Lady Scandal (10 page)

Really, the tedious toad had even forced her to touch it a time or twelve.
Blech.

Fulfilling her duty as a dutiful wife, she might have done so at the time without heated protest. But Juliet now came to recognize the revulsion she’d suffered and suppressed, lacking, in her youth and naïveté, the courage or comfort to make her own wishes known.

What was the opposite of revulsion, she pondered, weighing her options—and the sight before her. Untethered delight? Sheer joy? A strong passion to discover more secrets of the male flesh?

She currently experienced those and more, evaluating Mr. Tanner and his attractively appealing attribute. The one she couldn’t seem to avert her gaze from.

So he wanted reasons, did he?

Easy enough to supply, for she tasted a wealth of them upon her tongue. “Reason three, the only other manful prominence I’ve had the misfortune to be intimately acquainted with made my flesh crawl as though a thousand maggots creeped along every speck of my skin.” Without intent, she scraped her palms down the tops of her thighs, wiping off the offensive memory for the last time. “Reason four, I find my curiosity about
yours
greater than I ever dared conceive—”

“Thank God for that,” he interrupted, standing tall and imposing, his fierce brows slashed over those shimmering sapphire eyes—in frustrated relief or disapproval, she couldn’t tell which.

“Five. Just because I said no immediate…uh…”

“Licking? Suckling?
Tasting?
” he supplied, rather unhelpfully she thought as his words sent her mind and senses scattering in all sorts of naughty directions.

“Just so. Um… Does not mean I am not amenable to the possibility at some point in the near future.”

“How near?”

How was it his length continued to expand? To thicken? To make her mouth water in ways even the veriest of roasted goose and Belgian chocolate failed to?

He was built so exquisitely. She yearned to explore every strong and powerful inch, from the tops of his broad, expansive shoulders, past the corded plane of his stomach, all the way down, down to those big, brawny thighs covered in just the lightest sheen of hair.
Exquisite
didn’t do him justice, really…

As if watching someone else, Juliet saw her—for once—eager-to-touch hand lifting out, toward him. She recalled it, balling both together in her lap. Blazes! Her cheeks were on fire again. One would think another stormy, dreary afternoon would put to rest the heated response, but she swore her insides were sweltering, melting…

“Six!” she exclaimed, sensing another interruption looming, judging by the way a muscle in his jaw had started ticking. “I am at six, aren’t I?” Without giving him a chance to complain, she rushed on. “Or if not, six and a half. Since reaching my majority, I have spent a good deal of time fearing the unknown. Observing you helps put that fear to ground.”

“The unknown?”

Rather than respond to his guarded tone and corroborate his suspicions, Juliet realized other questions of the newly aroused mind must be answered. “Would you…ah…”
Oh just say it, Juliet! It’s one thing for him to suspect you’re an inexperienced ninny—it’s another to confirm it outright!
“Please turn around.”

“Like so?” Accompanied by the tiniest of grunts, Mr. Tanner complied, shuffling around in a tight circle, its journey completed so fast, she collected naught. No new information. No complete views.

“No! Not like that. Turn and pause, if you would. Facing away.” Hearing it, her ears burned at what she requested. Juliet wanted to check the air beside her for smoke but feared if she took her eyes off Mr. Tanner, like a genie bound to dispense wishes, he might disappear once released. Or was that leprechauns? “Oh, would you just
please
grant me a view of your…”

What did she term it? His posterior? Backside?
Derrière
? What did one call their sit-upon in polite company? “Your hindquarters! I desire to see them, please.”

His banked gaze narrowed. “You care for a glimpse of my arse?”

“Not so much a glimpse as a look. A, umm,
long
one.”

She could see him calculating either a refusal or another demand of her clothing. Given how she possessed but the two remaining items—her tightly laced stays and gossamer shift beneath—Juliet cajoled, “For every moment you comply, I will give you another reason why it matters so very much.”

“How could any man decry such an offer?”

