Chapter 10

Sarah

"The greatest pleasure of life is love."

― Euripides

Later that afternoon, as Sarah walked back to Ivy Cottage with Ambrose, she had occasion to think on the day's events. These must have been on her brother's mind too, for no sooner had they put some distance between themselves and Stanton Hall than he spoke, saying, "Daniel did not mean to badger you about Benjamin today. It is just that he is desperate to know what is going on with him."

"I could see it."

"You were quite right to keep Benjamin's confidence," he went on. "And Daniel understood, although he is cut up about it." He threw her a questioning look. "How bad is it with Benjamin?"

She sighed. "It is bad. Do not mistake me. He is in sound health physically. But Benjamin's is a gentle soul, and there is no place for gentleness in war." On further reflection, she added, "I often wonder what would have been if by an accident of fate, we had been born in America. Remember how Father considered emigrating there for a while, but Mother was set against it?"

"Yes, I remember it well," he said thoughtfully. "It makes me wonder how I would have managed. I do not know if you would class me a gentle soul, but I am not sure how I would ever go about taking another person's life."

"What if I were in danger and our home about to be attacked?"

He smiled. "You have me there. I suppose then, I would kill to keep you safe."

"As would I," responded Sarah. "War makes us do things out of necessity that we would otherwise never consider doing."

They had by now reached the front gate that led to their cottage. Ambrose unlatched it and let his sister through. In ponderous silence, they walked up the path to the door, which Ambrose opened. Once inside, he turned to her. "It is several hours yet until dark. What are your plans for the rest of this day?"

"I thought perhaps to work on my railway."

He placed an affectionate arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "I thought as much. Then, will you excuse me while I go read in my study?"

"Of course. I will bring a tray there later in the evening, and we can have a light supper together."

He smiled in acquiescence and let her go. Sarah climbed the stairs to her room. First thing was to divest herself of her Sunday clothes and put on the brown cambric gown she usually wore when doing her train modelling work. Once that was done, she headed down the stairs again to the small parlour room at the back of the house that was for her exclusive use.

In one corner of the room, a large table was set up with the miniature railway project that Benjamin had started with her two years ago. It would take months or even years to complete, but Sarah was in no hurry. Most days, she spent a few hours here, adding new sleepers to the track she was building or working on a model of the Iron Duke, a favourite locomotive of hers.

The work was laborious and long, as Sarah had to fashion most of the parts herself. In this, she was using the skills of jewellers and clockmakers. The rails she had fashioned from brass rod and the sleepers were made from kindling wood, into which she had inserted pins. She then soldered the rails to the pins, carefully measuring to ensure that they were the right distance apart. The finished track, which ran from one end of the table to the other, was very nearly complete.

Far more of a challenge to build was the locomotive. Here, she had used the services of the clockmaker in Witney to help fashion the parts she required—wheels, valves, piston rods and so forth—based on the detailed drawings she had furnished him with. For the tender and the cab, she had procured thin sheets of brass from the ironmonger, which she cut, bent and soldered to the shape required.

It was a labour of love, and one of which she was proud. Strangely, it gave her a feeling of closeness to her friend who was mired in war on the other side of the world. Benjamin. As she sat at her modelling table and began to work, her reflections returned to him. Over the past two years, she had received nearly a dozen letters from him. The first few had been imbued with a youthful optimism, high spirits and a dash of salacious humour as he shared intimate details of his sexual conquests and wondered about her progress in pleasuring herself at night. As ever, his missives were distinguished by their searing honesty. She had longed to write back to him and give an account of her nightly adventures, but of course, she could not.

Over time however, she had noticed a subtle shift in the tone of his letters. As the novelty of being in uniform wore off, he began to hint at his fatigue with it all. One turning point, of course, had been his first kill. The face of the man whose life he took haunted him for weeks. It had been a young man, perhaps no more than twenty years old. They had come face to face in battle and both raised their guns. His had been fastest to discharge, hence why he and not the young Confederate soldier was alive to tell the tale. That first kill was soon followed by others, as is demanded by war. With each life snuffed, something too was extinguished in Benjamin, his natural optimism replaced by something darker—a bleak outlook of his fellow man.

Then came his last letter. It was written in the aftermath of the bloodiest battle in the war so far. Throughout it all, miraculously, he had remained unharmed. His friend, Jimmy, was not so fortunate, succumbing to a bullet wound some days later.

In the aftermath, Benjamin had taken himself to the nearest house of ill repute, desperate to seek comfort for his grief in the soft flesh of a woman. With unsparing detail, Benjamin told of how, drunk on whisky and rage, he had sunk himself repeatedly into this unknown woman, wanting desperately to achieve release. Afterwards, he had laid his head on her plump breast and cried. The whore, an older woman of a kindly disposition, had held him to her and soothed him. Sarah had read the letter and wept.

That night in bed, she had stripped naked and touched herself, all the while imagining she was that kindly whore and that Benjamin had come to use her. She'd pictured herself being taken roughly by him while she held him tight, whispering soothing words of love, feeling his heavy weight upon her and the whisky on his breath. With each furious thrust of his cock in her, she had held on even tighter, subsuming his anger and despair into her welcoming body. Her hand on her clitoris had stroked roughly, frantically, in an echo of Benjamin's brutal thrusts, and she had orgasmed so strongly it had left her breathless.

Afterwards, she had extinguished the light and slept, her dreams crowded with an amalgam of visions—a bloodied battlefield followed by smoky rooms filled with desperate soldiers and whores rutting together, then Benjamin crying on her naked breast. She had awoken in a sweat and with a pounding heart. Drawing a deep breath, she had got out of bed and washed away the evidence of her orgasm. She had dressed with care and headed for church with her brother. Then, seating herself on the eighth row, she had looked at Mr Templeton and allowed herself to drift into the easy familiarity of her infatuation with him, sealing away the pain, anguish and ecstasy of last night into a hidden compartment of her mind.

She sighed now, thinking about it. This was how it had been with her these past two years since Benjamin had first introduced her to the wicked art of pleasuring herself. At night, she escaped into delicious fantasies, playing herself into the role of whatever buxom widow or comely maid Benjamin described to her in his letters. She would touch herself, imagining it was his fingers on her, his cock inside her, and she would reach her orgasmic peak. She had tried once or twice to imagine herself with Mr Templeton, but that had not worked. It was Benjamin that owned her at night.

Thoughts of Benjamin when the evening came co-existed with tantalising thoughts of Mr Templeton during the day. It was as though she led two separate lives—one as an upright spinster who daydreamed of the handsome but unattainable gentleman she loved, and one as a voluptuous vixen who filled her mind with wicked thoughts of her friend while pleasuring herself at night. If ever she were to marry, she supposed then she would put a stop to this strange double life she was leading, but as that prospect seemed unlikely, she thought it fair to continue to indulge in her nightly secret obsession for a faraway friend—one she was unlikely ever to meet again.