Page 31 of The Etiquette of Love (The Academy of Love #7)

F reddie grinned across the carriage at Piers, who was staring in disbelief at the small foldout table littered with playing cards. “Piqued, re-piqued, and capoted, my dear brother.”

Piers shook his head and gave her a look of disgust before glaring out the window at Plimpton, who was riding alongside the coach. “No wonder he wanted me to relax inside the coach with you. Relax? Ha! He just didn’t want to get his arse kicked—” he broke off when Freddie cleared her throat. “I beg your pardon, Duchess, I meant to say that your husband did not want to get his bottom spanked—that is what you aristos like to do, is it not?”

“Piers!” she squawked. “You are a respectable citizen now—not a wanted felon. You need to learn to behave properly in public.”

He snorted. “Have you heard Severn and that black-haired wench of his go at it hammer and tongs? I tell you, Little Bird, I learned a few new words from that shrew.”

Freddie hid her smile only because she knew it would encourage her brother’s bad behavior. But he was right; Lori had a far more vulgar mouth than many a dock worker and sailor.

As Piers shuffled the cards—evidently eager to have his arse kicked a bit more—Freddie glanced at her husband.

As always, Plimpton looked mouthwatering on horseback. Her gaze dropped to his boots—a glossy black pair today, the white tops pristine—and her heart fluttered when she recalled him wearing them the night before, with nothing else, while swiving her. That was a wicked word Plimpton had taught her. She wondered if Lori knew that one.

In the weeks since her brush with death, Freddie had learned more and more about the man who hid behind her husband’s mask. Plimpton would always be the same aloof, haughty aristocrat in public—she knew that now—but behind closed doors he became a man that only Freddie got to see.

Her skin tingled and she knew before she wrenched her gaze from his thighs that Plimpton would be looking at her.

He was. And he was wearing his stern-faced look, one of her favorites now that she knew what lurked beneath it.

He raised one eyebrow slowly and Freddie felt it all the way in her womb.

“Talk about behavior that is inappropriate outside the bedchamber,” Piers groused.

Her head whipped around. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Your wildly blushing face suggests otherwise, Little Bird.”

“You are imagining things.”

He grinned. “There is an excellent duchess glare if I ever saw one.”

Freddie couldn’t help laughing. “Thank you for riding with me, Piers. Plimpton doesn’t care for coaches.”

“I can understand why if you thrash him at cards.”

“Would you rather play chess?” she asked sweetly.

“ No. ”

She saw that he had put away the cards rather than dealing them out again. So, they were done with that, then. “How long until we get there?”

“About an hour.”

“You told me the same thing an hour ago.”

He cocked his head.

Yes, she did sound a bit plaintive.

Freddie knew she was behaving badly, but something about being in the company of her siblings seem to bring it out in her. She had spent all last week with Piers and Wareham and Plimpton had said it was like living with a trio of twelve-year-olds the way they bickered.

Perhaps, but Freddie felt as if they were all making up for lost time.

All jesting aside, it warmed her heart to see how well her older brothers appeared to be getting along. Wareham and Plimpton had both used their influence to clear Piers’s name of any wrong-doing, which meant that her brother was able to walk the streets of England as a free man for the first time in over a decade.

Which reminded her…

“Do you really have to leave next week?” she asked, not for the first time.

“I don’t have to do anything—now. But I miss it, Little Bird.”

“You are a contrarian. When you were not supposed to be here, you were here. And now, when I want you to stay, you are leaving.”

“Only for a few months.”

“It is a dangerous occupation.”

“Not really. All the fun has gone out of being a privateer now that the war is over.”

“I think your notion of fun might be just a little warped, my dear brother.”

Piers laughed and carefully folded up their game table.

Freddie had loved spending this extra time with Piers before Lori’s party. Naturally, the idea had been Plimpton’s. He had suggested that Piers should come and stay at Plimpton House and then the three of them could make the journey to Granton Castle together.

Piers had accepted the invitation with flattering alacrity, joining Freddie and Plimpton in London shortly after they had returned from their first trip to Spenham to see Miranda.

