Peter Mainwaring, Viscount Herridon, fell in love with Amy in the Assembly Room at Bath. When he waylaid her in a moonlit garden and introduced her to erotic bondage and submission, he thought he had found his bride. But Amy, frightened of her response, fled and married Peter’s best friend John instead.
Amy loves John, but his gentle caresses leave her cold. When John confesses his unhappiness, Peter offers to help. He comes to Amy as a masked stranger and teaches her to embrace her desires. But when it is time to return to her husband, Amy realizes the masked man is Peter, and that she cannot give her heart or her body to John alone.
This short story highlights the experience of three individuals, all of whom are good and decent people, all of whom are looking for love and loving in their lives, but all of whom have a need for more than “vanilla” sex in their intimate relationships. The problem in the story is that both Peter and John have fallen in love with the same girl at practically the same time. Peter stages the encounter in the garden with the help of a friend, sort of trapping Amy so that he can let her see what a relationship with him would entail. He was delighted with her response but his delight lasted about 12 hours. He found her and her parents gone the next morning, and three weeks later she is married to his best friend. What he doesn’t know is that Amy had already decided to marry John. She did truly love him.
However, John’s determination to hide his “darker side” has wrecked havoc in his marriage. Amy is unresponsive and their intimacy has become a deadening and sorrowful matter between them. John is at his wits end and seeks Peter’s assistance and advice. Now Peter is delighted to once again exert control over Amy, knowing that she will respond fully. However, this time, John is watching the entire scene.
I think this one of those “good news/bad news” kind of situations. The ultimate resolution to Amy’s coldness and the involvement with John and Peter was not what any of them envisioned. In many ways it is not the happy outcome John had supposed, but it did solve the dilemma and it changed the course of their friendship with Peter, and John and Amy’s intimate relationship.
This is a very short story and there really isn’t a lot of time and space to develop this story more fully. Suffice it to say that this is most definitely a time of discovery for all three of these people. Peter and John freely admit their need for edgier sexual practices. John’s concern for treating Amy “like a lady” comes right out of the cultural prejudice that women who are “gently born and bred” are not to be introduced to or involved with the darker side of sexual practice. And as was often the case such cultural bias took the normal urges and needs of any woman to be of no account. It was really quite dehumanizing. It was also important that Amy take her body’s needs seriously and begin to celebrate her sexuality rather than be ashamed of it. That, too, was another prejudice that needed to fall by the wayside.
So this is a very short read–possibly too short for the content and issues involved–but I happen to think that perhaps it is still sufficiently thought-provoking. Not that the author or the reviewer are advocating any particular lifestyle. I can’t speak for the author on that score. But the deeper lesson is that every thinking person needs to make decisions about themselves and own up to who we are and to celebrate that rather than live a shame-based life. Each person is, after all, unique and wonderful.
I give this short story a 3.75 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr. J’s Book Place.
This book is available from Ellora’s Cave. You can buy it here in e-format.
Leave a Reply