Mon, February 06 2012
| TITLE: | Newlyweds Behaving Badly |
|---|---|
| AUTHOR: | Polly Anne Morris |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | Humor, Romance, AltUniverse |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | NC-17, Adult-Het |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | Phileas\Rebecca |
| DESCRIPTION: | Someone's in the kitchen with . . . |
| STATUS: | Complete |
| DISCLAIMER: | This story has no redeeming social value of any sort. In my defense, however, it takes place in an Alternate Universe in which Phileas and Rebecca Fogg are decently married. Well, married, anyway. Yes, to each other. Playing With Food or, Someone's In the Kitchen or, Newlyweds Behaving Badly or, The Scottish Brunch or, Wishbone |
Phileas Fogg set down his cup with an expression of disgust on his face. "Well. All I've got to say is, Rebecca, if you can't tell the difference between the turbinado and the superfine, you really should consider simply going back to bed."
Wonderful idea, Rebecca thought, watching her new husband through half-slitted eyes. Except that they had yet to reconfigure the master's cabin for a bed that could suit for two, so what was the use?
It was a beautiful morning, bright and clear and crisp, and Jules would be back from morning mass with Passepartout at any moment. She didn't think Jules was particularly mass-going by nature, but Passepartout liked to go to church whenever they were in Paris to visit with his beloved Aunt Louisa who had raised him; and so far as she remembered they meant to do the marketing on the way back, so Jules had gone off with Passepartout together.
Before either she or Phileas had gotten up, which was rather awkward, because there were breakfast issues. She'd never done breakfast. Phileas wasn't much of a breakfast man either, but he was fully as attached to his toast and tea as another man might be to his kippers and kidney pie; and the organization of Passepartout's stores in the galley defied decoding.
"I'm awake now, Phileas," she pointed out. "And if you find my sugar-seeking skills to be inadequate I invite you to undertake to prove my lack of diligence. With a whole heart. See if you can find some of those thin little ginger biscuits, go on."
Pushing himself away from the table with a scrape of the chair's-leg and a half-muttered "Ach" of moderate irritation Phileas threw down his napkin and stalked off toward the kitchen. To comply. Obviously. Rebecca watched his beautiful shoulders disappear around the corner into the galley with a mild proprietary interest before turning her attention to the table, where she held her own cup of tea in two hands. Yes. He was quite right. Turbinado didn't suit Darjeeling at all, though she could see a possible match with a Ceylon. Should she go point that out? Helpful suggestion? If he couldn't find the sugar to match the tea perhaps he could match the tea to the sugar?
Sugar.
She wore a simple band, for her wedding-ring, because faceted stones tended to catch the light at awkward moments and Chatsworth was exercised enough with her for having married at all as it was. A plain band, but a bright one, and it caught the light just now in a way that reminded Rebecca that she had only been married for four months and that they kept to separate cabins in the Aurora and that the moon was coming into phase, which always gave her an appetite for sugar. No. Not sugar, exactly. Cinnamon, perhaps, something with a bit of heat to it.
Jules and Passepartout would be on foot. And would need to get to more than one market on their way home. Passepartout had done something with the roast chicken at a recent meal that had taken Jules by delighted surprise, and had promised to Reveal All; so the two of them were approaching dinner from the scientific angle, in the spirit of discovery.
It would be some time.
Stealthily Rebecca rose to her feet and tied the strings of her negligee and floated on marabou-embellished feet after her husband, silent as an apparition.
In the kitchen the pantry doors stood open, and Phileas was stood inside. He had the inner cupboard doors pushed to, standing in front of shelves lined with canisters of stuff that were all clearly labeled in precise handwriting but with words that made no sense.
"Well, I found sugar, Rebecca, but I can't make head nor tail of it," Phileas complained, in one of his very best mildly chagrinned and not at all serious tones of voice. "What do you make of all this?"
For the mustard, one said. Only for cabbage, another. Very best with cucumber.
Well, she hadn't made anything of any of it, she'd picked up the first sugar she'd found and carried it out to the table. Passepartout was too efficient; the sugar bowl as well as the creamer had been emptied, washed out, dried, and stood empty for morning tea, or she would not have had to make a guess.
She picked up the canister marked "purple with rice," and opened it. It looked like sugar. Tan. Very lightly tanned. Toasted? Taking a pinch she dropped it into her mouth to taste. Well, it was sugar.
Phileas was standing in the pantry beside her, with his dressing-gown not quite closed, one hand on his hip. It was not a large pantry.
