It Plagues My Soul

“Anna.”

She’s taken aback by the voice. Not expecting him of all people to be here, despite the fact that it is house. “Mr. Marriott.”

She blinks away the surprise, setting the school work on the table. “I’m sorry, the children aren’t here. Mary’s nursemaid-“

Marriott raises a hand kindly, coming into the room with a strange apprehension. “Oh no, no. I’m here to see you.” She can’t help the bewildered expression that appears on her face. Never has her Master ever come to see her, the children, yes, but not her. Always just sending a servant to fetch her to wherever he was. She came to him, in all ways.

“I’m afraid we last parted on... bad terms-“

The memory of his yelling and disgust with her in his study, just a few day before, has her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. “Sir-“

“No,” he interrupts gently, stepping closer, “please, allow me to finish.”

She stands straight, willing her spine to harden as never before. The uncertainty of what’s coming making her feel as if she’s drowning.

“Anna, I owe you an apology.” And whatever it was she was preparing herself for, it certainly wasn’t that.

“What happened that day in the billiards room, was not your fault. And even though I knew it then, as I do now, still I took my misplaced anger out on you. You did not deserve such severe treatment. And... I am ashamed even remembering it.”

She’s stunned into silence for a time, an awkward quiet filling between them. “I hold no animosity towards you,” she finally says. And it was true. Despite all that’s happened, and what she’s learned in these last few days, she truly believes he is still a good man. “I did wrong-“

“You did no such thing, Miss Smith. The truth is, I am to blame for it all, I’m afraid.”

That was news, and despite Robert’s explanation the night before, she couldn’t help but feel there was something he hadn’t told her. “Sir?”

“Hall is... an unhealthy man. Haunted, and driven by a hate for me.”

That much she now knew, but it still made no real sense. “I don’t understand, then why invite him here if you know how much he dislikes you?”

“Because I am also haunted,” he admits with a sad smile. “As you’ve no doubt guessed, we share a dark past. Though my feelings towards him are colored more by guilt than hate.”

“Guilt, Sir,” she prompts with a raging curiosity she tries to tamp down.

“Sometimes, when you are fortunate in life, as I have been, you can carry your happiness as a burden when those you greatly care for have not been so lucky.”

She frowns, his ‘admission’ not really explaining or confirming anything. And for perhaps the first time, she sees that Mr. Marriott is as cunning with his words as Robert is. Maybe these two men are more alike than she first thought.

“You feel guilty because you are happy, and he is not?”

He opens his mouth to add to it, but obviously decides against it. “In its simplest form, yes.”

“That seems...”

“Ridiculous?”

She tilts her head. “A bit.”

“I pity him, Miss Smith. He’s had a hard time of it. I’ve tried to help, but...”

“You cannot help those who refuse it.”

He watches her with some emotion before affirming. “Exactly. So, his actions towards you that day, were simply a way to hurt me. I knew this, and I allowed my anger to get the best of me. You were an innocent party to it all. And again, I apologize.”

This is all a bit surreal as she tries to take hold of it. “I still don’t understand. How did he come to a conclusion that using me would hurt you? I’m merely your governess.”

He swallows deep, eyeing the rug beneath him for a time. “Miss Smith, you-“ His face tells of so many words but an inability to express them. “Anna, you really don’t know?”

She thinks she does now, thanks to Robert, but the very thought of it is too unbelievable.

“Of course you don’t,” he whispers with a reverence that leaves her short of breath. “You are so sweet. So fresh and naive.”

“I’m no fool,” she fires at him, trying to hide the giddiness his words are causing her. How many times had she lain in her bed, and dreamed of this man saying such soft words to her.

“No,” he agrees. “Far from it.” His eyes behold her in a way that has her pressing her fingertips atop the desk between them, whether to keep balance or to ground herself she’s not sure.

“Your intelligence is part of your loveliness.”

She shakes her head minutely. This is wrong, she thinks, feeling her world shift around her. How could she not have seen this before?

He must notice her distress, reaching out to rest a warm hand over hers as he leans closer. “Please, Anna, do not fear coming to me if Hall insists on bothering you further. I am his friend, whether he believes it or not, but I won’t allow him to drag you into his childish schemes to anger me.”

She doesn’t know what else to do but nod weakly, trying to unravel the twisted strings of this story between these two men, and understand her part in it without getting herself hurt in the process. It was an impossible task made even more so when her body kept betraying her.

