My Lady's Pleasure

by Olivia Quincy

  The three talked, ate, and drank for the better part of an hour, and speculated endlessly about who was what and what was who. There was a Florence Nightingale that Freddy swore up and down must be Mrs. Sheffield, and Alexandra thought the admiral must be Lord Grantsbury. Georgiana was quite sure that the earl would never lampoon the admiralty in that way, but she kept her thoughts to herself.

  To Georgiana’s relief, Zeus did not reappear.

  As they were drinking the last of their wine, their hostess joined them. As was the custom of the party, they all identified themselves to her.

  “May I waylay someone to get more wine for you?” she asked, looking at their empty glasses.

  “Thank you, Lady Loughlin, but not for me. I’m already feeling the effects of what I’ve had,” said Alexandra. “If I’m going to dance at all, I must try to keep my head. If I topple over during a mazurka, the floor is so crowded that I’m likely to bring everyone else down with me, like dominoes.”

  Paulette laughed. “I can’t imagine a girl as graceful as you doing any such thing,” she said.

  “But we can put it to the test,” said Freddy, again holding his hand out to Miss Niven, who took it and excused herself.

  Lady Georgiana and her friend were left alone, and together they surveyed the room. The buzz was getting louder as the effects of the food and the drink and the company were being felt.

  “It seems to me that you have more people this year than last,” said Georgiana.

  “We do. Every year, the list of people we absolutely must invite—or face the consequences—grows longer. If it continues, we’ll have to hold it at Buckingham Palace before long.”

  “The outlandishness of the costumes seems to increase with the length of the guest list.” Georgiana pointed to a sultan with an elaborately wound headdress, ballooning trousers, and a sword that looked like it could take down a tree. “I’m surprised he didn’t come with his own elephant.”

  Paulette laughed. She enjoyed seeing her guests’ enjoyment, and she took it as a compliment that so many of them had spent time, money, and ingenuity on their dress.

  The two were so busy looking at the costumes that they didn’t notice Zeus come into the room. Georgiana didn’t spot him until it was too late to make an escape, and she steeled herself for the encounter.

  The god joined them and bowed to Paulette. “Lady Loughlin,” he said.

  “Zeus,” she said, bowing in return. She knew it was Barnes, but she thought he made an excellent god.

  Then he turned to Georgiana. “Lady Georgiana, I presume,” he said a little more stiffly, and bowed again.

  “Mr. Barnes, I presume in turn,” she replied, and gave a shallow curtsy.

  Lady Loughlin sensed the tension between them, and thought it would be a good time to take her leave. She excused herself and left the two alone.

  Georgiana took a deep breath as the details of their last conversation came back to her. Since they had last spoken, she had come to the conclusion, which she had only suspected at the time, that she had indeed behaved imprudently by becoming entangled with him.

  She remembered that he had asked for an explanation, and she knew she owed him one. But she did not think this the time or the place, and she hoped they could exchange pleasantries about the party and leave it at that. Those hopes, however, he dashed immediately.

  “I believe we ended our last conversation on a somewhat unsatisfactory note,” he said. He was keeping his voice low so none but she would see his displeasure.

  “We did,” she replied. “But perhaps this is not the time for us to discuss that. It is, you know, a party.” She gestured at the room and gave him a wan smile, knowing it was unlikely that she could distract him from his purpose.

  “And is that why you ran for the door when you saw me approach earlier in the evening?”

  She flushed. “It was,” she said. “I believe that what we have to say to each other may be difficult, and I could not quite muster the courage to face it.”

  “And can you muster it now?” His tone was even.

  “I think I need to.” She sighed and dived in. “I told you that I owed you an explanation for turning you from my door, and so I do.” She had been thinking about what she would tell him, and so had her explanation ready to hand.

  “When I met you, I felt an attraction that was immediate and strong, and it seemed to me that you felt an attraction as well.” She looked him in the eye as she said this. He nodded his agreement, but did not reply.