"Um," Rebecca nodded. "All right, still not superfine, but it would do for -- h'mm -- say, berries. Here. Have a taste."
He reached for the canister, but she had no intention of surrendering it. She folded her hand close to the bosom of her night-robe and took up a pinch of sugar to set on the tip of her tongue, gazing up into his moderately perplexed face with challenge in her eyes.
Perplexity did not last long.
Phileas was an intelligent man.
And her body had power over him that she was only now beginning to understand and enjoy, now that they were lawfully lovers, now that they were no longer forced conceal their desire for and admiration of each other's physical person from the world. Or from each other.
Phileas looked at her mouth, into her expectant eyes, back at her mouth. Her parted lips. The pinch of sugar, dissolving on her tongue.
Carefully, with meditative care, Phileas lowered his head and touched the tip of his tongue to hers, to taste the sugar.
She shivered.
It wasn't fair.
It was such a small thing, the tip of her tongue, quite differently located from the other small thing that could make her perish at a touch, and she touched things with her tongue all day, every day. Food. Drink. The rims of tea-cups. The tines of forks. The backs of her own teeth. The detonation pins of explosive bomblets, and yet when Phileas touched his tongue to hers she was the one who exploded.
Shivering in bliss Rebecca surged into his arms, lost in the moment while he tasted her thoroughly.
When he pulled away, he took the canister away from her and picked up the next in line, and opened it, and offered it to her.
Oh, why not, Rebecca thought; and took another sample. This one was darker and richer than the first. The taste of it in Phileas' mouth was less like some sweet ten o'clock on a summer morning and more along the lines of nine o'clock in the evening in October at the fireside, supper having been passed over due to a very substantial tea earlier in the day. There were crackling logs and fur rugs in the taste of that sugar in Phileas' mouth. Her body was warming to the concept rapidly.
She dipped a finger into a pot of treacle and offered it to him to suckle on. But she had to put her hand to his neck to steady herself, when he drew her finger deep into his mouth, because there was something in the stroking of his tongue against the underside of her fingertip that seemed to loosen the elastic of the tendons in her knees so suddenly that she feared that she might fall.
She hadn't closed the treacle-tin; she wasn't thinking about it. But suddenly Phileas gave a little start, and his tongue curling around her finger in his mouth stilled abruptly. Opening her eyes Rebecca saw that a thin line of the sticky amber syrup had spilled over the lip of the treacle-tin and down his neck, across his throat, dripping down very naughtily beneath his half-buttoned shirt.
Oh, dear.
He looked from the tin to her with an expression of accusation that was a little difficult to take quite personally with her finger in his mouth; shrugging apologetically Rebecca set the treacle-tin back on the shelf -- not in the same place it had come from, no, but at least it was on the level once again -- and reached up on her tip-toes to clean up the evidence and taste his skin un-sticky.
She liked sweets.
She liked them to be a little salty, though, sometimes, like nuts dusted with sugar and a little salt, like a nut brittle, like the taste of treacle on her husband's skin. His neck. The side of his neck, not a very broad track of treacle there, she could deal with it with efficient little lappings of her tongue, but his throat was a little messier and took more focus and concentration. She focussed. She concentrated.
And then she pulled the collar of his shirt away from his shoulder to follow the treacle-track down Phileas' chest. Her own finger was sucked clean of treacle by now, surely, but Phileas held it in his mouth still, encouraging her tongue with his, by example.
His breathing had begun to come a little labored, in his throat. She could tell. She was right there, after all, there was treacle spilled on Phileas' throat and it was her fault so it was up to her to clean up the mess, and it had run all down beneath his collar.
There was a very great deal of Phileas beneath his collar, he had a broad chest that she loved, and it was hers by right of sanctified contract after all. She licked treacle away all down his softly furred chest and made him tremble as she went; and if the treacle itself had not quite overflowed across his nipple, who was he to complain to her about that? He was in no condition to speak. And had a finger in his mouth as well, it wasn't polite to speak with one's mouth full.
Pressing her lips to Phileas' breast she lapped at his nipple like a cat with cream dripping into a pan, and purred deep in her throat to hear the leonine rumbling in his chest. So many wonderful surprises of married life. He'd be after her at any moment, but she had him here and now, and she had his entire attention firmly -- gently, yes, but just firmly enough -- between her teeth, and did not mean to relinquish her advantage.
What --
Phileas with a magnificent act of will gathered her loose hair carefully away from the back of her head with one hand, and drew something across the nape of her neck that was cold and sticky and sent a shock straight to the pearl that she kept in her oyster.
