by Lynne Barron
“Tell me what?” Olivia demanded.
“Who precisely do you think orchestrated this amusing and, for some, quite lucrative night?” Henry asked. “Up you go, Ollie. Mind you don’t bump your head.”
Olivia scrambled into the carriage and fell against the plush velvet seat. “I know Alice planned the night. What I want to know is what you are not telling me, what my husband should have told me himself.”
“Taking credit where none is due?” Henry cast a chastising look at Alice.
“I only steal recognition for misdeeds,” she countered, climbing into the carriage and joining Olivia on the padded bench with a sigh.
“But you said…you agreed…”
“I agreed that your husband likely thinks me a bad influence upon you.”
Henry took his seat across from the ladies. “You undoubtedly are.”
“This was your idea?” Olivia asked her brother.
“It never occurred to me that the proper Lady Bentley might like to venture into unchartered territory. Not until I received a summons this morning.”
“What your brother is attempting to say, in his customary bumbling fashion, is that your husband sent notes around to all of us.” Alice kicked off her silk slippers, lifting her feet to wiggle her toes. “Asking us to gift you with an adventure.”
“An adventure?” Olivia repeated, confusion giving way to dawning wonder.
“You might have told me of your desire to gamble the night away,” Henry said with a grin. “I’d have been only too happy to take you around with me.”
“But why? Why did he keep it secret from me? And why did he not join us?”
“You’ll have to ask your husband,” Alice replied, leaning back and closing her eyes. “While you are at it you might consider asking the man why he bought you a house when you’ve an overabundance of residences.”
“You know about Raleigh’s Folly?”
“And why he purchased that smart little curricle for you,” Henry added. “And allowed you to take the reins and nearly get yourself killed whipping around ale wagons in Bloomsbury.”
“How do you know about that altercation?”
“For goodness’ sake, darling,” Alice murmured sleepily. “This is London. One hears about Lady Casterbury’s bowel movements over tea and Jasper Clive’s sexual proclivities in retiring rooms all over Town.”
“What have you heard of Clive’s proclivities?” Henry asked.
“Only that he is an imaginative lover.”
“How imaginative?”
“Silk ties and superbly wrought toys. From what I’ve heard your former paramour welcomes such attentions, which truly makes me wonder about your inclinations and appetites.”
“I can assure you I have never needed to tie a woman down and pleasure her with inanimate objects.”
“Never fear, your reputation as London’s greatest gift to women is intact.”
Olivia allowed their teasing banter to wash over her as she sank against the seat, her mind filled with the knowledge that Jack had sent her off to dinner and the theater all the while knowing she would end the night at London’s most opulent gaming house. He’d not only known, he’d planned the entire adventure.
Jack’s chamber was pitch-dark when she stepped in and silently closed the door behind her, carefully turning the key in the lock. She waited for her eyes to adjust before tiptoeing to the bay window that overlooked the garden. She pulled the heavy velvet drapes apart just enough to allow a beam of lavender light to glide across the room and land upon the bed.
Jack lay on his back, his chest bare above a tangle of covers bunched about his hips. His long, muscular legs were kicked out, his toes pointing straight up in the air. A dozen pillows lay scattered about the bed and on the floor and Olivia smiled in remembrance of her first time in his too-soft bed and all the times since that day.
He muttered something unintelligible, his head rolling on the pillow, his dark hair falling over his forehead. Then he lay still once more, his breathing evening out to the quiet snores she remembered from their early nights together.
She undressed before the window, her eyes on the sleeping man, anticipation humming through her veins.
Olivia loved him, had always loved him. Since she was a girl of six and he a boy of thirteen, he had been the center of her world. No matter they’d been apart for much of those years. Always she’d thought of him and dreamed of him.
When she’d wished to be wicked that long-ago day outside the stables, she’d truly been wishing she might one day dare to reach for him, to pull him to her and capture his lips, capture his attention, his love.
And she’d made her wish come true. She, the awkward girl, the shy debutant, the proper lady, had reached for what she wanted. She’d dared to invite him into her bed, into her body, into her heart.
Jack twitched and muttered beneath his breath when Olivia climbed on the bed to kneel beside him. She paused, waiting for him to awaken, for his eyes to open and a smile to lift his wonderfully full lips. But he only rolled his head on his pillow before stilling once more.
With a featherlight touch, she ran one finger over his square jaw to find his whiskers rough and his skin warm. She trailed her finger through the cleft of his chin to his lips where she paused to press gently before tracing their contours from one corner to the other.
Jack’s tongue came out to wet his bottom lip. Olivia leaned over him, carefully bringing her hands to rest on his chest, and glided her tongue along the same path, chased his when it retreated into his mouth.
She kissed him, slowly circling his tongue with hers, stroking along the sensitive underside until he joined in the kiss. He angled his head and delved into her mouth, their tongues tangling, a soft hum vibrating in his throat. Suspecting he was awake, Olivia sifted her fingers through the coarse hair on his chest, found his nipples and plucked at them.
His big body jerked beneath her, his hips rising from the bed before falling again.
Breaking the kiss, she leaned back, expecting to see him gazing up at her only to find that his eyes were still closed, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks.
