The Lady and Her Secret Lover

by Jenn LeBlanc

  “That’s what the town physician said. Maitland, my wife, wanted to labor quietly but when the physician refused to deliver the babe, we sent for you.”

  Another humph from Margarethe. “I never understood men who deliver children. Men are only good at putting things into women, not taking them out.”

  Hugh stopped and looked back at her, but she just returned his gaze without a flinch. He nodded to the door, then opened it. “Maitland, the midwife is here,” he said.

  He was met with a loud groan from Ellie and “Hugh?” from Louisa, so he flew the door wide and rushed to Ellie’s side, taking her hand and giving her something to crush if she chose to. And crush she did. He feared his bones would crack.

  “You should leave. This is women’s work,” Margarethe said.

  The resounding, “No!” came from all three of them at once, and Hugh looked up to find the woman with a smile on her face as she approached the bed.

  “So be it, but you’ll do as you’re asked, no questions,” she said.

  “Whatever you say,” Hugh replied.

  Maitland collapsed back to the bed in a heap of fabric and sweat, and Hugh reached over to the basin, pulling a fresh linen through the cool water then bringing it to her forehead.

  “Good, good,” Margarethe said. She came up next to Ellie, rubbed her hands together, then placed them on Ellie’s big belly, feeling her way around. “Oh, she’s a feisty one, this babe. Yep, yep, she’s right side up the tot. You’re doing well though. Carry on.” She proceeded to push and prod at Maitland’s distended belly for a minute, and Hugh watched as the little bumps that made up his child’s arms and legs seemed to fight back. Then the woman nodded. “I need a cup of tea. I’ll return.” And she disappeared out the door.

  Maitland groaned, bringing Hugh’s attention back to the room. “She woke the baby,” she complained as she wrapped her arms around her belly and sank into the pillows.

  Hugh smiled. “I believe it’s your turn to regale us, Louisa. Take us back to the beginning. Not the first night, but after. When everything was fresh and new.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she started, but then Ellie pleaded with her and Hugh saw all their love and passion in that look.

  Louisa

  “I still dream of that blue-eyed girl,” Ellie said before crying out from the onset of what seemed to be a rather powerful contraction.

  “I know you do. So do I,” Louisa said, and she wrapped an arm around Ellie and rubbed the tight muscles of her lower back. “So do I.”

  The woman returned, a team of maids with linens and buckets of steaming water behind her. She closed the door after they left and rolled her sleeves. “Right, it’s time to get this babe out of you, I think.”

  She walked to the bed, giving Louisa and Hugh instructions for how to arrange Ellie on the pillows, bringing her all the way to the end of the bed and standing there with her feet on her shoulders as she checked her, and Hugh cast his gaze anywhere he could but there, and Louisa felt light-headed as Ellie screamed and latched on to both of them with all her might.

  “The two of you can hold her legs here, like this. It isn’t going to be comfortable, or easy, but now the faster we get this babe out, the better.”

  Louisa and Hugh held Ellie’s legs and spoke as the woman fussed. She brought a bucket to her feet and started drying off silver tools and laying them out. Louisa was thankful Ellie didn’t have a view over her massive belly of what she did.

  “Right then,” she said. Ellie tensed at the onset of another contraction. “You two support her, help her, concentrate on her. I’ll do the rest. Maitland, you push.”

  It was minutes later—though it felt like hours— when the midwife pulled a small, screaming, bloody mess from Ellie’s body. She held the babe upside down against herself for a moment, wiping and clearing and using the tools to suck out her nose and such. Then she lifted her, still attached to Ellie, and laid her across her chest.

  Ellie lifted one hand and placed it on their daughter’s head. “You were right, Hugh, and she’s beautiful.”

  Louisa had tears streaming her face as she leaned in and kissed Ellie on the cheek, still holding Ellie’s leg as instructed. She looked up to see tears streaming Hugh’s cheeks as well. “She’s beautiful, Hugh.”

  He nodded but couldn’t seem to speak.

  “Pay attention, people. We’re far from done here. Apparently your doctor is more a dolt than I assumed. Maitland, hold on to that baby. You’re going to feel a—”

  Ellie cried out, holding the babe and lifting from the bed. “I thought it was over!” she said through the scream, quite clearly pushing again.

  “Not as much as we’d like, my dear. Seems your babe has a sibling.”

  Hugh looked at Ellie, then at Louisa. “Another babe?” He went pale, and Louisa narrowed her gaze on him.

  “Come on, Hugh. Keep it together. Just a few more.”

  “Push Maitland, push with all your… There,” the midwife said, and Ellie collapsed to the bed once more, the midwife cleaning yet another babe, this one a son.

  “Hugh?” Louisa said.

  “Louisa,” he replied.

  They looked at each other for a moment, then they both looked to Ellie, who was the happiest she’d ever seen her. “I knew there was something special going on in there,” she said. She kissed the top of her daughter’s head with a smile and reached for her son. Ellie lay there, between her husband and her wife, holding the first of their children, while Louisa cried and Hugh was panicked.

