by Lynne Barron
“Tell me, my lord Henry, how is it done?”
“How is what done, love?” He turned her into his arms the waited for a space on the dance floor to open.
“How do the ladies go about seducing you in crowded ballrooms?”
“They don’t,” he replied. “Not any longer.”
“But if a lady, or better still, a shameless tart, had a mind to have her way with you,” she persisted, “how would she go about it?”
“Don’t tease, love,” he murmured.
“Oh, I am not teasing, my lord.” Georgie rose onto her toes and leaned in to whisper the words in his ear, lingered a moment to draw in his scent.
“Damn me,” Henry growled, his fingers clenching on her back. “I gave my word I wouldn’t touch you again until the wedding night.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Georgie blew lightly into his ear, smiling as he drew in a choppy breath.
“Georgie, a gentleman’s word is sacred.”
Their break in the dancers came and Henry swept her into the waltz, effortlessly leading her around and around the floor crowded with ladies and gentlemen from all walks of London life. He twirled her this way to avoid a collision with a portly man and his equally portly partner, spun her that way to forestall a clash with a couple who’d mistaken the waltz for a country reel, until he finally found a relatively uncluttered space on the floor in which to dance and spin her about for the sheer joy of it.
Georgie smiled as he whisked her around a corner, giggled softly as the music soared and the pace of their steps soared right along with it, and laughed aloud as Henry pulled her close enough to elicit a few gasps from the dancers around them.
And all the while he held her gaze, one hand firm on her back, the other lightly clasping her gloved fingers, his thumb brushing her palm in time to the melody that surrounded them.
As the final notes wound to a close and the dancers slowed almost to a sedate pace, Georgie whispered, “I’ve heard talk of a tower.”
“Don’t tempt me, love.”
“That sounds remarkably like a dare and you ought to know the Buchanan who can resist a dare, or a wager for that matter, has yet to be born.
“Is that so?” His eyes lit with amusement.
“Shall we place a friendly wager, my lord?” she asked, stepping close enough that her hip brushed his thigh.
“What did you have in mind?” The music came to an end and he bowed to her quick curtsy.
“I’ll wager my frilly drawers against your starched cravat I can get you hard without so much as touching you.”
Henry looked about and, apparently satisfied no one was near enough to hear their risqué banter, replied in a voice laced with husky laughter, “That seems an unfair wager as I’ve yet to see a you in a pair of drawers, frilly or otherwise. And I’m already as hard as I care to be with my family and friends looking on.”
Georgie glanced down at his crotch with unabashed interest and sure enough he was sporting a discernable bulge in his trousers. Peering up at him through her lashes she slowly licked her lips.
“Have mercy, love,” he begged.
“Do you remember the feel of my lips around your cock?”
Henry swallowed, reached for her fingers and placed her hand on his forearm with an audible slap. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“I don’t want to kill you. Only swive you silly.”
“I want the same,” he muttered as he led her from the dance floor. “You’ve no idea how I want you.”
“You want me flat on my back and yours to command.”
“Leave off, Georgie,” he ordered, his voice a gravelly whisper.
“Or perhaps on my hands and knees with my bum in the air.”
“I gave my word as a gentleman.”
“Mayhap you would rather soixante-neuf,” Georgie mused.
“Soixante-neuf?” he repeated, steering her toward the refreshment table just beyond the wallflowers lined up amid the wheat and barley.
“Sixty-nine,” she translated helpfully.
“I am conversant in French.”
“We’ve yet to attempt it together.”
“Attempt what?”
“Soixante-neuf. We can try it if you’d like, but I must say I’ve never found it terribly enjoyable. It’s deucedly hard for me to concentrate on my part while…well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“I get caught up in my own pleasure.”
“All right, I give over.”
“You’ll take me to the tower?” Georgie released his arm to clap her hands.
“No, what does it mean?” Henry replied around a huff of laughter.
“Soixante-neuf?”
“That is what we’re discussing, isn’t it? What is it? A card game? Billiards?”
Georgie blinked in surprise before letting lose a snort.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Oh, good lord, of course you’ve never…I was your first, after all. But surely you’ve heard of…no?” Georgie took hold of Henry’s arm and dragged him past the ladies lined up along the wall and beyond the grains and weeds in tall urns to a shadowy corner, suspecting she was about to win his lordship’s starch-stiff cravat and the swiving of her life.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“At the same time?” Henry croaked, wanting to be certain he hadn’t misunderstood Georgie’s rambling, though stunningly vivid, description of an act he’d never heard of, much less experienced.
His betrothed truly was going to kill him.
But not before he swived her silly.
Forget silly, he was going to roger her senseless.
“The tower. Five minutes.”
Christ, was that his voice? He sounded deranged, as if he’d come completely and totally unhinged.
“Does that mean I’ve won the wager?”
“Four minutes and fifty seconds. Don’t make me wait.”
Henry turned and started back the way they’d come, lust coiling low in his belly and pulsing down his pike-hard shaft.
Passing Lord Everett where he lingered near the line of ladies lacking dance partners, he filched a glass of punch from his cousin’s hand.
