For a long time then they were face-to-face, which Eliza thought was as pleasant as this was likely to get. But after a while she got Bob to raise his chin and entrust her with his throat. While she was exploring that terrain she was undoing the top few buttons of his shirt, pulling it down off his shoulders as she did so, pinning his arms to his sides and exposing his nipples.
She locked her right knee behind his left, then shoved her tongue through a protective nest of hair, found his right nipple, and carefully nipped it. He twisted up and away from her. Pulling down hard on his trapped knee she drew her left leg up, planted her foot on the raised blade of his pelvis, and shoved. Bob rolled over onto his back. She came up from under him and wound up sitting on his thighs. A hard yank down on his breeches freed his erect penis while binding his thighs together. She pulled the knotted sheepgut from her stocking, stripped it down over him, straddled him, and sat down hard. He was distracted with pretending to be angry, and the sudden pleasure ambushed him. The sudden pain astonished her, for this was the first time a man had ever been inside Eliza. She let out an angry yell and tears spurted from her eyes; she shoved clenched fists into her eye-sockets and tried to control her leg-muscles, which were convulsively trying to climb up and off of him. She felt that he was rocking her up and down, which made her angry, but her knees were grinding steadily into the hard wood of the table, and so the sensation of movement must arise from light-headedness: a swoon that needed to be fought off.
She did not want him looking up at her like this and so she fell forward and struck the table to either side of his head with the flats of both palms, then bowed her head so that her hair fell down in a curtain, hiding her face, and everything below his chest, from Bob’s view. Not that he was doing a lot of sightseeing; he had apparently decided that there were worse situations he could be in.
She moved up and down on him for a while, very slowly, partly because she was in pain and partly because she did not know how close he might be to reaching his climax-all men were different, a particular man would be different according to the time of day, and the only way to judge it was by the rhythm of his breathing (which she could hear) and the slackness of his face (which she could monitor through a narrow embrasure between dangling locks of hair). By those measures, she was nowhere near finished, and a lengthy and painful grind awaited her. But finally he came complete, in a long ordeal of back-arching and head-thumping.
He took the first breath, the one that meant he was finished, and opened his eyes. She was staring directly back at him.
“I hurt like hell,” she announced. “I have inflicted this on myself as a demonstration.”
“Of what?” he asked, bewildered, stuporous, but pleased with himself.
“To show you what I think of honor, as you style it. Where was Abigail just now?”
Bob Shaftoe now tried to become angry, without much success. An Englishman of higher class would have huffed “Now see here!” but Bob set his jaw and tried to sit up. He had more success in that-at first-because Eliza was not a large girl. But then from behind the dazzling hair curtain came a hand, and the hand was holding a small Turkish dagger-very nice, a wriggling blade of watered steel-which closed on his left eyeball and obliged him to lie flat again.
“The demonstration is very important,” Eliza said-or growled, rather, for she really was very uncomfortable. “You come with high talk of honor and expect me to swoon and buy Abigail back for you. I have heard many men speak of honor while ladies are in the room, and then seen them abandon all thought of it when the lusts and terrors of the body overcame their noble pretensions. Like cavaliers throwing down their polished armor and bright battle-flags to flee a charging Vagabond-host. You are no worse-but no better. I will not help you because I am touched by your love for Abigail or stirred by your prating about honor. I will help you because I wish to be somewhat more than another wave spreading and spending itself on a godforsaken beach. Monsieur Mansart may build kingly chateaux to prove that he once existed, and you may marry your Abigail and raise up a clan of Shaftoes. But if I am to make a mark on this world, it will have something to do with slavery. I will help you only insofar as it serves that end. And buying the freedom of one maiden does not serve it. But Abigail may be of use to me in other ways… I shall have to think on it. While I think, she’ll be a slave to this Upnor. If she remembers you at all, it will be as a turncoat and a coward. You will be a miserable wretch. In the fullness of melancholy time, perhaps you’ll come to see the wisdom of my position.”
Now the conversation-if it could be called that-was interrupted by a mighty throat-clearing from the opposite end of the room, gallons of air shifting dollops of phlegm out of the main channel. “Speaking of Positions,” said a husky Dutch voice, “would you and your gentleman friend please find a different one? For since you’ve made sleep quite impossible I should like to eat. ”
“With pleasure, meinheer, I would, but your lodger has a poniard at my eye,” said Bob.
“You are much cooler in dealing with men than with women,” Eliza observed, sotto voce.
“A woman such as you has never seen a man in a cool condition, unless you were spying on him through a knot-hole,” Bob returned.
More throat-clearing from the owner: a hearty, grizzled man in his middle fifties, with all that that implied in the way of eyebrows. He had hoisted one of them like a furry banner and was peering out from under it at Eliza; typically for an astronomer who did his best seeing through a single eye. “The Doctor warned me to expect odd callers… but not business transactions. ”
“Some would call me a whore, and some shall, ” Eliza admitted, giving Bob a sharp look, “but in this case you are assuming too much, Monsieur Huygens. The transaction we are discussing is not related to the act we have performed…”
“Then why do both at the same time? Are you in such a hurry? Is this how it is done in Amsterdam?”
“I am trying to clear this fellow’s mind so that he can think straighter,” said Eliza, straightening up herself as she said it, for her back was getting tired and her bodice was griping her stomach.
Bob knocked her dagger-hand aside and sat up violently, throwing her into a backward somersault. She’d have landed on her head except that he caught her upper arms in his hands and spun her over-or something rather complicated and dangerous-all she knew was that, when it was over, she was dizzy, and her heart had skipped a few beats, her hair was in her face and her dagger-hand was empty. Bob was behind her, using her as a screen while he pulled his breeches up with one hand. His other hand had a grip on her laces, which he was exploiting as a sort of bridle. “You should never have straightened your arm,” he explained quietly, “It tells the opponent that you are unable to make a thrust.”
Eliza thanked him for the fencing-lesson by pirouetting in a direction calculated to bend his fingers backwards. He cursed, let go of her laces, and yanked his breeches up finally.
“Mr. Huygens, Bob Shaftoe of the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards. Bob, meet Christiaan Huygens, the world’s foremost Natural Philosopher.”
“Hooke would bite you for saying so… Leibniz is brighter than I… Newton, though confused, is said to be talented. So let us say only that I am the foremost Natural Philosopher in this room, ” Huygens said, taking a quick census of the occupants: himself, Bob, Eliza, and a skeleton hanging in the corner.