"Wilbur Smith - Courtney 03 - Blue Horizon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

Her eyelids were clenched tightly, and he ran his hand over her buttock, gently but insistently. "You are a big girl now, Louisa. It is time you knew these things. Open your eyes, my dear."

Obediently she opened them a crack. She saw that he had undone the front of his robe, and that he wore nothing under it. She stared at the thing that stood proud through the folds of silk. The painting was a bland and romanticized representation of it. It rose massively from a nest of coarse dark hair, and seemed as thick as her wrist. The head was not an insipid pink as in the painting, but the colour of a ripe plum.

The slit in the end of it glared at her like a cyclopean eye. She shut her eyes again tightly.

"Gertruda!" she whispered. "I promised to take her for a walk."

"You are very good to her, Louisa." His voice had a strange husky edge to it that she had never heard before. "But now you must be good to me also." He reached down and under her skirts, then ran his fingers up her naked legs. He lingered at the soft dimples at the back of her knees, and she trembled more violently. His touch was caressing, and strangely reassuring, but she knew it was wrong. She was confused by these contrary emotions, and she felt as though she were suffocating. His fingers left the soft back of her knees and moved up her thigh. The touch was neither furtive nor hesitant, but authoritative, not something she could deny or oppose.

"You must be good to me," he had said, and she knew that he had every right to ask that of her. She owed him everything. If this was being good to him, then she had no choice, yet she knew it was wicked and that Jesus would punish her. Perhaps He would cease to love her for what they were doing. She heard the rustle of the page as he turned it with his free hand, and then he said, "Look!" She tried to resist him in this at least, and shut her eyes again. His touch became more demanding and his hand moved up to the crease where her buttock joined the back of her thigh.

She opened her eyes, just a fraction, and looked through her lashes at the fresh page of the book. Then her eyes flew wide open. The girl who looked so like her was kneeling in front of her swam. Her skirts had hiked up behind her, and her exposed bottom was round and buttery. Both she and the boy were gazing down into his lap. The girl's expression was fond, as though she were looking down at a beloved pet, a kitten perhaps. She held it clasped in both her small hands, but her dainty fingers were not able to encompass its girth.

"Is it not a beautiful picture?" he asked, and despite the wickedness of the subject, she felt a strange empathy towards the young couple. They were smiling, and it seemed as though they loved each other and were enjoying what they were doing. She forgot to close her eyes again.

"You see, Louisa, that God has made men and women differently. On their own they are incomplete, but together they make a whole." She was not sure exactly what he meant, but sometimes she had not understood what her father had told her, or the sermon preached by the dominie. That is why the couple in the painting are so happy and why you can see that they feel full of love for each other."

With gentle authority his fingers moved between her legs, right up to the juncture of her thighs. Then he did something else to her there. She

;._. ~-.~ "sw*tu uti leet apart 6 he could do it more easily. The sensation that overtook her was beyond anything she had experienced before. She could feel the happiness and love he had spoken about spreading out and suffusing her entire body. She stared down again into the opening of his robe, and her feelings of shock and fear faded. She saw that, like the picture in the book, it was really quite pleasing. No wonder the other girl looked at it like that.

He moved her gently, and she was pliant and unresisting. Still sitting in the chair, he turned towards her, and at the same time, drew her closer and placed one hand on her shoulder. She understood instinctively that he wanted her to do what the girl in the picture was doing. Under the pressure of the hand on her shoulder she sank down to her knees and that strangely ugly, beautiful thing was only inches from her face. Like the other girl she reached out and took it in her hands. He made a small grunting sound and she felt how hot and hard it was. It fascinated her. She squeezed gently, and felt a leap of life as though this thing had a separate existence. It belonged to her, and she felt a strange sense of power, as though she held the core of his being in her hands.

He reached down and placed his own hands over hers. He began to move them back and forth. At first she was not sure what he was doing, then understood that he was showing her what he wanted. She felt a strong desire to please him, and she learned quickly. While she moved her fingers as rapidly as a weaver working at the loom he lay back in the chair and groaned. She thought she had hurt him and she tried to stand up, but he stopped her with the hand on her shoulder again and, a desperate tone in his voice, said, "No, Louisa, just like that. Don't stop what you're doing. You're such a good, clever girl."

Suddenly he let out a deep, shuddering sigh and whipped a scarlet silk kerchief out of the pocket of his robe, covering his lap and both her hands with it. She did not want to let go of him, even when she felt a hot, viscous fluid pouring over her hands and soaking the silk cloth. When she tried to keep on with what she was doing, he grasped her wrists and held her hands still. "That's enough, my dear. You have made me very happy."

After a long time he roused himself. He took her little hands one at a time and wiped them clean with the silk cloth. She felt no sense of revulsion. He was smiling at her kindly, and he told her, "I am very pleased with you, but you must not tell anyone what we did today. Do you understand, Louisa?" She nodded vehemently. The guilt had evaporated, and she felt instead gratitude and reverence.

"Now you can go back to Gertruda. We will begin her riding lessons tomorrow. Of course, you will take her to the academy."

Over the next few weeks Louisa saw him only once and at a distance. She was half-way up the staircase, on her way to Gertruda's room, when a footman opened the doors to the banquet room, and Mijnheer van Ritters led out a procession of his guests. They were all beautifully dressed, prosperous-looking ladies and gentlemen. Louisa knew at least four of the men were members of Het Zeventien, the directors of the VOC. They had obviously dined well and were jovial and noisy. She hid behind the curtains as they passed below her, but she watched Mijnheer van Ritters with a strange feeling of longing. He was wearing a long, curled wig, and the sash and the star of the Order of the Golden Fleece. He was magnificent. Louisa felt a rare flash of hatred for the smiling, elegant woman on his arm. After they had passed her hiding-place she ran to the room she shared with Gertruda, threw herself on the bed and wept.

"Why does he not want to see me again? Did I displease him?"

She thought about the incident in the library every day, especially after the lantern was out and she was in her bed across the room from Gertruda.

Then one day Mijnheer van Ritters arrived unexpectedly at the riding academy. Louisa had taught Gertruda how to curtsy. She was awkward and clumsy and Louisa had to help her back on to her feet when she lost her balance, but van Ritters smiled a little at this accomplishment, and returned the courtesy with a playful bow. "Your devoted servant," he said, and Gertruda giggled. He did not speak directly to Louisa, and she knew better than to address him uninvited. He watched Gertruda make a circuit of the ring, on the lead rein. Louisa had to walk beside the pony, and Gertruda's pudding face was screwed up with terror. Then van Ritters left as abruptly as he had appeared.

Another week passed and Louisa was torn with opposing emotions. At times the magnitude of her sin returned to plague her. She had allowed him to touch and play with her, and she had taken pleasure in handling that monstrous thing of his. She had even begun to have the most vivid dreams about it, and she woke in confusion, her newly fledged breasts and her private parts burning and itching. As though in punishment for her sins her breasts had swelled until they strained the buttons of her blouse. She tried to hide them, keeping her arms crossed over her chest, but she had seen the stable boys and the footmen looking at them.

She wanted to talk to Elise about what had happened to her and ask

her advice, but Mijnheer van Ritters had warned her against this. So she kept silent.

Then, unexpectedly, Stals told her, "You are to move to your own room. It is the Mijnheer's order."

Louisa stared at him in astonishment. "But what about Gertruda? She can't sleep alone."