soft spill of sunshine over your back. 

Joel’s expression creases, the wrinkles in his forehead deepen. “What do you mean nothin’?” 

“I mean. . .” you shrug, take his hand in yours, press it to your chest, the hollow beneath your throat. 

“Darlin’,” he says, “You hate him. You even want to have his kid?” 

You blink. “What does that have to do with anything?”  

He raises his brows.

“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s what I am supposed to do.” You shake your head and bite your lip, an odd anxiety settling on your chest like a stone. “I’ve been such a fool, and I’ve dragged you under with me.” 

You want to climb up on the rock and hold onto his shoulders, beg him to put his hand between your legs. You want to stay here, sleep in the long yellow grass, eat fruit, swim naked. 

You cannot think for too long about what you want. It will unmake you, unbind you. 

He says your name and the affection laced through his voice is almost too much for you to bear. You push away from the rock and climb clumsily to shore. He stands and drapes your dripping body with a light muslin blanket. “You couldn’t have dragged me nowhere I didn’t want to go.” 

“But I have failed. On every count, I have failed. I have resented my husband and this life. You,” you accuse suddenly. “All I have wanted is you. I should not have want of anything. I should pray more. Maybe that’s why I can’t conceive. God has not seen fit to give me a child when I have transgressed.”

“If that had anything to do with it, nobody would have kids,” he says, more gently than you deserve. 

You pace away from him, tripping over the cloth caught around your ankles, grass whispering dryly around your calves. You feel what you are suddenly, dirty and sinful, naked before a man that you have not made vows to. 

“You know he had another wife before you?” 

You freeze. 

“Joel,” you warn, desperate. “Stop it.”

You hear him move closer, through the grass, stopping just behind you, a couple of feet away. “She never could get pregnant neither. Think it's a coincidence?” 

A horrible sound wrenches from your throat. “I know.” You press your hands to your cheeks, feel the panicked warmth beneath your skin and pace back and forth through the long, yellowing grass beneath the swaying branches of the willow tree, the damp muslin sagging around you, slipping off your shoulders. 

It does not help that you are nude before him in a way you never could be in front of your husband. That your husband doesn’t look at you at all, let alone with such reverence, such care. 

His first wife had not produced a child either. Her broken, empty body had been found at the base of the rocky cliffs that overlooked the river, her dress a bright blur of color against the black, sharp basalt. 

Her shame, they said, had been too great and drove her to madness. She’d lept in the dead of night, of course, the wild roar of the falls concealing any wretched cry that might have been torn from her lips.

You hadn’t known until after the wedding. Until after you had remained barren for too long, and the whispers had started. Not that knowing before would have changed anything. The choice to marry, and who, had not ever belonged to you. It is a duty, not a choice. It is your purpose. 

“I only need to have a child. That’s it. Then all will be well.” 

You say as though it’s that simple. The denial is easier to live in, than the harsh reality that you are running out of time. Maybe that is the reason you’ve been so keen for Joel to leave recently. 

“This is all my fault.”

He tucks his hand around your upper arm and pulls you around. “It’s got nothing to do with you. Me and you both know you ain’t the goddamn problem.” 

“I don’t know,” you answer. “I’m not. . .I’m nothing, if I can’t do this. What use am I otherwise?” 

A disbelieving silence descends between you.

You peel out of his arms, but he doesn’t release you, pulls you back to him and cups your face in his hands. He searches your face, eyes skating over your expression. His thumb traces the scar that arcs across your cheek, something deeply fond in his eyes. “Listen to me,” he says and then shakes his head, jaw gritted. “You ain’t nothin’. You are—Please see sense.” 

Your husband never asked how you came to have the scar on your face; you can only assume he knew that your mother had taken a knife to your skin when you were barely a teenager. To preserve you, she said, from men who would covet your beauty.

Your husband hadn't asked, but you'll never forget the look on Joel's face when you told him. The horror, disgust, the soft shell of his hand when he said there were things that could never be taken.

