Comte by Candlelight 1

Victor was being a dick. Charlotte had found him rifling through the ribbon-bound letters she kept as a reminder of Hector, her deceased fiancé.

Puce-faced he rose, one particular note of affection screwed in his left hand and forced out, 'you must put aside these childish dreams, woman!'

Charlotte had no such intention. She liked Victor to a point but did not love him. Her primary interest was in securing an annuity with which she could keep her aged father warm and fed in his modest terraced house on the new estate. Father, and mother when she was alive, had always been good to her, the model parents. Victor was rough around the edges, pleasingly egotistical in bed, and wealthy enough to be of interest. That he was regularly abroad for eight months at a time visiting his estates also added incentive. This intrusion however was seriously making her doubt.

Hector had been everything Victor was not. Delicately beautiful, clever, thoughtful, shy at first and poor as a church warden must be. But they had fallen in love on meeting and shared fourteen months on that pleasant cloud before the grave robbers had done for him with cudgel and haste. It did not matter they'd been caught and hanged, something broke in Charlotte that day and, being of practical bent, she had placed her tender past behind to be enjoyed on private moments, setting about the new task of possession and accomplishment.

An avid reader and talented cartoonist of nature, the wealthy Comte d'Heuressy appalled her with his loves of hunting, cards and the triangle economy. But Charlotte was a magnificent beauty and he fell like a routed boar for her more obvious charms, promising her the earth should she bear him heirs and bring him respectability in a fragile Society. Her terms had been simple: an independent purse, guarantees of inheritance should she die... and Egypt, her cultural fascination.

She took the crumpled missive, smoothing it agin her breast, placed it atop the others, tangled her fingers with Victor's hairy digits and led him to the far corner where he forgot his rage inside her.

As his seed dripped spent onto the floorboards, she stared over his heaving shoulder at the letters of a lifetime before. The tears ran quickly and silent as her husband grunted and wiped himself clean on his handkerchief.