So I don't usually do this, but this is way too hilarious not to share with my very limited audience. Over at BNaBBT, we're currently writing a group romance novel and it's absolutely amazing. This thread has made my whole day better and made me cry with laughter. So without further ado, I present 'The Throbbing BNaBBT Romance Novel':
(usernames eliminated to protect the guilty - ie, myself)
Lady Rowena Rebecca Roxana Rhiannon von Reichardt de Vere, known as "Kiki" throughout the countryside, stood on the rocky cliff facing the grey, heaving sea. Like the sea itself, but less grey, her ample yet pert breasts heaved with pride as she surveyed the wildly beautiful landscape, which was also like her appearance. The wildly beautiful part, that is. For Kiki was more stunningly beautiful than any woman alive. Her thick and shining locks of hair were like carved and polished ebony, falling in loose curls to her ample yet pert buttocks. Her magical eyes were changeable and fascinating--richly violet at dawn and twilight, vivid emerald at noonday and half-past four, twinkling sapphire at breakfast time and during periods of mild ennui. Her mouth was as luscious as a crushed rosebud, but not as disorganized-looking. Now it drew into a surprised moue as it saw a ship loom forbiddingly on the horizon. One ivory hand came up to her small yet pert chin in consternation as the shocking thought oozed through her mind--could it be he? No! Never! Not now! Not after--and yet the flags bore his colors. Turning swiftly, she flitted up the path to the manor house, knowing she must return before he arrived. But it was too late.
Kiki lifted her skirts of red velvet and climbed the stairs to the manor house. She never knew that her husband could return after such a long time at sea. Years had passed since that fateful storm when nearly all ships at sea were lost. When Kiki heard the news of the tragic storms, she flung herself, bosom-first, into her bed laden with satin pillows. There, she sobbed, her chest collapsing with each subsequest wail. She would never ever feel the tender and passionate caresses of her husband, Lord Beau Hunter Spermanius Jack Knife Blade von Reichardt de Vere. Kiki always used to whisper in his ear during their sunset to sunrise sessions of love, "Oh, Hardty... you make my desire well up like a kettle abouut to boil over. I cannot contain my passion and must unleash my pert breasts from their bodice prison. Take me, Take me now!" But alas, she lost it all when his ship was no longer heard from. And Kiki sadly mourned the loss of her husbad. Until, one day she met him.
As Reginald Gerard Rohan Friedrich von Eckelhart von Schniztelheinden von Hendrikson von Gottfriedelson, Prince of Lower-Upper Saxonlandfried approached the manor, his eyes settled upon a lithe form in a distance, one whose luscious curves remained burned in his memory even after his attempts to banish them in the arms of a steady parade of similarly curved wenches over the past months. At the mere sight of her tousled locks blowing in the salty sea breeze, he felt an uncomfortable tightening in his britches. The time being half-past noon, he recalled that her eyes were likely at his favorite hue - a shade transitioning from the emerald hues of noontime to the cerulean/azure blend of the late afternoon, when they held in them a sparkle like the rays of the sunlight hitting a calm ocean on a sunny day.
Gods he had missed her. Her body called out to him like a siren song, and he could swear that he could smell hints of her unique perfume carried in the salty sea breeze - a mix of roses and vanilla and lavender, with just a hint of citrus thrown in for good measure. They had been passionate, torrid lovers for months after she had attempted to recover from her husband's death the best way she knew how, but he knew not what he would do now that he had himself brought the man who legally possessed her, who could be considered his enemy, back home after years spent in captivity rather than in the watery grave they had believed him to lie in.
The oak door creaked like her old bed frame as she pushed it open. It was hard under her hand, hard like the sculpted muscles that she so often felt moving beneath Reginald's supple, tanned skin. A frisson coursed through her body, remembered pleasure and fear; both the remembered fear of discovery and the new fear of what might happen should her husband return alive. She stopped in the door frame to allow her eyes to adjust, trapped like an exquisite dragonfly in a spiderweb of light and darkness, the sun still gilding her back, the shadows of the manor's front hall a mask of darkness caressing her face. Her thoughts raced 'round and 'round, her heart pounded. Her head was filled with so many things: long-extinguished hope, her love for the husband she thought lost forever, the newer joy she'd found in Reginald's strong arms, the pain of their recent parting, the longings for him she couldn't deny, the knowledge that she might lose any chance for that new love with the return of the first, and the memory of her lord's fierce jealousy. There was movement on the far side of the hall, near the hearth, and it stopped all of those thoughts dead, dead as she'd once thought the man who turned to face her now was. Lord Beau Hunter, his face lined, his once lustrous chestnut hair now limp and grey, his tall frame now shrunken, stood in his hall once more.