Your skin blazes, sparks careen up your arm and across your chest. You don’t want to know what he means when he says you aren't nothing, when he had said there were things that couldn't be taken.

“You’re miserable here,” he says in the softly approaching sunset, the world around you shimmering off the water behind you in golden arcs. “We can leave. You let me know when you wanna go and we’ll go.”

“I can’t,” you say again. “I can’t.”

“I'll take care of you’.” 

You huff, irritated then. “Joel. Be serious.” 

His jaw tenses, brows furrow. “I am.” 

“No,” you answer sharply, fear allowing cruelty to slip into your voice. Afraid of how much you want to just say yes. “And when the novelty wears off?” Your mouth feels dry, like you’ve swallowed a wad of cotton. 

“When I ever give you the idea this was novel?”

“You are only fond of me,” you continue loudly. “Because I am a secret you must keep. You will not like me in the light of day. You will not want me when I’m not forbidden. I can’t take any more chances. I’m broken anyway.” 

His shoulders stiffen and the air grows thick again with a different kind of tension. “So that’s all this was?”

You shrug and expect him to say something cruel, hope for it, even, as he’s wont to do when cornered, angry, worried. But he only shakes his head.

Joel releases you, steps back. “We better get goin’,” he snaps. “Get movin’.”  

.

.

.

The ride home is silent as a tomb. 

The brush of the swaying branches overhead, the call and return of insects, the soft grunt of the horses are the only sounds between you. 

Still, when you can just see the estate between the thick trunks of the trees, a massive white shape that steals from the sun from the horizon, Joel slows to a stop and reaches to take your hand. 

You let him, because you fear it will be the last time, that your fear has made you go too far this time. 

Your skin blazes with his touch, sparks careen up your arm and across your chest. “If you ain’t gonna leave,” he says into the encroaching dark, his attempt at compromise. “Then you need to get pregnant, and you know he,” he jerks his chin toward the house, “isn’t gonna be able to do it.” 

You frown at him through the blue shadows, the air sparking with fireflies. “Joel—What are you saying?” 

His thumb slides over the back of your hand, and he doesn’t answer. His jaw tightens and then releases. He sighs. 

He doesn't need to say it, you know. 

Something breaks in your chest, crumbles. 

You know how painful it must be for him to offer. He’d only spoken of his daughter to you once, but it was enough to feel the great gulf of grief within him. 

“I would not ask you to do that.” 

“No, you wouldn’t,” he agrees. “That’s why I’m offerin’.” 

“Joel—”

“This isn’t the first time I thought of it.” He strokes your hand again. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it for a while.” 

Everything in you shivers, trembles. “But it would mean—”

“Pretending it’s his?” He huffs. “Trust me, darlin’, I know.” 

“Then why?” 

He shakes his head. It goes unspoken, that he could not bear it if something happened to you. He would live with the pain of watching this imagined child from afar, anonymous protector only, in the margins of their life. 

It also, you realize, means he trusts you that much. To keep the child safe.

You squeeze his hand and then release him entirely. “That is a sacrifice I will not let you make.”

This, you know then, is the last time.  

You will not let him destroy himself.

Especially not for you.

.

.

.

You don’t speak with Joel again, though he is a usual, constant presence, at your back when you venture outside, in the hall outside your rooms, in the shadows of the dining hall and library and drawing room. 

You weather the days alone again, with him at your back instead of as a companion. 

You avoid the church, and then spend two days inside, from dawn ‘til dusk. 

Each night, you lie amongst your sweaty sheets and think of opening the door, asking him in. Saying yes to anything he could ever offer you, seeking shelter in his arms. 

But your husband has been unusually needy, and seeks you out each evening, slipping into your bed without a word. You bend over the edge of the bed and listen to him thrust and grunt into the quiet dark of your room.  

You hadn’t known anything about sex the first time with your husband. Everything had felt rushed and odd, warm and damp in places that disgusted you. You felt crushed and too panicked to say anything because you were supposed to like it. Let him know it feels good, your mother had said, but not too good and don’t be too loud or he’ll think you wonton. It was as specific about the experience as she would be the night before your wedding. She said if you knew more it might frighten you or make you overthink what was happening. 

