An Oxford Education

“Theresa, are you going to tell my brother that you are carrying his child?”

She froze in the act of putting her resignation letter on the large mahogany desk. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be dancing with some silly chit at Lady Winter’s ball not sit here in the dark library as if waiting for his errant secretary to sneak in.

“Are you going to tell Darius about the child?”

As she turned slowly to face him she still had no idea what to say. He just sat there, a large, powerful man in formal evening dress taking his nightcap in a chair barely illuminated by the dying embers of the fire; sprawling in the chair as if his words had not ripped apart the well-ordered existence she had built for herself in the last decade. Theresa, will you tell Darius about the child? God, that question implied so much, so much that held her paralysed. He knew about the pregnancy, he knew about her gender - and most shockingly, he knew her name. How to deal with this? It was 1773 - women did not attend Oxford University, not even daughters of French aristocrats so embarrassed about their existence that they agreed to pretend their girl child had died in exchange for entrance to the university disguised as a boy. Women did not become secretaries to one of the most influential peers of the time, did not write research proposals and policy documents. And women did not find themselves alone in the bathing chamber with the drunken, dissolute brother of their employer and were stupid enough to just let events take their course simply to, for once, find out what all the fuss was about. She had done all three. But looking at the severe man in front of her, a man who might very well have her taken to Bow Street and tried for fraud, she still could only regret the third. And sometimes, in the dark night when she put her hand over her womb and felt the growing life there, she could not even regret the that.

“Theresa, my patience is running low - I am expecting an answer”

The voice was coldly assessing, a dispassionate reminder not unlike when he ordered her to answer an invitation or decline a plaintive’s missive. It matched the icy cold rising in her, the wave of hopeless resignation threatening to swallow her.

“No”




He showed no reaction, no outburst of emotion, only a raised eyebrow indicated he had even heard her. The eyebrow would have been enough to reduce the majority of society into gibbering wrecks of fear - but she had worked for this man for a decade now and stood her ground. He was Lord Julius Yelverton, Earl of Sussex, known for his cold acumen in business as well as political matters, his emotionless use of courtesans and his ability to destroy a social aspirant with one sarcastic comment. He also was her friend, or had been, and in the end, the last was all she had to count on now.

“Since when have you known?”

He did not mistake her question for anything related to her pregnancy, that had not really become a reality to even her yet, but understood that it was a more fundamental query.

“Week 3, Michaelmas term 1763.”

Her first term at Oxford then.

“How?”
She needed to know, needed to understand why she had failed.

"All right, boy, skewer me. I've dropped my defences, I'm an easy victim. Why, by now Your arrows practically know their own way to the target And feel less at home in their quiver than in me. Do you remember that quote?”

She nodded - Ovid, the second book of the erotic poems. They had never directly discussed those works but, predictably, someone had brought them to the tutorial and their professor, possibly aware that it was hard to hold the attention of a bunch of spoiled young men, had allowed them to be discussed. It had quickly turned into a ribald lesson, an exchange of exaggerated tales and stories of even more inflated peccadilloes. The smile quirking on his lips told her that he had followed her train of thought.

“I knew then - you blushed”

She remembered that lesson, remembered that day only too well - and she had not been the only one whose face had burned from embarrassment.

“I was not alone in that”

He leant forward in the chair and she realised that he had shed his coat before taking up his vigil here, the dark blue silk of his shirt playing over the powerful physique. For a moment she almost could feel the soft fabric under her hand but she pushed the thought away quickly, avoiding even the notion of sensuality as she had done for most of her grown-up life. It was his sharp, glacier-blue eyes that held her attention.

“True, but you were the only one who blushed from female arousal”

She shivered partly from the sudden cold that seemed to whip around the room but also from the sudden heat blooming in her at that memory.





