Chapter Three

Was she, Patience Emery, really doing this? Had she truly slipped out of a ball for an assignation in the library with this devilish man? Had she actually let him lift her skirts and spread her legs so he could look at her there and…do that to her…there? Good Lord, she couldn’t even think the words he’d used.

She jerked back, suddenly tense, thighs coming together. “I don’t know—”

His tongue darted out to lick a dewy gleam from the center of his upper lip, and he smiled. “If you don’t like it, all you have to do is say the word and I shall cease immediately.”

He buried his nose in her maidenhair and inhaled. “The smell of you makes me hard.”

She could only gape in shock. Before she could make herself coherent enough to find a respond, his mouth met her sex. His tongue slid gently over the place only she had ever touched.

Oh, what sorcery was this?

It was so wrong.

And better than anything she’d ever dreamed.

Patience dissolved into a dreamy haze of pleasure. A man’s head was between her legs. Not just any man, but a wicked, depraved marquess who was gloriously debauching her. He sucked and kissed and feasted upon an unmentionable place she’d never dared to look at, all the while careening her closer and closer…

It was her birthday. She was twenty-five, which had always sounded old—right up until she was about to reach that number herself. If she died tomorrow, she’d die complete.

The sight of his dark head between her open thighs was nearly enough to send her over the edge. It was pure luck that she could hold herself back. She didn’t want it to end.

The pressure of his tongue was firm, but not firm enough. Slow. Too slow. When she touched herself, she moved quickly to get it done with—partially out of shame for doing what she oughtn’t, partially because she was so eager for the blessed release.

Moaning, she rocked her hips. He pulled away.

Patience jerked, discombobulated as she tried to push down her skirts. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No, no. None of this now.” His hand stayed hers. “You’re eager. Relax and enjoy it. Let me take my time.”

He pushed her legs open even wider than before and stared.

Heat rose in her face. “Is it…all right?”

A wicked grin spread across the hard masculinity of his features. “What did I just tell you, Miss Emery?”

“To relax and enjoy it.”

“Before that.”

A rush of emotion swelled in her throat. Her voice emerged husky. “That I’m beautiful.”

For the first time in her life, she felt it. Every inch.

It wasn’t a word she associated with herself. She’d told herself it didn’t matter. Her family loved her. She had plenty of friends. People usually liked her, and she—generally speaking—liked people. There were plenty of plain women who married well and lived perfectly content with their husbands. Sometimes even truly happy. Plain men, too, but it was far less a sin to be a plain man than a plain woman.

And here was the marquess looking at that and saying it was beautiful. A marquess, for God’s sake. One who looked like the devil had fashioned him to tempt all of womankind.

Well, it’d worked on her. He put a finger on the point of her pleasure—the place she rubbed when she needed it—and drew a little circle. And when those sensations rippled through her body, she wasn’t sorry it had, either.

Her insides clenched.

“And you are beautiful.” His gaze never moved from between her legs. His eyes glazed with lust. “Eminently fuckable. I want to hear you moan and feel you writhe.”

He slipped a finger inside her. Oh…she was going to hell. There was no question now. After a night when she couldn’t help but touch herself, she always repented. Always.

But she could not, would not, ever be penitent for these sins. She had to accept that she was a wanton. Here with a man she hardly knew, letting him do unspeakable things to her and relishing every second.

He pushed his finger deeper up her. “What do you think of that, Miss Emery?”

“I like it.”

She pushed her back into the chair and let her head fall back to enjoy the gentle way he stroked her. Vision unfocused, she stared up at the ornate plasterwork framing a ceiling painted with an allegory of morning. A fitting place for her very own awakening.

“Have you ever put anything inside yourself?”

Put something inside herself? She’d never dreamed of such a thing. But now that the suggestion had been made, the possibility unraveled in her mind. She’d need something sturdy and thick, but smooth so she wouldn’t damage herself. The handle end of one of those old-fashioned shoehorns? No, indeed, that sounded horrid. The handle of her brush, maybe. But that was small. What fun would that be?

“I haven’t.” Because the right thing, of course, would be having a man inside her.

“But you’ve made yourself come, haven’t you.” It wasn’t a question. He knew. She didn’t have to tell him. Because he saw what a wanton she was. It was so obvious. Did everyone see?

“Yes.”

When he started using his thumb on her pleasure point while caressing her inside with his finger, her breath came deeper. Harder. All her muscles clenched.

“What do you think about when you touch yourself?”

“I think about a man…doing it to me.”

“Doing it? Say it. I know you know the word.”