“I say, Hastings, bad form,” Everett called to his back.
Henry downed the rum-spiked libation in three quick swallows and tossed the glass into an urn sprouting wilting green grass and oat stalks.
Just ahead Lady Talbot and another woman, a raven-haired beauty whose name he could not recall but with whom he’d once shared a rollicking ride in his carriage, watched his approach.
“Good evening, Lord Hastings.” Lady Talbot greeted him with a graceful curtsy while her friend smiled like a cat in the cream.
“Lady Talbot,” he called out without slowing his steps. “And…er…my apologies.”
Rather than taking offense at his poor memory, the dark-haired lady laughed gaily as she stepped into his path. “Are you going out for a breath of fresh air all alone?”
“I’m in rather a hurry,” he answered, stepping left.
She matched his move and laid her hand on his arm. “I don’t recall you being the sort to hurry. Shall I accompany you outside to determine if memory serves me well?”
“Have you not heard?” Lady Talbot asked her friend.
“Heard what?” the other lady replied.
“I’m off the market.” Henry feinted to the right and dodged to the left, leaving the lady teetering over her own two feet. “Tell all your friends.”
Every french door on the wall was thrown open in deference to the warm August night and Henry sailed through the first one he came upon only to find the terrace packed with bodies.
“Hastings,” Jasper Clive called out from across the way.
Beside him, Cybil Fairley beamed a smile at her former lover, no matter that her current lover was standing not two feet away.
“I say, chap, come and join us,” Benedict Edwards, Lord Carlton, invited with a wave. “W
e’ve heard the damndest bit of gossip about you and a certain Scots lass.”
Ignoring his two friends and his former mistress, Henry turned to the left, nearly knocking Lord Casterbury off his feet.
“Pardon,” both men mumbled, doing a little jig in an attempt to get around one another.
“For pity’s sake,” Henry ground out, taking the older man by the shoulders and bodily moving him out of the way.
His name was called out a dozen or more times as he plowed through the laughing and flirting throng, tossing out nods to this acquaintance and that and evading one gloved hand after another until he reached the edge of the terrace and took another left.
The north section of the stone veranda was less populated and measurably darker without the light spilling from the ballroom. Passing a couple arguing in one corner and another flirting behind a potted palm, he found the door to the tower.
He twisted the ornate handle, his fingers tangling in a fat pink ribbon someone had discarded on the cool iron.
Inside all was dark and quiet, the space cool and slightly damp, and he speedily picked his way up the spiraling stairs.
Dizzy from the winding ascent and the simple fact that all of the blood had rushed from his head to his cock in anticipation, Henry pushed open the door and barreled out onto top of the tower.
A circular stone balcony wrapped around the tower. London spread out as far as the eye could see, lights glinting and flickering, transforming the city into a wonderland of twisting roads and passageways beneath a dark sky.
It might have been a lovely sight, breathtaking in fact, had it not been for the pale arse pumping away between a pair of stocking-clad legs at the hip-high wall encircling the balcony.
“We’ve company,” a woman’s voice warned with no apparent concern.
“Is it your husband?”
If Henry wasn’t mistaken the gentleman’s voice belonged to one of his cousins, Barron White’s boy down from university.
A blonde head rose over Jeremy White’s shoulder and a pair of dark eyes peered at Henry through the gloom before disappearing again with a giggle and a hushed whisper.
“Hastings, by God you old so and so,” Jeremy White called out without so much as slowing his energetic lunging. “Didn’t you see the damned ribbon on the door knob?”
“Watch you don’t toss Mrs. Miles clear off the tower,” Henry warned as he turned away and yanked open the door.
He hadn’t a clue what his cousin meant about the damned ribbon and couldn’t spare a thought to figure it out as he descended the stairs in the dark, a more treacherous journey than the ascension and one that necessitated he slow his steps.
Where the hell was he to take Georgie now?
He considered and tossed away a multitude of options without landing upon a single place that might provide the privacy required.
He’d coupled in gardens and gazebos, dark alcoves and miniscule pantries, libraries and linen closets all over London but none of those places guaranteed privacy.
It was one thing to risk the reputation of any woman daring enough to lure him away from a ballroom but he would not risk the reputation of his future countess.
Yanking open the door, he strode onto the terrace expecting to find Georgie waiting for him.
Only the flirting couple inhabited the shadowy space.
Except they’d progressed well beyond an innocent flirtation to a wiggling, groping, panting embrace. The young man had the lady pressed to the stone wall, one hand fumbling at the neckline of her gown, the other lifting her ruffled skirts above one plump thigh.
Henry turned away with a muttered oath the couple either did not hear or chose to ignore. He ought to walk away but Georgie would be arriving any moment and he would be damned if he would miss the opportunity to roger her senseless simply because everywhere he went he found couples in various stages of the same.
“Harder.” The feminine command whispered around a breathy moan had Henry peering back over his shoulder.
“Like this?” Her lover asked as he forced his hand farther down into her bodice.
“Pinch the tip,” she begged, curling one leg around his hips and pulling him tight against her. “Harder.”
