Page 13 of The Lady Sparks a Flame (The Damsels of Discovery #2)

13

Q: But can the mere contact of two metals, without any intervening fluid, produce electricity?

A: Yes, if they are afterwards separated. It is an established fact, that when two metals are put in contact, and afterwards separated, that which has the strongest attraction for oxygen exhibits signs of positive, the other of negative electricity.

—Mrs. Jane Mercet

Phoebe must have known Sam would find her at some point today. What happened between them last night left its imprint on them both.

Like a godforsaken bee to a flower, Sam couldn’t leave her alone after that kiss.

That kiss.

“It’s three hundred years old,” Phoebe said without turning around.

Her voice didn’t carry more than a foot inside the gray stones of Prentiss Manor’s chapel. Something about the way the ceiling sloped or the slabs of rock that formed the back wall cut her voice in half.

It was the carved rood screen stretching across the front of the chapel. An empty pedestal at the top once held the rood itself, a crucifix showing Christ in the throes of agony. Such a piece would be priceless if carved by a master carver.

Whoever carved the rood screen had pagan sympathies. In between the curlicues and fleurs-de-lis, there lurked exotic animals such as monkeys and tigers. Strange birds had found their way into the carving as well. One had an enormous bill larger than its body. Did such a bird even exist in nature?

Sam sauntered closer; the sound of footsteps was sucked into the stone. The only noise he heard was her breath. Stopping a foot behind Phoebe, the scent of her soap roused the pulse in his wrist.

“Your hand…” Sam stumbled for words.

Phoebe held her hand up without turning around. Two small gray plasters covered her thumb and forefinger.

“It’s fine,” she said, her words falling flat instead of clipped.

What kind of a chapel turned voices to lead?

Oh, yes, the kind of chapel one found in a haunted bloody manse in Cumbria. That’s what.

“I wanted to apologize for the liberties I took last night.”

There. That sounded like something a gentleman would say after kissing a woman whom he was not supposed to kiss for many, many reasons.

Sam preened when Phoebe turned around on one heel and regarded him seriously. He did have a way with words, didn’t he? She looked impressed.

Should he keep talking?

“Think nothing of it, Mr. Fenley,” Phoebe said, a faint air of—was that pity in her voice? “Perhaps in your experience such fumbling is construed as kissing. I can assure you; I took no…offense.”

Sam knew his jaw had dropped, for the gelid air of the chapel hit the back of his throat, but it took a moment to shut his mouth and compose himself.

“Oh. Well. I’m happy to hear that. We’ll forget it, then,” he said.

Obviously, Phoebe was lying.

Sam had kissed her with passion and expertise . No doubt her icy demeanor was the result of a sleepless night spent tossing and turning with unrequited lust.

That mystery solved, Sam crossed his arms behind his back and joined Phoebe in staring at the rood screen.

“It has held up well. The craftsmanship is…” Sam blinked.

At first, he’d assumed the rood screen depicted Noah’s ark, albeit with animals one never encountered in the Bible. Surely giant lizards and snakes with two heads were not among Noah’s original manifest.

Upon closer inspection, Sam discerned a few human figures in there as well, male and female, some of them…

“Holy Mother of—” Sam exclaimed. He forgot the awkwardness between them as he craned his neck and squinted. “Is that woman touching—?”

His head jerked back, and he stared at Phoebe in outrage. “How long have you known about this screen?”

Shrugging, she lifted an eyebrow as though amused by Sam’s reaction. “It’s three hundred years old. Most everyone who has been in this chapel for hours on end has had time to look at this screen.”

“Look here—” Sam could not contain his fascination. “This little man is holding his—my goodness, that can’t be to scale.”

Wicked woman! Now she was laughing at him. Not aloud, but she’d sucked the side of her mouth in and the three wrinkles in the shape of cups at the corners of her eyes straightened when she swallowed her amusement.

Gah. This was no laughing matter.

“How could your family have let this stand?” he asked. “This isn’t suitable for children.”

The more he looked, the more Sam found little imps and witches and whatnot cavorting in the most carnal manner. “Then again,” he said mostly to himself, “I might have spent more time at church if we studied this instead of scripture.”

“How puerile,” Phoebe drawled. “Is that what it takes to save a man’s soul? Naked breasts and outsized penises?”

When Sam squeaked with surprise at her words, Phoebe melted.

