Hidden Paradise

by Janet Mullany

  But Lou… He watched the gentle spread of her butt as her coattails lifted, the way her breeches-clad legs pressed against the saddle. Down boy. He really didn’t want to experience a hard-on on horseback. Riding was an uncomfortable enough experience in itself.

  He thumped his heels into Ajax’s sides and the horse switched from a trot to a canter. Hands down, heels down, head up, lean forward a little. This was far more comfortable than posting to a trot with the awareness that he could do his balls some serious damage on the saddle horn if he misjudged the rhythm. Ajax shook his mane as though agreeing.

  The path approached a thicket of trees again, and they slowed to a walk.

  “So what is it about girls and horses?” Mac asked, coming to ride next to her.

  “Obviously the sensation of a huge, powerful animal pulsing between our thighs and driving us to ecstasy,” she said, entirely straight-faced. “Really, Mac, dumb question. Why don’t you give it some thought?”

  “Being in power? In control?”

  “Partly. But it’s more than that. Horses are very intuitive creatures. Beautiful and muscular and you have a pact that you do no harm to each other and you try to understand each other, even though you’re so very different.”

  “Like men and women?”

  She tilted her head. “Possibly. At least we’re the same species, whatever pop culture may tell us. And I bypassed the whole adolescent horse thing so I may not be the best person to ask. I only started riding when I moved to the ranch, though I’ve done quite a lot.” Her face saddened. She was thinking about him—Julian—again.

  “Do you think you’ll stay at the ranch?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s on the market, but my asking price is high and I doubt I’ll get an offer. I’d miss having the horse and dogs and cattle. A neighbor’s looking after them for me. That’s something I’d miss, too, if I moved—neighbors who look out for you. In bad weather, your lives can depend on each other. You don’t get that sort of community in a city. And then there’s my dissertation—as yet unfinished.”

  “What’s your dissertation on?”

  “Jane Austen and the stuff of domesticity.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s about houses and things—the sort of things women made and owned,” she explained, and sighed. “I don’t really want to talk about it. I gave a paper on the topic at a conference in the States where I met Peter and Chris, and the idea grew, but it doesn’t seem like part of my life anymore, even though I’m here.”

  The path divided ahead of them. “If we go to the left, we can go around the lake. It’s pretty.”

  He watched her face as the lake came into view, vivid rhododendrons dipping to meet their reflection in the dark water. On the wooded rise above was the summerhouse, a perfect miniature Greek temple. A pair of swans floated, serene and barely moving.

  “They mate for life,” she said with such longing that he felt he was intruding upon her most intimate thoughts. He reached a hand out to her but she didn’t notice, and at that moment Ajax stepped away sideways, snorting loudly, as if reminding him just in time not to be an idiot.

  A splash broke the silence and the swans turned to see who might be invading their territory. Someone’s head broke the surface of the water, hands rising to push back wet hair. It was that kid, the footman, Rob, who began a circuit of the lake, moving easily through the water.

  “Let’s get moving,” Mac said, aware now of how Lou stared at the swimmer, whose buttocks occasionally flashed clear of the surface.

  “Oh. Okay.” She tugged at her horse’s reins and began to talk of how American riding style differed from English, as though resuming an interrupted conversation.

  So she did fancy the kid after all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Back at the house, Lou turned down Mac’s suggestion of more sex. He suggested a shower and lunch together, but they both knew what he meant. Besides, she should dress as a woman again. Her masculine clothes weren’t that comfortable and now she smelled of horse. She reminded Mac that she had a date with someone else—and was amused at his possessive glower—and no, she didn’t want to come watch him fence, because that was about as interesting as watching paint dry.

  “Isn’t that what you’ll be doing, Lou?” He leaned against the sandstone pillar on the porch, idly slapping his riding crop against his boots, stubbled cheeks made even darker by the brim of his hat.

  He looked so stunningly sexy in a non-PC way she had to look away and collect her thoughts. “Nonsense, this paint dried years, decades ago. Go have fun with the other boys. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Back in the house, two maids in modified historical clothing pushed a very modern housekeeping cart down the corridor. Lou smiled at them and entered the quiet of her own room. She wished she hadn’t started thinking about her dissertation. This room would be a good place to write, if she didn’t feel so frozen and, well, bored by the whole idea.

  Another pretty cotton gown, clean stockings and linen awaited her, along with a list of the day’s activities. The fabric reminded her of old-fashioned wallpaper, but not in an unpleasant way, with its muted colors, stripes and stylized sprigs of roses. She remembered Mac saying she was like a rose, and how embarrassed he’d been by his spontaneity, and smiled as she tightened the drawstring of the gown.

  She tied her hair back with a length of lace she found among the ribbons and odds and ends in a small wooden box on the dressing table and wondered if she’d caught a touch of sun from the morning ride. The scrapes from Mac’s stubble had faded a little but her face looked pink and excited. Did thinking about Mac do this to her?