  “We acted on that attraction in a way that was, I think, to our mutual satisfaction.” He nodded again. None of this was news to him.

  “Had our liaison remained private, I daresay we could have simply enjoyed it, but once it became public, I had to choose whether to continue, with the eyes of the world upon me, or desist.”

  Here he interrupted her. “And I did not also have a choice to make?” he asked brusquely.

  She considered. “Yes, you did,” she finally said. “But your choice was different.”

  “And why was my choice different? Because I am a gardener and you are an heiress?” he asked, his tone growing almost belligerent.

  “No,” she said softly, “because you are a man and I am a woman.”

  She owed him the truth, and she told it. “As much as I wish we lived in a time and a place where people had more freedom to do as they please . . . as much as I believe conventions about relationships between men and women are both archaic and unjust, I have been made to see that it could be harmful to flout them.”

  As an explanation for ending an affair, it was stilted and impersonal, and Barnes wasn’t having it.

  “Harmful? ” he said with a sneer. “And who is harmed? You are harmed, and you would prefer not to be. That is what you are telling me. Being with me cost you more than you wanted to bear, and so you simply cut me loose, as though I were ballast weighing you down.”

  “That is unkind,” she said, looking at the floor.

  “But is it untrue?” he asked angrily.

  She could not say that it was untrue. In a sense, it was certainly true. But it missed what was, to her, the heart of the matter.

  “What we had,” she said, choosing her words carefully now, “was a dalliance. It was a light, delicious coming together of two people who felt a pull toward each other. I don’t think either of us ever gave a thought to anything serious or long-term. And a dalliance is not worth either of us making a sacrifice for.”

  “And how do you know that neither of us ever gave a thought to anything serious or long-term?” He looked her steadily in the eye with a penetrating gaze.

  She faltered. When Lord Grantsbury had suggested that Barnes’s heart might be broken, she had pooh-poohed the idea, but she did not have direct access to his emotions, and she acknowledged to herself that she might be mistaken.

  “Only you know what you feel,” she said. “I can only guess. But you certainly gave no indication that you thought of me as anything other than a diversion.”

  “And if I had not thought of you as a diversion? What then?” He was almost snarling at her. “Am I to believe that, if you thought I cared more, you would have behaved differently?”

  She had been determined to be as patient and gentle as she could, but she felt her anger begin to rise at this. She did not deserve this attack.

  “Mr. Barnes,” she said, “I can forgive you for forgetting that a young unmarried girl has a lot at stake when she chooses to take up with a man in the way I took up with you, as I forgot it myself. But when I look the ramifications in the face and decide that what is at stake is too much, I do not expect to be rebuked in this way.” She looked him in the eye, and showed him that he did not have the corner on anger.

  “As for your feelings,” she went on. “It is difficult for me to deal in the theoretical,” she said, making an effort to control the tone of her voice. “So let me simply ask you: Have you cared for me in a serious way?”

  He was nothing
if not blunt, and she fully expected him to say yes or no. Instead, he glared at her and said, “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Suddenly Georgiana understood the game he was playing. Had he loved her, she felt sure he would have said so unambiguously. Instead, he was simply playing on her guilt by making her think she’d wounded him mortally.

  “If you have loved me, I am truly sorry for the pain this causes you,” she said, with a knowing emphasis on the if and a look that was intended to tell Barnes she was onto him. “But if you did not, then I hope we can agree to remember this week fondly, and part friends.”

  She extended her hand to him, but he did not take it. He looked from her hand to her face, turned, and strode off.

  TWENTY

  Lady Georgiana found herself angry, but at herself rather than at Barnes. Grantsbury had made her see that she had erred in taking up with him, but she hadn’t fully realized what the repercussions of that error would be. As unjust as she thought Barnes had been to her in trying to make her believe in his love, he had made a point that struck home: She had discarded him, and she had done it because she was protecting her own interest.

