Fancy was enthralled. Temple had a tub like this in Port Hastings, but she’d never used it, of course, nor had even seen it in operation. The Evanstons, the people she’d worked for right after leaving home, had only aspired to such luxury. Even Keith’s house in Wenatchee boasted nothing remotely comparable.
Jeff idly began to unbutton his shirt. “Will you join me, Frances?” he asked.
The temptation was too great. Hot water, and all she wanted of it. Were those bath salts, those pink granules in that apothecary jar on the tub’s broad edge? “Of course I will—Jeffrey.”
Jeff paled slightly. “Don’t start calling me that!”
“Why not? You insist on calling me Frances.”
“That’s different!”
Fancy turned, so that he could help with the fastenings of her dress. “Is it? Why?”
Jeff gave Fancy a little push instead of an answer and then announced, “You’d better hurry, my dear, unless you want the devoted Miriam to come prancing in here and find us in the altogether.”
“She’d do that? Walk right in?!”
“Of course she would,” he replied, stripping off his shirt and trousers before Fancy had even progressed to her underthings. He climbed into the wonderful bathtub and sank, with a sigh, to his chin.
Fancy scrambled to join him. His steady regard made her uncomfortable, so she turned away, kneeling in the deliciously hot water, to add some of the pink bath salts. “Ummmm,” she said, drawing in the floral scent.
“My sentiments exactly,” drawled Jeff.
Fancy cast one look at him over her bare shoulder, and realized that the anticipated ‘tonight’ had finally arrived … with a wallop. “Don’t you dare think what you’re thinking!” she hissed.
“Why not?” replied Jeff in a husky tone born of utter contentment.
“Because—because Miriam is going to arrive at any moment, that’s why. You said so yourself.”
“Yes, but even she can’t see through that screen, and she’ll only be here long enough to leave our dinner.”
“And hear us!” flared Fancy, sitting down with a plop and stretching her legs straight out in front of her. Even then, her feet didn’t reach the other end of the bathtub.
Jeff laughed and pulled her backward so that she rested against his chest. She would have drawn away but for the fact that his arms closed around her, forestalling any such motion. “The way we heard Eustis and Isabella last night?” he drawled. The palms of his hands were on her breasts now, circling. Kneading. Claiming.
Fancy moaned. “I should have pinned up my hair,” she despaired. “Now it will get wet—”
Jeff’s fingers were attending her nipples, sending piercing shards of desire stabbing through her. “It will dry,” he pointed out.
At that moment there was a bold knock at the bedroom door and Fancy tried to sit up, only to be restrained again. Jeff continued to caress one imprisoned nipple, but his other hand glided under the water and over Fancy’s stomach. “Come in, Miriam!” he shouted good-naturedly, as though they were playing chess instead of sprawling, naked, in a bathtub.
There was a rattling sound and Miriam hummed, beyond the wide screen, busy for the most appalling length of time.
Meanwhile, Jeff was stroking Fancy, slowly, skillfully, into a fever of need. Helpless, she pressed her head back against his hard chest and submitted, her legs spreading wide of their own accord. Her hips began to rise and fall; she could not stop them. And still Miriam worked in the main part of the room.
Dishes and silverware chimed. The night was cool and Fancy heard wood being laid in the fireplace, a blaze catching and then crackling.
The motion of Jeff’s marauding hand accelerated and Fancy arched, biting her lower lip to keep from crying out in the first throes of a lengthy release.
“Just roll the cart back out into the hall when you’re finished,” Miriam sang out from somewhere in the spinning storm of sensation that surrounded and pervaded Fancy.
Jeff chuckled, still attending his shuddering wife, as a door clicked shut in the distance. “Are we finished, Mrs. Corbin?” he asked, in a wicked undertone that whispered past her ear.
Fancy hadn’t the breath to answer and he damned well knew it, the wretch. To express her rebellion, she clawed the length of his bare leg with her toenails.
He laughed and rose out of the water with a thrusting rush, like some great beast of the sea, hauling an unsteady Fancy with him. “Supper awaits,” he reminded her, after patting her tingling bottom once and then thrusting an enormous towel into her hands.