Freddie had worried that her first visit as the Duchess of Plimpton would be awkward, but she had been relieved by how quickly everyone had adjusted to her change in status.

Predictably, Miranda had been disconcerted by the shift in the visitation schedule and also anxious to meet Plimpton for the first time, but he had charmed all three of the Morrisons’ charges—not to mention surprising Freddie—by performing some impressive sleight of hand tricks for everyone’s entertainment.

“And here I thought you only performed tricks in the bedchamber,” Freddie had whispered into his ear after Plimpton had produced a gleaming sovereign seemingly from thin air, making his small audience shriek and clap with delight.

Plimpton had barked a laugh. “I have some special tricks to show you this evening, my naughty Winifred,” he had promised, giving her a smoldering look and making good on his promise later that night at the Spotted Sow. Indeed, his tricks had been so impressive that Freddie feared those people below in the taproom might have heard about them.

“Look, Little Bird,” Piers said, pulling her from her erotic reminiscing.

Freddie looked to where he was pointing and gasped. “It is just like something from a storybook.” They were on a hill slightly above the castle, which looked as if it were rising from the middle of a lake.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Piers asked.

“Indeed.” Granton Castle had a massive, crenellated drum tower at each of the four corners with a high curtain wall and parapets. “I cannot imagine Lori being mistress of that .”

“You will find that she has taken to it like a duck to water.”

A drop of rain smacked the window. “Oh! Poor Plimpton. He will get wet,” Freddie said, glancing about for her husband. “I do hope he does not catch a chill.”

“Lord, but it’s nice to see you so smitten, Little Bird.”

Freddie pointedly ignored her brother’s laughter.

A short time later they crossed the drawbridge and entered beneath the massive barbican where two carriages were already being unloaded.

A much more modern structure had been built along the base of three of the interior curtain walls. Judging by the style of the construction it dated to the early 1600s, so a good three hundred years after the original structure.

“Oh, there is Lori now!” Freddie reached for the door.

“Just a moment, Little Bird. We wouldn’t want you to take ill, would we?” Piers took her umbrella, opened the door, and hopped out, unfurling the vivid red canopy and holding it over her head.

Lori—dressed in the height of fashion, but just as headlong as ever—came streaking across the courtyard.

“Freddie!” Lori cried, flinging her arms around her.

Piers winced. “Take this,” he murmured, pressing the handle of the umbrella into Freddie’s palm and sidling away.

Lori released Freddie and snickered at Piers’s receding back. “I think I frighten your brother.”

Freddie thought Lori probably frightened most people, men and women, but kept that opinion to herself.

“I would have thought Piers would be accustomed to you by now,” Freddie said.

“No, he hides from me. And the castle is big, so it is hard for me to find him.” She paused thoughtfully. “Sometimes I think Severn has shared secret hiding places with him.”

Freddie laughed.

With Piers’s permission, she had divulged his story in a series of letters to all her friends. Most of them would respect his privacy. Lori, she knew—and so did Piers—had boundless curiosity and was not afraid to satisfy it.

Well, that was for Piers to deal with.

“I adore your umbrella, Freddie—I don’t think I have ever seen you so close to a bright color before,” Lori teased. “Unless you are standing next to somebody else, of course.”

“It is a gift from Plimpton,” Freddie said, irked when she felt her traitorous face heat.

“ Hmmm . Where is the delicious duke, anyhow?”

“ Lori! ”

“Sorry. But I recall telling you to snap him up ages ago.”

Freddie shook her head and deliberately changed the subject. “The castle is magnificent.”

Lori pulled a face. “It is magnificent to look at but living in it”—she shuddered. “Severn said we don’t have to spend more than a few weeks here a couple times a year, but I know he worries about the marquess, so I daresay we’ll be here a great deal.”

Lori meant the Marquess of Granton, whose title her husband, Lord Stand Fast Severn, would one day inherit. Lord Granton was one of the great sticklers of society so it would be interesting to see how he and Lori engaged with one another.

“Freddie!”

