He let out a groan that was almost a grunt, and tried to pull her down on him, but she resisted.
“Just imagine your cock sliding in, into that hot, wet hole,” she whispered, all the while moving just a fraction of an inch so the very tip of his penis was moving in and out of her.
He moved back and forth under her with the frustration of imagining that very thing. And just when she thought he might pull her down by brute force, she sat down, engulfing the whole of him.
The sound he made was indescribable, loud and low at the same time.
“You’d better fuck me now,” he said, and put his hands on her ass to keep her down on him. “I can’t stand any more of that.”
Fuck him, she did. She felt his length and breadth filling her, satisfying her. And with each stroke up and down she felt him anew. She lifted herself up and down, up and down, her hands on his chest.
His hands were still on her thighs, and she felt him lifting her, accelerating her pace. Her strokes got faster, and her cunt gripped him harder. She could feel every ridge of him as she moved, and as she reached her climax she felt him get even harder and knew he was reaching his own. He held her down on him, and the throes of his orgasm lengthened and heightened her own. She rocked back and forth, just a hairbreadth, to keep the waves coming, and then sat still as they subsided.
She opened her eyes to see that his were still closed. She smiled at what looked like his perfect happiness, and his eyelids fluttered open to her smile.
“Ah, Rose,” he said, “you’re a marvel.”
She laughed. If she hadn’t already been so flushed, she would have blushed at the compliment. She’d been called many things in her life, but never a marvel.
As reality set back in, she knew she had to get on with her work before she was missed, and she climbed off him and got dressed with easy efficiency.
Gerry looked ruefully from the clock to his clothes, lying in a heap on the floor. He pulled his dressing gown around him, and took Rose by her upper arms.
“Thank you,” he said simply, looking her straight in the eyes.
She did blush now.
“I don’t know why it’s you who should do the thanking and not the other way around,” she said.
“Well, I certainly feel as though you’ve given me something, and good manners dictate that I should thank you,” said Gerard. “If you feel that I have given you something in return, then it’s all the better.”
“It’s all the better, then,” answered Rose. “But I’ve got to get back to my work.”
She grinned at him, and was gone.
TEN
Gerry looked at the clock again. He should have already been downstairs. He opened the doors to the wardrobe, and was surveying its contents when he heard a bloodcurdling scream.
He ran out his door and looked both ways down the corridor. There, three doors to his right, he saw Lady Georgiana backing out of her own room, her face drained of its color.
He ran to her. “Lady Georgiana! Whatever is the matter?” As he asked the question, he followed her gaze into the room and saw for himself what the matter was. There was a dead peacock, a noose around its neck, hanging from the top of one of the bedposts.
“My dear,” said Gerry, after he took a moment to absorb the scene. “Please come in and sit down. The bird is dead, and it will do you no harm now.”
Georgiana did as she was bidden. By this time, several other people were gathered outside the door to her room, brought there by her scream. Among them was Lord Loughlin, who rushed in and knelt at Lady Georgiana’s feet. “Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.
“No,” she said. “I am not hurt in the least.” She was beginning to recover her wits, and was a little abashed at having attracted so much attention. “I am sorry to have frightened everyone. It’s only a dead bird.”
“It’s a dead bird hanging from your bed,” said Lord Loughlin hotly, “and you needn’t apologize for your alarm.” He was extremely perturbed at having such a situation in his house, and felt acutely for the girl. But he didn’t want to make it any worse than it was, and he rose and urged the spectators in the hall to go down to luncheon.
Gerry remained behind, in part because he felt a responsibility because he was first on the scene, and in part because he couldn’t very well go down to luncheon in his dressing gown.
“Tell us what happened,” he said.
“There isn’t much to tell,” the girl said. “When we parted, Alexandra and I came back to the house to change, but I was waylaid by the O’Maras, who asked me about the grouse at Eastley. And once you start talking about grouse . . .” She shrugged, her humor returning with her equanimity.