Delighted by his unconscious response, by the desire she heard in the moan that whispered over his lips, Olivia sat back and eased the covers from his hips and thighs, tossing them to the foot of the bed.
Jack’s cock jutted over his taut abdomen, hard and thick.
Olivia lightly stroked one finger along the root on the underside of his shaft and he bucked his hips, a raspy groan reverberating around the otherwise silent room.
She took him in hand, her fingers wrapping nearly all the way around his girth, and stroked down the hard length, from tip to base.
“Yes,” he moaned.
Again and again she pumped her hand down his shaft, setting up a rhythm that had him thrusting in counterpoint to her strokes, low groans rasping between his parted lips.
Olivia felt the familiar arousal course through her body, felt her cunny pulsing in anticipation, growing wet for him.
“More,” he begged, his hands grappling for purchase on the mattress.
Olivia rose above him, straddled his lunging hips, and guided his cock between her legs. She rubbed the fat head over and around her clit, teasing herself with the promise of what was to come.
But Jack had other ideas.
He pushed against her, nudging insistently, intent upon thrusting into her even in his sleep.
Olivia brought his cock to the opening of her body and eased down until the engorged tip penetrated her, stretching her almost painfully.
“Yes, yes,” he panted.
Bracing her hands on his chest, her fingers clenching over his hard muscles, Olivia took him into her body in one long, smooth glide.
“Ah, fuck me,” Jack growled, his hips lifting to grind between her spread thighs, foraging deeper into her cunny.
Pleasure arrowed deep into her womb and trembled along her thighs and up her spine. Her breasts tingled with it
and she raised her hands to cup them, to pinch her nipples, her eyes upon his face, waiting for the moment he would awake to discover he wasn’t dreaming.
She rose up slowly only to descend down over him, taking his cock deep into her quim, again and again, nearly mindless with desire, desperately chasing an orgasm that shivered just beyond her reach.
Jack met each downward glide, thrusting deep inside her until she could no longer take the exquisite torture. She dropped down over him, wrapped her hands around his shoulders and changed the angle of their joining. She strained over him, bore down with each thrust of his hips, dragging her clit against his hard flesh, filling her quim with his pulsing cock.
“Jack!” The cry was torn from her as she climaxed around him, her entire body shaking with the force of her release. On and on it went, buffeting her in its intensity, until she lost all awareness of herself. There was only Jack beneath her and his cock thrusting into her body.
Without warning his arms came around her, clasping her hard to his chest. With a grunt he twisted beneath her. Olivia wrapped her arms around his back, tucked her knees tight to his hips and rolled with him, dizzy with the sudden motion while in the last throes of her crisis.
He reared up to his elbows, pressing her bottom to the bed, forcing his cock deeper into her still convulsing cunny.
“Did you think you could have your wicked way with me and I would sleep right through it?” Jack’s teeth flashed as he grinned, withdrawing from her body until only the blunt tip of his shaft remained.
“Thank you,” she whispered, wrapping her legs around his waist and locking her ankles over his tight buttocks. “Thank you for this night.”
“If this is how you thank your husband for catering to your every whim, I’ll be sure to come up with one adventure after another for you to enjoy.”
“Right now the only adventure I want is you.”
Jack sank into her, filling her with his pulsing shaft once more. “Tell me. Give me the words, Livy.”
“Your cock,” she whispered, swiveling her hips, taking him deeper into her body. “Your wonderful, amazing cock.”
Jack dipped over her, his lips dragging down her neck to burrow into the juncture of her shoulder. She felt his breath billowing over her skin and thought he might be silently laughing. Then she gave up thinking altogether when he began to move.
With long, steady strokes, he thrust into her, delving deep, his hips swiveling between her thighs, grinding his pelvis against her clit. Olivia felt another orgasm looming and clutched his back, rolling her hips up to meet each thrust of his cock.
With a cry, she gave herself up to the pleasure, her thighs trembling as she clasped him to her, pulling him deep into her body. She arched off the bed, clawing at his back, drowning in the release that slammed into her.
“Jack!” His name left her in a long wail that ricocheted around the room.
“Livy, love, yes,” Jack groaned against her shoulder.
The tempo of their lovemaking shifted and his movements became hard and fast, his thrusts frantic and without finesse. Olivia unwound her legs and he rose above her on his arms, his eyes finding hers, holding her gaze as he pounded into her, the slap of their meeting flesh and panting breaths loud in the shadowy room.
“Not want you?”
She barely heard the words, his voice little more than a guttural groan above her as he bucked between her splayed thighs, his entire body shuddering.
Jack fell over her with a soft grunt, his head landing beside hers on the pillow. Olivia wrapped her arms around his heaving back, welcoming his weight and the rasp of his whiskered jaw on her shoulder.
“Livy,” he gasped, “I cannot get enough of you.”
She turned and rested her lips at his temple. Her eyes drifted closed and a wonderful lassitude descended over her. In the final moments before sleep claimed her, Olivia wondered if he’d not been asking for the naughty words at all.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Mama, Charlie’s digging up worms.”
