“Has he gone to smash then?” asked Gerry.
“Not entirely, I understand,” said Sheffield. “He had a great deal to begin with, and I believe he has enough left to try to make a go of it without selling the estate. But he won’t have much to settle on his ward. It’s lucky his daughters are grown and married already.”
As Gerry pondered this new opportunity, the butler came in with the port. After he left, Gerry looked at his host with a more serious expression.
“Do you think I have a chance, then?” he asked.
Lord Loughlin looked at his friend. Gerard’s appearance wasn’t prepossessing. His face was a little too round, his hair was a little too sparse, and he was undeniably awkward. But his smile was winning, his good nature was genuine, and he moved with a certain grace. And, of course, he was certainly rich.
“I think you do,” he finally said.
“Hmmph,” grunted Gerry. “Damn fine port, this.”
The three men drank in silence for a few minutes, and then said their good nights.
On his way up to his room, Alphonse Gerard met Rose, the parlor maid, coming down from upstairs, carrying a tray with the remains of a meal. She nodded to him and moved to pass him, her head down.
“Rose, is it?” Gerard said to the girl.
“It is, sir.”
The evening’s conversation had left him feeling a bit randy, and he thought he might have a go at her. Experience, moreover, had taught him that the most effective method of having a go at a servant was picking one who wasn’t especially pretty and telling her she was. But first he had to break down her reserve a bit.
“Whoever ate that dinner, give him a wide berth,” he said, in a tone of dire warning, pointing at the tray.
Rose looked uncomprehendingly at him, and at the tray.
“You can’t trust anyone who doesn’t finish a dish of strawberries and cream,” said Gerry, breaking into a broad grin.
The girl laughed. It had crossed her mind that something must be wrong with a person who wouldn’t eat such a delicacy. Strawberries and cream were a rare thing in her world.
“It wasn’t a him, sir; it was a her. Miss Mumford, sir.”
“Well, I see her loss has been your gain,” said Gerry, pointing to a small dollop of cream on Rose’s left cheek.
Rose colored. “I couldn’t bear to see all of them go to waste like that.”
“I’m sure, had they made it all the way to the kitchen, that they wouldn’t exactly have gone to waste,” he said, smiling.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to take her to task emboldened the girl. “Well, then, why not me as well as them? After all, I was the one as had to fetch them down from Miss Mumford’s room.”
“Why not, indeed?” Gerry laughed. “The only flaw I can see in your line of reasoning is that you didn’t eat them all.” He picked one of the strawberries out of the cream and held it up to her mouth. “You missed this one, for example.”
The girl looked at him curiously, and backed away. After a moment, Gerry put the strawberry in his own mouth, and licked his fingers deliberately.
“By the by, my name’s Gerard,” he said. “Alphonse Gerard. You’re new here, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve been here three months, sir.”
“Tell me, Rose, do you have a young man?”
“A young man, sir?” The girl almost snorted with derision. “No, sir.”
“What! A fine girl like you with no young man? What’s the world coming to?” Subtlety was not in Gerard’s nature, and he had learned that, anyhow, it generally didn’t answer in situations like this. He took the tray from her, set it on a small side table, and moved in close to the girl.
Rose kept her distance, but didn’t absolutely make a run for it. Gerard read curiosity and excitement in her face, but they were tempered by something else. Not fear, he thought. Skepticism, maybe. He took one step closer, reached up, and ran the back of his fingers down her cheek. Her skin still had the softness and suppleness of youth. He used a fingertip to skim the dab of cream off her cheek, and then licked his finger clean.
For the first time, she looked him full in the face. Her eyes were brown tinged with green, and Gerard saw the living, breathing being inside the parlor maid’s uniform. And then she said something that surprised him.
“I noticed you in the drawing room.”
“You did?” Gerry asked with genuine curiosity.
“I did. I was glad to see that Mrs. Sheffield taken down a peg. She was poking her nose in where it don’t belong.”
Gerard laughed heartily. “She most certainly was.”
