I mean— You know what I mean.’
‘The women I’ve experienced, as you put it, have certainly not been married to another man at the time, but nor have they been harlots, if that is what you’re implying.’ She was blushing. She was unduly flustered, considering she was neither a virgin herself, nor as strait-laced as she now sounded. ‘I’m finding you a puzzle,’ Innes said, ‘for the day I met you, I recall you were threatening to join the harlots on the Cowgate.’
‘You know very well I was joking.’ Ainsley set her glass of sherry down. ‘Do you really think Madame Hera’s advice misguided?’
‘Does it matter?’
She bit her lip, then nodded.
Innes picked up the magazine and read the letter again. ‘This woman, she’s not exactly lied to the man she’s betrothed to, but she’s misled him, and it seems to me that Madame Hera is encouraging her to continue to mislead him. It’s that I don’t like. The lass is likely nervous enough about the wedding night without having to worry about subterfuge. Hardly a frame of mind conducive to her enjoying what you would call her husband’s ministrations.’
‘What would you call it?’
Innes grinned. ‘Something that doesn’t sound as if the pleasure is entirely one-sided. There’s a dictionary worth of terms depending on what takes your fancy, but lovemaking will do.’
‘You might think that innocuous enough, but I assure you, the Scottish Ladies Companion will not publish it,’ Ainsley said.
‘You are a subscriber to this magazine, then?’
She shrugged. ‘But—this woman, Innes. Don’t you think her husband will be angry if he discovers her deception? And anger is no more conducive to—to lovemaking than fraud.’
‘In the grand scheme of things, I doubt it. Chances are he’s not any more experienced than she, and like to be just as nervous. I’d say he’s going to be more concerned about his own performance than anything else, something your Madame Hera doesn’t seem to take any account of.’
‘It is a column of advice for women.’
‘And most of the letters in this issue seem to be about men. Anyway, Madame Hera is completely missing the main point.’
‘Which is?’
‘The lass thinks she’s not well enough endowed, and Madame Hera is by implication agreeing by telling her to cover up. If she goes to her wedding night ashamed, thinking she’s not got enough to offer, you can be sure that soon enough her husband will think the same.’
‘So it’s her fault?’ Ainsley said.
‘Don’t be daft. If anyone’s at fault it’s that blasted Madame Hera—and the mother.’ Innes threw the magazine down on the table. ‘I don’t know why we’re wasting our time with this nonsense.’
Ainsley picked the magazine up, her face set. ‘Because I wrote it,’ she said. ‘I’m Madame Hera.’
* * *
Innes laughed. Then, when she continued to look at him without joining in, his laughter stopped abruptly. ‘I’ll be damned. You mean it? You really do write this stuff?’
‘It is not stuff. It is a very well-respected column. I’ll have you know that in the past month, Madame Hera has received no less than fifty letters. In fact, such is the demand for Madame’s advice that the magazine will from next month offer a personal reply service. Felicity has agreed a fee with the board, and I shall receive fifty per cent of it.’
‘Felicity?’
‘Blair. The editor, and my friend.’
‘So all that correspondence you receive, they are letters to this Madame Hera.’ Innes looked quite stunned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because it was none of your business.’ Ainsley flushed. ‘And because I knew you would most likely react exactly as you have. Though I am not ashamed, if that’s what you’re thinking. Madame Hera provides a much-needed service.’
‘So why tell me now?’
Ainsley reached for her sherry and took a large gulp. She had not meant to tell him. She had been so caught up in worrying about how to explain away her earlier behaviour that Madame Hera had been far from her mind, though her advice would have been straightforward. ‘Il faut me chercher’ was one of Madame’s axioms. Men must hunt and women must avoid capture. Kissing, not even just kissing, without the benefit of a wedding band, was quite wrong. And though Ainsley did have the benefit of a wedding band, she was not really married, so it was still wrong. Kissing gave a man all sorts of immoral ideas. Such ideas were, in Madame Hera’s world, the province only of men. That Ainsley herself had had ideas—her mind boggled, trying to imagine what Madame would say to that.
In fact, those very ideas cropped up in several of the letters Felicity had forwarded to her, variously referred to as ‘unnatural desires,’ ‘longing,’ ‘carnal stirrings,’ ‘fever of the blood,’ ‘indecent thoughts’ and even, memorably, ‘an irrepressible need to scratch an itch.’ On the one hand, it was consoling to know that she was not unusual, but on the other, she was utterly defeated when it came to even contemplating a reply. Felicity had been right—Ainsley knew very little of such matters. She’d been right, too, in suggesting that Ainsley would do well to learn. But Felicity had no idea of the hurdles Ainsley would have to overcome in order to do so.
She had concluded that her only option was to return the letters to Felicity until Innes had read out Madame Hera’s letter, and she saw what she had suspected: that her advice wasn’t only skewed but perhaps even hypocritical. Madame Hera existed to liberate women from ignorance, not to reflect Ainsley’s own insecurities.
Her stomach had tied itself in knots in her bedroom earlier as she’d contemplated that kiss. Now she was aware of Innes studying her, waiting patiently for an explanation, and she had never felt more inarticulate in her life. Seeing with some surprise that her sherry glass was empty, Ainsley reached for the decanter and topped it up, taking another fortifying gulp. ‘Felicity said that— Felicity suggested that— She said...’ She took another sip of sherry. ‘Felicity was concerned that I had not the experience to answer some of the more intimate queries made of Madame Hera. I agreed with her, but I thought—I was certain that in all other instances, my advice was sound.’
Ainsley took another sip of sherry. It was really rather good sherry. She took another sip. ‘Then earlier today, when I was mulling over the contents of another letter, I began to wonder if perhaps I had been a little biased. Failing to take account the other side of the problem. A little. And then, when you read that letter out I realised that—that perhaps you were right. To a degree.’
Innes looked as confused by this rambling explanation as she felt. ‘I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand why this led you to confess your secret identity.’
Ainsley tried to sort out the tangle of threads in her head into some sort of logical order. ‘These letters are written by real women with real problems. They are not printed in the journal to titillate, nor to provide some sort of vicarious enjoyment to readers who can congratulate themselves on their own superior, problem-free lives. The letters that are printed are chosen because
