Rules for Being a Mistress (21 page)

“I suppose,” she said contemptuously, “your dirty governess was smooth as glass.”

Actually, his governess had been inordinately hairy. He had almost balked when she rolled down her stockings for the first time. And the hair in her armpits had been as thick as the spreading black bush between her stout thighs. Hers was a body only a desperate virgin male could enjoy. There was no comparison between that distant, nightmarish memory and the present reality of these lovely legs.

“You’re beautiful,” he assured her. “I was only joking.”

He opened her breeches at the knee band and began kissing her kneecaps as if he were in love with them. This, obviously, was no sin. It didn’t even feel good. Her feet were on either side of him, resting on the ottoman, her shoulders were flat on the sofa, her bottom was resting on his knees, and, as he nuzzled her knees like a madman, his face was directly in line with her womanhood. In fact, he was completely ignoring the parts of her body in which other men showed the most interest. She felt ridiculous and annoyed in this absurd position.

She began to question his sanity.
Just my luck. The only man ever to set my skin on fire, and he’s a madman.
Then he began running his tongue along the back of her knees, and she thought,
I must be mad, too.
When he licked her behind the knees, for some strange reason she felt warm all over. Parts of her he hadn’t even touched began to prickle and sting. She began to squirm with pleasure. She couldn’t help it.

He lifted her shirt—his shirt—and kissed her belly as if she were a baby. Except that, instead of making a raspberry, he kissed her navel. Hers was an odd little button of flesh, rather than a divot. She had always thought it shamefully unattractive. She was horrified and embarrassed when he suddenly took it between his lips. He tickled it keenly with the tip of his tongue, making her giggle as helplessly as a baby. He sucked it and bit it until she screamed at him to stop. He said it was like a baroque pearl, whatever that was. “Very tasty,” he murmured. “I wonder what other little buttons you are hiding.”

Instinctively, she crossed both arms over her breasts, but he began unbuttoning her breeches. “Ben!” she shrieked, trying to push him away.

“Do not be alarmed, madam,” he said. “I am simply removing your breeches. As I have no intention of removing mine, you are perfectly safe.”

Her green eyes were enormous. “You’re not going to touch me
there!”

“My dear innocent, I am going to kiss you there.”

“Ben!”

He had the flap at the front of the breeches completely unbuttoned, but he had not yet uncovered her. “Why not?” he asked, softly. “It is as much a part of you as your feet or this sweet little button here.” He swooped down like a hawk and kissed her belly button again. “If it’s all right for me to kiss you here, why not here?”

It was like trying to argue with a Jesuit.

He snuck the breeches down over her hips as he was tickling her navel. Typical male trickery. She felt his hand move between her legs, and, instinctively, her thighs closed around it like iron, trapping him. She moistened her lips nervously. “Ben,” she protested faintly.

“Only a caress,” he promised softly. “Let me in, sweetheart. Trust me.”

His soft, deep voice had the power to melt her bones. He pushed her unresisting legs apart. She squeezed her eyes closed and braced herself, as if for a violent attack. Benedict caught his breath as he looked at her. Tucked between her creamy, slender thighs was the neatest, prettiest little nest he had ever seen. The fine, silky hair was golden-rose in the firelight. It moved delicately as he breathed. He couldn’t resist nudging the soft thighs farther apart to reveal the lips, pink and glistening as the inside of a seashell. She was so tiny he could not imagine making love to her without causing her great pain.

“You expect me to trust you,” she whispered, “when you behave like this?”

“Yes, I do.”

With the utmost care, he parted the delicate folds of silk, skimming his fingertips lightly along the fine, soft hair. He caressed her softly as if she were as fragile as a butterfly, and in the softness, he found the tiny pearl protected by its hood of silky flesh. When he touched her there, she whimpered in the back of her throat. Soon she was so warm, so silky, and so wet, that he couldn’t resist tasting her with his mouth. He had never tasted woman flesh before.

“You taste like honey,” he told her, wild-eyed.

“I think you’re crazy,” she said, squirming in an obvious effort to bring his mouth to her again. He took the hint.

With his tongue he parted the innermost, most delicate furrow of her body. It would have been churlish to used his fingers in such a fragile place, of course, but the intimacy was excruciating. Pinned like a butterfly between his mouth and his knees, she quivered helplessly. “Please,” she begged. Then he found the little button that seemed connected to every nerve in her body, and she began to moan for release in earnest. Her slender haunches moved up and down luxuriously as if she were bobbing in a gentle ocean. Her hands went to his hair.

The first crisis stole over her little by little, in tiny, lapping waves. She hardly knew what was happening. A second climax, more powerful than the first, wrested a moan from her lips. The third shattered her into pieces. She collapsed, crying out shamelessly.

While she was still dazed and helpless, he laid her back gently on the sofa, then climbed up next to her. They were squeezed close together on the narrow couch. He lay on his right side and gently explored her with his left hand. He caressed her face and neck and shoulders like a blind man. Finally, he untied the strings of her shirt and eased it down over her breasts. She hated her breasts, but she was too warm and lazy to resist him.

Benedict was enchanted by the pale cups, each topped by a tiny, impossibly pink nipple. These were not the perfectly rounded breasts of statues. They had a shape all their own, and the fact that he was the only man in the world who would ever be allowed to see them made him very happy. The breastbone between them was as delicate as a birds. He walked his fingers down the miniature staircase, then back up again.

“They’re small,” she apologized.

Tiny would have been the accurate word, but she had her pride.

He played with her breasts for a long time, making the nipples erect, then feasting on them. They tasted as tart as wild strawberries. Finally, he settled down on top of her. She felt something massive and too hard to be flesh trapped against her belly.

