Lessons in Pleasure

The anticipation with which Sarah had approached her reading vanished like paper tossed into a fire. In the space of one short day, she’d forgotten her original purpose in acquiring the books. It hadn’t been titillation or curiosity, but true fear that had driven her to that bookshop. That fear was back.

Tray of food forgotten, Sarah rose with the book in her hand and rushed to the door to lock it. This would be far more than idle reading. She curled into the large chair nearest the fireplace and opened the book.

She tried to read slowly, but the words rushed at her. Whitcomb seemed to believe that women’s natural modesty often protected them from their own inherent weaknesses. Their sheltered lives provided protection and insulation from the realities of life. He theorized that the very delicacy that so attracted a man to clasp his wife to his bosom also left her susceptible to being traumatized by that attention.

A woman is not a sexual creature. The scabbard is designed only to embrace the sword, not to take action. The wife receives the husband’s attentions because she was made to do so, not because she is compelled by desire. But her delicate psyche, previously innocent of all idea of lust and copulation, can be damaged by this male assault. She cannot make sense of it. It holds no meaning for her. And so, if already predisposed to pitiful weakness, her brain may suffer peculiar maladies that lead to mental destruction.

Pitiful weakness? She hoped that wasn’t true, but the rest of it . . . The rest of it made her hands tremble. Marital relations had been strange and startling to her, even frightening in the beginning. She certainly hadn’t been compelled by desire.

Sarah glanced at the bellpull, tempted to call for a glass of sherry to steel her nerves against the rest of it. But she was already putting on an odd show for the servants. They might be inclined to report to her husband if she began drinking wine in the middle of the afternoon.

After taking one long, deep breath, Sarah bent her head back to the book. She read quickly, emotionlessly. Pages and pages of information.

According to Doctor Whitcomb, there were several different manifestations of this mental damage. Paranoia. Hypochondria. Exhaustion. Painful spasms and rictus of the birth canal.

Despite the terrible nature of the afflictions, Sarah began to relax. She was fine. These diseases had nothing to do with her.

But she breathed a sigh of relief too soon. Nymphomania, the chapter heading screamed in dark script. An ungovernable desire for sexual contact and congress.

Well. It was possible there was a hint of familiarity in that. Though she smiled at the thought, her amusement faded as her eyes crept over the page.

Nymphomania, sometimes known as erotomania, is the most insidious of all the feminine disorders. It begins with restlessness and creeping warmth. Insomnia. Confusion. Then the building desire for physical stimulation which becomes a preoccupation with thoughts of marital relations.

“Oh, no,” Sarah breathed. “Oh, my Lord.” She pressed her fingertips to her lips, hard. Nymphomania? Was that the strangeness that had been crawling under her skin for days?

Though marital relations may occasionally occur more often than once a week in a healthy relationship, a nymphomaniac may encourage sexual congress every night, perhaps even multiple times in the same twenty-four-hour period. Morning or midnight, it makes no difference to this pitiful creature. Her obsession has nothing to do with duty or even procreation, and her affliction endangers the husband’s health as well. Without

the natural damper of expected wifely modesty, a man will succumb to his basest lusts. Her insatiable demands force him to engage in unnatural acts involving alternative stimulation of the genitals as he cannot otherwise satisfy her urges.

She dropped the book, threw it, almost, so that it bounced off the wall before landing back at her feet. Despite that she could see it lying on the rug, the feel of it lingered on her fingers. Sarah rubbed her hand against her skirts, desperate to remove the phantom stain.

Unnatural acts. Yes, she had done that, had tempted her husband into it. Not only that, but she had reached her climax three times in the space of a few short hours. She was insatiable. What had seemed so pleasurable now seemed fraught with danger.

What did it mean? If this was her illness, could it be cured? Would it worsen?

Heart pounding, she stared at the blue cover as if the cloth had suddenly begun to ripple with dark life. Her symptoms were laid out so clearly, so vividly. Whatever else she would read seemed certain to be just as true. The very reason she needed to read more, and yet her hand would not obey the order to reach down and grasp the book.

“Do not be so cowardly,” Sarah whispered to herself. But it seemed as if her marriage—indeed her whole life—might hang in the balance, teetering on the delicate edge of one page in a book. “Coward,” she said again but still could not lean down. Instead, she leapt to her feet and began to pace.

There was no reason to think this particular physician was right where others were wrong. Hadn’t she just read a book asserting that women should feel pleasure and desire? Indeed, that author claimed that female climax was necessary for conception and marital harmony. She’d stopped feeling ill about her desires after that. In fact, just moments ago she’d been happy.

Sarah scrubbed her hands over her face, hoping the pressure would rub away her confusion, but nothing changed. Nothing but the shifting view of the rug as she paced back and forth.

Yes, this doctor had treated her mother, and perhaps that lent his words a certain weight, but her mother hadn’t improved. She’d declined. Dr. Whitcomb was no demigod.

Sarah stopped and turned slowly toward the book. She stared it down.

She’d deceived James into this marriage. She owed him at least the courage to discover if her deception had been harmless . . . or horrendous.

CHAPTER 5

Figures rushed past her, dark masses in the gloomy light. The fog thickened around her, viscous, putrid-gray as cold porridge. Sarah pushed through it, nearly running, darting through the packs of people making their way toward home or market or their favorite tavern. Her maid called out in alarm, and Sarah slowed her pace to allow the girl to catch up.

“Ma’am,” Betsy panted. “Is something wrong?”

There was nothing about this trip that called for an illiterate companion, but Sarah felt secure with Betsy now, as if the maid were part of keeping this secret safe.

She didn’t bother answering the question, just waved at her to move faster.