Chapter Twenty

T

hey had reached the door to their second-floor apartments and Miles ushered her in. She paused in the sitting room, removed her smart hat and tan string gloves and  placed them on a low table. She turned to him as he closed the door. “Miles?”

He raised an eyebrow and offered her an inquisitive smile.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, praying she could, for once in her life, manage to say what was in her heart. “The day you followed me here from London…I most profoundly apologize for the undeserved and hateful words I spoke in anger in this very room. I said detestable things deliberately meant to hurt, and I have bitterly regretted those words ever since.” She looked at the floor, ashamed to meet his gaze. “I don’t think you are without pride. I think you lived as needs must, in difficult circumstances, and you have always comported yourself with dignity and integrity while I…” she faltered, “I have not. Indeed, it would be impossible for me to hold you in any higher regard or be more disgusted with my own past behavior. I can only hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me,” she finished quietly. 

He had moved to stand in front of her, and she raised her head to find grey eyes filled with tender consideration. “Forgiven and forgotten. And for my part in so bitterly disappointing you, I beg your forgiveness.”

“I think you have already apologized most admirably, but…” a smile trembled on her lips, “Forgiven and forgotten,” she whispered.

His hand cupped the nape of her neck, and he bent slightly to kiss her, angling his head to better fit his mouth to hers. With a moan of pleasure, she opened to him, and his tongue invaded to tangle with hers. Once again, with an effortlessness that mystified her, Miles reduced her to a senseless abandonment, her body aware only of him.

After a prolonged interval wherein he seduced her with breathless kiss after breathless kiss, pulling her into his body with a strong arm around her waist while his other hand traced light fingertips down her flanks and back, he paused and murmured against her lips, “Let’s have dinner in our rooms. I’ll be your lady’s maid, and you can be my valet.”

She flattened her palms against his chest and pushed gently. He released her, watching for her response. She gave him a mysterious smile and rang the bell to summon a hallboy. The young man assigned to their wing of the second floor answered almost immediately. “Advise the kitchen that Lord Miles and I will be taking dinner in our apartments. You may leave the tray trolleys outside the door, and tell Mr. Hopwood and Miss Conway they are free for the rest of the evening. Please send up hot water for a bath. After that, we are not to be disturbed until morning.”

The hallboy acknowledged her orders and bowed. “I’ll see to it immediately, your ladyship.”

Eleanor closed the door, set the lock and turned to face Miles. “Is that what you had in mind, my lord?” She shivered at his wicked grin as he shrugged out of his black tailcoat, placed it over the back of a chair and stood before her in a white shirt and fawn waistcoat.

“Come stand here, lady wife.” His forefinger pointed to the carpet directly in front of him. He pulled the tails of his cravat out of his waistcoat and proceeded with dispatch to disassemble the Mathematical his valet had painstakingly tied that morning. With a jerk of one hand, the long piece of folded, starched linen joined the tailcoat across the back of the chair. 

She closed the nine feet between them with a growing sense of wariness provoked by the piratical expression on his face. The closer she got to him, the more her feet dragged. He didn’t wait for her to reach him before striding to her and hoisting her over his shoulder, head down, her posterior in the air, as she shrieked in laughter.

“Miles! Whatever are you doing? Put me down!” She landed with a bounce in the middle of their bed and giggled, until her husband’s body landed on hers, punching all the air from her lungs. With his face inches from hers, she flailed at him and in breathless pants complained, “I can’t breathe. Off me, you oaf. You are a very troublesome maid. Sally has never behaved so.”

With a low chuckle, he rolled to the side and braced himself on one elbow. “I suspect I will behave in many ways that would scandalize the good Miss Conway.”

She gasped as he nuzzled into the sensitive juncture of her neck and shoulder and placed sucking kisses and tiny nips, soothed by licks of his tongue all along her neck and the underside of her jaw. All the while, his busy fingers played havoc with the high-collared front of her habit, undoing the hooks of her tight-fitting jacket and then the buttons on her white lawn blouse to expose her fine linen shift. She’d forgone all stays as the tight-fitting jacket didn’t allow for anything other than her naturally slender shape. Consequently, he had no difficulty slipping his fingers into the bodice of her loose shift to cup her bare breast in his warm palm and roll her tightly gathered nipple, inciting tumult between her legs. His kisses reached her lips, and she greedily grabbed the back of his head to hold him to her. She groaned loudly into his mouth when the hand that had been at her breast moved to gather up her full skirts and bare her thighs. Beneath her shift, she was nude.

