My Lady's Pleasure

by Olivia Quincy

  She was too dumbfounded to say a word and, for a moment, Robert and Jean didn’t even realize she was there. Then she must have made a sound, because they both looked up at the same time. Lord Loughlin’s expression showed astonishment and horror, but apparently he had been so close to climax when he looked up that he found himself coming, ejaculating into his wife’s maid as his wife watched from the other side of the iron-barred door.

  Lady Loughlin didn’t know how to respond to the tableau she was witnessing. It was too far removed from anything in her experience. But she knew she didn’t want to stand there watching her husband and her maid extricate themselves, so she turned on her heel without saying a word and almost ran out of the cellar.

  Her husband and her maid did extricate themselves and, as they did so, considered the repercussions of Lady Loughlin’s discovering them.

  “I’m going to get sacked, aren’t I?” said Jean.

  This had not been at the forefront of Lord Loughlin’s mind, but he supposed it was a question that deserved an answer.

  “I imagine so, yes,” he said. “But I will make sure you aren’t turned out without a reference.” He knew full well that a maid without a reference from a long-term engagement would be all but unemployable.

  Jean’s immediate future was certainly a bit grim, but it was uncomplicated. She would simply have to find a new place. Lord Loughlin’s future was a more difficult question. He had no idea how his wife would react, or even how he’d want her to.

  Jean got dressed as quickly as she could. The idea that she was going to lose her place at Penfield, this household that had been her home these ten years and more, was taking root in her mind, and she felt herself near tears. Her personal pride was such that she would shed them alone, and she took leave of her master with no more than a nod.

  Lord Loughlin was left half-dressed, sitting on the stool with his head in his hands. He had always known there was a chance it would come to this, and he knew that it was his wife, and not himself, who would decide the course their marriage would take from here. It was some comfort to know that all he could do was tell her the truth and take whatever came.

  He remained in the dungeon for the best part of an hour, incapable of moving or even thinking. Finally, he roused himself. He put on his shirt, laced his boots, and went upstairs to find his wife.

  He didn’t have to look far. As soon as he came into the hall, he saw her, smiling brightly, arms outstretched, welcoming the Earl of Grantsbury.

  The earl was a middle-aged widower with five grown children, all married. When the last of them, his daughter Serena, had wed, he’d breathed a sigh of relief in the knowledge that no other scheming parents would be pursuing him in the hopes of marrying their offspring to his.

  His wife had died only the previous year, and he missed her sorely. But he was possessed of a cheerful, optimistic temperament, and her absence didn’t prevent him from traveling all over England to wherever good shooting, fast horses, or interesting people could tempt him. He loved company, but also had a scholarly bent. A decade ago he’d written a monograph on ferns that was still thought to be definitive.

  He was a tall, stately-looking man. His straight hair, although shot with gray, was so thick that it stood almost straight out from his head. He was kindhearted and good-natured, and the British aristocracy would have been none the worse had more of their number resembled him.

  “Lord Grantsbury,” Paulette said, with welcoming warmth. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “My dear Lady Loughlin,” said the earl, taking both her hands in both of his, “I’m delighted to be here.”

  “I’m sure you must be exhausted,” Paulette said to her guest. “Let me show you to your room.”

  “Not a bit of it! If you can have someone take my man up, he’ll take care of the bags. I expect you to take me around and show me all you’ve done.” Here he offered his arm to his hostess. “I’ve heard stories, you know,” he added with a grin.

  In a way, this suited Lady Loughlin very well indeed. She knew that the events of the last several days were too public for him to not get wind of them, and she thought it best if she told him herself. This was her opportunity to color the story in such a way as to prevent its being taken too seriously by her most important guest.

  If only she didn’t have to do it right this moment! She was still reeling from what she’d seen in the wine cellar, and hadn’t had enough time to herself to think about it properly. And now she had to direct all her energies toward the earl, whose arm she now took.

  “By all means, let us go outside and take a turn around the park.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her husband, but she would not look at him. She had to put that problem in a little box in the back of her mind while she focused on the task at hand, which was earl management.

  The pair went out, and Lady Loughlin led him first to the tennis court, then to the pond, and then through the labyrinth. On the way, she told him of the events of the last several days, beginning with Lady Georgiana’s affair with Bruce Barnes.

  Grantsbury shook his head and tut-tutted. “I’ve known that girl since she was a babe in arms. She always would have her own way, and she never would understand that her own way could, if she weren’t careful, be her undoing.”

  Lady Loughlin defended her friend. “I think she has always tempered her own way with just enough judgment to keep her on the right side of public opinion.” Grantsbury looked at her and raised his eyebrows, prompting Lady Loughlin to add, “It’s been a near thing, though.”

  “This time it’s too near, I daresay. She simply doesn’t understand what’s at stake. She is so accustomed to the privilege she was born to that she simply can’t believe that society would turn its back on her.” For Grantsbury, though, this was about more than Georgiana’s shortsightedness. He felt strongly that nobility brought with it responsibility, and he profoundly disapproved of her flouting of propriety.

