Work Text:
Few people are so unfortunate as to arrive in this life without a family name. Most orphans may count one among their few possessions; even natural children, though they receive them irregularly, from their mothers, do receive them. The unlucky few, finding that the law frowns upon persons with only one name, often choose to assume a surname related to a place or event of biographical interest to them, or to their occupation – this cannot be held to be strange, as it must be how most of our forbearers’ surnames were acquired to begin with, or else there would not be such a surplus of Mssrs. Smith and Hill.
Such a person was Miss Wellfound. She took her name from her consideration that she herself had been quite well-found, having been rescued, as an infant, from a dockside spot where she would most likely have been carried off by the tide and drowned, had a kindly young sailor not plucked her up and deposited her at a local tavern, from whence she was removed, by gradual degrees of church, orphanage, and school, to the position of ward to a gentleman whose income and whose principles were equally solid and reliable. This gentleman regarded her as a daughter, and would happily have allowed her the use of his own name, which was Skywalker, but he found the one she had given herself to be both charming and apt – though he was somewhat inclined to fuss and to grumble at her, he nevertheless regarded her as a having a worth beyond rubies, and therefore as quite a lucky find indeed.
It may be assumed that someone had, at some uncertain date, attempted to bestow upon her the Christian name Rachel, but by the time she accounted herself to be twenty years of age, she had not answered to that in the memory of anyone who knew her. To all her intimates, she was known as Rey, and she introduced herself by that name to every new acquaintance.
Mr. Skywalker was, as we have noted, a man of very firmly-founded principles, and he was much engaged in philanthropic works. A great many Committees for the Improvement of This-or-That counted him as a member, and he spent no small portion of his time meditating on how best to encourage wholesome activities and pleasures among the idle youth, so as to prevent them from forming any invidious habits of drinking or gaming. In these endeavors, he was greatly aided by his sister, Mrs. Solo, a very energetic and accomplished woman, with a singularly sharp tongue which Rey admired greatly. Though Mr. Skywalker and Mrs. Solo were born in a single hour, they could hardly have appeared more different, for he was of a good size, with fine fair hair and blue eyes, while she was dark and finely-boned, and so small in her stature she found it necessary to tilt her head back when she addressed her brother. In so doing she often endangered her hat.
Mrs. Solo had made a somewhat scandalous marriage; though Rey had never heard it from any truly reliable source, the rumor persisted in society that Mr. Solo did not dare acknowledge the sources of the better part of his fortune. There was also a rumor – though it was perhaps less rumor than information, for Mr. Solo hardly denied it – that he had come up from very humble origins. He was, however, both a handsome and a kind-hearted man, and he seemed perfectly pleased to allow his fortune to be spent in aid of others.
The union had produced only one child, Mr. Benjamin Solo. He had from his father’s side a very fine height and figure, and from his mother’s side very dark hair and a very alarmingly choleric nature. Though he had from a young age apprenticed himself to his uncle in his charitable works and devoted himself to virtuous activity, he was markedly better at accomplishing good acts, than at leaving off bad habits. This is not to imply that he was in any way given to vice; to the contrary, he was extremely upright and irreproachably pure in his manner of life. It is only that he had never quite managed to shed the impetuousness, the sulkiness, or even the tears of his boyhood, and that sometimes his manly strength was given over to the enactment of a tantrum rather than to the suppression of it.
Mr. Benjamin Solo was often in Mr. Skywalker’s company, and therefore often in the company of Mr. Skywalker’s ward. In general he presented to her a face of courteous disinterest, and though he permitted her the liberty of addressing him as Ben, he invariably referred to her as Miss Rey or even Miss Wellfound, and Rey rather imagined that he looked on her more in light of a charitable project than a person, as if Mr. Skywalker were building a hospital which happened to be able to sit and take tea with him. Though she had certainly witnessed his fits of temper, which he aimed in every direction conceivable, from the servants to his uncle to the innocent objects of the household, she herself had never been the object of one of his rages, which only solidified her impression that he hardly noticed her.
It was therefore with great surprise that she heard, passing the door of Mr. Skywalker’s library, Ben pronounce her name in tones of great irritation and petulant complaint. She could not help but pause, and though she was in general a good girl and given only to the lightest and most harmless forms of mischief (though, it should perhaps be noted, she was very much given to those), nevertheless she chose to do her guardian and his relation the little wrong of listening without their knowledge to their conversation.
“You must ask my mother to speak to her,” Ben said, in those same voluble and angry tones which had captured her attention to begin with.
“Why do you not ask your mother yourself?” Mr. Skywalker’s tones were a great deal more civil than his nephew’s, and therefore his words rather harder to distinguish; nevertheless, Rey could make them out.
“It is – I cannot.”
“I do not see why.”
“You are her guardian. You have a parent’s interest. My mother must supply the deficiency.”
“I believe you do her a wrong in supposing that she has not. She has always taken a most generous interest in Rey, and you cannot know your own mother so ill as to believe she would refrain from correcting a fault where she observed one.”
“But perhaps she has not had occasion to observe it!”
“Ben, it seems to me that Rey displayed only good sense and kindness; had she muddied her skirt, it would have been a great trial to her maid to clean it, and I know that Rey, having herself been put to menial labor, has great consideration for those who must do it themselves.”