“In any case,” she went on, “I realized I had barely enough time to wash my face, and I came rushing upstairs. I opened my door, and that’s what I saw.”
“Did you see anyone in the corridor, anyone who didn’t belong?” asked Lord Loughlin anxiously.
“I didn’t see a soul. Everyone had already gone downstairs.”
“A servant, perhaps?”
Georgiana paused, and thought. Yes, she had seen someone in the corridor! She was so used to having servants come and go that the sight hadn’t even registered.
“I did see a servant. It was your parlor maid. Is Rose her name?”
“Rose?” Lord Loughlin asked, surprised. “It’s hard to imagine that Rose would do such a thing.”
Gerry, who knew exactly why Rose had been in the corridor at such an inopportune time, hastened to second Lord Loughlin. “I’ve spoken with her once or twice,” he said, his face coloring, “and she seems like quite a nice girl. Besides, why on earth would she hang a dead peacock on your bedpost?”
“Why, indeed.” Georgiana pondered the question. “It’s certainly possible that she was simply making up the rooms, and had nothing to do with it.”
“I will have a word with her,” said Lord Loughlin, “but it could have been anyone with access to your room while you were gone. What time did you leave your room this morning?”
“It was about nine o’clock. I met Alexandra downstairs, and we went punting with Gerry. And I haven’t been back to the room from that time until this.”
“Then there were several hours in which the bird could have been put there,” mused Robert Loughlin. “I suppose, theoretically, it could have been anyone, not just Rose.”
“I daresay it could have been.” Here Lady Georgiana hesitated. But she thought she owed these two men, who clearly cared for her, a complete explanation. “I am afraid I have made some enemies since my arrival here.”
Both gentlemen knew what she referred to, but neither of them wanted to discuss it explicitly. “I am aware . . .” Lord Loughlin trailed off.
“And this is not the first incident,” she went on.
The two men looked at her in surprise, and she told them the story of the poison ivy.
As she finished her narrative, they were interrupted by the arrival of Bruce Barnes. “Lady Loughlin told me what happened, and asked me to send someone to dispose of the peacock,” he said. “But I thought you might not want the servants seeing this, so I came myself.”
He looked at the bird. “It’s Eustace,” he said.
“Eustace? ” Georgiana asked in surprise. “Do you name all the peacocks?”
“Not all of them. But Eustace was a kind of paterfamilias. He was one of the first birds we had, and was cock of the walk until recently, when he started to get feeble. He was a good bird, but I thought he might be nearing his end.”
“So no one killed him just to do this?” asked Loughlin.
“I don’t think so, no.” Barnes released the peacock from its noose and took it down with real gentleness. Georgiana liked him for caring, and smiled sadly as she watched him.
As he put the bird under his arm to take it out, a note fluttered out of its mouth and landed on the floor. Georgiana bent over to pick it up, but she didn’t have to unfold it to know what it said. She didn’t wan
t to display it with Barnes in the room, and she crumpled it in her fist.
None of the men asked her what it said.
There was an uncomfortable moment, broken by Lord Loughlin saying to Barnes, “Let’s dispose of that, shall we?”
The two men took the carcass and left Gerry alone with Georgiana.
“Steady on, my dear,” Gerry said with a smile. “It’s a stupid prank, and you mustn’t let it bother you.”
Georgiana smiled wanly. She couldn’t quite agree that it was a stupid prank. She felt the menace beneath its surface, and that made it hard for her to laugh off the incident. Still, she thought she must be a poor creature if she couldn’t stand up to this.
She forced her smile to brighten. “I’ll admit that it shook me, but I’m fine now. Let us both get down to luncheon before all the best bits are gone.”
Gerry wasn’t quite convinced that she was fine, and he took a long look back at his young friend before he went out and shut the door to her room behind him. He went to his own room, traded his dressing gown for the first clothes that came to hand, and went downstairs.