Red to the roots of her hair, she flung the towel back at him and stomped, stark naked and beaded with scented water, around the changing screen. By the time he followed, the towel wrapped casually around his middle, Fancy was shivering before the fireplace.
Jeff arched one eyebrow and favored her with a mocking grin. “Eat,” he said.
Having had nothing since the hearty breakfast at Isabella’s, Fancy couldn’t afford to decline. She sat down in one of the big wicker chairs, took a plate from the rolling cart between them, and began to fill it from the covered dishes thereupon.
“You’re going to have a plaid backside, you know,” Jeff observed as she began to eat. When she didn’t reply, he went to the bed, took up one of the pillows, and extended it to her.
Fancy balanced her plate in one hand, grudgingly taking the offered pillow and tucking it beneath her. “You’d think rich people would at least put cushions on their chairs,” she muttered.
Jeff laughed and sat down to have his own supper. “You’re the mistress of this house, Fancy. If you want cushions, buy them.”
She ignored him, concentrating on adding a dollop of butter to her mashed potatoes.
“Why are you so angry?” Jeff asked after a long time.
Her hunger sated now, Fancy met her husband’s gaze, glaring. “Miriam was right here, in this room! And you just kept—you just kept right on—”
“She didn’t see us,” he reasoned patiently. “And she didn’t hear anything, either.”
“That was God’s own wonder!” spouted Fancy.
“You liked it. That’s what infuriates you. You can lie from now till the Second Coming, but you liked it.”
“I did not!”
Jeff set his plate aside with an ominous leisure. “Shall I prove that you did?”
“No!” cried Fancy, too quickly.
“Will you admit it, then? You might as well because your body has already confessed, Fancy.”
Fancy scowled at him; it was a defense and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Have you no shame? I swear, you’re as bawdy as Eustis and Isabella!”
Jeff laughed. “At least they’re honest,” he said. “Sex is a natural thing and they aren’t shy about it. Why should they be?”
Fancy couldn’t think of an answer to that for the life of her, so she took a second helping of thinly sliced roast beef and kept her peace. She probably would have gone on eating all night just to protect herself, if Jeff hadn’t calmly taken away her plate and then returned the serving cart to the hallway.
When that task had been attended to, he turned back to face her. The light of the small fire on the hearth danced on his broad, furred chest and flickered in his eyes.
Fancy swallowed a lump of mingled excitement and dread and was suddenly very conscious of her nakedness.
There was a long, pulsing silence, during which neither of them moved. Then, slowly, surely, Jeff crossed the room. Standing in front of the crackling fire, he removed the towel from around his waist and bent to spread it on the plush rug, just inches from the hearth.
Fancy watched him in bemusement. She wondered what it was in her that always made her want to resist this man when she knew that there was no doing that. When he offered a steady hand, she took it with one that trembled.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since we decided to come to Spokane,” he said, his lips not an inch from hers
and already working their compelling magic.
“A–About what?” whispered Fancy, even though she knew the answer already. Something wanton within her needed to be told.
“Making love to you, Fancy. Right here, in front of this fireplace.” His hands resting on her shoulders now, he pressed her downward until they were kneeling on the damp towel, facing each other. He caressed her neck, his thumbs moving softly in the hollows beneath her ears, then pushed her hair back over her shoulders. “It will be a long, long time before I let you sleep, Fancy,” he went on in husky undertones. “And even then I’ll wake you up and have you at my leisure.”
Fancy shivered, entranced by his words, knowing and not caring in the least that he would do just that. She tilted back her head and sighed as his hands came inevitably to her breasts, stroking them, caressing, but denying the throbbing nipples the attentions they craved.
He made her ask. And ask again.
She crooned, her fingers tangled in his damp, gleaming hair, as he cupped one warm mound in his hand and nipped at its peak with careful teeth.
Even then, he taunted her with broken, husky words, muttered between plays of his tongue and sucklings that were too brief. “I wanted—this—on the train today,” he said. “Next time—Mrs. Corbin—we’re going to have a private—compartment. And you are going to—attend me properly.”
