My Lady's Pleasure (23 page)

He saw her visibly relax, almost deflate. She believed him, and in him.

“Thank you,” she said, a little embarrassed to have been so upset about a situation that had such a simple solution.

“Do not thank me for doing what is unquestionably my duty,” he said, and then grinned because it sounded a bit pompous. “Will you let men back in your world?” he asked.

“Some men, I think. Some others, definitely not.”

“And which am I?”

“Oh, you’re all right, I suppose.”

The night before, when he had resolved to ask Miss Niven to marry him, he had resolved also to put an end to the affair with Rose. But here she was, her hand in his, the door closed behind them. He felt the first stirrings, and he pulled her toward him. Just this one last time . . .

But she wasn’t having it. “It’s this that got me in trouble in the first place, it is,” she said as she pushed him away. “From here on in, I’m keeping myself to myself.”

“A policy that certainly has its advantages,” he said, still keeping his hold on her hand, if not the rest of her. “But sharing yourself with someone else every now and again has advantages as well.” Here he raised his eyebrows suggestively, and his look was so comical that she giggled.

“It does,” she said hesitatingly, and then summoned her resolve. “I mean, it did. For I’m not to do it anymore.”

“Not forevermore?”

She nodded briskly.

“Forevermore is a long, long time,” he said. “Perhaps you should fortify yourself for a life of self-denial with one last act of indulgence.” The eyebrows went up again.

He pressed his advantage by taking her other hand. He could see the indecision in her face. “Come, Rose,” he said in a tone of gentleness. “Let’s say good-bye to each other properly.”

A sly look came over her. She reclaimed both her hands, and then held out the right one as though to shake hands with him. “By all means, let’s do this properly. It’s been very nice getting acquainted with you, Mr. Gerard.” But she couldn’t hold back her laughter, and the last syllable of his name was garbled by her guffaw.

“Oh, you are a naughty girl,” Gerry said as he took her hand and marched her over to the bed. “Do you know what happens to naughty girls?”

She tried to look serious, without much success. “They have to wash the dishes all on their lonesome?” she ventured.

“Well, perhaps, but that wasn’t what I had in mind.” He sat down on the bed and pulled her down over his knee. “Naughty girls get spanked.”

“Oh, no, master, please, don’t spank me!” said Rose in a squeaky schoolgirl voice.

“I must spank you, for you have been very, very naughty,” said Gerry, lowering his voice commensurately.

And then he matched the deed to the word.

After a few strokes, Rose turned her head to look up at him, a puzzled look on her face. “But that doesn’t hurt at all.” She lifted herself up and sat beside him on the bed. “I haven’t been spanked since I was a wee girl, and I seem to remember that it hurt then. I guess now I have more padding.”

“I think I could make it hurt,” said Gerry, distinctly suggestively.

“Thanks just the same,” she replied, not taking him at all seriously.

“You might find that a little pain never felt so good,” he said in a tone that made her stop her bantering. She’d lived in the world long enough to have heard of such things, but she’d never imagined that it would be suggested to her.

She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to take him up on the suggestion, but she had an adventurous streak, and she trusted him. “Will it really hurt?”

“It will hurt just enough,” he said. “And if you say ‘stop,’ I will stop immediately.”

A slow smile spreading over her face told him she was game. He got up, walked over to his dressing table, and opened the top drawer. He took out a razor strop, a long strip of leather with a metal fastener at one end and a kind of buttonhole in the other. He took the metal end in his hand and snapped the strap in the air a couple of times.

Rose’s eyes widened in surprise not untinted with alarm. “I thought you would use your hand.”

“Don’t worry, my dear; you’ll find that, in the right hands, this works quite well.”

After a fleeting moment of indecision, Rose decided that she would try this, and let him do as he would.

“Take off your dress,” Gerry said, still standing and slapping the strap against his palm.

Rose took off her dress and stood before him in her shift.

“That too,” he said.

When she was standing before him naked, he walked purposely over to her and circled her once, looking at her from head to toe. Then he dropped his hands to his sides and gently started swinging the strap at her legs in a motion that resulted almost in a caress of the leather on her skin. He walked around her again, swinging the strap against the backs, fronts, and sides of her thighs.

“Open your legs,” he said when he’d finished his circuit. She did, and he walked around her again, this time working the strap so it stroked the insides of her thighs.

Rose had never experienced a feeling like this. The leather was cool and smooth, and Gerry was swinging it against her gently enough so that it didn’t sting at all. That, combined with the odd feeling of standing naked in the middle of a room with a fully dressed man, set her senses at sixes and sevens. There was pleasure, but there was also a little discomfort, and her mind struggled to reconcile the two.

Gerry started using the strap on other parts of her body, and she felt it brush her buttocks and the small of her back. He came around to her front and used it on her belly and her arms. He ran it up her chest, between her breasts. He went around to her back again and swung it over her shoulders, each in turn, so the end brushed the top of her breasts.

The pleasure was in the ascendant over the discomfort, certainly.

Then Gerry started using a little more force, and there was a tiny sting in each lash of the strap. It focused Rose’s thoughts on the feeling of the strap, and she was completely distracted from the unease she’d felt at standing naked before him.

Gerry stopped long enough to take off his shirt and boots, and then picked up the strap again, wearing only his trousers. Rose could see the bulge of his erection through the fabric.

He swung yet harder, and what she felt, she realized, would certainly qualify as pain. Somehow, though, it was a good pain. It dovetailed with her growing arousal, and pain and arousal together occupied her mind completely, pushing out thoughts of anything else.

