‘It’s all right,’ she said and kissed me gently on the lips. ‘It’s a nightmare, nothing more.’
She put her arms round me and held me to her, rocking me. I found myself returning her kisses and with each peck the ache became stronger until I was desperate for relief from it. Mercy asked if I felt calmer and all I could do was nod. She blew out the candle, turned over, and promptly fell to sleep. I lay wide awake, certain I must be ill for the surely the ache shouldn’t have returned at Mercy’s kiss. A terrible thought occurred to me that I was truly sick and there was no cure. I stared into the darkness, sobbing, as lost as midnight. Mercy stirred once more and asked sleepily what was wrong.
‘Mercy, I think I have a fever,’ I blurted out.
‘Oh, no, my dear,’ said Mercy, hurriedly relighting the candle. ‘What is the matter?’
‘I have a terrible ache!’
‘Where?’ Mercy asked.
I couldn’t tell her, I was too embarrassed.
‘Where?’ she asked again.
‘In between my legs.’
‘Show me,’ she said.
I bunched up my nightdress so it was above my waist and pointed to my Venus mound.
Mercy fell back on the pillows in a fit of giggles. ‘My dear Tully. That is quality, so it is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When did this ache of yours start?’ she said, struggling to compose her face.
With eyes half closed and pulling my nightgown up further so that it hid my face, I made her promise not to whisper a word to any soul as to what I was about to tell her.
‘It started with the gentleman visitor.’
‘Oh sweet Lord. What gentleman?’ said Mercy.
I peeled back the nightgown from my eyes, for her voice had lost all its humour. I told her how the gentleman had found me as naked as the day I was born and how he had kissed me and how his fingers had the effect of making my body flame.
‘I thought it must be love. It seemed the only rational reason for the ache. But when you kissed me just now on the lips the same ache came back, so you see I think I must be ill.’
Mercy tried to stifle a laugh.
‘It’s not amusing,’ I said.
‘You are a noodle,’ she said. ‘You’re not ill. You’re as healthy as any other full-blooded female. Perhaps more so than others.’ She pulled the nightgown from my burning cheeks. ‘Shall I show you the remedy for your ache?’
‘Is there one?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said and kissed me, her tongue sweeter by far than that of the gentleman in the blue chamber, and her fingers more gentle. My whole body ignited on the point of bursting into flame. Her mouth by degrees – and such delicious degrees – found their way to my globes and stayed there while her hands progressed further down in between my legs, which she gently parted. Her finger then went into my wet purse and found the spot of all my ache, a hard pearl which she attended to with such care that I thought I might go wild if there wasn’t some release. My whole body started quaking and I felt I could endure it no more when, to my utter surprise, there was an explosion followed by the most exquisite sensation and the ache burst into a thousand fragments of joy. I let out a cry as a flood of warmth and glory filled me, and all was peaceful.
Without thinking or even considering the right and the wrong of what had taken place, I put my arms round Mercy and kissed her.
‘That,’ she said, stroking my hair, ‘is the remedy for your ache.’
I woke to find that I was curled up in Mercy’s arms and that she too was naked. She had a flat stomach and her Venus mound was covered in a lush bush of black foliage. Waking, she looked at me and kissed me and asked how my ache was.
I smiled. ‘Better. But still there.’
‘So is mine,’ said Mercy.
She opened her legs and, taking my hand, guided it down to the spot and kissed me with such longing that I felt my ache return with a vengeance. Afterwards, I told Mercy what Mr Smollett had said about the root of all evil. She said she had never heard anything quite so silly, and was a far better tutor in every way than dull Mr Smollett. Shortly after this, Mr Smollett and his root vegetable came to a pretty pass, which proved to be a good thing for I would have been obliged to use force to deter him if it had gone any further.
Like the boot boy, he suddenly declared his undying love for me.
‘Mistress Truegood,’ he said, ‘I am on fire.’ And he took hold of my hand and placed it firmly on his vegetable patch.
I said nothing but decided that come feathers and dust this would be the last lesson I had with Mr Smollet.
‘You want to see the root of all evil,’ he cried. ‘I know you do. You want to feel the passion that cannot be denied.’
And before I could say that due to Mercy I was now in a much better position to wait a while, he had quite undone himself to reveal a rather disappointing upright carrot.
‘Mistress Truegood, touch me,’ he pleaded.
‘No thank you,’ I said, ‘I would rather not.’
‘Please,’ he said, grabbing hold of his small root. ‘Put me out of my misery.’
The door to the chamber burst open.
‘Happily, sir,’ came the stern voice of Mrs Truegood.
I watched fascinated as the carrot shrivelled and became only good for compost.
‘You will leave this instant,’ said my stepmother.
And to my delight, Mr Smollet and the root of all his evils did just that.
But having seen my tutor’s shrivelled vegetable made me realise that there was something missing from Mercy’s lovemaking, something I longed to experience: not Mr Smollett’s root of all evil, more a man who possessed a true pole of pleasure.
Riddle for the Ladies
In what do good housewives take delight
Which though it has no legs will stand upright?
At the end it has a hole, it’s stiff and strong;
Thick as a maiden’s wrist and pretty long.
Yet women love to wriggle it to and fro
And take delight to watch it grow.
By giddy sluts it is sometimes abused
But by good housewives, rubbed before it’s used.
Now tell me, merry ladies, if you can,
What this must be that is a part of man?
You may think, sir, that I was corrupted by a wicked stepsister. But I was by far the keener player, by far the most inquisitive, the one who most desired to understand the joys to be found in our pleasure gardens. The new delights Mercy showed me made me look forward to bedtime, for I was still a prisoner of Milk Street. Mercy and the pleasure she brought were my only form of escape. In my body I began to find another