“Lord, that was good,” he said, rolling over and grasping his still oversized, pulsing member to slide back into his trousers. “And the others won’t even miss us.” He extended his hand and pulled her up. “Was that good for you, Lady Partington?”
Sybil couldn’t help herself. She giggled. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself so much, Stephen. For what it’s worth, I did too. Your enthusiasm is worthy of the most ardent schoolboy.”
To his credit he didn’t pout, nor did he release her hand. Instead, he scratched his chin and regarded her quizzically. “No one has ever likened my prowess in any arena to that of a schoolboy.” He grinned and she knew he was joking when he said, “The jades and misses I’ve made up to have been infinitely more complimentary than that.” He took her hand and led her back to the path.
“I shall take that as a compliment.”
His mouth quirked. “Actually, you should be exceedingly flattered, Lady Partington. I find you and your lovely creamy body far more exciting than any of the jades I’ve had the benefit of knowing.”
“I’m not sure if that really is particularly flattering, Stephen.”
“Well, you’re not setting out your wiles to entrap me. You’ve offered me a proposition—which is entirely to my benefit —and we’re cramming as much fun into the next few days as we can. I can’t remember ever having had such a jolly good time.”
She walked beside him, enjoying his complete honesty, happier and more carefree than she could remember. “I certainly never have.”
Stephen squeezed her hand as he glanced down at her. “Six more days, Lady Partington. Six more days,” he reminded her. “You’re more daring than you look, I’ll grant you that. Let’s see how daring you really can be.”
* * * * *
Luncheon was an interesting affair. They ate ‘round a table already laid for them in the center of the circular rotunda, its elevated position affording them a glorious view of the lake and far distant fields surrounding the Grange, with the boathouse and beech forest a short distance across the glittering water.
After lunch, they rowed back to the jetty, which extended in front of the boathouse, and while the others amused themselves Sybil relaxed in a cane chair Stephen had positioned near the shore. As she watched the servants tidy away their recent meal, transporting the empty plates into the second boat still moored at the base of the rotunda, she could hear every word of the young people, who pretended to fish from the jetty. Edgar considered himself an expert on the sport and he graciously assisted Hetty and Araminta with their lines.
Even from a distance he looked ridiculous as he officiously demonstrated the most rudimentary process, taking every opportunity to get close to Araminta. Once, Sybil caught a glimpse of Araminta’s face as his arm brushed the length of hers. A spasm of the utmost distaste marred her pretty features as she turned away so he could not see. Clearly her aversion ran deep, which Sybil could well understand. The more she observed her nephew the more she disliked him.
I mustn’t think so badly of him, she thought. Nor, she thought, of Araminta, whose behavior hardly reflected well on her. Perhaps in her own naïve way, she too was acting for the greater good of the estate. Perhaps it wasn’t all motivated by self-interest.
She heard Edgar remonstrate with his youngest cousin. “No, no, Hetty, you mustn’t jiggle it around so much. You’ll scare the fish. You need to entice them.” He slid his eyes across to Araminta and his hand brushed across hers as he took Hetty’s stick in demonstration. “You must learn the art of subtlety, Hetty. Araminta is the queen of subtlety, eh, coz?”
Araminta looked a little startled at this before her smile took on the usual cloying cheerfulness, entirely forced, which she reserved for Edgar’s inane remarks.
“Araminta knows exactly what she wants and what’s good for her but does she show it? Oh no. Ladies who can demonstrate subtlety will get further in life. You wear your heart on your sleeve, Hetty, but you must learn the art of subtlety. None of this jiggling about trying to get instant results. It don’t work, you know, old girl.”
By now Sybil’s maternal instincts were on full alert. She bent forward, poised between giving Edgar a well-targeted setdown but also wanting to know how her girls responded.
Araminta’s cool, “Edgar’s right, dear,” was not what she wanted to hear though it was sadly predictable. Hetty’s trembling lip and blanching of color was, however, like a red rag to a bull.