"Beau...regard!" she half-whispered, her mind racing like a greyhound trapped in a circular rabbit farm during the birthing season. "You're alive!" "Yes, my darling." the withered man croaked. "Alive, and still man enough to love you!" He lurched forward on spindly legs, still bearing the scars from the shackles that had held him fast in Baron Schwartzehiney's dungeon for so long. He held out pale and shaking arms, and Kiki hesitantly moved into them. Her breasts heaved not from excitement, but dread--nevertheless, heave they did, and mightily, with lots of jiggling. Over Beau's slumping shoulder she caught the burning gaze of Lord Reginald Gerald etc. etc., and her eyes skipped over the violet spectrum altogether and went totally black with furious passion. Why? Why now? And then Beau's frail body quivered in her arms, a quiver that could only mean one thing.
One thing alone. Kiki could tell that her once verile husband couldn't sweep her off her feet and up the stairs as he used to. So, gathering her skirts with one hand, she cradled the remains of her husband in the other arm, and led him up the steps, snarling when her manservant, Jacques, attempted to take her place. Anger became her - like an ember, she smoldered.
She could feel Reginald's eyes on her backside, burning with fiery intensity, much like their short lived passion. Her life must be different now, serving her husband's much declined needs, but perhaps, someday, her devoted, tender nursing would bring him back a degree of the man he was - the man she had loved.
She approached their bedroom, realizing how much it had changed since the last time he had slept in their bed.
"Gently, gently my darling," Kiki cooed, slowly easing her husband's limp frame to the mattress, pulling the brilliantly-decorated quilt over his body. "Rest now. I will bring you some hot water." As she turned to go, Kiki felt a hand grasp her wrist.
"Kiki... are you ashamed of me?" his voice, once so full and masculine, was as weak as a starved kitten.
"Oh my darling... let's not worry about that just now. The important thing is that you are home. Let me take care of you." Kiki smiled at him, but was alarmed when she did not feel the same passion she had felt before. She decided not to worry about it, and gently kissed his forehead. "I will be back shortly."
She pulled back the curtain on the enormous window, and quietly made her way back down the stairs, her mind as turbulent as the ocean currents that had brought her husband home again.
She had scarcely made the third landing on the stairs--or was it the fourth? Von Etc. Etc. Manor was so very vast--when an iron hand in a velvet glove gripped her wrist and pulled her into an alcove. She went icy with fear, then melted with laughter as she realized that the valet, Crookstink, was jesting with her again, using his false metal hand to play tricks as usual. "Oh, Crooky," Kiki sighed. "Lord Whoozits is home again, and so very ill. Whatever shall I do?" Crookstink leered and winked, but as was his custom, said nothing intelligible. Kiki shook off his prosthetic hand--how was it that iron could feel so damp all the time?--and continued downstairs. As she approached the front door, she sensed a masculine form behind her, and her breasts heaved anew, even more so than usual. Before she could turn, Reginald's voice rasped hotly in her left ear. "Well, my lady...and what now?"
"Oh, dearest Reginald," Kiki cried as her shapely bosoms swayed. "I must attend to my husband. I cannot abandon him now that he returned," she said, tears falling down her skin onto her milky cleavage.
"What about me, Kiki? Have I not returned to you, too?" he said, staring into Kiki's face, his eyes brooding pools of indigo.
"Not now, Reginald. Beau needs me," she said, trying to stifle the passions that were ready to burst inside of her, ready to flood her body, screaming for his love to fill her.
"I shall not wait much longer," said Reginald gravely, but he caught hold of Kiki's hand, and caressed its velvet skin with his hungry kisses. Knowing she couldn't contain herself much longer, Kiki forced herself to escape him, hurrying down the corridor, not looking back.