He didn't so much pull her hair -- he didn't pull her hair at all -- as use her hair to guide her head away from her banquet at his breast half-a-turn to face the pantry shelves, so he could bend his head to the back of her neck and discover for himself whether the tin marked "Second August market" was lingonberry jam or Concord grape.
He hadn't had his toast.
He was clearly getting hungry.
He bit at the skin at the back of her neck with deliberate care, and made her flush from head to foot with unashamed arousal.
Well.
If that was the way that he was going to treat her.
She backed into his body where he stood and wiggled her backside against his palpable erection. Knowing how much in principle he liked her saucy buttocks, and how weak she could make him by simply sitting in his lap. Hearing him groan with longing for his breakfast, neither of them had had more than a chaste domestic snack since they'd left Marseilles for Paris, and that had been days and days and days and days ago --
She heard the door.
Phileas froze.
His body didn't, not quite; his cock still cresting beneath his trousers-front, but Phileas heard it too, Passepartout and Jules were back. Rebecca turned around, eager to escape from the compromising position in which they found themselves, but Phileas looked her up and down and she did Phileas, and by mutual if unspoken consent they each reached out to pull the pantry doors shut behind them.
There was no hope.
Phileas' dressing gown hung open, his shirt undone and pulled wide at the front, and her own night-dress was in a suspicious state of general dishevelment that would lead any man to check her husband's personal deportment and find it in an out-going frame of mind.
Impossible.
Rebecca put her face to Phileas' bare chest to stifle her embarrassed giggles and catch her breath. Oh, quite impossible. This hadn't happened to her since she and Aigithe had gotten just a little too involved with comparative anatomy and had had to hide in the broom- closet for three hours of chemistry laboratory class and then explain to Matron in detail how Rebecca had ended up in Aigithe's blouse. Matron had not been fooled.
Phileas had his arms around her, holding her very close, clearly struggling to rule his breath and avoid betraying their presence. Phileas wasn't thinking. He might have intended to hold her close to quiet her and himself alike. But his hands stroked the soft swell of her derriere as if without conscious volition, his fingers sliding ever and again between her buttocks, down across the gentle curve of her bottom, back up along her hips and down again.
She wished he'd stop.
It wasn't getting easier.
She couldn't say a word to him, though, because Jules and Passepartout were in the kitchen now, right outside the pantry door. Right there. She could smell the morning on them, the wood-smoke and the frost.
"I wonder where they've gone," Jules was saying, his words just a little muffled -- as though he was talking into a parcel. "I guess they do just leave the dishes, though. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there doesn't have to be a sinister reason for everything, not even with Foggs."
"Is maybe Master Fogg placing an early bet, and Miss Rebecca betting against him. They will be back. Master Fogg, he is not liking French cuisine even more than what Passepartout cooks. He will not miss his chicken dinner."
Speaking English, that was odd. But, Rebecca realized, they'd expected to find her and Phileas at home. Glancing up into Phileas' face she saw that he seemed to be frowning, though it wasn't very clear in what light came through the slatted doors to the pantry. Worry. Concern. Fear, almost. She gave him a squeeze to reassure him. They would find a way to escape before dinner-time. They would. He would not miss his chicken dinner. Then there would be pot-pie, perhaps, tomorrow, from the left-overs.
"Do we have everything?"
Jules had lapsed into French, and was coming straight for the pantry door by the sound of it. Phileas' grasp on Rebecca's rump tightened momentarily, then relaxed as Passepartout saved them from imminent discovery.
"Everything fresh from the market this morning, Jules, except for the salt and pepper, and that's on the stove. Fresh is nicest. Here, the fire's laid, light the stove, Jules."
In French. She almost never heard Passepartout speak French. She almost didn't understand him, without the torturous locutions that characterized his English and his Spanish, his Italian and his Cree, his Greek and who knew what else.
"Now, Jules. Come here, I'll show you everything you need to know about this chicken. Or everything I know about this chicken, anyway."
Leaning her head against Phileas' disarranged shirt Rebecca resigned herself to wait this out, doing her best to ignore the contemplative caress of her husband's hands across her body.
###
Jules Verne had been raised on family fare, and since he had come to Paris he had lived on the proverbial student's purse. He had no defenses against Jean Passepartout's cooking. Phileas Fogg kept a good table, something Jules would never have expected from an Englishman -- and it was Passepartout who was responsible, Fogg just paid the bills.
He could not cook in his little room. But he had a chance to study the alchemy of salt and spice, herbs and heat; and he was a student of all the sciences, after all.