  Louisa reached over and squeezed his hand. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  “Oh, no, God no!” he exclaimed. “I’m just…trying to wrap my head around how we’ve all come so far in such short a time. A year ago…”

  “Yes, well. Go tell Charles and Amelia before Charles needs medical attention. Poor man.”

  Hugh straightened. “Yes, quite.” He put some pillows under Ellie’s leg, and with a nod to the midwife, ran to the door.

  “That’s it then,” the midwife said, and she tied off both babies’ umbilical cords and held them to be snipped. “You’ll have to do it as my hands are full.”

  Louisa took the scissors from the small tray and clipped both cords as Margarethe held them steady. She helped to scoot Ellie up in the bed, surrounding her with pillows before she gathered her things.

  “I’ll be back in a bit. I need to take this to the kitchens and check them.” Then she turned and walked from the room, a towel-covered bucket in her hand.

  Louisa crawled up in the massive bed next to Ellie, dragging blankets and clean towels with her to be sure the babies were warm. Babies. Ellie handed one to her, then pulled aside the shift she wore, helping the little boy to one of her nipples. She let out a breath, closing her eyes.

  “Okay. I can manage this. Perhaps,” she said. They hadn’t yet decided whether or not to use a wet nurse. Ellie had been against it, but now with two babies, Louisa wasn’t sure.

  “Hand me Alice,” she said, and Louisa gazed down into the tiny baby’s face, her little fists shaking as her tiny bird mouth rooted in the blankets.

  “Alice?” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat.

  “Yes, Alice. Hugh thought she should be named for her mother.”

  Tears welled in Louisa’s eyes as she helped Ellie adjust the tiny babe against her other breast. “Of course he did,” she said. Then she snuggled next to Ellie and watched the babies, checking often to be sure everyone was good and pink and warm.

  “And what did he think if the babe were a boy?”

  “We hadn’t discussed it, actually. Only that we wished for you—” Ellie groaned against another contraction, her back bowing as she held the babies and Louisa smoothed the tension in her forehead with her palm.

  “I had an idea…” Louisa said when it passed.

  “Tell me,” Ellie said, gazing up at her.

  “I’ve always liked the name Gabriel. One of the angels, who brings messages from God… li
ke his mother.”

  Ellie closed her eyes and turned her face into Louisa’s palm, kissing her there as she had once before, and Louisa closed her palm and held the kiss to her breast.

  “Gabriel. I like it,” the words were dry. Louisa smiled, leaning forward and kissing her so sweetly.

  “Oh my Ellie. Look at what you’ve done,” she said as she leaned in. “I always told you you were brave.”

  Ellie let out an exhausted laugh, leaning her head against Louisa’s chest. “Could you have ever imagined such a thing, watching that girl in the ballroom?”

  “Not in my wildest dreams, Ellie. Not in my wildest dreams.”

  Enfin

  No honey for me if it comes with a bee.

  Sappho

  Thank you for reading this edition of The Lady and Her Secret Lover. If you want to read more about Hugh and Charles and Amelia, as well as more Louisa and Maitland, go straight to The Duke and The Baron. While the happily ever after is the same the road to that happiness is completely different.

  If you liked Perry, my lovely rogue, his story is included in The Rake and The Recluse alongside his brother Gideon, the Duke of Roxleigh.

  If you want something completely different, try reading Warrick’s story in The Duke and The Domina, my personal favorite.

  He’s poor, she’s rich

  He’s a sub she’s a switch

  It’s not love,

  it’s a marriage of convenience

  Warrick is a powerful duke, he’s also a virgin and a submissive. Lulu is a modern day dominatrix. It’s a story of power, submission, and intimacy, like nothing else.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek of Warrick’s story!

  Preview of: The Duke and The Domina

  Prologue

  In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact, to shatter and destroy it is not so good.

  —Sun Tzu

  The Art of War

  The corset tightened, and Grayson let out his last breath of freedom, finally at ease. Corsets were popular with the men of Victorian society, but the reason he wore a corset was different from the rest. For them it was vanity, a softness of the waist, or a straighter posture. But for him? He had no need for help with posture or waistline. His structure was not at issue.

  Grayson needed the binding and the constriction, the pain of the tension and the relief when it released.

  Grayson breathed against the steel bones, letting them pinch as he watched the process in the cheval mirror. If he took a deep enough breath, if he held it long enough then shifted, he could bruise his skin where the boning crossed his ribs.

  He put his hands against the front of the corset and breathed again, waiting for as long as he could before exhaling, then he used his muscles to prolong that feeling.

  The pinch. The burn. The release.

  Then he nodded to his valet in the mirror’s reflection, and his shirt was brought to him. Then his waistcoat.

  Grayson wasn’t looking forward to today. It took everything in him to not run, leave Britain, and return to India—his home. It’s where he felt safest. Here in England, a country he’d wished to never see again, he was constantly on edge. Terrified he would be discovered. There was too much scrutiny here, particularly for a man like him.

  The fact that chance or fate or whatever machination would take his father and brothers without warning, without so much as an inkling, was beyond cruel. That today he was to meet the woman his father had contracted for his oldest brother, the woman he would marry, the woman who was now to become his duchess, was beyond him. Grayson couldn’t fathom marriage to anyone, but to a society miss? The daughter of a duke? A highborn lady who would expect certain things from him? This was truly unfathomable.

