by Hope Tarr
Forced to cling to him, she felt her former embarrassment returning. “My leg is asleep.”
“So I see. Hold on to me.”
With his free hand he covered her with the cloak and then walked her over to a chair. Reaching it, he sat her down and knelt at her feet. He reached for her foot and began kneading the arch.
“Ooh.” Bea winced as the needling spiked.
“Better?” He slid his massaging hands upward to her calf.
Staring down onto the top of his bowed head, the wavy locks still bearing the furrows from her fingers, Bea couldn’t bring herself to answer beyond a nod. The sudden lump lodging in her throat felt as big as a boulder. Despite the most intimate act in which they’d only just taken part, his tending of her seemed infinitely more personal, almost…tender. “Ralph?”
“Hmm?” As if lost in his task, he didn’t bother looking up.
“Do you mean to…that is will you…enter me?”
Still working her leg, he shook his head. “I will not.”
Hugging the cloak about her, Bea felt the sting of his rejection like a backhanded blow. Mr. Billingsby’s reaction had been dispiriting to be sure, but this was humiliation swept to soaring, dizzying heights.
Addressing his crown, she said, “I know I’m not a beauty like my sister.”
The current fashion favored females with curvy tops and bottoms and tiny, cinched-in middles. Kate was blessed with such an hourglass figure. Bea, in contrast, was shaped like a stick.
This time he looked up. Their gazes snagged, and his massaging hands stilled though he yet cradled her foot. “No, you are nothing like your sister,” he agreed.
Bea felt a sob bubble in her throat. Choking it down, she pushed up from her seat. “Well, now that is settled, I should go.”
Only Ralph refused to release her. “What you are is breathtakingly beautiful and utterly exquisite.”
Tears of gratitude dampened her eyes. “Then why do you not desire to—”
“I desire to do everything with you.”
“Everything?”
He nodded, the stark need sketched on his features affirming he wanted her as she did him. “Yes, everything.”
“Then why…”
His gaze swept over her face. “It is late, you have spent the day traveling and the servants will begin stirring in another few hours. We have six more nights.”
“But I still want…” Mortified, she bit her lip and let the sentence trail off.
“Anticipation plays a large part in sexual satisfaction.” He grinned up at her, once more the consummate rake. “In the interim, I want you to go back to your room and practice pleasuring yourself.”
“But I’ve never…” Ashamed, she let the sentence die.
Rubbing her arch, no longer tingling, he lifted a brow. “Pleasured yourself?”
She hesitated. “Not…successfully.”
Before the dispiriting episode with Mr. Billingsby, she’d launched multiple attempts. She’d ended each session frustrated and sore.
He set her foot gently down and stood. “A woman must understand how to satisfy her own desires before she can satisfy those of a partner.”
He offered her an arm up, his gaping robe revealing perspiration-damp curls, perfectly sculpted pectorals and the brownish pink disc rimming one nipple. Relief at knowing he still wanted her brought a swift return of desire. Suddenly, she wanted to rip off that robe and lap his salt-slick skin, draw his nipples into her mouth and see just how hard her suckling might make them, drag her nails and lips and teeth across his leanly muscled chest and torso and…
“I will try.” She reached out a shaking hand and wrapped her fingers about his wrist.
He brought her to her feet and swung her toward him, so close that she could taste the smoky peat of the Scotch he’d drunk on the breath blowing across her lips, feel the heat of his gaze like fire on her flesh. “Think of self-pleasure as your first homework assignment. There may well be a test when you return tomorrow night.” He winked.
Bea relaxed, as well. “So you mean to have me back, then?”
“Come at nine o’ clock and make sure you’re punctual.” He looked down to his wrist, which she still gripped, and then back up at her, gaze gleaming. “I have a most intriguing lesson in mind.”
DAWN LIGHTS STREAKED THE SKY by the time Bea crept over the threshold of her bedchamber and pulled the door quietly closed. The flagstone floor felt like an ice block beneath her thinly soled slippers, the chamber’s chill beckoning her to bed. On her way, she couldn’t resist stopping before the dressing glass. Turning up the globe lamp, she regarded her reflection.