Gerry continued walking circles around her, lashing her with increasing force over her entire body, from her ankles to her shoulders. Soon she could see red marks where he’d strapped her hardest, and the tingling heightened all her sensations.

Just as he got to the point where she thought she wouldn’t want him to hit any harder, he stopped. “Kneel down,” he said, gesturing at the rug.

She did. “Down on your elbows,” he almost commanded. She did as she was told, which had the result that her bottom stuck up, unprotected, in the air. He positioned himself behind her, and she braced herself for the sting of the strop.

But Gerry started gently again, running the leather over one side of her ass and then the other, and then between her knees and up through her slightly parted legs.

By this time her excitement had reached the point that any pressure on her clitoris or vulva sent shivers up her backbone, and she focused on each stroke on her backside, waiting for the gentle lashing between her legs. He once again started hitting her harder, and pain again mingled with the pleasure that was starting to cascade inside her.

And then it seemed like he was lashing her in earnest, the strap hitting the bottom of her buttocks over and over, and her mind was a jumble, unable to process the disparate sensations.

As though he had an uncanny sixth sense of it, he again stopped just before she thought she must ask him to stop. Before she even had time to savor the cessation of the pain, he was out of his trousers, kneeling behind her.

She was ready for him, wet and hot, and the sense of fullness as he slid into her was glorious. The sting of the leather was replaced by the feel of his fully engorged cock sliding in and out of her, and the feel of his skin against hers. He had one hand on each of her ass cheeks, and he worked them apart and together, apart and together, in time to the rhythm they’d established.

She lowered her head so her bottom stuck up even more, and pushed back against him as he thrust into her. He groaned, and she could feel him get harder and wider inside her. The change in the angle meant more contact with her pussy, and together they rode to climax. Rose felt her orgasm deeper and longer-lasting than she’d ever had. It spread from deep inside all the way to the surface of her skin, which was still sensitive from its ordeal.

When it finally dissipated, she collapsed on the floor, leaving him kneeling between her legs, his gleaming cock beginning to lose its stiffness.

He stood up and walked over to the basin of water on the dressing table. He dampened a cloth and wiped himself off, and then went over to her and turned her over so she was facing up.

“My dear Rose,” he said as he ran the cloth between her legs and down her thighs. “I have never heard of a good-bye conducted in quite this manner, but I must say I approve of it wholeheartedly.”

Rose smiled and closed her eyes, enjoying the coolness of the damp cloth against the warmth of her skin.

Gerry continued more seriously. “I know I shall never forget you, and will always think of you with fondness. It is my hope that you will do the same. But it is also my hope that you reconsider your dissociation with my gender, and find someone who can make you happy.”

Rose smiled again, and propped herself up on her elbows. “I appreciate what you’re saying, and that it’s kindly meant, but I hope I don’t need anyone but myself to make me happy. I
am
happy. I’ve always been happy. It’s in my nature to be happy.”

“I know many a nobleman who would envy you that.”

Rose looked at him incredulously. “Not if happy goes with making up rooms and sweeping out fireplaces and fetching hot tea at all hours.”

Gerry laughed. “You’re probably right about that.” He gave her his hand, pulled her up, and kissed her forehead. “You’re a peach, Rose, a regular peach.”

She took both his hands in hers. “And you’re a . . .” She struggled to find a fruit she could compare him to, but to no avail. “You’re a gentleman. You’re a regular gentleman.”

She kissed him one last time, with feeling, and left to return to her duties.

A
lexandra and Lady Georgiana had whiled away the entire morning talking of suspects, harlots, suitors, and trousers, and it was well after noon by the time they came down together for lunch. By this time the effects of what had been in Alexandra’s hot milk had worn off, and she was finally, and acutely, hungry.

The house was a hubbub of activity. The drive was lined with carts delivering items as variable as glassware, sherry, and onions. One covered cart concealed a whole load of crinkled red and white streamers. The party was the next evening but one, and preparations were beginning in earnest.

Lady Loughlin stood in the main hall keeping an eye on the provisioning, but the real work of checking deliveries against the list of what was expected and stowing the goods where they belonged was being done by Dodson, the butler. She knew the work of the day was in good hands, and when she saw Georgiana helping her friend, still limping a little, down the main staircase, she left Dodson to his job and went to the two young women.

“I was just thinking about you,” she said to Alexandra. “And how is your ankle today?”

“It’s much better, thank you, Lady Loughlin. I can almost walk unassisted, but stairs are still difficult.” She winced as she came down at a bad angle, as if to make her point.

“As though an injury weren’t enough,” Georgiana said, “Miss Niven has had another little incident.”

Paulette looked at them, her head cocked to one side and her eyes questioning. “What has happened?” she asked, looking from one of the girls to the other.

The two friends had decided that, as much as they’d like to spare their hostess from knowledge of the tainted milk, they were obligated to tell her what had happened. As Georgiana had said, “If it happened in my home, I would most certainly want to know.”

“Let us get some lunch for this poor, famished, injured girl,” Georgiana said in mock pathos, “and then we shall tell you all about it.” They did get lunch, and the three women sat down in a sunny corner of the drawing room.

The story was soon told, complete with the addendum of Alphonse Gerard’s proposal of marriage.

“I declare, I don’t know whether to pity you or congratulate you,” Paulette said to Miss Niven. “But I do know that I am exceedingly unhappy about having my guests poisoned under my roof.”