by Jane Feather
She interrupted him desperately. “For God’s sake, Lamb, yes, please.”
This time when he laughed, it made him breathless. “I’m sorry. It’s just hard for me to believe”—he stopped to gasp—“that you trust me. I’ll help you feel better, Lucy. Truly I will.”
Pressing her dry, swollen lips, her feverish cheek against his ear, she whispered, “I’m getting more achy. Not just in my chest.”
His hand had moved under the greatcoat he had wrapped around her, under her skirt and her linen petticoat.
More softly, her lips hardly moving, she whispered, “Do you know where I’m achy?”
“Yes.”
She gasped. “When you touch me under my—my skirt, it feels so …”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes. Oh yes.”
Stroking her thighs through her stockings, he murmured, “This will be more intimate.”
“Just do-o-o it, Lamb,” she ordered with sweet, husky determination.
“I will. I promise, I will. Love, can we move you a little—”
His gentle, experienced hands shifted her on his lap, made her face him, and then, soothing her with soft kisses, drew apart her knees until they enclosed his body.
He paused to cup her face in his hands, to lightly kiss her mouth. Again, she felt his hand search under her skirts, this time higher.
He murmured, “What do you have underneath all of this?”
“Nothing.” Then, shyly, “But do you not mean to undress?”
His smile curved against her cheek. “Most emphatically I don’t.”
She felt his hands move upward from the tops of her stockings, felt his fingers discover her bare skin, his palm warm the curve of her hip.
Ever so tenderly, he said, “What we need to do is to bring the achy part of you closer to the achy part of me.” His hands were under her, on her bare skin, guiding her forward until the low hot ache of her body came into hard open contact with him. She gasped so hard she hiccuped. She dropped her burning face against his chest.
His breath lightly stirred the curls at her temple. He said, “Is it all right, Lucy?”
“Yes,” she breathed. His lips were tracing the outer curl of her ear. “Just for a moment I felt a little bit … a little bit sick.”
His mouth lingered on the pulse of her throat, on the curve of her jaw, on her nape. Softly, “That happens sometimes. It goes away.”
His fingers slipped beneath the garter on her thigh and drew it slowly downward until it rested just below her knee. And, as slowly, his other hand lowered her other garter.
His mouth found hers again and filled her with deep, lazy kisses while he rolled down her stockings. Under the greatcoat, she was naked against him, bare hot tingling skin against the cool roughness of his buckskins.
Swallowing air, she whispered, “Lamb, I don’t think—” Then she couldn’t remember what she didn’t think because his grip altered under her gown, his strong hands sliding upward on her naked back to give her support while he kissed her bare throat, and then, over her gown, kissed the tip of her breast. And gently wet her there with his tongue.
One hand left her thigh and came around to cup her, and he drew the peak of her breast into his mouth, damp gown and all, and gave her the long delicious caress of his tongue.
Her breath caught hard in her throat.
His thumb replaced his mouth on the heavy delicate ache he had created as he took her mouth in a deep, plundering kiss. She felt his hand glide back beneath her skirt and caress her bare thigh, and slide underneath her, cupping her bottom, dragging her into tight contact with his body, guiding her against him until she was shivering, light-headed, opened to his kiss, his touch, the hypnotic whisper-soft pleasure words he said to her.
In time, she heard him say, “Your trust … it’s just so sweet …. It does something to me inside.”
She clung to him, clung hard and whispered, “Do something to me inside, Lamb.” And his mouth came back to her, no longer gentle, kisses like long, turbulent, fiery dreams.
Without breaking the contact of his mouth, he rolled her backward onto the bed, until she lay briefly under the startling warmth and weight of his body. And then he lifted himself away from her. She felt his fingers stroke her belly, her inner thighs, then, with terrible gratitude felt his touch where she burned for it to come.
She dragged free her mouth, and said, shudderingly, “Lamb? … Now what?”