"Do we have everything?" he asked, going toward the pantry to fetch whatever might be wanted. He didn't need encouraging to make himself useful in Passepartout's kitchen; the wealth of the supplies beguiled him. There were so many different sorts of salt in Passepartout's pantry; as many as two dozen sorts of sugars, three nutmegs, more than three cinnamons as well as cassia . . .
Passepartout did not give him his opening, not this time, but Passepartout could have no idea of Jules' plot or else he would have enabled it. Jules was sure.
"Everything fresh from the market this morning, Jules, except for the salt and pepper, and that's on the stove. Fresh is nicest."
Jules turned away with only mild disappointment. The shelves would still be there; Passepartout was talking. "Here, the fire's laid, light the stove, Jules."
Something inside the pantry seemed to shift as Jules turned, something that he thought he saw but only out of the corner of his eye.
What was it?
Had he seen anything at all?
Perfume.
He thought he smelled Rebecca's fragrance, but that meant nothing; the Aurora was her home as well as anybody's.
Frowning at his own distraction Jules went to perform the task that Passepartout had assigned to him.
"Now, Jules. Come here, I'll show you everything you need to know about this chicken. Or everything I know about this chicken, anyway."
He could almost taste Passepartout's roast chicken. He'd been thinking about it all morning, even when he had been in church with Passepartout. The crisp brown skin. The crackle as he cut into the thigh; the fragrance of the juices as they ran, the sweet and salty savor of the first bite of the tender meat . . .
He forgot all about the pantry and set his powers of concentration to bear on Passepartout, and the dinner that was making.
###
"So we singe the feathers. And now you can see her true worth, look at her, Jules. Isn't she beautiful?"
Phileas stood with his wife half-dying in his arms, trying to pretend that he was on a reconnaissance mission somewhere in the corridors of a foreign State and not trapped in his own pantry with his half-clothed wife in very close proximity, his body tingling with remembered sensation from their play.
"The poulterer has been generous, Jules. This is indeed a lovely bird. First for freshness. See here, when you press your thumb into the flesh, how it resists and presses back."
Phileas' fingers tightened against Rebecca's beautiful bum. It wasn't a conscious gesture. It just happened. Her luxuriously strokable backside, shaped with muscle, rounded with the softness of her sex.
The flesh sprang back, resisting to his touch. It was pleasant. He pet her rump again.
"Next, look to the thigh. You should feel its plumpness. The skin moves freely over the flesh beneath. See how this works?"
He was alone in the pantry with his wife.
Yes, Verne and Passepartout were just there outside, but it was his pantry, and it was his wife. His wife. Rebecca was his.
His hand strayed east of north to stroke her thigh. He wasn't thinking about it. He was listening to Passepartout. His French was not perfect, but it was good enough.
"Go ahead, you must learn these things for yourself, by experience. Try it, Jules. Pinch the thigh, here, where it is plumpest. See? Very nice."
Yes.
Very nice.
Right there, where the thigh was plump and full and soft. Rebecca's strong thighs, sleek, the muscles taut beneath her silky skin. Phileas stroked her thighs, smoothing the fabric of her negligee up to her waist absent-mindedly to gain access to warm skin. She trembled. The movement brought her hips closer to his. He let her gown drop down again behind, but he had his hands beneath it now.
And she wasn't wearing knickers.
Shocking.
"The skin won't brown the way you want it to unless it's completely dry when you butter it, Jules. So you must be sure to pat it completely dry. Here. You try. Such a plump-breasted chicken, Miss Rebecca will be very pleased, she likes the white meat."
"Miss Rebecca" swallowed back a strangled groan, and pressed herself against him.
He hated to lose contact with her skin but there was no help for it He had to make a strategic relocation. And when he lifted his hand to her neck to smooth the open neck of her gown away from her creamy white shoulders, she shrugged her shoulders together with a sort of hungry shiver, so that her gown fell down around her elbows and bared her breasts.
Beautiful breasts.
Pale and shining in the dim indirect light of the pantry, perfect as apples or as pears, full and round and quivering.
Phileas touched her breasts, stroking the weighted ripeness of the full curve on either side with his fingertips to accustom himself to the sensation before he put his palms flat to her, to cradle her breasts in his hands and seek her nipples.
Sugar.
There was crystallized sugar.
He could take the sugar in his mouth to rasp against her nipples with his tongue and tease her, and the sharp edges of the sugar would dissolve as he suckled --
Her nipples were as sweet as sugar in his mouth, they needed no such augmentation from Passepartout's stores.