“If Mr. Barnes and Lady Georgiana want to hide out in the peacock pavilion, it ain’t no business of hers. They’re grown people, and can do as they like.”
“And were they hiding out in the peacock pavilion?” Gerard asked cautiously. He wanted badly to know what had happened, but he didn’t want to be seen sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong and categorized with Mrs. Sheffield.
“Well, I can’t say as they were hiding out, but they went there together, alone, and stayed for some time. Everyone in the servants’ quarters knows about it, thanks to Little Eddie.”
“And who, may I ask, is Little Eddie?”
“Oh, he’s the groom’s son. He does odd jobs around the grounds, and he seems to know everything about everyone. If you want to have a secret around here, you’d better stay out of the way of Little Eddie.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Gerard. “Would Little Eddie be anywhere in the vicinity right now?”
“Oh, no, sir! He works outside, and almost never comes in the house.”
“Well, that’s good news,” said Gerard. “Because I think, perhaps, we’re about to have a secret.”
The conversation had thawed Rose considerably, and when Gerry reached for her hand she gave it, if a little tentatively.
“Tell me, Rose,” Gerard said with a lowered voice, gesturing down the corridor, “do you know if any of these rooms are unoccupied?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, lowering her own tone to match his, “that one there on the right is for Lord Peter Halsey, and he won’t be coming for three days yet.”
“Excellent,” said Gerard. “Come with me.”
Gerard glanced both ways down the hallway, and led Rose by the hand to the empty room. They went in, and he was about to close the door when something occurred to him. “Wait just one second,” he said, and dashed out. He was back before she had time to wonder where he had gone, with the bowl of strawberries in his hand. “We can’t let them go to waste now, can we?” he asked conspiratorially.
“No, sir.” She grinned at him.
“You’ll have to stop calling me ‘sir,’ you know.”
She grinned again. “Yes, sir. I mean, yes, uh . . .”
“Gerry,” said Gerry.
“Oh, no, sir, I can’t call you that!”
“And why ever not?”
“It’s too . . .” She thought a moment. “It’s too personal.”
“Too personal?” asked Gerry, with mock incredulity. “And is this too personal as well?” he asked as he cupped one of her ample breasts with his hand. He hefted it, as though judging its weight, and began to fondle it in a way that was almost kneading.
The feel of her breast in his hand fueled his increasing arousal, and it took him some moments to realize she seemed somewhat bemused. He took a breath and a half step back.
“You’re a damn fine girl, you know,” he said. He didn’t really believe she was a damn fine girl, but because she seemed to have something to say for herself, he genuinely liked her. If she wasn’t a damn fine girl, she was certainly above middling.
But Rose was clear-eyed, and she knew the difference between damn fine and above middling.
“I’m not a damn fine girl. If I was, I’d already be married with a bunch of little ones, and that would probably be a mixed blessing, so I’m not sorry,” she said, the words tumbling out of her. “I’m a grown woman, and a red-faced, thickset fireplug of one at that. But I’m an honest one, and I work hard, and I’m not stupid.”
Gerard was thoroughly taken aback by this. But Rose wasn’t finished yet.
“If I’m going to duck into Lord Halsey’s room with you, it won’t be because you feed me strawberries and call me a damn fine girl. It’ll be because I want to, pure and simple.”
At this, Gerard was completely thrown. Although he didn’t make an absolute habit of it, he had seduced servant girls before, and never had any of them talked to him like this.
He looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and admiration. “And do you want to, pure and simple?” he finally asked.
She didn’t answer. Gerard wasn’t sure if she hadn’t decided yet, or if she had but wasn’t ready to let him in on the secret.
“I hope you do,” he said in a whisper, and kissed her.
He didn’t kiss her the way he kissed servants. He kissed her the way he kissed lovers, with his lips soft and barely parted. But he didn’t linger; he didn’t feel he had permission quite yet.
“I do,” said Rose, “on one condition.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you never call me a damn fine girl again.”
“Only if you promise not to call me ‘sir,’ at least in private,” he said, grinning.
