“Yes, yes, that’s fine.” She began to move toward a gilt-edged door. “Wait. I meant out here.”
“Can’t do that, my lord. Services are performed in private rooms.”
“Oh, I see.” He followed her through the door and down a hallway. She opened a door to a bedchamber.
Once in the room, Lydia took off her shawl and George observed the dress underneath was transparent and her small nipples were likely rouged. He looked away quickly.
“Nancy told me you’re a friend of His Grace’s.” Her voice was suddenly low and honeyed.
George felt sweat beading on his head despite the fact that he wasn’t wearing a wig. “Uh, yes, quite.”
Lydia put a hand on his chest and looked up at him. “You want what he wants, my lord?”
He stepped away so Lydia’s hand was no longer touching him. “Perhaps you might tell me what that is?”
She took a step closer to him again, but this time she didn’t touch him. “He likes talk, too. He likes me to talk about what I do with other men. The naughty things they ask of me.”
George stepped away again. “Does he really?” A stinging drop of perspiration fell into his eye, making him blink rapidly.
“Yes, my lord.”
“And then what? You do those things to him?”
“Then I touch him. Down here.” She darted forward and grabbed George’s crotch. He was quite relieved he was not engorged. Just as he had done earlier that day with Lady Starling, he put a very tight grip on Lydia’s wrist and moved her hand off his cock.
“Keep telling me,” he said in his sternest voice, “what you do to him.”
She wrenched her wrist away. “I told you, my lord,” she hissed. She nursed her wrist in her other hand.
“You touch him?”
“I talk to him, and I stroke his cock. Until he spends. Or, at least, I used to.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. But I can do anything you like.”
“Tell me, does it get any bigger when it’s hard?”
She studied him. “I see. You’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
“One of those men that . . . you know. Want other men.”
Oh. His soft cock when she grabbed it. His interest in Thornwick’s sexual habits and the size of Thornwick’s member.
Suddenly, George wished hewereone of those men who wanted other men. How deucedly simpler this would be. You knew where you stood with a man. A man wouldn’t get engaged behind your back. A man wouldn’t cry and say it was nothing. Of course, there would be no children which would be a pity in the long run as he would hate for his cousin to inherit everything when he had worked so hard restoring the barony. There would also have to be the most fearful secrecy given the law and a possible death sentence, although it would be unlikely a lord would face that if he practiced a modicum of discretion. And George would hate to give up breasts. Even now, with no intention of dallying with this courtesan, he was glad she had breasts. They just made women so beautiful.
A little crying was worth it, if it meant breasts. Like Phoebe’s.
But wait.A glimmering possibility.
“Is Thornwick one of those men?”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, my lord, but His Grace is not.” Her tone was flat. Then she said coyly, “But perhaps a strong, handsome man like you could persuade him otherwise.”
“But if he wanted you to talk about other men . . .”
