“Amen to that, Polly. I’m country myself originally. I can vouch for all those high jinks in the meadows and the barns and the potting sheds.” Jamie’s other hand began its voyage into the convoluted hinterland of her petticoat now, and after some fishing about achieved its goal—the vent of her drawers from the front. “And now it seems that both me and your Mr. Charlie like a bit of a fumble with you, as well as each other.”
Polly opened her mouth, but whether to protest or proclaim her delight, she didn’t quite know. But there was no chance for either, because Jamie plunged in and kissed her hard and long, over and over again. And as his tongue worked inside her mouth, his finger found her clitty.
As he fondled her there, wicked images filled her head.
Charlie rubbing her. Her rubbing Charlie. Charlie and Jamie rubbing her, and rubbing each other. Between her legs, her sex leaped and fluttered, and grew stickier and stickier with each thought. Something Jamie seemed to appreciate as he doubled his efforts to arouse her.
You’re so selfish, Polly Jenkins, she castigated herself suddenly, still rocking and wriggling against Jamie and his fingers. You should think of others, not your own entertainment.
Here she was having a lovely, fruity time with a handsome and personable man, and she’d completely forgotten all about Miss Bea and the dangers upstairs.
“What is it, Polly?” Jamie’s fingers still moved, but there was concern in his voice.
“I’m still worried about Miss Bea and your Mr. Ritchie.”
“Don’t, my love. Don’t worry,” he breathed, fingertip swirling, “He likes the ladies, yes, but he’s a good man too. He once saved my life, and he’s saved my hide in other ways too.”
Polly caught her breath as the finger pushed inside her, but Jamie went on. “He’ll not hurt your lady, believe me. He knows far too much about pain and anguish to hurt another.”
Questions churned in Polly’s mind, but Jamie’s touch was too clever for her. She wriggled and bore down, her thoughts in a whirl, her worries forgotten.
As were Jamie’s, it seemed. “Oh, I wish I could fuck you here and now, Polly,” he gasped, “You’re the most toothsome young woman I’ve met in an age, and I’d love to plunge into your puss and make us both happy.”
Polly wished it too, but she was cautious. So-called sophistication wasn’t all that “town” was notorious for. Country girl or not, she knew about the consequences of pleasure, and that sometimes falling with child was the lesser misfortune.
“I never go the whole way, I’ll have you know, Mr. Jamie Brownlow. Nothing goes inside anywhere, if you take my meaning, and there’s no exceptions.”
“Very wise, Miss Polly, very wise. You’re a very progressive young woman.” He squeezed her breast teasingly, clearly taking advantage of whatever she was willing to permit. “Very forward thinking, as I happen to be myself. There’s no pleasure in sex if you’re worrying all the time, is there? Personally, I’m a great believer in the efficacy of French letters, when fucking either sex. But alas, I wasn’t expecting to meet a goddess in a broom cupboard this morning, so I don’t happen to have one about my person.”
French letters, eh? Now here was a man she might be able to go all the way with. Especially if Miss Bea took up with the apparently saintly and lifesaving Mr. Ritchie.
“Well, that’s a shame, Jamie,” she said softly, working back against him, “because despite our very brief acquaintance, your avowed perversions, and the peculiar circumstances of our meeting, I do believe that I like you very much, and as I said, I’m of a mind to take my pleasure where I may.”
“Oh, Polly,” he murmured back to her, “a man doesn’t meet a peach like you every day. And it’d be a shame to waste this opportunity.” He began pulling at her skirts again. Polly pushed them back down just as determinedly, but he soothed her with another silky kiss. “So I think we ought to try and improvise without taking undue risks. What do you think?”
Polly laughed. Could she trust him? She certainly wanted to. “I’m game if you are.”
“Good girl, I knew you were a sport.” There was a laugh in his voice, unadulterated happiness. He was a straightforward pleasure-lover, untrammeled by guilt and tiresome peregrinations on what was moral and what was sinful. As she responded to him, her hands sneaking beneath his jacket to stroke his back, Polly recognized a match for her own persuasions.
