My Lady's Pleasure (15 page)

“Lady Georgiana,” Miss Niven said, slightly flushed, “I hope you haven’t forgotten our plan to go punting on the lake with Mr. Gerard.”

“No indeed,” she replied. “On the contrary, I have been looking forward to it. But I don’t see Mr. Gerard,” she continued, glancing around the room.

“He was here earlier, but he left to see to the boat.”

“Well, then, we should be on our way, should we not?”

“We should,” said Alexandra. “I just need to pop upstairs and get my bonnet.”

A few minutes later, the two girls met at the front door and set out across the lawn.

“I am so glad to talk to you alone,” said Alexandra. “I really must apologize for Miss Mumford’s behavior last night. She is a good creature, but she has some old-fashioned ideas of what’s proper for a young lady.” Alexandra blushed at the mere thought of what those old-fashioned ideas were in reference to.

“There is no need for you to apologize for the behavior of another person,” Georgiana said with emphasis. “You are not Miss Mumford, and not only did you do nothing objectionable, you rebuffed her efforts to separate you from a young lady as improper as I am.” Both girls smiled.

“For that,” Georgiana went on, “you have earned my affection.” She took Miss Niven’s arm.

Alexandra glowed at this expression of friendship. Although she had grown up accustomed to wealth and rank, she was aware that her guardian had suffered serious financial setbacks and knew that her position in society was not what it had been. Even if Georgiana hadn’t been an earl’s daughter, she would have responded with warmth to this overture—she was a good-natured, openhearted girl—but knowing that she had such a friend as this suffused her with good feeling.

And it gave her courage.

“There’s something . . .” Alexandra faltered, and the question she wanted to ask trailed off into silence.

“Yes?” Georgiana urged her to continue. She wondered what the girl could want to ask her, but a moment’s reflection gave her a good idea of what to expect.

“It’s about . . .” This second foray of Miss Niven’s wasn’t any more successful than the first. She blushed deeply, and thought she must give up this line of inquiry.

“Is it about the impropriety that so injured the sensibilities of our good Miss Mumford?” Georgiana asked gently.

“It is.” Miss Niven blushed deeper still. “But I don’t even know what I want to ask.” And then the floodgates opened. “It’s just that I’m nineteen years old and I don’t have the first idea of what relations between men and women really are. I’ve been shielded, protected from ideas and facts that are supposed to do me harm, but I don’t see how ideas and facts can do me anything but good. How can ignorance possibly improve me?”

Georgiana laughed, and then hurried to assure her companion that she was laughing at how completely she agreed, and how she had had those same thoughts herself. She laughed because, beneath the naive ingenuousness of her new friend, she had found a kindred spirit.

“Ignorance cannot improve you. And it has always rankled me that it is only women who are thought to be better by knowing less. Men are expected to know even what might be thought distasteful, but knowledge of the venal, or the carnal, is supposed to taint women.” Georgiana’s blood rose as she tapped into this old resentment. “It’s positively infuriating.”

Alexandra was a little taken aback at the vehemence of this response. Her own thoughts on this issue were limited to her own discomfort, her own experience, but Georgiana’s thoughts ran to their whole society. She was more comfortable with the particular than the general.

“I certainly think Miss Mumford believes that knowledge will taint me,” Alexandra said. “And I have never been sure whether my curiosity about what I have been protected from is sensible, or merely prurient.”

“How can curiosity about things that affect you intimately possibly be prurient?” asked Georgiana.

“Well, because it’s curiosity about . . .” Alexandra trailed off once more.

“Sex?” Georgiana asked bluntly.

There. The word was out.

Alexandra blushed crimson. She was determined, though, to take advantage of the situation to find out from her new friend what no one else would tell her.

“Yes,” she said, willing her voice not to quaver. “Sex.”

What followed was a candid explanation of what had been to Alexandra, until that day, a mystery shrouded in euphemism and obfuscation.