As he started a breath-stealingly slow revolution, the muscles in his thighs straining and flexing, Juliet loosed the other, possibly most profound reason swirling about her mind. “Seven, I never, in all my wildest, most secret hopes and imaginings, thought to gaze upon such a magnificent sight of grandeur and grand proport—”

“Me?” He turned his head to the side to inquire, fairly preening like that peacock she’d thought of earlier. “Magnificent?”

“Yes, most assuredly you. And I beg you, beseech you, do not take the sight away from me. Not yet.”

Silence settled between them, save for the increasing boom and blast of thunder as the storm exploded violently overhead. Paying no mind to its fury, Juliet inspected the
arse
of the man before her. Strong and gently curved, pale yet pleasing, the firm portion of his anatomy she’d never once thought to consider on any other beckoned her onward, as did his front. Tempted her to further wantonness—how might such inviting-looking flesh
feel
? To her hand, her lips?

But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and multitudes of strictures weren’t abandoned without effort, so when he spun back around to face her, in all his near-naked splendor, Juliet chose not to grumble.

After all, only a paper skull would complain about sampling the banquet Mr. Tanner allowed her to feast optically upon.

“Does it not prick your conscience, my lady, to reside there so composed and clothed while I stand here thus?”

Arms outstretched, silk neckcloth swaying, buckskins clumped over the tops of his tall boots, the wretch attempted to assume a pitiful, put-upon expression. Attempted and failed spectacularly. This man couldn’t look pitiful if someone dipped him in a vat of pathetic and coated him with grimy goose feathers.

At the image—the one in her mind, of what she suspected Mr. Tanner
thought
he portrayed—Juliet laughed. Then laughed again. A less pitiful man she’d never seen! “Pardon me,” she gasped out between grating giggles she couldn’t seem to snaffle. “Your attempt to garner my sympathy is having the opposite effect, I fear.”

Juliet bit down on both of her lips, compressing her smile as flat as she could, doing her best to harness the humor and exhibit a more dignified demeanor. For seriously, was this not a most serious occasion? Did not inspecting the, um, masculine paraphernalia of a potential husband warrant every much the solemnity of one inspecting a horse?

Though she doubted any horse ever had hindquarters as fine as the ones she evaluated now.

And that thought set her off all over again.

For though she may not be overly familiar with horses, she did know stallions were prized for certain attributes. Attributes she had no doubt the man posturing before her in his altogether possessed in spades.

Grinning gamely at her weak efforts to appear solemn, which was difficult to achieve when she was feeling so joyful she could float, Mr. Tanner dipped his head and raised his brows as though about to impart a confidence.

When he paused, she leaned forward and released her lips to prompt, “Yes? Have you more to add?”

“I love your laugh,” he astonished her by saying.

“My laugh? Are you infirm? Have your ears gone on protest? Down to Piccadilly perhaps?”

“My lugs work splendidly, I assure you.”

“I laugh like a crone.” Or so Father had said once. Letheridge had concurred, casting a rheumy scowl toward his newly intended, enticing Juliet to keep her laughter to herself.

“I think the rusty cackle you free when tickled is charming. Uninhibited. Absolutely adorable, as is the woman behind it.”

Blinking away not tears of mirth now but ones of emotion so profound she couldn’t fathom how to express it, Juliet only said, “There’s been precious little in my life to laugh about until recently.”

Very recently, as in once applicant twenty-four prowled inside her sitting room and forever took command of her heart.

“Well, I hope you laugh often and loudly,” he told her emphatically, as though seeking to convince her of his sincerity. “I find it unfettered and unpretentious, everything I never knew a lady could be and I realize now I cannot imagine my life without it.”

She scrubbed away any remaining trace of moisture. Her croaky laugh—he
liked
it? “I do believe, sir, that’s likely the sweetest compliment anyone’s ever paid me.”

Mr. Tanner beamed as though she’d given him two bricks of gold. “Then I say you’re just now mantling yourself with the correct type of company.”

