"You're lying," Amanda snarled at Adam.
"I'm not, why would I?"
"Because you don't like me being with Fairfax."
"Amanda, the man is a lunatic. He's a monster and a tyrant."
"Don't be ridiculous. Adam. He's an army officer and the head of intelligence, he has to have a sharp side."
"Sharp, he's a fucking sadist, he tortures prisoners for fun."
"Adam, please stop, you've been drinking and you are getting worked up and becoming annoying, you're exaggerating."
"Amanda, darling," he said sitting beside her on the seat that ran the width of the window in the drawing room in her new home and taking both her hands in his. "Yes I have been drinking and yes I may be exaggerating, well at least quoting rumours, but he does interrogate prisoners himself for no other reason than he enjoys it. In his position he does not have to, he has experts who work for him to do that. Ask yourself why would he?"
That was a question that Amanda most certainly would not ask herself.
They were in her house on the Sunday after the White House reception. She had no appointments and had welcomed Adam inviting himself round after he had lunched with some cronies at a new, fashionable restaurant at Buzzard Point near the recently extended Navy Boat Yard. He was slightly drunk when he arrived.
Adam was feeling very guilty about having told Jayne about him and Amanda. He knew he should not have done that and that the information of them committing the illegal act of incest between brother and sister, and Amanda having had an abortion, would be powerful information in the wrong hands, perhaps Lennon's was his thinking. Not only could it be used to blackmail and compromise Amanda it could also lead to his and her arrest for neither crime was covered by a statute of limitations.
As she was not expecting anyone other than her brother, Amanda was dressed very casually. She was not using her frame or hoops and instead was dressed in what was becoming the fashion in Washington when ladies were either alone or only with other females. She was wearing a plain, loose skirt that did not reach the floor, but ended on her ankles and showed her feet in her stockings and shoes or boots: a display that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable. For comfort, she had dispensed with her corset and for coolness her petticoats and even her chemise. Under the skirt she was merely wearing her open front and rear drawers. Above her waist, she was wearing a thin, cotton bodice that reached down to her hips. That provided her ample breasts little support.
Amanda knew that her outfit was risqué. She would never have worn it in male company, even and in some ways especially, if it was her brother but she hadn't been expecting him. He had just turned up, something he was doing more often recently and that annoyed Amanda for she knew that sooner or later he would arrive as she was in bed with the General. As he had told her in his slightly drunken state about Lennon, she had seen him looking at her breasts and rear as the flesh moved and wobbled under the thin material. She was aware that Adam still had difficulty in containing his urge for her, as indeed she did hers for him. As her brother's eye roamed over her body in the, what would be considered by many as being, unconventional and by some unsuitable, dress her mind flashed back all those years to when she had first worn such an outfit in front of him.
She had been eighteen when anything had first happened. Of course before then there had been moments, stares, touches, stolen glances and times when it seemed as though something might happen. But both were frightened, as rightly they should have been. It was wrong. Blood relatives should not be intimate with each other and they should not have carnal feelings or, even more so relationships.
But this was the Deep South, taboos were different, standards and expectations were different.
They lived miles away from other children, they were cut off from contact with others, had hardly any friends and little chance of meeting boy or girl friends. The luxury of the huge mansion and almost town level of facilities of Selby Bluff where every whim they had was taken care of by their servants and slaves was not an effective alternative to living a 'normal' life.
They were rarely alone in the house. It was just not possible with thirty or so live in servants and probably a hundred slaves who attended to the household, which at the time was Florence and George, Adam and Amanda's parents, granny O'Rourke, Florence's mother, two widowed aunts and the two of them.
Unusually they were alone for a few days for the elders had all gone to a distant, but incredibly rich relative's funeral in Savannah and Adam and Amanda had been left in the good hands of the servants.
Their rooms were on the third floor. In a gesture that was by their father's, but not their mother's, view extremely liberal, an apartment had been created for the two children at one end of the third floor. They each had a bedroom, there was a sitting room, a small kitchen, a tiny dining room and a classroom where the tutor, the redoubtable and largely scorned by them, Mister Blount, had provided their early education. It was all due to Florence who held attitudes well beyond the times.
They were in the sitting room after they had eaten dinner; they were relaxed and alone.
"You know Adam, this is the very first time we have been alone in the house" Amanda had said for no other reason than curiosity as she walked towards her room.
"Oh yes, so it is," her brother said, stretching out on one of the two plum coloured, velvet covered chaises. He was wearing tight, white, wool trousers, a scarlet cummerbund and a white shirt that was open half way down his chest. He had removed his boots and was barefoot. Amanda thought he looked very handsome.
As had been her way ever since she was a child, Amanda had changed from her day clothes once dinner was finished. When the family were there she would say her goodnights to her parents, aunts and other guests, there was nearly always a few, go to their apartment and undress. The formality, awkwardness and sheer heat of her stockings, knickers, chemise, corset, petticoats, hoop frame and dress was oppressive and she could hardly wait to rid herself of them.
Knowing that she, if Adam was away or, if he was home, they would not be disturbed, for Florence insisted that everyone in the family should have their privacy, Amanda would don her nightwear. Usually a simple white, shift chemise type of cotton dress, with, when she was younger, long sleeves, but now short so her arms were almost bare, it reached to mid- calf. She wore nothing under it. However, as she and Adam got older, Florence suggested that she wear a shawl or bed jacket to cover her arms and that she keep her stockings on until she was alone in her bedroom.
Even her enlightened mother seemed to Amanda to have rather prudish views. In reality, though, it was not that which prompted Florence to make such suggestions, it was because she was aware of the 'temptations of the flesh' between people of their ages, even brothers and sisters. Florence was also acutely aware that incest was rife in the South and, although intellectually she was fairly neutral in her views as to the emotional aspects, she was highly concerned about the potential physical repercussions if 'things went wrong.'
As it was a particularly warm evening, Amanda had removed her stockings and hadn't bothered to button up the short bed jacket. Due to her nightdress being cut fairly low at the neck and was only ankle length, a fair expanse of her chest, her bare ankles and her feet were constantly on view to Adam. Although when he was younger he could recall seeing her bare arms, her chest above her chemise and her feet, it hit him hard when she came out of her room to the classroom where they were to study for now his sister was a woman.
Adam was standing behind the back of the chaise reading a book on Venetian art. He looked up and stared at his sister as she walked across the room towards the table. She was barefoot, the nightdress flapped around her bare ankles occasionally, or so it seemed on the short journey she made across the room, rising up and exposing her lower legs. The cotton clung to her. It clung to her knees, her upper legs, her thighs, hips and buttocks. But most of all he noticed, it clung to her bosom.
Adam had become more and more aware over the past year of his sister's breasts. She had reached the age where they, along with her hips fill out, become more rounded to give her the look of a woman and no longer a girl. It gave her, he thought, the shape and look of the many whores he had visited in Savannah.
As she walked across his line of sight he saw the fascinating movement of those globes of flesh that are so attractive and appealing to men whether they be exposed or covered as they were now. He imagined that he could see the shadow of his sister's areola and the outline of her nipples, but of course that was just in his mind. He could, though clearly see through the thin, slightly stretched cotton the outline of her upper legs, her rump and buttocks as they swayed and wiggled so wonderfully provocatively as she approached the table, bent forward and sat down. He was confused, worried, excited, concerned and very hard indeed.