There was a great thump, as of a large man rising energetically to his feet, and then the sound of Ben’s boots striding up and down the carpet before the fire. “It is not modest,” he said, and Rey could picture to herself with ease the sulky expression of his aquiline face and the pout of his generous lip.
“Perhaps the immodesty,” replied Mr. Skywalker, in tones of dangerous mildness, “was not in the hand that raised the hem, as much as in the eye that lingered.”
There came from Ben’s lips such a noise of outrage that Rey feared he would storm directly out into the hall and catch her at her spy’s post. She retreated rapidly down the hall, and if the banging of doors and the clatter of boots on stairs were to be believed, her fears were quite well-founded.
Rey found it easier to think in her own little sitting room. Ben must have been referring to the afternoon of their visit to the Ladies’ Society for the Benefit of Retired Military Men; it was the only recent concurrence of Ben and mud which she could recall. Her guardian, of course, was entirely right – had she not lifted her skirt, Lydia would have been left with the task of cleaning a particularly filthy variety of mud from the edge of her nice muslin day dress. And she had picked up her hem only as much as necessity required; it was impossible she had shown more than an inch or two of stocking, and not for more than a moment.
Yet who would have imagined that Ben would be looking?
In truth, she was inclined to laugh at him. Though young orphans are kept carefully schooled in their manners by the virtuous ladies who have charge of them, their poverty cannot help but bring them into contact with persons and behaviors of the most vulgar kind, and the idea that the brief and practical show of an ankle – and an ankle demurely stockinged in dove-grey at that – might be counted immodest was most humorous to Rey. Only imagine, what Ben might have said, had he seen her got up as some of the ladies she used to see upon the streets at night were accustomed to go out!
And yet – Rey felt a blush creep into her cheeks as she considered the idea of Ben’s eyes lingering on her ankle. That had been Mr. Skywalker’s word. She searched her memory – had she glanced at Ben’s face that afternoon? Had it been scarlet, averted in scandalized propriety? Scarlet, yes, she rather thought it had been scarlet, though at the time she had attributed it merely to some poorly-concealed outbreak of his temper. But not averted – rather his gaze had been fixed on her. She had fancied, as she had in other instances of finding herself the object of Ben’s eyes, that he had elected to look at her out of a desire to rest his glare on something unlikely to object, rather as a man might scowl at a fire or a teacup rather than at the person who vexed him. But perhaps it was not so. Her blush crept rather higher.
When Ben called the next day in his mother’s company, as custom suggested he would, Rey was seated decorously with her guardian in the parlour, wearing her favorite olive-green morning dress with chestnut ribbons at the neck and at the flounce. Mr. Skywalker, being both intently focused on the moral plane and also somewhat near-sighted, did not observe that his ward had somehow permitted the bow at the neckline’s lowest point to come undone, and though this made no real practical difference to her state of dress, it did allow the soft shape of her breast to be not merely inferred from the silhouette of her gown, but actually glimpsed – in, as it were, the flesh. Such a glimpse might only be caught by someone who might choose to watch for such a length of time as to allow chance to reveal it, of course, and though Rey thought that Ben might take his uncle’s reproach to heart and direct his glance elsewhere, he rapidly proved himself to be just such a patient watcher; he did not allow his part of the conversation to flag, but nevertheless he fixed his dark eyes on the gap in Rey’s gown with a hunter’s vigilant attention. Rey, for her part, took care to give no sign that she noticed anything amiss, either with her dress or with her guest. When, at a convenient interval in the conversation, Mrs. Solo found a way to discreetly murmur in her ear that her ribbons were not all as they ought to be, Mr. Skywalker’s ward gave a convincing start and evinced a very fetching blush. And if her fingers, as they searched for the loose ends of the ribbon, stroked lightly over the bared skin of her breast? Surely one would have had to be watching most attentively to notice that. Just as one would have had to have been looking rather closely at Ben to see him lower his chin nearly to his necktie, attempting to conceal a heavy swallow, even as his eyes remained where they had all morning.
It was only when Rey took the opportunity of her ribbons to raise with Mrs. Solo the question of whether she believed tight-lacing to be truly detrimental to moral health, or merely indicative of existing frivolity, that Ben’s eyes rose to the level of her face. Furthermore, as they moved to meet hers, it seemed to Rey that they narrowed somewhat, as if suspecting her of some mischief. Rey, knowing that he had some cause for such suspicions, took care to school her face and to listen most attentively to Mrs. Solo’s opinions without advancing any of her own. She could hardly be blamed that Mrs. Solo invited her to visit her home at her earliest convenience to examine some examples of Artistic Dress which Mrs. Leighton* had once presented to her, nor could she be held accountable for the coughing fit that overtook Mrs. Solo’s son at the suggestion that one of the lighter garments might fit her admirably.
In the next day’s second post, Rey was somewhat surprised to find a missive addressed to herself. She was further surprised, that, though it was addressed to her, it seemed to be an instructive pamphlet of the kind that interested men of science sometimes sent to her guardian in the hopes of influencing the path of his philanthropic concerns with the youth, and that it had no return-address on it. On opening it, however, she found it to be the work of a Dr. Acton, whose specialty was the maladies of young women. Certain passages of the text had been blacked out very tidily with ink, and in some cases it appeared that entire pages had been removed, but the overall impression Rey received as she read was that the medical man believed that young ladies who had not been properly minded as children were given to very strange and unhealthful behaviors (though the particular nature of these was obscured by the ink), for which the only cure was a thoughtfully-made marriage to a man of good moral character.
