by Jade Lee
She frowned at him. “Worked out what?”
“Everything to your satisfaction. The money, the business, the timing of it all? Whether or not I manage the return of your home, you and Tommy will be fine.”
She frowned at him even as she was nodding slowly. “Yes, I have worked it all out. But our wager still stands.”
He sniffed as if insulted. “Of course it does.”
“And have you worked out how to accomplish the task?”
He nodded, but his words contradicted it. “Not exactly. Shall I explain my thinking?”
Her mad toff offering to explain? Tonight was a night of wonders. “Yes, please.”
“And would you mind terribly? In the evenings when I was a boy, I used to rub my mother’s feet. She had terrible bunions, you understand, and after a long day, she would sit by the fire and I would rub her feet. And we would talk.” He spoke so wistfully, that she was already shifting to accommodate him without even thinking of the scandalousness of it all.
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, any number of things. What I had learned that day, what the workers had done, who was cheating whom in the village. Everything. Whatever came into my head to share, and she listened so patiently.” His eyes grew distant. “I should like to visit her soon. She says the dog isn’t nearly as good as I am on her bunions.”
“The dog rubs her feet?”
“What? Oh, no. He lays on them. His body heat helps, I think. But she says my hands are miracles.”
A man’s hands on her feet? She couldn’t imagine. But he seemed so eager and she was equally interested in hearing his thoughts, so she nodded.
He grinned like a little boy, which she found really endearing, and scrambled down to the floor beside her chair. He was tall and lanky, so it took a moment of arranging for him to settle with his back against the wall. Then he reached under the blanket and took hold of her left foot with a firm touch. She gasped and felt her shoulders tighten, but his touch was strong and impersonal. Or so it seemed, though she felt his every movement as if it were the only thing of true import. As if nothing else in the world mattered except his hand on her ankle as he worked off her shoe.
“This is very wrong,” she murmured as she tried to draw back.
“We shall leave your stockings on. Your foot is covered by the blanket. I can see nothing untoward. It is perfectly acceptable.”
“It is not, and you know it.”
He looked at her, his expression honest and a little disappointed. “Penny, forgive me, but you are not a fine lady to be worried about your reputation. If you were, my presence here would already have ruined you.”
“Tommy already ruined me,” she said under her breath.
“Your cousin, now brother? How could he ruin you?”
She frowned down at him. Surely he knew. “Everyone believes him to be my illegitimate son.”
The man grunted, the disgust on his face clear. “That is the problem with most people. They notice only one fact and forget all the others. Tommy does not have your features. There is some family resemblance, to be sure. In the ears and in the shape of your lips. But that is all. If you were truly his mother, there would be many more similarities, not to mention the changes in your own body.”
“Changes in me?” she asked, surprised.
“Wider hips, fuller breasts. Often the gait changes. Even the rhythms of speech can change, but perhaps that is more a result of chronic exhaustion or screaming after stubborn toddlers. I don’t know. But I can assure you, there are changes that happen to the body when a girl becomes a mother.”
She looked down at her chest. Her breasts had never been small, but…
His grip caressed along her ankle. “Rest assured, my dear, it is quite plain you have never had a baby, never been pregnant. Tommy is your relation, but not your child. And anyone with eyes to see will know it. I did immediately.”
She looked at him, her mind struggling with what he’d just said. He had known immediately that she was an honest woman. He had known and stupidly believed that everyone else saw it, too. The idea was so unsettling, so wonderful, that she could only stare. In her experience, no one saw, no one believed. Not even her friends here at the dress shop.
“You knew,” she whispered, her voice choked and her eyes misting with tears. Stupid woman that she was, crying over such a silly thing. And yet she was touched all the way down to the core of her soul.
“Immediately,” he answered firmly. “But if you are going to cry about it, then I shall pretend you are a fallen woman. Would that be better?”
She laughed. He intended her to, of course. How the man could be utterly charming now when he was so hideously annoying earlier, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was just the magic of this moment. So she shook her head and leaned back in her chair. He knew she was an honest woman. And so she would allow him to do the very scandalous act of rubbing her feet.
What a contradiction it all was. And yet as he firmly pressed his thumb into the arch of her foot, she found the particulars didn’t matter. She was in heaven, his hands were truly magical, and she would not move even if Armageddon began.
“Please,” she said as she closed her eyes. “Tell me what you have surmised about my home.”
He settled back against the wall while his thumb pressed deeply into her heel. She could feel the texture of her stocking as it imprinted on her skin. But it didn’t matter. Nothing had ever felt this good.
“All we need do is prove the will false. That is a simple matter of comparing the signatures to your father’s. A marriage certificate would be best. Do you have that?”
He was curling her toes around, stretching her foot into a point and then arching it back the other way. Oh, God, did that feel wonderful.
“Yes,” she murmured. “In the Bible.” Then she groaned. “But it is at my home.”
“Which is currently occupied by Cordwain. No matter. He certainly has no use for your family Bible. We can surely persuade him to give it to you.”
“He wouldn’t give me the mud off his boots.” She spoke the words without heat mostly because Samuel was rolling his thumb along the ball of her foot, sliding between the ridges. She felt as if her toes were separating, stretching open as never before. “Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.