His touch was becoming too much to bear. The pleasure was too much. He was teasing her now, and she both hated him for it and never wanted it to end.

“Fucking me.” The word was charged with power. Nothing could have been more perfect for what she meant—and he was the only person to whom she could admit such secrets. “I think of a man fucking me.”

The air vanished from her lungs. Angels of heaven, had she said that? For years, it had been a secret pressing weight upon her soul. A part of herself she thought wrong. Certainly nothing she’d ever believed she’d admit to another person.

Now she had.

The floor remained steady under her feet. No thunder rattled from beyond the windows. No candles guttered. If she were going to be granted a reprieve instead of being immediately struck down for her wickedness, she wanted to proceed with the matters at hand.

Fortunately, so did he, it seemed.

Lord Ashcroft’s face lit with a wicked grin. “I like playing with you. I like feeling the smooth texture of your quim.” His voice dropped. “I like feeling you from the inside.”

She was so close. She could come at any second. Her head thrashed one way and then the other as the pleasure tightened to an exquisite head.

The marquess nearly purred his next words. “What a wicked creature you are, Miss Emery.”

Yes.

She let out a little cry, desperate for the agony to end in completion.

His hand fell away, and for a horrible second, she thought she was going to die, but he bent back over her and applied his tongue to her pleasure point…

His tongue traced a circle around that magical spot.

She shattered. The most powerful waves she’d ever experienced made her writhe and buck. Pleasure racked her body. A cry ripped from her mouth—she couldn’t have been quiet had her very life depended on silence.

When she floated back down, panting hard to catch her breath, she found him staring up at her, that all-too-satisfied smile on his face.

She pushed her skirts down but neither smoothed them nor rose. Must she return to the ball? What if the others could tell? What if once a person experienced this, they could see it marked on others? How could she resume making polite conversation after what she’d experienced here? What would happen if she were asked to dance? Her legs couldn’t be trusted to hold her.

More than that. Her whole life had changed. A part of her she’d always suspected existed had tonight been proven very real.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Miss Emery.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. How could they fall into conversation after that? It wasn’t as if having an elegant and beguiling man bring her to completion with his mouth in the library of a ball was a commonplace occurrence.

Although, perhaps it was for him.

“I don’t know how I can go back.”

“What about my offer? Have I done enough to sufficiently convince you, or should we think of another way for me to entertain you?”

“More? Oh no, I couldn’t. I’m so…” She didn’t know. But something.

Life was different. She was alive. Fully alive.

And somewhere downstairs were her parents, who hopefully hadn’t missed her yet, and she was going to have to face them fully aware of this new mark on her soul. Even that wasn’t enough to make her regret her decision to come here and let him do what he’d done to her.

In the normal way of things, if she weren’t so large, she might have been married by now and already know firsthand what it was like to lie with a man. And her parents would be aware of the fact, being married themselves and knowing what it was married people were allowed to do, although they probably wouldn’t want to give much thought to what their daughter and her husband were up to behind closed doors.

If she’d married, she wouldn’t be here now with the marquess.

“I must own I’m a little disappointed in your answer. There’s so much more I want to do to you.”

Ashcroft stood. His waist was about at head level, which meant if she stared directly forward, there was no question as to what sort of thing the marquess carried behind his falls. Something thick, hard, and big. Very, very big. Until that moment, she’d never guessed men were so large. Were they all that way? The nude statues she’d seen hadn’t given any inclination, although she’d pieced together enough information to guess that they did grow when a man became excited. That was a lot of growing, though.

Patience rubbed her face. “I hope nobody’s missed me.”

“You came to the library for a few minutes to get away from the crush. Hardly anything wrong with that.”

And it wasn’t a lie, either. Neither did it tell the whole truth, but she could hardly go reporting what she’d done.

He was still looking at her as if waiting for something. “What is it, my lord?”

“You haven’t given me an answer about my proposal.”

“Because of course it’s quite impossible. You didn’t really think I’d agree to such a preposterous notion, did you?”

“You need to come, Miss Emery.”

“I couldn’t possibly. What if I became pregnant?”

“There are always risks, of course, but I will do everything in my power to see that you don’t.”

“How could you prevent it?”

“There are ways, I assure you.”

“My lord…” She pushed to her feet. “I realize you must be used to having your way in every circumstance—”

“Yes, I am rather, if you must know. And right now, what I want is my way with you.”

The velvet of his voice was a caress over her skin. She’d just climaxed, and she was already stirring again. This man could tempt her to sin over and over. He had far more power over her than could possibly be safe.