Rey, on further examining the cover under which the pamphlet had been sent, and the notably fine hand in which her name and address had been written, grew very certain who had sent her this message, with its very unpleasant implications as to the sender’s opinion of Rey’s upbringing and manners. In a high temper, she immediately went to her writing desk and produced a short epistle for the next post.
My dear Ben,
It seems to me rather hypocritical for persons who send ladies anonymous poison-pen letters to reproach them with the flaws they perceive in their educations, as having need of guidance with regard to character. To whom should such a lady turn for this guidance? To a man who uses another man’s words and is too cowardly to sign his name? I suggest that if you wish to make remarks of this kind, that you make them to my face.
– Rey
Having dispatched this note as soon as the ink was dry, Rey could hardly sit still for vexation, and, by the time two more deliveries had been made without any reply for her, she had fairly made a track in her carpet with angry pacing. When she next saw her guardian, she did her utmost to conceal her feelings, for she did not wish to grieve him or to cause strife between him and his nephew. But he soon made it easy for her to smile at him, for though the post had contained nothing further for her, he had received from his sister an invitation to go to the opera. Did she wish to go?
Rey told him that she should like nothing better, and promptly retired to examine her evening dress. As her early education had been intended to prepare her for a life of modest independence, she had been from a young age a talented seamstress, and she rapidly made the necessary alterations.
When the Solos (less Mr. Solo senior, who pleaded a headache) called at Mr. Skywalker’s to go to the opera, it might have seemed that Rey had taken Ben’s admonitions to some degree to heart – she had wrapped herself in a lovely silk shawl that muffled her from chin to elbow. When Mr. Skywalker handed her into Mrs. Solo’s carriage, Ben gratified Rey by looking rather like a kicked dog, and making as much conversation as one, besides.
At the opera-house, Rey hurried to place herself with Mrs. Solo in the edge of the box closer to the stage, “For,” she said, “if either of the gentlemen sit between us and the singers, we shall see nothing at all.” This left Mr. Skywalker to sit with his sister at the outermost edge, for Ben was considerably his lesser at gracefully nodding to their acquaintances in the other boxes. It seemed to Rey that she felt Ben’s eyes on the back of her neck, but she did not pursue her principal intention in coming to the opera until after the music had begun. Then, and only then, pretending to be absorbed in the singing, she began be degrees to let the pretty silk shawl loosen, and drape, and slide, revealing to Ben the bare length of her lovely round arm, and a décolletage which was rather more dramatic than it had been the last time she had worn this dress.
After enduring this for the duration of an aria, Ben attempted to draw her attention to the dropped shawl, but she paid him no attention, continuing to feign a great interest in the tragic doings of various Italians. Then he went so far as to pluck up the garment from where it brushed the floor and attempt to place it back around her shoulders, at which action Rey started so violently that his hand was pressed for a moment into the curve of her neck. And by the beginning of the interval, the shawl had found its way to the floor again.
The instant that the audience began to rise, Ben sprang to his feet. “Miss Wellfound is overheated,” he declared. “I will take her for a turn in the lobby.” And before Rey could protest that she was perfectly content with her temperature, he had seized her hand, tucked it into his arm, and hurried away with her onto the stairs, where he pressed her shawl into her hands with a grim expression.
“But I do not need it,” she said, innocently, “for you are taking me for a turn to get cool air, are you not?”
He scowled at her as they strode down the stairs. “You are as visible to the public in the lobby as you are in the box.”
“Oh, but you must not be ashamed to be seen with me; my gown is really the latest thing!” Rey exclaimed. “Though I do not expect you to know that. I’m sure you have no time to read the fashion papers when there is so much work to be done in the way of mutilating pamphlets in order to insult young ladies.”
“I did not mutilate them in order to insult you,” he protested, and then closed his mouth, realizing that he had made a confession.
“No? If you did not intend to insult me, then why did you send me something suggesting that I was ill-bred and unhygienic?”
“That was not – ” he protested, breaking off, and then continuing in a lower and angrier tone, “Will you pretend that you are not deliberately changing your mode of dress in order to plague me?”
“You told your uncle I was immodest! For saving the hem of my dress!”
“Stooping to listen at doors is the lowest of low behavior!”
“I had no need to stoop to it; you raised your voice loud enough!”
Several couples passing by turned their heads as their disagreement grew very audibly heated, and Rey and Ben were obliged to walk in silence for a time. At length, as they turned to go up the stairs and return to their box, he spoke to her again, in a much more civil voice. “There was justice in what my Uncle Luke said; I ought not to have looked when you lifted your skirt. It was a failure of my virtue, and a violation of your modesty, and I apologize for it.” Before Rey could utter a forgiving word, however, he continued: “But the affair with your ribbons – this alteration of your dress – pretending I had startled you – do you deny that you have done these things on purpose to try me?”
“To teach you a lesson, perhaps,” Rey retorted.
“What lesson is it intended I should learn? That the author of the pamphlet was right, and that you are unwell and in need of assistance? Or simply that you are heartless and cruel?”
“I am not cruel; it is unkind of you to say so.”
