Katie Edwards was the
daughter of the Vicar of St Hilda’s in Forestdean and Mark Holt was the village
“Jack the Lad” and apart from them both being 28 years old, they had nothing in
common whatsoever.
Katie was a good
Christian girl, whose life revolved around her widowed fathers Church and the
associated parochial duties, Mark on the other hand was an agnostic, albeit a
church going agnostic, but above all he was an unashamed hedonist.
Katie was steady, diligent,
and chaste and was an innocent but Mark had no morals whatsoever but to his
mind that was more than compensated for by a belt full of female scalps.
However all of that
however seemed set to change when Mark was walking through the village one rainy
morning.
“Hi Katie” he said
Katie Edwards was a very
attractive young woman by any measure, with a warm open manner, a willowy
figure, and shoulder length brunette hair, intelligent green laughing eyes and
a broad toothy smile and altogether a very pleasant demeanour.
“Hello Mark” she
replied “What’s brought you out into the rain”
Mark was tall, dark
and muscular with wild gypsy eyes.
“I’m avoiding mum,” he
said trying to keep a straight face, Katie gave an understanding nod
“And you?”
“The Miss Devonshire’s”
she replied “it’s their turn to do the flowers” and she bowed her head with
shame.
“I think we need to be
fortified,” he said
“The Royal Oak?” she
suggested
“I thought you were
barred for calling the landlord a godless heathen,” he queried
“A simple
misunderstanding” she assured him “I’ve forgiven him”
Due to the inclement
weather the pub was almost deserted so they sat and unloaded their burdens on
each other.
Mark detailed the
haranguing his mother gave him for getting home at 3 am in a state of
inebriation and she talked about how the Miss Devonshire’s were making her life
a misery.
To make her feel
better Mark revealed some rather unsavory gossip about her protagonists which
made Katie feel much better as did the Guinness.
The alcohol also aided
Katie to reveal more and more about herself and the more she drank the more she
rambled.
The Guinness helped
her speak a lot about time and sand running through her fingers and choices and
not knowing.
He couldn’t really
follow her train of thought all the time, the drink wasn’t helping and as
neither of them had eaten since breakfast the beer took its toll very quickly
and two hours later they were fortified as newts and he had to steer her
through the pouring rain to the vicarage, and thankfully the rain was falling
so hard that no one noticed their drunken progression.
Once he reached the
front door he had to wedge her against the wall while he opened the door,
unfortunately as the door swung open she fell into the hall.
Mark instinctively
reached out and grabbed her in an effort to prevent her from hurting herself.
Unfortunately in
trying to avoid grabbing anything intimate he only succeeded in falling to the
floor before she did.
As a result Mark
landed on his back and she landed on top of him.
“You know Mark if I
wasn’t the Vicar’s daughter I’d shag you” she slurred before planting an almost
Labrador like kiss on his mouth.
“And if I wasn’t a
gentleman” he said after extricating himself from her embrace “I’d let you”
And then he struggled
to his feet and helped Katie to do the same but as soon as she was vertical she
said
“But you’re not a
gentleman so there’s nothing stopping you”
And launched another
assault on him and even put his hand on her breast before Mark regained control
and steered her through the hall and into the sitting room and plopped her into
an armchair and she immediately grabbed him by the lapels and planted another
kiss on his mouth, a much more controlled and unhurried kiss than before.
He wondered as he was
starting to reciprocate if she thought that having sex with a philanderer like
him was sin free, making him like a vegetable in a slimmer’s diet plan, and
then he broke away from her embrace again.
“But you are the
Vicar’s daughter” he replied and kissed her on the forehead
“And you’re drunk” he
added
“What’s that got to do
with it?” she slurred
“Everything, because
you wouldn’t want to shag me if you were sober”
“Oh yes I would” she
said after he left.
On the short walk home
Mark had mixed feelings, he felt rather proud of himself, after all Katie had
offered it to him on a plate and he had turned it down, and not because he
didn’t fancy her, on the contrary, and he also reflected on the wonderful kiss
and how much he enjoyed it.
Katie ticked a lot of
boxes for him and he was not possessed of any high moral principles, so why
didn’t he take advantage of her was a mystery.
He didn’t have the
foggiest idea why he didn’t accept her invitation to canoodle, it certainly
wasn’t a lack of attraction on his part or even being put what she was wearing,
he liked uniforms and outfits, and vestments certainly didn’t put him off.
Nor did he think it
was because she was the Vicars daughter after all he had made many immoral choices
in the pursuit of sexual gratification, so he was left with only one possible
conclusion.
However having come to
that conclusion he immediately dismissed it, it was the obvious conclusion but
it had never happened before, so he wasn’t sure how to proceed in the new
territory.
It was a strange
feeling that he was experiencing which had hit him right out of the blue.
But strange though it
was it was impossible to ignore because the genie was very much out of the
bottle and there was no putting it back.
Mark never imagined in
his wildest dreams when he escaped his mother’s scathing tongue that morning
that bumping into Katie Edwards would turn his entire world upside down.
“Thank you the Miss
Devonshire’s” he said aloud “Thank you for taking your turn to do the flowers”
But after his
revelation he didn’t know where to go from that point.
And more importantly
he didn’t know if she would still be receptive to him without the aid of
several pints of Guinness.
It was an interesting
position for him to find himself in, caring whether or not a girl would come to
her senses in the cold and sober light of day.
So when Katie knocked on
his front door he knew it was a game changer.
“Hi” he said
“Hey Mark, I’m sober”
“So I can see, come
in” he said “But I’m still not going to shag you”
“Really?” she said as
she followed him inside
“Really” he confirmed
“But why?” she asked
“it’s what you do isn’t it?”
“And that’s why I’m
not doing it to you” he said
“I don’t understand”
she said and sat down heavily on the sofa
“You’re better than
that” he said “you deserve better than that and I’m not going to let you settle
for less than you deserve”
“What does that mean?”
she asked
“It means we are going
on a date”
“A date?” Katie asked
“Yes, a date” he
replied “and after we have dated for a while we can talk about the other stuff”
“Oh” she responded and
then he kissed her
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