by Tinnean
“There’s no need. It’s getting late. See to it in the morning.”
“Very good, sir. Goodnight, Sir Ashton, Mr. Stephenson.” He bowed himself out.
Geo drew up a chair and spooned a bit of soup into his mouth. “Ahhh.”
“Yes, Cook has always had a way with soup. Geo….” He glanced up at me. “You asked if I missed you. I apologize for being so glib.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Thank you. Might… might I ask the same of you?”
“Of course.” He returned his attention to his soup.
Of course? Did that mean that of course he had missed me, or of course, I might ask? I sighed, then swore as the cheroot burned down to my fingers. I dropped it hastily into the small Spode ashtray Sir Eustace had brought home on one occasion or another, and blew on my fingers to ease the hurt.
“Here, let me see.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Let me see.”
“Very well. There.” I held my hand out. “As I said, it’s—” The words clogged in my throat as he brought my fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “Geo!”
A final gentle kiss, and he released my hand. “Sit down and tell me how the week has gone for you.”
“All I did was see to the harvest. You can’t be interested in that.”
“I can’t? Why not?”
“Well… well….”
He gave a half grin, took another spoonful of soup, and waited patiently.
“Very well.” I surrendered. “We managed to successfully harvest both crops. The estate has done well. I could… I could pay off some of the debt, Geo.”
“No. Not with money.”
“If that’s what you choose….”
“It’s what I choose.”
“Forgive me for asking, but are you sure you can afford to buy up all of Sir Eustace’s vowels and yet seek this way to be repaid?”
“If I am content with our bargain, then I suggest you be also.”
“As you wish, sir.” I was absurdly relieved. “However, I feel I should warn you that Arabella is counting on the funds I offered you for her bride clothes.”
“Has someone offered for her? Should I wish her happy?”
“Hardly. Both she and Aunt Cecily anticipate an offer from you.”
“I?”
“You.” I was gratified to see he appeared startled. “You made quite an impression on her Saturday week. She’s done nothing but sing your praises—your fashion sense, your address, your handling of the ribbons….”
“Never tell me she’s decided I’ll make an ideal husband!” He burst into laughter, and I was entranced at how young and carefree it made him appear. “I’ll have to disabuse them both in that case.”
“Indeed.” I wondered how he was going to go about that. Both women could be headstrong when they chose. Unless he told them he had offered for another? I disliked that thought in the extreme, and searched for something to take my mind from it. “How… how was your week in Town, Geo?”
“Well enough.”
“I imagine it must have been rather dull?” The Season was over, after all, and most of the ton would have deserted London. I waited expectantly, but beyond his slightly amused expression, he said nothing more, just pushed himself away from the desk, leaving his soup unfinished. I frowned. “Was the soup not to your taste? I’ll speak to Cook about it in the morning.”
“No need. It was quite good. I stopped to dine at the Whistling Pig in Chertsey,” he said by way of explanation.
There was a knock on the door, and my frown deepened.
Geo rose and limped to the door. “Yes, Kincaid?”
“I came to collect the tray, sir. Thought I would spare young David the task in the morning.”
“I see.”
“I thought you would.” Kincaid’s lips stretched in a prim smile. His gaze rested on me for a moment, then returned to Geo. “I’ve laid out your nightshirt. Will you need me for anything else? Then I’ll wish you both a good night.” He left us standing there.
“It’s been a long day. Might I suggest we retire?”
“Of course.” I closed and secured the French windows. “I’m at your service.”
Matching my pace to his, we left the study and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“How is your back, Ashton?” Geo asked.
“My back? It’s well enough, thank you. Why do you… oh.” He wanted to know if he could lie on me. My prick quivered, and I felt flushed and warm. “I do not sleep upon my back. However, for some days it has not pained me when anything has come into contact with it.”
“Splendid.” He continued along at my side, down the long hallway that led to my room.
“Aren’t you going to your chamber?” I paused before my door. “What I mean to say is, don’t you wish to change into your nightshirt?” John never wished to be naked any longer than it took to perform the act.
Geo reached past me and pushed open my door. “After you?”
I rather thought he’d be uncomfortable traversing the corridors of Laytham Hall in the early morning hours in the clothes he’d worn from Town. For a moment I was lost in the image of him, his shirt undone, revealing the pale, muscled expanse of his torso, his trousers only half buttoned, his shoes in one hand and his feet bare….
I moistened my lips and swallowed. If that was what he wanted, who was I to object? I shrugged in an attempt to conceal my arousal and entered my room, to come to a sudden halt.