Little did either of the forlorn lovers knew that one of the parlormaids, Carmelita, had witnessed the entire scene.
Having braved the fetid kitchen and the equally fetid cook in order to oversee the preparation of a tempting dish for her enfeebled returned spouse, Kiki bore the luncheon-tray up the endless and confusing staircases, with no help other than the assistance of the head butler, Mandible, and a pair of ill-favoured scullery-maids. As they passed Crookstink, still lurking in his customary alcove, Mandible winced and spat, in memory of the hereditary feud that blighted their respective families.
Kiki assumed a gay aspect as she entered the bedchamber where the unprepossessing form of her lord lay gumming his jaws together under the satin quilt. "Bashed partridge with quince mayonnaise, your favourite, sir!" she trilled, though her eyes had turned the dull grey of a wet November afternoon, a sure sign of deceit.
A handsome young boy-child ran into the room, and began to bounce up and down on the coverlet. With each bounce, Sir Beau H. Spermanius &c. made a gentle retching noise.
"And who is this young starveling, eh?" he croaked genially between retches. Mandible, in attendance at the door, winced anew.
"Why, my lord, he is....he is your son, of course, Beauregard Peregrine de Fenestratius Coxwain Euphrates de Cuckoldson, born during your regrettable sojourn abroad," faltered Kiki, her eyes inadvertently glowing an adulterous red.
"But why is he mixed-race?" snarled her husband suspiciously, heaving himself up on one withered elbow.
Kiki's eyes abruptly dropped off the colour spectrum and became black and white.
"Oh, you foolish, fond old man!" she burbled. "Why, 'tis but a touch of the sun, nothing more!"
"But he looks Chinese!" Beau ejaculated.
His words transported Kiki back in time, to the torrid embraces of a sturdy seaman by the name of Ronald Chen, who had briefly entangled her in his swaying hammock before weighing anchor and departing for parts unknown......
Her bosom quivered, but only faintly. It had been a long time ago. "Eat your partridge, dear," she cooed absently.
From behind the secret peephole in the secret room that connected to the secret passageway that had conducted him so many times to the silken curls between Kiki's thighs, Reginald watched with detached, cynical amusement as Kiki tended to her invalid husband. Whatever doubts Reginald had had about saving the decrepit old man had quickly been pushed aside. He would never be able to satisfy Kiki's insatiable lust now that Reginald had tutored her in the ways of love for so many lustful nights.
Once again, he found his groin throbbing at the mere thought of her, and the heady waft of her scent through the air, that vanilla-rose-lavender-citrus blend with a newly added hint of jasmine did little to help matters. She had been a delightfully innocent creature when first he'd expressed his true feelings to her; he still recalled how her (as it had been twilight at the time) violet eyes had looked up at him in wonderment as he had reached down to kiss her, to cup her pert yet ample milky white breasts in his hands, their color almost entirely obscured by her pupils, so heavily dilated with lust for him...oh yes, they had spent many, many heated nights between silken sheets in the throes of passion.
If Beauregard thought he even stood a chance with his wife, he had a nasty surprise coming to him.
As he mused, his breeches swelling slightly with frustrated amour, Reginald felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned swiftly to find the alluringly plebeian parlourmaid Carmelita at his side.
"Señor," she whispered menacingly. "Yo sé lo que hace usted aquí. Acabo de ver un beso muy caliente entre usted y la señora. ¿Puede usted explicarme eso?"*
"I'm frightfully sorry, I don't speak Turkish," said Reginald urbanely. Carmelita regarded him from beneath her sombre, brooding eyebrows and revised her estimate of his intelligence downward.
"I have seen you kissing Madame Kiki," she explained, her (always) dark eyes flashing. "I know the truth -- that my mistress is also your mistress! What are you prepared to pay for my silence?"
Underneath her starched maid's gown palpated the bust of a passionate woman, Reginald could tell. He contemplated taking her there and then, but no, the wench must be dealt with in a less pleasurable, but more lasting manner.
He drew his sword.
