"But, Papa!" Emma cried.
"Enough!" He had gone crimson, a truly alarming shade, darker than the stained-glass in the church window above the pew where they sat every Sunday. "You're lucky I don't snap your neck like a chickenbone, girl! Ungrateful hussy. As I live and breathe, you're lucky."
Emma fell silent. She clutched her traveling valise, the one she would not be parted with. Let the train's baggage handlers do what they would with her trunk. Drop it in the mud, break it open so that her petticoats spilled out for all the world to see, set it on fire. The valise held her money, her grandmother's pearls – Papa didn't know she had spirited them out of their hiding place, but damned if she'd let her sister Mary have them, damned if she would! – and what little money he'd seen fit to give her for the trip.
And the books.
The books that had been, in a way, the cause of all this. Her downfall, her doom. Yet how could she hate them, those wonderful books? They had opened her eyes to things she had never before even imagined.
The look on Papa's face, though … when he'd come into the parlor, when he'd seen what he'd seen.
She was lucky he hadn't snapped her neck. He could have done; he might be a wealthy businessman now, but he'd been a miner once, and the endless toil of hauling ore-carts and swinging a pick had left a mark on him. In his shoulders, in his arms, in his hands that were still strong.
Mama, meanwhile, would not look at Emma. Not once. She sat in the corner of the very parlor where their lives had been thrown into uproar, dabbing at endlessly-running eyes with a hanky. But not one word of argument had she made when Papa told them of his decision. Not one word of defense on her eldest daughter's behalf.
Emma thought, meanly, spitefully, that Mama would be glad to be rid of her. Hadn't Mama always been just a touch jealous? Jealous of Emma's thick chestnut curls and milky skin, jealous of Emma's shapely figure, jealous of Emma's love of life? Mama was a thin woman, once a seamstress, with hands that no amount of lanolin cream could make smooth and supple again.
And Mama, passionless as a nun, had to hate Emma for what she'd done.
What she'd almost done, Emma amended. She hadn't, it hadn't happened, not really, not fully, and that was the bitterest pill of all.
If she had done it – which she would have, and gladly, if Papa hadn't come home early, walking in on that unforgivable scene – that would be another matter. She could have understood their rancor. A ruined daughter, unmarriageable to any respectable man in the city despite the family's wealth. The scandal. The whispers. Her parents made a laughingstock.
But he hadn't even put it in!
Emma opened her mouth to say so, and caught herself in time. To Mama and Papa, it didn't matter. They hadn't believed her before, that it was the first time she'd ever done anything even remotely so wicked, and wouldn't believe her now.
She had even pleaded with them to send for a doctor. A doctor could examine her, and prove that she was still a virgin.
The very idea had sent Mama reeling, nearly fainting. A doctor? Bring a doctor here for that sort of examination, and let the news get out? No matter if she was intact or not, the fact that they'd needed medical proof of it would be enough to set tongues wagging all over town.
What therefore angered Emma the most was that she was being punished for that which she hadn't done. Or, rather, that because she was being punished for it, she wished she'd gone ahead and done it.
How easy it would have been, how delightful! And they had, almost. If she'd been less coy, dash it all! If she'd not played at such maidenly demure resistance, and made him pant breathless vows of undying adoration in her ear … why, it might have been long over with by the time Papa came in. No one would have needed to know.
And the ache, the terrible need in her, might finally have been met. The need that had burned since she'd discovered the books. She had never dreamed that such books existed. That people did the deeds described in its pages, and depicted in its drawings.
The flame had begun then, flickering, lapping, consuming. Making her think of things she had never considered before. Making her look at men with a sly secretiveness. Knowing what they had in their trousers, and what they could do with it.
Finally, when the yearning curiosity – was it really like they wrote about in the stories? – became too strong, she knew she had to find out.
She'd noticed how her little sister's piano teacher watched her sometimes, when Mary was diligently plinking out the notes and Henry Ryans thought that Emma was unaware of his lingering glances.
Oh, but she had been aware. After reading the books, she'd been very, very aware indeed.
It became a game to her, acting oblivious as she adjusted her skirt or tugged at her bodice or curled her forefinger in a long dangling chestnut lock. She saw the way his eyes went smoky and faraway, pretty blue eyes that went well with his fair hair and neat mustache.