Stephen, just returning from a solitary ramble in the woods, heard the end of this exchange. He put out an arm to stop Sybil from launching forward to intervene.
“Allow me, Lady Partington.” He arched an eyebrow. “Edgar has just stymied my grand opportunities for the station in life to which I’d aspired but he lacks the charm I have with the ladies, I think you’ll agree.”
“You think highly of yourself, Stephen, my love,” she murmured. “However I give you leave to turn on the charm for my daughters. I trust you provided I can see you.”
He’d already taken a step forward. At this he swung round, his eyes dark. “Do you really think I might abuse my position should my charm win over hearts?” He lowered his head, gripping both arms of the chair for support as he put his face close to hers. “Do you really think me so careless of the feelings of others that as long as I am pleasured and gratified they don’t matter?”
His words found their mark. She felt her chest caving in as her breath left her in a whoosh. She opened her mouth to speak but had to try several times before the words came. “I’m sorry, Stephen.” She cupped his face in an entreaty for forgiveness. “I spoke carelessly. I did not mean to insinuate I don’t trust you. For I do. It’s just—”
“Just what?” He straightened, clearly not prepared to let it go.
Desperation warred within her. She struggled to answer. “You’re a handsome young man with youth and virility in your favor and natural urges for beautiful women to love and admire you.” Sybil shrugged, palms outward as she appealed to him for understanding. “You have an old woman to admire you. One with two fresh young daughters, the eldest of whom is clearly in love with you and who turns every head whenever she walks into a room.”
“Hetty is sweet but as you know completely no threat to you, Lady Partington, and Araminta, while she is one of the most exquisite creatures I’ll admit I’ve ever met, is also the most designing debutante I’ve ever come across and I consider myself to have had a lucky escape. You, on the other hand, Lady Partington, are in a completely different league. You’re a grown woman with nothing missing. You have wisdom and beauty and kindness, a potent combination.” He leaned over her and for a moment Sybil thought he was going to risk the unthinkable: a kiss when they were not ten yards from the other young people. Though whether this was as unthinkable as what they’d just engaged in was a moot point.
Then he rose to his full height, his indignation not fully erased. “I might be a young man aware of his attraction and equally attracted to attractive women but please credit me with integrity.”
Turning on his heel, he marched down the river bank, clearing his voice so that the girls raised their faces in welcome. Edgar was not so forthcoming.
“Hetty, if fishing is not as exciting as Edgar and Araminta clearly find it, perhaps you’d like to walk with me along the riverbank?” He enjoyed the pink rush to her cheeks and the way she held her hands together to stop them trembling. Yes, he did have a way with the ladies, even when he had no prospects with which to entice them. At least he could be assured he was desired for his natural assets rather than his pocketbook, however the thought of what he was going to do when the week was over was depressing at best.
And although he managed to appear lighthearted he was still wounded by Lady Partington’s words. He was not the base Johnny-take-all she had suggested though he had enough understanding to accept that a woman unsure of herself was far more likely to strike out like that.
With exaggerated gallantry he offered Hetty his arm. “Let us t
iptoe through the daffodils—or find some equally pleasurable equivalent,” he said, causing her to titter and, he was rather pleased to notice, Araminta to twist her neck around with a look of unmistakable envy.
Edgar grumbled that she must pay attention and Lady Partington smiled with such genuine pleasure that Stephen felt ridiculously gratified.
Chapter Nine
The next two days passed in a rapturous blur of lust and rutting. Lady Partington had risen to the challenge in seeking out novelty and he’d risen to the challenge with her. In the butler’s pantry while ostensibly seeking a particular vintage when the servants were at church, Stephen had taken her from behind. In the tower room, while the young people were playing croquet, Sybil had waved to them while Stephen, lying on the floor, had wickedly pleasured her before pulling her down and impaling her upon his never-flagging member.
She was as insatiable as he and he gloried in her abandonment and in her sweet, moist, pliant body. Her face haunted his dreams, taking precedence over all the women he’d ever known, including of course that jade Lady Julia, with whom he’d fancied himself passionately in love for five minutes. He wasn’t sure how he’d regard her when she and her husband attended Lord and Lady Partington’s house party at the Grange in a few days’ time.