She heard Lady Georgiana through without comment, taking it all in. When her friend had laid it all out for her, she took a moment to absorb her new knowledge.

“Well,” she finally said, “that doesn’t seem so very horrible.”

Georgiana laughed. “No,” she said. “It isn’t horrible at all. In fact, it is quite wonderful.” But then she paused, and realized that her words might be interpreted as advice, or even a recommendation.

It was Georgiana’s turn to feel awkward and embarrassed. “But it can also have devastating repercussions,” she said. “Its being wonderful would be cold comfort if all the world turned its back on you.”

For all her ingenuousness, Alexandra Niven was not a stupid girl. “You mean that the world would be quicker to turn its back on one such as me than one such as you.”

“It would,” said Georgiana. “But that is not to my credit. It is rather to the world’s discredit.”

She looked Miss Niven full in the face. “I recognize my good fortune. Because I was born into a particular family, I have more leeway than most girls. I have pushed that leeway to its very limits, and the Miss Mumfords of the world have indeed turned their backs on me. But I have the luxury of not giving a fig what the Miss Mumfords of the world think or do.”

“I do not have that luxury.” Miss Niven looked at the ground. “And perhaps it is because I want courage, or because I have been so thoroughly schooled in what is thought right and what is thought wrong, but I do not regret my constraints. It is much easier to navigate the world knowing exactly what is expected of one. Knowing that the world would turn its back on me if I”—here Miss Niven paused, searching for the words—“experimented as you do makes my course of action very clear.”

Georgiana heard this with some relief. If she had been the catalyst for this girl’s downfall, she could not have forgiven herself for her carelessness.

“My guess,” she said, lightening her tone, “is that a girl such as you will not suffer from want of offers of marriage, and you will soon enough be able to experiment from the safety of the marital chamber.”

Miss Niven was saved having to respond to this by the appearance of Alphonse Gerard.

“Good morning,” he said cheerily. “I was preparing the punt and saw you coming down the path. Allow me to escort you the rest of the way.” He stepped between them with exaggerated gallantry and offered an arm to each young woman. They took it, and the threesome walked down to the pond.

The punt was onshore, ready to go. The bow was filled with pillows, and the two girls climbed in and made themselves comfortable. Gerry positioned an umbrella over them, took his place in the stern, and shoved off.

The three made their way leisurely around the small pond, and their laughter rang out over the water. The girls enjoyed themselves immensely, and Gerry was positively in clover. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent a morning so pleasantly.

After an hour or so, his arms gave out and he could punt no more, and they took the boat in.

“Can we help you put things away?” Miss Niven asked.

“No, no,” said Gerry. “It won’t take more than a few minutes. You girls go back to the house. I’m sure you’ll want to freshen up before luncheon.”

The girls took their leave, and Gerry put the pillows, pole, and umbrella back in the boathouse. He turned the boat over so the next rain wouldn’t fill it and, finding himself quite tired, sat down on a bench overlooking the little pond.

Miss Niven was much on his mind. He’d never married, mostly because he valued his freedom, but partly because he was aware of his rough edges and worried that he didn’t have enough to offer any girl that he’d like to have for a wife. As he got older, though, his freedom didn’t seem quite so worth protecting, and his rough edges didn’t prevent him from developing the confidence of a man who knows he’s sound at bottom.

He had no doubt that Miss Niven was a girl worth having. She was innocent, but she was not insipid. She seemed to have something to say for herself. And she was so very beautiful. The fact that she had beaten him at tennis tended to make him like her even more.

He pulled his watch from his pocket and realized he had just a half hour before he, too, was due at luncheon, and he took a last look at the clear, flat water and turned to go back to the house.

Guests who’d been engaging in the various activities that the estate had to offer were straggling back to the house, and Gerry greeted several of them on the way to his room, which was in a far corner of the guest wing. As he approached his door, he was surprised to see Rose coming out.

“Hullo, Rose,” he said warmly.

Rose looked a little taken aback. “I didn’t expect you back so soon,” she said. “I was making up your room.”