“Are you not going to undress?” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

He must have known she could no longer resist him, but he seemed to take a perverse sort of pleasure in denying himself. He laid on top of her, fully clothed. She could even feel his shoes hard against her naked feet. Her thighs were parted for him. She took him in her arms and he rested his head in the nook of her neck and shoulder.

He didn’t kiss her.

After an eternity, he got up and went to pour them both some brandy.

She was suddenly furious with him. She sat up and pulled his shirt back up over her shoulders. It barely covered the soft triangle between her legs, but, at the moment, she didn’t know where the rest of her clothes were.

“I suppose,” she said, “that nasty governess taught you that dirty little trick!”

“What trick?” he asked innocently.

Innocently!

She refused to answer him. He knew perfectly well what she meant. She was obviously not the first woman he had ravished with his mouth.

“Oh, that trick.” Smugly, he settled down on the sofa next to her with his brandy. He put his feet up on the ottoman as if he were putting the harmless piece of furniture back in its place. It really annoyed her that he hadn’t even taken his shoes off. “Actually,” he said airily, “I learned that at Eton. We practiced on fruit. Why do you think it’s called Eton?”

She frowned at him.

“What’s Eton?” she demanded, imagining a nightmarish place of unrestrained and unremitting debauchery.

He laughed until he choked. Becoming frightened, she set down her glass and pounded him on the back, forgetting that she was naked. “Oh, my dearest girl,” he said fondly, when he had recovered. “I do adore you.”

“But what’s Eton?” she insisted, snatching up a cushion to cover herself. “What the hell kind of a place is it?”

“Eton,” he said gravely, “is where great men send their sons to be educated.”

“You learned that
at school?
” she cried, appalled.

“We of Eton carry on a tradition of excellence going back for centuries,” he explained.

He laughed. He was a young man when he laughed.

Nora took one look at her young lady’s flushed face and sparkling eyes. “He’s done for you then,” she said grimly.

“You have a dirty mind, Nora Murphy,” she said primly, walking up the stairs with her head held high.

“Where’s the money, then?” Nora demanded. “If it’s only reading you are?”

Cosima paused on the stairs. She had forgotten to get her three shillings.

“Go boil your head, Nora,” she said.

The next morning Pickering pretended he had seen and heard nothing the night before. The new day was a tabula rasa as far as he was concerned. He counted his blessings that the mysterious and rather noisy Mr. Cherry had not been invited to stay on as a guest.

Benedict ate his breakfast with a hearty appetite. He read his newspapers and correspondence as usual. He bathed and dressed, and was on the verge of leaving the house when a Dr. Grantham called.

White-haired and handsome, Dr. Grantham was a society physician. Most of his patients were females, and his suave and sympathetic air inspired the fair sex to confide their most delicate issues to him. To Benedict he looked like the typical sort of leech that makes most of his money catering to rich females who fancy themselves nervous.

Dr. Grantham came straight to the point. He wanted Sir Benedict to commit Lady Agatha Vaughn to the Royal Mineral Water Hospital for treatment. As Lady Agatha refused to go, and “the daughter”—presumably Miss Vaughn—refused to make her ladyship go, Dr. Grantham had no choice but to apply to a higher power. He hoped that Sir Benedict Wayborn might use his natural authority over the ladies to bring them into compliance.

Benedict looked at him in amazement. “I have no such authority, I assure you.”

The doctor’s amazement was equal. “Are you not a relative, Sir Benedict?”

“I am very distant cousin, Dr. Grantham,” Benedict replied.

The doctor smiled again. “Excellent! If you will just sign these papers, I will be able to remove Lady Agatha to the hospital at once.”

“I’m not signing anything,” said Benedict. “If Lady Agatha doesn’t want to go to the hospital, I certainly will not make her.”

“But you must understand, Sir Benedict. Her ladyship is in no condition to make these decisions. Her wits are fragile. She is actually afraid of the hospital—a quite irrational fear, I assure you! As for Miss Vaughn…”

“What about Miss Vaughn?” Benedict said sharply.

“I’m afraid the young lady becomes dangerously excited on the subject. I sometimes think Miss Vaughn would benefit from a few months of quiet serenity in my private asylum in Wiltshire.” He shrugged. “But, then, she is half-Irish, and breeding will tell.”

Benedict decided he did not like Dr. Grantham. “Lady Agatha is frail, to be sure,” he conceded. “But that doesn’t mean she is incompetent.”

“All women are incompetent,” said the doctor. “We men must think for them. If there were a man in the picture, Lady Agatha would be hospitalized. And, then, there is the matter of my fee,” he went on with a delicate cough. “I can not be expected to treat Lady Agatha indefinitely without being paid.”

Benedict sighed. What was the girl doing with the money he had given her?

“Send me the bill,” he said. “It will be your final bill.”

Dr. Grantham gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I believe my relative should be in the care of a specialist,” Benedict said tactfully. “In any case, I would like a second opinion.”

The doctor seemed thunderstruck. “Second opinion! I never heard of such a thing.”

He went off in a huff.

Later in the day, when Benedict returned home, Pickering informed him that a Miss Vaughn had called while he was out. Pickering did not approve of young ladies who called on single gentlemen. It was not respectable, in his opinion. Benedict was not interested in his opinion. He walked through the park to Lady Agatha’s house.

Cosima was furious with him. She had hired Dr. Grantham back, and she made it plain that Sir Benedict’s interference was unwelcome.

“The man is a quack,” he said angrily. “Your mother needs a real physician, not some spa practitioner. Dr. Grantham is a charlatan.”

“Dr. Grantham,” Cosima replied angrily, “is the best doctor in Bath. All the high-born ladies use him. I want my mother to have the best. And, anyway, it’s none of your business. She’s
my
mother, and
I
will decide what is best for her. You stay out of it!” She hissed and spluttered at him like an angry house cat. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after my mother!”