He drew his sword...which had been partially concealing a purse. The swollen red velvet bag hung from the golden cord which was slung carelessly around his breeches. Briefly Carmelita's limpid eyes lingered on that area of the man which told her that only moments before, Reginald had been imagining the heavenly union of their earthly bodies but suddenly a sound drew her attention away from the thought of how it would feel if his muscular arms were pinning her against the wall, while his mouth discovered that the scent of flowers which followed her everywhere she went, and which he had so far been unable to identify, was nothing more or less than the scent of Carmelita herself. A heady perfume which had singled her out as a child in the tiny mountain village where she grew up. The other children had realised with that uncanny ability that children have that there was something different about her. It was almost as if she didn't belong there...as if she should not have been born to a peasant widow who was at least 60 years older than her own daughter.
A sigh escaped from her heart-shaped lips as she remembered the loneliness of village life. Her blind mother had not noticed it, she had been too busy weaving baskets and trying to buy a little extra food to add to the few meagre scraps they ate every night. But Carmelita knew she was different. Mothers told their sons to stay away from her and the local girls teased her when they noticed her budding breasts and the soft silky hairs that had started to grow under her arms...and elsewhere. As Carmelita had started to develop a woman's body, and a woman's passions, she had been sent away. But not before she had been introduced into the world of passion and deceit, love and hate, hope and fear, by Carlos, the young gardener at the monastry...but that had been long ago, another lifetime and Carmelita had seen many things since then...
The sound was the sound of jewels falling to the table. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds...the myriad of colours were reflected in the pools of Carmelita's dark eyes...
"Here, cherie...that's Turkishlike, is it not? As many as you can fit in your hand--but the first breath that crosses your lips after you mention Lady Kiki's...indiscretions...will be your last. Capisce?" "Si, senor." Carmelita scooped up a handful of beautiful yet worthless colored glass chunks as Reginald hid a devious smile. Surely the silly doxy would try and sell them and be richly punished for her scheming. His scheming was perfectly fine, though--that much he knew. He turned his attention back to the peephole, but Kiki had left the room, leaving only Beau and Crookstinks, who was fumbling and mumbling in the corner. Reginald moved down the secret corridor, emerging from behind the frame of a gloomy portrait of The Most Right Reverend Lord Magistrate Burgomaster Beauregard Beaumont Theodoricus von Sleichenhardt the IV, Esq. Kiki awaited him there, her eyes a pale silvery-blue with little brownish flecks--a perplexing sign indeed. Her breasts heaved and quivered as she murmured "Reggikins, darling--you must come with me at once. I fear that I have not been entirely honest with you. In the cellar there is...something...that you must see. Then I will explain all to you, my dearling. Follow me." He followed her trail of vanilla-lavender-rose-citrus-jasmine, entwined now with a curious scent of not-so-fresh hard-boiled eggs, down the dank and crusty stairs to the cellar. As she lit the lantern hanging on the wall, he nearly collapsed to his knees. "'Swounds, it can't be! By the rood, that's--that's--"
It was a lich. A gruesome, charnel-house, writhed, twisted, dried-up bony thing, even more decrepit than Kiki's husband and certainly more dead, yet preserved in its ghastly wizened posture by some strange embalmatory effect of the cellar air.
"It can't be!" cried Reginald, loosening his neckerchief frantically. Yet it was.
The hideous mummy that stared unseeingly at them from mostly empty eyesockets wore round its neck a large golden pendant that proclaimed in flowing script, "Yes, it is I, Gregor Faustus Georg Friedrich Turdspine von KittyKat-Hoffenpfeiffen-Spurbourg-Rhinewanker von Gottfriedelson, King of Lower-Upper Saxonlandfried and of many other lands gained by rightful conquest! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Reginald fell to his knees. "Why, it is the grotesquely mummified corpse of my father, whom we all thought had been eaten by wolves during the Winter of the Long Black Night of Menacing Snow When the River Froze Over In October and Didn't Unfreeze Till, Oh, Mid-Mayish!"
