“Behave yourself,” he admonished in a teasing voice. “Your inexperience demands a week of amorous activity that occurs in a comfortable bed, accompanied by all the niceties such as hot baths and clean sheets. There will be time enough to venture into the wilds.” He traced a knuckle across her cheek and stepped back to put more than a hand’s span between them.
“As you wish, my lord.” She looked away, appearing very much like a barn cat who’d discovered a spill of cream. “The horses are wandering off.”
And so they were. With a snort, Miles went about catching them. It was just the diversion certain parts of him needed to restore equilibrium.
After securing the horses, he and Eleanor spent in excess of an hour with the miller as the man showed Miles the massive, four-story shaft that turned four stone wheels and all the cogs and gears that connected them to the water wheel to produce power. Mr. Townsend was justifiably proud of his mill and Miles left with a greater appreciation for the labor required to provide the flour for his daily bread—and a growing understanding of the assets Eleanor fought so hard to retain.
When he and Eleanor rode into the courtyard of Rutledge, the sun cast lengthy shadows. It had been a long, but interesting, day. A bass chord of desire for his wife had strummed in the background of his awareness the entire time, and he wondered if they might forego a formal dinner for a tray in their apartments. He assisted Eleanor off her horse and handed their horses off to the grooms. Turning, Miles offered his arm, and with a smile, she entwined hers with his as they both sauntered across the cobblestones to the great oak doors of Rutledge Manor.
“I’ve only seen a portion of the Rutledge holdings, but I am gaining an ever-growing insight into the vast diversity of knowledge required to efficiently manage this estate.”
“I cannot pretend to have an in-depth knowledge about many of the trades. I have several land stewards that manage most of the day-to-day issues, but tenants always benefit from the eye of the landowner. That precept is one my father imprinted on me from my earliest days. The people who are entrusted to work the land need to know that the master or mistress of Rutledge is aware and engaged in their efforts. At some point in the future, we will do a comprehensive tour of the estate and introduce you as the new master.” She cocked her head and glanced at him. “Is Chelsony a large property? Did your father involve you in its workings?”
“Chelsony is a fair size at 35,000 acres but small in comparison to Rutledge. As to my involvement? I wasn’t really…or at least not in any depth.” Miles frowned. “As the third son, I was expected to go into the Church, not a vocation to which I felt called; law, again not a field that suited me; or enter the military. Father strongly opposed buying a commission for me commenting that one son at risk of death was enough and when Mother added her heartfelt pleas, I conceded the field.” He shrugged. “I had developed a passion for the breeding and racing of the Thoroughbred horse, and my understanding with Father was that, upon my graduation from university, he would grant me an independence sufficient to pursue my desires. Unfortunately, he died without amending his will, and when Edgar acceded to the title, he shut down what he considered frivolous expenditures. He sold off all the racing stock Father and I had so painstakingly put together, indeed sold all our horses but those that pulled the carriages and a few personal mounts. My Badger was on the block in the knacker’s yard when Ned rescued him and brought him to me in London. Baron Stanton was kind enough to stand for Badger’s upkeep as I lacked the ready. Edgar left my younger brother and me to find our own way on a pittance, enough to hold body and soul together…but little else—certainly not keep a horse in London.”
“Your half-brother appears deficient in brotherly love,” Eleanor observed dryly. Miles snorted and dropped Eleanor’s arm, so she could use both hands to manage her skirts as they climbed the steps to the front doors. Gaining the wide porch, she paused and once again wrapped her arm around his when he offered it, casting a shy smile at Miles as she did so.
“Edgar’s greatest sin was treating Mother poorly for which I will never forgive him. Had Duncan been home, he might have been able to shame Edgar into doing properly by her, but he is fighting somewhere in France. I hope, still alive. My letters to him have gone unanswered for almost a year.”
“Duncan is your father’s second son by his first wife?”
“Yes.” He made to open the door for Eleanor, but it swung inward of its own accord.
“Good evening, Lady Miles. Lord Miles.” The doorman nodded as they walked through.