  She felt deflated, and she wandered from room to room in an attempt to revive her festive mood. At first, the conviviality all around her felt false because it was at odds with her state of mind. After a while, though, she found it was infectious, and the dark clouds that swept in after her talk with Barnes began to dissipate. When the Roman senator she had danced with earlier in the evening approached her again, she was happy to join him on the dance floor.

  Again, she felt as though he was familiar, and the idea that she knew him was reinforced by his total silence. Had he been a stranger, surely he would have spoken. But then, how did he know who she was? It was a puzzle, but a pleasant one.

  As they danced, she saw Freddy and Alexandra dancing a few couples away, and she was alarmed to see that Alexandra looked unhappy. When Georgiana saw her friend abruptly break off dancing and leave the room, she excused herself from her senator and followed.

  Once she caught up to her, she took Alexandra’s elbow. “My dear Miss Niven, you seem upset,” she said. “Has something happened?”

  “Yes, it has,” she said. “But I don’t mean to give the impression that it’s serious. It’s just that . . . It’s . . .” She sighed. “It’s Freddy.”

  “Oh! Freddy, is it?” Georgiana said. She tried not to laugh, as Alexandra seemed a bit disquieted, but she couldn’t suppress a smile. “What has he done?”

  Alexandra saw the smile, and felt a little silly for letting Freddy unsettle her. “He has . . .” She sought the right words. “He has been making inappropriate advances to me.”

  “To you !” Georgiana fully expected that he might make inappropriate advances to a girl, but thought the girl might be a milkmaid or a villager, not a member of his own set.

  Miss Niven didn’t want Georgiana to think he had done her any real injury, and she hurried to explain. “Please don’t think it’s all his fault. It’s my fault, too. In fact, it may be mostly my fault. You see, when he came to my room yesterday, and you left us alone, that’s when it started.”

  The story of Freddy’s clumsy assault on her virtue was soon told, and Alexandra laid the blame at her own feet. “I should have dismissed him the moment he crossed the line,” she said, with much more firmness than she had felt at the time. “And because I essentially gave him permission, he tried again just now.”

  Lady Georgiana did not need the details to understand what had happened. The party atmosphere, the free-flowing spirits, the protection of masks all combined to fuel Freddy’s fire until it was sufficiently stoked for a renewed attempt.

  She took Alexandra’s arm and steered her away from the crowds, toward a little veranda off one of the drawing rooms. “I am glad to see that he has not truly upset you,” she said. “I’m sure you understand that there is no harm in Freddy. If you consider that you are up to the task of protecting yourself from such advances—and I certainly consider that you are—then you have nothing to fear, and you can see this as the misplaced ardor of a callow youth. A callow youth with excellent taste, I may add.”

  Alexandra by this time was a little embarrassed about the fuss she had made. “I have made a mountain out of a molehill and, in so doing, kept you from the party for too long,” she told Lady Georgiana. “Let us go rejoin the other guests.”

  They did rejoin the other guests, and found that the party seemed to be losing its self-control. It was well past midnight, and the orchestra was playing a cakewalk, a new dance that very few of them knew, reportedly imported from America. Debris from food and drink was accumulating on every surface, despite the best efforts of a host of servants. The volume of talk had increased to the point where it nearly drowned out the music.

  The crowd, though, had actually thinned somewhat. From the veranda, Georgiana and Alexandra had seen a few carriages taking their leave, and had assumed they were some of the older, more staid guests, who had limited tolerance for late-night revelry.

  And someone had turned down the lights.

  As the two young ladies wandered from room to room, they saw things that, a week ago, would have made Miss Niven blush uncontrollably. Since she had arrived at Penfield, though, she had matured considerably, and the sight of a bobby and a barmaid kissing—actually kissing—behind a very large potted plant did not discompose her.