While Jamie grappled with buttons and petticoat, Polly fought skirmishes of her own with layers of gentlemen’s clothing. But it wasn’t long before she finally drew out a solid, sturdy cock into the dusty darkness.
He was thick and hard, the tip silky with the fluid of his excitement. It felt exquisite as she ran her fingers over him, slick and warm and inviting. She wanted to taste it but clearly Jamie had other ideas.
“Turn around, sweetheart, brace yourself against the wall,” he gasped, his hands relaxing their hold on her breast and her pussy. But not before he bestowed the latter with a wicked parting squeeze.
“What an omnivorous fellow you are, Jamie Brownlow,” Polly observed, turning as per his instructions. “You enjoy the gentlemen, yet you handle the ladies like a pro.”
“That’s the truth, Poll, the honest truth.” Positioning her, and renegotiating her under-things, he pressed his hot and sticky cock against her bottom, then clasped himself against her. Hand against drawers, drawers against cock, cock against the rounded curve of her bottom. With his other hand, he reached around and found her clitty again.
“Now, there we are. Something for everybody,” he remarked roundly. “Now let’s get to it, lass, before my boss comes back again.” Positioning his finger, he started to swing his hips and rock.
Polly thought fleetingly about Beatrice again, wondering how far her dealings with Mr. Ritchie had progressed. The toffs were just the same under the skin as their servants. Would it take them any longer than she and Jamie to get to business?
A moment later all thoughts of the world beyond the broom cupboard evaporated. What Jamie was doing wasn’t quite like having a man inside her—nothing felt like that—but it was certainly a particularly delicious substitute. The friction between her legs soon had her adjusting the position of her hands and elbows against the wall so she could bite her knuckle. It was either that, or bay like a she-hound when she spent.
Which she did. Again and again, in quick succession, her empty channel clenching the air in luscious waves.
“Do you like that, my Polly?” growled Jamie, his voice low and ragged and full of mirth. “Are you spending? Are you spending now? Answer me!” he demanded, beating on her clit in a way that made her soar. “Tell me you’re spending, you wicked little trollop.”
The words were harsh and exciting, but the way he said them mellowed, then grew soft and full of warmth. His tender quality made her suddenly think of Sam.
And it was that, the sweetness and the nostalgia, that filled her eyes with tears as she rocked and swooned. Pleasure overcame her again as Jamie jerked and anointed her. His essence was slippery and unctuous, warming her thigh.
Squashed against the boarded wall of the cupboard, it was hard to breathe. Both their chests heaved as they slumped, gasping, hot and thunderstruck. But after a moment or two, Polly struggled, feeling suffocated by Jamie’s bigger body still pinning her to the wall.
“Oh, I’m sorry, lass,” he said, lifting himself away in the darkness. “Have I squashed you? You’re not injured, are you?”
There was such honest solicitude in his voice that Polly laughed. Bless him, he really seemed to care.
“I’m perfectly well, thank you, Jamie. It’ll take more than that to hurt common clay like me, you know. I’m no delicate drawing-room lady.”
Her own words caught her on the raw.
Miss Bea! Was she safe? As yet unmolested by the randy
Mr. Ritchie? If the master was anything like his handsome, opportunistic servant, who could tell?
“What’s wrong, Polly? Have I upset you?” Jamie grabbed her arm as she fumbled with the buttons of her bodice in the dark, hampered by her twisted-about apron. With no fuss, and a good deal of skill, he fastened them up, working blind, and set the bib of her apron neat and straight.
“No, I’m not upset. Just concerned about Miss Bea. It just occurred to me that if your master is anything like you, she might already be compromised.”
Listening to the small movements of Jamie doing up his fly buttons, Polly could also almost hear his keen brain ticking too.