  She left the room and one of Rob’s footmen, the one who hardly spoke any English, directed her to the wing of the house still under restoration. Jon, wearing a pair of painter’s overalls, sat at a cheap wooden desk in a room that was stripped to plaster and lathe, the floorboards dull and uneven. Tables held containers full of samples in small plastic bags. She noted with ridiculous excitement that the room had electricity and a computer.

  “Lovely to see you, Lou,” Jon said. He peered at her over half-glasses with a genial smile, his hair flopping onto his forehead. He had come into the business naturally, as the descendant of impoverished English aristocrats, brought up in a house like Paradise Hall. Last night, he’d told her he had probably wrecked his brain picking off layers of ancient, lead-filled paint in his bedroom as a small child. After that, it was the only profession open to him.

  “I asked them to bring us some lunch and my partner, Simon, will join us,” Jon said. “Meanwhile, look at this little beauty from the small dining room.” He ushered her to the microscope. “This is our sixteen layers, with the original being the sort of mauve that was meant to aid digestion based on Goethe’s color theory. That’s the room we use for breakfast. Imagine seeing that paint color if you had a hangover. I much prefer the yellow.”

  She admired shreds of the past preserved in small plastic bags and awaiting analysis or stabilization and storage; a strip of gorgeous red silk brocade from inside a chair found in the attic, pushed into the stuffing of the seat and as brilliant as it was over two centuries ago; discolored, dull pieces of wallpaper and fabric ravaged by time and damp and rodents; hinges and door handles, nails and other pieces of archaic, rusted hardware.

  “What to do with it,” Jon said. “That’s the question. The boys can’t bring themselves to throw anything away, and it takes a
weird sort of mind, like yours or mine, to appreciate this stuff. So it goes into storage. And sadly, much of the original decor of the house would be unpleasant to the modern eye. Oh, here’s Simon. And lunch. Delicious!”

  A footman placed a large tray on one of the tables and Simon helped him push boxes of samples out of the way and arrange chairs. They sat and helped themselves to cheese, a sharp crumbling white and a smooth soft one that oozed delectably onto the china plate, fruit and freshly baked bread, a cake decorated with fresh flowers and a jug of amber cider.

  “Oh, dear, did you miss breakfast again?” Jon said as Simon worked his way through a huge plateful of food. “He works so hard. We’ll take Lou to the blue room later, shall we? Although, it’s not very blue at the moment. Simon’s doing lovely work on the plaster and we’ll show you the paint color we’ve chosen. Very classical and elegant.”

  Sometimes with upper-class Englishmen you really couldn’t tell, but Lou decided they had to be gay. Or…both had that same floppy brown hair, sleepy hazel eyes behind half-glasses. “Are you related?” she asked. “You look so alike.”

  “We’re always being asked that,” Simon said. “Probably inbreeding. Don’t we have the same great-great-great-great grandmama?”

  “I think so. We’re probably something like fifth cousins ten times removed. I should ask Nanny next time I visit.”

  “You have a nanny?” Lou said.

  “Oh, dear, yes,” Jon said. “She was invaluable when we restored the kitchen at my house to its Edwardian glory. She knows all the family stuff. Mummy’s too busy with her charities.”

  Lou shook her head. “You are such a cliché.”

  “But we’re not gay,” Simon said.

  “Only a little bit,” Jon amended. “We do like girls.”

  “Now, don’t put our guest off her lunch. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear about our perversions.”

  Lou spluttered over a mouthful of cider. They both looked at her with identical benign smiles.

  “The thing is,” Simon said, “we work together, we’re in and out of each other’s houses, we like each other’s company. Naturally people think we’re a couple. We even sound and look alike. And some women like that sort of thing.”

  “Double the pleasure,” Jon said. “Are you interested, Lou? Because I’m sure we can fit you in.”

  “So to speak,” Simon said. “Maybe after the blue room is painted—”

  Lou could barely contain herself as she patted the neckerchief at the top of her gown dry. “Did Peter put you up to this?”

  They exchanged glances. “Dear me, no. We thought of it ourselves,” Jon said. “Peter hired us for restoration work because we’re the best.”

  “At everything we undertake,” Simon added meaningfully.

  Lou looked at them both, owlish and earnest, and tried to fight back a giggle. Yes, of course some women would find them attractive. Some men, too.

  “The emphasis is of course all on the lady’s pleasure,” Jon said primly. “No playing with each other’s winkles.”

  “Oh, a little. Sometimes,” Simon said. “Some girls like that. We can give a demonstration of our extraordinary prowess, Lou, anytime.”

  To her astonishment, he produced a BlackBerry and consulted it. “After I’ve finished the blue room, we’re pretty much free. I think we’re both recovered from Sarah—such a greedy girl, all those orifices begging for attention all the time. Quite exhausting. But if you need a reference, I’m sure she’ll—”

  “Thank you,” Lou said, “but I don’t think I’ll take you up on it.”