“You may say so, but you see where you place me?” He spoke with the air of a man who issues a dire threat, and knows that his enemy will be forced to retreat in the face of it. “If you rule out the malicious, only one solution remains: if you continue to torment me in this fashion, I shall have no alternative but to go to my uncle and request his permission to pay my addresses.” Rey could hardly help but laugh at him.
“Ought I to be petrified?” she inquired. “Are your addresses so ferocious that I should fear them? You may do your worst, Ben; I will not be intimidated.”
It seemed to her that he almost dropped her hand, so greatly was he startled. And indeed it came to her that she had, in effect, challenged him to court her. And yet she could not take it back – for surely to do so would be to admit defeat, and Rey was not a young lady to concede so easily.
Rey watched the opera’s second half with the shawl folded in her lap, feeling almost as though she could hear Ben breathe. “Well,” she thought to herself, “if he courts me, I may expect to hear more of his breathing – and I dare say I can make him breathe faster than this, too.”
It was less than a full day later that Mr. Skywalker came, with a look of profound perplexity on his face, to find his ward in her sitting room. “I have just been with my nephew,” he said, and paused, at a loss.
“And how is young Mr. Solo?” Rey inquired promptingly.
Her guardian’s honorable brow wrinkled. “I believe he is well,” he said, with some further hesitation. “Rey, he has requested my permission to seek your hand in marriage.”
Rey had resolved to show no concern for Ben’s sortie. “Oh?”
“Rey, is this not some queer joke you have thought up between you? I grant you I have never credited Ben much for his good humor, but – ”
“Whether or not it is a joke as such, sir, I promise you it is an idea entirely of his own conception, and I believe he has formed it as a stratagem to buffalo me into behaving more as he likes.”
“And you will let him call for you?”
“Oh, at least once or twice. But I beg you not to worry yourself; he will soon see I’m not easily bested, and cry mercy, and I promise you I will refuse him with perfect grace the instant he does.”
With a queer look and a shaking of his head Mr. Skywalker left her, and Rey fell immediately to plotting how to make Ben see the folly in his marital maneuver. Something with gauze, perhaps, that she could angle her parasol to let the sun fall on?
But despite industrious work at her dressmaking, she found herself thwarted, for Ben called to take her to a lecture on Christian Socialism, which was entirely gas-lit, and which Rey was almost irritated to find entirely absorbing. She and Ben had a very lively hour’s discussion on the subject of joint-ownership of industry, and they did not see more than the merest glimpse of the sun.
Mr. Skywalker had arranged for a chaperone, a Mrs. R---, who proved to be a very dear little round person, prone to whistling when she spoke and rocking to-and-fro when she was excited. She had found the lecture improving but not exciting, and was happy to second Rey’s request that they go for a walk the next day the weather was fine, so that Ben was forced to acquiesce, rather than seem tyrannical.
Rey was pleased to find the sun very bright, and, while Mrs. R--- was admiring the scenery, allowed her parasol to droop and let the bright rays render the white gauze of her sleeves and bodice quite transparent. The next instant, there was a click, and she found herself shaded again. Ben had called on his walking stick to restore the parasol to its previous angle. With a challenging glance, she let it drop again, and again he darted out his stick to right it. She dropped it at another angle, and his stick, quick as a flash, was there to meet it.
“What queer modes of flirtation you young people have!” Mrs. R--- exclaimed. “You make a noise quite as if you were fencing. In my day it was all done with fans, and making requests at the Broadwood. Do you play, Miss Wellgood?”
“No,” Rey replied, rather put out at her scheme’s having been thwarted once more. “Not a note. I have no accomplishments which become a lady, only the little practical crafts appropriate to a spinster.”
“I approve of practicalities,” Ben replied. “Music is charming, but often pleases only those educated enough to enjoy it. And furthermore it is only appropriate for certain occasions and certain company. Whereas I have noted in you that practical skills may be applied to the improvement of the lives of any one of our fellow creatures at any time, with grace and humble kindness.”
Rey frowned, for she believed him to be impugning her education again, but Mrs. R--- was quite transported by this portrait of Miss Wellfound’s sweetness, virtue, and charity, and whistled a great deal in saying so, until Rey felt obliged to thank him, and to note that he himself spent many hours in service of the deserving poor.
“When I was in school,” he replied, “I could throw myself into games to try to keep up my moral health, but now that I am a man grown, I find I must work to find other outlets to maintain myself in God’s light.”
“Mr. Solo is a muscular Christian, you see,” Rey observed to Mrs. R---. “I’m sure he is a shining example of the form.”
Mr. Solo was briefly unable to meet her eyes.
After this excursion, Ben contrived to call three more times for Rey without once allowing her the opportunity to violate his sense of propriety. Consequently, in between attempts, she was obliged to keep making conversation with him. Furthermore, besides these outings, she continued to see him as she went about with her guardian in philanthropic pursuits, and when Mr. Skywalker at length inquired whether she had gained any greater knowledge of his nephew’s character, she was forced to admit that he was in actuality rather an interesting person, and perhaps even, despite the passionate cast of his temper, kind-hearted.