“Good evening, Jeffers. How is Lady of the Lake going?”
“You have not kept up, your ladyship.” He grinned. “I’m now into a popular novel that’s all the rage, Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.” He shuddered. “A gruesome tale I’d not have thought penned by a woman.”
“Truly?”
Miles cleared his throat. “It deals with the reanimation of the dead.”
Eleanor turned to him. “So you’ve read it?”
He pulled her away gently and continued to walk toward the stairs to the second floor. “Yes, I have not always been as usefully occupied as I’ve been the last few months. In the past, I’ve had to fill large stretches of idle time, so I read extensively.”
Eleanor cast a sidelong glance his way and considered Miles’ last words and all that he had not said. How it must have chafed this young, active man of sharp intellect to be reduced to the beck and call of single, aging females. Was she any better? Yes. Yes, she was. She had offered him an honorable escape from that life. She was like any other bride that came to her groom with a large dowry, and look how he had responded—not by squandering his monies on high town living and stylish equipage. He’d purchased a working estate and set up his mother.
He’d thrown himself into smoothing her way as well; and then there was the gift of Day Dreamer and Miles’ inexplicable ability to kiss her into forgetting all reason. He worked some sort of strange alchemy on her body that liquefied her bones and melted her flesh in surrender to stunning pleasure. Was it any wonder she was powerless not to love him? She acknowledged her ability to resist him had never been worth a tinker’s damn. Emotion welled in her breast, and she vowed he would not regret his many kindnesses to her, and she cringed inside when she recalled the vile slur she had hurled at him in anger. She would do whatever was required to make Miles happy—even if it meant a life lived apart. But until that calamitous day, she’d do all in her power to make him love her, beginning with a much overdue apology.
Chapter Twenty
T
hey had reached the door to their second-floor apartments and Miles ushered her in. She paused in the sitting room, removed her smart hat and tan string gloves and placed them on a low table. She turned to him as he closed the door. “Miles?”
He raised an eyebrow and offered her an inquisitive smile.
She closed her eyes and took a breath, praying she could, for once in her life, manage to say what was in her heart. “The day you followed me here from London…I most profoundly apologize for the undeserved and hateful words I spoke in anger in this very room. I said detestable things deliberately meant to hurt, and I have bitterly regretted those words ever since.” She looked at the floor, ashamed to meet his gaze. “I don’t think you are without pride. I think you lived as needs must, in difficult circumstances, and you have always comported yourself with dignity and integrity while I…” she faltered, “I have not. Indeed, it would be impossible for me to hold you in any higher regard or be more disgusted with my own past behavior. I can only hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me,” she finished quietly.
He had moved to stand in front of her, and she raised her head to find grey eyes filled with tender consideration. “Forgiven and forgotten. And for my part in so bitterly disappointing you, I beg your forgiveness.”
“I think you have already apologized most admirably, but…” a smile trembled on her lips, “Forgiven and forgotten,” she
whispered.
His hand cupped the nape of her neck, and he bent slightly to kiss her, angling his head to better fit his mouth to hers. With a moan of pleasure, she opened to him, and his tongue invaded to tangle with hers. Once again, with an effortlessness that mystified her, Miles reduced her to a senseless abandonment, her body aware only of him.
After a prolonged interval wherein he seduced her with breathless kiss after breathless kiss, pulling her into his body with a strong arm around her waist while his other hand traced light fingertips down her flanks and back, he paused and murmured against her lips, “Let’s have dinner in our rooms. I’ll be your lady’s maid, and you can be my valet.”
She flattened her palms against his chest and pushed gently. He released her, watching for her response. She gave him a mysterious smile and rang the bell to summon a hallboy. The young man assigned to their wing of the second floor answered almost immediately. “Advise the kitchen that Lord Miles and I will be taking dinner in our apartments. You may leave the tray trolleys outside the door, and tell Mr. Hopwood and Miss Conway they are free for the rest of the evening. Please send up hot water for a bath. After that, we are not to be disturbed until morning.”
