My friend Lutecia was a domineering woman of marriageable age and nothing else marriageable about her.
Young enough to have still the looks required of most men's approval in marriage and courting, upon first meeting as teenagers at a ball that looked primarily held for young bachelorettes already promised to be wed, after the sneering and drinks we were certainly NOT meant to be consuming, among the jokes at the expense of the less pleasant dancers and tedious pieces of her tragic woeful teen-year-old life, I found out exactly one important thing about her.
She detested men.
And be it the drink or the lingering sense of fear and requirement of politeness weighing down upon me like a Mother's tightened bonnet, I had to agree. As a result I had spent many a year fallen in with the same hatreds, and stoking my fires of past betrayals and heartache which fell from the most reasonable and painful, to the most trivial and petty.
For the both of us, though her four years the older, marriage had always been a point of fervent discussion.
As teenagers hating the thought of it... as young women craving and despising it... as women full-bodied who longed for it and feared it's lack...
When Lutecia finally gave in to her softer side and plucked a handsome Henry from the ballroom's aether, I thought such would calm her somewhat and reveal a woman I now would much rather talk to... a kinder one... a gentler one... one who had just needed a man to turn her to something more rather than less, to show her the love we could both have, and I could myself take the proverbial shot of shame and give in to my own man, and we could talk about such together...
But when first I met her soon after the engagement, and even soon soon after the wedding night, the same feelings remained. Her fiance was not exempt, her husband was not exempt. Her man was no exception.
I detested her. Detested myself for being so young, so stupid. Keeping not in touch for some four years, I realised myself a young woman of twenty-seven, panicking and smiling politely, looking desperately for men who could keep up, terrifying myself with fears of brute force and servitude. I longed for them. And in the same way of prejudice and constancy, I longed. I lost. I gained nothing from playing as a frightened girl waiting, nothing from saying and berating and whining that the men in my life were doing nothing to appease me. Confessions were plentiful. Rejections more so. Gifts fell short, love letters tasted dry...
Because it was me.
I thrived on hate. Needed it. Required it. Yearned for it for myself from more men. I needed hate needed lust needed fire and passion and murder in a man's eyes... I got simpers. Bows and stuttering. I loved them. I could not give in, couldn't admit the girl I was, couldn't show myself to any of them... because in truth that is what had happened to the beautiful Alicia Lycette; bachelorette of twenty-one.
At the time of my confessions, she was now a well reputed spinster of fourty-two and feeling all manner of tug at every opening in the skin and heart.
She lusted.
------UPON ARRIVING AT AN OLD FRIEND'S-----
She visited her old friend again, hoping at least to be somewhat encouraged at seeing a fourty-six year old face. Perhaps she'd be lined with age from the family she'd started some twenty years ago.
She chapped on the door to find a man.
Not Henry. Yet dressed nor as a butler. He politely informed her with kind eyes and a bow of servitude that though his Mother was indeed in, he knew not the whereabouts of his father, nor the identity of the woman to whom he spoke. He smiled. And he asked. It was courtesy, important, and of course- the fact of the matter being though I was well-dressed and in kept shape and make-up and perfume- we had never met. And so I was a spinster of fourty-two on the door of the boy's house, asking about his Mother.
'His Mother?' I thought.
And I gasped when I realised.
'Her son...!'
I looked him properly for the first time. The moment was going on forever anyway, love at first sight being what it is... he wore his poet's shirt and thin trousers... thin everything really, but not gaunt, never gaunt. He was tall... but not so tall. His hair was as the fashion, but with modesty, slight curls and dark shine of nothing mudding it, simply good upkeep of reasonable wealth. And his skin was a little pale, enough to perhaps make a lady draw comparisons with several terrible erotic novellas she mightn't have read were she so enraptured with a man herself...
He let me in, with not just a bow but a motion for the servants. Normally I bid they wait, but on this occasion I made an exception. I pictured him a man of steady growth, unashamed to do what needed be done in the face of pomp and decorum. I pictured him a lot as I walked past him in the giant skirts and bumped him against the wall.
He smiled, laughing a little. He didn't care what I was wearing, just for the blush on my cheeks... was I really so old? So alone? So needing of this kind of attention? So bereft of it?
I put all thought of age aside and focused on the house. And... saw that it was old. It was big, beautiful, white, bare. Lutecia.
I could have laughed. But I didn't want to prattle on like an old fool in front of this boy... I wanted to impress him.
No. I wanted him to impress me.
I turned and started close to him, staring him in the face as the servants nodded bows and bobbed past into the stairwell, the boy motioning up to rooms as I stared and him frowning slightly, seeing me as if truly for the first time. Perhaps it had been the hat. I realised though such was not entirely proper... if we were to be friends... family even? I gently plucked it from my head and laid it on the rack.
I turned to him and stared again. We heard the servants' ebbing feet away up the stairs... but more importantly- I knew that he heard it. A subtle difference, but...
"How old are you, young man, if I may ask...?"
A gulp. He replied that he had twenty-one years to his name.
And there it was... an opportunity. I smiled sweetly and nodded gently, him being the man of the house after all, and I a guest.
"Show me to my room."
He remembered, panicking a little and nodding, rushing up to help lead me. He rushed back down and offered an arm. I laughed gently and made sure he could feel the pat on his arm. I made sure that he could feel the little rub on the back of his hand.