“Your body will figure this out.” He nuzzled her cheek with his face. “I promise it will.”
The complex and knowing stroke of his fingers drove her into a new world. In time, nothing looked real above her.
She clung to him so hard she tore off his shirt buttons. She kissed him so hard she cut her lips on her teeth. She pushed herself against his hand until finally she felt on fire there, and in her breasts and in her swollen mouth and she heard herself whisper, “Lamb, please, help me, help me.”
Then he said, “Lucy, my poor love,” and slipped a long careful finger gently inside her.
And at last, she learned what he meant by completion. It felt more or less like galloping on horseback and getting hit in the gut by a tree limb.
She thought, This is better than fishing.
When she could—which wasn’t soon—she gazed up into his breathtaking green eves and whispered, “Thank you.”
His beautiful mouth turned upward at the corners in a smile. He said, “Pshaw. It was nothing.” And collapsed laughing.
She laughed too, although the effort almost made her swoon, so it was difficult to prop herself up on her elbows when she heard a faint scotching sound by the floorboards. Sitting woozily, she stared at a tiny mousehole in the baseboard, invisible to her until that moment. And saw Elf’s small brown dappled ferret peek his nose through the aperture with something gleaming between his teeth. The little weasel trundled toward her, humpity-hacked, and with a small clink dropped the room key in front of the iron door.
The bottle, she’d learned, was reliable as a Swiss clockwork.
As the ferret disappeared back down the mousehole, she retrieved Henry Lamb’s pocket watch from his greatcoat pocket, where it had been digging into her kidney, and handed it to him. He was taking, she could see, quite a while to recover himself. Which made her wonder if the completion had been a little one-sided.
She could see he was forbearing comment on the ferret.
His gaze stayed fixed to her while she picked up the key and unlocked and hauled open the iron door.
She said, “You need to hurry.”
As he considered her, his smile faded and a slight frown entered his eyes. He said, “Lucy, if I provide for that child, will you give up your plan to interfere with Lord Kendal?”
She pulled off his greatcoat. “I suppose I could bring it up fora vote.”
“God forbid,” he said. He left the bed and relieved her of the heavy coat. He placed a final tender kiss on her lips, still so thrillingly raw from the heat of his passion.
She said, “Are you going off to find your Italian?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “And to learn sonnets.”
ANOTHER GROUP of young people might have been daunted by the events of the day. The Justice Society merely assured themselves of Lucy’s safety, cooed over her briefly, and then traipsed off with untarnished enthusiasm to kidnap the real Lord Kendal.
Henry Lamb, it seemed, had in no way exaggerated Kendal’s malice. Even Elf could hardly remember a time when he’d heard a man use that kind of language around girls. Everyone was glad Rupa had thought to borrow a pair of shackles from Charlotte’s father to truss Kendal up in.
The Society had their hands full dealing with Kendal until George’s grandfather returned from his abortive hunt for Henry Lamb. Charlotte was acknowledged by all to be just about brilliant when she had the idea to tell the old duke that George had been mistaken. It had been Lord Kendal attempting to try a maiden, not Henry Lamb.
George’s grandf
ather kicked Kendal into the cistern.
Elf sent the ferrets into the ratholes, which again abundantly disgorged their vigorous, scabrous specimens.
When they pulled Kendal back up, he was white as a shroud.
He signed every document Elf set in front of him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, Laura Hibbert was seated at her desk inside the modest office from which she ran her charities.
She had let the same space since her arrival in London, and it had changed little over time. When women needed her, she wanted them to know where to come.
The sign, of course, had caused her considerable expense. At first, in her naïveté, she had had it painted to read REFUGE FOR LADIES OF FALLEN VIRTUE. An unfortunate choice, for it had caused to gather on her doorway a retinue of hopeful young loiterers who had to be shooed off daily. Changing the name to a THE SOCIETY OF REPENTANT LADIES improved nothing, and altering it to THE HOMELY LADIEs’ CLUB fooled no one.