Fancy moaned, soaring on the wings of her own femininity, as he turned his head to the delights of the other breast. “A–Attend you properly?”
He drew at her noisily, beautifully, and then stopped to reply, “I told you once before. When I want a breast, you will bare one.”
His words were outrageous and arrogant in the bargain, but Fancy didn’t care, not then. She was honest enough to know that if Jeff demanded suckle, regardless of the circumstances, she would nurse him willingly.
He pressed her back to lie prone on the towel, stretching her hands high above her head and holding them there. Assessing her breasts with molten indigo eyes, he breathed, “And I assure you, I will want them often.”
Fancy moaned as he again took sustenance, now greedily, now at leisure. She writhed and the bud of her womanhood grew hard and moist with wanting, raging at its neglect. “W–What about me?” she choked out, wanton in her desire. “W–Will I be p–properly attended?”
Jeff chuckled, understanding, kissing his way down over her glistening, taffeta-smooth stomach. “Until you beg for mercy,” he assured her, in a throaty rumble.
Minutes later, she was doing just that.
While Fancy lay quivering and sated on that bright hearth, her skin warmed to luscious comfort by the heat of its blaze and by Jeff’s lovemaking, he disappeared from the blurred edges of her vision. Moments later, she heard the clinking of crystal, and then he was back, sitting beside her, offering her a glass of shimmering Burgundy wine.
“Have you no—conscience at all?” she struggled to say, managing to sit upright only because he helped her.
Jeff lifted his own glass in tender deference. “None at all.”
Beyond the door, Miriam could be heard collecting the dinner cart and humming. “Do you suppose she heard us?” Fancy whispered.
Jeff grinned. “What do you mean, ‘us’? You were the one making all the noise, my love.”
“How ungentlemanly of you to point that out!” hissed Fancy, over the rim of her wineglass.
“We’ve been over this ground before—where my being a gentleman is concerned, I mean. I don’t claim to be anything other than a salacious rake.”
“At least you’re honest,” replied Fancy with a saucy toss of her head. Then she took her first sip of wine and found it pleasant. Eventually, a sweet warmth began to spread through her, following the paths that still celebrated her passion.
She set aside her glass and then took Jeff’s, putting it with the other. Laughing, he got to his knees and made to reclaim it. When he reached, leaning forward, Fancy took instant and scandalous advantage.
Jeff was trapped; he moaned in protest and Fancy enjoyed him with abandon. He had no choice but to brace himself with his hands and endure the pleasures in store for him.
Fancy held him fast, her hands on his flexing hips, her heart soaring as he groaned in fierce, reluctant surrender. She began to experiment, nipping at him, kissing him softly, tonguing his magnificent length to a state of sheer splendor.
“Woman,” he warned, his voice rumbling above Fancy like thunder in a stormy sky.
Still, Fancy tormented him, and when he uttered that same word again, it had the tone of a plea.
Suddenly, she felt him stiffen. The muscles in his hips grew taut and then rippled, and a low, growling cry of wondering defeat escaped him. When he collapsed to the floor, breathing in ragged gasps, Fancy smiled and patted his hard stomach. “Have you been properly attended?” she teased.
He emitted a gasping chuckle, though his eyes were still closed and his chest was still heaving. “Oh, yes,” he breathed. “Quite properly.”
* * *
Meredith Whittaker assessed Jeff Corbin’s wife with carefully hidden dislike. Sitting there in that wretched, star-dappled dress, her cascading pale hair almost silver in the morning sunshine, she looked like some elfin creature from a fairy tale. The smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes and the velvety shine of satisfaction inside them nettled Meredith, made her want to cause pain.
“What do you mean you don’t want to go out shopping today?” she asked pleasantly, following this with a steadying sip of her tea.
Frances shrugged, curled up in the big barrel-backed chair facing Meredith’s. In another part of the parlor, Miriam Carrington dusted industriously, pretending not to listen in. “I’d rather rest.”
Meredith smiled. With an effort. “Long night, Frances?” she asked cattily.
