My Lady's Pleasure (19 page)

Mr. Sheffield dutifully brought the chair, and then he and Mr. O’Mara, who was also among the group of guests, together carried her in, sedan-chair style.

“We will put you in the front drawing room window seat, where you will be comfortable and can watch the activity out the front window,” Lady Loughlin said, steering the men toward the room.

“Oh, please,” said Alexandra, “I would much rather be in my own room. I’d only be in the way.” She was thinking about how she was dressed, and her disheveled state, and wanted nothing more than the privacy of her own bedchamber.

“Nonsense!” said Lady Loughlin. “We all intend to wait on you hand and foot, and we can’t very well do that if you’re hiding away in your room.”

Miss Niven was just about to protest again when her companion, Miss Mumford, came rushing in.

“Alexandra, my dear, what has happened?” she asked in agitation as she pushed her way through what was now a substantial entourage gathered around the girl.

“Don’t be upset,” she said to the older woman. “I’ve only twisted my ankle playing tennis. I’m in very good hands.”

As she made her way to Alexandra’s side, Miss Mumford got her first good look at her young friend and gasped openly. “What are you . . .” she began, but then stopped before she could say, “wearing?” A split second’s reflection told her not to call attention to Miss Niven’s attire. After a pause, she said, “. . . going to do about that ankle? It needs ice, I suppose.”

“Her ankle needs ice, but I daresay her spirits need good company.” Lady Loughlin addressed Miss Mumford. “Can you help us convince her to let us enthrone her in the drawing room, where all her little needs and wants will be ours to fulfill?”

Had Lady Loughlin not been so wrapped up in her own argument, she might have known that she was making her appeal in the wrong quarter.

Miss Mumford was the soul of tact. “As she would like to go to her room, I think you must give me the privilege of attending to her needs and wants, just for a while,” she said with an air of finality. “I promise to share those duties just as soon as she recovers herself enough to come downstairs.”

It was the first time in a long time that Alexandra had been grateful for Miss Mumford’s ministrations, and she felt real relief as Mr. Sheffield and Mr. O’Mara carried her up to her room.

Freddy had watched all of this from the sidelines, and took the first decent opportunity to head to his own room to bathe and change his clothes. As he sat in the bath, he thought about Alexandra. He knew, more by instinct than by reason, that she was not a girl to be toyed with. With Lady Georgiana, he thought, he could certainly flirt. He even thought he had done himself no great harm by venturing a bolder proposition, though he had been rejected. Still, the rejection rankled. She had rejected him, and not the blasted gardener!

From Lady Georgiana, his thoughts wandered back to Miss Niven. She was a horse of another color! And, to Freddy’s mind, she was a ripping fine horse of a beautiful color, and he thought perhaps she would be worth the having. He thought himself too young to seriously consider marriage, but he also wondered when another girl like her would come his way.

Dressing, he thought of the walk back from the tennis court, and how much it aroused him to have the girl in his arms. Because he was a young man of eighteen, this had predictable results, and once he was dressed he headed straight for the stable, saddled Prancer, and rode off in the direction of the Glück dairy.

When he got there, he dismounted and tied the horse to a tree, and went off in search of Gretchen. He wasn’t absolutely avoiding Gretchen’s parents, but he knew from experience that things went more smoothly if he didn’t encounter them. Approaching on foot was, if not stealthy, at least inconspicuous.

He looked first in the barn where the cows were kept, and found it empty. The cows were out grazing, and Gretchen had evidently already finished cleaning it out and making it ready for the evening milking. There was another barn for the horses and other animals, and he found Gretchen mucking out stalls. He watched her for a moment or two. She was fresh and beautiful, spirited and strong, and any man who had her could be considered fortunate indeed.

The sound of the shovel against the wooden floor masked his approach, and when he grabbed her around the waist she started and dropped a shovelful of horse manure and straw on the clean barn floor.

It took her only a moment to know who it was, and although she was happy to see him she feigned severity. “Freddy! Look what you’ve made me do.” She gestured to the pile on the floor.

It was the work of an instant to shovel the manure into the cart, and Freddy had it done almost before Gretchen had finished her sentence.

“You know what else I can make you do?” he said, raising his eyebrows and grinning.

“You can make me lose an afternoon’s work, that’s what.”

“Now, how could that be when the afternoon is almost over?”

“An evening’s work, then.”

“Oh, I think we can get you back in time to finish all that needs doing.” He again took her by the waist and pulled her toward him. She allowed herself to be pulled, but leaned away a bit and crossed her arms in front of her. “What needs doing now is that the horses need to be fed,” she said, still stern.

“And would that necessitate a trip to the hayloft?” Freddy asked.

“Yes. That most certainly would necessitate a trip to the hayloft. What’s that to you?”

“Well, perhaps you need some help fetching the hay.”

“Since I was ten years old I’ve fetched the hay by myself, without help from you or anyone, almost every day of my life.”

“Well, then, the novelty of assistance should brighten your day.” Freddy released her, gestured toward the hayloft with one hand in the air, and bowed gallantly.

Gretchen giggled and ran for the ladder, Freddy close on her heels.

Once up, they both flopped in the hay and rolled into the back corner, which was fragrant, dusky, and familiar. Gretchen reached for the buttons of Freddy’s trousers, but he checked her. “Will you take off your dress?” he said simply.

Gretchen’s dress was an uncomplicated affair, a white muslin skirt topped by a blue cambric bodice with buttons up the front. She started to unbutton them, and Freddy sat back on his haunches, watching.