That wasn’t the whole truth. She had wanted to run into him, but she hadn’t wanted to look as though she did, and she calculated the timing so that it was likely that she’d see him, but also likely that her protestations that she didn’t expect him would be believed.

Gerry didn’t bother to think whether he believed her or he didn’t. He was glad to see her, and he still had a few minutes before he had to be downstairs.

“Do you have other rooms to make up just this minute?” he asked with a conspiratorial grin.

“Not this very minute,” she said, smiling back at him.

Gerry took her hand and pulled her into his room.

The combination of the unexpectedness of the encounter—Gerry wasn’t expecting it at all, and Rose wasn’t at all sure it would materialize—and the press of time immediately rekindled the heat they had felt in their last encounter. Gerry closed the door with one hand as he reached his other around Rose’s waist and bent his head to her neck.

Rose felt the warmth and the wetness of his tongue on her skin, and she leaned her head back, elongating her neck. Gerry worked his way up, running his lips and his tongue over its length, relishing the sweet-salty taste of her skin. He followed the soft ridge of a tendon that led up to her ear, and took her earlobe between his teeth. He bit down just enough for Rose to feel a prick of pain through her growing arousal, and she was surprised to find that the contrast of the two feelings focused her even more on the cascade of hot dew building within her.

She took Gerry’s head in both her hands, her fingers running through his hair, and kissed him, hard. Her tongue found his, and they held each other as if they were becoming one. She felt as though she couldn’t cleave close enough to him, that the urgency of her need to have him inside her couldn’t be denied.

Through his trousers and her skirt she felt the hard shaft of his cock, and she knew his need was as urgent as hers. As their bodies, still fully clothed, moved against each other, the friction fueled both of them. She felt the constriction of her breasts pressed up against his chest, her erect nipples straining at the fabric. She traced the outline of his erection with her mound, and the feeling of his hardness against her clitoris drove her wild.

The clothes came flying off. He unbuttoned her with fumbling fingers, as she released him from his trousers. She stepped out of her dress and shift, he pulled his shirt, still buttoned, over his head, and they were on the bed, limbs and tongues entwined.

Gerry took her breasts in his hands.

“Your tits are magnificent,” he said as he pressed them together and buried his face between them. He put first one nipple, and then the other in his mouth, and Rose felt the tip of his tongue circling. She ran her hands down his back, feeling his muscles and shoulder blades, holding him against her. She was supremely aware of every sensation—of the softness of his seemingly prehensile tongue, of the warmth of his hands on her breasts, of the slight roughness of his cheeks against her chest. And of the steely-hard feeling of his cock, lying in the crease between her thigh and torso.

With an effort she shifted him to her side and rolled him over on his back. She straddled him and ran her hands through the hair on his chest, starting at his belly and moving up to his nipples—as erect as her own. She pinched his nipples and he gasped, and she felt the reverberation as his penis strained under her.

She moved back a little, so she was straddling his thighs, and took his cock in both hands. It was slick with her wetness, and she held it firmly in her palms, rolling it between them and slowly working her way up toward its tip.

Gerry moaned, and Rose felt him gripping her thighs so hard that there were little white circles of flesh where his fingertips dug in.

She worked her way up and down the shaft of his cock twice more, and then positioned herself over him.

She slipped the tip of him in between the lips of her pussy. “Is this what you want?” she asked. “Do you want my cunt?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I do want it,” he said urgently. “I need it.”

“It’s ready for you,” she said, but she didn’t move. “It’s warm and it’s wet and it’s ready.”

He let out a groan that was almost a grunt, and tried to pull her down on him, but she resisted.

“Just imagine your cock sliding in, into that hot, wet hole,” she whispered, all the while moving just a fraction of an inch so the very tip of his penis was moving in and out of her.

He moved back and forth under her with the frustration of imagining that very thing. And just when she thought he might pull her down by brute force, she sat down, engulfing the whole of him.

The sound he made was indescribable, loud and low at the same time.