She turned at the sound of Miles’s familiar and beloved voice just in time to be caught up in a tight embrace and whirled around until she was dizzy and a bit wet from some errant rain drops.

“Married!” he whispered in her ear. “Congratulations, my dearest Fred.” He gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek, released her, and stepped back smiling. But Freddie, who knew him best of all her friends, saw the questions in his celestial blue eyes. Eyes that suddenly slid to Freddie’s right, his smile stiffening. Freddie knew who it was before he opened his mouth.

“Plimpton. It is good to see you again,” Miles said in an overly hearty voice.

The duke inclined his head slightly. “Avington.”

Freddie frowned at the faint chill in his voice. Before she could examine it more closely, a ravishing black-haired woman and a man who resembled a male Galatea came trotting after two toddlers, their coloring so like their respective parents that Freddie was momentarily distracted.

“Come here, you,” Eustace Harrington, the Earl of Broughton growled as he snatched up a child as devoid of pigment as he was. The little boy squealed with delight and turned his face toward the sky, sticking out his tongue to catch raindrops.

“Freddie!” Portia threw her arms around Freddie, squeezing the breath out of her.

Portia then held her at arm’s length and examined her with a gimlet eye. “You are happy,” she declared, only a touch of Italian showing in her English accent.

“I am happy,” Freddie agreed. She felt something tug on her skirt of her periwinkle blue traveling costume and looked down to find a girl who resembled her mother so much that Freddie laughed. “Hello, Isabelle!”

The little girl soundlessly held out her arms to be picked up.

Freddie was flattered. “You remember me?”

Isabelle nodded.

Freddie handed the little girl the umbrella. “You will need to hold this up to keep us dry.”

Isabelle nodded again and Freddie swept the toddler up, groaning when she settled her on her hip. “You are so big!”

Isabelle merely smiled.

Freddie met Portia’s gaze and the other woman shrugged. “Not yet.”

Portia meant that Isabelle still wasn’t speaking. Her brother, Ian, on the other hand, had not stopped talking since his father picked him up.

“This one is like his mother,” Portia said, smirking proudly as her husband handed her their son.

“Papa!”

Freddie turned in time to see Plimpton catch a young woman in a hug. He was facing her and had closed his eyes, his expression one of pure happiness as he embraced his tall, slender daughter.

He opened his eyes, immediately saw Freddie, and his face flexed into what she thought of us his public smile , which was an almost indiscernible curving of his lips. “There is somebody I want you to meet Becca.” He turned his daughter toward Freddie. “This is my wife, Winifred.”

Freddie had seen Becca’s miniature, but the girl was older that she had been in the portrait. She looked so much like Plimpton that Freddie instantly felt drawn to her.

“Hello, Becca—may I call you that?”

“Of course, er—Your Grace.”

Freddie smiled. “Why don’t you call me Winifred—or Freddie, if you like.”

Becca’s eyebrows lifted, the expression so much like Plimpton’s that Freddie laughed for no reason other than she was happy. “I am so glad to meet you finally. I feel like I know you, I’ve heard so much about you.”

The girl blushed. “I have heard about you, too.”

“You have?” Freddie turned to look at Plimpton.

Becca laughed. “No, not from Papa. He never tells me anything. It is Honey who talks about you all the time. Ah, here she comes.”

“Robert wants his cousin,” Honey said, handing her remarkably fat, healthy baby over to Rebecca, who actually looked small holding the child. Honey shook out her arms. “He seems to gain a pound a day. How are you, darling Freddie?” she asked before Freddie could comment on her child’s astonishing size.

“I am well.” She returned her friend’s gentle embrace.

“We are real sisters now,” Honey murmured, and then kissed Freddie’s cheek. “I cannot wait until you are living at Whitcombe. We can see each other every day.”

“That is not fair!” Portia protested. “Stacy,” she said to her husband, not caring that he was in the middle of a conversation with the Earl of Rotherhithe, Annis’s husband. “I want a house beside Honey and Freddie.”

“Of course, my dear,” Lord Brougham said, and then turned back to Rotherhithe and continued his conversation.

“I don’t think he really heard me,” Portia told Honey.