Lying across the foot of my bed was a nightshirt that wasn’t mine, and abruptly, Kincaid’s words and glance at his employer made sense.
I couldn’t prevent a groan. “Dear God, sir, do you hate me that much?”
“What are you talking about? I thought you would be pleased!”
“Pleased to know that by the morrow, servants who have never had the least liking for me will be taking great pleasure in spreading it about the countryside that I am a sodomite?”
“Why would they do that?”
I looked away from him, reluctant to speak of the events that followed my parents’ deaths.
“Explain, if you please, Ashton.”
“I was a very unhappy child. The servants who have been here since I arrived remember me as that child.” The words tumbled from my mouth. How was it that this man could get me to say or do things that I’d had no intention of saying or doing? “The younger servants, who have come since then, have taken their tone from the older ones.”
He frowned. “And you allowed that?”
“What say do you think I had in it? Granted I was the heir, sir, but I was a pensioner as well, here at the good will of Sir Eustace and his wife.”
“But you’re Sir Ashton Laytham, Seventh Baronet now!”
I shrugged. “What matter the title?”
“They still dare to treat you with disrespect?” His expression darkened. “They will not do so in my presence!”
“Are your attics to let? Of course they will not!” That didn’t mean the water they brought me in the morning wouldn’t be cold by the time it reached me, or the chamber pot emptied and my fireplace raked out in a timely manner.
“Very well, I will grant you that, but how will they learn that I’ll be spending the nights in your bed?”
“Do you truly think your man will keep silent on this score?” It was too juicy a tidbit. All too well I remembered Fosby, Sir Eustace’s man, gossiping with Colling about how once their employer had returned from a night on the town so bosky he’d mistaken Fosby for his barque of frailty and had tried to tumble him. I could picture Kincaid gleefully imparting the news of Geo bedding me to one of the maids in hopes he’d impress her enough that she’d allow him into her bed.
“Yes. Trust me, Ashton. Kincaid has been with me since before I was at Sandhurst. He’s as much a friend as a servant, and he won’t betray our secret.” It was more than just the assurance in his words that tempted me to believe him. In order to make a success of my lands an
d the intended stud, I must have the good will of my neighbors. I had no choice but to believe him. “Now come. Let’s to bed.” He propped his walking stick against the wall and began removing his clothes.
In spite of my best intentions to undress slowly, I was naked and on the bed before he, my spectacles still in place so I could watch him.
“Well done, Ash.” He sauntered to the bed and trailed a fingertip from one nipple to the other. I was startled by their responsiveness, by the way they tightened and almost ached to be pinched, and my prick grew swollen. He sat beside me on the bed, his hip hard against mine, and his palm followed the path of hair down the center of my body to where my prick rose from the thatch of curls that grew around it.
I raised a hand to touch his hair. “Let me….”
“No,” he said. “Let me.” And his mouth came down on mine.
I wound my arms about his neck and drew him closer. If it had been anyone else, I would have been embarrassed by the low, hungry sounds I made as I fed on his mouth. What was it about his kisses? I’d had more than a week to mull over my reaction to them but had been unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion beyond the fact that he was the first ever to have kissed me.
Distracted by his mouth, I was startled to feel him working a slicked finger into me, followed by another and then another.
“You’re tight,” he murmured against my lips. “I want you loose enough to enjoy this.”
I turned my head so I could free my lips to speak.
“No.” His voice was hard as he turned my face toward him. “You will not attempt to deny it is I who is having you!”
I rested my palm on his cheek. “I would not do that, Geo. I simply wanted to tell you that in spite of my stiffness after the last time we did this, I did enjoy it. I should have thought the evidence spattered over my loins would have proved it so.”
“A man’s body can be manipulated by his mind.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No matter, it’s of no consequence. How is your back?”
“It’s fine. I would have said something if there was any discomfort.”
“As you did the last time?” He shook his head and curled a hand around my thigh, tugging it up. “Wrap your legs about me, Ash.”
I did as he said and suddenly found his prick sliding into me. His lips on mine once again, he swallowed my moan as he stretched my back passage, his possession of me burning, and he began a slow, steady, rocking motion that gradually built in speed and intensity until I was gasping with the need for air, and more air.
I held on to Geo, so lost in the sensations his movements were eliciting from my body that it didn’t occur to me that I should be touching myself, bringing myself closer to bliss. He was doing that quite by himself. He growled something in my ear in that foreign tongue, bit down on my earlobe, and I cried out and went spinning into the universe, holding tight to him so that we might spin out of control together.