She was trying very hard to keep her breathing quiet. Passepartout and Verne were there. Right there.
He was trying very hard to decide whether he wanted to maintain his cover or hear her pleasure, he couldn't decide, he couldn't, and in the kitchen on the other side of the pantry's slatted door Passepartout was talking. So Passepartout couldn't hear. And Verne was listening to Passepartout talk, so Verne wouldn't be hearing anything he shouldn't hear, either.
The taste of Rebecca's sweet nipples in his mouth was maddening.
"So. Now that you have rubbed a good layer of sweet butter over the entire surface of your chicken. And with the salt and pepper. You have the stuffing mixed? Let me see."
Oh, God.
The stuffing.
Gathering up Rebecca's negligee Phileas touched her, carefully, thinking about stuffing.
Her negligee frothed around her waist; he held an ocean of sheer white lawn and lace. He could feel the crisp curls that cushioned her sweet belly, under his palm. And that meant that if he snuck his finger through her lady's mantle, he could touch --
"It's not good to push too hard, Jules, the stuffing must have space to breathe. Room to expand, to absorb the juices as the chicken roasts. Gently. There is more room than you would think, but you must get well inside the cavity. Like so."
Rebecca took his collar in both hands, pulled his garment up with desperate strength, took his collar between her teeth and sobbed into his neck.
So she was listening, too.
Phileas stroked her, tenderly, feeling how stiff and swollen her little gem felt beneath his fingers, how moist and welcoming the way into her womb.
She was so soft and warm, for him.
Two fingers, three fingers, he stroked against her tender flesh and up into her vulva, his thumb held lightly to the swollen button of her clitoris to keep his place. He wanted her. His cock ached for her; it was out of the question. He should stop. He couldn't stop. He had Rebecca in his arms; she quivered to his touch. How could he stop to think of so boorish an animal as his cock, when he had Rebecca in his arms, panting for his touch?
"And this place, here, the flap of the neck. Be sure to stuff both ends. See? There is just enough of the stuffing left."
Well.
If Passepartout said so.
Passepartout should know.
Phileas slid his hand between Rebecca's thighs, all the way back between her legs, and touched her someplace she had not expected, his fingers slick with the moisture of her need.
"Ooop -- "
The surprise was almost too much for her; she bit her startled cry back as best she could but didn't quite master it, and buried her face in his crumpled shirt with her shoulders shaking.
"What was that?" Verne asked; and from the sound of his voice he had turned toward the pantry.
"I said, whoops! I have forgotten the oysters. There must be oysters and corn on the table, one of Miss Rebecca's favorite dishes. We have only just enough time if we hurry. Jules, the bird is ready to go into the oven, we must go and get the oysters right away."
"No, I thought I heard something, Jean. Over there. In the pantry. I'll just check. If Fogg and Rebecca aren't at home it could be trouble."
Headed this way.
Rebecca's skirts hiked up behind and her bodice pulled down before, her naked breasts pressed to his half-open shirt, his hands full -- absolutely full -- of Rebecca, his fingers where nobody's fingers but a husband's had any right to be and then only on sufferance --
"You are mistaken," Passepartout said firmly. Very firmly. Too firmly. "It is only the sounds the kitchen makes when the oven heats. Wood compression and expansion in the heat, changes of humidity. We are going for oysters, Jules, where did you leave your hat?"
Phileas closed his eyes with a grimace of anguished despair.
Passepartout knew.
Passepartout knew, and Rebecca knew Passepartout knew, and Phileas was a dead man.
It wasn't his fault.
He hadn't started it.
He simply hadn't been able to keep his hands off her, he'd meant no harm by it, and now he was about to die at the hands of the avenging angel who was his wife.
"Jean, I really don't think we should leave the Aurora with a fire in the oven and Fogg not at home, especially if there's something in the pantry -- "
But Passepartout could be difficult to deflect, when his mind was made up. Verne's voice trailed off as it went out of the kitchen, into the main cabin, following Passepartout out of the Aurora.
Then there was silence.
Rebecca loosed her hold on Phileas' shirt and threw open the pantry door with a fierce gesture, and Phileas groaned inwardly, his body almost losing its focussed tension to the certainty of near and sudden death.
She would kill him.
She was as beautiful as a Valkyrie with her night-dress down across her shoulders, showing one bared breast.
He didn't care.
So long as he was dead anyway he would die happy. It had been days since he had been alone with his wife under anything like an encouraging circumstance. This wasn't an encouraging circumstance. But he could have to make do.
