“Have you been with my husband, Harley?” Innocent as a girl, guileless as a kitten. Abigail’s fierce small body is thrust up against his back — her fierce sharp fingers are working their way past his gilt buttons.

“On occasion, yes. Our paths have been known to cross.”

“I shall say it more properly, then. I am a married woman now. Have you buggered my husband? Or been buggered by him, I suppose.”

“Certainly not, madam.”

“Only tell me one thing. When you are together, in your little room, what is it that you do together? He to you and you to him?”

"Don't be ridiculous. Lady or not, I should have you thrown out."

"You have made a mockery of my marriage." Abigail begins to cry, squinching her nose and pressing her lips together. It gives her rather the appearance of a small decorative ape.

"You've done a fine job of that all on your own, dear. The boy says you'll barely suffer him to touch your exquisite breasts."

"Did he really say 'exquisite'?"

Her ape eyes glitter.

"I added that. They look rather well." Harley peers at her. "You're not pregnant, are you?"

All sign of mock-grief has gone from her face. "As we have discussed, no. What have you done to my husband?"

"You want to know what I've done with your husband. I want to know what it is you do with the queen."

"Why, I serve her. I fetch, I carry. I dress and undress her."

"Abigail the favorite reigns like a king. Whatever might that mean?"

Harley pulls up a fistful of her skirts, slipping a hand down the downy plain of her thigh. In this light, the fine hairs on her body glint red. Perhaps she'll have a coppery bush.

"I give succor to the queen, like a good husband should. Is that criminal?"

She has freckles on her pretty shoulders. Harley presses his mouth there, raising a red-licked welt, and she swats at him.

"There are yet some things that only a man can do."

Harley turns her around and hoists her up — she's tall for a woman but lightly built, all that deprivation and scrubbing. His hands slip into in the pits of her knees, pressing her legs back and dislodging the garter of her left stocking — her tangling hands reach up to find his face, gouging at his lip and chin, before seizing on his neckcloth.

"Do go easy on me, I've just had that starched—"

She kisses him viciously, and drops back.

Harley slips his fingers between her legs like the pages of a book, finding the prim little entrance of her — she's already remarkably wet, which spares him some of the indignity of spitting on one's hand before getting down to one's business but serves as a testament to her retrograde desires. Ah, well.

His thumb works at her clit, slick and easy. She's only a small little thing, easy to lift into place and manipulate, but once planted she stands firm like a lioness, which seems commendable. The downy hill of her fills his hand. He can slip into the tightness of her back passage, as his long fingers manipulate her most female parts — she makes soft sounds, like pretty breathing, and tosses her head becomingly until a curl of hair snakes loose from its pin and tumbles down her throat. Harley bites at it and tugs.

No, he hasn't had Masham like this, on his back — the beautiful fool is happier on his belly, or face to face with their pricks in one another's hands like schoolboys at Eton. He has hairy legs, sinewed from riding, and the noises he makes are wholly involuntary — without pretenses. This girl and her uncannily wet cunt would demolish him, if not for the strange stingy games she plays — admittedly these games have served both of them in their fashion, they've sent Masham the equerry scampering to his bed for succor and release. If Abigail can't bear the work, there are others who will take it on.

She hasn't let go of his neckcloth. The cloth is wrapped around her hand in a tight sling — rather, he thinks, like a noose. Abigail pulls him down against her, and he makes a choked noise of annoyance. His erection throbs.

Something he does in between thrusts must find the last remaining speck of honesty in her — her soft cries begin to sound less like stagecraft and more like grim exertion. Less than pretty — so, he imagines, is the look on her face, but he's busy breathing shallow breaths against her pink throat with her right breast fumbled free from her gown. Her sharp pale nipple is snagged between his fingers.

And so it is, keeping his rhythm and enjoying the viselike tightness of her, the soft-hard snare of her legs wrapped around his waist — is she always like this, or is it something she's doing to keep him captivated? Is Sarah Churchill's service some seraglio of higher learning? Have the two of them fucked like this, is the real question, or if by having Abigail he is enjoying something that even royal prerogative cannot boast of knowing? Anne guards her royal prerogative jealously, for all that will get her.

Masham has a greedy body, hardy and yielding, and his wife is just the opposite — tight and keen and rigid as a diamond, like a woman who is practiced in the ways of men but no more patient with male weakness for it. She is choking the life from him as she goes, just as he nears the sharp bitter edge of climax, and the pleasure is exquisite.

The blackness swells up behind his eyes, and the sound of seagulls begins to sing in his ears. He rolls off, cock slipping loose, and steadies himself against the table; the impact sends a dish of pears rattling to the carpet. Abigail yelps, and he spends like a prize stallion all over her petticoats.

