Was that attraction? Was it inspiration?
Was that love?
She really wasn’t sure. Her mother always pined for her father when he was abroad, and they most certainly were in love. And when he returned, her father always kissed her mother in very much the same manner Nicholas had just kissed her.
She touched her finger to her lips again, then traced them with her tongue. They felt tender, almost bruised. Would everyone at the Shotwick ball know what she had just done? Could they tell just by looking at her?
As she pulled her gloves from her reticule, she realized how much she did not want to return to the ballroom. It was filled with dull, uninspiring men, men who did not thrill her, who did not attract her, who could never send her mind and body reeling, spinning, like Dr. Nicholas Ramsay could.
As she tugged her gloves on, she decided she did not care very much what anyone thought, even if they could tell she had just had the most incredible experience of her life.
She smiled. She still felt Nicholas’ kiss in a million different places, some of them very far from her lips.
Chapter Eight
“Doctor, sir, who is that woman?” Grace asked from behind the modesty screen as she took off her dress.
“Which woman, Grace?” asked Dr. Christopher absently.
“The one what comes over and sleeps here.” She tugged at the hooks on her corset.
“She is a very dear friend of mine. Her name is Mrs. Phillips.”
Dear friend? “Is she in love with you?”
“Never you mind that, girl! Are you ready yet?” The doctor seemed annoyed.
Grace stepped out from behind the screen.
“On the table.”
Grace got on the examination table and placed her feet in the stirrup-like holders. Propped up on her elbows, she watched Dr. Christopher make his preparations.
She liked watching the doctor when he was busy, when his handsome features were unclouded by insincere expressions of concern or interest. When Dr. Christopher concentrated on something scientific, his eyes became soft and dreamy, he would suck in his lower lip, wetting it, and he would even talk very quietly to himself, his seductive baritone growling indistinguishable syllables.
“Right,” he concluded to no one. “Now, Grace, my girl—”
Grace loved it when he embellished her name with little terms of endearment.
“You understand what I need you to do, correct?”
“I’m to think about the feelings I feel, then describe them to you.”
“Very good.” He took off his jacket and laid it neatly over a chair. “Then we’ll compare what you’ve felt with the vibration device with what you feel with penetration.”
That was a word Grace was not sure she knew. “Doctor, sir? What do you mean? Penet—”
“Penetration. Inside you. When a man places his member inside you.” He unbuttoned his waistcoat. “You said you were not a virgin.”
“No, sir. I mean yes, sir, I haven’t been a virgin for a few years. I like men.” She was babbling, but his presence was quite distracting, especially when she was half dressed and he seemed to be taking off his clothes.
“Good. Then we will compare the pleasure you feel with the two events.” He carefully laid his waistcoat over his jacket.
“Sir, will there be a man involved or a machine?”
He chuckled. Grace liked it very much when he chuckled. “It will be a man, my girl. It will be me.” He sat on the chair and proceeded to remove his shoes.
Grace could hardly believe her ears. “You, sir?”
“Yes, me. I will be the one penetrating you.”
Her breath quickened at the prospect. She and Dr. Christopher were going to engage in intimate relations? It was all she had imagined since he had first pleasured her in the bathtub. Where would they do it? Her bed? No, her bed was far too small for two people. Would she be invited into his bedroom? Would they make love on his four-poster? Since being his housemaid, she had been in his bedroom many times, making up the bed, changing the sheets, folding his laundry, placing it in his chest of drawers. Dr. Christopher didn’t keep a valet, and Mrs. Jennings kept to the cooking these days, so it was Grace who did everything for him. Whatever he needed and whenever he wanted.
And she relished every minute of it. She would do so much more for him. Now perhaps he was finally asking her to do precisely that. Much, much more.
“Lie back, my girl,” he said coolly as he lifted her petticoats.
Grace did as commanded. She had taken off her drawers like he had asked and now lay before him splayed open, all of her desires exposed for him to see.
“Good, girl. You’re already wet.” His warm fingers stroked her, spreading her sticky moisture. “Last time you had said you thought of someone while I stimulated you with the electro-mechanical device. Do you remember?”
“Yes, sir.” It had, of course, been him she had thought about.
“Good. Let’s see what you think about this time.”
Still propped on her elbows, Grace watched, riveted, as Dr. Christopher unbuttoned his fly and pulled off his suspenders. He slipped his trousers off, then folded them and placed them on top of the pile of his clothes. Surprisingly the normally very particular doctor was not wearing drawers, tantalizing Grace with a view of his bare, muscular, masculine thighs. His magnificent member jutted forth, tenting his shirt. Grace wet her lips in anticipation.
He lifted the hem of his shirt. Grace sucked in air at the sight. Dr. Christopher was more than well-endowed. He was huge. And beautiful, the length and breadth of the smooth pink shaft in perfect proportion to the swollen glans.
He pulled the fabric of his shirt taut at his waist and tied one end in a knot. He touched her briefly again.
And then he entered her.
Grace gasped at the invasion, thick and delicious, suffusing her mind and body with a satisfaction she had craved. She looked up at him, wanting to know if he felt what she did. But the expression on Dr. Christopher’s face was thoughtful, perhaps clinical, his mind absorbed in an analysis of what the rest of him was doing.