It had hurt, that first time. He pushed into you from behind and thrust blindly in the darkened room, mostly drunk, until he came inside you. You bled. The sheets were collected the next morning as proof of your virginity, your consummated marriage, and the humiliation of it was so confusing you’d had to lock yourself in a hall closet until your breathing returned to normal. 

At least it was done, you’d thought. 

The second time he mounted you, the experience was better. It didn’t hurt as much; there was no blood. He still had you from behind, and though you knew nothing about sex, you hadn’t imagined it like that. The third time, you learned that touching yourself helped, hand wedged between your body and the mattress, massaging, as he pushed into you, and thought maybe your imaginings of the act had just been inaccurate. 

He groaned in your ear that you felt good, that your pussy was tight. And that made you feel good. Like you had done something right. 

You thought maybe you were supposed to do more but when you found a diagram of two people engaging in oral sex in a book in the vast library it disgusted you. You did not want to touch him that way. And you certainly didn’t want his head between your legs. 

At least back then he had seemed enamored with you, whispered sweet things to you, even if he did not want to look at you. Now, it was a deadened affair, an obligation fulfilled.  

You hadn’t really understood, until that first night with Joel, that you could want to have sex, that it could feel good. 

Maybe because he didn’t feel like a stranger. He was someone you knew and cared about first. Who cared for you in turn. Looked you in the face and didn’t flinch.

And when he put his head between your legs you’d felt thrilled rather than disgusted. 

Your husband never tried to know you, all your clumsy attempts at closeness had been curtained, shut down. He was busy, he was off somewhere else, his business was too complicated for you to understand, and anyway stressing you by explaining it might affect your womb. 

Still, you made promises to him. Your guilt and shame shimmer lowly in the back of your throat. How many vows have you broken? How many failures could one person possibly orchestrate?  

Spring wanes into summer. The world outside bursts with life, flowers in bloom, shuddering emerald leaves, bright sunshine that feels like a blight. 

The self imposed distance between you and Joel remains. You feel alone, impenetrable and lonely in so many ways. But it frightens you, how much it matters that he is still there, that he offers himself in so many ways, contradicts your accusations quietly by staying. Accusations you only half wish were true. 

Would it be easier if he thought of you as a plaything?

You only speak to him once, one bright, horrible morning when you wake once again to blood on your sheets. Your cycle is now arriving early, as if to rub your nose in your humiliation.

For it is humiliating. What use are you to anyone? You sit alone among your books and pens, sequestered from the world. You are nothing; you give nothing. You could shrivel in the corner and no one would notice for days, weeks. 

Your chest heaves so hard, you choke on it, only pulled away from the restless scratching at the inside of your mind when a warm hand curls around your wrist. 

You had not heard the door open.

For one hopeful moment, you think it might be your husband, finally noticing you outside your marriage bed, noticing your pain, noticing you at all. You long for him to say it’s all right, you’re enough as you are. It doesn’t matter if you cannot give him a son. 

But it’s only Joel, looking from your swollen, wet face to your bloody thighs through your thin nightclothes and back. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, your wrist still in his hand. “You’re all right, sweetheart.”

“He will be angry.” The words are involuntary, scattered out of your mouth like pieces of a game you don’t know how to play.

Joel just shakes his head, helps you up, draws a bath for you, knowing better than to call for a maid, even though he could. Rumors would not affect him in the way they affected you. 

“He’ll get over it,” Joel snarls, like he could will it so. 

“I’m okay, I’m sorry.” 

His eyes sweep over you, taking inventory, making sure that’s true, before he confirms it, like you had asked a question. “You’re okay.” 

You say nothing, and when you’re in the bath, you squeeze his hand and watch him go away again. 

.

.

.

One evening, a few weeks into summer, your husband sends for you. 

He wishes to dine together.

You can’t remember the last time you did so where it was not required, where he liked to have you at his side in front of guests. The invitation is unexpected, but you take a moment to tuck yourself into a fresh dress, rife with silk and tulle, a color that makes your skin brighten. 