The marquess raised his chin. “Here’s what you will do. You will write to me with your answer. Think about it as long as you please. Take a day or a week. Even a year. The offer, I assure you, will stand. You will put a tiny X at the bottom left corner below the direction. That’s the signal to my butler that it’s urgent and I’m to receive the message instantly. Agreed?”

“And what is your direction?”

He smiled. “My dear, I am the Marquess of Ashcroft. Anyone you send will know. And in the remote circumstance he doesn’t, he’ll quickly find out.”

“Really?”

“Once you say the word, I’ll have everything arranged immediately, and we can leave the next day.”

She bit her lip. Sending written correspondence to a man to whom she was not related was forbidden by the rules of polite Society.

Then again, where it ranked against having a man eat her quim at a ball…it wasn’t hard to figure.

“You’ll burn anything I write to you?”

“As soon as I read it, Miss Emery. You have my word.”

…

Having no choice but to return downstairs, Patience was alone in a ball again. This time, for an entirely different reason.

It all seemed false—a play in which people lied to each other, including their own selves. All the while pretending they didn’t want to see each other naked or lie together or participate in any number of depraved acts she hoped to learn about one day. Politeness was nothing but a pretense.

She couldn’t be the only one with desires. The only one who touched herself and thought about—she swallowed, recalling all too well the gleam in the marquess’s eyes when she’d admitted her secret—being fucked.

If only they could talk about it.

It would be absurd, though. What would they say?

“Oh, yes, I had the most marvelous time with myself in bed last night.”

“Have you tried putting this into yourself when you’re doing it? I find it much nicer than using that when I do it.”

“The last time my husband licked my quim, I came harder than I ever imagined possible.” Then take a sip of tea or help themselves to another lemon cake from the tray. “And what about this weather we’ve been having? Nasty stuff, rain. I daresay it’s the wettest May that I’ve ever seen. And speaking of being wet…”

Patience found her mother, Martha Emery. “I think I need to go home. I’m not feeling well.”

“You are flushed, my dear.” Her mother handed her lemonade to a nearby friend and reached to feel Patience’s forehead. “And warm.”

Patience went warmer still under her mother’s observation. Please let what she’d done upstairs not be obvious.

Mrs. Emery had been a plain girl but, in one of those odd quirks of life, had grown into being a handsome older woman. Gray hair muted severe coloring, and the loss of definition that came with skin not quite so dewy and firm softened previously strong features.

She took Patience’s arm and led her away from the grouping, speaking in conspiratorial tones. “But you haven’t seen Mr. Wilshire yet. He mentioned how much he’d like to dance with you.”

Mr. Wilshire? Dash it. She’d forgotten about him. And being reminded soured her stomach.

Wilshire was the youngest son of an impoverished gentleman farmer. In the late days of his youth, he’d wanted to go to sea, but found there was no place among the officers for a man who hadn’t first gone to sea as a boy. Joining as a sailor had been out of the question.

Patience’s mother brought her into a small niche on the side of a ballroom, tucking them behind an orange tree.

“Mother, I don’t like Mr. Wilshire.”

He called her Miss Prudence as often as Miss Patience, in the handful of times a year he deigned to notice her. He oughtn’t to have called her anything but Miss Emery, as she had no elder sister to use the name. And he was always nattering on about his dogs. Mr. William Wilshire and his Welsh terriers.

It was difficult to keep both him and Ashcroft in mind at the same time. One of them elicited all the excitement of a cloudy drink of water. The other…

Patience breathed deeply and released the inhalation in a shaky breath.

“He is what he is, but he comes from a good lineage.” Her mother frowned. The dark-red feathers tucked into the back of her upswept hair wobbled as if underscoring her disapproval. Mrs. Emery glanced around as if double-checking nobody overheard.

Good lineage. Meaning, he belonged to the class to which her parents aspired. Her mother, mostly. The one Mrs. Emery, as a sailor’s daughter, had neither been born nor married into.

“I don’t much care about his lineage.”

“It might not be romantic to care about such things, but practical considerations must be considered when making a match. Oh, I know he doesn’t cut a very dashing figure. But he’s steady and reliable and will do right by you. I think when he asks you—”

“I don’t feel like dancing tonight. Forgive me, Mother.”

“When he asks you to marry him—”

“When he asks me to what?” The hot jolt of shock could have fused the soles of Patience’s slippers right to the parquet floor. “Mother, I pray you, stop planning and plotting my life behind my back. I’m old enough to know my own mind.”

