It was all right; the room held only herself and Thomasina. Maud looked back at the clock, thinking that surely when the minute hand reached the half hour this would be over. She saw a movement from the deep wing chair by the fire–the comfortable old chair in whose depths she had often curled up with a book before going to bed.
The chair had been turned away from the fire, so it faced the bed. Somebody was seated in it, and whoever it was had red eyes from the firelight, and a sly grin. Maud frowned and struggled to make sense of all this. She tried to push Thomasina away, because there was somebody here in the room with them–there was somebody watching them!
A log broke apart in the hearth, sending cascades of sparks shooting out, and Maud saw that it was Simon sitting in the chair. Simon Forrester was seated silently in the bedroom, watching the two of them naked on the bed, seeing how Thomasina’s fingers were thrusting up between Maud’s legs, seeing how she had pulled one of Maud’s hands down between her own thighs, so Maud could do the prodding and finger-stroking that made Thomasina gasp and shudder.
Simon was looking straight at them and, as she met his eyes, Maud felt as if she had been flung, neck-deep into boiling water. Fierce shame at being seen like this by a man engulfed her. She struggled free of Thomasina’s hands, and clawed blindly at the sheets trying to drag them over her, but it was already too late, Simon had seen, he had seen…
She cried out to Thomasina to look across the room, but Thomasina was shuddering and jerking and pulling Maud’s unwilling hand deeper, and she did not seem to hear, even when Simon got up out of the chair and came towards the bed. His eyes were still shining redly from the glow of the fire and his mouth was slack and wet–it looked ugly, Maud hated it. He had pulled off his tie, and as he crossed the room he was tearing at the buttons of his shirt. Maud saw that his chest was sprinkled with coarse dark hair.
Thomasina moved her hands away from Maud at last, and turned to look up at Simon. Something seemed to pass between them–some kind of acknowledgement, Maud thought it was. Thomasina said, ‘Ready, Simon?’ and Simon said, in a queer thick throaty voice, ‘Never readier, my dear.’ He paused, and then said, ‘By God, Thomasina, I shall have a good tale to tell in the clubs.’
‘You do and I’ll make sure half of London believes you’re an impotent imbecile,’ said Thomasina in the most vicious voice Maud had ever heard her use.
But Simon only smiled. ‘Imbecile, perhaps. Impotent, never. Didn’t you know that it’s every man’s wildest fantasy to watch two females in bed together?’
To Maud’s horror, he threw off his shoes, and unbuttoned his trousers and took them off. Then he lay down on the bed next to her.
She thought at first that between the pulsing headache and the burning humiliation she might faint; she would indeed have been very glad to tumble down into a black pit of unknowing. But something–perhaps it was even the embarrassment itself–kept her from fainting. Even when Simon lay right on top of her, scraping her breasts with his coarse black chest hair, and crushing her ribs so that it was difficult to breathe, she stayed awake and aware.
There was a kind of fumbling between her legs–at first she thought it was Thomasina’s hands again, but then she realized they were masculine hands: larger-boned and with rougher-feeling skin. Oh God, oh God, this could not be happening. But it was. He pushed her legs very wide apart and wriggled his body between them. She felt the skin of his thighs, and a hard insistent thrusting that seemed to be coming from his body and even though his weight was making it difficult to breathe, Maud drew in a gasping breath to cry out. But Thomasina clamped a hand over her mouth and whispered to her to stay quiet, asking if she wanted the servants to hear and come running? This was all part of the plan, hissed Thomasina, it was necessary if they were to have what they both wanted.
The threat of servants almost silenced Maud, but she managed to fight free for long enough to gasp out a question, ‘What plan? I don’t understand—’