Lydia groaned, falling back, fighting the blankets to spread her legs wider so she could take more. Harriet leaned over, hand working with a lazy, determined rhythm that was bound to drive Lydia mad. When she leaned lower still and swirled a tongue over Lydia’s nipple, Lydia fisted the sheets in her hands and cursed.
Harriet’s laugh was a caress on her collarbone; her hand a piston; her mouth silken and hot as it slipped down Lydia’s quivering belly. She nipped once at Lydia’s hip, just a tease—and then her tongue was parting Lydia’s slickened flesh and finding the hard, hot little center and stroking in time with the relentless motion of her hand. “Do that again,” Lydia begged. “Deeper… harder—please…” Everything she asked for Harriet gave, and more, and it was eons or maybe seconds later that Lydia cried out and the world shivered apart.
Afterward, she ebbed back into herself, pulling in what felt like the deepest breath she’d taken in years. “Seems like you needed that,” Harriet murmured. She’d only come partway back up the bed, her head pillowed against Lydia’s side.
“You have no idea.” Lydia stroked a hand into Harriet’s hair, chestnut and silver slipping against her fingers, then locking tight as Lydia gripped it—not hard, but with insistence, a gentle fist at the back of her neck. “And you? What is it that you need?”
“Oh,” Harriet said airily. “I’ll take anything.”
“Will you now?” Oh, if that wasn’t a sentence to tempt a good English girl to resurrect her best debaucheries. Desire flooded back in, and Lydia pulled harder on Harriet’s hair. “Up with you,” she said sternly.
From the catch in Harriet’s breath, that was the right tone to take. Lydia dropped her hand to Harriet’s hips and guided her up, so that soon Lydia was flat on her back and Harriet—tall, proud Harriet, with a flush running down her neck to the top of her lovely breasts, and her hair thoroughly mussed by Lydia’s hand—was kneeling with her thighs on either side of Lydia’s head.
“Hold still,” Lydia said.
She took her time to settle the coverlet around her feet for warmth, and a pillow plumped beneath her head for comfort. Then she looked at where Harriet’s lovely pussy was waiting, just inches away, and licked her lips.
Harriet, watching, shivered.
“Cold?” Lydia drawled.
“A little,” Harriet breathed. “But I like it.”
Lydia had suspected she might. The embers from the hearth limned one side of her in gold, but the other was silvered with moonlight pouring in the windows. Lydia herself wanted to be wrapped in warmth—to be seized, gripped, pinned, held, and pressed down by the weight of a whole other person. But for Harriet—she remembered their conversation in the ballroom, about walls and fields and feeling trapped. Trying to fit your heart into a cage could hurt, when your heart kept beating against the bars to get out. “Put your hands on the headboard,” she said. “And hold on.”
As soon as Harriet gripped the wood, Lydia raised her head and feasted.
Harriet gasped, but Lydia barely heard her. Her whole world was in her mouth: sweet slickness, warm skin, softly curling hair against her cheeks. Her palms pressed Harriet’s thighs wider as she licked, tonguing her with abandon and chasing every throb and pulse to its source. She’d always enjoyed this, but tonight it felt like a sharp and urgent need—to feel Harriet’s flesh yield beneath her mouth and hands, to feel her thighs shake, to look up and see Harriet had pressed one hand against her mouth to muffle the series of keening cries Lydia could feel even down so low on her body.
She surfaced briefly. “If you want to make noise, I would be delighted.”
Harriet squeaked and shivered, but shook her head. “Mr. Dixit might hear,” she gasped. “He—he doesn’t do well—with strange noises at night.”
“Then we shan’t disturb him.” She shifted, rising to her knees in the bed. “Turn around for me, won’t you?”
Harriet nodded desperately, and soon Lydia was pressed up against her back, both of them facing the window with its expanse of winter wildness. Lydia put one hand up—gently—over Harriet’s mouth, and slid the other around a hip and between her thighs. Two fingers easily slipped into the heat there, and Harriet’s hips began rolling insistently, hungrily. “That’s good,” Lydia purred into her ear. “Show me how quiet you can be.”
Harriet was panting for breath, hot puffs of air against Lydia’s palm. Her hips and Lydia’s fingers made a whisper of wet sound as Harriet chased her pleasure. Lydia held on as she bucked, the rhythm growing wild as the ecstasy approached.
Lydia leaned forward near her ear. “Remember,” she said. “Not a sound. Not a single cry—or else they’ll know you’re being fucked. They’ll know how hard you can come after getting your pussy licked, around someone’s fingers. My fingers.”
She punctuated the last phrase by speeding up her strokes—just a hair, but it was enough. Harriet fell to pieces in her arms, muscles straining tight and her head thrown back against Lydia’s shoulder.
Afterward, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and satiety, Lydia’s last thought before drifting into sleep was: whatever trouble this night brought, it was more than worth it.
4
Harriet couldn’t remember the last time she’d been lucky enough to wake up in somebody’s arms. She’d forgotten how much she craved it, and Lydia seemed inclined to agree. She didn’t spend every night at Thornycroft after that first time—perhaps one in every three—but she always seemed as eager to stay as Harriet was to have her, and as reluctant to leave on the nights when Harriet knew they’d be separated.
The weeks before the Poultry Fair flew by, and then it was the day before Christmas Eve, and Lydia and Harriet and Mrs. Crangle and the staff were all up before dawn to prepare. By the time the winter sun peeked its lazy head above the horizon, Harriet and Lydia were driving toward Bickerton with a cart full of willow-work cages, clean straw, and even cleaner chickens.
A spacious tent had been set up on the green across from St. Gilbert’s: workmen were fixing the tent-poles in place. As soon as they entered the tent, a dozen pairs of eyes swiveled up and pinned them in place.
Harriet froze, surprised by the wash of hostility.
Lydia paid them no attention, but carted the cage with Walter and Boudicca (who had developed something of a particular tendre) over to a space on the end of a center row—central, but room to the side for them to do any work needed. One by one they moved the cages from the cart to the tent—but the animosity in all those watching pairs of eyes only grew.
Finally, all the chickens were in place, and the cages labeled neatly with each bird’s breed and class. Harriet was pinning the last label in place on Minerva and Joan when a stern voice spoke from behind her. “Does that say Bickerton Grey?”