She had settled finally on THE SOCIETY OF LADIES IN SEARCH OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE, which scared off most of the dawdlers, and when she finally had the inspiration to insert the word stern before the words political discourse, she was able to rout the last of them. The only disadvantage lingering from the name was that from time to time some deluded gentlewoman would stop by and Laura would be compelled to discourse sternly with her for an hour or two about tariffs or the latest Privy Council committee report.
This late in the afternoon, she expected no more visitors, so Laura spent a moment with herself, contemplating her daughter.
Lucinda had seemed unlike herself for several days. And she had tied over seventy nymph flies. To a mother, these were worrying signs. To top it off, this morning, Lucy had suddenly asked her, “Mama, is it complicated too for a man to find completion in an act of love?”
“Heavens, no, Lucy,” she’d responded. “A man can find completion fondling a grapefruit.”
Laura had just decided that if George had been engaging Lucy in an improper conversation, she was going to box his ears, when she heard a strong knock on her street door.
She opened it quickly, expecting some late-day emergency, and was astonished instead to find herself looking up into the startling green eyes of Henry Lamb. The most gorgeous piece of man-flesh in the kingdom.
Up close, she saw he was considerably younger than she’d imagined. Surely he was no more than a year or two older than Elf. He must have been busy, building the reputation he had by his age.
The only thing that occurred to her was that he must have gotten himself lost in this unfashionable quarter of town and was seeking directions out.
He said, “I know this won’t come as welcome news to you but I’ve fallen in love with your daughter.”
It would have been stating the case too mildly to say she was stunned. She couldn’t imagine where her chaste daughter had even managed to meet Lamb, who was surely one of London’s more exotic creatures.
Answering her unspoken question, he said, “I became acquainted with her when that nasty band of cubs she calls her friends kidnapped me by accident.”
All she could think of to say was, “How careless of them.” The discussion she would have with the nasty cubs was another matter entirely.
She stared at him for a full minute before she found herself able to continue with, “Well, come in, then, and let’s see what’s to be done with you.”
She could see the wait had stripped his nerves to the fiber, and that moderated not at all the inquisition she put him to. It was one no man who was not profoundly in love with Lucy would have tolerated. She grilled him for two hours, even on subjects that made his cheeks burn with color.
She said, finally, “You’re remarkably easy to embarrass for a man of your stamp. I somehow expected you to be more artful.”
She saw him wince at the word. “I have no arts. I did what people asked me to.”
She said, “What women asked you to.”
He met her eyes steadily, but, she observed, with effort. At length, he said, “Yes.”
“And what is it you find in my innocent child that you did not in those women before her?”
He answered her simply. “Joy.”
It was Lucy’s most lovable trait, her joy in life. And this damaged man had soul enough to recognize it immediately.
Laura studied him, clear-eyed.
Although he would tell her little about his time with Lucy beyond the fact that he had lost his heart to her, he had borne her questioning with a palpable stoicism that exposed to her how inured he was from childhood to hostile treatment.
She had expected to find him conceited about his appearance, and it took her aback that he was not. She decided it might be because his looks had cost him the love of both parents.
He had a sense of humor, which was a necessity for anyone in long-term contact with her daughter.
She found him dishonored but not dishonorable.
She said, “What would you be willing to do to win her? Would you be willing to work for your bread like an honest man?”
“I would.”
After a moment’s contemplation, she said, “I’ve heard you can train a horse to do just about anything.” She paused. “I’m thinking racehorses.”
For the first time, then, she saw his full smile. He said, “Thank God for that. I thought it might be two weasels and a terrier.”
And she understood then why women had paid him. That smile alone was worth ten golden guineas.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THREE MONTHS LATER, George and Elf spent the evening following Lucy’s wedding getting pleasantly drunk over a fine bottle of port at Elf’s lodging house.