And you have been so alone, these past few weeks. You are hungry for any company.

He stands to greet you when you enter his rooms, his eyes flitting over your efforts without a word. 

He holds out your chair for you as you cycle through conversation you could offer. How was it Joel was so easy for you to speak to but your husband made you choke on your tongue? Every word seemed wrong, imprecise, unimpressive and simpering. 

“I’ve called for a doctor,” he informs you as soon as you are seated across from him, situating himself in his chair, eyes never quite settling on you. “You can expect him tomorrow afternoon.” 

You clear your throat. “Whatever for?” 

With that simple question, he finally looks at you, his fidgeting settling. “Whatever—?” He cuts himself off with a chuckle. “Darling. I fear your childbearing years may be coming to a close.” He pushes back from the table again, pacing the length of the dining room, pausing before the glass doors that lead to a small balcony, hands tucked behind his back. 

You open your mouth, when he continues. 

“And, it pains me to say this, but you have disappointed me greatly.” Your stomach clenches hard, a wide hollow space expanding in your chest. “You and I, we made certain promises. And I made concessions, despite my misgivings about your, ah, aesthetic presentation, in favor of your youth and, despite your disfiguration, your beauty.” 

He turns back to you suddenly, blotting out the sun behind him. “You promised me a child. I am owed a son. It has been more than three years, since our union.” 

Your husband circles the room, his thick hands grip the back of the dining chair you are perched on.

Strain bleeds between you in the air, a terse rigidity that pulls your spine straight and taut. Though your heart pounds, you maintain your composure, breathing slowly and evenly. 

“I am sorry,” you offer. “I can no more control—” 

“I was assured of your standing,” he continues over you. “That you were untouched, educated, and proper. But lately, I have. . .heard whispers.” 

“Whispers?” You murmur back, lips barely moving, fear coiling in your gut, not for yourself but for Joel. “What do you mean?” 

His hands move from the chair to your shoulders, fingers clamping down along your collarbone briefly before he drags the chair next to you closer and sits. He’s so close you have to lean back to meet his eyes. He takes one of your hands in both of his. 

“I only want to help you fulfill your purpose, you understand. You are so restless and unhappy. You will mellow and be calm once you are with child. Think of it. How good it will be to fulfill this wish that is both of ours.”

You swallow and shift your gaze down, wondering if the stress of the pressure to conceive was interfering with your body’s willingness to do so. He cups your unmarred cheek in his hand and pulls your gaze to his. “Look at me when I speak to you.” If he were another man, the action might have been sweetly cajoling, a desperation to see your eyes, but with him it is a matter of control. 

“You will see the doctor tomorrow. You will follow his directions and recommendations exactly. He will consult with me after, so I will know.” 

“Of course. I will do everything to the letter.” 

His thumb drifts over the apple of your cheek, then your lips. Once, you would have reveled in the affection, thought it a good thing. Now, it only smarts for it is not the hand you long for. “Good. Maybe you will finally yield.” He releases you, picks up his silverware and clears his throat. 

“Yes,” you agree, feeling faint. 

You are nothing more than cattle, you think distantly. A placid little cow, dumb and satisfied with being incubator to your husband’s heir. Because it must be a boy, of course. 

A daughter would only mean you would have to do it all again. And again and again and again to give him a son. You refuse to imagine the life that might fall on these illusory daughters—married off, sold, confined and capsized in a life they had not asked for. 

If you could get pregnant once, let alone more than once.

“As for these whispers,” he continues as the door opens and a few household staff finally sweep in with your dinner. You wonder if one had been listening at the door. “I expect them to cease.” He cocks his head at you. “I will not have a wife with a tarnished reputation.” 

The vagueness of the threat tells you that more specific rumors have not yet met his ears. Or, maybe they had, and he simply never cared, until this recent renewed need for an heir. 

You slide your limp palms into your lap and try to control the fear gathering at the back of your neck. It feels as though god has reached down to pinch you by the scruff. Something else pulsing in your belly too. 