Rebecca backed away out of the pantry with her head down and her eyes level like a bull about to charge, a peculiar and dangerous expression that spoke volumes of warning and of threat. She reached the edge of the kitchen table and stopped; Phileas followed after her, drinking her in with his eyes, feeling each rustle and flounce of the lace of her garments in his bones.
Mercy.
He would beg for mercy.
Kneeling down on the kitchen floor Phileas put his arms around her thighs and lifted her gown away to kiss her cocklette and beg its pardon for the trouble he had caused. She gasped aloud, and clutched the edge of the table to either side of her in her hands; all to the good, because if she had to steady herself by holding on to the kitchen table she would not be able to throttle him until he had had her oyster.
Maybe he could distract her. Maybe he could persuade her to forget that he had suckled at her breast in the pantry while Passepartout stood talking about chickens --
Or at the very least he could enjoy her. The light brown curls of her mons veneris were slick with the mosture of her arousal; the fragrance went straight to his cock and stiffened it with firm resolve. It would do his cock no good, but Phileas knew better than to try to tell it so. He wasn't moving. He had Rebecca in his mouth; he wasn't giving that up, because she cried so when he licked her clitoris and let his fingers do a cock's errand as he supped.
It was an awkward angle.
Phileas decided to correct it.
Rising to his feet he lifted her, and set her down on top of the table where he could get a better purchase of his mouth between her legs.
Yes.
Much better.
She kicked her heels against his back, against his shoulders, half-sobbing as he supped her little dainty, making sounds that were anything except for sweet and lady-like. He loved it. He loved to hear her cry with amorous abandon almost as much as he liked losing himself in her body, or maybe more, because a man could lose himself all by himself but only he could give such pleasure to Rebecca.
She grew impatient to kill him for the humiliation he had caused her. And his shirt was half-undone, but not so loose that she could not use it for leverage. He was the one who had set her on the table. She sat up. Pushing his trousers down around his knees she cut the fabric of his drawers from waist to thigh; he didn't know where she had got the knife, but his senses were full of the scent and savor of her arousal so he didn't think at all but went willing unto his wife to seek his doom.
She sheathed him to the hilt in one swift gesture and rolled her hips, encouragingly.
He lost his mind.
Rebecca was his. He couldn't keep still, but had to dance with the sheer joy she gave him. Not a very complicated dance, but one they both knew the steps to, one they both enjoyed. She made her own music for the dance, as well, and Phileas held his wife in his embrace and strove within her till he perished of it.
He collapsed slowly to the floor, and her on top of him.
The taste of her was still sweet and musky in his mouth. She kissed an ample share of it out of his mouth, licking at his lips. She was as spent as he was, and he had drawn her out; he was proud to have done so, to have given her pleasure. If she had a fraction of the pleasure in him as he had of her he was a man among men, and if no other woman than Rebecca ever knew it was enough --
But Passepartout and Verne would be back. There was no way to tell how soon; the chicken in the oven was beginning to smell like somebody's dinner, however, and that meant that more time had elapsed than Phileas had realized.
Staggering to his feet reluctantly he helped Rebecca up, and stood for one last moment in the kitchen with her in his arms to kiss her yet again as her lover, as well as husband.
"We'd better get upstairs," Rebecca said. "And wash up. And get dressed."
She was his angel. Every word was truth.
They helped each other up the spiral stairs, and went their separate ways to put themselves to rights.
###
Jules Verne followed Jean Passepartout out of the Aurora, wondering what had gotten into the man. That Passepartout had not been alarmed by what they'd heard in the pantry meant that it was not a problem, but not that there had been nothing to hear. Jules knew enough to trust the evidence of his own senses. He knew that he'd heard something.
He had to hurry to catch up with Passepartout, who was walking very rapidly across the lawns where the Aurora was moored; with his head down, and his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him, and both hands wrapped firmly around the market basket's wicker hoop-handle. If he hadn't been there, Jules thought, Passepartout would be talking to himself.
"Jean, please, wait, what's the big hurry?"
"Must be getting the oysters," Passepartout explained tersely. "Very important. For the corn dish. And the best place, it is at the fish market, we must hurry to be back before the chicken is cooked."
Jules couldn't understand this at all. Fogg liked oysters; Jules did too. But Fogg preferred them raw, an unusual taste for an Englishman but one Jules had come to accept because it meant that he got oysters to eat when Fogg was in an expansive mood. And Fogg had been in a very good mood, since he'd been married.
