My Lady's Pleasure (25 page)

Usually, at this point in their game, Lord Loughlin would sit on a stool set up in the corner for the purpose, and watch as Jean deliberately undressed. This time, though, he told her, almost gruffly, to take her clothes off, and he went straight to the cabinet where he kept his toys. He took out the leather harness, the anal plug with the horsehair, and a large, soft sheepskin.

He removed his shirt and trousers, and Jean waited for the moment when the power shifted to her and he became submissive and yielding, but as he handed her the harness so she could put it on him, she did not sense submission. He gave her the reins, literally, but she didn’t think he gave her the authority to use them quite as she would.

Robert threw the sheepskin over the cask and straddled it as though he were a stallion mounting a mare. Jean rubbed the plug in the tub of Carston’s Complexion Cream, and worked it into his asshole.

They’d played this game before, with Robert in the role of stallion trying to get at the mare, and Jean in the role of handler, keeping him just out of reach of the sheepskin on the cask. Jean stood behind him and pulled on the reins to get him off the cask, but either she pulled only tentatively, or he hung on with particular tenacity, or some combination of the two. She couldn’t get him off.

“Pull, girl, pull!” he said. He wanted the familiar strain against his chest. He wanted to reach for the cask but not quite get there. He wanted to be tantalized; he wanted to be controlled. But, somehow, today was different. As he yelled at her to pull, he struggled against her all the harder.

Jean couldn’t quite understand why he had asked her to come down there, and then changed the rules. She didn’t see that she was at fault, and she resented the displeasure in his tone.

If he wanted her to pull, pull she would. Jean was a slim girl, but she did physical work all day long, and she called on all her steely strength as she pulled the reins. She turned her back to Lord Loughlin and put the reins over her shoulder so she could brace herself against the rug and pull him away.

Away he came, and she felt strangely exhilarated. Every time she’d been in that dungeon, her power over him had been illusory, granted to her temporarily by his decree. But now this power was real. He was really fighting her, and she felt a heady mixture of arousal and adrenaline.

He was genuinely surprised that Jean had the strength to pull him off, and as he reached for the cask but came up with only air he, too, felt the reality of what had heretofore been playacting. He wasn’t acting. He was feeling, and what he was feeling was anger. Angry at her, yes, but angry mostly at himself.

He reached a foot behind him to get a better purchase and strained against the harness once more. He was certainly the stronger of the two, and once he had leverage against the floor, he managed to reach the cask. He grabbed it with both hands and mounted it. The blood was coursing all through his veins, and he felt an insistence in his erection that he had seldom felt.

Jean, for her part, seemed to realize there was no point in trying to pull him off again. Lord Loughlin felt the reins go slack, and made an effort to master himself and turn around. Her look of bewilderment reached through his anger and his excitement, and he knew he hadn’t been fair to the girl. He stood up and reached for her hand. She took a step toward him, and he bent her over the casket and stood behind her.

Robert spread the cheeks of her ass with his hands and laid his cock in between them. He reached underneath and gently massaged her clitoris with his index finger, and the arousal that had drained away came roaring back. She held the cask with both arms, her body braced against the soft sheepskin.

He took his hand away and slipped his cock inside her. It went in easily because she was so wet and ready for him. For the first time, they were two people making love instead of two people playing games, and the freshness of that feeling fueled both of them, enveloping them in an all-consuming warmth.

His already hard cock stiffened that last little bit, and he slowed down to prolong what he knew would be his last few strokes in and out of her.

And that is when Lady Loughlin found them.

L
ady Loughlin had come down to the cellar to get a bottle of port to leave in the room intended for the Earl of Grantsbury. She’d borrowed Dodson’s key to do it. As she perused the racks, looking to see if there was a stray bottle of the ’72 left, she heard noises of what sounded like a struggle.

She ventured back and back until she came to the cage where she knew her husband kept his prize wines, and when she looked through the bars she got what she could safely say was the surprise of her life. There was her husband, wearing a leather harness and sporting what looked like a horse’s tail, fucking her maid from behind over a barrel covered with sheepskin.

She was too dumbfounded to say a word and, for a moment, Robert and Jean didn’t even realize she was there. Then she must have made a sound, because they both looked up at the same time. Lord Loughlin’s expression showed astonishment and horror, but apparently he had been so close to climax when he looked up that he found himself coming, ejaculating into his wife’s maid as his wife watched from the other side of the iron-barred door.

Lady Loughlin didn’t know how to respond to the tableau she was witnessing. It was too far removed from anything in her experience. But she knew she didn’t want to stand there watching her husband and her maid extricate themselves, so she turned on her heel without saying a word and almost ran out of the cellar.

Her husband and her maid did extricate themselves and, as they did so, considered the repercussions of Lady Loughlin’s discovering them.

“I’m going to get sacked, aren’t I?” said Jean.

This had not been at the forefront of Lord Loughlin’s mind, but he supposed it was a question that deserved an answer.

“I imagine so, yes,” he said. “But I will make sure you aren’t turned out without a reference.” He knew full well that a maid without a reference from a long-term engagement would be all but unemployable.

Jean’s immediate future was certainly a bit grim, but it was uncomplicated. She would simply have to find a new place. Lord Loughlin’s future was a more difficult question. He had no idea how his wife would react, or even how he’d want her to.

Jean got dressed as quickly as she could. The idea that she was going to lose her place at Penfield, this household that had been her home these ten years and more, was taking root in her mind, and she felt herself near tears. Her personal pride was such that she would shed them alone, and she took leave of her master with no more than a nod.

