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Millie had decided that she would not pace the floor, anxiously awaiting Charles’s return. Instead, she was in bed reading one of her gothic novels. Even though she tried to focus on it, she could not help but glance at the adjoining door to her husband’s room every thirty seconds. Charles would normally be home by now. They spent some time with the children before the two of them ate dinner together, talking about his day in the House of Lords and her day at home or visiting some of their acquaintances.
After dinner he usually went out again. Every other night he of course went to see Delilah, and the rest of the time he often had meetings or went to his club to play a game of whist or have a drink if he knew that Winterbottom or one of his other friends were there. But tonight, he had not even come home.
She turned back to the book, willing herself to read another paragraph. It didn’t help take her mind off Charles as it was a description of the heroine eating breakfast. She needed to move on to the gripping and scary parts. She looked at the door again, as the heroine started buttering a roll.
For a long time, she had thought that they had the perfect marriage. She would do everything in her power to help Charles better his career and achieve his political goals. But then two years ago, he had stopped coming to her bedchamber. She could only assume that it was because she had failed him and had not been able to give him another child.
It had opened up to an examination of their entire marriage for her and she had found that perhaps he was not satisfied with her on more accounts than she had thought. When they were in company, he would always stand by as she awkwardly tried to make small talk. She would use all her powers to get him to join the conversation and not merely stand by and assess her.
Then she had also noticed how he looked at her body. If her dress were a bit low cut or for example this morning when he had seen her in only her dressing gown, he would quickly look away as if the sight of her body offended him. She knew that she had gained weight after she had had the children, but she still felt she looked good. In fact, she liked her new body better than when she had been young and very slender. She felt womanlier with the curves. It hurt that he did not feel the same.
Millie thought she heard a carriage stop in front of their house and looked up at the closed cerulean curtains, listening intently. It was not in front of their house after all, she decided and turned back to the book again. The heroine had finished her breakfast and was going for a long walk, digesting the events of the night.
During the day Millie would read the newspaper and books on science and philosophy, both out of interest and to be able to help Charles, but at night she liked to indulge in gothic novels. She knew that Charles found them silly; he had told her when they became betrothed, and she had tried to start a conversation about the latest novel that she had read. But she liked them. They allowed her to escape to a different world, feeling both terrified and exhilarated at the same time.
Her best friend, Caroline, Lady Winterbottom, liked romance novels, but Millie always found them too unrealistic. Surely grown people, and especially grown men, could not act as silly as the characters, even though they were falling in love. Running screaming down the hallway of an abandoned abbey because you feared that you were going to be killed seemed like a much more plausible reaction to Millie.
She had completely lost herself in the story, feeling she was right there with the heroine as she surveyed a ruin of a castle and suddenly heard footsteps behind her that stopped every time she stopped. The heroine hid in an alcove and the creature, or person, or whoever it was, would surely discover her at any moment.
Being so absorbed, she practically screamed with a mixture of fear and surprise when the adjoining door to Charles’s room opened.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he entered the room. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Millie could not help but laugh at her own reaction, her hand resting on her bosom, as if it would make her pounding heart calm down.
“No, it’s only me, that’s being silly,” she said. “The heroine is being followed by an unknown person – or creature – in a ruined castle.”
She showed him the cover of the book.
“I didn’t know you still read gothic novels,” he said as he dragged a chair from her dressing table to the side of the bed.
“Of course,” Millie said, ready to defend her choice of book, if he said anything against it.
“It’s no wonder where Henry gets all his stories of pirates and highwaymen from,” he said with a smile.
“I’m not the one telling him stories like that. It’s Edmund Winterbottom. He will tell the children the most horrible stories when we go to visit them. Both I and Lady Winterbottom have told him to stop, since Henry and some of the younger Winterbottom children find it difficult to sleep afterwards,” Millie said.
“I was only teasing you, Millie,” her husband said, still smiling.
“Oh,” Millie said and wondered why he was acting so nicely. He had seemed positively shocked when he had found her with Delilah. As well he should, she imagined. But now he did not seem angry anymore.
He dried his hands on his breeches and looked intently at her. He was nervous, she realized. It wasn’t like him to hesitate to speak or to fidget around.
