by Lynne Barron
“You were the right of it,” Olivia answered.
“I had the right of it,” her cousin corrected with a smile. “And?”
“I’ve assured your father I have no intention of marrying Jack Bentley.”
“And Belmont?”
“Nor him.”
“Good for you, Olivia.” Alice pushed her feet back into her slippers and motioned Olivia ahead of her down the hall toward the ballroom.
“Good God!”
Olivia spun around at her cousin’s cry, her wine lapping over the rim of her glass.
“You silly girl,” Alice said around a husky laugh as she stepped up to her. “Give me that wine.”
“You’ve only to ask if you want a sip,” Olivia replied as she handed over the glass.
“Now turn around.”
“Alice,” Olivia protested with an arch of her brow.
“Turn around I say,” Alice ordered, an impish glint in her eyes.
With a huff that was in no way ladylike, Olivia spun about, her silver skirts belling out around her.
A cool blast of liquid hit her lower back, bottom and thighs.
Olivia spun back around with an outraged cry to find her cousin holding the empty glass and grinning like a mad woman.
“Terribly sorry, darling,” Alice cooed.
“My goodness!”
Olivia looked over her shoulder to find an aging matron standing with one gloved hand to her mouth, behind her a dozen people stared at her, more precisely at the red wine spreading over the delicate silk of her gown and dribbling down her thighs.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have accepted that last glass,” Alice replied with an airy wave of the hand still holding the offending glass. Little droplets of wine flew about, spotting both Olivia’s bosom and her own. “I can be so clumsy when in my cups.”
“Alice,” Olivia grated out between clenched teeth.
“Lucky we are the same size, relatively speaking,” Alice replied cheerfully, her laughing eyes sweeping over Olivia’s bosom. “I’m sure I can find you something to wear that covers your charms. Come along, my lady. I shall play your lady’s maid.”
“Alice, why did you…” Olivia began as her cousin tugged her down the hall toward the servants’ stairs at the back of the house.
“Shh,” Alice hissed. “A lady is never alone…”
“Even when she is alone.” Olivia finished for her.
The ladies wound their way up the narrow, dimly lit stairwell and along the wide hall above in silence.
“You, I’m sorry, I cannot remember your name,” Alice called out to a pretty maid in a simple black dress and starched white apron.
“Sarah, my lady,” the girl answered with a quick bob.
“Sarah, be a dear and fetch us a bottle of champagne and a plate of those little French things, the ones filled with strawberries and cream,” Alice told the girl who only stared back at her in confusion.
“Crepes,” Olivia supplied helpfully.
“Oh, yes, mum, that is my lady,” the girl answered with a grin.
“Off with you now,” Alice said with a wave of one hand before tugging Olivia none to gently into her girlhood bedchamber.
“Thank you!” Olivia called over her shoulder.
“Good God,” Alice said as she pushed the door closed. “Did no one ever tell you that you cannot leave off your drawers and allow a man to spill inside you?”
“What?” Olivia asked in confusion from the center of the pink and white room where she’d spent a large part of her childhood, pestering her mother until she relented and allowed her daughter to flee to her uncle’s house and the pleasure of her cousin’s company.
“One or the other, Olivia. You simply cannot do both.”
Heat washed over Olivia as she realized what her cousin meant. “Oh.”
“Oh indeed,” Alice replied with a laugh. “Thank goodness I decided to wait for you in the hall. Else you’d have gone tripping back into the ballroom with a giant wet spot on the back of your gown.”
“Wet spot,” Olivia repeated around a giggle.
“Dastardly nuisance, wet spots. Next time take him into your mouth after you’ve reached your crisis. Much less messy.”
“Into my mouth?”
“Darling girl, have you not had that pleasure?”
Olivia shook her head.
“Turn around.”
Olivia turned around.
Alice attacked the long line of buttons down the back of her cousin’s gown. “I myself like to bring a man nearly to the point before taking him into my mouth. There is nothing worse than working over a man until your jaw aches, especially a well-endowed man. Is Mr. Bentley a well-endowed man?”
