She scanned the short phrase, hunting for the derision or condescension, but found none. Habit told her she should pull back, dampen the impact of her statement, giggle or simper orsomething else equally nauseating, but she couldn’t. She was on the way to her wedding, and she wouldn’t restrain herself anymore.
“Because society uses ignorance as a tool for controlling women. If we understood pleasure, we’d capitalize on it. Were it not for the necessity of male seed to reproduce, we could eliminate the need for men altogether!”
Her heart was pounding, her ears ringing by the time she stopped to pull in a breath, and Will was staring at her, his pillowy lips parted as he blinked.
Now she’d done it. She’d broken his brain with her ranting, and he would abandon her and the Bumbletwits, or—
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I like talking, and I get carried away.”
“Don’t be sorry.” His rough voice was oddly soothing, warming her like mulled wine on a cold winter night. “I like listening.”
Adelaide had been wasting her time looking at lewd pictures and reading salacious stories. Was there anything more erotic than a man attending to a woman’s opinion on dismantling the patriarchy? She should capture this moment in an etching, but perhaps add him standing between her thighs, those soft eyes watching her over the curve of her belly as he lifted her skirts and bent between her legs—
Stop it, Adelaide!How her mother’s reprimand reached inside her mind from such a distance was a wonder she had no desire to explore. Before she could gracefully (ha!) exit, her mouth got the better of her. “What do you think?”
His brows knit together. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” She gestured around them. “I rarely ask the horses for their political opinions.”
The crease in his forehead grew deeper. “I… it’s not my place to have an opinion, miss.”
She felt the familiar pang of chagrin chased by disappointment. Once again, she’d been wildly inappropriatein her choice of conversation topics and had made thingsawkward.
“I’d best return to my room,” she said with a weak smile, and Will nodded, looking relieved to be rid of her presence. “Thank you for finding this—“ she plucked the book from his hand, “and for listening to this.” She made a circular gesture around her mouth and chuckled weakly.
He did not laugh.
Adelaide, graceless dolt that she was, curtsied. “Good night, Mr. Shipley.”
He blinked several times, no doubt overwhelmed by the barrage of words and sheer lack of sophistication, before responding. “Good night, Miss Kimball.”
Her pulse thundered as she raced to the inn, up the stairs and into her chamber. The Bumbletwits’ snores through the wall from the adjacent room couldn’t pierce the buzzing in her ears, nor diminish the pulsing ache between her thighs. She stumbled out of her dress, stripped off her corset and bustle, shed layer after layer until she tossed herself onto the bed sheets, too hot to cover herself, then squeezed her eyes shut.
Her mind immediately supplied the scenario she’d imagined earlier and her hands drifted down her legs to pull up her shift. In the absolving dark of the sweltering room, Adelaide pictured Will while he brought her pleasure with his mouth—she did not understand the specifics of such an act, as the articles she read never included sufficient detail for her taste. But she knew how to swirl her fingers in her wetness, to rub in tighter and tighter circles until the pressure built, quick and strong and—
She slapped her hand over her lips to contain her cry as her body tensed, then shuddered. A whimper escaped as she collapsed on the bed, her limbs limp and sated. As she lay in the sheen of her perspiration, her gaze drifted to the stable, its roofbarely visible through the window, and she wondered what Will was doing at that moment.
Chapter 4
Will swallowed his moanas his cock pulsed, cum spilling over his hand and onto his belly. His breath rasped in and out, and when the crisis finally passed, he dropped his head on the rolled-up coat he used as his pillow.
He hadn’t been able to keep Adelaide—Miss Kimball, you boorish oaf—out of his thoughts since she left his side. His subconscious had played a fiendish trick on him with a dream recreation of the scene in Adelaide’s book, although he somehow filled both male roles rather spectacularly. He’d taken himself in hand halfway through the night and again as the earliest light of dawn broke through the slats in the stable loft.
If she were merely pretty, he could put her out of mind. He had seen beautiful women before, but none who so perfectly fit the voluptuous ideal of femininity he’d first glimpsed in the art books his father kept in the vicarage library, hidden behind treatises on the Book of Lamentations. The Italian masters hadknown beauty when they captured it on canvas, and Will Shipley knew it when he saw her in the carriage.
But the way she’d spoken to him—his chest ached at the thought of it. No one ever treated him as though he were smart. Somehow, his profession precluded any semblance of intelligence on his part. But of course, he had ruined it by being so discombobulated by her brillianceandbeauty that he’d stammered like a simpleton.
A clamor outside the stable burst through Will’s melancholy thoughts, and he rushed to clean himself up as he listened.
“Doc got here right quick, didn’t he?”
A rumble of assent was accompanied by hoofbeats, the sound of leather being unstrapped. “Aye, but a woman like that isn’t happy with a country doc. She’s callin’ for someone fromLondon.” The stable hand said the last like it was a slur, and the first man chuckled.
“Cor, if it’ll stop her from screaming—”
Will had already clamored down the ladder and dropped the remaining distance to land just behind the speakers. “Who is screaming?” he barked, and the men jolted as they spun around.
The one holding the reins flapped his gums like a fish, and the other swallowed hard before answering. “’Twere the rich lady you came in with. She was wailin’ half the night, she was.”
