“Certainly there are, and when the whole world does talk of them, one is likely to be discomposed. But not distressed, my dear. Reserve your distress for situations that merit it. I understand that you are upset—with good reason. And I hereby give you license to be annoyed, but not distressed.”
Georgiana had to laugh, and she thought there was a great deal of sense in this. While she would have preferred to keep her affair with Barnes private, that was no longer possible. Since it was public, she would hold her head high. She would not be cowed by criticism she knew to be unwarranted. She would hold firm to her principles.
She felt the flush that had come over her when Paulette told her the news begin to ebb, and as they wound their way through the labyrinth she found she was able to tell her hostess all about her feelings for Barnes with relative equanimity. By the time they exited the maze—Lady Loughlin was as good as her word, and they had no navigational trouble—the women were talking of other things as though nothing had happened.
Had they turned around as they were walking away, they would have seen Bruce Barnes emerging from the maze after them. He had seen them enter just as he was riding back to the estate from his visit to Romsey, and he couldn’t stop himself from following them in. He knew the maze well enough to keep a path parallel to theirs, and he’d heard every word that passed between them.
Barnes turned toward the stables to see to his horse, which he’d left saddled and unfed while he followed the women. Paulette and Georgiana headed toward the house, which they reached just as the large party was returning from the tennis courts.
“And who is the victor?” asked Lady Loughlin.
“That honor belongs emphatically to Miss Niven,” said Alphonse Gerard. His face had turned bright scarlet, and his clothes were sweaty and disheveled. His wide smile, though, was intact.
“But Gerry put up a good fight,” said Miss Niven, who looked as though she had barely exerted herself.
“Fiddlesticks!” said Gerry. “Whatever points I scored were results of your extraordinary generosity, not my superior play.”
Miss Niven demurred, but not very convincingly. “You play with heart,” she added.
“Heart? I play with heart, do I?” Gerry laughed. “Well, perhaps there’s something in that. I have so much heart that I will gladly lose to you again tomorrow.”
Miss Niven, who had enjoyed herself, agreed readily. The appointment was made, and the entire party went in to lunch.
When lunch had been eaten, the houseguests dispersed to their afternoon activities. Lady Georgiana had correspondence to attend to, and she was steeling herself to the task with one last cup of tea. She was sitting on a window seat overlooking the expanse of lawn, lost in her own thoughts, when Freddy sat down opposite.
“Hullo, Lady G.”
“Hello, Freddy.” She smiled at him. She was going to make a remark about the fine weather or the tasty lunch, but she decided she didn’t have to stand on such social niceties with this young man. “Have you made it up with your father yet?”
Freddy grinned. “I think he’s coming ’round. He glared at me this morning, but he seems to have left the horsewhip in the stable. He didn’t even shout, which I regard as a good sign.”
“A good sign, indeed,” Georgiana said solemnly.
“Are you engaged for the afternoon?” Freddy asked. It was a perfectly commonplace question, and if it had been asked by Paulette, or Mr. Sheffield, or Miss Niven, it would not have caught her attention. There was something in Freddy’s tone, though, that made her take particular notice.
“I am engaged in my correspondence, I’m afraid,” she said, slightly warily. “I’ve neglected it far too long.”
“But surely you can’t just shut yourself up in a musty old room when the sun is shining and the grounds are calling,” said Freddy, in a tone Georgiana could only describe as suggestive. Could this young man possibly be making a lover’s overture?
“My room is hardly musty,” she answered, with not a little hauteur. “And there are some responsibilities that supersede even sunshine.” She hated the way the words sounded as they left her mouth. She could have been some dried-up old harridan! Why did she feel the need to take this tone with the boy, even if he was trying to bill and coo?
She deliberately softened. “I do feel the call of a beautiful day,” she said. “That is, in fact, why I’ve fallen behind in my letters—we have had day after day of sunshine and warmth. We’re all quite spoiled.”
“So split the difference,” said Freddy in a husky voice, flashing hooded eyes. “Come for a walk with me and then attend to your letters.” He stood up and held his hand out to her.
Now there was no mistaking the tone. “Freddy,” she said, smiling but serious. “Are you making love to me?”
Freddy blushed to the roots of his white-blond hair. “If you insist on putting it that way, I suppose I am, but a chap’s not used to being called out on it.”
Georgiana laughed softly. “I wouldn’t say I’m calling you out, Freddy. I was only asking because it seemed so unlikely. After all, I’m several years older than you are, and I’ve known you since you wore short pants.”
Freddy considered this a blow to his manhood, and didn’t like it at all. “Every man wore short pants once, and not one of them likes to be reminded of it by the girl he’s got his eye on.” His husky tone was gone, replaced by one of indignation. “If you’ve been paying one whit of attention, you will have noticed that I no longer wear short pants, and I daresay I’m as much of a full-blooded man as any you know.”
In all her acquaintance with him, Georgiana had never seen Freddy even annoyed, let alone angry, and she was astonished. She started to say something, but he wasn’t finished yet.
