said, “Will you tell me what it was like?”
“How would you like me to tell you?” He spoke quietly, barely loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the engine.
Lucilla swallowed. She kept her eyes on the packed dirt of the road, winding away before the motor’s lamps. “Tell me as if we were lying together. After.” She pictured it in her mind, their bodies close and warm, the sound of their breathing, the scent of their effort lying on their skins, and shuddered inside.
She heard him take a deep breath. “I was sixteen.”
“So young!”
“Ancient, compared to my compatriots in the neighborhood. One could have a prostitute for a single coin, if one were not afraid of one’s mother finding out.”
“Who was the woman?”
“The widow Jacques. She owned her late husband’s bakery. She was not so old, but had been a widow as long as I could remember—perhaps ten years or more. She had no children. I recall my oncle Marius wasted a year in courting her at one time, but she did not wish for a partner in her business.”
“Her name?” Lucilla felt this was important.
“Marie-Beatrice. I did not call her this, you understand. I was not so brave.”
Lucilla wanted to know more; she wanted to know everything about how Pascal’s experience had differed from hers. Women weren’t supposed to want to know these things, but if she did know—it felt as vital to her now, to know his experience, as when she had learned the first workings of chemistry. “How did she—”
“She was a woman much to be admired. One afternoon, I had extra francs from my grand-oncle. I was hungry—I was always hungry, no matter how much I ate, or how often—and as I walked past her shop, I smelled the bread baking. I went inside, but no one was there to sell me bread. So I slipped past the counter and went in search of her in the kitchen.”
“What did she look like?” Lucilla asked.
Pascal offered her the bottle of warm lemonade, and she drank, one-handed, as she drove, then handed the bottle back. Their fingers brushed. He said, “She was very small, even compared to my height then, but with a prodigious bosom.” He added wryly, “You understand that this was of the greatest interest to me.”
So far as Lucilla had been able to determine, his interest was for all parts of the female body, but perhaps he’d been less catholic in his tastes as a young man. “Was she alone?” she asked.
“Yes.” Pascal paused, as if remembering. “She stood behind a table that was dusted with flour. She wore an apron, decorated with flowers, and a cap over her hair, of the same fabric. She didn’t wear these things in the front of the bakery. It is hard to explain. It was as if I saw her in a negligee, to see her in these items that she wore for baking in her own place, where none saw her.”
“I understand,” Lucilla said, remembering the first time she’d seen a man other than her father or brother in shirtsleeves.
“She asked after my studies, and told me that she herself had left her home in Picardy to marry Monsieur Jacques when she was just sixteen, and she had never regretted this decision. She did not think I would regret it, either.”
“Did you?”
“No. She was the first person who had told me this. All my family, they left France to travel, but they always returned home, to the same two streets. I did not plan to return there, and to this day I never have, except to visit. You went away, to Somerville College?”
She didn’t want to talk about herself just now. “I did,” Lucilla said. “My father thought I would meet a man and marry before I’d been there a year. Tell me what happened next.”
“She asked me for help in removing her apron. The knot was too tight.”
“You believed her?”
“I did,” Pascal said. “I did not see myself as she did. I went to help her.” He paused. “She smelled of baking bread. Her nape was bare. I wanted to lean closer and lick it, perhaps even bite. I could see myself bent over her. I had never had such a desire before. I had to look away, but I could still smell her. When I touched the knot of her apron, I also touched her skin. It was hot and damp, from the heat of the ovens. As I untied the knot, I could not help but touch her with my fingertips, again and again.”
Caught up in the story, Lucilla was surprised to find that his description aroused her; whether the cause was imagining herself as Marie-Beatrice, or putting herself in Pascal’s place, or both, she didn’t know. “Did she touch you?”
“She removed her cap. Her hair fell onto my hands and across my wrists. It smelled of bread and vanilla. Then I did lean closer, and she told me I could go home if I wished.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I realized her intent as soon as she released her hair. I asked her why she had chosen me.”
Lucilla had guessed. “Because you were leaving.”
“Yes.”
When he didn’t continue, she asked, “How did she—”
“She lived above the bakery. She closed for the afternoon, and took me up the stairs, to her bedroom. The drapes were drawn, but sun beamed through gaps and laid bars of light on her bed. It was the largest bed I had ever seen, with many pillows.”
Lucilla’s pulse beat between her thighs. She was not Marie- Beatrice; she was Pascal, about to experience the hot wet pain of sexual congress for the first time. Her throat felt thick. “Were you ready?”
Pascal snorted. “In those days, there was no time when I was not ready. Or I thought I was. I sat on the bed, and I grew harder still while she undressed me. She explained that she did not want this encounter to be over too quickly, as we would not have the opportunity for another. I agreed, of course. She took off my cap and ran her fingers through my hair, as my mother and sisters had sometimes done, but her touch was utterly different. It went through me like electricity.”
“I would like to undress you,” Lucilla said.
“I will permit that, when time allows,” he said with some humor. “The widow Jacques, she undressed me down to the skin and laid my clothing on a chair. I had never considered before what happened to one’s clothing, as the couples I had seen all wore their clothing while coupling. When she bent to tuck my boots beneath, I could see into her dress.”
“Did you undress her?”
“No. She stood before me and disrobed. Her corset unhooked in the front and she—” He swallowed. “Beneath it, she was bountiful. She did not wear drawers beneath her shift. I thought I would choke for lack of air, when I realized I could see the hair on her cunt through the cloth. I had never before had a close view of the hidden places of a woman’s body, and I felt balanced above a fall into some great understanding. She touched her breasts, stroking her nipples. She told me she liked to have them suckled gently, and that later she would like me to take her from behind, as that was the best for her.”
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