I Remember Nothing, But I Have Four Husbands

After dinner, the brothers once again gathered by the river to wash. The youngest decided that he wanted to eat fish the following day so he started to diligently fish, the oldest three sat by the shore to talk. Lucas was conspicuously washing his pants, roughly rubbing a hard spot in the crotch area.

"Holy shit, Lucas, what d'ya do in the mountains?" Joseph asked as he watched his older brother wash off the hardened fluids.

"Kiss." Lucas replied, not stopping in his task. He submerged the pants in the water and felt around for any spot he had missed rubbing.

"Kiss, my ass!" Joseph cursed. "You came with just a kiss?! You sure ya didn't go all the way?" He suspiciously inquired. Lucas did not deign himself to answer.

"Lucas ain't as indecent as you, Joseph." Ethan interjected before the two started fighting. "It's obvious they snogged."

The brothers had a good relationship, product of being the only support they had for each other. Of course, in regards to their sexual activities, they could only talk about it among themselves.

Though, that was only between the three older ones; Felix was not included in those conversations. Not yet. Lucas had somehow become an unwilling listener whenever Ethan and Joseph recounted their ventures with the women they had been with. That was why, even though Lucas was inexperienced in the practice, there was a lot of knowledge in his mind on how to pleasure a woman.

His own tricks actually depended on imagination and on what he thought had sounded good to try.

"Pot callin' the kettle black." Joseph mutinously grumbled as he glared at Ethan. His oldest brother was as indecent as he was. Ethan's gentle façade and soft voice could deceive anyone but his brothers. They knew that brain of his was as rotten as a lecherous old man. "And, how was it?" Joseph changed the topic and kept interrogating Lucas.

It was, after all, his second brother's first sexual encounter. If possible, he could give some tips for next time. Joseph, though, would rather that encounter to be with him.

Lucas' pupils dilated as he recalled the moment. "Soft and fragrant." He commented. Everything about Isabelle was soft: her waist, her legs, her breasts, her butt. He had felt very reluctant to part from her body after touching and fondling. And her smell was…

"Dammit, Lucas! I asked ya how it was, not ta get a boner!" Joseph loudly complained, looking away after noticing the changes in his second brother's body.

Ethan wryly chuckled, also diverting his gaze to let Lucas fix his problem. He did not blame his brother. Lucas had been a virgin for twenty-two years, and now that he finally had a taste of what it meant to have a woman, he got easily excited. It had been the same for Ethan when he first started looking for women to satiate his curiosity, and then the need when he liked the experience.

Although, more than anything, Ethan was happy.

After the crude comment Joseph made to Isabelle the previous day and her reaction to it, they thought they had ruined any chance they had with her. So, Ethan proposed to let her go with Lucas to the mountains to look for flowers as she had wanted. Lucas and Joseph had agreed, and the latter even shared some last-minute knowledge about women to his brother.

Knowing about the 'kiss' Lucas experienced up there, it told them that Isabelle was not completely spooked by them.

They could try once again!

A splash of water told Ethan and Joseph that Lucas had decided to remedy his issue in the river's cold water. A good decision considering Felix was also around. They did not want their youngest brother to witness his second brother jacking off so openly.

"'twas that good, huh." Ethan sighed as Lucas' arm jerkily moved, creating a soft splashing sound.

"Ya talked about somethin' else, or just went directly to the deed?" Joseph asked, not caring about Lucas pleasuring himself in front of him. He was not ignorant about the matter either way. None of them were. And, more than once, Joseph had woken his brothers up with his grunts while masturbating.

After a while, Lucas suddenly stopped moving and let out a heavy sigh. "Told her I like her." He replied in a rough voice as he washed off the clinging residues.

"So soon?" Joseph startled. It had just been a few days! The days she had remained conscious and lucid at that!

Ethan, however, felt there was something else to Lucas' words. As the eldest, he had to make sure all his brothers communicated in an efficient matter, so he learned to pay attention to the tone in Lucas' words rather than the words themselves. "Did she ask for a confession?"

Ethan admitted he only sought for a physical relationship with her so she would give birth to a few children – or one was good, too – for them in exchange for a place to stay, food, and companionship. He neglected the fact that Isabelle might also want some emotional stability.

His thoughts also came from their reality: they could not give Isabelle a stable life in the long run. So, the most Ethan had hoped was for her to stay for a couple of years, or a year at most, and then let her go whenever she wanted to – once she finally realized how hard it was to live with them. His haphazard vision vanished like smoke as Lucas desired to get emotionally involved with her.