  Lady Loughlin went on to tell him of the notes, the poison ivy, the peacock, and the milk, and his surprise mounted with every new chapter of the tale. She made every effort to keep her tone breezy, but Grantsbury didn’t see it as one big lark. It wasn’t just the possibility of danger; it was that he thought the whole thing an offense against how things ought to be.

  “I agree with you that it’s unlikely any real harm is intended,” Lord Grantsbury said to his hostess, “but this kind of thing can’t be countenanced. If we can’t get to the bottom of it ourselves, we simply must call in the constables.”

  This felt enough like a rebuke to silence Lady Loughlin. But Grantsbury hadn’t meant it as one, and when he saw that she had taken it that way, he stopped in his tracks and took both her hands. “Now, now,” he said gently. “You mustn’t see this as some kind of failure on your part. You are most certainly not to blame. All you have done is surround yourself with interesting, strong-minded people, and that is something I heartily approve of, even if it sometimes has unsavory consequences.”

  In her entire adult life, Lady Loughlin had not cried in front of another human being. At that moment, she thought she might. There was chaos under her roof. She had earned the displeasure of Lord Grantsbury, the guest she most wanted to impress. Her husband was fucking her maid, for crying out loud, and wearing a tail to boot! What more could a woman be expected to endure in one week?

  Strangely, it was the idea of the tail that helped her keep back her tears. Even through her confusion, her anger, and her sense of helplessness, she couldn’t help but see something funny in the tail. Why had he had a tail?

  There was a bench near the path, under a small grove of trees, and Lady Loughlin walked to it and sat down, all pretense at good cheer abandoned. She shook her head ruefully. “I do this every year, and every year it goes perfectly smoothly. Why it had to go to smash this year, I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “It hasn’t gone to smash.” The earl sat down beside her. “And we shall see that it doesn’t.” He patted her hands.r />
  They talked for a bit about the servants, the guests, and how best to keep things in hand, at least until the party. Lady Loughlin would talk to Freddy, the earl would talk to Georgiana, and they would ask Lord Loughlin to get all the servants together and offer a reward for any information leading to the apprehension of the culprit. Lady Loughlin thought this was the best they could do short of notifying the police, and she didn’t want to have to do that until after the party.

  “We may as well begin at once,” she said, sighing and standing up. The earl stood also, and they started to make their way back to the house.

  As they walked, he wondered that his hostess could let her spirits be brought so low by this mischief. He couldn’t know what was really on her mind, which was the image of her husband and her maid in their little dungeon. Neither said much.

  They parted in the front hall, each with a job to do. For Lady Loughlin, it meant talking to her husband, and she went up to her room to pull herself together for the task. She never had the chance, for he was in their joint sitting room, waiting for her.

  “Paulette.” He stood as she entered.

  She sat down heavily, not saying a word. He started to speak, but she put up her hand.

  “Before you say anything else, there are two things I must ask of you, and I want to get them out of the way.”

  He nodded and sat.

  “First, I just explained to Lord Grantsbury about the notes that Lady Georgiana and Miss Niven have received, and we have agreed that the best step to take is to offer the servants a reward for any relevant information leading to our finding out who is behind this. Can I ask you to take care of that?”

  “Of course. Consider it done.”

  “Second, I want Jean out of this house as soon as is humanly possible. I don’t ever want to see her face again. We can tell the guests and servants that her mother has suddenly taken ill.”

  “She is packing right now, under the assumption that she must be gone immediately.”

  The two looked at each other, and then Lord Loughlin said, “I can’t imagine what you must think, but I suspect this must be causing you much pain, and I am very sorry.”

  “Did it have to be my maid?” she asked him in a low voice. “Couldn’t it have been the parlor maid, or the scullery maid, or the cook, or even the sheep, for all that?” Her voice rose in tone and volume. “But my maid! My maid! ” For the first time since she’d found them, she felt anger. There had been sadness and a sense of betrayal. There had been bewilderment and plain old surprise. But now there was anger. “Why?”

  Her husband looked at the floor. “Do you want me to tell you how it began?” He spoke softly.

  “Yes!” she almost screamed, and then, not so loudly, “No.” Then a pause as she considered. “Yes, yes, I do.”

  The emotions she’d run through over the last hour had depleted her, and she felt her anger ebbing as quickly as it had come on. She leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them to look at her husband. “Tell me.”

  He looked at her, took a deep breath, and began. He had felt Jean’s eyes on him from almost the moment she arrived. It was when Freddy was eight and Robbie was twelve, and Lady Loughlin had been so absorbed by the needs of her children that there had been very little intimacy between man and wife. But there was something about Jean—her look, her movements, the way she stood just a little too close to him—that made him think she was available to him.

  Even so, he told her, nothing would have come of it had he not had certain . . . urges. At this, Lady Loughlin sat up a bit straighter. She knew nothing about these urges, and wanted to have them explained.

  Explain he did: about his desire to be commanded, to submit, to play roles, to be hit. Paulette’s eyes widened as he spoke. She had, once or twice, heard or read that such people existed, but she never dreamed she was married to one.