You hate him, you realize, for the control he wields over you. Something cold and mean slithers into your heart. If anything should happen to Joel, you decide then, you shall throw yourself off the roof of the estate and curse your husband to never see a son born to him. 

The anger gives you courage, but he isn’t done. 

A plate of roasted duck and potatoes is placed before him, while a bowl of broth is sat on the table in front of you. 

You frown and he continues. “You will have light soup, broth, and tea until it is done. The physician thinks that heavy food may be contributing to your irregular cycle. And your. . .temperamental moods.”

He cuts into the duck with gusto, not looking at you anymore. “My first wife was prone to certain moods too.” He chews, smiles placidly at you. “Have I ever told you about her?”  

You cannot tell malice from the general cruelty of being a woman. Did his wife jump, or was she thrown? It’s impossible for you to know. If you get pregnant under this new regimen about to be installed, you will never know. Or, you may find yourself pushed from a great height, watching from above as another woman swanned into your husband’s life to repeat your mistakes.

One thing you suddenly know, is that you know nothing. Of yourself, the life you want. If you were supposed to desire something beyond what was prescribed at all. 

You had only ever wanted to be married, a wife. Maybe naively, you had thought that meant being loved. To be someone’s wife was to be loved and cherished. But your husband clearly doesn’t, not beyond what nested inside you. 

Joel, not your husband, not your anything, cared for you, maybe cherished you. At the very least he treats you like a person, considers you. 

You feel a jealous rage scrape the inside of your lungs. An envious, covetous rage that he has been there all along, waiting for you, offering impossibilities like they wouldn’t kill him slowly, and you were stuck, trapped, chewing your foot off in a chain you could unlock. 

“No,” you smile. “Tell me about her.” 

.

.

.

In the days after you dine with your husband, your anger, always repressed, pushed down into the pit of your stomach, curdles. It sours and writhes and twists its way into your lungs. 

The indignity of suffering the doctor does not help. He condescends to you about your monthly cycle, the foods you eat or don’t eat, how often and how vigorously you engage in sex. He asks you to lie back and puts his fingers inside you, groping around to feel for god knows what, making you shudder, making the anger double until you’re gritting your jaw so hard your teeth ache. 

When he retracts his hand, he says you are unnaturally cold and tense. He prescribes a tea and a warm compress, and suggests laudanum mixed into your wine to help relax and open you to your husband’s ministrations. 

In addition to your light diet, you are directed to rest. No walks, no reading, no writing. It simply stressed your body and overtaxed your delicate mind, distracted from energy that could be conserved and put toward conceiving. 

A corpse, you think bitterly. 

He wants you to play dead until a baby appears. 

“And keep your hips raised after your husband has reached completion,” he says as he steps toward the door. “I shall pass on my recommendations to your husband.” 

You lie prone for the entire day, restless and miserable, monitored by the household staff. Despite the anger pulsing like a bruise under your ribs, you don’t know what else to do but follow the orders handed down and hope this course works. 

The laudanum and something unnamed for your irritable mood is mixed into your wine that first night. The maid mixes it and watches you drink it down. As usual, your husband enters your rooms when the candles are snuffed out and you have passionless, dutiful sex. His hands grip your hips to steady you and don’t trail elsewhere.

You think about pushing him off the roof of the estate. Then feel guilty, because you have no reason to resent him. Not really. He has not been cruel to you. 

You think about how much excitement his recent relentless attention would have stirred in you a few years ago. It would have been evidence that he cared for you. 

You think about Joel, but can’t imagine sex with him would ever be that way. 

On the dawn of the fifth day of drugged lethargy, the maid lets it slip that your husband departed the estate early that morning, and wouldn’t return for several days. 

Feeling mischievous and bold, a well of want, need, and pulsing, wretched self-loathing, you sit up and ask for toast and coffee. She hesitates, looking at you in your mountain of sheets, a prison of sorts. 

She hesitates and then goes, returning with it a few minutes later. You scarf it down ravenously, starving after so many days of broth and tea, like you were a sickly child. 

