no living man am i!

It has been only a short few months since they were married, and in that time - though she may hate to admit it, sometimes - her husband has taught her things she had never dreamed of. Their marriage is not perfect, and at times she still chafes against it, against the shame of a man below her station, and against his manner, and his way of speaking, and the aspects of womanhood which marriage does nothing to dispel.

But there are aspects of womanhood, of its stifling nature, which marriage - at least this marriage - has done no small amount to dispel. She has shed maidenhood like a too-tight skin, and stepped into a lusty wildness that ought to horrify her, but which delights her more. What she expected to find a bitter chore is, instead, a thing that can bring her alive, and she has welcomed that depth of feeling with open arms.

All of which is to say, Jack and Éowyn Harrison have managed to fit a lot of fornication into a few months of marriage. Enthusiastic, athletic, and often loud fornication. It embarrasses her, at times, how easily it comes to her, but for the most part, she has ceased to be ashamed. They are married, after all, and it is their duty to be carnal, and he seems to think no less of her for seeing her on her knees - if anything, it seems to her that he thinks better of her for it, and not in a degraded way. By the same token, she has not thought any less of him for seeing him busied between her thighs - but then, it is always different for men, isn't it?

The people who know her in her daily life, who see the Earl's daughter glide through life cold and aloof as ever, a woman carved of marble and steel, would be shocked to see what she gets up to behind closed doors (and occasionally in open fields). They would not imagine, despite her calloused hands and strange habit of riding cross-saddle, that a lady of such cool dignity nightly demands her husband fuck her against the wall, or sucks him off enthusiastically while spreading her legs for the toys he seems to have collected. (Or, if they would imagine it, they would think it was a fantasy. She knows this, too, and where it would not so long ago have filled her with horror, the idea that the things she and Jack do would seem like impossible fantasy to some now only adds an extra piquancy to their reality)

There is only one issue that she has with their sex life, and it is the same that she had, from the first, with their marriage. It does not seem just that she should always kneel, that she should invite him to claim her, that she should be his. She is, she still believes, not only of far nobler blood than him: she is as strong as he is, and as clever, and as steadfast; she is more honourable, and bolder still, and she is his equal at least, and - though he has grown in her estimation - more truthfully his superior. And yet, in the bedroom as in all of life, she is a woman, and she must bow to the constraints of her sex, and she must be a diversion and a helpmeet, and she loathes it with every fibre of her being.

At least, she assumes that it must be so, until one thing leads to another, and it transpires that it is not so set in stone, after all. She has seen how he reacts when she does take command, how he does not reject it but seems rather to enjoy it, and it is with uncharacteristic shyness that she proposes this evening's approach. She is half-afraid he will reject the idea out of hand, and that is why she does not simply take control without asking: in the end, she is still a slave of her duty, and she will not risk embarrassment. So she waits until one night, in the sweat-drenched tangle of limbs that follows another thoroughly pleasurable exhaustion, to ask; and it would be an understatement, in hindsight, to say he is amenable.

That is enough to restore her confidence, and later that same week, when he returns home, he will find her waiting for him in the drawing-room, standing by the fire, clad in a thin shift which is more revealing than nakedness, her hair pinned up above the nape. She stands as tall as she ever has, and as proud, and fixes him with a look that carries all the command of her rank, her bare feet soft on the carpet as she strides over to meet him. That command comes easily to her, and it is something which - even when they were first wed - she has never quite fully turned on him, knowing that she does not, strictly speaking, have the right. Never, at least, until now; and now it is easy to see how the men of her family have so easily won the absolute obedience of their soldiers in battle. There is something in her bearing which expects it.

"I think," she says, in a tone that is deceptively soft, but which brooks no argument, "that I would prefer you on your knees, Mr Harrison. Unless you have any objections?"