“Hush,” he whispered. “The servants are filling the bath, and they will hear you.”

As his fingers stroked her outer and inner thighs in a provocative fashion certain to result in her ultimate madness, she tried to listen for sounds of the servants leaving the bathroom through the service door. She gasped audibly and whimpered with pleasure when his mouth settled on the nipple his fingers had teased into inordinate sensitivity.

“You cannot be quiet, can you, Eleanor?” he murmured around kisses as the sounds of light chatter and water being poured into the great tub filtered through the walls.

“Devil…fiend…oh!” His tongue did something particularly nice at her breast at the same time his fingers stroked with great delicacy between her legs, and she cried out at the pulse of sensation.

He lifted his head off her breast. “Shhh…you’ll set the servants talking.”

The laughter in his voice finished her. “Off! Off me, until we can be private.” She laughed. “You cannot be relied upon to behave in a seemly fashion, and I am defenseless against your trespasses on my person.” She accompanied her words by scooting out from under him and batting at the hand between her legs.

With a quiet chuckle, he complied and rolled to a sitting position at the side of the bed. “Come and make yourself useful. Pull my boots off.”

Eleanor snorted and proceeded to tug on his top boots, grimacing at their refusal to part company with Miles’ leg by even so much as an inch. Frowning, she eyed a languid Miles. “Is there a secret to this?”

He grinned, immediately arousing her suspicions. “Straddle my leg with your back to me.”

She did as he instructed. With a narrowing of her eyes, she glanced over her shoulder. He gazed at her with a cheerful demeanor, and her suspicions increased.

“Now…one hand at my heel and another at the toe, clasp my boot between your legs. Good. Now, bend over and pull and I will assist you.”

As she followed his instructions, he placed his other foot on her buttocks and pushed. Abruptly, the boot gave up its death grip on his leg. With an exclamation of alarm, she sprawled forward onto her elbows and knees on the carpet, holding the foot of his boot between her legs. Silently she rose, boot in hand, and turned, bestowing her most ferocious glare on him. “I cannot believe Mr. Hopwood tolerates such personal abuse every night. How do you remove your boots when you have no assistance, for it is patently impossible for the wearer to pull off such tightly fitted boots as these without aid.”

“I use a boot jack,” he replied amiably, lounging on his elbows on the bed.

She rolled her tongue in her mouth. “I see. And is such an item present in these rooms?”

“Oh yes. There is a perfectly good boot jack in the dressing room, but I dislike using it as it mars the polish on the heels. Mr. Hopwood works very diligently to achieve that shine.”

Eleanor held up the offending article and examined the glossy black leather of the boot’s heel. “Resign yourself to marring your other boot.”

Miles sighed and shook his head, though his eyes held laughter as he rose and wandered into the dressing room. A minute or two later he returned in stocking feet, took his boot from her and placed a quick kiss on her lips. “Thank you, lady wife.” He tossed his boot toward the open door to the dressing room and faced her holding his arms out straight to either side. “You have some more work to do before I’m fit to bathe.” He waggled his eyebrows in a comical manner, and she stifled a laugh.

“Wretched beast.” She stepped up to him and unbuttoned his waistcoat, then the four buttons at the very neck of his shirt. She pulled the tails of his shirt out of his breeches, slid the waistcoat off his shoulders and pulled his shirt over his head. She tossed both toward the dressing room and paused at the sight of his well-muscled upper body so very different from her own. Unable to resist the temptation, she ran gentle fingers through the whorls of springy hair on his chest.

“Ahem. Stockings then breeches.”

Her mouth thinned, and she glanced at her grinning husband. She sank to the floor; at the bend of his knee, she undid the buttons on his breeches and removed one stocking and then the other from well-formed calves covered with additional fine brown hair. She looked up at him from the floor and swallowed. One more piece of apparel and he would be bare.

He extended a hand and helped her to stand. “My breeches, if you would be so kind.”

She inhaled deeply and unbuttoned the fall of his breeches and then the small buttons in the center of the waistband encircling his trim waist. His inexpressibles sagged and fell from his hips, and she finally allowed herself to examine the male part of him that had grown rapidly to stand upright in yet more tight curls of brown hair. Fascinated, she reached out a finger to touch and let out a squeak when it jumped on his belly.

