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11:29 PM
Anyway, Sasha!pants gave me some scenario suggestions, and I chose this one which involves (kind of) Gretchen trying to seduce Knoxley. 1707 words! Woohoo.
--
Half-hidden behind the stiff pages of an unfolded newspaper, he says: “Those French girls, I hear they do practically anything.”
This is how Colin talks now. Like a boy with a secret or a soldier with a venereal disease (half a dozen of one and a sixth of the other). He never really fought in the war, although he had been stationed for a mere month in Paris, if only to enjoy the martinis and, apparently, the women. Gretchen thinks he would not be so cavalier or suggestive if his father were with them, but the family’s patriarch is taking in the Connecticut breeze on the veranda, quietly sneaking the left over bits of biscuit from dinner to her Scottish terrier. It’s a nightly routine that everyone intentionally turns a blind eye to. Some things are harmless.
On the other hand, Gretchen thinks while sipping her sugared tea, some things never lose their potential to hurt either.
She placates him anyway with a response, “I’m sure the French would find some of our customs peculiar.” She doesn’t look at him when she speaks; she focuses her eyes elsewhere, on the mantel of the fireplace, on the old photograph of Knoxley as a boy, of a ribbon he won for a horse that would ultimately cripple him.
Colin’s eyebrow arches and he snaps the newspaper shut, crumpling the pages in his attempt to fold it. He is careless even with the inanimate. “I don’t mean customs as in the eating of snails or frog legs. These women they … well … Some of the boys, you know, they would get lonely, missing home and their wives, so after one too many sips from the bottle they’d find themselves on the streets of a Parisian alley, all wet cobblestone and the smell of wine and these women with their voices and those accents. Like a cat purring, that’s how they sound. Anyway, a few of them came back with these stories of what a few francs could buy you.” He lowers his voice now, leaning forward against the arm of his chair, closer to where Gretchen sits, still staring straight ahead in her stubbornness, but he can tell by the way her head leans to the side that she’s listening. There’s the tiniest flush of color creeping beneath the pearl encrusted collar of her high-necked dress and he suddenly remembers, vividly, that he was once well acquainted with all of that soft skin she now tries so hard to hide.
He leans forward even further for emphasis, his fingers reaching to brush her knuckles, and the contact makes Gretchen startle. They look at each other, and she can feel herself bristle, the slow shock that drags up her spine.
“These men,” he tells her, whispering like they’re conspirators together, “these men said that the French women will use their mouths.”
He doesn’t have to say where. She’s flooded with the illustration before he has even finished his sentence. The blush that sweeps from her neck to her cheeks reveals as much. Colin’s grin is rueful, boyish, and he looks as though he might have elaborated if the floorboards behind them had not creaked with the weight of Knoxley’s distinct steps. To his credit, Colin does not lean back into his chair; he meets his brother’s gaze with his usual incompetence, full of mirth rather than competitiveness, and does not even consider his hand or the tone of his voice until Gretchen politely takes hers away, her gaze less steady, the fold of her body somehow suggesting guilt.
Like children caught on the verge of bad behavior, Knoxley thinks.
“I was just telling your wife -- ”
“About the war. Yes, I heard. How patriotic of you, as always, Colin.” His smile is stiff, and he leans more pointedly on his cane as he approaches.
Knoxley looks down at Gretchen, at his wife of almost six years, and for a moment he forgets himself. He forgets that she smells of jasmine, that she wears white linen throughout the year, that she favors braids that resemble the tails of fish, that even her happiest smiles seem somehow tinged with sadness. He remembers, instead, that she is not nearly as delicate as her body would suggest, that for all her sweet demeanor she can quill with fury, that she has often surprised him with both her callousness and her hunger. Colin has been home for nearly a year, but they are all still adjusting; maybe it’s the adjustment that has Knoxley looking at her differently or that silent, indescribable ache that occurs whenever he finds them (like he often does) speaking quietly alone with their easy familiarity. A familiarity that he, on the other hand, had to earn gradually and still struggles with even now. He wonders if part of what he feels is jealousy: once again, he is responsible for something Colin has already had and already ruined.