Kiki fell onto his lap and began to massage his inflated pectorals, weeping out of eyes that had assumed a nearly viridian hue. "I feared it was true. Alas, Reginald, what are we to do? For this is my father too, as I learned only last night from the dying confession of my old nurse Rattlepants! It seems that my mother and he had a shameful liaison that resulted in my birth! Woe be upon us, Reginald, or should I call you.... BROTHER! (And uncle to my sweet little Beauregard, too)."
Reginald froze; his eyes bulged nearly out of their bleary sockets at the shocking starkness of the truth. He swore mightly; he moved as though to thrust the beauteous Kiki aside but instead his brawny arms reached out with a will of their own and grasped her close, so that their bodies heaved in perfect sychronization. Each of them thought the same: is it any wonder we are so insanely drawn to one another, when we are of the same blood, the same flesh? But for our flesh to touch is an abomination that cannot be tolerated!
Each of them thought: "I must give you up! But, my darling, I cannot do it! How can I stand a life without your touch; an existence in which we are sentenced to love and love each other but never again merge our bodies in heaving passion!" He thought: "Shall I never crush your full, pouting ruby lips against mine? Never again caress the perfect alabaster whiteness of your porcelain breast? Shall our strong young bodies never merge their firm flesh in that ultimate act of love and passion?" She thought: "Shall I never feel your strong, safe arms crush my bosom to your manly chest? Shall I never feel the that rigid thrusting inside me ever again?" Both of them thought, simultaneously: "This is so right, this love and passion that unites us body, mind, and soul. I cannot do it! I cannot give you up!
It was Kiki who broke the silence. "My darling Reginald, how could we not have known! All those names that start with R--clearly we are of the same blood!
Reginald hung his head in an agony of grief and neck pain. "Worse yet, my darling...it is worse than you thought. For on the night when my father had a political assignation to impregnate your mother, thereby nullifying her claim to the Childless Superpower Throne, he couldn't bring himself to do it. I know you loved your mother, Kiki, but you must know--her nickname in the court was Foulcrotch von Scheissethighs. And so--my God! how can this be!--my father sent me in to do the filthy deed! Kiki...I am your father!" Kiki tore herself away from Reginald, shrieking in horror and disgust. "NO! No...it is too much like some strange moving pictures about a great war in the very stars themselves! And yet also too terribly like a wretched manuscript about the forbidden love of one family member for another, locked in the attic of sadness like the flowers of Hell! I cannot bear it!" Kiki fled up the cellar stairs, passing a moist Crookstinks who gibbered at her amiably. She dashed into the parlour, her agitated bosom rising and heaving and jiggling like a sack of angry kittens. What now? To whom could she go for help and hard, thrusting comfort?
Her mind was a whirl with emotion. How could she not have realized? Suddenly everything made sense! Truly, she had noticed that her smile and Reginald's complimented each other, and her hair and his matched almost exactly. She had noticed that he had a slight angle to his right pinky toe...
Her slipper flew across the floor, and Kiki's eyes widened. Her toe was the same! Reginald's claims were true! "NOOOOOOOOO!" Kiki crumpled to the floor, sobbing mercilessly against a decorated vase, which was leftover from Kiki's own mother. The mother she inherited her strange eyes from.
How could this have happened? She had had many lovers since her husband's departure, but none so dear to her as her sweet Reginald... whom she may never have again.
Kiki shook with inconsolable grief, her world as she knew it falling apart, not hearing the approaching footsteps.
The one-handed valet, Crookstinks, had followed her, strangely drawn by the scent of her vanilla-lavender-rose-citrus-jasmine-hard-boiled-egg body odour, now infused with the essence of pure despair.
"Oi've over'eard it all," he mumbled semi-understandably. "'Twere bad enough givin' the wounded lord a pair o'horns an' a bastid son. Now ye must be carryin' on with yer own kin. Tell me, child, fer me eavesdroppin' skills is on the wane, what relation exactly is hunky Marster Reginald to yerself?"
"He's my brother!" sobbed Kiki. Crookstinks languorously drew off his velvet glove and slapped Kiki across her dewy, alabaster face.
"He's my father!" she shrieked. Crookstinks hauled off and hit her again.
"He's my brother!" Kiki wailed, and her eyes turned a colour that never was on land or sea. Crookstinks looked bemused for a moment, then slapped her again.
