My Lady's Pleasure (39 page)

Then she kissed his neck, tasting his salty-sweet taste. He put his hands on her buttocks and pulled her closer to him. She felt the contours of his body against hers, familiar but freshly exciting. She ran her hands down his arms and felt as his muscles tightened to pull her closer still.

She groaned and threw her head back with the joy of it, and he ran the tip of his tongue from the base of her collarbone, up her neck, to the point of her chin. And then her mouth met his once more, and they kissed with a passion that amounted almost to greed.

She felt his cock, hard beneath her, and she shifted her body to one side so she could reach the fastening of his trousers. In a heartbeat, it was undone and he was released. She stroked him, slowly and gently, noticing every detail. Her fingertips ran over every bump, every ridge, every vein, as though this intimate braille would tell her all she needed to know.

Again she felt their connectedness. This was his cock, but it was also hers.

Then it was his turn to release her. He ran his hands under her skirts, over her taut legs. Her body was warm, and got ever warmer as he moved up her thighs. If he was going to take her drawers off, she would have to stand up, and he couldn’t have that. He simply ripped a hole in the seam.

Georgiana was surprised at the sound, and then laughed softly as she realized what he had done.

Then she shifted over him and he was inside.

She felt him slide into her and had an overwhelming sense of completion, of rightness. They began to move as one and she felt as though they
were
one, that they would be one until death did them part.

She wanted him very badly, but not with the sharp-edged urgency that she had sometimes known. It was instead a deep, soft compulsion, and the knowledge that he wanted to satisfy it filled her with happiness.

She rocked back and forth, back and forth on his lap, and the small motion gradually built up the tension in their muscles and the firmness of the hold they had on each other. Georgiana felt Jeremy’s hands on her ass, holding her tightly, moving her back and forth. She felt that he was restraining both himself and her, and the restraint piqued her ever-growing pleasure.

She felt her arousal mount. What had started as dewy moisture building inside her became a torrent as he got harder and they both gave themselves over to the motion and the pleasure.

As the waves built higher, her impulse was to speed up. She wanted to move faster, she wanted to feel more of him pulling out and thrusting in, but he had his grip on her and kept rocking her back and forth, back and forth, slowly.

It was tantalizing, it was agonizing, that little pulse she felt every time she moved never getting bigger!

And then, with one of those little pulses, she knew nothing could stop her. Just as she knew it, she felt that last hardening in his cock that told her he could not be stopped either.

Still he kept the motion small, the rhythm slow, and at last an orgasm washed over them as though they were one, feeling it together. It started small, and she felt it first as a tightening in her chest. And then it spread and it grew, pulsing into strength. And then, finally, it crested as an all-consuming sensation, binding them together in intoxicating joy.

For several minutes they sat as they were, letting their heartbeats slow and the heat from their bodies dissipate. Then she put her hands on his cheeks, kissed him, and climbed off his lap.

“I shall have to get new drawers,” she said as she tried to reassemble her dress.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jeremy said. “This kind certainly has convenience in its favor. Perhaps you should convert your entire undergarment wardrobe.”

“Well, it’s good to know that, if I decide to do so, I have someone with experience to do the conversion,” she said as she straightened his shirt collar and brushed off an inchworm that had lit on his shoulder.

He in turn straightened her neckline and tucked a lock of her hair back into her loose chignon.

“How do we look?” she asked.

“As though we’ve been cavorting in a gazebo, I’m afraid,” Jeremy said, looking at his wrinkled trousers.

“Well, there’s no help for it,” she said, and took his hand. If her dress had been grass-stained and torn, it wouldn’t have detracted one whit from her happiness.

They headed back to the house to seek out Lord Grantsbury in order to tell him what his interference had wrought.

 

They found him, and they told him, and his congratulations were hearty and heartfelt. They also told Lord and Lady Loughlin, whose mild surprise did not stop their congratulations from being just as sincere as the earl’s. It was only a couple of days ago that she was conducting an affair with their landscaper, and here she was engaged to another man.

Georgiana saw their surprise, and did not wonder at it.

She touched Jeremy’s arm. “This is not new,” she said to her hosts. “It is only newly discovered.” She paused for a moment. “I have discovered much at your house this week.”

Paulette understood her friend, and nodded. “I am very happy for you,” she began, “and anyone who has ever loved understands that these things sometimes come about in odd ways, ways that are opaque to any but those who are in love.”

Georgiana was grateful to her hostess for understanding, but was skeptical that others would. “Under the circumstances, perhaps it is best if we do not announce this to the company at large,” she said. “I daresay it would be talked of in ways that would not be flattering to any of us.”

“I think that’s probably prudent,” Lady Loughlin said. “When it is time to tell the world, though, I hope you will come back and let us give a dinner in your honor.”

“We would be delighted,” said Jeremy, and his affianced bride nodded her agreement.

Georgiana was relieved that she would not have to tell Barnes that, only days after she had been in his arms, she agreed to be the wife of another man. She told herself that he would possibly be hurt, or even unmanned by this piece of news, and that she would spare him that, but the real source of her relief was that she would spare herself the discomfort of that interview.

Still, she thought, there must be an interview. After what had passed between them, and the events of the previous night, she could not leave Penfield without trying to say a few healing words.

She and Jeremy were planning to leave for home in the morning, and so Georgiana thought she may as well try to say those words as soon as possible. She excused herself to the Loughlins, gave Jeremy a quick explanation, and went to find her erstwhile lover.