“Your mistress is safe with Ritchie. It doesn’t matter whether a woman’s had a thousand lovers or is as pure as the Virgin Mary, he never forces himself where he knows he’s not wanted.” His hand settled reassuringly on Polly’s shoulder. “If anything has happened, it’s because your lady wanted it to.”
“If you say so, Jamie. If you say so.”
“I do, pretty girl. Don’t fret.”
Evading Jamie’s searching hands, she slid out into the passage, with him following.
“I still think I might go up and knock. As if they want tea or something.”
“No! You’re doing nobody any favors by interfering, Poll. Least of all your mistress.” Jamie’s hand clamped around her arm, firm but unyielding. “Just bide your time until you’re rung for, there’s a good girl.”
“Get off me.” She tried to shake him free. “I don’t trust you and I trust him even less.”
She pulled and tugged, but got nowhere, and was just about to kick his shins when the morning-room bell trilled out clearly from the kitchen.
“See. I told you to wait, and now they’re ready, and no harm done.”
“That’s what you say,” shot Polly at him, straightening her apron and cap in the little mirror at the foot of the stairs. “But just look what you’ve been able to get away with in the same amount of time.”
“He means her nothing but good,” persisted Jamie. “Believe me.”
Polly wished she could believe him. She wanted to believe him. But all the same, she’d keep a lookout for her mistress.
And maybe for her master too, the way things were.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dark Thoughts and Whiskey
I SHOULD HAVE had you when I had the chance.
Eustace Lloyd splashed whiskey into crystal and then cursed when droplets of it flew out onto the cards spread on the table. Dabbing furiously with his pocket handkerchief he managed to repair the damage, which was just as well—they were the last set he possessed until he used the plates again.
He knew he shouldn’t drink this early, but still he took a heavy jolt of the smoky amber fluid and stared down at the image in his hand. His favorite composition. Beatrice Weatherly on a tiger skin with her hand between her legs.
Eustace’s cock kicked heavily in his drawers, even though neither his own hand, nor any other part of him had ever managed to get anywhere near that peerless body.
“Siren of South Mulberry Street, my arse.”
Apart from that one afternoon, when he’d plied her with champagne and laudanum, the beautiful Miss Weatherly had been tediously virtuous, granting him only the occasional mild, stolen kiss. Eustace knew now he should have pressed her for more favors, but he’d been canny, or so he thought. Believing that the sale of Westerlynne had left her and that fool brother of hers well set up, he’d bided his time, hoping to snare her as a blushing, willing bride bringing with her a sorely needed fortune.
Ah, the plans of mice and men. The Weatherly parents had been as imprudent and spendthrift as his own, and their offspring were as penniless as he. Worse, Charles Weatherly was a loser at cards, at the races and on the stock market. So much so that the insolent pup had been looking to tap Eustace for funds once they were brothers in law.
But that was all water under the bridge now.
At least I got these. Poor as a church mouse you are, Beatrice my dear, but you’ve still made me a tidy pile of money.
Indeed, even though his hobby of photography had proved extravagant, useless and expensive at first, it was now turning him a nice little profit; all garnered from the anonymous sale of racy, erotic cabinet cards. And bizarrely, his libidinous customers seemed to be able to tell the difference between a whore brought in off the street to pose for a shilling or two, and a refined gentlewoman who’d been tricked out of her clothes.
The cards featuring the exquisite Beatrice Weatherly, the newly dubbed Siren, brought in twenty times as much coin as any others. If only he’d been more circumspect with Beatrice and ladled on the honey a bit longer, notwithstanding the fact that she wouldn’t open her legs for him, and she didn’t have a bean. The demanding connoisseurs who frequented the private pornography shops in Holywell Street were crying out for new and more daring poses from their luscious Titian-haired favorite.
But it wasn’t the loss of potential income that cut Eustace now. Nor even the fact that his desire to attend to his photographic plates had allowed the drugged girl to struggle into her clothing and quit the studio in his mother’s summer house before he’d returned to round out the occasion by fucking her.