The unfortunate truth was that Rey had privately thought his charitable habits more a reflection of his uncle’s good influence than of Ben’s own inclinations. But it seemed to her, as she came to know him better, that he truly wished to do good in the world, and for this reason she could not prevent herself from softening somewhat towards him. Nevertheless, she reminded herself that he was paying court to her only out of an insulting and disagreeable conviction of her need for instruction. "He means by all this attendance at improving lectures and concerts to show me how he believes I ought to live my life, with no opportunity to do anything of which he disapproves," she told herself, and she resolved to give him no quarter.
She soon found a good opportunity to resume her pursuit of his discomfiture. Visiting a museum to review a selection of antique coins, she discovered that Mrs. R--- had great difficulty in climbing stairs, but refused any help. Rey therefore made a point of going up stairs at every opportunity, and at a pace that set her ankles directly in Ben's line of sight, with her skirt hiked rather higher than was required to safely ascend, so that her well-turned legs were visible almost to the knee should he lean forward to observe. She was very satisfied to discover that, as she had foreseen, she was able to render Ben much shorter of breath at the top of the stairs than a man of his physical condition might have been expected to be. After she managed this trick several times, he began to speak to her in quiet anger when she interrupted him.
"Surely it is clear to you by now that I am quite incorrigible? What do you gain by this threat to wed me? What do you imagine your self-sacrifice would accomplish? What do you imagine you could do as my husband, to reform my character? Do you propose to lock me in the house?"
"I propose," he retorted in a low tone, fixing her with his eyes, "if you were my wife, to take you home and bounce you as you so clearly need to be bounced!"
Rey was so astonished by this that she could make no reply, and after composing himself somewhat, he continued, flushing very red, "I apologize profoundly for my impetuous coarseness; it is a great offense against your decency, and I understand entirely if you do not wish to forgive me. But I believe I may have redacted Dr. Acton's treatise too heavily for my meaning to have been understood."
"So," Rey faltered, "so then you do have some... genuine interest in marrying me? In being married to me?"
Ben blinked. "I had believed that to be well-understood at this point."
"You don't believe me to be in need of the improving example of an upright man?"
"Well, that too."
It is perhaps fortunate that Mrs. R--- arrived at that moment at the top of the stairs, or Rey was at risk of fainting from pure confoundedness.
The rest of the visit to the museum, coins and all, was lost to Rey. She could think of nothing but what Ben had said to her on the stairs.
"I fear Miss Wellfound is overheated," Mrs. R--- exclaimed, observing her flushed face.
"No, no; not in the slightest," Rey replied distractedly. Ben, observing that she did not take the excuse for some act of immodesty, frowned and asked her if she were well. Rey began to reassure him that she was, and then doubted her own opinion of the case. "Perhaps it would be best if I were to go home and – and rest." Ben, obviously beginning to fear that his vulgar declaration had given her a much more profound shock than he had intended, insisted on giving her his arm, and all but carried her home.
Rey retired to her bedroom but did not rest. She found she could not, even when night came. It was not only Ben's words, and the revelation of his intentions which they conveyed. It was also the look in his eyes. She had thought about his eyes before. She had taken amusement in the idea of them being fixed upon her. Amusement? Was that all? Rey, searching herself, began to wonder if it wasn't rather pleasure she had taken in the thought.
If Ben truly wished to be married to her, she was obliged to ask herself how she felt at the prospect of being married to Ben. As she turned the matter over in her mind, she was bound to acknowledge that he was intelligent, honest, and interested in the welfare of others. He was not universally polite, but then, neither was she. There was the matter of his temper, but it occurred to Rey that it had been some time now since she had observed him to have a real flying-out of the sort he used to.
And then of course she supposed he was handsome enough.
Oh, to be sure, he was tall, to which she had no objection, and there was a fine gloss to his dark hair as it curled about his collar. His voice was very pleasant and low. His mouth was perhaps not in the cast most approved of by fashion for men, but it rather made Rey think of – well, never mind that. And his eyes – Rey could not get them out of her head. It was most unfair. She ought to be resting. And instead she was only thinking of Ben Solo and his pretty eyes!
She passed a sleepless night, and in the morning when she went down to breakfast her guardian noted that her chin was set very determinedly. When Ben called with Mrs. R---, and an intention of going to a conservatory to see a show of exotic plants, Rey agreed only on the condition that he come to tea afterwards. Ben felt her to be alternately inattentive to and far too intent upon the plants. At tea she set her cup down very firmly and turned to Mr. Skywalker with unfaltering poise.
“I have decided to agree to marry Mr. Solo.”
Mr. Skywalker choked on his tea, Mrs. R--- whistled particularly shrilly on her exclamation, and Mr. Solo himself, having unfortunately been in the middle of stretching out his arm, knocked the greater part of the tea service off the table and into unsalvageable fragments.
“Surely, Rey,” Mr. Skywalker protested, when he had recovered himself somewhat and a maid had been summoned to clear away the broken china, “it would have been more delicate to inform Ben first, and then be with him when the… happy news was delivered to the rest of us.”
“I expect so,” Rey said, “but my method was more efficient. And Ben believes we ought to be married as promptly as possible.”
“Young men always think so. But – ”
“For the sake of my health.”
Mr. Skywalker choked again and knocked what remained of the tea service onto the floor. Ben sprang to his feet, eager to reassure his uncle. “Not – not as you are thinking! I would never – we have never – Mrs. R--- has been most – I did not mean – ”
Wiping liquid from his whiskers with a stern look, Mr. Skywalker suggested that he took his nephew’s meaning, but that it might be best if the two of them spoke alone in the library.
