by Jane Feather
His hands had gone still on her feet.
She tried to explain. “I hadn’t really gone to the hanging, as such. I spied the crowd from afar when I was out with my mother comforting prostitutes.”
After a moment, he said, “Words fail me ….”
She tried again. “It was a large crowd. A very large crowd. My mother said, ‘Why don’t we go and see what that’s about?’ and once we got there, she said, ‘Now that we’re here, we might as well stay.’ There were a great many ladies there for her to offer aid to and she planned to take me home before the prison carts arrived. Rupa was there with her brothers and aunt selling cures for warts and bladder troubles. She’s a Gypsy girl, you know.”
“My cousin George must have been what? Five?”
“Eight.”
“He was the most protected whelp on the face of the planet. I can’t believe his parents let him attend a hanging.”
“No, you’re right. He’d bribed a nurserymaid to take him. And Elf—you know, whose hand you broke—was there to pick pockets.”
His thumbs were moving warmly over her stockings, slowly opening the space between each toe. “Did he lose his eye to one of your previous victims?”
“No, that happened long ago. He was the youngest of ten children and when he was four, his mother sold him to a chimney sweep, who starved him to keep him small, and drove him naked up narrow, burning chimneys by holding a torch to his feet. Once a hot brick exploded and blinded his eye. After that he ran away and joined a gang of boy thieves. Oh, and Charlotte—from the hallway just now?—She was there because her father was the hangman.”
Since once again she appeared to have deprived Henry Lamb of speech, she continued, “Before the hangings began, a riot broke out in the crowd and I was separated from my mother. I crawled under one of the waiting hearse wagons to cry and found Rupa was hiding there already. The others joined us one by one, because we were all small enough to fit. When it was over, the others saw me home safe, because I am the youngest. That’s when we formed our Society (Or Club). We protect children, you see.” Then, “We protect natural children.”
She found herself hefted, greatcoat, stocking feet, and all, onto Henry Lamb’s lap. Embracing her gently, his breath tickling her eyelashes, he said, “My darling girl, don’t tell me that’s why you were trying to kidnap Lord Kendal? Because he’s fathered a child out of wedlock?”
“He has. With a dustman’s daughter. And he’s refusing to provide for the little baby.” Earnestly, she added, “We only kidnap as the last resort.”
He brushed the backs of his fingers along the curve of her cheek. “Promise me you’ll give up any idea of pursuing Lord Kendal. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. He’s a very powerful man, and a vindictive one, too. Believe me, I know this from experience. You and your friends will be in way over your heads.”
The tenderness in his voice made her eyes sparkle. “Our motto is ‘We risk all.’”
With some asperity, he said, “Then you ought to change it to ‘We can’t do a thing right.’”
She tilted up her head, caught the softness of his exhalation on her smile. “Not one thing?” she inquired, resting her mouth, barely touching, against his.
On a quickly indrawn breath, he conceded, “Maybe one.” Taking her shoulders, he drew her gently backward until he could see her eyes. “I am serious about Kendal. You’re really going to have to let it alone.”
She rested her elbows on his shoulders. The sleeves of his greatcoat were a good half-foot longer than her arms and they dripped off her hands, tapping him lightly on the back. She put herself eye to eye with him. “Does this mean you’ve decided to join our Society?”
“No, it does not.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Who the devil are Mr. Frog and the Ferrets? Or is that something else I’m going to wish shortly I didn’t know.”
She answered readily, “Mr. Frog is Elf’s terrier. And the ferrets—well, they’re two small weasels.”
“I know what ferrets are.”
“They love to explore tunnels, and they catch rats. Actually, I don’t know that they catch any but they scare them out of their dens and when they do that, Mr. Frog—the terrier—kills and eats them. Elf used to be a ratcatcher. It was the profession my mother got him into to get him out of thievery. That was quite a while ago. Now he’s at Lincoln’s Inn and he pleads law in the Chancery.”
