A rustle. A cloth on her bottom, wiping her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” His low voice.
She used every ounce of strength she had to turn her neck and look behind and up at him. His trousers had been pulled up. His cravat was gone. His eyes were on her bottom and there was such tenderness in his face as the cloth—it must be his cravat, she realized—went over her skin. He wiped her bottom for far longer than was surely necessary. When he was finally done, his eyes met hers and there was a sheepishness there.
“Don’t be sorry,” she managed to say. “Thank you.” She turned her face back to the mattress and her hands found her nightdress hiked up to her armpits and she wiggled and brought it down over her bottom.
“Was that all right, Phee?”
She gurgled. She turned on her side. Then onto her back. He was buttoning his fall, not looking at her.
“All right is not the word I would use.”
He looked up. “All right is not a word—”
“—it’s two words,” she finished.
They both laughed. She sat up and pulled her nightdress down over her legs.
“George, if you were a stallion and I owned you, I could make such a lot of money studding you out.”
He sank to his knees in front of her, his arms on either side of her thighs, cradling her as she sat on the edge of the bed. His eyes were so dark as he looked up at her.
“You do own me, Phee.”
No. No. No. Too late.
“Silly,” she said and forced a giggle and stood, pushing him back and walking to the window. “Do you think you’ll have much trouble getting down or will I have to sneak you downstairs and out the door?”
“Phee.” His voice was anguished. She turned around and shook her head.
“Don’t say anything. I think you had better not say anything. And I know that’s difficult for you, but it really would be for the best, you know. And horses don’t talk, do they? So we better not. Just know that . . . this mare was very satisfied with her stallion. Yes?”
He came toward her and there was a moment when she thought he might kiss her and she would be lost all over again. But he just walked past her and leaned out the windowsill and looked down.
“I’ll climb down.”
“Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
Are you, George? Haven’t we been doing something very dangerous? I know I started it, but still. You didn’t need to give me any more lessons. You paid your forfeit last week.
“Good night, George.”
His leg was over the windowsill when he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Then the other leg was over and she couldn’t see him. He must have slid part of the way down because his feet were safely on the ground when she looked out. He turned his face up and held up a hand. She held up her hand, too. And then he was gone into the night, his feet crunching on the gravel.
Tomorrow? She wasn’t going to see him tomorrow. She went to her bed. A damp cravat lay there. She picked it up. Well, she’d rinse this out as best as she could in her basin and give it back to him tomorrow. Or it would join her handkerchief collection.
Seventeen
George sipped his tea and tried not to stare at the place where Phoebe’s body met the chair. Although sheathed in a sprigged muslin that gave no information about its beautiful shape, her bottom now lingered in his imagination at all times.
Oh, no. He had conjured those gorgeously rounded velvet peach-halves and his cock was springing to attention.
Think of something else, lecher.