He stops abruptly at the door, turning as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “Oh, and I have thought about John’s schooling. Perhaps you were right all those weeks ago. Perhaps another year or two before sending him away would indeed be better.” It takes her a moment to even recall the conversation they had of John going away to Eton. It seemed so long ago now.

“I know how much you’d miss your favorite pupil.”

With that he was gone, leaving her with yet another thing to think about. Was that the real reason she insisted on John staying with her? Was she merely being selfish? Her time in the orphanage truly did make her wary of allowing John and Mary to leave, but what if she was only hurting them in the end?

She drops down in her chair with a sigh, wishing she could sleep for years.

—————

The day prior

—————

“Trust me, Robert. Let me help you fight your monsters.”

He watches her for a moment, and she can see his mind working as he tries to fight through his lust to think. While she still has her hand set upon him, she doesn’t move it, doesn’t try to feel the outline of the prominent bulge under her fingers despite aching to do just that. She lets him have his time to decide, to trust her.

He exhales heavily through his nose, coming to some kind of decision. The hand she has in his hair releases him from its cruel grasp, sliding down to hold his jaw.

His sharp features fascinate her as her finger follows the line of his jaw absentmindedly. When she thinks of men, she thinks of large and brutish, thick and boorish. And, she admits with a smile, he still has quite a few of those qualities, yet his features seem almost delicate yet cutting, eyes piercing and cat like, nose long and thin. His masculinity shows in an appearance of a lean, cunning virility.

He takes the hand she has between his legs, raising it to his lips with a kiss. “Alright.”

And she can’t stop the way her eyes widen nor the large smile that spreads slowly across her face. He snorts in return, eyes rolling.

“Tonight. I’ll visit you in your room, and tell you all about monsters, pet.”

“My room?” She knows it’s ridiculous to be so worried about proprietary considering, he’s not only snuck into her room at night once before, but also touched her in ways that long crossed over any line society thought moral.

But worry over appearances and morality are difficult chains to free yourself from. She wonders if she even truly wants to be free? And if so, how will she end up at the end of all this?

“Be ready,” he whispers into her ear before sliding away from her, leaving her, but not before giving her one last, devilish smirk.

—————

She tries her best to stay awake, keeping herself busy with setting a fire and looking over some of the children’s schoolwork. But time continues to drag, and the warmth of the fire along with the mechanical, repetitive ticking of the clock has her eyes feeling heavier with each click.

She lifts her eyes open against their will at the caress she feels along her hairline, sighing tiredly as she blinks away the grogginess from her mind.

Robert kneels before her as she sits slumped in her chair, his expressions unreadable as he watches her. “I told you to be ready, pet.”

“I waited,” she explains, voice heavy and a bit slurred with drowsiness. “I couldn’t wait anymore.”

His thumb traces down to her lips, caressing the bottom one lightly, making her remember the last time he did that, and she swallows deeply. “That’s not what I mean.”

She’s too tired to try and understand, looking to the still burning embers in her fireplace as he stands. So it’s not been too long, she thinks.

Taking her hands, he helps her raise from her chair, her quilt falling between them. He leads her to the end of her bed without a word, her heart beginning to drum hard in her chest, pushing the blood with in her faster, and waking her from her drowsy state quickly.

Surprisingly, he turns her around, facing away from him. She realizes she can see their reflection in the mirror beside her wardrobe, and she watches with bated breath as he lifts his hands, fingers pulling out pin after pin in her hair, eventually uncoiling it from the bun she rolls it into everyday. Her tensions begin to ease with the quietness of the moment, and the attentive steadiness of his fingers.

He works on her braids next, patiently releasing her brown strands till they hang loose and free around her. He catches her gaze in the mirror, smoothing her long hair over her shoulder. Cool fingers glide back, the wide neck of her dress allowing him access to her skin, making her shiver. He caresses his knuckles down her neck until he reaches the dress edge, and his eyes catch hers once more when he begins to release the hooks hidden down the back of the fabric.

She knows she should end this now. It would be the right thing to do, but she’s tired of doing the right thing. She’d never understood it while sitting in church, listening to the pastor drone on about the wicked desires of the flesh. She’d fancied boys and men, but never before now has she been unable to stop what she knew was wrong, despite her desires. She could no longer even remember what was so wrong and sinful about it.

Robert rolls the dress down, allowing it to pool at her feet, pressing a soft kiss on her back as he stands. “You’re awfully quiet, pet,” he observes as he unties layer after layer of petticoats.

She tilts her head, suddenly feeling a calm wash over her. “You promised answers.”

“Did I,” he asks nonchalantly without looking up. “I don’t remember that.”