No, it was something else, not entirely unrelated, that drove Eustace to reach for the whiskey decanter and slop another enormous measure into his glass.
Edmund bloody fucking Ellsworth Ritchie.
That bastard. Why him? Now he’s started pawing her, I’ll never be able to effect a reconciliation and get a few more juicy poses out of her.
Eustace hated Ritchie. Resented him probably even more than any other wealthy man in London who seemed to have all the right assets and financial connections that Eustace himself didn’t possess. Why should a man like Ritchie have all the advantages? Eustace had more right to them. He had minor aristocratic associations, and that cur Ritchie was just “trade” or worse dressed up in the glad rags of fine tailoring.
It had started last year at the Earl of Plenderley’s house party. If the accursed Ritchie hadn’t been so fond of that clod of a servant of his, well, Eustace knew that he might have got away with a certain matter.
Yes, a gentleman would have taken another gentleman’s word, and dismissed the man out of hand. Valets, footmen, maids, they were always swiping the odd bit of cash and blaming each other, and that ass Johnny Brayford had been a fool to leave so much of it lying about in his room, unattended and apparently uncounted. Having lost heavily at cards, and with no way to cover the debt, Eustace had taken a chance, slipped in and stolen fifty quid. No loss to someone who was heir to an Earldom.
But alas, Johnny had counted his money, and had raised a mild kerfuffle about the theft, leaving Eustace having to think fast lest suspicion fall on him because his room had been next door to Brayford’s. As luck would have it though, Eustace’s man had picked up a useful titbit of gossip in the servants’ hall. Ritchie’s own rather dubious-looking manservant had been in trouble with the law at one time. Which should have made him the prime candidate for this bit of thieving.
It all should have worked out so neatly. But it hadn’t. Eustace’s discreet accusation against Brownlow had been dismissed out of hand. Not only had Johnny Brayford accepted Ritchie’s defence of his servant without question, it seemed that some sly housemaid or other had seen Eustace sliding out the young viscount’s room, so suspicion had indeed fallen his way.
Nothing had been said, at least not overtly, but his blood still boiled at the memory of Ritchie and Johnny Brayford, laughing over brandy, eyeing him slyly, both so assured and untouchable and blasé about the loss of fifty pounds while he was suddenly out in the cold. It was the fact that the whole affair had really meant nothing to them that rankled the most.
Eustace deteste
d them all, these confident men, but Ritchie most of all, with his obscene millions and his ideas above his station and his friendships with the great and the good.
And now, to cap it all, the filthy upstart had apparently been invited to Lord and Lady Southern’s Summer Ball as an honored guest too, when no invitation had been forthcoming for more worthy members of society.
Eustace ground his teeth. Late last night, a couple of fellows at an after-hours drinking establishment he frequented had described to him how they’d seen the bastard en tête à tête with the beautiful Beatrice, then later they’d observed him whisking the now notorious beauty away to God alone knew where. The man had a dog’s reputation with the women, and the fact that wealthy society belles threw themselves at Ritchie with their drawers wide open made Eustace resent him all the more.
“Fuck you, Ritchie! Fuck you!”
Eustace slammed his glass down on the desk. It didn’t break, and he didn’t even spill whiskey on the cabinet cards, because it was already empty. As he filled it up again, he took that as a favorable omen.
He’d bloody well get his own back on Ritchie, and then he’d lure Beatrice Weatherly back as well somehow too, and find a way to maneuver her into modeling for him again.
And he’d fuck her bandy-legged into next week in the bargain.
Eustace smiled at last, sipping his third large measure of the morning more slowly as he considered whether to take himself in hand as a celebration.
There was a way to do it all.
He had connections of his own, although far less salubrious than those of the likes of Ritchie.
And he’d heard rumors, delicious rumors, priceless rumors that lifted his spirits and lightened his dark thoughts.
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