“I am feeling too lazy even to come upstairs with you tonight,” he said, laying his head back against a cushion. “Have you ever made love on a love seat? It sounds like a logical place to do it, does it not?”
“It would not be long enough,” she said, “unless we were uncommonly short.”
“Shall I show you?”
“It sounds . . . uncomfortable,” she said, but she was half smiling back at him.
“Not at all,” he said. “What are you wearing beneath your dressing gown and nightgown?”
“Nothing.” Her cheeks turned a little pink.
“Perfect,” he said. “I, on the other hand, need to make a few adjustments. I could hardly leave the main hall clad only in my nightshirt.”
He lifted her off his lap and set her down beside him while he undid the buttons at his waist and lowered the flap of his breeches and parted the folds of his drawers. And he reached for her again, his hands going beneath her garments to lift them out of the way. She came astride him, braced herself on her knees, and set her hands on his shoulders while she leaned slightly back and looked down. She watched—they both did—while he put himself inside her and drew her downward with his hands on her hips until he was fully embedded. Her muscles slowly clenched about him.
“Oh,” she said.
Oh, indeed. He was enveloped in wet heat and the agony of full desire.
He kept a firm grasp on her hips and lifted her partly away from him so that he could work her with firm upward strokes. And she rode him with a bold rhythm that matched his own, and he wanted it never to end, and he needed to end it now, and he would continue with it forever because it was the most exquisite feeling in the world and she felt it too and they must end now but they must prolong the pleasure just a little longer.
He did not know for how many minutes they made love. He did not know which of them broke rhythm first. It did not matter. They finished together, and it was like—ah, that old cliché, though it had never had any meaning for him before now—it was like a little death.
It was . . . exquisite. He was going to have to invent a vocabulary all his own, since the English language was often totally inadequate to his needs.
When he came more or less to himself, she was relaxed on him, her knees hugging his sides, her head on his shoulder, her face turned away from his, and she was sleeping. He was still buried in her, still slightly throbbing. The cat was on the love seat beside them. Hector was draped across one of his shoes.
He had never felt more relaxed in his life, Percy thought.
And never so happy.
He was too relaxed even to be alarmed at the thought.
19
“All the servants?” Paul Knorr said. “Inside and out?”
“The butler, the head steward, the cook, the bootboy, the head groom, and lowliest gardener and stable hand, Lady Lavinia’s maid, the scullery maids,” Percy said. “All except those brought by my visitors.”
“The cook is sure to have something in the oven at ten o’clock in the morning,” Knorr said with a cheerful grin. “And she is a tyrant. I quake and tremble.”
“If she comes at you with a rolling pin,” Percy said, “run fast.”
“Has Mr. Ratchett ever ventured beyond the steward’s room?” Knorr asked.
“He will today,” Percy told him. “You will see to it, Knorr, by being your usual deeply deferential self. You do it very well. Go.”
Knorr departed to fulfill his task of rounding up everyone who worked within the boundaries of the park, even Imogen’s housekeeper, even Watkins and Mimms and Percy’s coachman.
Everyone had dispersed after breakfast, except Mrs. Ferby, who kept guard over the fire in the drawing room. Percy’s mother had gone with Aunt Nora, Lady Lavinia, and Imogen the Lord knew where to make arrangements about flowers and music for the ball. Aunt Edna and Beth and the twins were out in the stables with Geoffrey, kitten gazing. Meredith had gone off in Percy’s own curricle, driven by Sidney, to call upon Miss Wenzel and her brother—Percy thought there had been a bit of mutual attraction between his widowed cousin and Imogen’s would-be suitor last evening. Arnold was exploring the cliff walk with Uncle Ernest and his two boys—they intended to take a look at the fishing village too. Uncles Roderick and Ted had gone riding up the valley in the opposite direction. Everyone was accounted for.
“You are staying home on estate business, Perce?” Arnie had asked with a look of incredulity when Percy had explained why he would not join in the cliff walk. “That is more than a bit alarming, I must say.”
“You are staying in order to confer with your steward, Percy?” Uncle Ted had said when his nephew declined the request to go riding. “I am impressed, my boy. Turning thirty has done wonders for you. Your father would be proud.”
“I hope so,” Percy had said meekly.
He had steeled every nerve. He was probably about to do entirely the wrong thing. But for once he was determined to do something that needed doing, even if like an idiot he must stand alone against the whole world and even if nothing of any significance could possibly be accomplished. Even if he was going to be merely tilting at windmills.
He had been raised, after all, to stand alone and always to do what he believed to be right. He had not fully realized that before now. He had not gone away to school, where, at an impressionable age, he would have learned to become just like every other boy of his social class. He had remained at home to be educated and trained—and loved—by a number of straight-thinking adults. He had remained under the influence of that upbringing through his university years and had stuck out from his fellows like a sore thumb while acquiring an excellent education in his chosen field. He had spent the past ten years more or less repudiating his past and making up for lost time—with interest. He was now like every other idle gentleman of his generation, but even more so.