  They didn’t venture as far as the tables set up outside for the villagers but, had they, they would have seen a great deal more. Although the local people were not in costume and didn’t have the lack of inhibition anonymity invariably begets, they did have a freewheeling spirit. Drink was undoubtedly partly responsible, but so was the simple—but temporary— release from the grind of daily routine that their social betters knew little of.

  Women sat on tables, their skirts hiked up over their knees. Men leered, and fondled, and caressed, and the women’s efforts to rebuff them were clearly only for show. Dark corners and large bushes provided shelter for all manner of intimate activity.

  A way down a well-trodden path was one such shelter, a well-enclosed glade with a small clearing and a bench. It was there that Freddy, no longer a satyr but a mere mortal, had led Gretchen.

  When Miss Niven had rebuffed him for the second time, he had taken it philosophically. Since he was coming up empty at the big house, he ducked upstairs to his room, put on real clothes, and shimmied down the drainpipe (something he’d gotten good at in childhood) so as to avoid causing comment by walking through the party unmasked.

  He knew he’d find Gretchen and her parents at the party outside, but as he wanted to see Gretchen alone, he skirted the edges, shrouded by the darkness, until he got her attention. She was surprised to see him, having assumed he’d be at the masquerade, but he was always a welcome sight to her, and she slipped away from the party to join him as soon as she had the opportunity.

  He took her by the hand and led her down the path—familiar to him, new to her—to the glade. There, he took her by the waist rather unceremoniously and kissed her, hard.

  They were young, enthusiastic, and more than a little drunk, and each fumbled at the clothes of the other until skin met skin. The night was cool, and the two of them almost glowed with warmth and pleasure.

  Freddy, with his cock sticking straight out of his trousers, took Gretchen’s hand and climbed up on the bench. He then put her hand on his erection and stroked her hair.

  His cock was just at mouth level, and she knew what he wanted. She was happy to oblige him—but not right away. She ran her hands up and down the insides of his thighs. She laid her warm cheek against his hard cock. She caressed the base of his penis, running circles around it with her fingertips, and then her tongue.

  Freddy groaned in pleasure and anticipation as the circles got tighter and tighter. And then she was licking—using the tip of her tongue at first, and then, gradually, more of it—the shaft of his cock. She could feel it thr
obbing and bouncing as though it had a life its own.

  Up the shaft she went, toward the sensitive tip. Freddy resisted the urge to draw her head toward him and force himself into her mouth. He wanted this to go on this way, but he kept having to remind himself of that.

  And then she was there, running her tongue around the ridge of the glans, barely making contact, but doing it in a way that drove him mad. And then she was doing it a little harder, and a little harder still.

  Then, suddenly, she took all of him in her mouth. Her lips were on the base of the shaft and the tip of his cock was at the back of her throat. She held him there for a moment and then slowly, slowly withdrew.

  When he was all the way out, she flitted her tongue around the ridge again, and again took in all of him. She did this over and over, each time a little faster and a little harder, until Freddy could barely stand it. Then she started going in the other direction: moving more slowly, easing up on the pressure, deliberately calming him down.

  After one last, long, slow stroke, she backed away from him, and again stroked his thighs and laid her cheek on his cock. She had taken him full circle.

  She leaned back and smiled up at him, and he jumped down from the bench. He kissed her again, and moved his arms around to take her ass firmly in his hands. He held her to him, moving her ever so slightly back and forth against him, and then he lifted her off the ground.

  She automatically wrapped her legs around his waist, and he carried her around the bench and put her down next to the large elm that stood behind it. He was inside her almost before she got her balance.

  She was more than ready for him. The feel of him getting ever harder in her mouth gave her a kind of pleasure almost commensurate with his. She had felt her insides turning warm and liquid, and now he was answering her need.

  The hum of the party would have been barely audible, had they been listening. But they were not listening, raptly absorbed as they were in the matter at hand. Gretchen was thrilled that Freddy had left the party at the house to steal away with her, and the feel of him now, all his muscles taut, his skin warm to the touch, compelled her.