“Millie, I’m so sorry,” he then began. “I had no idea.”
Millie looked perplexed at him but did not know what to say. It would be the most bizarre world if he actually knew that she was visiting his mistress.
“If I had had any idea I would, of course, have acted differently,” Charles went on.
It made sense that he would not simply have barged through the door, had he known that she would be at Delilah’s place.
“Of course, if I had known, before we married, I might have questioned whether it was a good idea to marry after all, but even if I had first learned about it later, I still feel that I could have treated you differently. Perhaps have been more patient with you,” Charles said looking at her with an intent and serious look on her face.
Millie looked at the foot of the bed trying to make sense of what he said. If he had known, before they married that she would one day go to see his mistress...?
“Charles, I’m sorry, I’m not certain that I follow,” she said hesitantly.
She was glad that he was not angry with her, but he seemed to be speaking in riddles, or at least be talking about a completely different matter.
“If I had known that you prefer women...” Charles said and looked pointedly at her.
Prefer women. Millie supposed that she did prefer the company of women over men, they mostly had the same interests. They would talk about charity work and motherhood and, well, gossip. Even if she had preferred the company of men, she was not sure how she would have gone about that. It was not exactly encouraged that men and women were friends.
Her brothers visited from time to time, but they were dreadfully boring company, and unless she talked about hunting, they seemed to have little to say.
“I’m sorry, I still don’t follow,” Millie said. “I thought that you wanted to talk about why I was... at Delilah’s place.”
“I am talking about why you were at Delilah’s place,” Charles said impatiently, shifting rather suddenly in the chair. “I’m talking about the fact that you like to sleep with women. I only wish that I would have realized it earlier.”
“Sleep with women,” Millie repeated.
It had never occurred to her to be possible. In fact, she did not even know how it was possible. There simply seemed to be something missing.
“How would two women manage to sleep together?” she had to ask.
Charles’s cheeks colored a little, something that she had never seen him do before. He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat again.
“I gather from your question that you were not there to... eh, sleep with Delilah?” he said.
Millie shook her head and looked at the book in her hand.
“You’re thinking of the kiss of course,” she said and could feel that it was now her turn to blush. If he nodded or gave any other indication that she was right, she did not see it as she kept her eyes firmly on the book. “It was not exactly... a romantic kiss, it was more of an... experiment or... a demonstration perhaps,” she said.
“An experiment or a demonstration?” Charles repeated, anger clearly seeping into his voice now. It was only what she deserved, Millie thought, but could feel that she shrank a bit under his scrutinizing eyes. “You’ll have to elaborate a bit on that I’m afraid.”
Millie looked at him. There was a stern look in his eyes. She gulped and realized that it would probably be easiest to tell the truth. She nodded.
“I...” she said as she thought of how to begin. “Do you know that Lady Winterbottom is expecting again? I believe it is their sixth child in eight years.”
Charles had crossed his arms over his chest by now.
“I believe Winterbottom mentioned it at the club at some point,” he drawled. “How is this relevant to this story?”
“When she told me, I asked her whether it was not tiresome that she had to sleep with her husband so much in order to have so many children. I mean, I’d like to have one or two more, but six in eight years, they can have done little more than... Well,” Millie cleared her throat. She was certain from the burn in her cheeks that they had flushed to a bright scarlet color. “Well, you know.”
Charles looked at her with a completely dumbfounded look on his face.
“Why are we talking about the frequency of the Winterbottom’s intercourses?” he said. “He is my best friend, but I’d rather not know this about him.”
“But you can guess,” Millie said. “I mean, six children, eight years.”
She looked at Charles, but he clearly was not as astonished by this as her. Perhaps there was something else there that she was missing?
“Anyway,” Millie went on, she had plunged into the tale now and could not stop. “Lady Winterbottom told me that it was not a hassle at all having to... so many times, since she liked it.”
Charles looked away, clearly annoyed.
“Millie, this is a completely inappropriate conversation,” he said.
“Well, yes, but nevertheless, it is the explanation as to why I was at Delilah’s place. Because what Lady Winterbottom said made me think. Before we got married, my mother told me that women never enjoy sleeping with their husbands...” she said.
Charles’s head spun back around to her.
“She did what?” he demanded in an ice-cold voice.