Olivia looked up from the pansies she was carefully planting in the rich, dark soil of her new garden to find her son sitting back on his haunches dangling a worm before his eyes. He tilted his head this way and that, studying the wiggling creature from every angle.
“Half the fun of gardening is digging up worms,” she told her patently disgusted daughter. “Perhaps you’d like to give it a try?”
“I’ve better things to do with my time than toil in the dirt,” Fanny replied from her perch on the bottom step of the porch. On her bent knees rested an open book.
“What are you reading?”
“Fanny found a bunch of stinky old books on the top shelf of the library,” Charlie said, prompting his sister to shoot him a glare.
“Well, they do stink,” the boy insisted before carefully laying the worm in the hole whence he’d come. “And they don’t have any pictures.”
“Well that’s something of a relief,” Olivia murmured.
“They are the diaries of a girl named Edith,” Fanny said, her eyes dropping to the open book once more. “She lived in this house long ago.”
“Derrieres?” Charlie giggled. “Why do you want to read some girl’s bottom?”
“Diaries,” Fanny corrected.
“You shouldn’t read another’s diaries,” Olivia admonished, biting back a smile at her son’s question.
“I don’t see why not. She’s dead. She won’t know the difference,” Fanny replied airily.
“Even so, they are her private thoughts.” Olivia returned her attention to her task, her gloved hands patting the soil around the roots of the pretty pink blooms that would soon line the walkway to the front porch.
“Her private thoughts weren’t very interesting. She writes of nothing but what to name her new kitten and which pudding she ate with dinner.”
“How old was she?”
Fanny flipped back through the pages she’d already perused. “She’d just celebrated her eighth birthday. I hope when I am eight I’ve more to write about than kittens and pudding.”
“Would you like a diary?” Olivia reached for another small clump of flowers.
“I’m far too busy living my life to take the time to write about it,” Fanny answered with such startling insight that Olivia could only smile.
“When can we move in?” Charlie asked for the dozenth time that morning.
“In a few weeks. When the interior renovations are complete,” Fanny replied, having heard her mother’s answer each of those dozen times.
“What are renovations?”
“Repairs to the structure of the house.”
“What’s structure?”
“The walls and roof and floors. Don’t you know anything?”
“I know how to dig up worms.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“You don’t even know what disgusting means, Charlie.”
“I know that it’s yucky. Just like you, lady smarty-petticoats.”
“Now you’re only mimicking Justine.”
“Justine’s my pet sister.”
Over the bickering of her children Olivia heard the screech of the rusty gate opening and looked up to see an elderly man stepping into the front garden.
He wore a somber black hat pulled low over his head, two steel-gray spiral curls dangling from beneath the wide brim. A bushy white beard and mustache hid the lower half of his face and tumbled down over his chest. His suit was ill-fitting and wrinkled, the shoulder seams sagging down his thin arms, the trouser cuffs pooling around his shoes as he came to a halt upon seeing her kneeling in the dirt.
“I’d heard someone bought the Folly,” he called out by way of greeting, his voice accented with the slightest Scotts burr. “You must be Mrs. Bentley.”
“Lady Bentley,” Fanny corrected, hopping down from the porch.
Olivia shot her a reproachful look as she came to her feet and stepped over the new
ly planted bed. “Mrs. Bentley or Lady Bentley. I answer to both.”
“Ah, a multi-faceted lady just as I’d heard,” the stranger replied.
“Multi-faceted?” Fanny repeated, seeming to savor the word.
“Like a diamond. My people know a thing or two about diamonds.” The man continued along the walkway, stopping a few paces from Olivia.
Ah, of course. She should have known by the long sidelocks and the austere dress that the man was a Hebrew. In truth she’d only seen a handful of such men in all of her life and never had she spoken to one.
“My mother was the Diamond when she came out,” Fanny said as she skipped to Olivia’s side. “She might have married a marquis and been a duchess one day.”
“Fanny.” Olivia laid her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, squeezing a warning.
“I’m going to be a princess and live in a castle when I grow up.” Fanny twisted from beneath her mother’s grasp and continued up the path until she stood looking up at the man.
“I’ve never been impressed by a title,” he replied. “And I never will be.”
“Who are you?” Fanny demanded, hands coming to her hips. “And what are you doing in my garden?”
“Francis Marie,” Olivia hissed. “Where are your manners?”
“Where are his manners?” Fanny countered. “What sort of person strolls into a lady’s private garden without so much as a by-your-leave?”
“You read private derrieres,” Charlie piped up, coming to his feet and lifting one pudgy hand to shade his eyes as he stared up at the man. “Fanny read a dead girl’s bottom.”
“Diaries,” Fanny corrected, shoving the book behind her back.
The man shook his head, soft laughter tripping from lips hidden behind his beard and mustache.
“Have you never cut your payot?” Fanny asked, all smiles as she adroitly shifted the topic.
He reached one gnarled hand up to tug at the curl, pulling it down his chest nearly to the first button of his coat. “What do you think?”
“What’s a payot?” Charlie asked.
“The curls he wears,” Fanny answered with a roll of her eyes.
“I’ve never cut my curls. See how long they are?” Charlie ambled to the gentleman, his limp more pronounced after hours spent kneeling in the garden.