When Ben emerged at length from this conference, looking rather shaken, Rey set upon him immediately, and he turned a reproachful look upon her. She stood in expectation of reproachful words to go with it, but they did not arrive. “Rey,” he said, and then did not seem to be able to conceive of another word he might say, and so contented himself with looking at her.
Rey was overcome with anxiety that she had made a dreadful error. “You – you said that you meant it?”
“Rey! Of course I meant it. I am only – surprised.”
“But – happy, I hope?”
“Oh!” he sighed, still looking at her. “Yes. Exceedingly.”
Rey, reassured, put her face up to be kissed, just as she often had as a littler girl saying goodnight to her guardian. Ben did not oblige her.
“But we are engaged,” she said.
“Engaged is not married.”
“But men kiss their fiancées all the time. Ben, men sit with their fiancées on their knees. It is done all the time.”
“Done does not mean proper.”
“Ben! It is only a kiss.”
“It would be vulgar. I do not wish to be vulgar towards you, Rey.”
She was touched by the tenderness of his tone, but her spirits were high, and she bridled. “Surely it would be vulgar to – what was the phrase you used, Ben?”
“Rey,” he said, “I have apologized for my impropriety. I will again. I know it was a great shock to your nerves and I am sorry for it.”
“It was not a great shock to my nerves! – Or, I mean, it was, but not because it was coarse; not exactly. Did you not mean it then? If you say now you don’t wish to be vulgar towards me?”
He bowed. “Allow me to call on you again tomorrow, Rey.”
Puzzled, she dropped him a curtsy, and he left her, to retire to her room and wonder.
He did, as promised, call the next day, to take her to an art gallery, Mrs. R--- firmly in tow. He insisted on leading them straight away to what he told them was his favorite sculpture. When the work came in view Rey stopped short in sheer surprise, and Mrs. R--- cried out, in her usual whistling tones, “Why, Mr. Solo! The lady has no clothes.”
Indeed, the lady in sculpture had been depicted with not a scrap of fabric on her; her hands wore manacles, but not an inch of her was covered.**
“Indeed,” Ben replied calmly, “but the work is not immodest. For it depicts a woman who has been forcibly stripped of her clothing by heartless captors, but not of her dignity, for that is not theirs to take. She has been taken from her family and her homeland, valued only for her physical charms, and treated as an object for sale. Gather all these afflictions together, and add to them the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, which she unmistakably displays, and no room will be left for shame – only for the admiration of those who understand what they see.” Mrs. R---, somewhat reassured, drew nearer to the statue, and Ben, offering Rey his arm, added in a lower tone, “What might be vulgar in one context is, when rightly seen in the proper setting, both proper and… pure.”
Rey, meeting his heated gaze, felt her fingers tremble a little on his arm, and remembered why the thought of Ben Solo’s eyes had robbed her of sleep.
Ben Solo was more fortunate than many young men who are desirous of hurrying their weddings, in that his parents, being delighted at the thought of welcoming Rey yet closer to their family, quite agreed with him that the date should be as soon as possible, and further, that Mrs. Solo was quite adept at persuading – or bullying – Mr. Skywalker into doing what she thought he ought. And so it was not too many weeks between their engagement and their wedding, but Rey found that she spent less and less of her nights at peace and dreaming, and more and more thinking of her bridegroom.
At length she found herself at his side, dressed in a white silk dress, with him in a morning suit, looking pale and solemn and somehow quite impossibly handsome as he made his vows. She knew she must be making her own vows as well, for the marriage service continued without pause, but she retained no memory of doing so, and could not hear her own voice over the sound of her heart.
At length his hands, in their fine white gloves, moved hesitantly to lift her veil, and his mouth to place a shy kiss on hers, and Rey could hear nothing at all but bells.
By the time she had been thoroughly wept over by Mr. and Mrs. Solo senior, Mr. Skywalker, and all their friends (including Mrs. R--- and her impeccably polite but rather doddering husband), however, she was rather back in her senses, and was able to acquit herself well at the wedding breakfast. Her husband (good heavens, he was her husband!) looked rather dazed, and after receiving several nonsensical answers to reasonable questions, Rey decided he was in need of some small, helpful shock to restore him to his senses.
“Ben,” she said sweetly, “I believe my veil may have gotten tangle in the buttons of my dress. Will you look?” He bent forward with unthinking obedience, at the same time that she leant back at a very particularly calculated angle, so that he found himself with his nose more or less in her bosom.
Though he straightened back upright in his chair, his shock was otherwise rather slower to express itself than she had anticipated. He cast no black looks at her, muttered nothing, hardly even blushed. She reminded herself that he was doubtless very tired, and would be better-rested later, but nonetheless she felt a queer pang of something almost like disappointment. Was that what it meant to be married, that what had been hotly disputed became dull and went ignored?
A moment later she was startled so completely out of this melancholy reverie that she almost screamed. There was a hand on her knee under the table. She turned wide, wild eyes on her husband and found him serenely looking at the crowd of guests. Beneath the table, the hand moved an inch or two higher than her knee, and squeezed very gently, before settling in to stroking the inner part of her leg with a slow thumb. Rey bit her lip to hush the squeak she would otherwise have given.