“Are you telling me the boy with the eye patch is a barrister?”
“He was called to the bar last month. It’s come in handy for us already.”
“I’ll just bet it has.”
She decided to pick at his neckcloth, which was failing loose anyway, and shook down the enveloping sleeve of his greatcoat. “What you perhaps don’t understand is that ferrets love shiny objects. They’ll run off with Elf’s keys in a flash if he doesn’t watch them every minute.”
Henry Lamb’s dark-lashed eyes closed for a brief, pained instant. “So in their effort to free us, your friends intend to send down the cistern a pair of key-stealing weasels?”
Tugging at his neckcloth, studying the beauty of his mouth, she resolved herself to get on with pleasing the bottle. “It doesn’t matter what they do downstairs. They could take a cannon and blow it off at the door, and it wouldn’t open. It just”—she kissed him bashfully—“won’t”—she kissed him again—“open.” Abandoning the neckcloth, she wrapped her arms around his neck and applied her mouth fully to his.
His strong arms responded immediately, hauling her close. An unsettling discomfort grew in her chest, a feeling of weakness, of frustration. She tried to find relief by twisting herself against him and pushing herself up into his kiss.
She could feel his smile form against her mouth. He said, “I no longer give a damn if it opens or not.”
“Then why did you say, ‘No, no, no,’ and stop me at first when I kissed you?”
Warm and relaxed, his palms were smoothing back the feathering of curls that had strayed onto her cheeks. “It was so unexpected, I was losing my control.”
Turning her face slightly, she was able to drag her mouth along the underside of his wrist. “What’s wrong with that?”
“If I have no control,” he murmured, between the slow, light kisses he pressed along the line of her hair, “you won’t get any finesse.” He bent his head to touch one light kiss on either side of her smiling mouth. “And it’s not good for things to happen quickly if you’re not accustomed.”
“Why not?”
“Because when you’re not experienced”—his mouth moved softly, nuzzling the underside of her chin—“it takes longer for your body to—”
She could tell he was searching for a word. She prompted, “To—?”
Tilting her head with his palms, he traced the side of her throat with his mouth. In time, he murmured, “To find completion. No matter how ready you think you feel, it still takes your body a while.”
“I don’t know what completion is, but I don’t give a fig about it.”
“If we keep on like this”—he passed his face over her hair—“trust me, you will.”
“What’s completion?”
His mouth returned to hers, pressing, searching, opening. “Did your progressive parent who gives you all the freedom never discuss this with you?”
“Not so much.” Her voice was beginning to sound odd to her, as though it belonged to someone else. “She’s guarded about this kind of th-thing.” Her breath shifted momentarily as his palm massaged a deeply responsive nerve path on the nape of her neck. “Having s-suffered a Disappointment in her youth.”
She felt her lips part under the altering pressure of his kiss, felt his hand cup her head and drop her slightly backward, preparing her for the penetration of his tongue. Gathering up loose handfuls of his coat and shirt beneath in her hands, she clung to him as his tongue stroked her inside, and his hands, knowing and gentle, moved her languorously against his mouth, against his body.
I
t continued forever. Forever.
It continued until her shyness and shock over the intimacy had faded and a heart-pounding wonder had taken its place. Until each subtle alteration of his kiss made her breath catch, and the tightness in her chest was close to pain. Until she could feel the regular cadence of his breath alter as hers had and feel, against her cheek, the heat that has risen in his.
The ache in her body became so intense she whimpered and lifted herself harder into him. When he raised his head to look down at her, she said, “My chest.”
He said, “I know.”
“It aches, inside me.”
“I know.”
“Can you make it feel better?”
He had been slowly caressing her cheek with the side of his thumb. His hand became still. She could see on his lower lip the faint sheen of moisture she knew had come from her mouth.
His hand left her cheek and slowly separated the folds of the greatcoat where it covered her chest. His eyes were hot and vivid, and brighter than Welsh poppies. He said, “If I make it feel better, it will ache worse. Do you want that?”