"He's my father!" Kiki choked, her bottom-like cheeks now covered in the hideous marks of iron fingers. The said fingers descended once again.
"He's my brother-----AND my father!" gushed Kiki in a torrent of hot yet maidenly (surprising, really) tears. She was incorrect, of course, yet the answer satisfied something deep, deep inside Crookstinks' humble breast.
"Ar," he said simply, and quietly limped away.
Kiki allowed herself the luxury of heaving for a while longer, collapsed in the velvet curtains of the window seat. Her plump, fuzzy cat took the opportunity and oozed over her many skirts to make a place on her ample lap.
'Oh, Tory,' she told it, 'how can I love him as a woman, and not as a daughter or a sister? What have I gotten myself into?'
Tory stretched out and dug it's claws into her white thighs, making her wince and bringing tears to her now ochre hued eyes. 'I cannot do this,' she said, throwing the betraying animal from her lap, 'I cannot love where I do not! Now what is my duty? I think I must take my child and retire to a monastery, living the rest of my life in service to God and his servants!' The idea of being enclosed for the rest of her life in a building with hundreds of single men was frankly alluring, but instead, she sank dejectedly back onto the velvet cushion.
'No, my duty is here, with the man who needs me. How can I ever escape?' But then, an epiphany struck her admittedly dim brain. 'Oh, maybe Beau will perish soon! He has lost all of his former strength and muscles - surely his life cannot be far behind?!' She sprung up with renewed hope and hustled about finding a better way for her husband to die. 'One problem at a time, Kiki, one problem at a time.'
As Kiki made her way back up the stairs, her son--what was his name again? Beau Jr.? Other Beau? yes, that would do--Other Beau ran to her and flung his arms around her waist. "Oh, Mummy! I'm so glad you brought me out to show to the funny-smelling old man! Please don't make me go back to the nursery!" Untangling his arms from around her, Kiki said absently, "There, there, dear. Go find Nursie and have her sing those nursery rhymes you're so fond of."
"But Mummy! I'm eleven years o--"
"SHUT UP YOU LITTLE SHIT! Mummy's busy." Squelching her irritation with a mighty heave of her tumultuous breasts, Kiki patted Other Beau on the head and pushed him on his way down the stairs. He'd be fine. Young children were so flexible. Flexible. Yes! That was it! Her plans, like her beloved son, must be flexible! Never mind her ailing husband! He could gasp on for a bit without her--she must go to London and see the King himself. Or the Queen, depending on what era Kiki was living in--she never had gotten it straight. Either way, she'd need a fabulous new wardrobe. She swept off to the ten-room clothing wing of Etc. Etc. Manor to begin planning.
Kiki swept into the wardrobe wing, eyes now blue-green and sparkling like the sea on a clear summer's day, a sure sign of thoughtfulness and the faint pleasure of being surrounded by some of her favorite things. Reaching out one slender, nimble hand, she fingered a long, jewel-studded, velvet gown like she would a lover. After a moment she picked it up, holding it over herself to examine its effect on her appearance in the gilded mirror. She studied her reflection for a long, silent moment.
Then another figure appeared in the reflection, just inches behind her. She jumped, startled, breasts bouncing like twin life-preservers on the ocean's waves, as her now crystalline eyes sought out the face of the intruder--a face that she recognized instantly, a face that she knew better than her own.
Meanwhile, Other Beau sulked to his the nursery. How dare Mummy treat him like a mere child! He was eleven years old, and not only that, he was the most precocious eleven year old in all of Lower-Upper Saxonfriedland. He learned to read and write merely thirty minutes after leaving Kiki's womb; he could recite all the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare by memory; he even had a six-octave vocal range. Truly, Mummy had no right to treat him the way she was treating him, and he was going to make sure she knew it!
"What're ye muttering under ye breath, bastard?" Nursie inquired politely. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, with greasy hair and swarthy skin that resembled an old leather boot that was left out in the icy autumn rain.
"Oh, shut your mouth, you senile old bat!" Other Beau replied affectionately. OB adored Nursie, who had given him all the warmth and attention that Kiki, unfortunately, couldn't.