Olivia nodded.
“What? Only one petticoat? Honestly, Olivia, what did you think would happen to his jism? Did you think it would magically disappear? What goes in must come out. It’s simple science.”
“Jism,” Olivia repeated, rolling the word around on her tongue.
“His seed, his spunk, his cum, for goodness sake.”
Once divested of all but her stockings and shoes, Olivia turned around.
“Where?” Alice asked, her gray eyes coasting over Olivia’s bare breasts and trim waist.
“Where what?”
“Where in this great mausoleum did you go to earn your badge of dishonor?”
“The tower.”
Alice arched a brow. “Divinely inspired. How is it I’ve never thought to…never mind, now that you’ve opened my eyes to the possibility, we’ll have to come up with some sort of warning system. Drape a pair of drawers over the door handle, perhaps?”
“Oh, Alice, I doubt very much Jack and I will make use of the tower again,” Olivia protested as her cousin disappeared into her dressing room.
“There’s always next year!” Alice called out.
“It is unlikely we will still be…” Olivia allowed her words to drift away, unsure how to complete the thought.
“Lovers?” Alice asked, alighting from the small, cramped space with an armful of silk, velvet and lace. “You’ll be more than that if you continue to allow him to spend inside you. Will he marry you if he gets you with child?”
“Yes.”
“Even so, I know you have no desire to marry again. You might consider being a little bit creative, so as not to be forced to marry Mr. Bentley. Demand that he pull out. He can easily spend himself on your belly.”
An image of Jack kneeling between her thighs, his hand pumping over his rigid shaft, flashed in her mind. Had he thought to spill his jism on her belly before pushing her legs back to thrust the head of his cock in her cunny?
“Or on your bottom,” Alice continued as she laid six dresses across her bed. “Tell me Jack Bentley has introduced you to the pleasures to be found on your hands and knees.”
“He has,” Olivia admitted as she trailed her fingers over a lovely cream satin gown overlaid with delicate lace of the same soft hue.
“That one won’t match your silver slippers,” Alice pointed out before turning to give her cousin her back. “Undo me, dearest.”
Olivia had just finished tugging free the crisscrossed ribbons that held Alice’s gown together when there came a soft scratching at the door.
“Oh, I’m not dressed!” Olivia exclaimed as the door opened.
“It’s only my Molly,” Alice replied, shrugging out of her dress, leaving her in drawers, stockings and slippers. “No one else would dare to enter these hallowed walls.”
Sure enough, Alice’s maid, Molly, drifted through the door with a silver tray in her hands, gently kicking it closed behind her.
“Little French things and champagne as ordered,” Molly sang out before she spotted Olivia and Alice standing mostly naked beside the bed. “Oh, hullo, Lady Palmerton. Playing dress-up, are we?”
“Good evening Molly, how are you?” Olivia asked the woman who had been her cousin’s lady maid since she’d escaped the schoolroom.
“I’ve no complaints,” the maid answered with a grin as she placed the tray on a table between two tall windows and poured champagne into fluted glasses. “Leastwise none her ladyship cares to hear.”
“Hush, you tart,” Alice replied with a regal lift of her chin.
“You’ve taken that gown off?” Molly asked, her hands on her hips. “After all the fuss you made about me lacing you up tighter than a drum?”
“We had an accident with a glass of wine,” Olivia explained with a nod toward her ruined gown that lay in a pile on the floor.
Molly scooped up the gown. “That’ll never come out, my lady, and such a pretty gown, too.”
“Take it,” Alice replied before clinking her glass to Olivia’s. “You can dye the silk to match the stain and wear it on your half-day.”
“Oh, and won’t I be the fancy lady visiting me mum in Cheapside in a gown such as this. Why that handsome butcher’ll snatch me up to Gretna Green and you’ll be left to fend for yourself.”