“Bachelors cannot give young ladies tastes of their own medicine,” Ben observed in a very quiet voice which was vexingly close to smugness. “Young husbands, however, cannot be blamed for offering their wives a sample of the sauce they serve.”
Rey found she could not even find her tongue to vow vengeance, when his thumb was caressing her through her silks and lace.
That evening, however, as she awaited him in her nightgown, she reminded herself that she was not a meek little thing, to be so easily quieted. When at length he knocked for her, in his shirt, she admitted him straight away. He took a moment to kiss her rather less shyly than he had in the morning, and then, before he could say a word or even put down his candle, she stood by the fire and pulled her nightshirt over her head.
He was quite satisfactorily speechless for a period of time Rey found gratifying. He simply stood and ate her up with his hungry dark eyes. Then he placed his candle by the bedside and said, “May I look at you?”
“What were you doing before?” she laughed.
“You know what I mean.”
“In truth, I don’t know at all!”
“I mean,” he said, and came rather closer to her, “I very much want to look at your pretty cunt.”
She could not help the very small sound of exclamation that came from her, or the color that rose in her cheeks, visible in the firelight. He smiled. “Surely you remember what I said to you in the museum, Rey?”
“Yes,” she said promptly, “you said I needed to be bounced. And that if you were my husband you would do it.”
“So you do, you naughty little vixen,” he said, and put his arms around her. She took in her breath in a gasp, for she had always know that he was a tall and well-built man, but knowing it, and feeling it, as it were, first-hand, in his hands, were quite different things. “And so I shall, by-and-by. But you know that isn’t the museum I meant.” And he picked her up as if she were a doll and set her on the bed. “Now, may I look?”
She was beginning to breathe rather fast; she did not say that he might, or that he might not, but only wriggled her hips and twitched her legs a little apart. He took this in the way of permission, and knelt down at the bedside to examine her. She felt unaccountably shy; she could feel his breath in places where she had never felt anything but her own fingers and bath water. “Well,” she said, pettish to conceal the fluttering of her nerves, “do I compare acceptably to your marble ladies?”
A moment later she cried out, for his mouth was on her. It was a mild and tender kiss, as such kisses go, but all the same it came as a surprise. "Ben!" she cried, "do you mean to begin by gamahuching me?"
"Not if you don't wish it, sweet," he replied, blushing, and before she could express that she did not not wish it, he rose to kiss her face again. She found his lips wet, and could not help a shiver, which he felt. “You out-do marble by a thousand times,” he murmured to her, as he sat beside her on the bed, and then he put her on his knee, and kissed her once more. She found they exchanged kisses more eagerly each time.
“Tell me, sweetheart,” he said, placing a few kisses on her throat and beside her ear, “did you think of this before now?”
“Of what? A wedding night? You should hardly believe me if I told you I thought it would become tomorrow without first being tonight.”
“I mean, when I told you plainly – and I am sorry to have been so crude – what I thought you needed – ” and here he jostled her a little on his knee, and dropped a kiss on her dainty breast “ – did you think of me doing it?”
“I – I suppose. After a fashion. I thought more of you thinking of it than I thought of it myself, perhaps.”
“And how did you imagine it might happen? In what manner? Or in what manner did you imagine me thinking of it?”
“I know how the deed is done,” she responded, sensitive to the accusation of naïveté. “The man takes his thing – ”
“Prick, Rey,” her husband murmured in her ear.
“ – and he puts it in the maid’s – in her cunt, and they, they – “
“They?”
“They fuck,” she said with such defiant straightforwardness that he smiled, though he also blushed again, very deeply, and it seemed to her that he shifted somewhat beneath her.
“Indeed. But how?”
A sudden thought, very disagreeable, took hold of Rey, and she shrank away from him. “You – Ben, you haven’t – done this before, have you?”
He looked quite horrified, even angry. ”Rey! Rey, you insult me; do you think I would – ”
She hurried to kiss and soothe him, saying, “No, no, of course not. Only, you sounded so knowledgeable.”
“I have read a great deal."
"Ah, of course. Your Dr. Acton."
"Dr. Acton and others. It is a subject modern science does not neglect, Rey."
"I suppose modern scientists might have some interest, yes," Rey said, with a certain dryness that her husband either failed to detect or chose to ignore, in favor of concentrating on his purpose.
“I have conceived an idea,” said he, “from my reading, of how we might begin; Dr. Acton stresses certain positions, modes of the body, but what he makes most clear is the importance of no unpleasant associations being formed by pain or dislike. I fear some pain is inevitable but I hope to spare you as much as I may, and you will tell me, dear heart, if you begin to dislike it?”
“Yes, Ben. But what did you have in mind?”
“I thought, ah, that I might sit like this, and you might, ah, sit upon me less like this and more in the style of equipage."
Rey believed that she could see the logic in this. "Would it not be best, if you were to first remove your clothing?"
"Yes, if you like," he replied, and displacing her from his knee, divested himself as she asked.
He was a very fairly proportioned man, as she had known before she married him, but she had not before known the particulars of his formation. His commitment to the equal health of body and spirit shone in ever line of him, but there were certain lines of which she had only been able to speculate, and now, in the firelight, had certain knowledge.