When she nodded, he laid his hand very lightly on her breastbone, barely touching her, a large, warm, alarming presence.
He said, “Are you sure?”
“I wish you to,” she said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HIS HAND STAYED as it was, accustoming her. From time to time, he placed a light kiss on her brow, her hair, on the curve of her cheekbone. When at last his hand moved, it was to smooth over her shoulder under the greatcoat, and then travel lazily down the side of her body, from nearly underneath her arm to her waist, to her hip and then back upward. Where his hand passed, her skin prickled.
Her stomach felt like warm lead and he explored her there too but more lightly, with the back of his fingers, following the line of her ribs, and then, as a sharp little respiration escaped her, the curve of his hand rubbed lightly against the place on her chest just under her breasts.
As the tips of his fingers discovered the outer swell of her breast, he drew her close. The clever fingers left her chest and touched her face, a brief, reassuring gesture.
He softly kissed her, nudging open her mouth. She responded by kissing him back hard, her mouth hasty and clumsy against his and this time it was his breath that became quick and uneven. Driving her lips farther apart, his kiss deepened and his whole palm found and covered her breast, and lightly pressed.
The burst of sensation inside her was so intense, it drew from her throat a shaken moan. And as his hand made a soft nest to enclose her and tighten over her, she moaned again.
Shivering, drifting, with her body melting into the stroke of his fingers, when his mouth left hers briefly, she still remembered to ask again, huskily, “What’s completion?”
“About the opposite”—he kissed her chin—”of having a Disappointment in your youth.” His hand abandoned her breast to lift a strand of damp hair from her cheek. Then returned to encircle her breast. “When you’re inexperienced, it’s not so difficult to feel stirred. It’s getting relief from it that’s more complicated. At first, your body doesn’t know quite what to do.”
Tightening her grasp of his coat, she pulled herself upward until her mouth was touching his ear. With the dark silk of his hair tickling her nose and her lips, she whispered, “Show me. Show me.” Far down the corridor, she became aware suddenly of the percussion of running footsteps. She thought, Bottle, if you’ve arranged a rescue right at this instant, I’ll smash you to dust.
To Lamb, she gasped out, “That’s Charlotte, I think. That’s the way she runs.”
He had lifted his head to listen. When he started to remove his hand from her breast, she held it there fiercely.
He laughed, though he said, “If she’s brought up a key, you’ll be sorry.” His hand slid to her hip, where it remained, absently stroking her through her gown.
Charlotte’s thoroughly winded voice came through the door. “Those stairs are fatal! Lucy, are you all right?”
When he saw Lucy was still unable to compose herself to answer, he said, “No. She’s being ravished even as we speak.” But he made his voice sound sarcastic and bored. “Why don’t you worry less about what’s going on with us and more about what you’ve got to accomplish downstairs?”
Charlotte wheezed enthusiastically, “You can’t imagine the time we’ve had! When George climbed down a rope into the cistern with the first ferret, it didn’t bring up the key, but it sure did chase out the rats. I’ll bet they could hear George scream all the way to Parliament. Mr. Frog must’ve killed dozens!”
Lamb said ominously, “You haven’t mentioned the second ferret.”
Charlotte’s tone became faintly apologetic. “Well, the second one brought up the key and he’s carried it off.”
Lamb said, “As anyone could have predicted.”
Charlotte was stung. “Don’t you take that ironic tone with me, sir! Not after all the effort we’re extending on your behalf, including my having to run up and down these hellish stairs until I’m ready to drop.”
“I’m moved when I think of the help you’ve been to me today.”
Charlotte came right back at him. “I don’t see that you’ve produced any brilliant ideas. All you’ve had to add is to sit up here threatening Lucy in what I consider a most unoriginal and even dastardly manner and getting George so upset that his judgment is even more impaired than usual.”
“Oh, dear,” Lucy said. “What’s happened?”