He was well-made, too, Henry Ryans was. With clever piano-teacher hands that played over the ivories with such skill that Emma couldn't help wondering how they might feel playing over the hills and valleys of her body.
Mary, only a child, hadn't noticed as her instructor and sister exchanged more and more direct looks and private smiles. Nor had she thought anything of it when Henry Ryans had directed her to practice on her own while he sat at the other end of the sofa, and sometimes touched Emma's hand.
Soon they had kissed, his mustache tickling, his lips eager. Emma could still recall the delicious shiver that had seized her when he'd first sent those lips in a string of sweet kisses from the hollow of her ear to the hollow of her shoulder.
And at night, every night, she read by candlelight and hungered to experience more of the adventures in the books. The Secret Loves of Molly K. A Gentleman's Confessions. Diary of A Fallen Woman. Those and others like them.
Finally, on a day when everyone else was out, Henry Ryans had arrived at the house claiming to have forgotten to leave a lesson-book that he had promised to give to Mary. Emma had welcomed him kindly and invited him into the parlor to sit. And there, emboldened by their solitude, they had finally flown into each other's arms.
How his hands had delighted her! As skilled as she had hoped, caressing her skin, teasing her nipples into stiff rosebuds. His mouth, too, hot and eager, speaking a constant litany.
"So beautiful, Emma, you are so beautiful, oh, my darling, oh!"
She had blushed and lowered her eyelids and gasped when he took some new and daring liberty, but even as she had shyly dropped her gaze she had been studying him, seeing if he did swell and bulge as they wrote of in the stories. He did, and in a pretense of nearly swooning she had let her hand fall high on his thigh, the backs of her fingers brushing against a long stiffness.
His kisses delved deeper, his tongue probing her mouth and sending sparks of excitement whirling through her. He had settled her reclining on the sofa, her clothes in disarray, her breasts bare and brazen to the parlor where Mama sometimes had her Sewing Circle ladies in for tea, and her skirt was drawn up, steadily up, baring her legs in their fancy hose.
Henry had been half-atop her, that stiffness rubbing her thigh, lavishing kisses on her breasts, and she had remembered a passage she'd read, how a woman had urged her lover to do something that Emma had initially thought sounded horrid. Yet now, the idea only inflamed her. She sank her fingers into his fine blond hair. Nudged his head lower.
He had looked up at her then, perhaps startled, but whatever he saw in her face – flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, tongue sliding slowly over parted lips – decided him. Without further pause he had thrust his head beneath her skirt and nuzzled, his breath hot through thin silk on the most tender and sensitive parts of her.
Emma could have shredded her clothes in her haste and maddening frustration, but Henry carefully removed them, and then his own. Naked, he had been white as marble, smooth as cream, and that part of him which rose urgently from a nest of honey-colored hair was everything that Emma had imagined from her reading. And more.
She sat up and took hold of it with something akin to wonder, never minding his disbelieving groan at the readiness with which she handled this strange and wonderful instrument. She rubbed it between her palms, ran her thumbs over the rosy nub peeking from a fold of skin, touched the bead of moisture that welled at the dark hole in its tip.
"Emma, dear girl, dear God," Henry Ryans had said, his voice hoarse. "Stroke it, yes, you darling, do!"
Then, as in the books, she licked at it. Henry had nearly gone unbuckled at the knees, and had to grasp her shoulders to keep from falling. The suddenness of the movement made Emma's head bob, and she had instinctively opened her mouth.
"Ah! Oh, yes!" Henry pushed with his hips. "Suck on it, darling Emma!"
The taste of him thrilled her, and the sense of power thrilled her more. A pulse throbbed between her legs, where she was slippery and damp. She dropped one of her hands into her lap, sliding her fingers as she had done so many lonely nights in her bed.
Henry moaned and breathed fast through clenched teeth. "Oh, Emma … Emma, wait … I want to … I want to make love to you. My darling. Let me … oh! … let me make love to you."
She had released him then, and leaned back, feeling wanton and womanly here on her mother's sofa, her clothes in a heap. Henry stared, transfixed, at her hand as she moved it leisurely over her thighs.