“You can come live with us if he proves stubborn,” Honey assured her. She lightly pinched Ian’s cheek. “And you can bring this little monkey with you.”

The little boy thought that was hilarious.

“Where is Annis?” Freddie asked, gently bouncing Isabelle on her hip and turning in a circle.

“Over here, with Oliver.” A slight figure waddled forward and Freddie could not help staring.

Portia leaned close and whispered, “She looks like she may have the child any minute. But she is only five months, if you can believe it.”

Annis squeezed Freddie’s shoulder and smiled, her huge blue eyes always making Freddie feel as if the other woman could see right inside her. “It has been such a long time, Freddie,” she said softly, her gaze sliding to Plimpton, who was chatting with Becca, Piers, and Simon. She lowered her voice even more and whispered gleefully, “A duke, Freddie!”

Freddie laughed.

“She only married him to outrank us,” Lori chimed in, holding out her arms. “It is my turn with Isabelle.” The girl eagerly switched to the other woman and Freddie relieved her of the umbrella and subtly flexed her arms.

“It is like losing two stone in an instant, is it not?”

Freddie turned at the sound of a French voice.

“Serena! How lovely to see you.” She embraced the beautiful, always slightly disheveled woman.

“I have missed you, Freddie,” Serena said, her hard belly jutting against Freddie’s and reminding her that Serena was, just like Annis, expecting an interesting event in four months.

“It is good to see you again, Mr. Lockheart,” Freddie said to Serena’s gorgeous, albeit odd, husband.

“Duchess,” Gareth Lockheart murmured, bowing in Freddie’s general direction before turning to Lori and demanding, “Where is Declan McElroy?”

Lori looked amused by his abrupt question. “He is not here yet.”

Mr. Lockheart frowned. “He told me he would be arriving yesterday.”

“Yes, that is what he said when he accepted the invitation.”

Lockheart kept staring at Lori, as if she might produce the missing man if he looked hard enough.

“Gareth, darling, don’t worry so much,” Serena soothed, looping her arm through her husband’s and pulling him closer. “Declan is a big boy; he can make his way to a country house party.”

Gareth did not look convinced by her words.

Serena met Freddie’s questioning gaze and rolled her eyes.

Freddie knew Mr. McElroy was a very close friend of the reclusive Lockheart, but Serena was not exactly fond of the man, who evidently drank a great deal and was a confirmed skirt-chaser into the bargain.

The rain began to fall harder.

Lori handed Isabelle back to her father and then clapped her hands. “Come inside, everyone! We will ply you all with tea and then show you to your chambers.”

***

Plimpton leaned against the wide doorframe between the double drawing rooms, nursing his drink and covertly observing his wife chatting with her friends while a small, sharp-eyed man whose name he had already forgotten stood in front of him and babbled about a hunt party he’d joined the month before. If there was anything more tedious than listening to somebody share a minute-by-minute description of a fox hunt, Plimpton could not recall it at that moment.

“Here you are Gervaise.”

Plimpton turned at the sound of his brother’s voice.

“Ah, Lord Simon,” the man—Gervaise, apparently, said. “I was just telling His Grace about—”

“Miss Middleton is looking for you, Gervaise.”

“She is?”

Based on how stunned he looked and sounded Plimpton surmised that people were more in the habit of running from Gervaise than toward him.

“Yes, she seemed most eager to talk to you. You should go to her,” Simon urged.

Gervaise glanced into the mirror that hung over the fireplace, slicked back his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger, and then drained the contents of his glass. “Where is she?” he asked, handing the empty glass to Simon.

Simon pointed. “Go that way and take a right past the statue of Venus and you can’t miss her.”

The other man went hurrying away.

“Is Miss Middleton really looking for him?” Plimpton asked, sipping his drink.

Simon snorted. “The man is a crashing bore; what do you think?”

Plimpton regarded his brother briefly before turning back to Winifred.

“I just thought I’d bring you a spoon, old boy.” Simon lifted a dessert spoon from the small pocket in his tailcoat. “Here you go.”

Plimpton stared. “Are you foxed?”