Miles’ rich laughter sounded in the room. “He will not bite. Hold me in your hand.”

Eleanor shot a doubtful glance at him but did as he asked and wrapped her entire hand around what felt like a hot wooden rod covered in velvet, but no wooden rod in her memory had pulsed in her hand with a life of its own. She tightened her grip, but her fingers would not quite encompass the whole of him.

Miles exhaled in a grunt.

“What do men call this part?”

“There are many names. Prick, rod, Adam’s staff, Arbor Vitae are but a few. I use ‘cock’.”

She looked at him bemused. “Like a male fowl? A rooster?”

He nodded with a chuckle, and his “cock” jerked in her hand. She released her grip and stroked up his length to the tip where it mushroomed out and formed a dusty rose cap. “So this is the part of you that I took inside me,” she mused. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I know I was able to accommodate you, but it still seems quite unlikely. Are you considered abnormally large?” She once again attempted to wrap him in her hand.

Miles choked on a laugh and looked heavenward. “I would like to observe that this is a most unseemly topic for conversation. However…” He cleared his throat. “It may be that the Almighty has blessed me with an abundance, but I have no definitive answer as I have not gone about making a study of men’s erect parts. There is a vast difference in size between an aroused male organ and one flaccid.” He lifted a shoulder and eyed her with amusement, and she returned to her intent study of his cock. 

“I should hope so. I would think it terribly awkward to go through the day with a part of this immensity in one’s trousers.” He didn’t respond, simply laughed silently, his cock leaping in the grip of her hand. A clear drop of liquid appeared, poised at the very center of the broad tip. She ran the pad of her index finger around the head and through the glistening drop. She was startled when Miles hissed and wrapped a firm hand around her wrist. “I’m terribly sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“No. Quite the opposite. Enough of that for now.” He worked his breeches down his calves and stepped out of them. The part of him that so held her fascination slapped against his abdomen.

Miles turned to her. “I’m neglecting my duties as lady’s maid.” He had her out of her clothes and down to her shift in half the time she’d spent on him. “Do you want to take down your hair?”

“Please.”

With an ease of practice, she didn’t wish to think about, he removed all her hairpins and unraveled her braid, finger-combing her hair and massaging her scalp in a pleasure-inducing caress that raised goose bumps on her arms.

“And now your shift, my lady.” He had it off over her head, and before she registered what had happened, she stood before him just a naked as he.

Her arms crept toward her breasts and the juncture of her legs.

“Ah, ah…we’ll have none of that.” Miles placed her arms at her sides. “You have a lovely body, and I enjoy looking at it. I know you may feel hideously uncomfortable, but you need never hide from me.”

She straightened and held him in a direct gaze. “I feel wretchedly awkward and thoroughly embarrassed, but if the sight of me naked as a babe pleases you, I will strut around thusly at every available opportunity.”

He chuckled and placed a kiss in the middle of her forehead. “It will be sufficient if you forego clothing in our bedchamber before only your maid and your husband.”

She blushed. “Of course. That’s what I meant.”

He took her hand. “The bath awaits.”

She hadn’t realized that Miles meant to get in with her. Sometime later, with half the contents of the tub on the floor due to some boisterous application of soap that devolved into finding what parts of Lady Miles Everleigh were ticklish, she stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a warm towel.

Miles grinned at her from the tub as he held up a foot and soaped it.

She offered him a soft smile in return. “Are all men such little boys at heart?”

“I can’t speak for all men, but as a rule, I’ve found most things that cause embarrassment are best approached with an appreciation for the ridiculous and an ability to laugh at oneself. I’ll chance a guess you didn’t think of your nudity once.”

She thought about that as she toweled her hair dry. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

He glanced at her as he washed himself. “For what?”

She closed her eyes and let out a long breath before she opened them again and allowed her gaze to linger on him. “For your kindness. For your humor. For your patience with me.” She lifted a shoulder, unable—and unwilling—to put into words all the different reasons she’d found to fall in love with him. She sighed and wondered what his reaction would be should she tell him that.

His gray eyes met hers soberly. “You are welcome.” He continued to hold her in a steady, considering gaze. For a brief moment, Eleanor read something more profound in his expression, a warmth of feeling that answered her own, but he looked away and began to sluice water over his chest, and she decided what she had seen was a product of wishful thinking.