Charlotte answered, “You’ll hardly believe this but George’s grandpapa has shown up! He found the keys missing and thought something was afoot so what must he do but come tearing over here in his carriage. George tried to convince him that we’d come to set up another test of us as servants, but his grandfather’s having none of it. He thinks George has come here to try to set up a—well, an assignation house where George can tryst with his mistress.”
Lucy was stunned. “George has a mistress?” Charlotte said fondly, “Honestly, Lucy. You never could follow a story. Of course, George doesn’t have a mistress—that is, he may, for all I know. It’s not like he’d make free on the subject to either of us! That’s not the point.”
Lamb interrupted in a honeyed tone. “Charlotte, would you be so good as to tell me where George’s grandfather is at this moment?”
Charlotte asked with real curiosity, “If George is your cousin, is George’s grandfather yours also?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awkward. Because George thought his grandfather might have an extra set of keys so George told him you were upstairs—”
Lamb interrupted again. “Did he use my name?”
Charlotte answered, “I’m afraid, sir, that he did. He told his grandfather you’d locked yourself in a chamber where you were attempting to dishonor a maiden. When George’s grandfather rushed to the carriage for his blunderbuss—”
“His what?”
“—George realized he’d made a mistake so while George’s grandfather was in the garden pouring shot into the gun, Elf went outside and convinced him you’d escaped. So George’s grandfather has taken off to try to track you down at your lodgings.”
Sweetly, Lamb said, “I’m so obliged to George for his endeavors. In fact, please tell him for me that as soon as I get out of here, I’m going to—”
Charlotte was laughing now. “Oh, he knows, he knows. He says as soon as we catch the ferret and put our hands on the key, we have to give him a ten-minute head start before we let you out.” Then, “Lucy, I’m off to help search out the ferret. It’s Elf’s belief Lamb won’t be able to bring himself to do you any harm. Is Elf right, do you think?”
And Lucy, her cheek tucked warmly into the curve of Henry Lamb’s throat, said, “Yes.”
As soon as she was alone again with Lamb, she said, “Do you know your grandfather?”
“I’ve never met him, if that’s what you mean. My father hid me from my relatives when I was a child becau
se he was busy pretending to them I was a hawk-nosed blond. Since I’ve left home—well, you know who I am.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know who you are.”
She saw again in her mind the bleak winter morning, the snow-covered pavement, the young man emptying his pockets to a pair of ragged children.
Her hand found his cheek, as her lips, lifting, found his mouth. She kissed him long and deeply, and, in time, his hands rose and twisted in her hair, guiding her mouth. And she pulled at one of the hands entwined in her curls and dragged it back urgently to her breast, and sighed as his hand closed over her there.
She said, “You’ve got me in this terrible condition. Don’t leave me this way.”
With tender amusement, he told her, “Honesty compels me to admit that if we stop what we’re doing, you’ll find yourself returning to normal.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think if we stop doing this I’ll ignite like a firework.”
Her hand, discovering his chest, moved lower, and he gasped, “Oh Lucy, Lucy …”
“You know my name.”
“Yes. Since people have been shouting it at me all afternoon coupled with the command to unhand you.” He inhaled sharply, catching her wrist. “Darling, no. Not now. Not here. I’ll give you ease but you can’t touch me that way.” He kissed her fingers. “Remember you don’t want me to behave like a Vandal.”
She laughed. “A Visigoth. Oh, yes, please do give me ease.”
“I will, darling. Just please first kiss me, again.” His voice, finally, had become as shaky as hers. “You’re so very sweet. I—” His words halted as his mouth took hers in a long kiss.
After it, she said, “You—?”
“I adore you,” he said, hazily. “I really adore you. Lucy, are you certain you want to experience this? Be certain. Be very certain.”
“Stop fussing, Lamb. Accept your fate.”
“I can’t undo this, if it happens. You need to—Oh, Sweetheart—” He closed his eyes as her hand touched open a shirt button and slid inside, stroking his chest. “I need to be sure you understand—”