The hallboy acknowledged her orders and bowed. “I’ll see to it immediately, your ladyship.”
Eleanor closed the door, set the lock and turned to face Miles. “Is that what you had in mind, my lord?” She shivered at his wicked grin as he shrugged out of his black tailcoat, placed it over the back of a chair and stood before her in a white shirt and fawn waistcoat.
“Come stand here, lady wife.” His forefinger pointed to the carpet directly in front of him. He pulled the tails of his cravat out of his waistcoat and proceeded with dispatch to disassemble the Mathematical his valet had painstakingly tied that morning. With a jerk of one hand, the long piece of folded, starched linen joined the tailcoat across the back of the chair.
She closed the nine feet between them with a growing sense of wariness provoked by the piratical expression on his face. The closer she got to him, the more her feet dragged. He didn’t wait for her to reach him before striding to her and hoisting her over his shoulder, head down, her posterior in the air, as she shrieked in laughter.
“Miles! Whatever are you doing? Put me down!” She landed with a bounce in the middle of their bed and giggled, until her husband’s body landed on hers, punching all the air from her lungs. With his face inches from hers, she flailed at him and in breathless pants complained, “I can’t breathe. Off me, you oaf. You are a very troublesome maid. Sally has never behaved so.”
With a low chuckle, he rolled to the side and braced himself on one elbow. “I suspect I will behave in many ways that would scandalize the good Miss Conway.”
She gasped as he nuzzled into the sensitive juncture of her neck and shoulder and placed sucking kisses and tiny nips, soothed by licks of his tongue all along her neck and the underside of her jaw. All the while, his busy fingers played havoc with the high-collared front of her habit, undoing the hooks of her tight-fitting jacket and then the buttons on her white lawn blouse to expose her fine linen shift. She’d forgone all stays as the tight-fitting jacket didn’t allow for anything other than her naturally slender shape. Consequently, he had no difficulty slipping his fingers into the bodice of her loose shift to cup her bare breast in his warm palm and roll her tightly gathered nipple, inciting tumult between her legs. His kisses reached her lips, and she greedily grabbed the back of his head to hold him to her. She groaned loudly into his mouth when the hand that had been at her breast moved to gather up her full skirts and bare her thighs. Beneath her shift, she was nude.
“Hush,” he whispered. “The servants are filling the bath, and they will hear you.”
As his fingers stroked her outer and inner thighs in a provocative fashion certain to result in her ultimate madness, she tried to listen for sounds of the servants leaving the bathroom through the service door. She gasped audibly and whimpered with pleasure when his mouth settled on the nipple his fingers had teased into inordinate sensitivity.
“You cannot be quiet, can you, Eleanor?” he murmured around kisses as the sounds of light chatter and water being poured into the great tub filtered through the walls.
“Devil…fiend…oh!” His tongue did something particularly nice at her breast at the same time his fingers stroked with great delicacy between her legs, and she cried out at the pulse of sensation.
He lifted his head off her breast. “Shhh…you’ll set the servants talking.”
The laughter in his voice finished her. “Off! Off me, until we can be private.” She laughed. “You cannot be relied upon to behave in a seemly fashion, and I am defenseless against your trespasses on my person.” She accompanied her words by scooting out from under him and batting at the hand between her legs.
With a quiet chuckle, he complied and rolled to a sitting position at the side of the bed. “Come and make yourself useful. Pull my boots off.”
Eleanor snorted and proceeded to tug on his top boots, grimacing at their refusal to part company with Miles’ leg by even so much as an inch. Frowning, she eyed a languid Miles. “Is there a secret to this?”
He grinned, immediately arousing her suspicions. “Straddle my leg with your back to me.”
She did as he instructed. With a narrowing of her eyes, she glanced over her shoulder. He gazed at her with a cheerful demeanor, and her suspicions increased.
“Now…one hand at my heel and another at the toe, clasp my boot between your legs. Good. Now, bend over and pull and I will assist you.”