Their lovemaking was usually a hurried affair, without the time or the privacy to remove all the fabric that came between skin and skin. But their interludes in the hayloft were different. They weren’t afraid of being discovered, and could indulge in the luxury of nakedness.

He loved to watch her undress, to watch the parts of her body be revealed one by one, knowing that they were his to touch, to caress. Gretchen wriggled out of her dress, and Freddy reached a hand out to touch her creamy shoulder, and to run his hand down the inside of her arm. When he reached her hand, he took it in his and raised it to his lips. He kissed the middle of her palm, and then released it.

She unlaced the ribbons that closed the top of her shift, and then started on its buttons. Slowly she went down the row, watching Freddy watching her. When the shift was open, she paused a moment. Freddy ran the back of his hand from her chest down to the top of her drawers, feeling her warmth and the swell of her breasts as his hand passed between them.

He opened her shift, exposing her full, heavy breasts. He loved the swell underneath and the upturned nipples, and he leaned over to kiss first one and then the other. As he took one breast in each hand he marveled that they were cool while the rest of her body was warm. He loved the way their weight filled his palm, and he caressed them gently.

Gretchen reached for his shirt and soon had it off. She touched him in much the way he had touched her, softly and gently. They were often together in a way that was urgent and almost rough, but their mood today was slow and sweet.

He eased her shift off her shoulders, and traced her waist just above the top of her drawers. She untied them, and eased them down over her knees and off. Freddy spread a soft wool blanket they kept there for the purpose over the prickly hay and Gretchen lay down on it. She reached back over her head to make a pillow with the hay, and Freddy admired the way her muscles moved under her skin.

She lay before him perfectly naked, and Freddy thought nothing could be better than this. Her hair, almost the same color as the hay, spread out under where she rested her head, and her milk-white skin stood out against the dark green of the blanket.

He stepped out of his trousers and knelt between her knees. She started to sit up, reaching for him, but he again checked her. “Let me do the touching,” he said, and brushed the backs of his fingers against the insides of her thighs. She closed her eyes and let herself be immersed in the sensation.

He traced her whole body with his fingertips, starting by reaching behind him to her feet. He felt every dip, every rise, every bone, and every crevice. Her body was intimately familiar to him, but it was as though he were discovering it anew. His touch was light but certain, and Gretchen gave herself up to it. She felt it particularly in places that surprised her—behind her knee, under her arm. Slowly, slowly, her feelings mounted. Her skin tingled where his fingers touched it, and the wetness built inside her. Initially, she had found it easy to lie still, but as she became more aroused she began to want to move to him, against him, around him.

And then, as though he knew her need, he was inside her. She felt the tip of his penis penetrate the lips of her vulva, releasing the warm dew that had built up inside. And then the whole of him was deep within her.

He had one hand on either side of her, propping himself up, but she wanted to feel the full length of his body against her. She pulled him down, and he sighed as he thrust deeper.

He held her head in his hands, burying his fingers in her thick blond hair, and he kissed her. His tongue filled her mouth as his cock filled her cunt and she felt completed.

They were in perfect synchrony as he pulsed slowly and deeply inside her. With each pulse, she got a little closer to what was to come, and she could feel his increasing heat and knew he was too. Still he went slowly. Even as they both reached the edge together, he kept up the regular rhythm.

And then they were at the edge—together, but each absorbed in separate sensations. They were each attuned, momentarily, only to themselves, succumbing to the encompassing power of the pleasure inside them.

When the last pulses died down, Freddy rolled over and lay down beside her. They looked at the ceiling of the barn in silence, enjoying the calm after the storm.

Gretchen was the first to get up, and she smiled at him as she reached for her underclothes. As she dressed, she said, “Didn’t you say something about helping me with the hay?”

Freddy took his cue and also got dressed. “That is why we came up here, is it not?” He picked up a pitchfork and began pitching the hay down to the floor of the barn. “But I daresay this isn’t so difficult that you couldn’t have done it yourself.”

Gretchen punched him in the arm and laughed. They climbed down the ladder, and he kissed her and left to recover Prancer. He knew that, someday, he would have to give up this girl, but he was very glad it was not today.

H
ad Alexandra known where Freddy had gone, it might have been easier for her to sort through her thoughts. Her sheltered life had been such that Freddy’s had been the first male hands to touch her in any but an ordinary way. That touch had awakened feelings and sensations that were new to her, and she needed time and privacy to sort them through.

Miss Mumford, though, was inclined to give her neither.

“My dear Alexandra,” she had said, as soon as the two were alone in Miss Niven’s room, “you know I am not quick to criticize.”

Alexandra nodded, knowing no such thing, but knowing also that nothing was to be gained by contradiction.

“I am paid by your guardian to be caretaker of your moral development, and I take those responsibilities very seriously.”

Alexandra nodded again, wishing with all her heart that her guardian, when his losses had forced him to economize, had seen fit to begin with Miss Mumford’s employment. She had a vestigial fondness for Miss Mumford, left over from the years when that good lady had been her governess. But as she made the transition from girl to woman, Miss Mumford hadn’t been able to adjust, and still sometimes talked to her as though she weren’t out of pinafores.

“I cannot allow your decision to go out in public wearing those clothes”—here she gestured with something like disgust at the trousers Alexandra had borrowed from Georgiana—“to go unremarked upon.”

Perhaps it was her exhaustion, perhaps it was her ankle, perhaps it was momentum from having already broken some of the boundaries she had remained within all her life, but Alexandra Niven decided she’d had enough. She looked at her companion with something approaching steely resolve in her eyes and said with quiet dignity, “Oh, but you can. You can certainly allow it.”