“Ladies’ maids are everywhere,” Alice told her before biting into a crepe, cream dribbling over her chin to splat upon the slope of her breast. “Off with you, Molly, my darling. Go back to flirting with that handsome footman while London’s latest and greatest hussy and I finish playing dress-up.”
Molly’s grin took in both ladies as she bobbed a surprisingly graceful curtsy. “It’s just like old time seeing the two of you in this room again.”
“You’ve tupped back a pint or two, haven’t you?” Alice accused. “You always turn into a sentimental fool when in your cups.”
“Leastwise, I don’t turn into a clumsy fool, pouring wine down my cousin’s back,” Molly shot back.
Olivia laughed at their tart exchange. Some things never changed.
“Shoo, you cheeky creature.”
A bottle of champagne, a plate of crepes, and an hour later, Alice said, “This one, I think.”.
“That bodice will never contain my breasts,” Olivia protested with a giggle.
“It will if you don’t lean over,” Alice responded. “How about this one? This emerald green will look lovely on you.”
“Again, I just don’t think…”
“The bodice is ruched,” Alice argued. “It’ll stretch to cover all the essential parts. Here, lift up your arms.”
Olivia complied, swaying slightly as the cool silk whispered over her skin.
“Are you tipsy?” Alice asked, tugging the dress down over her cousin’s hips.
“I might be,” Olivia admitted with a wobbly laugh.
“The nice thing about this gown is that there are only three buttons holding it together at the back.” Alice turned her gently and fastened said buttons low on her back.
“How does one go about taking a man’s cock into her mouth?”
“Mercy me, Olivia, listen to you!”
“What?”
“Does Mr. Bentley know you’ve such a naughty vocabulary?”
“He taught me the words.”
“Did he now? Well, well, well. There are hidden depths to the man,” Alice purred as she circled around her cousin to study her handiwork. Her cool fingers tugged the bodice of the shimmering green silk up just enough to cover Olivia’s areolas, leaving a shocking amount of pale skin visible above. “Take a deep breath.”
Olivia drew air into her lungs, expanding her chest, and held it.
“Perfect,” Alice pronounced. “I’ve a mind to teach you a trick that every sophisticated lady ought to know.”
“How to keep my luscious breasts hidden beneath this bodice?” Olivia asked hopefully.
“Slow, shallow breaths and no quadrilles,” Alice answered promptly. “You do have lovely breasts. I’m quite envious.”
“Yours are pretty,” Olivia hurried to assure her, her gaze dropping to study them. “Quite pert, they are.”
“I’ve never had any complaints,” Alice agreed with a grin. “Help me into the cream lace, will you?”
Once both ladies were dressed, every last sapphire hairpin pulled from Olivia’s hair and a wide emerald ribbon wound around her neck to hide a patch of whisker burn, Alice sat her cousin down on the edge of her bed.
“Now, about that trick.”
“Which trick?”
“You’ve the attention span of a gnat when tipsy,” Alice replied as she looked about the room. “Now what shall we use. Oh, perfect.”
She strode across the room and grabbed up a long, cylindrical crystal vase holding a small bouquet of pink roses. Whisking the flowers out, she poured the water into an empty champagne glass before turning to face Olivia.
“Most men prefer a woman on her knees, makes them feel she is properly subjugated to their dominance,” Alice proclaimed. “Oh and they love to see you swallow their load.”
“Alice what on earth are you talking about?” Olivia asked in confusion.
“Taking a man in your mouth,” Alice replied, gliding across the room to stand before her cousin. She held out her hands, palms up. On one she balanced the vase. Two blooming pink roses rested on the other. “Now this is a man’s member, or as you prefer his cock, and these are his ballocks.”
The Countess of Palmerton fell back on the bed with a roar of laughter and was soon joined by the Countess of Piedmont who jumped onto the bed beside her and proceeded to teach her all that a proper lady must know about taking a man in her mouth.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jack was beginning to think the Earl of Somerton had spirited his niece into the night as the evening wore on and she did not return to the ballroom. He danced a set with Beatrice, another with Madeline Dumfries and finally with Lucille.