She huffs, eyes narrowing, and she wants to kiss the stupid smirk that appears on his lips. After a ruffle of petticoats fall to the floor he leans in, kissing gently at the crook between her shoulder and neck.

“Marriott was my commander,” he begins, breath heavy and hot as it washes across her back. His hands are at her waist over her stays, smoothing up her sides then back down again, before making their way behind to begin untying the laces with a slow ease.

“Like him, I was a younger son, so I paid my way to become an officer.”

She’d known little about Mr. Marriott’s time under the King’s colors, other than that he had been.

“He was my Captain when our regiment was sent to Ceylon, a Crown Colony.”

“The island off the coast of India,” she questions. He gives a tight nod, and she feels the tension within him begin to build slowly, word by word, his breathing comes a bit faster, his expression becoming harder. The quick drag and snap of the laces as he undoes them only adds to it, and she’s almost frightened of how this story will end.

“It was miserable. Hot and humid, and the rain seemed endless some months. But it was an easy post, and Marriott seemed to be a good Captain.”

Finished, he lets her stays drop, sighing at the sight of her in just her chemise and leggings. Lifting her chemise, she begins to untie the leggings beneath, eyes locked with his in the mirror as she does it.

“What happened,” she asks, leggings falling before turning to face him. “What happened between you two?”

He motions for her to sit on the bed as he kneels in front of her, setting her foot on his leg before sliding a palm up her calf.

“There’d been problems with a central territory -Kandy - for decades.” He began untying the silk garter, and she felt it as his hands trembled, pulling down her hose. “They’d successfully kept British rule at bay - Dutch before that.”

“It was a heavily forested, wet, mountainous terrain they knew and we didn’t. But we wanted it, badly.”

He began to start on her other leg. “Their King, or whatever the hell he was, was quite mad. A nasty piece of work. **** had become the norm in his kingdom.”

“We’d gotten word that he’d taken a group of British traders prisoner, and as lieutenant, Marriott ordered me to take my platoon and save these men. So I did.”

Her legs now bare, Robert seems to take the time to enjoy the feel of her skin, hands running up her calves. When he gets behind her knees he pulls her legs apart, just wide enough for him to get between.

She’s barely breathing now, not wanting to break the fragile atmosphere that seems to have settled around them. Her stomach feels tight, nipples sensitive with every brush of the thin fabric she wears.

“What happened next,” she asks breathlessly. Because she wants to know. She wants to know what happened to him, what happened between him Marriott. But she’s also hoping talk of reality and the world outside this room will keep her from losing all sense.

He lays his forehead against hers, wrapping her legs around his middle. “Robert,” she whines softly, because everything seems to be happening too fast and too slow at the same time.

Dragging his forehead against her temple, he releases another heavy breath, as if he’s preparing himself. “I entered Kandy, set on doing my duty and rescuing these men. But before I could we were set upon by our enemy.”

She leans back quick to look at him, suddenly worried.

“They caught us. Dragged us into a village and began their ****.”

“You were tortured,” she asks, horrified at the images playing in her head.

“No. My men were tortured. In front of me, as I was tied to a post and **** to watch.” He smiles as he stares over her shoulder, a cruel, sardonic smirk. “I was left relatively unharmed after all my men had been murdered. And then I was sent on my way into the wilderness, where I proceeded to become lost.”

“But why? Why would they let you go.”

Robert shrugged in a disturbing, carefree way. “Presumably to tell my superiors of the horrors I’d witnessed, to scare them into staying out. But it didn’t matter, since we never returned my commanders assumed the worst.” He clicks his tongue, looking at her, open for him and wearing nothing but a thin shift, but even so, he wasn’t really seeing her.

“It was just what they wanted. What they planned for.”

She shakes her head, not wanting to know.

“They needed an excuse to attack with full ****, and the news of twenty of her majesty’s bravest men being killed, on nothing more than a rescue mission, was a very good excuse.”

She could do nothing but watch him with shock, not knowing what to say. Blinking away tears, she lifts her hands, bracketing his face. “And you?”

“I was presumed dead with my men. But found later, wishing I was.”

She leans in, kissing him chastely, trying not to think too hard about how relieved she is that he’s here with her now. She shivers at the feel of his hand steadily making its way up her thigh, lifting the hem of her chemise with it.

“Robert-”

“Now, now, pet,” he breathes into her mouth, biting her bottom as he uses his body to push her back onto the bed. “I’ve told you my sad story as promised.”

“Will you be good for me tonight?”

She squeezes her legs harder around him. “Yes, sir.”