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"Falling stars!" declared Lady Damerel, leaning perilously out of the carriage, a feathered mask pushed back on her golden hair, and reaching towards the sky as if to pluck the shower of stars right out of the heavens. "Falling stars," she cried. "Falling stars, mermaids and a mandrake root!"
"And the Devils left foot too," replied her husband drily, sliding an arm around her waist and pulling her back towards his body, just in time to stop her being crushed as the carriage ran through a pair of heavily carved gates
"Stars by the sun are not enlarged but shown," said the lady. "You think I'm bosky. I'm not bosky, just a trifle foxed."
"A trifle foxed," he agreed, leaning back in his seat,"and enjoying the Roman night. The shooting stars attend thee. Cloudless climes and starry skies and your sweet mind at peace with all."
"Ah, Byron," she sighed. "Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Every woman should marry a rake." and she kissed him firmly on the lips.
Damerel returned her embrace with fervour, one hand moving from her waist to find the smooth curve of her breast. She dropped her head back, giving him free access to her neck.
"My rake," she sighed in satisfaction.
"Yours" he echoed and lowered his head again.
The carriage came to a halt and Venetia wriggled away, opening the door and jumping lightly down before the impassive Italian coachmen could climb down from his box to help her.
By the time Damerel extricated himself and moved around the carriage, his beautiful, desirable creature had slipped out of her evening slippers (best French silk, purchased in Paris), discarded her cloak on the pebbled carriageway and was spinning in slow circles, her arms held wide as she moved across the lawns of their honeymoon villa.
The Roman night was warm and moonlit, the servants discreet (and safely distant from the critical tongues of London Society) and Aubrey, having invited himself on his sister's honeymoon, was visiting a new-found acquaintance, a classical scholar, on a half ruined estate that they believed held the remains of an original Roman forum. Not that Aubrey would be shocked by Venetia's uncharacteristic indulgence in wine, but she would surely have been embarrassed in his presence tomorrow.
Damerel was several sheets less to the wind than his wife and during their tediously proper engagement he had proven his ability to submit to the strictures of the polite world, behave impeccably in public and even charm his intimidating Aunt Stoborough. But now, he was free from such restraining influences, and the slender form moving towards the shrubbery was deeply alluring. He abandoned himself to the pleasant thrum of wine in his own blood and followed.
He caught her in his arms, just as she rounded a full-size stone lion, and quickly manoeuvred her so she was trapped between his body and the lion's curved back.
She laughed up into his face. "I," she declared, "have a bone to pick with you, my dearest friend." She raised one finger and poked it at his chest. "Yes," she said, "a bone, a bone, the tongs and bones..."
"You have a bone," he said, taking advantage of her lack of coordination to nip the offending finger firmly between his teeth and suckle gently on its tip. "And a lovely bone it is too, encased in delightful, succulent flesh."
"No distractions!" she cried. " You promised me an orgy, a fine Italian orgy. I expected concubines and carnal companie, but tonight was a bacchanalia."
He trailed his tongue down her finger and dropped slow kisses into the palm of her hand and down the tender skin of her inner wrist, pulling her closer to him as he went. "And did you dislike your bacchanalia, my dear delight?" he asked her.
"Yes... no... O Damerel, do that again..." she murmured and he grinned as he loosened her bodice and slipped her dress from her shoulders.
"It should have been an orgy of a party indeed," he said seriously, between the kisses he gave her emerging bosom. " A Masquerade Ball, in the middle of the Roman Spring, in the house of a notorious Italian Marchese. But I do believe the orgy goers were in their own little alcoves and wandering through the palace gardens. My attention was all for the fair fatality I was dancing with; she ravishes my heart, for beauty's self she is when all her robes are gone; my body hungers only for her."
"And do I ravish your heart?" She asked, with a husky sensuality that had come as naturally to her in their bed as the art of polite conversation did in a London drawing room. A quick study, his Venetia, and passionate.
"You do, you do," he declared, "most Admir'd Venetia."
"Then," she said, "I think you owe me my own orgy, now." She pulled him, half stumbling, down to the soft grass. The wild, intoxicating scents of jasmine and magnolia filled the air.
"Your own orgy," he said thickly. "Come prove some new pleasures with me... my lovely one, my heart. Let me unpin that spangled breastplate," he gasped, matching actions to his words. "Two hundred years to adore each breast... My life, my love, my heart... my own dear delight." He moaned as she ran her hands down his body and abandoned himself to pleasure and joy.
The End
This story is full of references, because of course Damerel and Venetia would make love in quotations and, like Lord Peter Wimsey, they would both find it easy to get drunk on words. Sources are as follows -- special brownie points to anyone who manages to identify every use I've made of them.
John Donne (Song, Love's Growth, The Bait, To His Mistress Going to Bed)
Lord Byron ("She Walks in Beauty like the Night, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
Andrew Marvell (To His Coy Mistress)
William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Nights Dream)
Robert Herrick (the Night Piece to Julia, to Anthea Who May Command Him Anything)
Ben Jonson (Eupheme)
Aurelian Townshend (in Remembrance of the Ladie Venetia Digby)
An Anonymous Madrigal
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