It took Lady Georgiana a bit longer before she felt she could go down and join the company. It hadn’t been difficult to laugh off the bouquet of poison ivy, but a dead peacock in a noose hanging from her bedstead felt much more threatening. But if it was threatening, what, exactly, was she being threatened with?
She told herself that it was highly unlikely anyone in the house would take the fanatical step of doing her harm. It was much more probable that this was a prank, or the venting of hatred, or an extreme sign of disapproval. She had nothing to fear, she told herself, only something to bear.
She sighed, put on a favorite white sprigged muslin dress that never failed to improve her mood, and went downstairs. Once she was able to put the peacock incident in the back of her mind, her desire to make things right with Freddy gravitated once more to the front. Although she still believed that what he had said to her had been unconscionably rude, she realized that she’d been treating him like a child, and thought he had the right to resent it. Besides, it was more important to her to be on good terms with him than it was to see every slight avenged.
She spotted him as she came down the staircase, lunching with Miss Niven. Although she would have preferred to have spoken to him alone, there was nothing she had to say to him that her friend couldn’t hear.
“Freddy!” she said, as she approached them. “I’ve been searching for you high and low.”
“When it’s me you’re looking for,” he said, grinning, “you should always try low first.” He didn’t seem in the least put out at seeing her.
“That must have been my mistake,” said Georgiana, falling into the same bantering tone. “I’ve only just finished high. But here you are, and I want to apologize.” Her expression turned serious.
Miss Niven’s eyebrows went up. There didn’t seem to be any constraint between Lady Georgiana and young Freddy Loughlin, whose acquaintance she had just made, and she wondered what the offense could have been.
“Nonsense,” said Freddy. “Old friends are entitled to take liberties, you know.” He smiled at Georgiana and turned back to Alexandra. “I have heard you’re a smashing tennis player,” he said, with his most winning smile.
But Lady Georgiana couldn’t have the incident of the slap glossed over so quickly.
“Freddy,” she said. “There are liberties that even old friends are not entitled to take, and yesterday’s was one of them.” She took a breath and was going to continue, but Freddy cut in before she could go on.
“Oh, rot,” he said. “But even if there are, least said, soonest mended and all that.” He smiled again at Lady Georgiana, and turned to Alexandra. This time, though, he turned his body ever so slightly to face the woman he so clearly wanted to talk to without interruption.
“And is it true?” he asked, as though Georgiana had never interrupted.
Alexandra, profoundly uncomfortable, looked at Freddy, and then at Georgiana, and then back to Freddy. She didn’t have any comment immediately to hand that could pour oil on these waters, so she simply answered the question. “‘Smashing’ would most certainly overstate the case.”
Georgiana saw her friend’s discomfort, and came to her rescue. “‘Smashing’ most certainly would not overstate the case,” she said, taking Alexandra’s arm and giving it a squeeze. “And neither would ‘modest.’” She told Freddy he ought to challenge Miss Niven to a game only if he was prepared to be taken down a notch or two, and then excused herself to get lunch.
It was only as she walked to the buffet table that the confusion cleared and she understood why Freddy hadn’t wanted to talk about what happened between them. He’d moved on to Alexandra, and in the space of just one day! The thought didn’t anger Georgiana. She rather marveled at the very plastic affections of young men as she sat down to cold beef and biscuits.
The peacock incident had made her late for lunch, and she was still eating after everyone else had moved on to naps, walks, correspondence, or whatever else they had planned for the afternoon. Rose, the parlor maid, had just finishing clearing away the dishes and was hovering in the background, waiting as unobtrusively as possible for Lady Georgiana to finish her meal.
“I’m so sorry,” Georgiana said to the maid. “Here you’re trying to get things cleaned up and I’m daydreaming and lollygagging.” She took a last sip of tea and started to get up, trying to imagine this woman hanging a peacock on her bedpost.