  She took it all in. When he’d told the whole story, about how Jean first approached him, about how he introduced her to his urges, about their games, she really had only one question.

  “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?” The hurt she’d felt at being betrayed was replaced by a different hurt. There was something important about him that he felt he couldn’t share with her. She had been excluded from this most intimate part of his makeup.

  “How could I expose you to such a thing?” he asked, clearly distressed. “How could I ask you to participate in something like that? You’re my wife; you’re a lady; you have a position in society. I love you. How could I possibly expect that . . .” He trailed off.

  “But how could you not have asked me? I’m your wife.” She said it simply.

  He looked at her, surprised, and said, almost in a whisper, “I thought you would laugh.”

  His eyes welled, and her heart melted. She went to him and knelt beside his chair. She took his hands in hers and looked straight into his brimming eyes. “I have been married to you for almost a quarter century, and in that time I have laughed many and many a time. But not one of those laughs, not one, has ever been at your expense. I never would have married a man I could laugh at.”

  He closed his eyes, and he wept.

  Dinner that night was a blur for Lady Loughlin. She made her way among her guests, laughing and smiling, but having little idea of either what she was saying or what was being said to her. She caught glimpses of her husband, engaged also in trying to make their guests comfortable, and she could see that he wasn’t quite as good at it as she knew herself to be. His smile was wooden and his laugh was forced. Still, she was happy to note, the atmosphere seemed merry and unconstrained.

  Had the atmosphere seemed dampened by recent events, she might have exerted herself to remain with her guests until the last went up to bed. Since things were going well, she felt she could excuse herself with those who retired earliest. It wasn’t much past nine when she went up to her room. Without a maid to help her out of her frock or into her nightclothes, she simply stepped out of her dress and left it on the floor where it lay. She didn’t bother with a nightdress, and climbed into her bed wearing only her shift. Within moments, she was asleep.

  She had been drained thoroughly by recent events, and her body was desperate to be rejuvenated. She slept deeply.

  When she woke, she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was seven, and she’d been asleep almost ten hours. It had felt like but a moment, but a moment so restorative that she felt like a new woman in a new world. Yesterday, it seemed that everything was collapsing around her ears. This morning she felt like herself again. The Lady Loughlin she knew herself to be could handle all that and more. She rang for tea and, when Rose brought it, she drank deeply and gratefully.

  Her thoughts were of her husband, and when she’d finished her cup she got out of bed and pulled her dressing gown around her. She went out into their shared sitting room, and then to his bedchamber beyond. She knocked softly—she didn’t want to wake him if he was still asleep—and when she got no response she carefully opened the door and slipped in. She closed it noiselessly behind her and stood for a moment, watching him.

  Robert Loughlin had ever been a dignified, considerate sleeper. He never drooled or snored, and when they shared a bed he stayed on his side and used no more than his share of the bedclothes. And there he was, lying on his side with his hands under his head, mouth closed, breathing silently.

  She watched him for a few moments, and then took off her dressing gown and stepped out of her shift. She walked around to the other side of the bed, lifted the covers, and slipped in beside him.

  Robert woke to the warmth of his wife’s breath on the back of his neck. As he came fully into consciousness, and the events of the day before came back to him, he felt flooded with gratitude and relief. He hadn’t known whether she would ever forgive him, whether she would ever come back to his bed, and here she was, her body cupped to his, her arm over his waist.

  He didn’t know when she’d come in or whether she was
asleep, and he lay still so as not to disturb her. As their bodies rose and fell with their breathing, he felt her skin moving against his, and it aroused him more than he would have thought such a small thing ever could. It had been months since they had made love, and the time apart combined with yesterday’s emotions made her feel new to him again. New and very much worth having.

  She stirred, and he sensed that she was awake. She had never been asleep, but had only kept still for him.

  He turned over and faced his wife. His beautiful, intelligent paragon of a wife.

  He took her face in his hands. “My love,” he said, and kissed her.

  She put her arms around him and cleaved to him. He was bare chested, and she relished the prickly sensation of his rough chest hair on her breasts. Husband and wife held each other tightly, gently rocking back and forth, each finding joy in the embrace of the other.

  He was wearing simple muslin pants with a drawstring, and she reached down to untie them and push them down until he could work his legs out of them. They were both completely naked, and they ran their hands down and around each other’s bodies as though they had never done it before.

  Robert marveled at her skin, still supple after a twenty-five-year marriage and two children. Paulette traced the muscles of his shoulders and arms, still firm from the active role he took in managing the grounds and the horses. She put her hands on his chest, a palm over each nipple, and felt its definition with her fingertips.

  She took one hand away and put his small dark nipple into her mouth. She ran her tongue over and around, and around and over, until he groaned with the pleasure of it.

  She turned him onto his back and sat astride him, his cock flattened under her, against his body. She ran her hands over the contours of his chest as though she were studying them for an exam, committing each curve, every freckle to memory. She touched every part of him, and every time she moved to reach him, he felt her vulva move against his penis, each time wetter and more frictionless than the time before.