“Please do not even think of thanking me for what has been truly my honor and my pleasure, to dance your first dance with you at your first ball, when you are the embodiment of grace and charm and so beguiling, and now let me take your arm, and please smile so everyone thinks I have said something amusing so I can maintain my reputation as a wit and I will bring you to a chair and fetch you a glass of lemonade.”
She had tried her best to smile as he had requested. She would have done anything to please him at that moment. She had been so full of relief at how well her first dance had gone. But her smile must have appeared unnatural since she rarely smiled.
Rarely smiled? Ha. Never. Except that one time. That one night. For him, because he had asked it of her.
She had made her mouth into a smile-like shape for him and allowed him to take her to a chair, although she would have preferred to stay standing. He had fetched her the lemonade and he had bowed and then he had . . . disappeared. To dance with other young ladies. And, now she knew, likely to bed one of much lower rank and much greater experience later that night or the next day.
Her mother had died two days afterwards, and Caroline had never had another ball, another Season, and she had never seen Phineas again. Until tonight.
He was thirty-five years old now. He was her brother’s age, six years older than she, and still not married. From what her brother had told her, Phineas and Edmund were part of a band of London rakes who wandered from theater to club to brothel to gaming hell, occasionally making appearances at balls, but not to seek wives seriously, only to cause fluttering in the hearts of the mamas of thetonwho wanted titled husbands for their daughters.
Phineas Edge was a dedicated philanderer and would never settle on just one woman. That—in addition to his physical perfection—made him the ideal man for what she had wanted from him tonight.
In retrospect, she knew her brother must have imposed on his friend to dance with her at that long-ago ball. She could imagine Edmund growling over cards the night before, “Here, Burchester, you’re just tall enough. You must dance with my flagpole of a sister.”
She had had that one dance with Phineas and three more dances at the same ball. But none of the other young gentlemen who had partnered her could touch Phineas Edge’s charm and good looks. One of them had openly laughed at the few words she had said and not in a kind way.
There had been no future husband at that ball.
And then there had been no more balls, no more Seasons, no more London. Here in Sudbury, she never had occasion to meet any gentlemen suitable for her station, only servants and tenants and tradespeople. She had dreamed of a man, a husband, but he had never manifested. Now she knew he didn’t exist.
Was it any wonder then that when she had touched herself in her own bed over the last dozen years, she had thought of the only attractive man who had ever paid her any attention? A gorgeous man who had wrapped her in a warm blanket of kind words and seemingly-sincere compliments.
She had imagined Phineas’ arms holding her. She had writhed in ecstasy at the thought of those irresistible lips skimming over her collarbone, her neck, her breasts. And after her lonely spasms had left her body, she had cursed, knowing her fancies would always stay just that. Fancies.
She was soon to be thirty. She was on the shelf. She would never wed, she would never know the delights of a marriage bed, she would never have children.
She was done.
Well, she had been done at seventeen, she just hadn’t known it yet.
But tonight, she had taken something for herself. And now she would not live the rest of her life unkissed and untouched. And unpraised.
For one night, she had been asweet, lovely darlingand she would have the memory of those beautiful words in her head, forever.
That would be enough.
That would have to be enough.
Three
Phineas’ morning cockstand pushed into the mattress and he rocked a bit, enjoying the friction on his member. So lovely.
Lovely. The raven-haired Caro. He opened his eyes, hoping against hope, but the bed was empty. Except for him and his hard cock.
Well, he would be a fool to expect anything else. Caro likely had early morning duties, whether that be laying fires, slicing rashers, gathering eggs, emptying chamber pots. And she couldn’t risk being discovered in his bed since she was not the strumpet he had first assumed she was. She must keep her position in the house. Phineas didn’t think the old marquess, a hard-edged curmudgeon, would take too kindly to a chambermaid, or scullery maid, or whatever Caro was, permitting a guest so many liberties.
He turned from his stomach onto his back. It had been stupid of him to think she was some local courtesan whom Edmund had brought into the house for Phineas’ pleasure. The truth—that she was a serving girl who had sought him out—had been so much better. Her passion, her wetness, her kisses. Mmmmmm.
And how wonderful for his vanity that she had chosenhim. A man needed a fillip like that sometimes. It was tiring, always being the hunter.
Although if he were truthful with himself, he rarely had to do much stalking in pursuit of his pleasures. He found it easy to keep several mistresses at once, and he seemed to hold a special attraction for widows. True, most of them didn’t last long with him. He never remembered ending things with any of them, but one would wander out of his life and in a few weeks or months, he would hear she was in the bed of some other man. Some more serious man. Some more substantial man. One who often became her second husband.
But there were always more delightful and amusing widows to replace those he lost. His friends carped to him that women seemed to fall into his lap.
“You’re not a hunter, you’re a woman trap, and that damn Phineas gab is the bait,” William Dagenham had said only last night after Phineas had told a story about one of his mistresses who had insisted on including her buxom stepsister in their romps.
But still, how absolutely charming to be the prey instead for a change. To have been singled out by a beauty like Caro and to have the honor of being her first lover. A distinction. And distinctively arousing despite her inexperience.