No, Lady Partington was the most sensuous, beguiling, intriguing piece of womanhood he’d met in his twenty-four years and he didn’t want to think about when it ended. His life beyond the following Sunday was a lonely void.
“My Sybil.” In the beech wood he whispered her name, dropping her title only now when he found himself alone.
Lady Partington was entertaining the vicar who’d come to tea and Stephen had found an excuse to avoid both Araminta’s and Hetty’s separate requests for his company.
Owing to the heat, he’d stripped off in a secluded leafy arbor, taken a plunge in the river and now lay on his back, eyes closed, enjoying the heat of the sun on his naked skin. Enjoying, too, recreating the sensation of Sybil’s ministrations as he grasped his own member and played it like a fine instrument—though not with the finesse she’d perfected.
“Yes, come, my beauty, come my dearest,” he murmured, reveling in the buildup of tension within him, remembering the damp mud beneath him and Sybil’s own dampness as he’d sheathed himself upon him when they’d made love here the day before.
“Oh yes, yes, I’m coming!” With a final jerk he came, opening his eyes to see the spray of ejaculate raining down upon his stomach. He groaned, closing his eyes. No point in thinking beyond the next few days when his life would be a barren wasteland once more. He didn’t mind about the money. He’d lived without that for as long as he could remember and he’d made do, having a jolly enough time along the way.
As the damp earth turned his warm skin chilly, mournfulness impregnated his soul. In two days’ time there would be no Sybil to tumble and make love to, to laugh with and make him feel like a naughty schoolboy and the world’s greatest lover in equal measure.
“Cousin Stephen?”
A rustle in the bushes and the familiar girlish accents sent shock and horror rocketing through him.
“Er, just a moment, if you please...” He leapt to his feet and grabbed his clothes, nearly overbalancing in his haste to don his shirt and breeches.
Araminta sidled into view before he was finished. “Did you enjoy your swim, Cousin Stephen?”
Her look was far too knowing to put him at ease and he blurted out, “Forgive me, Cousin Araminta! You caught me unawares. I was swimming—”
“Oh, you were doing more than swimming, Cousin Stephen.” She’d stepped up close. Too close.
He took a step back, swallowed and pretended ignorance. “Nearly time for tea,” he said, fumbling for his timepiece, which he remembered he’d left beside his bed.
“Cousin Stephen!”
Shocked by the insistency in her voice and the firmness of her hand upon his sleeve, he looked down. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
She sighed, toying with the loose material of his unbuttoned shirt as she prevaricated with artful coquetry. “You know I don’t love Edgar.” She raised limpid eyes to his, as if appealing for understanding. For something more from him than he could give her, but he could not step away. She was clinging to him.
“You must know my feelings for you,” she went on.
Her lips glistened, moist and inviting. Except that he didn’t find them inviting at all. Not even when she gripped his arm tighter and added as she raised herself on tiptoe and tilted up her chin, “I saw what you were doing. I’m not so innocent, though it’s not a thing a man wants to hear. That is, a man intending to take one as his bride, but you’re not intending that, Cousin Stephen.” She sighed again and said with commendable emotion, “I do so wish Cousin Edgar had died after all. You can’t imagine how much I wish that so I didn’t have to marry him but was free to marry you instead.”
Stephen shrugged. “No one’s forcing you to do anything.” He felt quite unaffected by her machinations. All he wanted to do was return to the Grange and see Sybil’s face light up as he entered the room. His mind took it to the next step. They’d find some excuse to leave—either separately or together—and then they’d throw themselves into and onto each other. That’s all that mattered. Sybil.
“It’s my duty toward Papa.” For once she looked deadly earnest. So much so that he actually believed she was sincere in considering it her duty to her father to marry her bottle-headed cousin.