It was not at all like what she had imagined their union would be.
She closed her eyes, casting herself in a different scenario, one where Dr. Christopher was the solicitous lover Julius, leading her by the hand into his room. There he would undress her, draping each one of her garments delicately on his slipper chair. Enveloped in a sudden chill, she would shiver and he would utter comforting consolations as he led her to the bed, tucking her under the goose-down comforter. She would watch him, wide-eyed with need, while he took off his own clothes.
Grace could now envision a complete picture of him utterly nude. Oh! What a sight he would be to behold! She had seen him working in his office at night in his shirt, his collar off, the placket unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up. He had glorious hair covering his arms and chest. Grace would tangle her fingers in the silky strands as he hovered above her stretched out in the proper position of love.
He would cup her breasts one at a time, then languidly draw his hand across her belly to find she was ready for him, wet for him. And he would enter her, his magnificent cock stretching her, filling her, eliciting a rapturous cry from her throat. He would wait a moment until her ecstatic throes dissipated, then begin his erotic motions.
Grace would answer his movements with encouragements of her own, willing him to go faster as she rocked her hips in rhythm to his thrusts, letting him know her body craved him, needed him. His groans would remind her that he needed her just as much.
Her ravenous wail of ecstasy would spur him on to his crisis. With a deep jerking thrust he would spill every drop of his seed deep inside her satisfied cunt.
Grace would breathe a sigh of relief as Julius rolled over and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her in afterglow.
A waft of cool air nipped between her legs. Her eyes flew open. The office.
“Very good, my girl!” Dr. Christopher exclaimed,
already half dressed. “Very good! Your orgasm was quite stupendous.” He pulled out a small black journal from his desk. “Now you must tell me everything you felt.”
Grace stared at him blankly. He was everything yet nothing like the man of her fantasies. “I thought of someone,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows in interest. “Oh? Tell me.”
“It was the same man. A bloke I fancy. I thought about the two of us together.”
“And what about a comparison of the two acts? Is one better than the other?”
“No…I don’t think so.” Especially when it’s with you.
“Hmmm.” Dr. Christopher wrote in his notebook. “Could you live the rest of your life without one act or the other?”
“Do I get the bloke I fancy?”
He looked up at her in surprise. “I suppose. Is that important?”
“Then as long as I get the bloke I fancy, I don’t think it matters much to me which act I would live the rest of my life with.”
Dr. Christopher’s surprise turned to befuddlement. He scribbled some notes. “Indeed this is most curious. Grace, my dear, women are fascinating creatures, are they not?”
She smiled. Not as fascinating as you.
* * * * *
“Nicky,” Lavinia began with trepidation. “I received a letter from your father this morning.”
Nicholas remained silent. He did not look up from his newspaper, but his fingers gripped the pages of the Evening Standard a little more tightly.
She adjusted her skirt over her legs stretched along the sofa in the library. “He says your brother is really awfully in debt, and he himself is not much better. He asks for money, of course.”
Nicholas crushed the paper just a little bit more. “I don’t give a damn about my father or my brother. They can both go to hell and rot for all I care.”
“Yes, dear. I thought as much. I just don’t like keeping secrets from you and thought you should know.”
He looked over the paper at that, put it down and reached for her. “Sometimes I wish I could just marry you.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her smiling lips.
Lavinia giggled as his attentions turned to her cheeks and neck. At the crook of her shoulder, he gave her a little bite. “Nicky!”
He pulled back to his side of the sofa, laughing.
“I received some other news this morning when Charlotte stopped by. The Roxton twin who got engaged, remember? It’s to Lord Davenham.”
“Good God! He’s old enough to be her father.”
“Well, that’s not always such a bad thing. I married a man old enough to be my father and look where I am now.”
“Sharing a bed with a man young enough to be your son.”
Lavinia swatted her lover’s leg.
“What else does Lady Banbury say?” Nicholas noticed his demitasse was empty and refilled it from the teapot.
Lavinia grinned devilishly at him. “Sophia Phillips is sharing Julius’ bed.”
“Yes, well, I know that. Puts him in a much better mood. I think the housemaid is a bit jealous, though.”
“And she says Helena Phillips has been acting queerly the last few days. Since the Shotwick ball, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh!” Nicholas appeared genuinely concerned. “How so? Is she ill?”
“Nothing to pin down, Doctor, darling. She’s morose one minute, then on a cloud the next. She’s forgetful and distracted, which is not like her at all. She even requested that her corset be tightened.”
Nicholas blushed at that and resumed his perusal of the afternoon paper.
“Well, if you ask me, I think she fell in love with one of her dance partners.” Lavinia looked over at Nicholas to see his reaction but he had turned his attention to his teacup. “I think it might be the Marquess of Aldersley—you know, the heir to the Duke of Underwood? He’s very handsome and a good conversationalist.”
“He’s a bit of a bore, if you ask me.”
“Perhaps it was one of the other dozen young men she danced with. Or all of them. Girls her age simply cannot make up their minds, really.”