She found him, with some help from the gardening staff, in the peacock pavilion, supervising the mending of a wall that had been damaged in the revelry of the masquerade.

His back was to her, and she knocked on the doorframe, hesitant to go in.

He turned, and was apparently surprised to see her. “Lady Georgiana,” he said, and nodded his head stiffly in greeting.

“Mr. Barnes.” She nodded in return. “If your duties allow for it, would you care to take a turn with me?”

He took a backward glance at the work underway, and then followed her out the door.

She was prepared to launch into her healing words, but he beat her to it. “I heard what happened to you last night,” he said. “It must have been dreadful, and I’m terribly sorry.”

“It was dreadful, but it is not for you to be sorry, as you had no part in it.”

Barnes, when he had heard what Maureen had done, knew that he had been cavalier with her, and that Georgiana had paid the price for it. He was in the habit of being cavalier with women and, although he acknowledged to himself that he was unlikely to change, he also acknowledged that the events of the night before were, to some degree, his responsibility. And, although he might be cavalier, he was also fair.

“I believe I had at least a small part,” he said.

“No part,” she said firmly, although she understood from what he said that he had been having an affair with the girl. “But what I want to say to you is not about that, or about her. It is about you, and about me.”

She took a breath. “I don’t know how you feel now or how you felt when you met me. What I do know is that I am not happy with my own behavior and, if I caused you any pain, I am terribly, dreadfully sorry.”

He was silent, and she feared for a moment that his anger might flare up again. But it did not. Last night Barnes had been angry indeed, but news of the assault on Georgiana had squelched his fury. Beyond his genuine concern that she might have been hurt was the realization that he had toyed with Maureen in just the same way he had accused Georgiana of toying with him.

And he admitted to himself as well that he did not love her. She was beautiful, and she was interesting, but she was more a conquest to him than a woman. It was the idea of a noblewoman in his bed, and the idea that he might keep her there forever after, that appealed to him.

Instead, he sighed, and said, “We had our moments, though, did we not?”

She laughed with relief, and from that moment they were able to talk with humor and even affection of the week that had passed.

When Georgiana realized she had to return to the house to dress for dinner, she took her leave of him. “I’m glad we part friends, Mr. Barnes,” she said, and held out her hand to him. He shook it, but then put it to his lips and kissed it. And then he was gone.

 

Penfield had been gradually emptying throughout the day, and the evening meal that night was a much smaller affair than it had been the last couple of nights. When Georgiana came down, she had barely a chance to survey the room before Miss Niven, positively beaming, rushed to her side and took her arm.

“Oh, Lady Georgiana, I have been looking for you all afternoon! I heard what happened to you last night!” Her expression of regret was at odds with the look of joy on her face.

They talked of it for a minute or two, but Georgiana could see that something else, something good, was distracting her friend. “But has something else happened?” she asked tentatively.

“Oh, yes! I have such news,” Alexandra positively gushed.

Georgiana smiled broadly. She could guess at the news, but she wanted to give her friend the pleasure of saying it aloud.

“I am going to marry Mr. Gerard,” she said.

Georgiana embraced her with warmth and affection. “I am so very happy for you! I am sure he will be an excellent husband and that the two of you will be happy together.”

“I believe we will,” said Alexandra. “I believe we will.”

After the two had extolled Gerry’s virtues, Georgiana decided she must tell of her own engagement.

“I have some news of my own,” she said, “but you must promise me to tell no one but Gerry. I don’t want it known here quite yet.”

Her friend looked at her quizzically, but pledged her silence.

“I am also to be married.”

Alexandra’s eyes widened in surprise. “To Mr. Barnes?” she blurted out, unable to contain her astonishment.

“No, not to Mr. Barnes.”

Alexandra blushed to the roots of her hair. “I’m terribly sorry. That was very rude of me. Please tell me your news.”

The news took some time to tell, as Miss Niven hadn’t known until that afternoon that Jeremy Staunton existed, let alone that he was in this very house. And now he was engaged to her friend Lady Georgiana Vernon!

By the time the story was told, most of the other guests had helped themselves at the buffet and were choosing seats in one of the two rooms being used that night. The two young ladies did the same, and then each found her fiancé. Introductions were made, and the foursome took a quiet corner in the farther of the rooms.

Once Gerry was sworn to secrecy, the news was told once more. He was more successful than Alexandra at concealing his surprise, and offered robust congratulations.

Four happier people had never sat down at table together.

After dinner, Lord Loughlin, who, with his wife, had been told of Alexandra’s engagement to Gerry directly after he’d been told of Georgiana’s engagement to Jeremy, stood in the doorway between the two rooms and asked for attention. He raised a glass, requested that all his guests join him, and announced his pleasure that the engagement of Miss Niven and Mr. Gerard had been sealed under his roof.

There was general surprise at the idea of a union between a middle-aged man like Gerry and a beautiful young girl like Alexandra, but both were liked by everyone who met them, and there were good wishes and congratulations all around.

The only person in the room who couldn’t quite adjust to the idea was young Freddy. It was unfathomable to him that a lovely young girl could reject his advances and then go marry this veritable troll of a man! But he shrugged, and consoled himself that any girl who would go in for the likes of Alphonse Gerard wasn’t for him anyway. And, although Freddy was wrong about many things, he was certainly right about that.