  “Alternatively, you could observe,” Jon said, and Simon nodded in agreement.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Simon said. “You don’t even have to announce your presence to whichever lady requests our expert services. We have a very lovely screen—early-eighteenth century, and someone had the foresight to cut holes in it, probably for a very similar occasion—so you can stay hidden. Sometimes that’s jolly good fun.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jon said. “May I help you to a slice of cake, Lou? Simon, dear, do ring for the footman and he’ll bring us some tea. Or coffee. Whatever you like, dear, we’re happy to oblige.”

  “I’ll have some tea, please,” Lou said with as much seriousness as she could muster. She was trying to let go and embrace the Twilight Zone that was Paradise Hall, but this was a lot to wrap her head around. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

  “Ah.” The two of them looked at each other, nodding, like mirror images.

  “Mac,” Jon said. “Now, I’d let him play with my winkle anytime he wanted.”

  “Except, I don’t think he wants to,” Simon said. “He is so deliciously macho. Well, I’ll just give young Master Rob a ring—” he brandished his BlackBerry “—and after we’ve had a nice cup of tea we’ll visit the restoration on the blue room.”

  * * *

  SHE SPENT THE REST OF THE afternoon with Jon and Simon and then, during the period she’d come to think of as the sex break, sitting beneath the shade of a huge cedar tree, reading and napping. She let her mind wander into pleasant erotic fantasies of Mac, Mac and another man, which was rather appealing, and a threesome was something she’d always been interested in—but who could be their third? Her shifting dreams wouldn’t settle on one distinctive set of features.

  She didn’t sit next to Mac at dinner. He wore those clingy knit evening trousers again and she refused to let herself stare at him. Sometimes pleasure delayed was better. He flirted with the other women and now and again looked down the table at her with appreciation and longing.

  As the ladies left for the drawing room, the men stood. Mac brushed against her and pushed something into her gloved hand. It was a note. She concealed it in her fan and, while the other women chatted and drank tea, moved close to a candlestick to unfold and read it.

  Wait for me in your bed.

  Naked.

  Mac

  P.S. I like those earrings. Keep them on.

  She smiled and tucked the tiny note away.

  * * *

  Well, where the hell are you, Mac?

  She’d arranged herself like an odalisque on the bedcover and he had yet to show up. A modest pile of condoms lay ready next to the bed. Outside, thunder rumbled and a flash of lightning flared in the room and she saw something at the window. Rain slashed down, infusing a cool fragrance into the air.

  She froze for a moment as the window rattled and then swung open. A figure stood there, dark and still, on the small stone balcony, before stepping into the room. He was naked, with a dark red dressing gown that billowed around him, and that he flung off as he strode across the room, bringing the scent of the rain and the storm with him.

  “Mac.” She rose, holding out her arms to him, and met him halfway. “Just like you told me, you’re a romantic.”

  “Almost scraped my balls off on that damned ivy,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, Lou.”

  Drops of cold water flew from his hair and clung to his legs and arms. He folded her against his damp, cool body and pulled her into bed, where they were swaddled in cotton and down, scents of lavender and bergamot, the musky smells of arousal.

  “You’re cold.” She ran her hands over his chest, enjoying the spring of hair and the hardness of his nipples beneath her palms, feeling his body chill against hers.

  “Warm me up, Lou.” He leaned in for a kiss.

  She’d nev
er met a man who wanted to be kissed so much, whose mouth and tongue became pursuer and pursued, whose kisses could range from playful to carnal and back. He tasted of coffee and toothpaste and sex as they twined together, limbs tangled, his cock rubbing against her thigh, her hip, her belly. She straddled his thigh briefly, riding him, and he reached down to dip his fingers into her.

  “So wet. Like satin. Gorgeous.” He lifted his fingertip to his mouth and licked, savored. “Want to taste yourself, Lou?”

  She took his fingertip into her mouth as avidly as she’d taken his cock earlier that morning, and sucked the remnants of her musky juices, while he hummed with pleasure and lowered his other hand between her thighs. He zeroed in to the right spot with unerring precision and she opened wide for him. One finger, two, delved inside; his thumb flirted with her clitoris, nudged and circled and flicked.

  She took her mouth from his finger and blew on it. “I’ll come.”

  “Maybe.” He played her, up on one elbow now to watch her face and follow her reactions. “If I let you.”

  “I’ll come if I do this with my breasts.” She raised both hands to her breasts and stroked and pinched her hard, sensitive nipples.

  “Do it, Lou.” His mouth nipped her neck. “So sexy. I love watching you touch yourself.”

  She anticipated the moment when he’d take control and delay her orgasm. How close would he let her get? She toyed with tricking him, stealing an orgasm from under his nose and as she thought of that potentially delicious moment she tightened around his fingers.

  “Uh-oh. I think you’ve had enough.” Sure enough, his finger and thumb withdrew. “Hands off your tits, Mrs. Connolly. You should be ashamed.”

  “You’re so mean,” she whimpered, delighting in their playful exchange.

  And then his fingertips, shiny and wet and fragrant, were in her mouth, followed by his tongue, greedy and licking and sucking, his chin scraping against hers. His thigh dropped over hers, holding her legs open wide, her sex exposed and needy. Laughter vibrated in his chest as her hips moved, begging for attention.