Simon laughed. “Not even close.”

“What the devil would I need a spoon for.”

Simon gestured to where Freddie was sitting. “You have been eating her with your eyes; I thought a spoon might help.”

Plimpton gave a bark of laughter. “Very droll.” He paused and then said, “Am I so obvious?”

Simon grinned. “Only to somebody who has spent a lifetime Wyndham watching.”

“ Hmm .”

“I can see married life is treating you much better this time,” Simon said after a moment, because he was the sort of person who was not comfortable unless he was talking.

“Is there a question in that collection of words?” Plimpton asked.

His brother laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good old Wynd. You haven’t changed a bit.”

Simon, he realized, was not a very observant man.

***

The following evening…

“Where did Gareth go in such a hurry after dinner?” Lori asked Serena.

“He has gone to talk to one of our footmen about going to the London house to see when Declan left. Or if he left.”

“Why do you want to know where Gareth went?” Honey asked Lori. “Did you want to torment him some more?”

Freddie, Serena, and Miles all laughed.

“It is not called torture, Honoria . It is called conversation,” Lori retorted icily.

Honey smirked. “Simon said talking to you was like shoving a live ferret down his breeches.”

Miles, who had just taken a drink, doubled over and fell into a coughing fit.

“You deserve that,” Lori said, slapping him on the back with more force than necessary. She turned to Honey, “And you should be less concerned about my interview technique and more worried about the fact that your husband knows anything at all about shoving rodents in his breeches.”

Honey laughed. “I said exactly the same thing to him when he told me.”

“Ferrets aren’t rodents; they are weasels,” Annis corrected softly.

Lori gave the other woman a look of amazement. “Why on earth would you know something like that?”

“All knowledge is valuable,” Annis said mildly.

Lord Severn drifted up behind his wife. “Are you being rude to our guests, my dear?”

“Of course not,” Lori retorted. “I am being the perfect hostess,” she added, sending Miles off on another coughing bender.

Freddie had missed her friends—had missed the hundreds of evenings they had spent together at the school, teasing and bickering and slowly building friendships that just got better every year. Often in the time since the school had closed, she had yearned to go back to that time again and appreciate it more fully, rather than taking it for granted.

And yet right now…

Her gaze drifted across the room and locked with Plimpton’s. He was standing talking to Lord Simon and Lord Broughton. Actually, Lord Simon was talking, and Plimpton was staring at Freddie, giving her one of those blandly assessing glances that used to irk her and now made her feel as if he could see right through her clothing.

Miles said something that made the others laugh, but Freddie didn’t catch it. Instead, she glanced at the clock. How soon could she politely excuse herself and go up to bed without becoming the target of the next round of teasing?

***

An hour and a half later…

Plimpton had Winifred stretched out facedown beneath him and nibbling on her neck and holding her wrists pinned to the mattress while he stroked into her with deep, rolling thrusts of his hips.

He liked taking her this way until she climaxed—the first time—as the angle afforded far deeper penetration. Once he had reduced her to a babbling, incoherent wreck he would usually roll her onto her back so he could watch her face while he took her again, but slower and more torturously the second time, working her as close to the edge as he dared take her, without pushing her over.

Over and over, he would tease her, denying her at the last minute and feasting on her needy frustration. Winifred, normally so cool and self-possessed, forgot herself when she did not get the sexual release she wanted. She would often beg and sometimes even hector him. Once, the week before, she had even used a very naughty word he had taught her.

Plimpton had no idea why he enjoyed controlling her pleasure and denying his own orgasm in the process. Perhaps it was just a natural male urge to dominate. But he had never felt such an urge with any other woman.

Maybe it was because Winifred was his that he wanted to possess and explore and master every part of her.

Well, regardless of the reason, he could not get enough of teasing her.

“Wyndham, please,” she begged.

Desire shot straight to his already aching bollocks; the pleasure he got from hearing her beg was near orgiastic in itself. There was probably something wrong with him for enjoying it so much. But he decided it felt too good for him to care.