Patience hadn’t been so horrified since the day that nasty Randall boy from next door had used his slingshot to hit a songbird from a rooftop. Mr. William Wilshire was whom her mother wanted for her? If Patience were feeling generous, she’d say he was a nice enough man who was probably (though not certainly) well intentioned.

She and Mr. Wilshire had been acquainted since she was fifteen. Ten years. And he had not showed the slightest interest in her in all that time. Then, for nine and a half of those ten years, he’d not owed her parents three thousand pounds that he was believed to be unable to repay. Was Patience to be sold off for so little a sum?

Oh no. Patience clutched at her throat. The picture in her head of them as a couple was a caricature. This was her life. She wouldn’t be made a joke of someone else’s.

Until a moment ago, marriage for reasons other than love had been all well and good. It had been firmly theoretical. Now it was a definite possibility.

Suddenly, Patience’s secret rendezvous with Ashcroft assumed greater significance. What was it the marquess had said of his shocking proposition? The best part of it would be the fucking?

Patience’s heart started thudding, and heat rose in her face. “I’m sorry, Mother, I’m unwell. I need to go home.”

“But we might not get another chance at a ball like this one.”

“Please.”

Her mother’s lips pressed together, but she nodded, saying nothing else. She took Patience to the foyer and had the carriage, borrowed for the evening from Mrs. Emery’s uncle, brought round. Before they set out, Mrs. Emery informed a servant to let Mr. Emery know they’d be returning home, but would be sending the conveyance back for him.

Frances, the maid of all work, who had heavy brows and an upturned nose, met Patience in her room with a folded sheet of paper. Patience didn’t need to open it. It was from Elizabeth Wells, her dearest friend, and the only person in Patience’s acquaintance whose voracious reading equaled hers. About a year ago, after reading Mrs. Radcliff’s A Sicilian Romance and deciding husbands needed to be locked away in secret rooms instead of wives, they’d started The Haunted Tower.

What had started as a lark on a chilly winter’s evening had taken over their lives in an unexpected fashion. Patience’s father had found their scribblings, read them, and asked for more. He’d started printing chapters as serialized pamphlets. And they’d never stopped.

It couldn’t be said to be wildly popular—The Haunted Tower hadn’t quite taken London by storm—but the story had a devoted following. The earnings kept Patience and Elizabeth in pin money. Which, unsurprisingly, went almost entirely to the bookseller.

Patience retired directly to her garret room and slipped Elizabeth’s passage unread onto the dressing table.

Under the pitched roof, Frances helped Patience undress and unpinned her hair. While the maid brushed it to shining, Patience idly fingered the items at her dressing table for something she might use to slip inside herself when she was alone to better imagine it. If the busk of her corset were cylindrical instead of flat, it would have been perfect. Finding nothing, she sent the woman to bed and crawled into her own.

What she had done tonight… She squeezed her eyes shut, searching her soul for regret. And found none. When she said her prayers, she often asked for the lascivious thoughts to be erased from her being.

Tonight, she did not. She wanted to do a bit more sinning before she’d ask for forgiveness.

She wriggled her shift up and bent her knees, opening her legs and reaching down, exploring her damp heat with new awareness of what was possible when people came together to seek out their pleasures. Her slick parts—her quim, the marquess had called it—were wetter than usual. She felt the different components. The spongy spot just inside her entrance. Each long petal-like bit. And the hard nub at the top. She pinched it and moaned, picturing the marquess’s head between her legs.

She began working herself—slowly this time—setting a steady rhythm, but not rushing. With her free hand, she grabbed a breast and squeezed. She massaged the soft mound and pulled at a nipple to harden it, curious about every and any sensation she could induce.

Her body clenched. She came again. Hard. For the second time that night, she soared on outstretched wings, spiraling at an unbelievable height over shimmering vistas. With a happy sigh, she sank back to earth.

So long as she could do this to herself, she didn’t need the marquess.

Patience rolled over and punched at her pillow. Absurd. Did she think she was fooling herself? The marquess could open whole new worlds to her. Worlds that she might never again have the opportunity to glimpse, if she were to pass up this singular opportunity.

What if she was coerced into marrying Mr. Wilshire? She’d be stuck having to do wifely things in bed with him for the remainder of her days. If a man like Wilshire could even conceive of putting his tongue between a woman’s legs…

Her thighs squeezed shut involuntarily. Mr. Wilshire, with his odd stature and clumsy awkwardness, wouldn’t be welcome to make the attempt.

But accepting the marquess came with immense risks.

She forced her eyes shut. Now it was time to sleep. Making decisions in the middle of the night was never a good idea, no matter how inane the question. She’d make her decision in the morning.