Buried Jewellery Box. Reseda Shaykhnurova
could forget about the incident, if we were even concerning our sisters,” stated his friend.
“I am sorry; I do not quite understand. What are you talking of?”
“You treated my sister in an infamous manner, Ralph, and I want revenge. I do not care if it is not seemly in a gentleman.”
“What exactly do you want?” Mr. Fellows stiffened.
“Do not be afraid! I do not want to disgrace Melody. In no case. I intend to marry her in the future.”
“What then?”
“I want you to arrange for me a chance to see her naked.”
Ralph was taken aback by such a request, coming from his well-mannered friend.
“I have never seen her naked myself! Even when we were children! How can I organize that, and manage to bring you in time?”
“Think!” ordered George and, putting his hat on, walked to the gate.
The only son of the Fellowses was deep in thought. He was well aware that it would be impossible to catch his sister accidentally during her bath procedures, however hard he tried.
“Melody, can I speak with you?” asked Ralph, returning to the sitting room.
“Dear, have you and George sorted out your disagreements?” asked the mother, as her children were about to leave.
“Rebecca, do not interfere,” said the father and nodded to his son to leave.
“Why can I not ask about my children’s affairs?” she protested, when her children left.
“They are grownup people, Rebecca. We mustn’t take care of them our whole lives.”
“But we can help them in difficult times!”
“Yes, we can. But only if they ask,” responded Mr. Fellows.
“Your parents took no interest in your life. Were you happy with it?”
The master of the household did not reply, only looked at his wife reproachfully. She immediately regretted her words and came up to Henry.
“Forgive me, my dear! I did not want to hurt you.”
“It is all right,” he squeezed her hand and kissed it. “We are better parents than they mine were.”
“Or mine,” confessed Rebecca, with a smile.
“He asked what!” cried Melody, when her brother voiced George Melshem’s request in her room.
“Please, keep your voice down!”
“And did you not challenge him to a duel?”
“Melody, I do not want to lose his friendship. Besides, you must understand that after a duel with him your relationship with Georgia will not be the same.”
Miss Fellows paused to think.
“Okay, I’ll help you,” she said.
“Are you serious?” Ralph was surprised.
“Yes, I am. You are my brother. Besides, I have no reason to be ashamed of my body. Thank God, the nature gave me quite an attractive figure.”
The young man hugged his sister tightly and lifted her up above his head.
“Thank you! Thank you, Melody!”
“Let me go, silly!” Miss Fellows burst into laughter. “I am dizzy! Let me go!”
“Will you tell me when Megan prepares a bath for you?”
“I will,” promised Melody and made her brother leave.
After he had left, she sat on her bed and bit her lower lip. Who knew her thoughts at that moment, but judging by her expression she liked what she was thinking about. Before she went to bed, Melody took her diary from a drawer and took a photograph out of it. It was made five years ago by daguerreotypes. It was a photograph of her as a twelve-year-old girl with her father. Then she wrote down in her diary about what happened to her during the day and pulled the bell to call Megan.
Chapter IV
At breakfast, Ralph caught his sister’s eye, who winked at him furtively.
“My dear, I was going to pay a visit to Countess Melshem,” said Mrs. Fellows to her husband. “Shall we go together?”
“I am afraid I have business, Rebecca. But you can take Melody with you.”
“No, I cannot go,” said his daughter.
“Why not?”
“Because there has to pass sometime after the incident with Ralph and Georgia before I can meet with her.”
“But it was in no way your fault, dear!”
“I know, Mother, but I will feel awkward anyway.”
“I think it is a reasonable decision, Rebecca,” Mr. Fellows agreed with his daughter. “And you will take notice of the situation there and of our neighbors’ mood.”
“Well, you leave me no choice. Megan, ask the coachman to prepare the carriage.”
“Yes, milady.”
During the rush about their mother’s departure the brother and sister managed to discuss the nuances of the latter’s bath procedures. She promised to be prepared at half past ten and leave the windows curtains open. The barn above the stables was opposite the bathroom on the first floor of the house, so one could look through a crack in the wooden wall of the stable and see a large bath bowl and the one who was taking a bath.
At the appointed time, Megan prepared a bath and asked Miss Fellows to come in. Melody tried not to look in the window, but she did glance a couple of times toward the barn. Her heart was pounding, and she was blushing. According to the legend, she was not aware that Ralph allowed his friend to watch her, so she was supposed to behave naturally. However, she had difficulty doing that, she dropped the soap now and again, so she had to bend over the rim of the bowl. “I suppose he is happy,” she muttered to herself. “I suppose he is sitting and smiling there.”
When Melody had stepped out of the bowl and was looking for a towel to wrap herself in, her father came into the room, wearing an unbuttoned white shirt and rolled up trousers. He froze up in shock, seeing his daughter naked, and she gasped and covered her breasts and crotch with her hands.
“Graham, do not enter!” shouted Mr. Fellows to his valet, who was about to bring in clean underwear and a towel.
The father immediately turned away and muttered crossly as he was leaving, “Tuesday is my day for bath procedures. Was it so hard to discuss the time with me or Graham?”
George Melshem, who was watching the scene, laughed heartily, though he did not hear Henry Fellows’s words.
“I can’t believe you did not want to show her to me undressed!” he said to Ralph. “Unlike you, your father has seen Melody naked, as it turns out.”
Ralph dropped his head dejectedly.
“You could at least show some tact, George,” he replied to his friend grumpily. “I hope that we are even now, and you will continue being friends with my family and me.”
“Of course, I will!” promised the viscount and patted his neighbor’s shoulder.
“Will you keep what happened secret from your sister or anybody else?” asked Ralph, walking with George to the gate.
The earl’s son slyly looked at his friend and slipped through the gate, making no answer.
Returning to the house, Ralph first went see his sister. She was writing something in her diary.
“I thought that you had told Father that you were going to do it in his time!” he said as soon as he entered. “He always takes a bath at eleven o’clock on Tuesdays with a rare exception.”
“I forgot,” said Melody. “You had confused me with your George