"Do you like the look of it, sweetheart?" he inquired, taking his prick in his hand. It was a most impressive instrument, for his hand was no small matter and yet it hardly obscured her view. Still, she leaned in closer for a better look, and he trembled and preened at once under her close scrutiny.
"I believe so," she said at length. "It seems to me as large and handsome as the rest of you." At the compliment, the tool in question gave a little twitch, as if in acknowledgement. "However, to be frank, I'm somewhat at a loss as to how it will fit."
"I understand your concern, and of course, sweet, we will stop all proceedings immediately if they are not to your liking. But you will try, won't you? I do believe that if you sit, ah, as described, that we may introduce my prick to your cunt in a gentle fashion."
Rey acquiesced, and he lifted her so that she knelt astride his lap, facing him. “There you are, sweetheart,” he said. “Now I will begin, and you may continue the rest at your own pace, or stop entirely if you find you do not like it.” And he put one hand on his prick again, and, with the other firmly upon her hip, introduced to her most private place only the very tip of his tool. Rey squeaked, for it was a very unfamiliar sensation. “Th-there,” her husband said, sounding a little unsteady. “Now you may – continue. Or not. As it suits you. Sweetheart. Oh, darling.” For she had indeed continued what he had begun, and was sinking down in his lap, her legs and her eyes opening wider as she went.
It did pinch a great deal, but Rey had observed that many of the women she had seen doing the deed when she was young seemed to enjoy repeating the exercise, so she tried it again. Ben’s head fell back as if his neck had no strength to support it, and a groan escaped his lips. She tried it a third time, finding it was becoming more familiar and less painful and in a little while her arms were about his neck, and his hands were around her little waist, to assist her motion, and the pace was growing very brisk.
"Is this, then," she breathlessly inquired, "what you meant – by saying – how I needed – to be bounced?"
"Oh, yes," he growled, "oh, yes, exactly. Just like this. Is that nice? D’you like that, Rey?” His wife, panting, nodded, and he leant forward and kissed her little breasts. "You have tortured me dreadfully, giving me such glimpses of these, and of your pretty legs. Will you say you are sorry, Rey?"
"No," she said impudently, "for it would be a lie. I am not sorry at all."
"You giddy little fiend!" he exclaimed. "I see we shall have to do this very often. And likely very hard."
"Oh yes, Ben. Please, very hard!" And, so saying, she gave herself in wordless ecstasy to the passionate exercise, until she was seized by such an overflowing pleasure that she cried out and fell against his shoulder, and he, groaning his release, carried her with him as he collapsed backwards on the bed, even as he made a few last, frantic thrusts up into her.
Rey, when she had recovered her breath, kissed her new husband with great affection, and thought to reclothe herself for sleep. Ben, however, stopped her, his brow furrowed with distress.
"Rey, you did not spend; we must continue."
"I, spend? What do you mean?"
"It is part of the complete act of fucking," he explained earnestly. "The man produces spend, and so, if she is pleased, does the woman."
"I have not heard so," she replied cautiously.
"All the literature on the subject makes mention. It is necessary for true release of the pent-up energies and essences. Rey, have you ever frigged yourself?"
"I do not make a habit of it," she replied, blushing. "I know it is very wrong. But I may have done, once or twice, before I properly understood that I was not to do it."
"I cannot condemn you; I have made the parallel error myself, and when I knew only too well how wrong it was. But you shall not need to be tempted in the future, Rey, for I can do it for you whenever you would like. But did you never make yourself spend, when you did it?"
"No, never."
"Perhaps that makes sense; it may require the assistance of another, being part of the proper act. Indeed, I cannot let this night pass without you spending."
"Shall we do it again, then? In another manner?" she inquired, for she supposed she was willing enough; it did not seem to her, however, that his body was as cooperative.
"If you do not wish me to use my mouth upon you," he said, "I thought perhaps I might still use my hands?"
"You may use your hands, or your mouth, or whatever pleases you, Ben; I did not mean to say that I did not like what you did before. I was only surprised, for I had heard of it, but did not know how commonly it was done."
"Oh, quite often, I believe," her husband replied, arranging himself below her on the bed. "Now, you must tell me if what I do pleases you, or if you do not like it. Oh Rey, how pretty you are!" And so saying, he began to lick and to suck her little clitoris, so that she was forced to cover her mouth with her hands to avoid rousing the whole house with her cries, and when she was in such a torment of enjoyment that she feared she would break his nose with the motion of her hips, he introduced his fingers to her hot recess and coaxed, after a moment or two, in concert with the action of his tongue, the most astonishing sensation of pleasure from her, so that she thought her whole body would break, or indeed that it had broken, and when the feeling at last abated, she found Ben wearing an expression of great satisfaction and wiping his face with his fingers.
"Now," he said, settling her in his arms, "we have done it as it as meant to be done, and you will not have need to tease me any more."
"No need, perhaps," Rey retorted, "but you may find I still have inclination. Do you think, because I am pleased, I am subdued? I am not so easily beaten as all that."
"In that case," her husband said, "I look forward to the struggle!"
*N.B. – Mrs. Frederick Leighton, later Lady Leighton, wife of the painter whose pictures so frequently feature dramatic examples of Artistic Dress.
**N.B. – The statue in question is Mr. Hiram Powers’s famous The Greek Slave.
