Now, as she read the same page in the Russian book for the third time, her thoughts drifted away from it again.
“Selina, what do you think is really in Dash’s collection – apart from books, I mean? I am quite sure that there is far more to it.”
Selina looked up from the book she was reading – which was the one that Mariel had brought out of the secret room the night before – and considered the question.
“Well… we can’t be sure, not without seeing it… but I suspect that he has as mixed a collection as we found in that little room, only more extensive – more objects, and quite possibly more… variety of objects, if you see what I mean?”
Mariel sighed.
“I think so too. And I very much want to see all of it. It is beyond irritating that he is still ‘protecting’ us from it.”
“It is. I would have thought that, by now, he would have realised just how hard to shock we are, and how interested in all of this.”
Mariel’s inner voice laughed at her. Oh yes, he knows how interested I am in all of this, and how much it arouses me – he has felt that arousal in my body, and driven me to a feverish pitch of need.
“Yes. But… perhaps, if we can work out where he has it stored here, we could sneak in to look for ourselves? Or at least one of us could, at a time? Someone would have to stay here to make it look as if all went on as normal.”
Selina smiled, that conspiratorial smile that they had shared so often over the years.
“Oh yes, I think that might work. Let’s attempt it. The first thing we will need to do is work out where, in this house, the collection is stored. Tomorrow, lets see if we can watch, after he greets us, just where he goes. Maybe… maybe we can also ask the staff some careful questions?”
Mariel grinned, feeling far more herself, with a plot to keep her mind occupied.
“I agree – shall we plan out how we can achieve this?”
They settled to that conversation, and, although not a great deal of translation got done that day, they were both rather pleased by the end of it.
~~~~~
The uncrating was going far slower than usual.
Which was hardly surprising, given how often Dash simply stopped, and stared off into nothingness, as his mind replayed the previous night’s kisses. The past weeks of being near Mariel every day, of sitting beside her, hopelessly aroused, as he provided words, and explained the function of objects intended for sexual pleasure, had left him in a near perpetual state of aching desire – a desire firmly focused on Mariel. When she had shown him that marvellous room, and her response had been delight at words, not shock or horror, he had not been able to resist kissing her.
The fact that one kiss had not been enough for either of them had near undone him. He could, so easily, have drawn her down onto that dusty floor and pleasured her, even if stopping before the act of penetration – but he had not. Resisting that urge had been the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. His cock had ached, and he had thought that he might spend, there and then, just from the sensation of her passionate response to his touches, so close to the edge was he.
But he had not, and they had managed to return to some semblance of normal, before leaving that room. But now, things between them felt awkward – for he wanted to kiss her again, and more. Every object her pulled from a crate that morning, he imagined applying to Mariel’s body, imagined her, naked, and writhing in the throes of acute pleasure. It was a thought which left him gasping, and unable to do anything.
It had been madness to kiss her so, madness to touch her breasts – but having done it, it was all he could think of. And he had no right to think of it. No matter her interests, she was a gently reared young woman with an unsullied reputation – a reputation that was not his to besmirch.
He was being a fool – a lust crazed fool. She deserved far better than that.
~~~~~
Two days later, Mariel and Selina sat in the office at Longwood Peak again, talking quietly.
“The collection has to be in the East Wing of the house. I watched, and that is the direction he has gone in, each day.”
“Then one of us needs to sneak in there, to confirm our assumption. And today is the perfect day – did you hear him leave a few minutes ago? He told Chalmers that he would be away for some hours, dealing with some business with the tenant farmers. You should go, Mariel – you will understand what you see, far better than I will. I am still learning about these things – I must say, this book from our secret room is most… educational.”
Mariel laughed at the expression on Selina’s face.
“Everything that I have seen, both here, and in that secret room is very educational! You had best stay here, reading, and hopefully making it look like we are both here, as usual. I will slip out, as soon as there are no servants in the hall, and see what I can discover.”
Mariel set aside her pen, capped the inkwell, and rose. She went to the door and peeked out, carefully. The hall was empty. Quickly, she slipped out, and walked along as if simply going to use the necessary. As she approached the door to the East Wing, she was quietly praying that it would not be locked – if it was, her exploration would be at an end before it started.
The door was closed, and at first, she thought it locked – but it seemed that it had not quite clicked fully into place when it had been pulled shut, and it opened when she pushed it firmly. She went in, and closed it behind her. Silence greeted her, and a drifting of dust caught the sunlight which came through the windows which lined one side of the corridor she found herself in.
Slowly, she walked along, looking into each room that she passed. In the first two, a scatter of empty crates and piled, discarded wood shavings were all that she found. In the third, there were some empty crates, and some which were obviously still full. She continued to the end of the corridor on that floor, but found nothing more – just empty rooms with dust sheets over the furnishings.
At the end, she paused, staring out of the window to the gardens. Where might the already unpacked things be? The only logical possibility was that they were on an upper floor of the Wing. Mariel turned, and walked back along to the midpoint of the corridor, where a narrow set of stairs ascended. Climbing up them, she felt as if she was venturing into the unknown – as if the East Wing of Longwood Peak had become some vast unexplored land, potentially full of dangers.