“Done,” she said. “Gerry.” She giggled a little at the idea of calling one of the Loughlins’ guests by his given name.
They were standing just inside the closed door of the room, in a little hall that led to the bedchamber. Gerry put his hands on Rose’s hips and pushed her backward against the wall. He reached his hands around to cup her ass and pull it toward him. By this time he had a full hard-on and he groaned as her hips met his.
The circumstances were such that Gerry had to be careful not to let his arousal get the best of him. That this girl had been unknown to him that morning, that he had gone from introducing himself to grinding his pelvis into hers in the space of ten minutes, that her surprising self-assurance attracted him, all created a confluence of novelty that made him feel as if he were nineteen again. And at nineteen, he remembered with some embarrassment that helped check his passion, he hadn’t been completely master of himself.
He put his hands back on her hips and pushed himself away. He turned her around so she faced the wall and traced the lines of her back. It was a strong, muscular back, and her firmness and solidity appealed to him. Somehow it seemed right that her strength of body matched her strength of mind.
As he pressed himself against her again, he reached around and took one breast in each of his hands. He started with his hands at their base and caressed them, circling first inward, and then outward, with the thumb and forefinger of each hand coming closer to her nipple each time. When he reached the nipples, and touched them lightly, Rose responded by groaning and moving her hips backward to meet him. Her hands were on the wall and she bent at the waist, moving her ass side to side against him. He let her breasts go and reached for the buttons on the back of her uniform. He hadn’t undone more than half of them before the girl turned around and shimmied out of the bodice of the dress.
Her bodily firmness extended to her lovely round breasts. “No fireplug ever sported a pair like that,” he said.
Rose looked taken aback, and Gerry was afraid he’d blundered. But it took her only a moment to remember that she had described herself that way not more than a few minutes ago. To his relief, she laughed heartily.
Gerry leaned down and kissed each in turn, just on the top where they rose enticingly from her chest.
He had put the strawberries and cream on a small bookshelf that was next to them, and he reached over to dip his finger in the bowl. He held his cream-covered finger out to Rose, and she took it in her mouth. He watched as she closed her eyes, and relished the feeling of her tongue on his skin as she licked it clean.
She in turn fed him some of the cream, and he kept her forefinger in his mouth and sucked it. She felt his tongue on her skin, warm and wet, and the warmth and the wetness spread through her. She arched toward him; she ached for him. She felt the hollowness at her center that she knew she needed him to fill.
He took the hand that still had a finger in his mouth, and guided it to the bowl. He held her forefinger in his hand and used it like a spoon to get a dollop of the cream. Then he led that hand to her breast and ran her own finger around her nipple, spreading the cream at its base. He licked the remaining cream from her finger, slowly. He started at the base and flicked his tongue over the webbing between her forefinger and middle finger. In her entire life, she’d never been touched there by another human being, and she was surprised at the sensitivity, the eroticism of it.
Gerry ran the very tip of his tongue up the underside of her finger, and then took the tip in his mouth. Rose was consumed by the sensuality of the tiny point of contact between her hand and his mouth. It was as though her finger was the proxy for her body, and he was licking all of her.
And then he leaned over and took the nipple, cream and all, into his mouth, and Rose felt enveloped. And she felt the need to envelop in return. She pushed him back until he was against the opposite wall of the narrow hallway. She deftly unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt and ran her hands up and down his chest.
He wasn’t a beauty; that she had to admit to herself. He was growing a bit stout, and the rough hair on his chest was already graying. But his eyes were kind and his smile was quick, and it was, perhaps, because he didn’t have such a fine figure that she could feel an attraction to him that was honest, free of worry about her own looks or the social chasm between them.
Whatever the reason, she couldn’t deny the attraction. She took a deep breath to cool herself down, and then she took another fingerful of cream. She ran her finger down the center of his chest, slowly, and then let her tongue follow her finger. She lapped up the cream with little darting motions, starting at the top and working her way down, down. When she reached the waist of his pants, she fell to her knees and worked the buttons deftly.