“What, break wills? Truly it is a matter of deduction. As for why other people cannot make such logical deductions as easily is a mystery that I have wondered all my life.”
She smiled. She didn’t know if he had meant to be funny or not, but she was pleased nonetheless. “No, silly. To rub a woman’s feet like that.”
“Ah,” he said as he set her foot down. She would have objected, but he was already picking up her other foot. She wiggled her toes in anticipation. “There are Chinese texts on the channels of energy that flow through the feet. Through the whole body actually, but there was a great deal of literature devoted to the feet.”
She lifted her head to look down at him. “You speak Chinese?”
“Goodness, no! Well, only a little, but these were written texts and I could not make much sense at all of them.”
“Then how—”
“I found someone who could and had the man explain it to me.”
“Of course you did.”
He sniffed. “It was the logical thing to do. I was interested, my mother’s feet hurt, and there was a visiting professor at school who knew. I took the time to ask, and he to explain.”
She reached out. If she shifted just the tiniest bit—which she did—she could touch his shoulder. She set her fingertips there and smiled when he looked at her. “Thank you,” she said and was pleased when his skin flushed in response. She waited a moment, happy to watch his expression shift from embarrassed to content. She did not think he was often content. Sure enough, all too soon, his gaze grew distracted again as his mind began to churn.
“If necessary, we can challenge the witnesses.”
She shook her head. �
�John Smithee and Thomas Baker? There are dozens of men with those names.”
“Yes, but they would have to prove that they could sign exactly like what was on the will. That is a great deal harder to do. But it’s best if we simply challenge your father’s signature.”
“Addicock said he would go to the constable. He said that the bill of sale was false.”
“Yes, but recall that the constable already told us he checked out the bill of sale. It was legitimate.” His hands shifted to stroke down the back of her ankle. She hadn’t thought it would feel so lovely, but everything he did was perfect. Meanwhile, he kept talking as if his mind would not stop. “Of course, you know that Addicock is simply playing a stalling game. Next time you see him, he will claim there was a delay with the constable. And then the next time that he has filed a complaint, but with the courts these days everything is slow.”
She picked up the thread of the game, having played it with some of her father’s clients—both aristocrat and not—all of whom had wished to avoid payment. “Then he will say that Cordwain is a villain, but he is working night and day to see the man brought to justice.”
“Years will pass and in the end…”
“He will be very sad, but unable to help me at all.” She sighed, her shoulders dropping with the movement. Or perhaps it was because he had found a hole in her stocking. The heel was worn through, so it was an easy thing for him to find. But she hadn’t expected that he would slip his fingers through the opening and begin to work on her flesh. Amazing how much better it was when he touched her skin to skin.
“So we must prove the signature false now. Still, I cannot believe Addicock the true villain here. He seems much too bad at it.”
“He is good enough that I would have no recourse without you,” she pointed out, both frustrated and grateful for his presence. Why were women so vulnerable without a man?
“Never fear. I shall get it sorted out.”
“But how? I don’t have the Bible,” she said, half on a sigh.
“Tell me where it is. I shall get it tomorrow.”
She was silent a long moment. Part of her was trying to remember exactly where the massive tome was. Her parents’ bedroom, she thought, high on a shelf. But she wasn’t sure. The other part of her was feeling his fingers press against the arch of her foot. He seemed to be caressing on a part of her deep inside her body. Not quite her spine, more a tight ache that was echoed throughout her every muscle. And the more he stroked it, the more everything in her eased.
It took a long while for her to remember that he was waiting for an answer. And even longer for her to find breath to answer. “I think it’s in my parents’ bedroom, but I’m not sure. It could be a dozen different places.”
He grunted. “Never fear. I shall find it.”
“No, I will go with you. It is my home. I know where things are. Besides, Cordwain can’t have moved in already. He has a home. All he wants is the shop.”
Samuel’s fingers paused as he frowned at her. “He will have guards, Penny. It will not be safe.”
Her gaze did not waver. “My home, my Bible. If you mean to sneak in to find it, then I will be with you.”
He grimaced. “I mean to talk to Cordwain and get him to see plain logic.”
She snorted. “He’s not a logical man. And he’s angry.”
“Nevertheless—”
“And then when that fails, you mean to pick the lock as you did at Addicock’s.”
She could tell she had him there. He pressed his lips together in frustration. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if she were stopping him from breaking in. Only insisting she help him.
“It’s only logical,” she said calmly. “You cannot find it as quickly as I can. And the less time creeping about a guarded home, the better.”
He humphed and twisted such that he wasn’t looking at her. She chuckled. She’d wager everything she owned—which wasn’t much at this moment—that very few people ever got the better of him in an argument. She was extraordinarily pleased that she was now one of them.
Meanwhile, he had begun tugging on her stocking. The ties—high on her thigh—had loosened while she slept. Her position on the chair kept the stocking on her leg, but a tiny shift would allow it to slip down.
“This is in the way,” he groused, referring to her stocking. “It seems silly to have it on while I am doing this. Doesn’t it feel better without it in the way?”