He rose from his seat and went to the fireplace to poke at the embers and fed the dying flames. It was two in the morning, the whole house was quiet, swathed in the silence of sleep, the stillness that came over even the largest households in the dead of night. She had intentionally waited until now to hand in her notice, had taken the coward’s way of simply leaving it on his desk and had wanted the darkness and stillness of the hour to cover her cowardice. They were entirely alone. She looked at him and dread rose - here and now he looked like the demon society named him, not like the near friend she had come to know over the years. The room was almost dark, many of the candles having burned down hours ago and the few remaining ones on his desk playing satanic images in shadows and reflections over the high bookcases and fine fabrics. The only pool of true light could be found at the hearth, illuminating the man kneeling in front of the fire in imitation of Mephistopheles. He was tall, taller even than her near 6 feet, but lean and sleek like a jungle cat - and just as dangerous. His ascetic face rarely showed any emotion other than cold and with his long black hair bound at the nape, and the piercing green eyes he should have been the dream of any maid - and was until he started to speak and cut them down. Not that he was adverse to female company, he was well known and regarded by the demimonde, but he seemed to prefer his dalliances businesslike and clear-cut, just as the rest of his life. Having poked the fire back into its glory he returned his unemotional gaze to her:

“Sit, Theresa”

And just as she had for the last seven years she followed his order to sit in one of the two red velvet armchairs in front of the blazing fire, still unsure what to say, and mortally afraid that whatever she said would make no difference.

“From your decision to refuse my offer to take a year away and return after you have dealt with your “family emergency” I assume you have decided to keep the child.”

His voice still held no emotion, gave her no indication how furious he was - and she knew he had to be. But what was there to say?

“Yes, Milord. I will keep the child. I will leave London tomorrow and travel North.”

She was trying her best to keep her voice from trembling, to keep it as calm and collected as she had for the last decade in her interactions with him. But it was hard, almost impossible and still she prided herself on her cool achievement. It was impossibly hard to keep the trepidation out of the next question though.

“Sir, may I ask what you are planning to do with this information?”

There was no clue to his thoughts displayed on his face, no indication of his plans and her hands cramped on the armrests of the chair. Quickly she relaxed them not wanting to give this highly observant man further ammunition to use in their skirmish.

“I am planning to marry you.”

The declaration was said in the same tone as anything before and for a moment she could not comprehend it, could not make sense of it.

“Wha… You cannot marry your secretary”

“No, but I can marry Theresa de Lancy, youngest daughter of the Marquis de Lancy”

“Theresa de Lancy is dead”

Her voice had lost all expression, dead and empty did it sound in this room in which she had been so happy.

“Theresa de Lancy has spend the last decade in the care of her aunt as she was expected not to survive but has recovered miraculously. Over the last year I have met the young Lady in her reconvalescence and have fallen in love with her. Society will love it”

But his searching eyes on her face had lost some of their cold, had acquired a different expression, in any other man she would have called it warmth.

“Terry” so strange to her hear nickname from him now “I will send you to Eastbourne, and follow in a few days. We can be married by special license by the end of the week. Everything else we can sort out after that”




She just looked at him, frozen by his words, the situation, the utter destruction of her life. Suddenly she could not breathe, could not simply sit there. Dimly she realised that she had come to her feet, that she was desperately trying to fill her lungs with air whilst her whole body seemed to be wracked with shivers.

“No!”

It was anger that pushed the words through her clenched teeth, and curiously it was anger that gave her the power to speak.

“No, I will not marry you. I will not be held prisoner in the country because you do not want to lose your bargaining chip or because you feel you have an obligation to the child I carry. If you think my father would raise a finger for me then you are mistaken and you do not need to worry for the child. I am smart and I DO have an education - I will find a way to use it, even as a woman”

He had come out of his seat too, facing her - but she would not be intimidated, would not back down even though he towered over her by a good three inches. As he spoke his voice was deceptively mild.

“You are a fool if you think I do not recognise your intelligence or do not value your education. I did not hire you because you are a woman but because you are the smartest person I have ever met and the years since then have not disabused me of that impression. You are smart, loyal, courageous and warm in a way I will never be. But that is not even the reason why I hired you, not the whole reason at least. I hired you to keep you here, to have you under my roof if - when - you decided to discover your femininity. I have waited for you to follow your needs, your desires and missed the moment when you finally did. I am done waiting now.”

That last sentence was said with such vehemence that it surprised her, stunned her even. The Earl of Sussex never lost his composure, never spoke with passion.