She squirmed beneath him, trying to urge him to fuck her faster. Some nights he punished her for such wanton behavior by denying her even longer. Some nights he rewarded her. The trick to toying with her was to always keep her guessing.

Right now, he could feel that she was well on her way to a second orgasm.

“I need—”

“I know what you need.” He slid his forefinger and thumb around his shaft, right where they were joined. “I love to feel you stretched around me.” He caressed her slick, sensitive skin, his hips pumping harder. “I adore the way your tight, wet body takes me so very—”

“Wyndham!” she shuddered, beginning to come undone.

“Take what you need, darling,” he said, deciding not to tease her any longer.

This time, he did not stop when her body convulsed around his but kept going, fucking her through her climax into what might have been a third one, or perhaps just an extension of the second.

Only when she was lost to bliss did he give in to his need and flood her with heat as he joined her in mindless ecstasy.

When their pulses had both slowed to a canter, he rolled off her delectable body and turned on his side to face her.

She had worn her hair loose to please him and it was a wild, blonde storm around her head. She stared at him through pupils that were still dilated with passion. “I love you, Wyndham.”

The words were as thrilling the twentieth time as they had been the first. Plimpton smoothed the silky curls away from her face, marveling that this woman was his. Would he ever stop feeling that jolt of wonder that struck him whenever he looked at her? He hoped not. He set a hand on her barely swelling belly, a surge of protective love filling him. “Have you decided whether or not you will tell your friends that you are expecting an interesting event?”

She smiled. “As almost everyone else seems to be expecting similarly interesting events, it only seems fair. And I daresay you would like to tell your family.”

“I would, but not until you are ready.”

“I am ready.”

“Good.” Plimpton would write to his mother first thing in the morning. He knew she was itching to meet his new wife, but she had agreed that it would be best to come directly from Sweet Clover to Granton Castle. Especially as this would be Winifred’s last chance to spend time with Piers for a while.

Plimpton knew his mother would be over the moon to learn there was another grandchild on the way. It had been the dowager who had told him that childbirth was a very different event if a woman actually wanted a baby.

“ You have suffered enough for your youthful infatuation with Cecily. And she certainly had an unhappy life, the poor thing,” his mother had said after Cecily’s death. “ You are a loving man, Wyndham. You should marry again. This time, to a wife of your own choosing. ”

Plimpton stared at the wife of his choosing and could not resist giving her another kiss—a deep, searching one that left them both out of breath.

“What was that for?” she asked. “Not that I am complaining.”

“No reason. Although I did want to thank you again for my wonderful wedding present.” Winifred had stitched an astoundingly lifelike picture of Sweet Clover, compete with bees so real looking that he swore he could hear them buzzing. Plimpton had had it framed and it would hang in his library at Whitcombe, in a place of honor.

She laughed. “If you like my needlework, it will all be yours from now on.”

“I certainly won’t allow you to sell any of it,” he assured her.

“Do you think you will enjoy this party, Plimpton?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I worry that you will feel left out given that the rest of us know each other so well.”

“I like seeing you enjoy time with your friends, Winifred.” Even if he had briefly wanted to throttle Avington for kissing her the day before. “And I am looking forward to becoming acquainted with both your friends and their spouses. Already I’ve had some interesting conversations with Lady Avington, Gareth Lockheart, and Lord Broughton.” He paused and then added, “The Countess of Avington is a fascinating and somewhat intimidating woman.”

Winifred chuckled. “Mary is very clever, and she also has a big heart—although she tries to hide it behind her businesslike facade. I am so delighted that she and Miles have made more of their marriage than just a convenient union.” Her lips twitched. “I must admit at the beginning I thought one of us might have to strangle Mary for being so cruel to poor Miles.”

It was clear that Winifred and her female friends considered poor Miles something of a pet, a role the handsome earl reveled in. Well, Plimpton could not blame the man for enjoying his special position; the women from the Stefani Academy were an impressive group.

“What did you think of Portia’s husband and Mr. Lockheart?”