Nicholas crumpled the Standard in a huff. “Christ, Vinny. Stop it.”
“Stop what, Nicky?” She glared at him, an inkling of the truth nagging at her. She wanted to hear him say it.
“I kissed her.”
Lavinia stared at him in shock. “You did what?”
“I kissed her,” he said succinctly, staring back.
She got up from the couch. “Nicky, how could you!” She began to pace.
“Vinny, how could I not? It was glorious, it was magical and I would do it all over again.”
“The poor girl. You’re leading her on with romantic notions—”
“Good God, you’re not jealous, are you?”
“Darling, no!” Lavinia stopped. “No, I have no right,” she said quietly. “But Nicky, to rile up a young girl’s senses when you cannot follow through, it’s…well, it’s seduction.”
Nicholas leaned his head on the back of the couch. “And what if I’m in love with her?”
Lavinia sat beside him. “You can’t have her as Dr. Nicholas Ramsay.”
“I know.” He stared broodingly at the ceiling.
She nuzzled against his chest. “Please, darling, just leave her intact for her husband.”
He kissed her forehead. “Yes, Vinny. I will.”
* * * * *
Helena knew Dr. Ramsay worked at the medical office on Chelsea Manor Street, but the maidservant who led her in said Dr. Ramsay was with a patient and that she was expected by Dr. Christopher anyway.
Mama had escorted her only to the front door. She seemed a bit embarrassed upon leaving but had said for Helena to be a good girl and to listen carefully to what Dr. Christopher would tell her.
For his part, Dr. Christopher was rather animated when greeting her. “Come in, come in, my dear. Have a seat. Thank you, Grace. You may go,” he said politely to the servant.
Helena sat down. Dr. Christopher drew up a seat alongside her.
“Now, Miss Phillips, your mother says you have been complaining of fatiguing vexations. Is that correct?”
She really didn’t know if that was a medical term or not. “Yes, I suppose so.”
He put his hand on her thigh just above her knee, an action that was oddly intimate and not very clinical. “Tell me, in your own words, what you have been feeling,” he said solicitously.
“So many emotions,” Helena sighed. “I’m miserable one moment but then something happens and I’m quite happy, elated even. Sometimes I’m cross. I think I’ve snapped at Mama once or twice. I don’t know. I feel frustrated about something but I don’t know what.” The warmth of the doctor’s hand seemed to have an unexpected calming effect.
“Might those frustrations have to do with your activities this Season?” His deep voice was lulling.
“Well, yes. The parties, the preparations, what to wear, how to act, whom I’m allowed to talk to, whom I’m allowed to dance with. It’s all very unsettling, really.”
“And what would you rather be doing?”
“Reading a book.”
Dr. Christopher raised a brow. “Ah, well. Very different from social pursuits.” He squeezed her leg a little. “Now I understand you have been receiving attention from several young men.”
Mama must have told him that. “Y-yes.”
“It’s all right, my dear. I’m not here to gossip. I’m here to listen,” he reassured her.
“There seem to be so many of them. They call on me during the times I’m meant to be at home. They leave cards when I’m not home. Some want to take me for walks, others for rides in their fancy carriages. I’ve been given loads of flowers.”
The doctor chuckled and patted her knee. “You are a very pretty young woman, Helena.” His hand gently rubbed her thigh.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You feel confusion by all the attention, do you not?”
“Yes!” S
he was surprised the doctor understood her. She looked up and studied him for the first time. He was really quite handsome for an older man. His eyes were the most beautiful color of blue she had ever seen. Like the summer sky.
“These tumultuous emotions of the heart are fairly usual in young women such as yourself.”
“They are?”
“Yes, medical men call what you are feeling ‘hysteria’. There are treatments for it. That’s why your mother sent you to me.”
“I’m suffering from hysteria?” Helena was astonished. “But I don’t feel ill.”
“No.” Dr. Christopher stood up to pace slowly. “But the chaos of emotions, from the desperate melancholy to the ecstatic excitability, create a sort of illness of the mind.” He faced her. “I have a method of resolving all of these feelings to make your mind well again. My treatment involves the body.”
He must have seen the curiosity on her face. He touched the top of her head. “Your mind is connected to certain places in your body via a system of nerves. When certain nerves are aroused they send a message to the brain. Pain is one of those mechanisms. But so is pleasure.” He folded his hands together as if emphasizing his point. “You are here to learn the method of pleasure.”
Something about his voice, his expression—a touch of genuine enthusiasm, maybe—was very exciting. “What do I do?” she asked.
“I must ask you to take off your skirt, shoes and drawers. And your hat, coat and gloves, of course. There is a screen behind which you may do so.” He pointed to a corner of the room.
He continued to talk as Helena took off the required garments. “I have my own three-step method to excite the nerves. The first is a manual massage, which I will teach you to use whenever you feel the need. The second is mechanical massage, which is needed at periodic intervals to give more stimulation to the nerves. The third step,” he paused and Helena could hear him pacing again, “is penetrative massage. This keeps the muscles surrounding the nerves vigorous.”
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