“You are angry?”
She could hear the puzzlement in her own voice and it had an immediate effect on him. Storm clouds gathered in his eyes and the lines around his mouth stood out prominently. When he took a step towards her she instinctively retreated. Her calves hit the chair and she ignominiously fell into it. He wasted no time to follow, wedging his knee besides her thighs and keeping her captive with his larger body looming over hers. He was close enough that she could see the flecks of light brown in his brilliantly green eyes, could smell the scent of sandalwood and spice that seemed to emanate from his very core. She had never felt small, never felt vulnerable - but in this instance a strange heat rose in her that left her feel exposed and warm at the same time, that left her feeling strangely female. She was intensely aware of his body so close to hers, of his mobile lips only inches from her skin and somehow it let her realise her own body, her bound breasts and covered skin, in a way she had forgotten existed.

“Yes, I am angry. I am furious - furious that you decided to finally experiment with your femininity when I was not here to protect you. I am furious that you got hurt, and I saw your eyes when I returned, he might not have raped you but you still got hurt. I am furious that you were alone. God help me, I am furious that it was my brother you allowed the first taste of your body and, most importantly, I am furious that you have not come to me. That you have not asked for help but simply wanted to run away like a coward”

There was nothing cold left in his voice, no detachment, he let her feel the full power of his rage, of his disappointment, of his desire. It scattered her wits, dumfounded her until she was left with only the most basic fear and the need to meet his demand to bare her soul to him.

“I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be a woman.”

She saw the triumph in his eyes, knew he had recognised this as the surrender it was, even though she herself had not. And suddenly his lips were not distant anymore, they were close, so close. The kiss was not a gentle taking, not even a siege but a wholesale attack on her senses, demanding her capitulation, almost forcing it. His lips nipped on hers, his teeth a sensual threat on her flesh. Instinctively she opened her lips to meet his and was taken up in the wave of his desire, of his taste invading her very being, the feeling of his tongue fencing with hers overwhelming all other awareness. He took her very breath and seemed to replace it with his own. When he had thoroughly plundered her mouth, he moved far enough away to meet her gaze with his burning implacable eyes:

“I will be happy to teach you”

His confidence frightened her, chilled her to the bone. Would this be her punishment? Two months ago she had been stupid, she had trusted a man and had been burnt; now she found herself pregnant and her life in tatters but the one thing that could have destroyed her utterly she had preserved, her heart. Julius would demand all, would take every aspect of her being in his keeping, leave nothing untouched. She was not brave enough to risk that.

“No”

She tried to put every bit of conviction she could muster into that one sentence and for a moment she thought she might have succeeded. Then a slow smile stretched his lips.

“A compromise. You will grant me half an hour and if I can make you say “yes” within that time you will marry me tomorrow”

A challenge, a trade - so typical of him and the normalcy of that lured her in. She would give him half an hour to state his case and then leave with a good conscience. She nodded. She expected him to move back, to take up his usual pacing with which he prepared strategies for arguments in the House of Lords. Instead he demanded:

“Place your hands on the armrests and do not move them from there”

When his hands loosened her neckcloth and unbuttoned her shirt she knew she was in trouble. Her bindings fell away with barely a flick of his hand and suddenly she was nude to his eyes from her waist up. His eyes roamed her skin and somehow she felt caught in a spell of sensation before he even reached for her. His first touch was almost reverent, fascination burning in his eyes as his hands cupped her already sensitive breasts.

“Sweetheart, you have no concept of your own beauty.”

She heard the emotion in his voice, heard the lust and care, heard the love and started to believe tentatively. He first pressed a soft kiss to one nipple then to the other, allowing himself a taste, before he returned to her mouth, this time not in a forceful claiming but in a gentle entreaty. She went up in flames, felt her body liquify in a way she had not been able to expect and that was so different from the hasty coupling two months ago. And as his hands began to shape her breasts in a gently arousing massage she saw him with other eyes, saw not only the friend but the man. With that realisation her hands moved without conscious thought, moved to come around him and she breathed against his lips:

“Yes”

She was not sure if she had just surrendered to his expert manipulation or her own intellect - only sure that she did not want him to stop.

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