One way or the other it made no sense for them to be hurrying out for oysters to be baked when Fogg liked raw oysters. There were good reasons to bake oysters -- among them the age and relative freshness of the oyster -- but no good reason to eat an oyster that required baking because it was no longer nice enough to eat raw. Fogg had told him. Life was too short to eat an oyster that needed to be baked. And sometimes eating an oyster that stood in need of baking made for a very much shortened life, as well.
Passepartout was gaining ground. Jules hurried to keep up, confused.
It was no wonder Passepartout wasn't talking to himself, not really, because he was walking so fast that he probably didn't have the breath for it. It was the only reason Jules could imagine for why Passepartout was so close-lipped, all so suddenly. Passepartout was a talkative man. Jules liked to listen to him, because there was never any telling what would happen on Passepartout next. Passepartout should be talking about chickens, about oysters, about the creaking of wooden beams in the framework of the gondola as the kitchen warmed with the oven's heat, and Jules knew he'd heard something.
Probably some sort of an invention that Passepartout was working on, testing out, trying out. A surveillance device, perhaps, something for Rebecca's use on her next mission or the mission after that.
Rebecca.
Jules stopped dead in his tracks.
The kitchen had been starting to warm up. The Aurora like any other inhabited place had its own smell; but the kitchen was Passepartout's domain. Fogg never went there. Rebecca hardly ever.
Something had reminded him about Rebecca, though, and he had just realized what it was. The fragrance of her clothing, of her hair. Rebecca. He hadn't thought twice about it, when he'd started for the pantry earlier. But he had been reminded.
The pantry.
Someone was in there.
Someone had been in there since he and Passepartout had returned to the Aurora, why had they been hiding?
Passepartout had noticed Jules' abrupt halt. Turning a tight corner in the street Passepartout came back for Jules, and took his hand. "Come along," Passepartout said. The market basket was still held unswerving at about waist-level, and Jules noticed its positioning now as he had not before because it was less natural for Passepartout to hold it that way with one hand. "We are getting oysters to bake in the corn. Miss Rebecca's particular favorite, oysters in creamed corn."
Speaking French, and still almost stumbling over the phrase. Passepartout wouldn't look at him. Passepartout pulled him along by one hand through the street, and Jules shook the wonder from befogging his brain and picked up his pace to hurry after. Oysters. God. Oysters in creamed corn.
Fogg and Rebecca in the pantry, hiding, Passepartout talking all the while about plump thighs and tender white breasts --
The sooner they got to the oyster-stalls the better it would be. Passepartout would not deny Jules the privilege of carrying a parcel home. It would look a little unusual, perhaps, one man with a market basket, another with the parcel. But Jules needed a parcel, now. He needed a parcel, suddenly, very badly indeed, so that he could carry it carefully through the streets.
Because he couldn't even imagine.
And if he couldn't successfully avoid imagining, children were going to be pointing fingers at him and laughing at him from the Aurora to the oyster-stalls, and back again.
###
Jean Passepartout set the chicken platter down in front of Phileas Fogg and stood back, anxiously. He wasn't the least bit sure about the chicken. This chicken had had nobody's full attention, not entirely.
Fogg took a deep appreciative breath of the fragrant steam rising from the bird, and smiled. "It smells wonderful, Passepartout. Would you be so kind as to serve Rebecca."
Miss Rebecca sat opposite to her husband at the table, being English about it. When Jean knew quite well that the two of them would have been just as happy to sit side by side and eat; Jules would not have minded either. But that would not be proper. The good God forbid impropriety at the seating of the table; the very fabric of the British empire would have been threatened by such a thing.
Jean lay three slices of moist white breast meat carefully down on the plate of Miss Rebecca, his eyes fixed on his work. He had hardly been able to look at her all day, but she was not-noticing. Noticing perfectly well, but never seeming to, and better for the avoiding of awkwardness all around.
He had not sliced the dark meat, though he would often; because Jules liked to cut into the thigh at the table, and Jean liked to watch him. It did his heart good to see how Jules enjoyed his food; his master was not so open and demonstrative about such things. In England it was rude to even mention the food at a host's table. It was maddening.
Fogg looked at his portion of thigh a little dubiously, it seemed to Jean, as if noticing that he was going to have to cut it for himself; Miss Rebecca picked up her fork, and Jules waited very politely for her first mouthful before he cut into the chicken. The expression on Jules' face was everything Jean would have wanted it to be.
"If I could have chicken like this," Jules said, "I would never miss morning mass so long as I lived."