As he spoke, Juliet heard shuffling, a mild disturbance just on the other side of the door. No doubt Wivy must be despairing of her by now, given how long she and her favored applicant had been ensconced.

The slight noise served to return her focus to their express purpose. She needed to conclude the
official
interview. Then, perhaps, if luck and God and Fate were all smiling down on her today, she and Mr. Tanner might be able to veer into some of those more intimate, unofficial regions together. Although, given the proximity and positioning of his spectacularly stript person, she could scarce imagine how much more intimate they might become.

Relieved when the sounds beyond her sitting room abated without anyone interrupting their interlude, Juliet forced her mind back to the remaining item. The letter.

She still needed to know what manner of lover Mr. Tanner was. But when she opened her mouth to concede it was time he drew up his drawers and commenced reading, that wasn’t at all what emerged.

Chapter Five

An Unplanned Eruption

Oliva watched as the fluffy paw shot out from beneath the sitting room door, tufts of sandy-orange fur protruding from between each razor-sharp claw.

Glad for the distraction from her chaotic thoughts, Olivia told her speeding heart to calm and knelt to rub her index finger across Henry’s front leg.

Her hair flopped forward and beads of water dribbled from the tips. Henry swiped his paw over the droplets, the cat’s antics bringing forth a shaky smile.
Good for him. The floor could certainly use a thorough mopping.

Cringing at the strands uncomfortably glued to her neck, she gathered the sodden mass over one shoulder. The smile faded, transforming into a frown at the mess she continued to make—on the floor and of her life.

Because holding a conversation with a cat was preferable to castigating herself or noticing how her drenched dress was plastered to her body, she whispered, “And what exactly do you think they’re discussing now, hmm?”

She’d heard enough to surmise things were going well indeed for her friend and employer.

Racing through the rambling manor to the modest room she’d claimed as hers, with the intent to put her hair and person to rights after that unexpectedly glorious (and guilt-inducing) “walk” in the rain, Olivia couldn’t resist deterring past Juliet’s sitting room.

Now she couldn’t seem to leave. Not that she was eavesdropping, the muted rumbles of Mr. Tanner indistinguishable, for the most part. But when Juliet laughed? Now
that
had come through the thick door clear enough. How wonderful to hear and know that sweet, sweet Juliet had finally found someone she could be herself with. Someone who she
wanted
to be with.

Instead of feeling jealous as one might expect of an older, poorer, definitely less creative companion to be, Olivia was in alt on her friend’s behalf.

And in awe of herself—and her recent actions.

In awe? Certainly not! She meant dismayed, disappointed even, at what she’d been doing. The subterfuge. The secrets! So completely unlike her.

But oh how it’d been worth it
, a tiny part of her acknowledged. So very worth it.

Heavy, rapid thumps coming from the direction of the stairway heralded a new arrival seconds before she heard the corridor-muted shout. “Lady Juliet!”

Giving Henry’s paw one last pat, she rose and hastened toward the landing to intercept Jacks. “Shhhh.” Olivia motioned toward the sitting room behind her. “We ought not interrupt them, I’m thinking.”

“We ’ave visitors,” he began, only to break off and exclaim, “By the devil! Miz Hales! Ye… Ye look…”

Self-consciously, Olivia raised both hands to the hank of hair residing over one breast like a waterlogged washcloth. She started to wring out the mass then stopped when several drops plopped to the floor. “I’m a mess. I know.”

“A mess?” Jacks reared back, appraising her from soaked skull to soggy slippers. After noting the muddy streaks trimming the bottom of her once pristine dress, his thoughtful gaze returned to hers. “I’m seein’ more than a mess, I could be fergiven fer thinkin’.”

Double drat! It was apparent, then? What she’d just done with applicant twenty-five? Mortification poured through her veins like syrup. It was one thing to indulge herself as she had. Another to have someone else discern it!