"Don't talk to me like that, you devil child! Go to bed, now!" Nursie ordered as she chugged a hearty portion of whiskey. Nursie was a very cultured woman who had something of a weakness for fine spirits.
"It's two in the afternoon, you twat!" he disagreed peaceably.
"Do what I say, you evil munchkin! If you'll be good, I'll sing you a nice song." Nursie said, and belched. She was the most decorous of women at all times.
"Oh, god, please don't sing..." OB began to protest, but Nursie already began her song...
"Mary had a little lamb..." Nursie's gently rasping voice was as soft as a bed of needles, as soothing as an explosive case of diarrhea at three in the morning. OB was heartbroken when her singing suddenly stopped.
"My mother's name was Mary. She was a whore." Nursie remarked.
"So's mine," OB said gravely. It was amazing that in spite of the differences in their ages and upbringings, they managed to have so much in common.
The face that appeared in Kiki's mirror was that of Reginald - her lover, brother, father, and who knew what other degrees of consanguinity might slowly make themselves felt, as the globules of fairy-dew appear from nowhere on a midsummer morning?
"Darling, no, I mean ew, get off me," breathed Kiki throatily, yet somewhat absently, wondering whether the golden silk with diamond trim really suited her usually roughly azure-tinted eyes (as changeable as the tormented sea that heaved onto the cliffs below the manor), or whether she should just go all out and dress in turquoise, which matched her eyes, roughly, yet didn't do all that much for her skin. Or black! She looked every palpating inch the noble heroine in black, which emphasised her maggot-like pallor while complementing her hair, which was pretty much the exact shade of crows, coal, and other black things that one stumbles across in the course of everyday existence.
"I was thinking," began Reginald softly, inhaling her vanilla-lavender-rose-citrus-jasmine-hard-boiled-egg-despair-scented perfume, which had somehow acquired a touch of cinnamon, "wouldn't it be awfully romantic to commit suicide together? We could climb to the highest point of yon cliff (the one roughly southwest of the kitchen-garden and beyond the orangery), clasp each other in each other's arms, clinging as tightly as bindweed and barnacles, nay, leeches and limpets, until our very essences had fused into one great mishmash of forbidden passion, and then, you know, just sort of fall off".
"That does sound awfully romantic, darling," stated Kiki, yet even more absently than before, because she had suddenly discovered that her lady's maid, the shy and buxom Flinda, had spilled gooseberry jam over her favourite ivory silk, the one with the little seed pearls sewn all over it..... "But sadly I don't think I shall have time. I'm going to London, you see, to see the Queen, or, mayhap, the King! Do you think I would look well in green?"
"Dearest relative, yet paramour, you look as radiant as the coming dawn in all the apparel that exists under heaven," Reginald assured her, his voice afloat with tenderness. "But why are you going to see the Queen (possibly King)?"
"I'm not quite sure," admitted Kiki. "But it seemed preferable to committing a vile and bloody murder, as, if I stay in this accursed house for much longer, I must surely do!"
At the sound of the word murder, another part of Reginald's anatomy perked up - his ears. His nether regions had long since been causing him discomfort, nearly from the moment he had entered into Kiki's presence and inhaled deeply of her vanilla-lavender-rose-citrus-jasmine-hard-boiled-egg-despair-withahintofcinnamon, and if he sniffed slightly closer, the gentle complement of cloves scent, a fact that was making his britches uncomfortably tight yet again.
Given his near perpetual state of discomfort, the thought of getting roomier britches briefly flitted across his mind, but all thoughts of reason fled as he gazed into the mirror and drank in the sight of his relative's ivory pert bosoms, heaving gently as she attempted to breathe despite her tight corset, which only served to accentuate her gently flared hips and shapely bottom. Consanguinity be damned, he thought! If they got rid of any servants who may have overheard the damning revelation, and off-ed her idiot invalid of a husband and shipped her little twerp off to boarding school, they could live a life of happiness together.
Schooling his voice so as to not sound too eager, he asked as nonchalantly as possible, 'murder, my dear? Whatever do you mean?'
Just then Mandible, the butler, entered the spacious wardrobe quarters, on his face the sneer of disgust with which his proud and ancient family had been wont to greet the sight of fripperies since the time of the Crusades.