You wash and dress in a simple day dress without help. 

You simply refuse to lie still any longer. Your legs ache from the effort of not moving. 

A different guard stands in the hall, and you pull up short, fear tickling the back of your throat. You look him up and down. “Where is J—Captain Miller?” 

“Off-duty, Mistress. Weren’t really keen on goin’. But should be back this evenin’.” 

“Of course. Come along then.” 

He shrugs and follows you. 

You walk the grounds, then run until sweat pours down your forehead, your dress thick with sweat. You visit the stables, and saddle a horse yourself, refusing help from the stable boys. Your guard for the day, along with the other staff, all seem at a loss for what to do with you, if there was anything at all they could do. 

You ride until your thighs ache, and then send the men in the training yard off, to practice with your little wooden training dagger. Your husband would blanche to see you with it; you think Joel might be amenable to giving you, if you asked, a real blade. 

The anger hasn’t abated by the time afternoon pools sticky and sweet on the horizon. The sun is a flaming yellow ball, dripping like honey along the bright blue edges of the sky. 

You go directly to the kitchens and raid it for whatever you please. Cheese, bread, honey, figs, a pomegranate that crumbles ruby red in your hands, drips in red rivulets down your wrists. A pit yawns open wide inside you, filled with unanswered questions, uncertainty about everything you’ve been brought up to believe true about the world, and about your place in it. 

The walls of the estate seem to have shrunk. You will not lie still again. You will not suffer the doctor again, nor your husband.

There is only one thing you desire.

You will have it.

.

.

.

That evening, you open your door into the slowly cooling hall, hoping Joel will be there now, as he wasn’t that morning. Summer air streaks the flagstones in orange stripes. He glances up, a bead of sweat rolls down the side of his face. 

You lick your lips, feeling suddenly nervous, feeling suddenly like your revelations have come all too late.   

“Hi,” you say softly, feeling suddenly shy. “Would you come in? Only if you’d like to. I am not making demands.”

He starts forward, eyes flicking over you. “Well, ain’t that unusual?” he asks, like no time has passed since you last opened the door to him, like it hasn’t been weeks.

You glance down the hall and back to him, a smile tugging at your mouth, despite yourself. “Joel.” 

His chest brushes your arm as he slips past you into the room, mouth at your ear, “me and you both know I don’t mind demands,” and takes in the little feast you’d cajoled out of the kitchens, citing continued ravenousness while your hand hovered over your stomach, as though a possible pregnancy were the cause for your hunger, the need for so much food. 

“What’s all this for?” 

“You,” you slip your arm through his, palm braced on his forearm, and guide him to sit at the table. The room is warm, swelteringly so, but you can’t risk having the curtains or the windows open. The setting sun beyond paints the white fabric a soft tangerine. “It’s my way of begging for your forgiveness.” 

He shakes his head but sits. “Nothin’ to forgive.” 

You linger at his side for a moment, just to be near him, inhale the scent of him close by, among your things. You touch the shell of his ear, the sharp edge of his jaw, tucking a piece of graying hair back, before sitting across from him. “There is.” 

His brows lift. 

“I said things I shouldn’t have,” you clarify. “I feel as though I am most myself with you. You're very dear to me and we’ve shared so much. I think, more than anything, I am afraid of—” You shake your head, nervous to say it suddenly. “I don’t know.” 

His eyes flick over you before he takes up a plate and begins to pile food on it. It’s good, settles something in you, to provide the small bounty, but he pushes the plate in front of you when he’s finished. “Eat.” He sits back. “Then you tell me whatever you need to.” 

“Joel—”

“I heard you wasn’t.” 

“Well—” 

“And you wasn’t goin’ on walks anymore. Thought you were sick or maybe. . .you finally got pregnant.” 

“You were worried about me.” 

He tilts his head at you, and in the low light you see something you hadn’t before, a yellowing bruise the shape of a crescent moon beneath his eye. “‘Course I was.” 

