Chapter Seventeen
‘Oh, dear.’
He was kissing his way up the inside of her leg until his mouth settled on the place that gave her the most pleasure. He grazed the little bud of sin with his teeth before swirling his tongue around it, then dipped inside of her, thrusting just as he did when he kissed her on the mouth.
The pleasure was sudden and intense, and she arched her hips up to press herself against his mouth. She clutched the grass in her fists to anchor herself to the earth as the climax took her. It was almost too much to stand. Her heart would burst if it continued. But when she tried to escape he held her hips in place and took her even higher before the last release which left her limp, wet and ready for his entry.
He pulled away and knelt to undo his breeches. She rose as well, lunging to tackle him to the ground, climbing on to his body and pushing her skirts out of the way to take him inside her. Then she locked her feet behind his thighs and thrust hard and fast against him, moving on him with the same frenzy he had driven her to.
When she knew he was nearing the peak, she reached beneath the collar of his coat and dug her fingers into his shoulders before sealing his mouth with a musky kiss. She felt his climax in the shocked breath he gave and the sudden tensing of every muscle before he relaxed with a sigh.
She broke the kiss and relaxed as well, resting an elbow on the ground and her head on her fist. ‘Does the club have a painting for that as well?’
He sighed, staring up at the sky with a beatific smile. ‘If we do not, I shall paint one myself and hang it at tomorrow night’s masquerade, in your honour.’
‘We are going to London,’ she said, smiling at the fun of fancy dress.
He gave her a surprised look. ‘I have given you my opinion of your attending events at Vitium et Virtus.’
‘But surely, now that we are intimate, it would be all right,’ she said, running a coaxing finger down the front of his vest.
‘I do not see how,’ he said. ‘The club is no place for a lady.’
‘Yet I saw many women there,’ she said. ‘If you go without me, how am I to trust that there is nothing unsavoury occurring?’
‘You should not even know of the place, much less wonder what I am doing there,’ he replied.
She had meant it in jest, but his reply was hardly reassuring. ‘But I will wonder,’ she said. ‘And others will wonder why you are alone, since we have been married less than a month.’
‘No one will talk,’ he said, as if this was the only thing that should concern her. ‘I am the one who sees that no scandal ever escapes the place. The members are sworn to secrecy.’
‘Not talking about a thing is not the same as not knowing it,’ she said. She could already imagine the sidelong glances she would get when ladies of her acquaintance realised he had returned to town without her. ‘I do not understand why you think my scandals shall be public and yours shall be private.’
‘It was a rule you agreed to, when we married,’ he said.
As she remembered it, she had agreed to nothing. She had told him specifically of her plan to break any and all rules when she chose. ‘But that one makes no sense,’ she said. ‘And it hurts me when you go to that place without taking me along.’ That was more truth than she’d planned to reveal.
Her honesty did not seem to affect him in the slightest. He rolled her off him and on to the soft grass that had been their bed. Then he gave her a quick peck upon the cheek before standing and doing up his breeches. ‘I will be back on Thursday morning. The time will pass so quickly you will hardly know I’m gone.’ Then he left her, walking in the direction of the stables, probably to prepare his horse for the ride to London. She could hear him whistling a few bars of the song she’d been trying unsuccessfully to teach the bird. It was some consolation to think that one of them had learned it. Would that Frederick was so easy to educate in the things that really mattered.
She rose and shook the grass from her skirts, calling for the dog before walking with him back to the house. By the time she arrived, she had a plan to teach her husband the benefits of shared entertainments.
He would not like it, of course. At least, not at first. If there was truly nothing to fear from Vitium et Virtus and her husband’s continued fascination with it, then there was no reason she could not go as well. He would see her there and scold her. Most likely, he would become so angry that he would kiss her. Then they would go to the places there that other couples went when they wished to be alone, and he would forgive her everything.
But he would not just leave her behind, as Father had when he’d married Marietta. They belonged to each other now, just as the Bishop said at the wedding. They belonged together.
And if she should find that he only went to the club to escape her and to sample pleasures in private and fulfil desires that he did not wish to admit he had?
She did not want to think about it. She had seen him there twice. He had not been behaving any more improperly than he had when people could see him.
It was a shame, really. If one could not let down one’s guard when all around them were doing so, what was the point of going to such a place? To cause him to make even a small misstep would be a service. If it was possible to commit a sin when one was with one’s own wife. She was not sure.
She went into the house and up the stairs, with Sargent loping at her side, until she arrived at her bedroom where her maid was waiting. ‘There is to be a ball at Vitium et Virtus and I need a costume.’
‘Oh, no, ma’am.’ Polly was still smarting from their last adventure and the risks she had taken.
George gave her a frustrated frown. ‘Do not be so silly. I am going with my husband. If he owns the club, I will be perfectly safe there.’
‘I suppose,’ Polly said. ‘But you do not mean to look like a fallen woman again, I hope.’
‘I am not fallen,’ George said with a proud smile. ‘At least not in a way that society frowns upon. I am married now. And thus, I am allowed some latitude in my dress, am I not?’
Her maid had no argument against something that was so perfectly true.
George threw the doors of the wardrobe open wide. ‘It should not be necessary to buy a costume, I think. Perhaps something old can be re-trimmed.’ She pulled out a blue-green gown, the colour of the sea on a summer day. ‘This one. Pull off the sleeves, cut the hem until it looks like seaweed. Take the pearls from another gown and scatter them across the bodice. And make me a mask as well.’ She held it up against herself, swaying to admire the movement of the skirt. ‘I shall let down my hair and be a mermaid.’
And she would not bother with the nonsense of attracting other men to dally with. In no time at all, she would catch the only man she cared for, lure him to the rooms upstairs she had heard about, and bind him so tightly to her that he would never leave her again.