"Someone to see you, Madame," he breathed, and the scent of the raw onion he had had for lunch wafted into the confined space to mingle hideously with the varied but always pleasant food, floral and emotional perfume affected by Kiki. "A forring gentleman, I make no doubt." Crookstinks, who as was his wont followed everybody around everywhere, spat at Mandible's rigid, black-clad back by means of emphasis.
The man whom Mandible ushered into the wardrobe area was young and extremely well-set up. He wore a fetching sailor's uniform which showed off his lightly-tattooed biceps. His dark eyes gleamed with what could only be interpreted as passion.
"Darling!" he cried, and, springing forward, he seized Kiki in his arms, while Reginald seethed in the background.
"Ronald!" Kiki cried, for indeed, it was he, the handsome Szechuanese sailor who twelve years since had become the unwitting father of her beloved little Bobo. "How opportune! Reggie and I were just discussing the fact that I no longer intend to murder my ailing husband, either with the bloodied axe of destiny or with the subtle poison of infamy, but instead will pay a visit to Court and show off all my new gowns!"
"Well," said Ronald, taking in the situation in a flash and noting both Reggie's seething and his breeches, "if it's poison you're after, I could whip up a dish from my native Szechuan, made from medium hot peppers that are stuffed with large hot peppers and garnished with small hot peppers. It is instantly lethal and very popular withal."
"But dearest," said Kiki, oblivious to the continued seething of Reginald, and feeling yet more absent as she swithered between her yellow silk with the artificial roses and the pink satin lined with swansdown, "I've given up all my plans of murder, 'twas just a passing fancy....Bobo! Bobo! Drat, where has the child got to? Bobo, Daddy's here!"
Ronald drew her sharply to his hard chest. His loins burned with need for her so that he nearly forgot the other man standing nearby. "You little fool," he growled fondly in her delicately-shaped ear. "Do you think I've returned after all of this time for some poorly named child? No, but for you."
She turned her face away, and the delicate flash of neck was too much for him. He bent her low, kissing her with a passion that was like a supernova, or a storm at sea, or a political debate.
Again as he sank into the rich aroma and taste of Kiki, so soft and light in his arms, he felt that fierce burning in his loins. Actually, Ronald realized, he'd been feeling that for some time. Ever since Faraway Harbor, where he'd met that really friendly widow with the nice silk stockings collection who had set his passions and his masculinity aflame. He wondered if he should get that checked out.
But it was of no moment; he was here, and so was his beloved, delicately-scented Kiki. He did wonder briefly if the widow could be persuaded to join them as well.
"Confound the pair of you!" cried Reginald. "You, Sir, are a bounder and cad. And you, Madam, are the daughter of a whore and a rogue with a roving eye and a manhood of quite extraordinary girth. And I should know!"
At this Reginald flung the reunited lovers apart and pushed Kiki onto the gold-embroidered coverlet of her four-poster oak bed, with blue valances that matched every colour in her eyes, no matter what the time of day or night, even at mealtimes and when she had conjunctivitis. He grabbed Ronald by his ponytail and applied his own forehead to the other man's with a rapidity and violence which caused even more tears to spring to Roland's eyes than had sprung thereto on the night when the widow introduced him to the delights of Faraway Harbour's own rum, made by local virginal unsullied maidens who rolled the bottles on their pure trembly milky-white-mocha-cappucino-latte-caramel-chocolate thighs. He had taken many a slake from the bottle but that had not been what had principally caused the eye-watering. It was afterwards when the widow introduced the bottle to his…but no he must not think of that now. He must fight back for his beloved! This cuckoo must not be allowed to invade Kiki's nest. This turkeyhen should not be allowed to be cock of the walk. This puffed up popinjay must not be permitted to pop in and out of her boudoir as he pleased. He must not be allowed to draw his sword in Kiki's presence. Dammit, it must not be!
Roused by the thought of Kiki's nest, Ronald pulled himself up from the corner where he lay and pulled his Skean dhu (the Scottish ceremonial dagger he had been presented for saving the life of the head of the clan of the McTartans of the small village of MacApple in Scotland) from his stocking...