You shake your head. “You shouldn’t have to wait for me like that. For me to come to you. You shouldn’t have to wait at all.” 

“I don’t mind.”

You don’t answer, feeling as though your heart is on your tongue, that it will fall out if you open your mouth. He nods to the plate in front of you. “Eat somethin’.” 

The sun finally sets beyond your curtained windows. The room goes purple in shadow, then yellow in the lamp Joel lights as you push the food around the plate. 

“I’m afraid to be honest,” you admit softly. "But I know I must."

Joel sits back in his chair again, his legs spread wide, hand rubbing over his face as he tilts his head at you. “Yeah.” He nods, like he can see something you can’t. “I know the feelin’.” 

You stand and push back from the table, rounding it quickly, pressing yourself into his lap, hand to his jaw. “I need to be honest, Joel.”

He catches you against his chest, rubs your thigh with his open palm. He tilts his head back to keep his eyes on yours, brows lowered, eyes soft. 

“Tell me then.” 

You shake your head, not sure how to say I want you and not sound like a petulant child demanding a sweet. It’s hard, too, to admit that you’ve been wrong, purposefully blind, willfully obtuse about your life. That you would abandon everything and flee with him.

That even if he won't go with you, you will flee.

“I don’t want to lose you,” you murmur, eventually, not looking away though you want to. “When I think of the future without you, I can’t see anything. I see only miserable hours, alone.” 

He considers you, doesn’t answer you for a long moment. “Okay.” He shifts, runs one hand down his face. “You think about what I said?” 

Your heart lurches. “That is not what I—”

“I know I upset you, sayin’ it, but I’ll still. . .the offer is there. Whenever you need me, I’m here.” 

You shake your head, feeling ill and loved. “I will always have need of you,” you answer. “But not like that.” 

He’s frowning at you, the crease in his forehead deepening. 

You feel the woolly unraveling of the last few weeks thick on the back of your tongue, and practically spit them into his lap. The humiliation of it, the helplessness of it. How trying to satisfy your husband should have been simple and brought you joy but it only brought you more doubts, and final certainty.

Joel’s expression darkens when you tell him of the laudanum, the days spent in stupor, resting so as not to upset your delicate womb. 

“You. . .knew what they were giving you?” 

“Yes.” 

His brows loosen, but only by a fraction. 

“If he meant to give it to me without my knowledge there were better ways than mixing it in front of me.” 

You grip his shirt in your hands. “But you are not listening. None of that matters because I will not give him a child. I would not give him your child. I want you. But I am afraid of being alone and unwanted, and I’m afraid that as soon as you have me, I will be nothing again.” 

You swallow, your mouth trembles, but you continue. “Being proper. Doing everything as it was prescribed. Has brought me nothing but misery.” Uncertainty laps at your heart, that he would say such offers are long past. “I would go with you,” you finish. “I would leave with you. Despite my fear that you will—I would follow you.” You swallow, "But even if you don't, I cannot stay. I am leaving."

The words have barely passed your lips before his mouth is pressed against yours, swallowing your voice, forcing the doubt back down your throat. 

Here you are safe, here you are warm. 

Here unreasonable demands will not be made of you. 

You curl your fingers into his hair, then the stiff collar of his shirt, breathe the scent of him, so familiar and tender, musk and salt and cedar.  

“Tonight,” he says, hands on your hips, urging you up. “Now.” 

“Wait.” 

He goes still, you can see the hope bleached from his eyes in an instant. “If it is me,” you begin, “if I cannot have children—” 

Joel is laughing before you finish, a relieved sort of laugh that makes you frown. “Can’t think of anything that matters less.” He strokes your cheek, thumb running over the scar that was supposed to make you undesirable. “Only thing that matters is you.” 

It’s beautiful in its simplicity. 

You. Not something from you. 

This time, when he urges you up from his lap, you let him. 

You take nothing with you. 

The halls and stables are empty of staff at that late hour; your husband will not return for three more days. 

The air tastes like rain and the crackle of summer heat when you ride out of the stables together and slip near soundlessly between the familiar trees that surround the estate.