He groaned and she dug her fingers into the muscles.
“That feels so good, Maggie. Everything feels good when you touch me.”
Her heart skipped a beat and those butterflies took flight in her abdomen again—simply from touching his calves and ankles. She moved to his other boot and worked it off his foot as well.
When she was finished, she stared dumbly at the bed. She needed to stop touching him. She needed to return to her own chamber.
“I can’t find the ring, Sebastian. How am I going to break things off with your uncle if I don’t have a ring to return to him?” Her hands moved to massage his other leg. In all honesty, limiting herself to his calves exhibited a good deal of self-restraint on her part. Because she wanted to climb onto the bed and lie beside him. She wanted to…
This was not like her. None of this was like her.
“We’ll go up tomorrow,” he mumbled, eyes closed. “It won’t go anywhere. Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”
“What if we don’t?”
“Trust me,” he muttered. While she mulled over his statement, a slow even snoring sound broke into her thoughts. Margaret slid her hands to the end of his foot and stepped backward. After scrawling instructions for him to meet her outside the servants’ entrance at dawn, and then adding that if he was not there, she would leave without him, she extinguished the taper and crept out of the room.
And then the oddest thought struck her.
Did George’s little leather pouch contain the same licentious items? And if so, how often did he have cause to use them?
16
Search Party
“What are you doing?”
Margaret practically jumped out of her skin when Penelope’s voice broke the silence in the corridor.
“Nothing.” Margaret glanced behind her and then back at her sister-in-law, attempting and failing to summon an explanation for her presence outside of Lord Rockingham’s chamber.
Penelope blinked and then yawned. And instead of staring at Margaret suspiciously, her emerald eyes appeared tired and worried.
“Are you all right?” Margaret forgot her own troubles upon seeing her sister-in-law looking so frazzled.
“I’m exhausted. Louella is teething and has been fevered most of the night and nurse just sent word that Creighton feels warm now.” Penelope swayed and then caught herself with a moan. “This makes for three nights in a row.”
“Can’t Hugh help you?”
“He went up earlier.” Penelope glanced up and down the hall, apparently just now wondering why Margaret was walking about late at night. “Did you decide to try again?”
“Shh…” Margaret took Penelope’s hand. “I noticed he was drooling more than usual this afternoon.”
“Mr. Kirkley?”
Margaret chuckled. “Your son. I’ll go upstairs with you. If Creighton allows it, I’ll rock him, and you can go back to bed.”
“You’re always helping me, Margaret. I do wish you’d lean on me more often.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.” Margaret turned toward the stairway that led to the nursery.
“That’s the thing, though, Margaret. You’re never any trouble. And I know you disapproved of what I did, before Hugh and I married, but I was hoping you’d forgiven me by now, I’ve been hoping for a very long time that you and I could be friends.”
“But we are!”
Penelope waved a hand through the air and resumed their climb up the stairs. “Only because I force myself on you. Which normally wouldn’t bother me, but we are sisters. And sometimes—“
“Sometimes, what?” Margaret felt quite taken aback. They were friends, were they not?