George had propped himself against a chipped and dusty stone mantel, which, like the rest of the small flat, was cluttered with the paper debris of a checkered legal career. George shook his head as he replenished his glass. “I can’t believe the cod’s head I made of myself the day we kidnapped him, worrying he was going to rape her. The man dotes on her. He wouldn’t have hurt a hair on her head. You, I noticed, were remarkably cool about the whole thing.”
Elf was tipped back in his chair, his bootheel resting on the scarred table. He shrugged. “He has a reputation, true, but never for meanness. And Lucy has a way of wrapping every man she meets around her little finger. I thought either that would happen or she’d start talking about fishing. There’s not a man alive who could maintain his arousal when she starts talking about bait and tied flies and how you can tell he-eels from she-eels.”
“God, no,” George said. “Although you should have seen Henry Lamb last week in the evening when Lucy was reading to him from The Compleat Angler. I swear to God, you would have thought it came from the quill of Eros. Did you finish your study of the family papers I got you?”
“Yes. And you’re right. The estate is entailed. In time, Henry Lamb will inherit his father’s fortune. His father’s tried to break the entail many times without success.”
George took a long pull from his glass. “Is Lamb aware of how rich he’s going to be?”
“He hasn’t a clue. He’s kind of a naïf in some ways. Charlotte’s been through his accounts and she says he’s hopeless with money. He’s always giving it away.”
“To whom?” George said curiously.
“God knows. To whoever asks for it. He says, by the way, he won’t accept your grandfather’s offer to settle what’s left of his debts.”
“Bother about that. Grandfather’s taken rather a shine to him. We’ll figure some way around Lamb’s pride. We have to protect Lucy, after all.”
“We’ll need to be subtle.” Elf said. “Henry Lamb has a mind of his own and he won’t take to our running his life. It’s not as if he’s too fond of us already.”
“Yes.” George grinned. “I’d say calling us the imps from hell doesn’t indicate any particular fondness. I hear he’s still mad as fire that we took Lucy along to kidnap Kendal after he had specifically said he
thought it was too dangerous.”
Elf lifted his left boot from the floor, and crossed it comfortably over the other at the ankle. “Laura says we’ll have to be patient with him. Think on it. He was raised thinking life was a place you could barely tolerate and then he meets Lucy and the sun comes out. It’ll be a while before he believes he deserves any happiness.” He tipped back his head and shook his long hair back off his shoulders.
“Here’s to happiness.” George lifted his glass. He pulled away from the cold hearth and stepped carefully over the spot where the ferrets and Mr. Frog were curled asleep in Elf’s court wig. You got more than you bargained for if you disturbed Frog once he’d decided to go down for the night. He clunked the bottle back on the table. “Speaking of happiness, do you and Rupa still …” He waved his hand vaguely.
“From time to time,” Elf admitted.
After a pause, George said, “Did you ever think about it with Lucy?”
“Oh, God, am I dead? Only about twice a day my whole life. Why? Have you?”
George hooked an arm through a chair top and dragged it to the table. “Yes. I mean her eyes—and that hair like a sunset.” He straddled the chair, facing his best friend.
Elf said, “Ever do anything about it?”
“You can’t be serious. I’m terrified of her mother. Why?” Incredulously, he said, “Did you?”
“Once, I almost did. When I was sixteen.” Elf closed his eyes. “I was sitting watching her fish and she had her mouth—you know the thoughtful way she has—”
“Damned if I don’t.” George folded his crossed arms on the chair rail. “It looks like a cherry you want to suck.”
“Precisely. So I thought, Oh hell, why not? I’ve loved her for years. It’s not as if I would do her any harm beyond stealing a kiss. So I draped my arm around her shoulders—at which point, if she’d been Charlotte, she would have guessed what I was up to and would have been possessing herself of a sharp stick—but Lucy just smiled up at me trustingly.”
“Christ, you ought to have been ashamed, the way that girl idolizes you.”