“If you don’t care for a chap, you’re perfectly entitled to say him nay, but to say he’s not man enough to speak to you in the first place isn’t cricket.” He gave her a look that was almost a glare, and Georgiana saw his point. But then Freddy made a mistake. “I’m every inch the man Barnes is,” he said.
It took her a second or two to realize his meaning, and then she was on her feet in an instant. “You impudent pup,” she said, and slapped him, hard, across the face. “You know nothing of manhood. Or manners.” She turned on her heel and left the room.
She knew it would be hopeless to sit at a writing table and attend to correspondence, so she headed, hatless, out to the grounds, thinking through what had just happened. Freddy, like everyone else in the house, knew of her private affairs. Could he really think that, because she was intimate with Barnes, she wanted to be intimate with every man who crossed her path? That would make her a wanton harlot.
But what, after all, was the difference between what she was doing and wanton harlotry?
The difference was Barnes himself, and the connection between them. There was nothing random or casual in what they were doing. They were driven to each other in a way that transcended social mores. It was very clear to her, but the only other person who seemed to understand it was Barnes himself.
After she’d walked long enough to calm down, Lady Georgiana headed for her room to catch up on her letters. As she reached her door, she saw Barnes coming down the corridor in the other direction, and she found herself a bit flustered.
“Mr. Barnes,” she said. “Good afternoon.”
“If anyone should call me by my Christian name, I think it’s you.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Bruce.” She tested the name on her tongue.
She found, somewhat to her surprise, that her fight with Freddy, coming on the heels of her conversation with Paulette, had made her easier in this man’s presence, and more inclined to indulge her visceral attraction to him. Let the world say what it would. She was sure—absolutely sure—that what she was doing was not wrong, and letting the world’s opinion override her own would be unconscionable weakness.
“Bruce,” she repeated as she opened the door to her room.
The two went in,
and as she closed the door behind them, Barnes took her face in his two work-hardened hands. She turned to face him and he kissed her hard. She felt his cool hands on her cheeks as his warm tongue found her own, and it was as though a switch flipped in her. She stopped being the clever, self-possessed daughter of an earl and started being simply a vessel for her own desire.
She reached her hands behind him and ran them down his ass. She was surprised by its muscular compactness. Although he was large and she was small, she could almost cover each cheek with her hand. She squeezed and pulled him closer to her.
She felt his erection at her waistline, and she leaned back just enough to leave room to work her hand between their two bodies so she could feel its length and strength. It was still pointing downward, imprisoned by the fabric of his trousers, and she reached under his waistband to release it. She put her hand around it, just under the glans, and felt the skin of his penis slip over the iron-hard core beneath as she stroked him up and down.
Only then did Barnes’s hold on her face loosen, as he closed his eyes and groaned.
“I thought about you all the way to Romsey and all the way back,” he told her. “I had a hard-on the entire trip.”
She smiled, thinking of her own experience with the confluence of arousal and horse riding.
“It was all I could do not to stop and take care of it myself,” he went on. “But I was hoping to see you this afternoon.”
“I’m glad you saved it for me,” Georgiana said, her hand still caressing his cock.
She unbuttoned his pants and reached both hands down between his legs. She cradled his balls and ran her thumbs in the crevice where the top of his thighs met the base of his genitals. She felt the roughness of his hair and the firm contours of his body. Still holding his balls, she turned her head, placed her cheek against his chest, and was still for a moment. She heard, and felt, his heart beat.
Barnes took her by the waist and lifted her, and her hands came out of his trousers as she rose. She wound her legs around his waist, and he turned and walked to the big four-poster bed. At its edge, he bent over and she fell to its soft surface.
He slipped his shoes off, stepped out of his pants, and almost ripped his shirt from his body. As she had before, she marveled that he could stand before her naked without a trace of self-consciousness.
He lifted her foot, unlaced her boot, and took it and her stocking off. He held her foot in his hand, and she felt his thumb press her instep. The sensation ricocheted up her leg, and she wondered how such a small touch could elicit such acute pleasure.
Barnes took off her other boot and stocking, and then her drawers. She lay on the bed, skirts flipped up, naked from the waist down. Barnes stood between her knees, with one foot in each hand. He pressed so that her knees came up to her chest, and she felt momentarily vulnerable, with her pussy and her ass exposed like that.
But it was only a moment. She felt the tip of Barnes’s cock circling and then entering her, and any sense of discomfort was forgotten.
She felt herself widen to accommodate him, and relished the slowness with which he eased himself into her. He stopped halfway, and she instinctively tried to push herself down so he would be completely inside. But he held her feet, and she couldn’t move.
“Stay right there,” he whispered hoarsely.
She felt the tantalizing denial of his grip. Her body, almost of its own accord, wanted to move. She wanted to feel him deeper, deeper. There was a chasm where his cock ought to be, and she needed to fill it. She squirmed, and he held her fast.
He eased himself out of her as slowly as he had eased himself in, and Georgiana felt the coolness of the air on her wet pussy. She wanted desperately to have him back inside her, but she knew he was in control, and she gave herself over to it.
She was surprised, though, when he bent down and picked up his own shirt. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him quizzically. Was he getting dressed?