As soon as the first wave of pleasure has abated he's left with a throbbing pain in the head and an equally exquisite sense of embarrassment. When he returns to his senses, Abigail is tugging her skirts into straightness.

"That's what I've done to your husband. More or less." Harley props himself up on his hands, trying to catch his breath again. His throat is thickened and rattling.

"Has he ever choked you into unconsciousness?" Abigail asks sweetly, sweeping her little breast back into her shift with a practiced motion like the world's most unlikely wet nurse.

"No, I don't believe he's ever done that."

"Would you like him to? Or shall only I have the pleasure?"

"I wasn't unconscious, you silly slut, I was only stunned."

Abigail's small cold hand rubs at his collar — how experienced she must be in dressing and undressing, starching and pinning.

"Pay us a call some time. There are urgent matters to discuss."

*

"Lady Masham." Harley lowers his eyes politely.

"My husband has told me everything. It is just as you say."

Abigail is in her shift, and Masham in his shirt and stockings, led out by the hand like a prize-winning sheep; his brocaded garters are glinting in the candlelight. She looks attractively disheveled; he looks more prim than Harley has ever seen him, which suggests his wife has taken it upon herself to set the scene for both of them. There's pink in his cheeks, like a girl's.

Masham looks so sweet and so foolish, so absolutely gormless, that he cannot help but feel a pang. If they mean to make him look overdressed by comparison, they've succeeded. The two of them are like Adam and Eve, smooth and fair and foolish.

Harley casts off his wig and begins undoing his buttons.

"Well?"

Masham squares his shoulders, and looks appealing. "It's awfully late, Robert. You must be fainting away. Come to bed."

Masham has learned a thing or two about the art of seduction since beginning his tutelage — less ravishment in the dirt, more finesse after his fashion. Write a poem about that.

*

Wigless he feel quite naked.

Masham is on his hands and knees, a bridge of muscled back. Abigail slinks in and settles her hips against her husband's backside. He'll have to get her one of those pretty enameled toys with the straps, just to see her use it. Masham takes his cock with consummate boyish indignity — his cheeks are flushed and his hair is mussed, still more mussed when Harley presses a hand down on it to see the pretty bulging shape of his cock against Masham's cheek. The man nuzzles into it admirably, wet tongue like a soft pad, and only a little bumping of teeth.

Harley fucks his mouth, holding him by the hair — his mouth grows rosy and the choked sounds he makes are admirably spontaneous, underscored by the way he presses against Harley's hand. What a luxury, to be spread out on a feather-bed and not rutting and swearing in the dead leaves after the murder of a few pheasants. Abigail is only a pretty figure behind him, attractive in her dishevelment but treating their connection with all the delicacy of a milkmaid who's behind on the day's orders. Something she's doing back there is making Masham moan around his cock — it could be pleasure or distress, but in either case it's stimulating.

"What are you doing to him? Do enlighten me, I can't see."

"Fingering his arse while I play with his balls."

"Mm. Good."

Harley himself is having trouble catching his breath — a consequence of the tableau in front of him, and of the memory of Abigail's nasty choking hand tightening around his windpipe. Masham looks up at him with those enormous wondering eyes, and it makes his balls hitch.

"Colonel Masham, are you with us?"

His lips are fucked red, his chin is stringed with spit, and he nods.

When Harley has finished, he lets Masham collapse against the bedclothes; Abigail has moved on to doing something obscene with her mouth, frigging away at herself all the while, and the rigid sharpness of her braced arm makes it look quite vicious. When unstrung by orgasm he can do nothing more useful with himself than sprawl.

Some time later, Masham rolls over and kisses him on the mouth — not his devilish young wife, but Harley, in a pathetic gesture of trust before which he cannot help but open up. How is it that this man can have every conceivable privilege for a man of his rank and still not achieve a satisfactory shave? His stubbled lip rasps against Harley's mouth.

The poor beautiful idiot doesn't know what he's doing, what he's done. His trust is sweeter than anything else they've bargained for on these sheets, and no doubt more useful. Harley lets him up, tucking an arm over his shoulders and permitting the great unpainted brute to rest his head against him. Masham's sweat-damp hair exhales the perfume of sanders and civet. Harley can smell the oyster-salt of his own spending.

Abigail has red knees and elbows like a painted nymph; she wipes her hands on the bedlinen and slides her cold feet in under the crook of Harley's knees. Triste est omne animal post coitum, praeter mulierem gallumque. Every animal is sad after sex, save for women and cocks.