That way, they could not escape from a real commitment. Lucas had taken that step and boldly confessed his budding feelings, but were the other brothers as committed as he seemed?

Ethan did not doubt his brother's feelings as Lucas had always been a centered person who knew what he wanted. Once he decided Isabelle was the woman he wanted to marry, it was only natural for Lucas to grow feelings towards her very quickly. Yes, they had talked about gifts and all that, but Ethan only considered those as ways to get what he wanted, not as an object of romance or proper courting.

The oldest brother was ashamed to realize he had not been better than Joseph who only thought of fucking Isabelle. He had also seen her as someone with whom he could only release his sexual drive.

"She asked after the kiss." Lucas replied, still insisting it was just a kiss.

"So, you first 'kissed' and then established a relationship?" Joseph incredulously asked.

Ethan, again, did not doubt his brother, and he did not want to doubt Isabelle, but he still remained a bit skeptical. The skepticism came from his experience of having seen all kind of women.

Together with Joseph, they had courted several women in the past years. It did not matter how different in temperament or looks they were, in the end, they all had wanted the same: money. As soon as they discovered their poor status, those women disappeared from their lives, forgetting all about the sweet promises of living together until old.

From the very beginning those women professed cheap love. If those women truly had loved the brothers as they claimed, then they would not mind a bit of hardship, or at least it would have been nice if they thought up some measures to improve their living conditions together. The brothers lacked many things, but the will to have a better future was not one.

With time, the two brothers had become jaded after going through relationships that failed due to the same reason: their lack of money. So, they unconsciously started doubting the only woman who seemed to be honest. After all, even without counting the fact that Isabelle was amnesiac, she could easily leave them without even thinking of paying them back. There was nothing holding her back.

 Yet she stayed, and was even thinking of ways to earn money for everybody in the house as if she was part of the family already. It was surreal. She was doing everything in a reverse way: accepting to live with them and share hardships together first, start a relationship with them later.

"Maybe…" Lucas began trying to find the words to explain the feeling Isabelle gave him when she asked if he liked her. "She wants it."

"Whatcha mean? That she likes us all and wants us to like her back?" Joseph scoffed. Was there such a generous woman in the world? Even in those families that had one Wife for several men, the Wife would always favor one Husband.

"If not, then only I'll marry 'er." Lucas cuttingly said. He had been sincerely answering Joseph's questions and he only got scathing remarks from him. If he was not interested in her, then he should give way to Lucas who truly was.

"We won't know 'bout it 'till we get along with her." Ethan quickly interjected, stopping any fight that could sprout from his brothers' words. Although Joseph was too caustic, Lucas did not fully understand where the other's skepticism came from. Ethan could only stop them and think up ways to confirm if Isabelle truly was interested in the four as Lucas claimed.

"But, can we really marry her?" Joseph asked. He still felt that matter was unclear.

"Of course we can…" Ethan replied, and explained his brothers with more detail how marriage worked according to what he had heard in town.

Rich men could marry several women, but could also be happy with only one woman; same as rich women who married a sole man out of love, or several men to serve her in the bed. Those rich people who married lots of partners did it to flaunt the fact they had money to afford them.

Homes with a middle status rarely practiced polygamy like those rich fellows, but there have been several cases of either the Husband or the Wife having a lover, or lovers, outside. Which also meant having another expense, but they could decide when to leave them or end the affair.

Then, there were the low-status homes that could only afford having one partner their whole life. No matter if one or the other was treated as crap, they could forget about a divorce as they had to fully depend on each other. And the extended family could not interfere in the matters of the couple. Or more, like, they did not bother.

It was the poor homes that had it the hardest.

The daughters were sold for a meager sum of money for the family to subsist and raise the sons at home who looked more reliable in the parents' view. The families with only daughters sought to marry them well so they could depend on them in the future, but it was a fleeting dream. Who would want a woman with no education and looked as good as a rag doll thanks to the poor upbringing?

The families with only sons, like them, searched high and low for a woman who was willing to share the burdens at home. It was as easy as looking for a needle in the ocean, as not many women from similar upbringing liked to continue their life of suffering in yet another poor home. That was why the practice of buying a shared Wife was common in the poor households full of sons.

Most of those women were daughters of really destitute homes, the poorest of all, that need the money so badly, or women with not a good reputation.

Naturally, with a Wife and future kids to feed, the family would never come out from the pit of poverty they were buried in. It was a selfish way to sooth the solitude of the heart and the helplessness of being the last of the line without caring for the lives they brought to the pit to suffer with them.

That was the reality the family of four brothers lived in.

A reality that was changing for the better with the arrival of Isabelle.

Or at least, they hoped so.