Lord Loughlin was left half-dressed, sitting on the stool with his head in his hands. He had always known there was a chance it would come to this, and he knew that it was his wife, and not himself, who would decide the course their marriage would take from here. It was some comfort to know that all he could do was tell her the truth and take whatever came.

He remained in the dungeon for the best part of an hour, incapable of moving or even thinking. Finally, he roused himself. He put on his shirt, laced his boots, and went upstairs to find his wife.

He didn’t have to look far. As soon as he came into the hall, he saw her, smiling brightly, arms outstretched, welcoming the Earl of Grantsbury.

The earl was a middle-aged widower with five grown children, all married. When the last of them, his daughter Serena, had wed, he’d breathed a sigh of relief in the knowledge that no other scheming parents would be pursuing him in the hopes of marrying their offspring to his.

His wife had died only the previous year, and he missed her sorely. But he was possessed of a cheerful, optimistic temperament, and her absence didn’t prevent him from traveling all over England to wherever good shooting, fast horses, or interesting people could tempt him. He loved company, but also had a scholarly bent. A decade ago he’d written a monograph on ferns that was still thought to be definitive.

He was a tall, stately-looking man. His straight hair, although shot with gray, was so thick that it stood almost straight out from his head. He was kindhearted and good-natured, and the British aristocracy would have been none the worse had more of their number resembled him.

“Lord Grantsbury,” Paulette said, with welcoming warmth. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“My dear Lady Loughlin,” said the earl, taking both her hands in both of his, “I’m delighted to be here.”

“I’m sure you must be exhausted,” Paulette said to her guest. “Let me show you to your room.”

“Not a bit of it! If you can have someone take my man up, he’ll take care of the bags. I expect you to take me around and show me all you’ve done.” Here he offered his arm to his hostess. “I’ve heard stories, you know,” he added with a grin.

In a way, this suited Lady Loughlin very well indeed. She knew that the events of the last several days were too public for him to not get wind of them, and she thought it best if she told him herself. This was her opportunity to color the story in such a way as to prevent its being taken too seriously by her most important guest.

If only she didn’t have to do it right this moment! She was still reeling from what she’d seen in the wine cellar, and hadn’t had enough time to herself to think about it properly. And now she had to direct all her energies toward the earl, whose arm she now took.

“By all means, let us go outside and take a turn around the park.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her husband, but she would not look at him. She had to put that problem in a little box in the back of her mind while she focused on the task at hand, which was earl management.

The pair went out, and Lady Loughlin led him first to the tennis court, then to the pond, and then through the labyrinth. On the way, she told him of the events of the last several days, beginning with Lady Georgiana’s affair with Bruce Barnes.

Grantsbury shook his head and tut-tutted. “I’ve known that girl since she was a babe in arms. She always would have her own way, and she never would understand that her own way could, if she weren’t careful, be her undoing.”

Lady Loughlin defended her friend. “I think she has always tempered her own way with just enough judgment to keep her on the right side of public opinion.” Grantsbury looked at her and raised his eyebrows, prompting Lady Loughlin to add, “It’s been a near thing, though.”

“This time it’s too near, I daresay. She simply doesn’t understand what’s at stake. She is so accustomed to the privilege she was born to that she simply can’t believe that society would turn its back on her.” For Grantsbury, though, this was about more than Georgiana’s shortsightedness. He felt strongly that nobility brought with it responsibility, and he profoundly disapproved of her flouting of propriety.

Lady Loughlin went on to tell him of the notes, the poison ivy, the peacock, and the milk, and his surprise mounted with every new chapter of the tale. She made every effort to keep her tone breezy, but Grantsbury didn’t see it as one big lark. It wasn’t just the possibility of danger; it was that he thought the whole thing an offense against how things ought to be.

“I agree with you that it’s unlikely any real harm is intended,” Lord Grantsbury said to his hostess, “but this kind of thing can’t be countenanced. If we can’t get to the bottom of it ourselves, we simply must call in the constables.”

This felt enough like a rebuke to silence Lady Loughlin. But Grantsbury hadn’t meant it as one, and when he saw that she had taken it that way, he stopped in his tracks and took both her hands. “Now, now,” he said gently. “You mustn’t see this as some kind of failure on your part. You are most certainly not to blame. All you have done is surround yourself with interesting, strong-minded people, and that is something I heartily approve of, even if it sometimes has unsavory consequences.”

In her entire adult life, Lady Loughlin had not cried in front of another human being. At that moment, she thought she might. There was chaos under her roof. She had earned the displeasure of Lord Grantsbury, the guest she most wanted to impress. Her husband was fucking her maid, for crying out loud, and wearing a tail to boot! What more could a woman be expected to endure in one week?

Strangely, it was the idea of the tail that helped her keep back her tears. Even through her confusion, her anger, and her sense of helplessness, she couldn’t help but see something funny in the tail. Why had he had a tail?

There was a bench near the path, under a small grove of trees, and Lady Loughlin walked to it and sat down, all pretense at good cheer abandoned. She shook her head ruefully. “I do this every year, and every year it goes perfectly smoothly. Why it had to go to smash this year, I’m sure I don’t know.”

“It hasn’t gone to smash.” The earl sat down beside her. “And we shall see that it doesn’t.” He patted her hands.

They talked for a bit about the servants, the guests, and how best to keep things in hand, at least until the party. Lady Loughlin would talk to Freddy, the earl would talk to Georgiana, and they would ask Lord Loughlin to get all the servants together and offer a reward for any information leading to the apprehension of the culprit. Lady Loughlin thought this was the best they could do short of notifying the police, and she didn’t want to have to do that until after the party.