The eyes meeting hers in the mirror were wide and clear and shining despite her having been up since dawn the previous day. But it was her swollen lips and flushed body that betrayed the change in her as she trusted Ralph would not.
Her first climax. What a mad, marvelous miracle it was! And to think Ralph had used no more than his hand whereas Mr. Billingsby’s entire person had not begun to bring about such a torrent of sweet, savage release.
But then Mr. Billingsby had never once stroked or kissed her breasts. Nor had he parted her thighs ever so gently and used the pad of his thumb to catapult her to mad, over-the-moon ecstasy. Likewise, she very much doubted it would occur to him to drop to his knees and rub her cramping feet.
Charming rogues like Ralph eat little girls like you for breakfast.
What a pity Ralph wasn’t a marrying man, an even greater pity that she should, even after tonight’s impromptu lesson, still fantasize that he might turn into one. But then confounding fantasy with reality had always been her flaw. Growing up, she’d pretended that her mother wasn’t dead after all but a fairy princess living in a castle in the sky. Her father wasn’t her real father, but a wicked troll who’d captured her and Kate. All they need do was bide their time until their respective handsome princes turned up to rescue them. Simple.
But grown-up life didn’t work like make-believe. Ralph might resemble the handsome prince of her girlish daydreams, but along with being her friend, he was also a former thief, a charming womanizer, a rogue. She wasn’t really in love with him. She couldn’t be. Loving Ralph would be blatantly stupid and after all the stupid mistakes she’d so far made, she couldn’t afford another.
In the spirit of prudence, she hung her cape back inside the wardrobe lest Hattie remark upon why, in the middle of the night, she had taken it out. Shivering, she walked over to the turned down bed and slipped beneath the chilly sheets. Pulling them up to her chin, she settled in, her recently sated body throbbing to full, awakened life.
Beneath the covers, she found herself with her fingers. Only for the first time in memory she felt no guilt, only a tremulous excitement she now recognized as arousal. Retracing the motions of Ralph’s finger—even thinking of those small, slow circles had her throbbing—she concentrated on conjuring her tutor’s handsome face, his eyes especially. No longer cast adrift in a sea of bottomless wanting, she felt the pleasure building as she’d always supposed it should, cresting toward some invisible crescendo, a golden moment she’d yet to fully comprehend but craved again all the same. In her fantasy, her slender finger became Ralph’s blunter digit, the blankets atop her the weight of his leanly muscled body lying atop hers. She could almost feel the warmth of his breath striking the side of her throat, the soft press of his lips as he trailed heated kisses over her body, a body he’d blessed with the word exquisite. And all the while, his gaze never left her.
Watching eyes. Hazel eyes.
Ralph’s eyes.
She squeezed closed her eyes and came and came and came.
3
Lesson Three
“Men and women, being of the same nature, feel the same kind of pleasure.”
—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
BEA SLEPT IN LATE the next morning, but once awake, she made a point of going down to breakfast if only to keep up appearances. Greeting Ralph over buttered toast and
tea was a daunting prospect, and yet her week-long stay included not only nights but days, too. She couldn’t expect to avoid facing him in the bright light entirely.
Descending the new central staircase Kate had ordered put in, she followed the aroma of sausages and buttered eggs to the breakfast room. She poked her head inside the open entryway, absurdly disappointed to find only Kate, Rourke and the baby within. No Ralph.
Stepping inside, she summoned what she hoped was a sunny smile. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Kate paused in spooning what must be mashed peaches into Lucy’s mouth and looked up. Eyes widening, she said, “My, how pretty you look.”
“Do I?” Self-conscious, Bea bent to the baby, chucking her beneath her dimpled chin. “Not nearly as pretty as this little peach, I’m sure.”