Well, of course he could have chicken like this. All he had to do was find a fine Jules wife and get married and buy her chickens and butter, sage and salt and pepper, rosemary and thyme. And then stay out of the kitchen while she was preparing the bird for the oven, because after today the ideas associated with the rubbing of the chicken and the stuffing of the cavity and the management of the legs were ones which could only result in a man's interfering with his wife. Jean was immune, himself, of course. He had no wife. At least not yet.
Miss Rebecca smiled at Jules with clearly heart-felt affection before she looked up. "Yes, Passepartout, it's very good. Thank you. Phileas, oysters?"
Fogg covered up so well. It was magnificent. There was no slightest trace of embarrassment or hesitation in his voice. Jean could almost believe he had imagined Fogg and Miss Rebecca in the pantry; but there was no other explanation for the disarrangement of the shelves. "Lovely. Yes. How about you, Verne? I must say. It was very good of you to have helped Passepartout out in the kitchen today. I can only hope you found the experience worth-while."
Miss Rebecca dabbed at her lips very daintily with her napkin, her eyes fixed modestly on her plate. Thinking her own thoughts. Jules took his cue from Miss Rebecca; he was a young man, but very well-bred, and not in the least bit backward in rising to the occasion. No, Jean thought, with a sudden pang of concern. Responding appropriately to social cues. Yes. Better.
It only needed that he be able to feel his way through the situation -- no, that was not good as well --
"Passepartout is a wonderful cook." Jules sounded so completely natural that Jean felt his association with Fogg was improving his skills of dissimulation, which fortunately was not the same as lying. "I've told you before, Fogg. You don't deserve him one bit."
Fogg raised his eyes to meet Jean's at this, his expression pure good humor and fraternal feeling. Jules made no allowances for Fogg, none at all, and Fogg loved Jules for it. "Well, if you're going to take that tone with me, Jules Verne, I can only observe that you should be doing less talking and more eating. I mean. Really."
Fogg was so happier a man as a young bridegroom or a not so very young bridegroom that sometimes it made Jean want to weep.
But the salt in the dish was already very carefully balanced. Perfect. So he bowed, instead, excusing himself with a heel-clicking gesture to return to the kitchen and fetch back the rice.
###
Dinner was over, and Phileas was very happily full.
Jules Verne had asked for, and received, his host's permission to go help Passepartout in the kitchen, with an unconvincing claim that students were always expected to clean up in the lab after their experiments.
Passepartout, oddly enough, had come out of the kitchen with something on a plate covered with a napkin; set it down on the table between Phileas and Rebecca, made a crisp bow, and gone back into the kitchen without saying a word.
Phileas exchanged glances with Rebecca.
After a moment she leaned forward, slowly, reaching for the napkin to fold it back from whatever it was on the plate.
The wish-bone. From the chicken.
Picking it up gingerly to hold it in two hands, Rebecca looked at the wishbone, then looked across at him, wiggling the wishbone gently to and fro.
Phileas stood up, and moved from behind the table to beside it. So did Rebecca.
She hooked her little finger around one of the halves of the wish-bone and held it up to him, with an inquiring expression that was almost too suggestive.
He took his end of the wish-bone in the crook of his little finger. She stepped closer, and raised her face to look at him.
Closing his eyes Phileas wished for a speedy return to England and the conjugal bed; and kissed her.
The wish-bone cracked down the middle, and split into two parts. Almost identical.
"Well," Rebecca said, with a soft voice that raised the small hairs at the back of Phileas' neck. "I suppose this means we wished for the same thing, yes? Phileas?"
Yes. He supposed it did.
"Time will tell, Rebecca." He took her half of the wish-bone to tuck the fragments away, for a souvenir. A talisman. "Now. What do you suppose could be keeping Passepartout with the coffee?"
"Trying to sort out the sugars, one presumes."
Good point.
Someone had certainly made a jumble of the pantry cupboard, earlier today.
"In that case. Perhaps you would do me the honor of accompanying me in a circuit of the deck, Mrs. Fogg."
It could have been much worse.
He had been only getting started on the preserves.
Rebecca took his arm demurely and went out with him, to take a stroll around the deck of the Aurora. "What about your shirt, Phileas, do you think that it will rinse?"
"I think we should let Passepartout worry about that, Rebecca -- "
Because he almost didn't want to wash his shirt at all, after today. But he wasn't going to tell her that.
With a wish-bone for a talisman in his pocket and Rebecca at his side he took a turn or three around the Aurora; and then went in to coffee, with good hope for his future and the glad thought of the bed that waited for him and for Rebecca, when they got home again to England.