He wasn’t. He picked up her left foot and tied one of the sleeves around her ankle.
“This may seem strange to you, but I think it will add a whole new layer of pleasure,” he said, smiling.
And then he reached up and tied the other sleeve to the top of the bedpost, well above his head.
“You’re tying me to the bed?” she asked with wonder at the novelty of it, and curiosity about this whole new layer of pleasure he was promising.
“I am,” he said, and picked up his pants.
He tied her other leg to the top of the other bedpost, and Georgiana lay with her legs suspended in a V. She couldn’t help thinking of the only other time she’d been intimately restrained, with Jeremy. With him, her powerlessness seemed playful, and she knew he would have untied her instantly had she asked. With Barnes, she felt truly powerless, and she wasn’t sure at all he would release her if that were what she wanted.
But release was most certainly not what she wanted. She wanted to know what he was going to do. Her body ached with wanting to feel what was coming next.
Barnes put his hand under her backside and spread his fingers. From the tip of his thumb to the tip of his pinkie, he could almost span her entire width. She felt his finger in the cleft between the cheeks of her buttocks, and she tightened her muscles automatically.
“Relax,” said Barnes. “Just let it all happen.”
She was vaguely uncomfortable, but her desire for him, and her desire to explore all that her body had to offer, overrode her discomfort. She made a conscious effort to relax, and she felt his finger work around the rim of her anus. She had to consciously stop herself from pressing her buttocks together again, to keep him out, but she made the effort and concentrated on the sensation.
And then she knew what he was talking about. It was a feeling she’d never experienced, a deep, dull, spreading pleasure. Barnes put his fingertip inside, and circled slowly to press the rim all the way around, and Georgiana felt it as though it were electric.
Then he turned his hand and reached his thumb into her pussy, and it was like a waterfall let loose inside her. He held all her desire between his two fingers, one in her cunt and the other up her ass. He pulsed his hand, and her pleasure rose and fell with the pressure. Her breathing quickened, she closed her eyes, and she unconsciously gripped the bedclothes. The restraints on her ankles were forgotten. The time and the place were forgotten. There was only his hand, and the astonishing sensation emanating from it.
She was on the verge of orgasm when he took that hand away. She breathed in sharply and opened her eyes. He had stepped back from her and was watching her reaction with a half-smile.
“You can’t stop,” she said before she had a chance to think about what was coming out of her mouth.
“I can’t?” he asked.
She squirmed against her restraints. “Don’t stop; please don’t stop.”
He stepped back between her legs, and brushed her pussy very lightly with the back of his hand. She tried to push against him, put he simply moved his hand to keep the pressure as light as possible.
She moaned in a mixture of pleasure and frustration, and, after making her wait another beat or two, he reinserted his fingers back where they’d been.
“Oh my god,” she said, almost involuntarily.
It didn’t take long for him to coax her back to the verge of orgasm. When she was there, he stopped again.
“No!” she almost shouted. But this time, when she raised her head, she saw him step again between her legs and guide his cock into her. He slid in effortlessly, his entry eased by the juices she had in such abundance. They groaned simultaneously, and he fell back into the same rhythm he’d had with his hand.
She kept herself flush against him by holding the bedclothes, and all the muscles in her legs and her ass held fast to him. She was so ready for him, so hot, that as soon as she felt his cock harden that last little bit and she knew he was going to come, she was over the edge. She cried out at the searing ecstasy that swallowed her whole.
She was subsumed for several seconds, and she let the waves overcome her. When the pleasure began to fade to contentment, she opened her eyes and saw him in the last throes of an ecstasy of his own.
Only then did Georgiana became conscious once more of the fact that her legs were tied to the tops of the bedposts with his clothes.
She gestured at her restraints. “I think you’ll be needing those,” she said with a smile.
“It would be quite a scandal if I left without them,” he said, as he untied her.
It seems to be quite a scandal even when you leave with them, she thought, but didn’t say.
As he dressed, she shook out her legs and rearranged her clothes.
“You look a bit the worse for wear,” she said with a laugh, gesturing to his hopelessly wrinkled clothes.
“Do I?” he asked, looking down at himself.
“Look in the glass.” She gestured to the mirror over the dressing table.
They both looked at his reflection and, for the first time, she noticed the beautiful bouquet of autumn flowers someone had left for her.
“What lovely flowers!” she said. “I wonder who could have left them.” She reached out to pick up the vase to get a better look when he stopped her.
“Don’t touch these,” he said, looking strangely at the bouquet.
“Why ever not?”
“See those bright red leaves all around the base?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said, puzzled.
“That’s poison ivy.”
She looked more closely and could see that he was right. The beautiful, bright leaves were indeed poison ivy.
She laughed. “I’m afraid that whoever put this together is going to pay an exorbitant price.”
He didn’t laugh. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because whoever put this together might have known exactly what those leaves were, and included them deliberately—using gloves, of course.”
“You think this was deliberate?” she asked, astonished.
“I do. I think anyone who would take the trouble to assemble such a bouquet as this would have to care about plants. And anyone who cares about plants can identify poison ivy.”
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