She shook her head, and laughed softly at her own whimsy.
At the next floor up, she stepped out into the corridor, and chose a direction, looking into each room as she went. The first room was a small parlour, with nothing but some couches and a table. But the second room drew her in, irresistibly, after her first glance through the door. It boasted shelves, and glass topped cases, as well as a scatter of small tables.
And every one of those pieces of furniture had items upon them.
There seemed, once she looked more closely, to be a sense of intentional order to them, but exactly what that order was, she was not sure, for the room contained a mixture of things – dilettos, as she now knew them to be called, books, paintings, sketches, and other objects which she puzzled at the purpose of, like some of those in the secret room at Fortescue Grange. Perhaps all of the things in this room had come from the same part of the world? She could have spent hours in just that room, but she forced herself to leave it, and continue exploring – if this one room held so much treasure, what might the other rooms contain?
She was sure, having seen the piles of empty crates downstairs, that there would be many rooms with pieces on display, if each crate had been fully packed with objects. She was right in that assessment. By the sixth room, her head was positively spinning. She could no longer resist the urge to simply stop, and touch things, to attempt to identify the use of some things, to read the books…
She felt almost lightheaded, and rather flushed – spending ever moment thinking about sexual pleasure, and the myriad ways of achieving it produced a heady arousal – an arousal
that made her body ache in every secret place, and her skin long for Dash’s kisses. Selecting a book at random, she dropped into a chair, and began to read.
Chapter Ten
The visit to the tenant farmers had taken far longer than he had hoped – but it had been necessary – he had needed to see, for himself, the state of the cottages, and the repairs which were required. Now, with that dealt with, he was keen to get back to uncrating – the pressure to get everything catalogued, and ready for the move to London hung over him.
As he stepped into the foyer, he paused – first, before burying himself away in the East Wing, he should see if Mariel needed any assistance from him, with parts of the translation. Just the thought of sitting beside her, explaining the words for various sexual acts and objects brought heat to his body, and a stirring in his groin. It was exquisite torture, especially now that he had the memory of their heated kisses in the secret room at Fortescue Grange to assist his imaginings.
He squared his shoulders, and forced those thoughts aside. If he wanted the book translated, he had to deal with his own lustful thoughts, and behave with propriety.
He tapped on the door of the little office, then entered. Mariel was not at the desk. Selina was curled on the couch, her cheeks rather flushed, avidly reading a book which he recognised as the one that Mariel had brought out of the Fortescue Grange secret room. She did not at first look up, so intent was she on the pages. When she did, she blinked for a moment, as if he was not what she had expected to see. Then her cheeks went an even darker red.
Instantly, his mind jumped to a rather stretched conclusion. If Selina reacted as if a little guilty, and embarrassed, like this, then where might Mariel be? The only place he could imagine Mariel going which might cause Selina to react in such a fashion at Dash’s appearance, was the East Wing. He knew that she was curious about the rest of his collection – she had made that quite obvious at times – but he had hesitated to show her, even after seeing her response to the room at Fortescue Grange – or perhaps because of that reaction.
Part of him was terrified that, if he did show her, she would be overwhelmed and horrified at the ‘depth of his depravity’ and refuse to continue with the translation. The other part of him was afraid that, far from horror, her response would be deep fascination, and arousal. He was not sure which he would find more difficult to deal with.
“Mariel?”
“She…”
Selina seemed completely lost for what to say.
“I see, I think I can guess.”
With that, he simply turned, and left the room.
He was sure that he had locked the door to the East Wing as he’d left that morning – so hopefully, she had not been able to… It was closed, but not locked. He cursed under his breath as he eased the door open and stepped into the hallway, closing it behind him.
He stood, and listened – silence. Each room on that floor was as he had left it, and there was no sign of Mariel. The churning tangle of fear roiled in his stomach – she must be upstairs, which meant that she would have already seen…
There was nothing for it – he was about to find out which way her reactions had gone. He went to the stairs, and up, listening as he did for any sign of movement above. Silence greeted him. Could he be wrong in his assumption? He walked on, glancing into each room as he went. Nothing moved, but the sparkle of dust in the wintry sunbeams. At the sixth room, he stopped in the doorway, his breath stolen by the vision before him.
She sat in the large armchair that graced the room, her dark head bent over a book, her profile cast in stark relief by the sun through the window, soft curls of hair escaping their pins to fall over her shoulder, where her fingers twined in their length, twisting them unconsciously as she read. Her lips were slightly parted, and her cheeks gently flushed. He did not think that he had ever seen so beautiful a sight. She was everything desirable, with her slightly darker than fashionable skin, her abundant rich dark hair, and her utterly kissable lips. That, combined with the mixture of her innocence and risqué knowledge, left him dry mouthed, hard, and aching. Without intending to, he uttered a little moan.
She looked up, and he was lost, utterly.