  This woman would be in his life and in his house. It would be impossible to escape her. The fact that he was an honorable man never rankled more than it did now. Honor was all he truly had, when the rest of him was…what he was, and he would be forced to hide who he was even in his own house, where he slept.

  To live out his greatest fear in life, to be a man of society, a husband, a father, a proper gentleman—he choked suddenly and leaned over, his breath stolen from him. He rested his hands on his knees at the thought, attempting to catch his breath as the corset bit into his lower abdomen.

  “Too tight, Your Grace?” Rakshan asked as he held Grayson’s jacket.

  Grayson lifted one hand and waved him off, unable to voice an answer. Breathing in through his nose, he stood tall again then pushed his arms back behind him. Rakshan slid his coat up his arms then yanked the tail, straightened the shoulders, walked in front of him, and buttoned him up. Then he pulled the brush from the dressing table and slid it across his chest, shoulders, and back.

  Grayson closed his eyes and settled into the calm of the movements on him. He would need to take that calm with him today to meet the woman he would marry. The future Duchess of Warrick, his dead brother’s fiancée, the woman who would prevent him from ever being himself.

  He may not miss his family for the reasons people believed he should, but miss them he did, because they were all that had prevented him from becoming who he now had to be.

  The Warrick.

  Lulu snapped the single tail just to the left of Oliver’s shoulder, letting the sonic boom send shudders through his muscles. She loved the dance of muscle as it rippled across the back of a client, the skin undulating like a soft wave carried to shore. She snapped it again quickly, this time on the right before the first ripple had a chance to make its way fully across the broad expanse of his back—and Oliver did have the loveliest back.

  With near-perfect symmetry and structure, he was simply beautiful with his arms stretched out to the bedposts above his head. The canvas of his physique, almost flawlessly balanced, could not have been more suited to her art. The thought of that alone could carry Lulu orgasm for days to come.

  He pulled against the bindings on his wrists, his muscles tightening in the center and stiffening his spine. The tension straightened his back as the lats on both sides flexed. The action made his back even bigger and more impressive, exactly what she needed him to do, exactly as she had instructed, throughout his training. She was so proud of him and could not contain the grin and the rush of blood from her excitement.

  Lulu waited for him to steady, then she struck him in earnest. First on the left just below his scapula, then on the right without pause.

  Tonight she would give him the wings they’d worked so hard for.

  She picked up the second bullwhip and tested the air with both bullwhips in tandem. This was her special trick and hers alone, and her clients paid thousands for the honor of it.

  She followed the pattern of his muscles down his lats, not letting him breathe between the strikes because the tension played out in his back. The feathers of his wings, made by the welts of the whips, needed to follow his natural musculature in order to look perfect. It was a difficult and practiced dance. Each strike had to be exact, because she wasn’t to draw blood, yet, and it was incredibly easy to draw blood with a single tail. Much too easy.

  For her part, the muscle control required of her had taken years to perfect, the ability to strike in tandem with an exacting weight and placement was nearly impossible. She practiced daily and worked her shoulders and back twice weekly to train out all signs of dominance on her left side. She worked harder than anyone else had ever considered doing. That’s why the clients paid, and they got exactly what they paid for.

  Lulu painted his lats with the red feathers, different weights and lengths of strikes making different patterns until he looked as though his back would physically give birth to the wings she put there.

  She set the bullwhips aside and picked up the Wartenberg wheel to add more subtle texture to the feathers. Then the evil stick for the center of the wings, for additional definition. The multiple tools completed her work, each of them leaving a different pattern much like a
painter and their collection of brushes.

  She wouldn’t use the bullwhip where the bone was close to the surface, because the chance of drawing blood was much too high. Instead, she used the floggers to paint broad strokes, then the wheel and the stick to define. The final effect was well-defined crests with fluffier-looking feathers down to the tips, but it was the last feather that sold the piece. Lulu stood back and inspected her work, then took a steadying breath.

  She picked up her whips again for the final strikes, the most painful of all. They would hit the soft hollows below his ribs, carefully avoiding his kidneys, and painting the final, long feathers that would go from his sides to just on either side of his spine. The feathers would bracket those beautiful dimples in a searing pain he would remember for the rest of his days. These would bleed, but only slightly, and only because he’d asked for them to.

  Lulu squared herself behind Ollie and shook her arms out to release the tension that had gathered. She needed to be loose and nimble, there was no first strike, and there was no second chance. This was it. She lifted her arms to her sides for the tandem strike and filled her lungs with air, then she channeled her weight into muscle memory and let the bullwhips sing through the air.

  Ollie yelled into it, a deep, throaty growl. They always did, if not during the process at least during the last strike. None of her subs could contain themselves through that final strike—blood or no.

  Lulu dropped the bullwhips and moved closer to him inspecting his back. She held her hands just over his skin, letting the heat of him sink into her palms warming her body. Her hands moved down past his shoulders, then hovered over the last strikes. The small cuts at his lower back bled two small rills of blood which slid easily into the dimples at his spine, pooling there. Perfection.