The young man must have been a bit heavy-handed, for the girl let loose a piercing cry quickly muffled against his shoulder.
“Sorry,” the boy muttered.
“Harder,” she begged, proving that both gentlemen had mistaken her cry of pleasure for one of pain. “Rub against me…Yes, yes, just there.”
The young lady certainly was a bossy creature, Henry decided as he gave up and pivoted around to watch the pair grind against one another through their clothing. The man’s panting breaths gained volume until he sounded rather like a locomotive while the lady whispered increasingly louder and more demanding orders.
The sight of the lovers wrestling in the shadows, the sound of their passion had Henry’s desire spiking until his vision blurred and his cock pressed painfully against the buttons of his trousers.
“Yes…yes…yes,” the young lady gasped, her gloved hands squeezing the boy’s ass, pulling him hard against her and moving his hips in a circular motion.
The boy let out a low groan and bucked against her as he found relief.
“Damn it,” Henry rasped, his hands balling at his sides and his chest heaving with each strangled breath he drew.
By God, he was going to fuck Georgie until she could not walk, fuck her until she could not see straight, and fuck her some more for tempting him into madness with her suggestive whispers and vivid descriptions only to leave him waiting and wanting.
A husky laugh carried on the breeze and he spun away from the panting couple in time to see Georgie turn the corner. Light from the torches flickered over her face and set her piled-high curls aflame.
And just behind her, Clive and Carlton watched the sway of her hips beneath her emerald gown as she hurried along the stone veranda.
The sight of his future bride walking away from two of London’s most notorious libertines with the remnants of her laughter hovering on her lips did queer things to his innards. Tangled his guts into a tight ball and shot a sharp pain to his chest.
There was something both inherently wrong and innately right in the picture the trio presented, as if they were but a portion of an old tapestry whose threads had frayed, leaving the tableau distorted. If he could just weave the tattered strands together he might comprehend the significance of the scene portrayed.
Between one breath and the next, Henry gathered the tattered threads only to discover they weren’t threads of a tapestry at all but rather missing pieces of a puzzle. Pieces bargained away by a girl who’d lied and schemed and seduced in order to become the lady who came to a stop before him.
From behind him or perhaps beside him, all around him, bouncing off the wall and beating against his temples, he heard the soft sounds of an old lullaby, the same lullaby Georgie had been humming as she cooked breakfast in the kitchen at Idyllwild.
“Henry, I’m sorry I’m late, but I didn’t know where the tower was located.” A slow smile bloomed across her face, lighting up her eyes, and it was only when her lilting voice drowned out the melody that he realized it was in his head.
Through his shock and awakening horror he felt the force of her smile and the pull of her sensuality, like a magnet holding him in place though he knew he ought to turn and walk away, to search out a private place to quiet his thoughts and rein in his sparking temper.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Jasper Clive called out. “You’ve chosen a fine woman.”
“The finest,” Lord Carlton added with chuckle that mocked everything Henry had believed about the fine woman standing before him.
Without a word, Henry latched on to Georgie’s hand and turned back the way he’d come, ignoring the niggling voice in his head that warned he was starting down a path that could only lead to disaster.
Georgie laughed as they passed the co
uple murmuring in the shadows while they fumbled to right their disheveled clothing and it occurred to Henry that she’d likely witnessed dozens of couples frolicking in the years she’d lived in Mountjoy’s crumbling castle, allowed dozens to witness her at the same.
“I think the tower’s occupied, as there’s a ribbon tied to the knob,” Georgie pointed out with a giggle, and the sweet, innocent sound was so entirely at odds with the carnal woman he knew her to be that it was all he could do not to howl in rage.
Where in all that was holy could a man find some privacy in this great mausoleum?
He barked out a raspy laugh when the answer came to him. Tightening his grip on her fingers, he ducked beneath a stone arch and hauled her down a short flight of stairs to a narrow, little-used door to the oldest wing of the house, a door that creaked as it opened into a dim hall and shadowy staircase. With his heart beating a tattoo in his chest and his blood roaring through his veins, he towed her up to the fourth floor of his uncle’s house where all was quiet but for the sawing of his breath and the tap of her high-heeled slippers on the floorboards.
Georgie said not a word but simply followed where he lead, as docile as a lamb. Her silent compliance seemed an admission of some kind, one he could not work out in his mind.
Pushing open a warped old door, he pulled her into a room crammed with trunks piled atop half a dozen wooden pews and discarded furniture stacked nearly to the beamed ceiling. Two stained glass windows set deep into the gray stone wall caught the moon’s rays, creating a muted prism of shifting, shimmering red, green and blue light. Atop a raised dais sat a listing pulpit and an immense chair fashioned of intricately carved wood and frayed velvet, the forgotten throne of some bygone clergyman with illusions of grandeur.
“A chapel?” Georgie sounded scandalized for the first, and only time, in their acquaintance.
“Not since the sixteenth century.” Henry yanked her into the room, releasing her hand and watching as she twirled down the aisle, coming to a stop before the dais, her skirts swirling around her legs.