Milton took her arm when she emerged. He led her straight into his waiting carriage, where she gingerly sat down to stare out the window, her thoughts flying hither and thither, scattering like barleycorn. Her mind returned to the hayloft in her story, adding new details she’d not considered before.
Those details alarmed her only more.
***
Milton willed himself not to grab and kiss his betrothed silly on their ride back. Those smart spectacles of hers perched on her pert nose above her long, tapered neck … The swell of bosom he’d explored in such stunning detail just this morning … Delicious images rose to mind even as his cock rose in response.
He continued to rake her figure with his gaze. “I’m sure you’ve had a trying day of it, Miss Winthrop, what with the final fitting you endured and such thorough baring of your flesh.”
She remained stubbornly silent, staring out into London’s darkening streets as if lost in private thought. Milton grinned. No doubt the lady pondered Damon’s cock.
“I have just the thing to settle you, Lizzie.” He spoke softly enough she wouldn’t hear. “And shall deliver it to you myself, tonight.”
Milton imagined the faint click of her room opening to him, his footsteps padding silently across her floor. She’d not see thecoin he’d use to charm her father’s footman to allow him entry to her bedchamber.
Lizzie would know none of this. She would only know once he arrived.
Elizabeth lay atop her bedclothes that night, unable to fall asleep. She felt raw and exposed, embarrassed not only by her new lack of hirsute parts, but by the ache of her bruised buttocks and the ‘love bites’ that still marked her neck.
The Baron’s lewd insinuations and admittedly masculine bulk inside the carriage today had made her insides quake. Her eyes had traveled from his boots to his thighs to the bulge at his waist one too many times for her to think him the least bit handsome. He was loathsome only.Loathsome!
She was embarrassed, too, by her reaction to what Miss Li’s maid, Evie, had done, because Elizabeth had been aroused, though she’d never let Milton know that. The fact he’d all but watchedherwatchEvie take that man into her mouth …Oh!She bit her fist, smothering a cry of fury and desire that maddened.
Elizabeth pressed her head into her pillow, pouring her frustration into the ticking in a string of smothered abuse:that blasted, sodding, wretch of a man can go to the devil, the evil, filthy, whoreson!
“Lizzie,” a voice whispered low and sudden at her ear, making her freeze and cease her cursing. “I have brought you something.” She rolled to her back and opened her mouth to?—
“Shh.” Milton’s hand clamped down, silencing her scream. “You mustn’t protest, darling, not when I’ve come to soothe your sore flesh.” He dimpled a grin at her—how had she not noticedher devil had dimples?—then rolled her back onto her stomach and lifted her night-rail to her waist.
He sucked in a breath. “Oi, sweet, no wonder you’re in pain.”
She lay there in shock, arse bared to the very man who’d spanked it, as he began to rub something cool into one cheek, easing the sting considerably. He continued to apply salve to both halves.
“There,” he soothed. “Better, yes? I should have instructed Li’s girls to treat you with this, Lizzie, forgive me. You quite upset my plans, you know.”
“Plans?” Her voice remained muffled by her pillow, though her body relaxed into a delicious, dead weight as he kneaded more salve into her buttocks.
“Plans, yes,” he told her. “You are continually disrupting them, my dear.”
“I do no such thing…” Her eyes closed, his warm touch and deep voice lulling her into a relaxed, sleepy state.
“Ah, but you do, Lizzie.” He pulled her braid to one side and tickled her ear with his breath. “You continually surprise me.”
“Milton.” She felt drowsy and scattered, half-lucid at best. “Why is Miss Li invited to our wedding? And do I dream you here in my room?”
“Because she is family,” he told her. “And I am here because I wish to ease your pain.”
“But she is not?—”
“She is the family Ichose, not the family I was born to. Just as I have chosen you to be my family too, Elizabeth.”
“Mmm…” She moaned into the pillow, succumbing to his ministrations. His knuckles traced her jawbone, then softly trailed her neck, shoulder, and waist until he landed at her hip and slowly slid his hand across her bottom, pressing at her cleft before he lowered it between her now smooth thighs.
She slipped into delirium.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Elizabeth awoke with a start. She was still in her night-rail, but below the covers, her body felt decidedly less sore. She could not recall Milton leaving. Had she slumbered while he remained in her room? Perhaps she truly had but dreamt him.
