"I'm a good girl," she said.
He brought his lips one inch closer to hers. "I'm perfectly sure you are, my sweet," he said. "I will give you the whole of the rest of the night to show me just how good, shall I?"
"Ooh," she said, her eyes devouring his lips greedily.
He tasted hers briefly and lightly. He would have to go searching for Carter in the kitchen and request that his valet find other sleeping quarters for the night. A pity when the man had set up a truckle bed for himself with such painstaking care. But Carter would not enjoy having his slumber disturbed by the sounds of his master making sport in the adjacent bed.
He would look thoroughly disapproving, of course.And martyred.But he was used to it. It was not by any means the first time it had happened.
The buxom lady's maid who had been screeching like a dozen demented virgins in the carriage earlier was on her way upstairs before him several minutes later. He had overheard her telling the innkeeper's wife in the kitchen that her mistress had the headache and had taken a second dose of laudanum just
an hour before.
''Don't know what to do with herself, she don't, the poor lamb, Lord love her," the girl had said. "Never willing to take no medicine, she isn't. But even she couldn't refuse this evening. A nasty exhausting day it has been for her." She had cast a self-conscious glance in the direction of the marquess.
A pity, Lord Kenwood thought, following the maid up the stairs. It would have brightened the evening somewhat if the lady had come downstairs for her dinner. It would have been delightful to have witnessed her blushes as she set eyes upon him and remembered just how much of her he had seen that afternoon. And he would have liked to have a good look at her face. He had been rather too intent on her legs that afternoon to notice anything more than that she was lovely.
"I trust your mistress will wake up in the morning no worse for her ordeal," he said conversationally.
The maid, who had reached the landing at the top of the stairs, whirled around and blushed scarlet. The color marred the wholesome prettiness of her face just as it had that afternoon. "I do hope so, for sure, sir," she said, as breathless as if she had just climbed forty flights of stairs. "She should be sleepingsound,she should, with all that laudanum inside her. She did not eat a bite of dinner."
"Did she not?" he said, joining her on the landing and clasping his hands behind his back. Damnation, but he was quite foxed. The world was revolving slowly around him. "But I am sure your tender care will have put all to rights by the morning." He smiled.
He expected the girl to step aside to let him pass on to his room, or else to hurry along ahead of him to whichever room belonged to her mistress. But she stood as if mesmerized. Well, well, he thought, amused, it seemed that he might have had a choice of bedfellows tonight, especially with the mistress in a drugged stupor. But somehow, pretty as she undoubtedly was when not blushing, the maid seemed just too wholesome to be considered in terms of seduction.
"I will bid you good night, then," he said, sketching the girl a mocking little bow and then wishing that he had kept his head up and still.
She looked embarrassed and agitated. She backed along the corridor ahead of him, grasped hold of the handle of his door behind her back, opened it, backed inside, bobbed a curtsy, whispered, "Good night, sir. I do not wish to wake my lady, the lamb," and closed the door.
Lord Kenwood stood staring at it for a moment. Pox upon it, he must be even more foxed than he had realized. He had thought that was his room. If he had not happened to come upstairs at the same moment as the maid, he would have walked right in. And come face to face with Sleeping Beauty, obviously. It might have been mildly embarrassing, especially if she had woken up. She probably would have screeched the roof down. And who would ever believe that he had walked in upon her accidentally?
His image might have been severely tarnished. His approaches to women were never that unsubtle.
He turned to the door at his right hand and shook his head. When he opened the door, he could see that the room was in darkness. What an inn! No candles in the rooms, no locks on the doors. But he was not about to go downstairs again merely to fetch a candle. He did not need light in order to undress and climb into bed.
He groped his way past Carter's truckle bed, swore softly at his own drunken state when he discovered that his bed was against the wall opposite the one he thought he remembered its being against, removed all his clothes and dropped them in a heap on the floor—a habit that Carter for all his pointed looks and discreet coughs had never been able to break him of—and slipped thankfully between the sheets. He would rest for a while before the barmaid joined him. He was asleep almost before his head touched
the pillow.
* * *
Diana woke up at some time during the night—if she could be said to be awake. She gingerly examined the state of her head and found that it was no longer throbbing. But she did feel as if she had been wrapped about by thick layers of cotton. She felt very heavily drugged. She had merely touched the surface of consciousness and had only to let go in order to sink back into fuzzy nothingness again.
But she felt an unexpected stab of loneliness. Teddy was not there. If she were to reach out to where he had always lain beside her, he would not be there. He would never be there again. Not ever or ever or ever.
She let the fuzziness wash over her for a while. Shortly after her marriage she had started to comfort herself for her loneliness with her imagination. Her fantasies had sometimes taken on a shocking reality.
It was not that she had been dissatisfied with Teddy. He had been the best of husbands. And he had never neglected her, even physically. He had kissed her frequently—every time he left the house and every time he returned to it and every night in bed before he settled for sleep.Loud, smacking, and affectionate kisses on the lips.
And never a week had passed without his exercising his conjugal rights. More often than not it had been twice a week. She had always known when it was about to happen. She would feel his tension beside her on the bed, as if his baser nature—his sexuality—were at war with his better nature. When he had turned to her, it had always been almost apologetically.
It had always followed the same pattern. He would raise her nightgown with one hand, lift himself on
top of her and between her thighs, and work vigorously in her for perhaps two minutes. He would roll away from her almost immediately afterward, relax for a minute or two, and then pat her affectionately on one bare buttock, lower her nightgown, kiss her smackingly on the lips, and tell her that she was a good wife to him and that he was sorry to be such a trouble to her. She had given up after the first few months telling him that he was no trouble at all.
There had been nothing at all distasteful or unpleasant about their sexual life. But there had often been an ache in her,an emptiness, an unfulfilled something when she lay beside him wakeful after he had dropped into a sleep of contentment.
And so the fantasies had developed. Teddy became idealized in her imagination. Sometimes he became unrecognizable. He became taller and slimmer, his muscles firmer andmore welldeveloped. His face became more angular and handsome, his eyes bluer and more intense. His hair became thicker and wavier. His voice became deeper.