Prejudiced though she no doubt was, her niece was a pretty child who so far exhibited her mother’s fine features and her father’s dramatic coloring, the very best of both worlds. Running a finger along Lucy’s satin-smooth cheek, Bea found herself imagining what her future offspring with Mr. Billingsby might look like. Pale-skinned, light-haired and light-eyed with a chin that could do with strengthening, her fiancé was best described as nondescript. Were she to have babies with Ralph, on the other hand, they couldn’t be anything but beautiful. Mentally conjuring their blond and sandy-haired, hazel-and blue-eyed brood, she felt a lump lodge in her throat.
Rourke dragged his gaze from his plate. “I didn’t think you city lassies ate breakfast,” he said with a wink.
She smothered a smile. There was a time several years ago when Bea had harbored a trifling tendre for her sister’s brash, barrel-chested, big-hearted Scots suitor. His stocky, solid frame and twinkling gaze had seemed to offer the masculine comfort and security for which she’d been searching all her life. But from the moment she’d first set eyes upon Ralph on her sister’s wedding day her girlish crush had died a swift and irrevocable death.
“What rubbish,” Kate broke in, rolling her eyes. “I’m a city lassie as you say and I’ve eaten breakfast all my life…barring the first few months of pregnancy, that is.” The greenish cast to Kate’s complexion and the untouched plate of buttered toast before her confirmed this was indeed such a time.
Bea studied her sister and sighed. Even in the midst of morning sickness, Kate stood out as a classic beauty. To keep their father’s creditors at bay, she’d posed as a Professional Beauty or “PB” for Rourke’s photographer friend, Hadrian St. Claire. Her image still graced the cartes postales sold from St. Claire’s London studio, only now the monies made funded a charity to benefit the East London poor.
If only Bea might put herself to some such worthy task. Passably pretty in a blandly British way, she wasn’t sufficiently original to stand out as a beauty or sufficiently scholarly to be one of those plain but terribly clever women who presided over literary salons. Unlike Kate who had a happy marriage, a beautiful baby daughter and now her novel writing to fulfill her, Bea had yet to find any particular area of expertise, beyond fabricating her foolish fantasy world.
But after last night, success seemed in sight. She could excel at sex, and sex, she was convinced, was a bigger bit of marriage than most women of her class were raised to believe. Nervous though she’d started out, once her “lesson” began in earnest, she’d melted beneath her tutor’s artful touch like butter sitting out in summer sunshine.
“Did you sleep well, Bea-Bea?” Kate asked, reaching over to nudge her still seated husband.
“Of course she did,” Rourke answered for her. He pushed his chair back from the table and rose, sketching Bea a brief bow. “It’s the country air,” he announced, shooting another wink Bea’s way.
Neither he nor Kate could possibly know how very sleeplessly she’d spent her first night beneath their roof, but Bea felt herself blushing nonetheless. Lest Kate spot her guilty face, she made a beeline for the sideboard. Striving for normalcy, she picked up a plate from the stack and began filling it with deviled kidneys, ham, kedgeree and eggs cooked three ways. Lastly and to please Kate, she filled a compote dish with Kate’s put-up peaches and clotted cream of which her sister was justly proud.
“Used to city life as she is, I wonder she could sleep amidst all the quiet.”
Bea whipped about, a triangle of toast dropping off her plate.
Ralph emerged from the butler’s pantry. “Good morning.” Though he greeted the table at large, Bea fancied his gaze found hers first.
Rourke turned to the newcomer. “Gracing us with your presence for a second meal, Sylvester? Och, but this is a rare honor.”
Recovering, Bea looked between the two men. Rumpled and coatless, Rourke appeared as though he’d emerged from the bottom of a rag bag. Ralph in contrast was impeccably turned out in a camel-colored frock coat with velveteen lapels and tight-bottomed trousers, every seam and hair in perfect place.
Ralph grinned. “I’m glad you’re mindful of it, Patrick.” He bowed to Kate and then crossed the carpet toward Bea.
Heart hammering, Bea counted the steps it took him to reach her.
“Good morning, milady.” He used the toe of his wing tip to slide the toast beneath the buffet and then walked over to the table.
Bea followed him over and put her plate down. “Thank you,” she said, taking her seat in the chair he held.
“You are most welcome.” He slipped into the shield-back chair beside her. “I trust you slept well?”