“My name is Fancy,” replied the sprite with an answering smile. “And, yes, it was a long night.”
Harlot, Meredith thought, uncharitably. But then she remembered that she’d spent a few nights in Jeff Corbin’s bed herself. A delicate blush moved up over her breasts and tingled on her cheekbones. “Very well, Fancy,” she said, placing an emphasis on the ridiculous name. “If you want your husband to be ashamed of you—”
Fancy tensed in a very satisfying way, and there was a wounded look in the depths of her lavender eyes. Before she could speak, however, Miriam bustled nearer, feather duster in hand. Though the servant didn’t look at Meredith, she felt as though she’d been warned in a most threatening way.
“Oh, dear, I do seem to be tactless today,” she chimed anxiously, reaching out to pat Fancy’s hand and ignoring Miriam as best she could. “I just meant that—well—you’ve obviously lived a very different sort of life than Jeff has. Certain—certain things are expected—”
“Like what?” demanded Fancy with bravado.
Meredith drew a deep breath. “Like not wearing that dress,” she replied in a rush.
“I like this dress.”
“Well, it’s hardly proper!” cried Meredith, at the end of her patience. She wondered if Jeff would be faithful to this creature, then dismissed the thought. Of course he wouldn’t. He was too virile. Too sophisticated.
All she had to do was wait.
Meredith set aside her tea cup and stood up with dignity, smoothing the skirts of her soft blue gown. “Have it your way—Mrs. Corbin. I’m sure your husband will have a few things to say about your recalcitrant and unfriendly manner.”
Fancy simply looked out the window, her eyes wistful, and said nothing.
Once the front door had slammed behind the indignant Meredith, Fancy let the tears she’d been holding back well up in her eyes.
Miriam refilled her tea cup and extended it with gentle insistance. “You mustn’t mind Miss Whittaker. She’s just jealous of you, love.”
Fancy could well imagine why. “H–Has Jeff been in Spokane a lot?” she dared to ask after taking a steadying gulp of her tea.
“Enough,” said Miriam re
luctantly.
The word confirmed Fancy’s suspicions. “And Miss Whittaker was his mistress,” she said. Somehow, Meredith was far more threatening than Jewel Stroble had been.
Miriam didn’t offer confirmation, at least not directly. To do that would have been presumptuous and Fancy had already learned that, her familiar manner aside, Mrs. Carrington was very conscious of her proper place. “Nothing that permanent,” she answered, eyes averted.
Fancy sighed and wiped away her tears. If she was going to cry every time she met a woman who had been intimate with the man she loved, she’d get nothing done for weeping. “It doesn’t matter,” she lied firmly.
Miriam’s gentle manner said that it did, but her words were more discreet. “My sister sews, Mrs. Corbin, and right well, too. It’s true you’ll need more clothes and I thought—perhaps—”
Fancy smiled. “Would you send for her? I–I didn’t really want to go out in public, looking like this.”
“You’d be surprised how nice you look,” Miriam responded briskly, “but I understand. I’ll send my Walter for Evelyn right now.”
Twenty minutes later, Evelyn, who might have been Miriam’s twin, so greatly did she resemble her, arrived burdened with copies of Godey’s Lady’s Book and dozens of squares of sample fabrics.
These were being spread out on the dining room table for Fancy’s perusal when Jeff returned, wearing a dapper suit and carrying a number of parcels wrapped in brown paper. Fancy’s heart caught at the sight of him; he’d said he wasn’t a gentleman, but he surely looked like one. Was she lady enough to hold him?
He kissed her briefly, paying no attention at all to Miriam and Evelyn. “Order one of everything,” he said.
Fancy shivered because even the nearness of this man had such a staggering effect on her senses. Always a reticent person, she was shaken by Jeff’s ability to turn her into a shameless wanton with only a look, a touch, or a caress.
“I think Mrs. Corbin is a little overwhelmed,” observed Miriam respectfully.
That subtle rescue won her a place in Fancy’s heart forever. “I wouldn’t know what to buy, or how much—”
Corbin's Fancy Page 17