As he was leading his stepmother from the dance floor, he spied Lady Hastings speaking heatedly with a dark-haired woman in a flowing emerald-green gown cut low enough to bare the long line of her spine halfway down her back. She tilted her head above a wide green ribbon wound around her neck, and if it hadn’t been for the color of her gown, Jack might have sworn the woman was his future bride.
“Would you like a glass of punch?” he asked Lucille as they passed beside Lady Hastings and her companion.
“Thank you, Jack,” she answered distractedly. “I say, isn’t that Lady Palmerton? Are ladies changing gowns midway through balls now? Goodness, I had no idea.”
Jack turned and caught Olivia in profile, her eyes fastened on her mother’s face as that lady whispered words too low for him to hear. She was clearly agitated, her hands clenched at her sides as she aimed her venom at her daughter.
“I refuse,” Olivia suddenly interrupted, one hand slashing at the air.
“Lower your voice,” Lady Hastings hissed.
“What are you thinking?” Olivia asked, ignoring her mother’s admonition. “He’s little more than a boy.”
“I know what’s best.”
“You haven’t any idea what’s best for me.”
Whatever reply Lady Hastings made was lost as he guided Lucille around a group of loitering gentlemen. With one final look over his shoulder he steered her to the refreshment tables set up along one wall of the room.
“And look,” Lucille murmured as he handed her a glass of punch. “Lady Piedmont has also changed into a new gown.”
Lady Piedmont glided across the room in a cream silk and lace gown, one hand wrapped around Hastings’ arm.
“She was wearing a lovely blue gown earlier,” Lucille continued.
Just then Olivia sailed up to him, a wide smile on her lips and two twin spots of color on her cheeks.
“Mr. Bentley,” she greeted, her gaze shifting between Jack and Lucille.
“Lady Palmerton, may I introduce my father’s wife, Mrs. Lucille Bentley.”
“Oh, Mrs. Bentley, how lovely to meet you,” Olivia replied graciously.
Lucille pressed her glass into Jack’s hand and dropped into an elegant curtsy, her eyes fastened upon the lady in the bold emerald gown. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Palmerton.”
“
Punch?” Jack asked.
“Punch who?” Olivia replied with a grin.
Jack blinked in surprise.
“I believe my stepson was enquiring whether you’d like a glass of punch?” Lucille explained.
“Oh, well in that case, no thank you,” she answered with a giggle. “But if you’ve a wet mitten somewhere about your person you’d care to lend me?”
“I’m afraid not,” Jack replied around a huff of laughter.
“A wet mitten?” Lucille repeated, her gaze darting between them.
“Wonderfully effective, wet mittens,” Olivia told her.
“I can attest to that,” Jack responded.
“I think I will join Mr. Bentley,” Lucille said with a nod across the room to where Jack’s father stood among a group of gentlemen. “It was nice to meet you, Lady Palmerton. Jack.”
With a quick curtsy she was off and Olivia laughed softly before asking, “Was it something I said?”
“I think you frightened her with your talk of punch and wet mittens,” Jack replied, watching the candlelight flicker over her upturned face. “Is your mother giving you grief again?”
Olivia waved her hand in the air as if to brush off his inquiry. “I am off to another ball, if you’d care to join me?”
“That must explain the change of gown.” Jack was only mildly surprised she would abandon her cousin’s annual ball. There were nights when the lady attended three or four entertainments. London’s Darling was much in demand.
Whatever reply she might have made was lost as she turned toward the door.
Jack followed her from the crowded ballroom and out the front steps to find her carriage at the curb. He waited while a footman handed her up before crawling in after her.
“I’m not really going to another ball,” she said as he sat across from her.
“So what accounts for the change in gown?”
“You would account for the change in gown. Thank goodness Alice was there to save me.”
Jack only looked back at her, unsure as to what she referred.
“You never told me what goes in must come out,” she said, waving one finger in the air in admonishment. “I nearly returned to the ballroom with a giant wet spot on the back of my gown.”