“Like a baby,” she said tightly, laying her napkin across her lap. Really, it was very bad of him to tease her at the table. She glanced across to his empty place. “Aren’t you breakfasting?”
Knowing hazel eyes met hers, bringing to mind the previous night and the promise of all the naughty lessons she’d yet to learn. “I’m saving my appetite for later.”
Light-headed, Bea reached for the teapot.
“Allow me,” Ralph said, intercepting her. She started to demur when he added, “I must earn my keep, after all.”
She sat back. “As you wish.”
He poured hot tea into her bone china cup. Beneath the table, his free hand landed upon her leg.
Bea started. Had she been sipping tea already, surely she would have scalded herself.
“Cream, milady?” he asked, lifting the silver pitcher, and the gleam in his gaze made “cream” seem a wicked word indeed.
Shivering, she nodded. “Yes, please.” Determined to appear as normal as possible, she picked up her knife and fork even as he kneaded her knee.
He set the cream pitcher down and reached for the sugar bowl. “Do you take one lump or two?”
“I take none, actually.” She picked up her teaspoon. “I believe I am sweet enough.”
“I believe you are,” he said beneath his breath, sliding his hand upward to her thigh.
Liquid warmth congregated at her core. Even though layers of clothing lay between them, the insides of her thighs began to tremble.
Clanging announced her spoon’s striking the floor. Bea felt her face spike from blush to full-on flame. “I am so clumsy this morning,” she announced for the benefit of the room.
Ralph’s fingers curled about her knee, holding her in place. With his free hand, he reached across to the vacant place setting and stole the spoon from it.
Somehow he managed to lift up her petticoats and dress. His fingers toyed with her garter, sending wet warmth splashing her inner thigh.
He handed her the utensil. “Milady.”
“Thank you.” She grabbed the spoon and used it to stir her tea—vigorously.
From the head of the table, Kate asked, “Have you yet tried the peaches and clotted cream, Bea-Bea? The fruit is tinned, of course, but the cream comes from the estate dairy.”
Ralph turned to Bea, a smile playing about his lips. “I can vouch for the fruit being most succulent with or without the cream.”
His hand slid to her core, palming her through her bloomers. Even without the luxury of looking down,
she knew she was beyond wet, drenched, in fact. Thank goodness she wore a petticoat, as well; otherwise she might find herself worrying over the possibility of leaving a telltale spot upon the cushion.
He traced the undergarment’s slitted crotch, teasing her curls and nether lips through the damp cotton, drawing both her desire and her indignation, a peculiar pairing of feelings that brought her to the cusp of coming.
Setting her jaw to better bear it, Bea refused to break. “I am sure I will find them delicious though I’m quite certain I will prefer them with cream.”
Two can play at this game, Mr. Sylvester.
A quick glance to the head of the table confirmed Kate was busy feeding the baby and Rourke with feeding himself. Confident that only Ralph watched, she set the spoon aside and ran her index finger along the bowl’s rim, then captured some of the clotted cream on the tip.
“Hmm,” she moaned, bringing her finger to her mouth. “I cannot seem to get nearly enough.” Snagging Ralph’s suddenly stark gaze, she slid her finger farther into her mouth and sucked the cream from the tip.
Ralph swallowed hard. His teasing hand fell away and he snatched up his folded and heretofore untouched napkin. Dropping it over his lap, he displayed a look that was decidedly discomfort.
“Would you care to try some, Ralph?” Bea asked, offering him the dish and smothering a victorious smile.
Ralph adjusted the napkin to better cover the bulge at his lap. “Thank you, but for the moment I believe I’ve had as much as I may manage.”
RALPH DIDN’T COME DOWN to dinner that night. Like as not, he considered that appearing at a third family meal might arouse suspicion. Even so, Bea couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting.
Pushing her untouched turbot about her plate, she finally asked, “Is Ralph not joining us?”
“Ralph’s dining with us is by way of being the exception, not the rule,” Kate replied.
Rourke reached for the carafe of lemon water and refilled Kate’s glass and then his. “Aye, ’tis a rare occasion that brings him down for supper.”