“Papa once said to me, years ago, that I’d have made a fine master of the Grange. Even better than poor George. Now that Edgar is going to inherit, I will at least be able to keep Edgar’s foolishness in check and be the mother of the next viscount, even if I can’t actually be lord of the manor, so to speak, in my own right. Do you see?”
“Your loyalty to your father is commendable.” Stephen tried to disentangle her hand from his wrist but was unsuccessful. Her gaze grew more wistful, her grip more urgent.
“Cousin Stephen, I told you, I am not the innocent you think me.”
He wasn’t about to cut her off and say he didn’t think her an innocent at all.
“You may have heard rumors about the reason I had to cut short my season. Have you?”
“I believe a...young gentleman inflicted some damage to himself.”
“My suitor, Cousin Stephen. A worthy enough gentleman. Indeed, he was most insistent that I become his wife. That is, after...” She blushed and Stephen thought it was genuine. After all, regardless of what she’d done, she was an innocent by most standards.
“We went for a carriage ride. I was without a chaperone and he became quite amorous. Indeed, I myself got carried away and...” She shrugged. “Suffice to say I realized I may well be ruined and he was determined that I must become his bride. But time passed, I realized I wasn’t quite as ruined as I’d feared and the idea of spending the rest of my life leg-shackled to the gentleman was not my idea of happiness. Only, when I told him so in the nicest possible terms he took offense and blew his brains out.”
She brandished a tiny square of muslin and dabbed her eyes. “Oh, Cousin Stephen, I’ve studied you so often when you haven’t noticed, and my heart has cried out for you.”
Suddenly her arms were around him and she was pressing her small, fragrant body against his, her face upturned, her lips slightly parted in open invitation.
Coolly, he said, “I will not snatch clandestine kisses, Miss Araminta, when you are all but betrothed to another man.”
“Another man who means nothing to me.” She pulled him down, murmuring against his lips, “When my soul craves you, Cousin Stephen. You can have it all: my heart, my soul, my body. All Edgar will have is a marriage contract and a wife in name only.”
Sickened by her naïve ramblings, Stephen was in the act of drawing back and telling her in no uncertain terms what he felt about her words, when a scandalized voice broke in.
“Araminta? Stephen?”
&
nbsp; He turned to find Sybil’s shocked eyes upon them. Not only shocked but hurt too. Araminta looked down at her feet. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came.
Oh God, thought Stephen, he was going to have to find an excuse for this one, alone. “Lady Partington, it is not the way it appears.”
She drew herself up to her full height. “Araminta,” she said, not looking at her daughter. “You may go now.”
Dismissed, Araminta hurried out of the clearing and Stephen watched her head toward Grange Hall while he waited to defend Lady Partington’s natural charges.
Better to meet this head-on, he thought. Sighing, he took her hands and lowered his face. “Araminta found me after I’d been swimming.” He indicated his dishevelment. “It obviously aroused some latent feeling for me as she’s just professed her preference for me as her husband while still steadfastly maintaining her intention to marry her cousin Edgar.”
He waited, the growing silence reinforcing how desperately he needed her understanding. God, if she sent him packing it would mean yesterday was the last occasion he’d glory in her luscious body and rest his head against her beautiful, pillowy breasts. Quite frankly, he couldn’t bear it.
For a long moment she allowed him to hold her hands in his. He hadn’t realized how soft they were. Soft and girlish. Like the rest of her. In the shade of the forest glade he could see no sign of crease or mark to indicate her real age. She was lovely, truly lovely with an inner depth he’d never found in all the women of his intimate acquaintance. She could laugh with him as if they were of the same generation, make fun of him yet still fill him with the sense that his physical strength and sexual prowess were important to her but that there was more about him she valued.
“Araminta was spying on you?” It was a whisper. Questioning, rather than accusing...he hoped.
He wanted to see her smile, not look at him with such suspicion, as if he were Beezlebub himself, slyly seducing her daughter behind her back. Lady Partington was a queen among women and he wanted—no, needed—her high regard.
Her Gilded Prison (Daughters of Sin Book 1) Page 11