“Oh, no,” said Rose. “Please don’t rouse yourself on my account. I can come back for your dishes later.” Rose, like everyone else in the house, had heard the stories of their noble guest’s dalliance with Barnes, but she was inclined to like Georgiana for it. Had they been born in the same sphere, the two women might well have been friends. She had no idea about either of the notes Georgiana had received, or that her very own name had been spoken in connection with them, and she went about her work in perfect innocence.
Georgiana appreciated Rose’s willingness to accommodate her, and couldn’t imagine that the maid was the culprit. She protested that she wouldn’t prolong the clearing of lunch any longer than she already had, and went up to her room.
Rose took the dishes down to the scullery and handed them over to Maureen, who was standing in the middle of her spotless domain, wiping down a perfectly clean table.
“Here’s the last of it,” Rose told her.
“I thought that last batch was the last of it,” said Maureen, looking at the dishes with distaste. “I’ve already washed everything up.”
“Sorry,” said Rose. “Lady Georgiana was late to lunch.”
Maureen made a face. “That one’s quite the princess, isn’t she?” She took the dishes and had them cleaned, dried, and stored away in a matter of ten minutes. Then she wiped her hands on a dish towel, took off her apron, and left the scullery, knowing she had at least an hour before she had to be back. She headed out across the grounds to Bruce Barnes’s cottage.
Barnes lived in the old gamekeeper’s cottage, a small, ancient stone house about a quarter mile from the main house. When the Loughlins had engaged his services, they offered him a suite of rooms in the house itself, but Barnes preferred the more austere, but private accommodations of the cottage.
He and Maureen had met there many an afternoon, and he often made it a point to be at home, dealing with paperwork or letters, when he knew she would be free. Today was no exception.
When he began his intrigue with Lady Georgiana, his first impulse was to keep Maureen at arm’s length. Although he couldn’t have known that the intrigue would be public knowledge, he did know that information like that had a way of seeping into servants’ quarters, and he didn’t think it likely he could keep the secret. His life would be simpler, he knew, if he limited his intimacy to one woman at a time.
Two things got the better of him. The first was that Maureen didn’t seem to mind. The only remarks she made about it wer
e amused. The second was that he thought he would have a better chance of controlling himself with Georgiana if he had a safety valve in Maureen. He’d always been a man of animal appetites, and when those appetites were whetted, he sometimes had less control over himself than he would have liked. And so he was glad to hear Maureen’s familiar knock at his door.
He opened the door and smiled at her. He stepped aside and, without a word, she walked in. He closed the door and shot the bolt.
“You look happy to see me,” she said, a sly look on her face.
“When have I not been happy to see you?”
“But when have you had an earl’s daughter at your beck and call?”
“I’m a gardener, Maureen,” he said. “Maybe a glorified gardener but, even so, I hardly have an earl’s daughter at my beck and call.”
“So you’re not proposing to marry her, then?” Her voice dripped sarcasm. She wanted him to know just how likely she thought it that Barnes would marry Georgiana.
This hit him hard, because it went straight to the heart of the conflict in his own breast. On the one hand, he genuinely believed that glorified gardeners didn’t have a fighting chance with earls’ daughters. On the other, though, he harbored a hope that maybe, just maybe, Lady Georgiana was unconventional enough and their magnetism was strong enough . . . He didn’t articulate the thought, even to himself, but he knew it was there. What a triumph that would be.
Aloud, he simply scoffed. “Don’t be daft.” He stepped toward her, took her hand, and pulled her toward him.
“You can’t blame me for pursuing the novelty,” he said. “I’m a man, after all.” He slipped his arm around her waist. “But it’s nothing like what we have.”
It was her turn to scoff. “What we have?” She gave a harsh laugh. “What we have is a jolly good time, nothing more.” But she harbored a conflict similar to Barnes’s. He wasn’t as far above her in social standing as Georgiana was above him, but the difference in their status was large enough to render it unlikely that he would ever marry her. But not impossible, she told herself, not impossible. What a triumph that would be.
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