Her deep violet eyes were slightly hazed, and filled with heat. Her tongue slipped between her parted lips to moisten them, and his imagination ran wild with the image. He wanted to kiss her. As if in a dream, he walked into the room. She said nothing, but slowly rose from the chair, placing the book on the table next to her, beside a rather beautiful diletto which lay there. Her fingers brushed its surface, and she might as well have been touching his cock, so strong was his reaction to the sight.
He stopped before her, mere inches away, and she looked up, those hazy violet eyes meeting his amber ones. They reached for each other in the same instant, and Dash crushed her to him, bringing his lips down on hers in a plundering kiss, full of all the passion that inflamed his flesh in that instant. She met it with equal intensity, her arms going around his neck, and a soft moan escaping her lips as they parted to allow his invasion.
Her hands tangled in his hair where its unfashionable length met his neck, as his hands explored her body, caressing her back, her sides, and coming, almost inevitably, to cup her breasts. She moaned against his lips as his fingers found her nipples through the soft cloth of her day gown, and her back arched, thrusting her into his hands.
Breathing hard, he pulled back from the kiss for a moment, trying to do as propriety demanded he should.
“Mariel… I…”
Her hands tightened on him, and her voice came husky and soft with desire.
“Don’t talk. Touch me, Dash, I want to feel… everything.”
He groaned in an agony of need and whispered, “Mariel, you would tempt a saint to a delirium of sin. And I am no saint.”
She slid one hand down over his shoulder in an intentional caress, then brought it to rest on his hip. His lips dropped back to hers, and she slid that hand further, slipping it between them to cup his cock where it thrust against the constraint of his breeches. His fingers tightened on her nipples, as he thrust himself against her hand. She gave a whimper of pleasure as the kiss deepened again, her tongue tangling with his and driving him to the edge of insanity.
They were alone, in a part of the house where his servants would not venture – they could, if they so wished, explore each other completely, and no one would disturb them. Dash fought himself, even as he plundered her mouth, even as her fingers caressed him to an agony of hardness, beyond anything he had ever experienced before, fought himself for enough control to stop, to not simply draw her down to the Aubusson carpet they stood upon, and have his way with her immediately.
He took his kisses from her mouth, across her cheek, and down her neck, savouring the taste and texture of her skin, then on, to the upper curve of her breast, even as his fingers undid the two buttons at the neck of her gown, and pulled the fabric down, baring the hardened tips of those breasts to his gaze, and his lips. As he drew a nipple into his mouth, her fingers tightened on his cock, and he groaned against her flesh. She shivered in response, and whimpered again. Her knees buckled as he began to suck on her other nipple, and he caught her, turning, and allowing himself to fall into the large armchair, with her on his lap. Mercifully, that movement pulled her hand away from his cock, giving him a few moments of respite.
He went back to licking, nipping, and sucking on her nipples, one arm about her waist to keep her steady on his lap, and his other hand reached to slowly draw up her skirts, his fingers trailing over her soft skin, up the inside of her long leg, towards the heated core of her. She arched in his grasp, pressing her breasts towards him, her hips shifting on him in a way that was almost more agonisingly wonderful than her hand had been.
He knew, deep in his mind, that he should stop, that he had no right to touch her in this way – but somehow, when she thrust herself at him with such obvious need, he could not stop. His fingers reached the top of her thighs, and her l
egs fell apart a little in natural reaction to the touch. The tangle of soft curls between her legs was wet – so very wet, and he groaned again at the pleasure of the sensation. Gently, he probed amongst the curls, seeking the exact spot at which her pleasure might be made most intense. He knew the moment that his touch found her bud, from just the right angle, for she tensed, then relaxed, her head going back as a sigh escaped her.
Still playing with her breasts, he moved his finger gently, then faster, and was rewarded with another whimper of pleasure from her. She arched again, sliding herself down on his lap, her hips pushing against his hand, moving in that way which was driven by instinct, to take the most possible pleasure from sensation. Soon, those movements became frantic. He could feel her rising towards a climax, and redoubled his efforts. Within moments, she shattered in his grasp, writhing, gasping and, most satisfactorily, calling his name. He held her as she came back to reality, gently kissing her lips as her eyes came into focus.
“Dash… that was… truly amazing.”
He could not stop himself from grinning like a fool.
“Why thank you, Mariel. I had hoped that it would be.”
She laughed softly, shaking her head.
“I am quite sure that you knew it would be, for you appeared to know, exactly, what to do to make that happen. But…” her hand slipped down between them, to curve around his aching cock, “…what of your pleasure?”
He shook his head.
“We have gone quite far enough beyond the bounds of what is right, between two who are not married – we should not go further. It is not that I do not want more, or that I do not want your touch… I most definitely do. But your reputation…”
“At this point, I do not give a fig for my reputation. Dash, I want this, and more. I have wanted to explore this sort of thing for so long, so very badly – but there has never been a man who I liked enough, wanted enough, or trusted enough for me to consider it – until you.”
Lady Mariel's Scandalous Love: Regency Romance (Regency Scandals Book 2) Page 8