As she followed his instructions, he placed his other foot on her buttocks and pushed. Abruptly, the boot gave up its death grip on his leg. With an exclamation of alarm, she sprawled forward onto her elbows and knees on the carpet, holding the foot of his boot between her legs. Silently she rose, boot in hand, and turned, bestowing her most ferocious glare on him. “I cannot believe Mr. Hopwood tolerates such personal abuse every night. How do you remove your boots when you have no assistance, for it is patently impossible for the wearer to pull off such tightly fitted boots as these without aid.”
“I use a boot jack,” he replied amiably, lounging on his elbows on the bed.
She rolled her tongue in her mouth. “I see. And is such an item present in these rooms?”
“Oh yes. There is a perfectly good boot jack in the dressing room, but I dislike using it as it mars the polish on the heels. Mr. Hopwood works very diligently to achieve that shine.”
Eleanor held up the offending article and examined the glossy black leather of the boot’s heel. “Resign yourself to marring your other boot.”
Miles sighed and shook his head, though his eyes held laughter as he rose and wandered into the dressing room. A minute or two later he returned in stocking feet, took his boot from her and placed a quick kiss on her lips. “Thank you, lady wife.” He tossed his boot toward the open door to the dressing room and faced her holding his arms out straight to either side. “You have some more work to do before I’m fit to bathe.” He waggled his eyebrows in a comical manner, and she stifled a laugh.
“Wretched beast.” She stepped up to him and unbuttoned his waistcoat, then the four buttons at the very neck of his shirt. She pulled the tails of his shirt out of his breeches, slid the waistcoat off his shoulders and pulled his shirt over his head. She tossed both toward the dressing room and paused at the sight of his well-muscled upper body so very different from her own. Unable to resist the temptation, she ran gentle fingers through the whorls of springy hair on his chest.
“Ahem. Stockings then breeches.”
Her mouth thinned, and she glanced at her grinning husband. She sank to the floor; at the bend of his knee, she undid the buttons on his breeches and removed one stocking and then the other from well-formed calves covered with additional fine brown hair. She looked up at him from the floor and swallowed. One more piece of apparel and he would be bare.
He extended a hand and hel
ped her to stand. “My breeches, if you would be so kind.”
She inhaled deeply and unbuttoned the fall of his breeches and then the small buttons in the center of the waistband encircling his trim waist. His inexpressibles sagged and fell from his hips, and she finally allowed herself to examine the male part of him that had grown rapidly to stand upright in yet more tight curls of brown hair. Fascinated, she reached out a finger to touch and let out a squeak when it jumped on his belly.
Miles’ rich laughter sounded in the room. “He will not bite. Hold me in your hand.”
Eleanor shot a doubtful glance at him but did as he asked and wrapped her entire hand around what felt like a hot wooden rod covered in velvet, but no wooden rod in her memory had pulsed in her hand with a life of its own. She tightened her grip, but her fingers would not quite encompass the whole of him.
Miles exhaled in a grunt.
“What do men call this part?”
“There are many names. Prick, rod, Adam’s staff, Arbor Vitae are but a few. I use ‘cock’.”
She looked at him bemused. “Like a male fowl? A rooster?”
He nodded with a chuckle, and his “cock” jerked in her hand. She released her grip and stroked up his length to the tip where it mushroomed out and formed a dusty rose cap. “So this is the part of you that I took inside me,” she mused. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I know I was able to accommodate you, but it still seems quite unlikely. Are you considered abnormally large?” She once again attempted to wrap him in her hand.
Miles choked on a laugh and looked heavenward. “I would like to observe that this is a most unseemly topic for conversation. However…” He cleared his throat. “It may be that the Almighty has blessed me with an abundance, but I have no definitive answer as I have not gone about making a study of men’s erect parts. There is a vast difference in size between an aroused male organ and one flaccid.” He lifted a shoulder and eyed her with amusement, and she returned to her intent study of his cock.
A Husband for Hire (The Heirs & Spares Series Book 1) Page 19