He hadn’t moved or twitched when she sat up so she slid herself out from under his hand. She felt a little sore, but not much. There was some stickiness between her legs. She needed to get back to her room and get cleaned up.
She turned down the lamp at the bedside, scooped up her nightdress from the floor, and crossed the room on tiptoes. She opened the communicating door to the other bedchamber, the one she had deliberately kept unoccupied by other guests so she could use it to access his room. In the darkness, her hand found the dressing gown she had left on a chair here. She put on the dressing gown and crept from the room and the guest wing and crossed the gallery.
Only when she was safely back in her own bedchamber and taking off her dressing gown so she could clean between her legs did she realize she had picked up the earl’s shirt and left her own nightdress on the floor of his bedchamber.
She held the shirt to her face. It was full of his scent and induced an ache in her chest and between her legs.
This is the smell of the only man I’ve ever wanted, the only one I’ll ever have.
A familiar coldness brushed against her thigh. She reached down to pet the warm velvet head attached to that wet nose. Lavinia had been very good, staying quiet despite being alone in the room at night, something she wasn’t used to. But now Lavinia was following her bloodhound’s instinct, interested in the odor of an unfamiliar person on her mistress’ body, wanting to smell the shirt, too.
She stroked her dog’s ears.
Tonight, I was told I was a good girl, too, La.
She folded the shirt and tucked it under one of her bed pillows. The morning would be the time to find a safe way to get rid of it.
She cleaned herself and put on a cotton nightdress. She got into her cold bed, lay on her side, and hugged her knees to her chest. She could hear the sounds of Lavinia settling herself on the carpet next to the bed. All was as it ordinarily was.
But she didn’t want to go back to ordinary just yet.
Despite knowing what she was doing was foolishness, she took the shirt out from under her pillow and held it to her face and inhaled.
Yes, yes, yes. Him. That smell of him. Oh.
She had done it.
She had coupled with him. With Phineas Edge. She had bedded the earl. Or he had bedded her.
It was a pity she didn't still keep a diary because she would have had a great deal to record in it. About what he had said to her. And how his lips and skin and hair and cock had felt. How he had touched her. But a diary’s purpose was to help one remember, and she didn’t need help remembering. This night would be etched into her memory forever.
Of course, the coupling would have held no meaning for Phineas. To him, she was one of many. Merely an unexpected diversion. A wench, forgotten as soon as he closed his eyes.
She hadn’t intended to deceive him but it had worked out so well, hadn’t it? He might have had some small scruple against fornicating with his friend’s sister. As it was, he hadn’t wanted her virginity even thinking she was a serving girl. She had had to make the seriousness of her intent perfectly clear to him.
And now she must make sure the earl never discovered the wanton woman he had bedded tonight was Lady Caroline Haskett.
She would continue to stay in her bedchamber while he was here in Sudbury. Last night, she had begged off greeting the guests and dining with them, pleading a headache to her father. Tomorrow morning, Caroline would have the marquess come to her bedchamber so he could see she was well, and she would tell him she was too shy to come out of her room with her brother’s friends here.
Her father wouldn’t like her asking for something, but he wouldn’t force her to join the guests. He might even be glad she wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his son’s friends. She would stay safe here in her own bedchamber until Phineas and her brother and the other guests had done their shooting and returned to town.
She would be sorry to have missed seeing and talking to her brother, but it couldn’t be helped. She would write a letter to Edmund once he was back in London to convince him to come to the manor at Christmastide. He hadn’t had a Christmas in Sudbury since Mother had died. And surely he would come alone then.
Yes, Phineas Edge would never know. There was no reason he would ever see her again, there was no need for their paths ever to cross. If he hadn’t recognized her tonight, he would never recall their first meeting.
It had been just a few minutes, after all. Over a dozen years ago.
Phineas had been the first man to ask her to dance at her first and only ball of her first and only Season. Every other man she had ever met—and she admitted there had been very few—had failed to meet the very exacting physical standard he had created in her mind that night.
His thick brown hair with a premature sprinkling of silver. Just at the temples back then. Tonight, by lamplight, she had seen his hair was now almost all silver and that was even more attractive to her. And his chest hair had flecks of silver in it too. Of course, she hadn’t known about his chest hair twelve years ago. But now that she had felt that virile pelt, pressed her own hands and breasts to it, it was hard to put out of her mind.
At Lady Huxley’s ball, she had had only the merest whiff of his scent during their dance. She had instead been taken by his roguish hazel eyes that met hers as his words flowed over her. And the impeccably tied cravat, the tailored jacket hugging his broad shoulders and chest, the satin breeches clinging to his muscular thighs. A perfectly formed man, to her mind.
And, oh. Oh. Oh. His beautiful mouth with its lush, full lips. Lips that moved constantly, bathing her in words. Lips that were perfect for the kissing she had wanted even when she was seventeen.
Yes, he was not tall. Not to say he was short. He was probably just right for most women. But for her . . . then, when she was seventeen, they had been almost the same height. Now, she must be much taller than Phineas since she had grown several more inches later that year.
He had danced with her perfectly that night. It was not that his dancing itself was perfect. It was how he had treated her. He had complimented her dress, her hair. He had asked questions but had not waited for answers, instead filling every moment they had danced together with a constant flow of softly murmured comments, leaving no space where she might have felt herself obliged to try and stammer something out. Even at the end of the dance, when she would have certainly been expected to curtsy and say, “Thank you, Lord Burchester,”—and how she had been dreading that bitch of abeeinBur, knowing she would be crucified by theessinchester—he had rescued her.