Geo continued plunging into me a few moments longer before he stilled, his teeth bared in a feral grimace, and I held on to him ever more tightly as the heat of his essence filled me.
He panted harshly as he endeavored to bring his breathing to something like usual. The dark curls that clustered over his scalp were damp from his exertions, and I ran my fingers through them, enjoying the feel as they clung to my fingers. I nuzzled his throat, tasting the salt of his sweat.
“Ash,” he whispered. “You didn’t….”
“Spend?” I laughed giddily against his throat. “I did, could you not tell? And very splendid it was; I must commend you.”
“No, I knew that. You have a way of growling deep in your throat….” He was softening.
“I do?” I squeezed my inner muscles in an effort to keep him deep in my body, and he hummed in pleasure.
“Didn’t you know?”
“Obviously not. I beg your pardon.” My efforts to keep him within me were to no avail, and he slid from me.
“Don’t. I like it. I must tell you….”
I was not to know what he had to tell me, for his breathing evened out and between one moment and the next he slept. I sighed and eased him off me carefully, not wanting to disturb him, although it would not have mattered. He was so deep asleep a cannon could have been fired within the room and it would not have roused him.
This time it was I who rose and fetched the dampened flannel. It must have been an arduous week for him—what was it that he did in London?—for he made no sound when I turned him over to wash the residue of our passion from his loins.
I studied his features for a moment, relaxed in sleep, so youthful and so without a care. He was like an enchanted prince from the fairy tale Mama had been wont to read me as a child.
“Goodnight, sweet prince,” I murmured, and leaned forward to lightly kiss his lips. I laughed quietly at my folly, for while Geo might indeed be considered a sleeping beauty, I, certainly, was no prince to awaken him with a kiss.
I blew out the candle, then with a sigh, removed my spectacles, climbed into bed, and pulled the covers up over us both.
It would have been bliss to sleep with him in my arms, but I knew I must not be greedy, and I settled myself beside him.
Chapter 9
Sometime during the early morning hours, an arm was flung across my chest, and I came awake with a start to find I was not alone in my bed. Confused, I fumbled for my spectacles, needing them as a barrier, a shield. John hated when he fell asleep beside me, not that he did very often, and he’d be out of reason cross!
Well, so too was I, for I’d been having the most extraordinary dream in which someone actually cared for me, and his inconsiderate action had woken me from it.
“John….” I reached out and roughly shook his shoulder. “Wake up!”
“Who is this ‘John’?”
“G… Geo? I b… beg your pardon!” I stuttered, now fully awake.
“And so you should! I thought we were agreed that you would not have anyone else in your bed!”
“You were agreed, sir, but you needn’t fear. I did not break my word.”
“Yet you thought I was someone else. Who is he?”
“It is not important.”
“And if I beg to differ? I do not enjoy being called by another man’s name.”
“It was simply because I awoke confused. I am not used to another spending the night in my bed.”
“Who is he?” Geo pressed, becoming impatient. “Ashton.”
“He is no longer in England.”
“But you think of him still.”
“Do you plan to put a curb on my thoughts as well as my desires?”
“I will not permit others to use what is mine.” He sat up and lit a candle.
I rubbed my forehead. “I have no wish to argue with you, sir. I have acquiesced to your decree. What I had with… with that gentleman is well and truly over and done with. Forgive me for waking you.”
“Tell me about him.” It was obvious he would continue to worry it like a dog with a bone.
“There is nothing to tell. He is gone, and I have given you my word that I… that I will be faithful to you. I fail to see how it matters.”
“It matters because although you say you have given me your word, you still expect the man lying beside you to be him.”
“I do not…. Can you not accept that it is simply because I did not have many men in my bed?”
“I find that surprising.”
I was inundated by a wave of hurt. “You take me for a harlot!” After what we had shared earlier, he could think that of me?
“Ashton, you are deliberately misconstruing my words! I find you appealing, and to learn that you have not had more men in your bed is surprising.”
“But… but….” All that went round in my brain was the thought that he…. Could it be possible that he liked me?
“No matter. Tell me about this lover of yours.” He was indeed like a dog with a bone.
I tightened my lips,
obstinately refusing to speak.
“Ashton.”
“Oh, very well.” I surrendered gracelessly. “What did you wish to know?”
“Who is he?”
“That I will not tell you, for it is germane to nothing.”
“I beg to disagree. However, we will set that aside for the time being. How long did you know him? How long were you lovers?”