“Lord Broughton possesses the sort of business experience that I find fascinating but know nothing about. Lockheart is a bit…odd, but it is clear that he is brilliant. I think he is also a bit obsessed with his missing friend—er, McElroy, is it?” His wife nodded. “Lockheart said he might go looking for the man himself if he has no word from him by tomorrow.” Plimpton had rarely met a man as… intense, for lack of a better word, as Gareth Lockheart.

“Serena says Mr. McElroy is not well.”

“Why is he coming to a house party if he is ill?”

“Not that sort of not well .” She gave him a speaking look.

“A dipsomaniac?” Plimpton guessed.

“It sounds that way. Evidently Lockheart and McElroy are very attached—as close as brothers—and have been friends ever since they were boys. They grew up in an orphanage—a horrible place according to Serena.”

Plimpton grimaced. “It is difficult to imagine having such a beginning in life. It makes Lockheart’s achievements all the more admirable.”

“He and McElroy are a team when it comes to acquiring new businesses.

“Interesting,” he said, distracted by her breasts, which were still faintly passion mottled. He cupped one and thumbed the nipple. It immediately began to harden.

His wife’s body shook with laughter, causing her breasts to jiggle enticingly. “Something tells me you are finished talking about poor Mr. Lockheart’s missing friend.”

“I have to admit I find other matters”—he lightly pinched her nipple, earning a hiss— “far more compelling.”

“I never would have guessed you had such a short attention span.”

“Not for everything.” He captured the dark pink nub with his lips and sucked hard.

“ Ohhh . No, not for everything,” she agreed as he slid a hand down her belly to her mound. “Some things you apply your entire— uh , Wyndham.”

“Such a good wife,” he praised when her thighs parted for his touch.

“I try to be.”

He chuckled at her prim, breathy voice, reveling in the way her hips tilted to give him better access.

“I love your laugh, Wyndham.”

“What else do you love? This?” He pushed a finger inside her wet heat and worked her until she was vibrating like a finely tuned instrument which only Plimpton was allowed to play and master.

“Yes. That, ” she said, shivering with delight.

“ Hmm. What about this?” Plimpton circled the source of her pleasure, teasing her little nub until it was engorged and throbbing.

Her eyelashes fluttered. “Yes…yes. I love that.”

“Then I had better give you plenty more of it.” Plimpton spread her thighs wider as he settled down between them and lowered his mouth to her sex.

She groaned. “That feels so good.

Plimpton preened at her praise, applying himself even more diligently.

She slid her fingers into his hair and gently but firmly lifted his head.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I am so greedy, Wyndham. You should allow me to—”

He growled and glanced down to where his fingers kept her spread and vulnerable. “You are not nearly as greedy as I am, Winifred.” He thumbed the bundle of nerves in precisely the right place. “You should not thwart your husband’s will.”

Winifred groaned. “I surrender,” she said, her hands going limp and releasing him.

“Such a good wife,” he praised, and then returned to what he loved best. As tempting as it was to make her pay for her momentary disobedience, he could not resist making her come apart.

It did not take long before her entire body stiffened and arched off the bed. “Wyndham!” she cried, shaking as she gave in to bliss.

Watching her come undone was truly Plimpton’s part of the day.

The last tremors had not yet fled before she again exerted pressure on his hair. “Come up here.”

“As my duchess commands.” He pushed up onto his hands and knees and prowled up her limp, sated body until he could lay down alongside her, face-to-face.

She gave him a tremulous smile. “You like to render me witless.”

“Yes.”

She gave an adorable gurgle of laughter. “Am I the only person in the world who knows what a wonderful, generous, funny person you are?”

“Just you, darling.” He kissed her nose.

“How can I make you as happy as I am?”

Plimpton kissed her again, lingeringly this time. “I am already so happy that I feel guilty.”

“Tell me this happiness will last, Wyndham. Tell me you will not stop loving me.”

“I am not going to stop. In fact, I’m going to love you more, until you are quite fed up with me.”

“You promise?”

“I promise with all my heart, darling.”

Winifred took his face in her hands and looked not just into his eyes, but into his soul. “For always and forever?”

“For always and forever.” Plimpton kissed her. “And that, my love, is a promise I look forward to keeping.”

The End