Gretchen cants her head to the side, her silvery hair slipping across her shoulder with the movement, and Knoxley knows she’s puzzling over his expression and the weight in his eyes. She speaks too loudly, as though she is trying to cover the sound of something more inappropriate. “Colin was telling me of the scandals of France. Apparently, French women are rather creative with their lovemaking. Hardly a suitable topic of conversation for a lady’s ears, don’t you think?”
She’s teasing them both and maybe even herself.
Knoxley has the grace to smile. He hands Gretchen her shawl, the one he carried downstairs in case she had decided to join his father outside, and clears his throat before Colin can speak. “Basil and I just finished putting her to bed. She was hoping you would say goodnight, if you were ready. I came to fetch you.”
He does this often, too. She must be found and reminded of her responsibilities, of the wants of her young child. But then Gretchen’s role as a mother is not second nature to her. She must slip it on, like a dress, and wear it until it is threadbare. Knoxley is trying to understand.
She places her cup on the side table, mindless of the ring it leaves, and wraps herself in the shawl as though it might protect her. Sometimes he forgets how tall she is, this wife of his, who is both girlish and waifish still. He can feel the heat from her, and he wonders how often in their life that heat has been for or because of him.
Later, when they are in bed together, she breathes very still. He can feel the way she moves against the sheets, the way her body blisters, causing her thin slip to press against the narrow slants of her hips, her small breasts, the smooth expanse of her stomach. She turns three times, catching the blanket with her legs, before Knoxley murmurs her name. It’s enough to make her still, like a chastised child, but after a moment he feels the mattress dip with her weight as she half-sits in the darkness, propped up by her elbow, searching for his face with her eyes the color of ocean swells.
“I would do that for you, if you wanted.”
“… Do what?”
“What those French women do.”
The silence that settles between them is so severe that Gretchen’s breathing hitches, fluttering with embarrassment and something akin to rage. She twists her wedding ring around her finger fervidly, waiting, sighing her sparrow’s sigh. It’s when she turns again, prepared to resign herself to a fitful sleep, that Knoxley catches her elbow with a steadiness customary of men who have trained fickle mares. He leans down then, to bring her face up to his, to span her delicate skull with his fingers, threading them through her long hair, and he kisses her, just a press of lips to lips. She tastes a little of his mother’s lavender tea, and his body twitches as her mouth opens to his, tongue flicking inside, and the hot wet feeling of her makes his good hip jerk. She closes her eyes and lets out another little sigh, leaning into the kiss, her hand spanning the scarred skin across his side, and she realizes that he feels taut, rigid, his entire body thrumming with energy and want. A jolt of arousal races down Gretchen’s spine for the second time, and she presses up, deeper into his mouth.
It surprises her almost every time that he is capable of desiring a woman. She has never spoken about the woman he saw before, the one even Colin liked, poorly hidden in town like a bad secret. But she wonders if he touched her the same way, if she taught him how to brush his teeth across a woman’s neck with just enough pressure, if he learned from her how to silence cries with the palm of his hand pressed heatedly against a wet mouth. Surely he was never so timid with a paid woman, not like he had been their first time, struggling with the crookedness of his body and the burden of their relationship between them like a gulf unable to be breached.
Now, Gretchen knows how to fit herself against him, how to curve against his less afflicted side. He shies beneath her wandering hands if she spends too long tracing the spidery lengths of his scars. He doesn’t like it when she turns her face into the pillow; he worries, she thinks, that she is hiding from him or thinking of another. She is no longer shy when he whispers against the shell of her ear, beseeching, and she moves with him, turning, balancing her sleight weight astride his taller body with practiced ease.
Their rhythm is uneasy and poorly balanced, but it is theirs all the same. Gretchen stretches forward, wraps her hands around the wrought iron of their headboard, careful about how she rolls her hips down against him until the pressure builds and thrums and she gets careless, scratching her thumb across his mouth, mewling and trembling, so that in the morning Knoxley never minds the way his hip and leg aches.
Some things never lose their potential to hurt.