He knew it did. She looked at him, feeling at war with her conscience. If her mother were alive, the woman would be screaming and swatting at Samuel with a broom. Or with a shoemaker’s awl, which was very sharp and could be deadly. But Mama was gone now, and Penny had spent many weeks learning exactly how vulnerable a woman alone could be. She’d defended herself and Tommy from all manner of cads.
But Samuel wasn’t a cad or a villain. He was helping her merely because it amused him to do so. Yes, she knew he wanted to seduce her, but this was not a seduction. At least not in the usual way. Besides, her friends were downstairs. A single cry, and they would run upstairs, brooms and other weapons in hand.
Meanwhile, he was looking at her closely, as if reading her thoughts right off her face. “You are quite safe with me, you know. I would never hurt you.”
She dismissed that with a soft snort. “Men never mean to hurt women. They are simply unthinking, and it happens.”
He all but rolled his eyes. “I am never unthinking. Good God, my thoughts rarely stop. Why—”
“Samuel,” she said softly, effectively stopping his words cold. “You are a strange, mad gent, but you are also kind and smart. Still, I don’t want to strip down my stockings for you.” That was a lie. A part of her did want to. A part of her wanted it very much.
“Of course,” he said. “I understa—”
“I want you to kiss me.”
His eyes widened and she could tell she’d shocked him. Here he’d been trying to subtly seduce her, and she had leaped straight to what they both wanted. It was a conscious decision on her part. She was her own woman now, the sole support of herself and Tommy. Her parents were gone and she had no one to watch out for her except herself. She would honor her parents and the morals that they had taught her. But she would also please herself. There was precious little pleasure in her life. She would take it now and not feel guilty about it.
She watched as Samuel rose up before her. She didn’t move on the chair, didn’t even shift the blanket away from her. She let him come to her, his eyes intense, his shoulders impossibly wide as they blocked out the glow from the fireplace. She saw his nostrils flare, even as she saw his mouth shift and pause, then shift again. He wanted to say something. His mind was likely clamoring some nonsense. But she didn’t want to hear it just then.
“Penny—”
“Just a kiss,” she said as she pulled her arm out from beneath the blanket.
He nodded gravely. “Just a kiss. Or maybe just a few kisses?”
She smiled and lifted her chin to meet him at a better angle. “Maybe a few. If they’re very good kisses.”
“Ah,” he said. “A challenge. I do like challenges.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to respond something sarcastic. Something about men and challenges, and always being ready for some things. But the words never left her mouth. Instead, they were stopped by the stroke of his finger against her mouth. It was a simple brush, a touch then gone, but it left a tingling heat in its wake.
Then he was smiling wryly at her. “We both talk too much.”
She couldn’t agree more. Then he was kissing her. His mouth pressed to hers, his fingers delved into her hair to support her head. And his tongue teased along the seam between her lips.
“Sweet” was the word that filtered through her thoughts. He was kissing her sweetly, like a boy with his first girl. She wasn’t his first. She couldn’t be. Any more than this was her first kiss. But it felt that sweet, the way he teased her lips, pressing lightly against them, almost hov
ering, silently waiting for her consent.
She gave it. She opened her mouth, she pressed herself forward, and she gave herself to his kiss. He supported her head, and he angled his mouth. His tongue swept inward with the confidence that was so much a part of him. Oh, the sensations he evoked with just a thrust of his tongue. She released a sigh and let her herself enjoy what he did to her.
He thrust his tongue in and out, he touched the roof of her mouth and dueled with her tongue. He pressed her backward into the chair and thrilled her as no man had ever done. Just his mouth and his tongue, his teeth, and his presence. He filled her, he challenged her, and she found she wanted more.
He pulled back slowly, and her lips clung to his. His breath was short, and her heart was pounding. The firelight was behind him, so his face was in darkness. But still she knew that his eyes would be dark and hungry. Or perhaps that was her own hunger she felt.
“Was that good enough?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “I think you will have to try it again. Better this time.”
“Better how?”
She knew what she wanted. She had married friends. She knew the mechanics of what went on between a man and a woman. She couldn’t do all of it, but there was a little she could feel. A tiny bit more that she could enjoy.
She pulled her other hand out from under the blanket. Shyly, she touched his near wrist and slowly lifted it up. She couldn’t say what she wanted, but she guessed that, with his mind, he would understand.
“Will you touch me a little, Samuel?”
“As much as you want, Penny. Are you sure you want more?”
She nodded. “Just a little.” Then she boldly brought his hand to her breast.
Chapter 10
Samuel felt his mouth go dry while all of his blood rushed straight south. He knew he needed to go slow. She was not a bored society woman. For all that Penny was a woman on her own, she was an innocent in the ways of sexuality. No matter how blatantly she asked for his touch, he had to go slow.
That’s what he told himself, but his mind had little control over his body. Even as she brought his hand to her breast, he was already adjusting his fingers to hold her, to caress her in the way all women enjoyed. He lifted her breast slightly, he squeezed just a moment, then he rolled his thumb back and forth over her nipple.