Her laugh was no less discordant in the chapel than it had been outdoors the other day, but it cheered Sam immensely. This manor was a place that turned the world upside down. When Phoebe laughed, however, everything around him righted.

A wan shaft of sunlight speared the stained glass and illuminated the slight cloud left by her breath. Was her nose as cold as his? Should he offer her a jacket? His arms?

“It was carved when the chapel was expanded in 1521,” Phoebe explained. “Do you have suggestions as to how we might describe it in the auction catalog?”

Sam knew a hundred ways to describe this, none of them fit for public reading. Taking a step or two back, the more egregious figures faded back into the cacophony of curlicues and larger carvings. To the left, above the pulpit, was a small loft. The railings there were carved in the same manner as the rood screen.

“What’s up there?” Sam asked. The light from the stained glass fell onto the altar and transept where they stood, but the rest of the chapel was murky and shadowed. “That isn’t the choir loft, is it?”

Phoebe’s laughter faded. “That is the women’s loft.”

“Women’s loft?” Sam echoed.

“It was the practice here for women and men to sit separately during services,” she explained.

Sam wasn’t a regular churchgoer like his mam and da, but he’d never heard of such a thing.

“I suppose it was something the men did back then,” he said, uncertain if he were teasing or truly offended. “Hiding the women away so they wouldn’t be distracted.”

Phoebe didn’t respond. She walked toward the pulpit, ducked below the stairs, and pulled open a small wooden door.

“Do you want to see?” she asked, looking back at him.

Why wouldn’t he want to go up into the unlit loft of an unheated stone chapel? Why, there was certain to be treasure up there. Mice. Rats, perhaps. Possibly a ghost.

What fun!

Sometimes Sam wondered if his thoughts were so loud, other people heard them, for Phoebe stopped two stairs above him, turned, and said in a low voice, “Do not be afraid. The ghosts won’t come up here.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said cheerfully.

Phoebe continued up the stairs and Sam followed. “As I am not prepared to meet a ghost and fear I will come up short in their presence.”

Ha. Haha.

Phoebe said nothing. She didn’t even chuckle.

Pushing open another thick oak door, she led him into the loft. There were a scant handful of benches up here, six at the most, one of them on its side. No pillows or moldering cushions like in the pew benches below. A squat wooden shelf sat against the back wall, thick with dust, no sign of the missals he supposed once lay there for the ladies’ use.

Phoebe walked to the edge of the loft and set her hand on the railing of the carved gate. Sam, a little sick from standing in so narrow a space high above the pews, did not venture over to Phoebe’s side. He was content to stand against the wall and keep watch for mice.

Not ghosts, though supposedly there were no ghosts here.

Should he whistle?

It would dispel the heavy aura of disharmony and misery thick in the air of the unused rooms in the manse.

Then again, what if it attracted the ghosts?.

“What are you doing now?” he asked her. His voice thunked to the floor, bounced off, and echoed on the flagstones below.

Phoebe had crouched at the opposite end of the loft. Pushing aside the empty bookshelf, she ran her fingers over the wall.

“If this has something to do with summoning ghosts…” he warned, “I will jump off this loft and be grateful when I fall unconscious.”

Phoebe shoved her shoulder against the wall. “There is another part to this loft.”

Sam glanced around to be sure nothing white or gray hovered in the air, then made his way over to squint through the gloom.

“How do you know?” he asked.

Phoebe rapped on the wall. “You can see when you walk in that this floor goes to the back of the chapel. There is obviously a hidey-hole on this side of the wall. Listen.”

She rapped again and it sounded different this time. Hollow.

“I would explore when I was a little girl, but my father had the chapel padlocked after Karolina was born. I tried but was unable to pick the lock.”

Aha. Perhaps there was treasure here! That would make this trip worth his time.

“What is in there? Gold?” he mused aloud. “Chalices with jewels in them and such? Silver candle holders?”

“Priests.”

Phoebe pushed one more time and a rectangle-shaped piece of the wall fell inward.

“Priests?” he cried. “You said there would be no ghosts.”

“Not dead priests,” she said matter-of-factly as she pulled the piece of wood out of the hole, then stuck her head inside. “Live priests. It’s a priest hole. I thought…”

Her next words were muffled when Phoebe stretched out on the ground, turned on her side, and wiggled her torso inside the hole.

Of all the…

Scientists!

Sam should have known Phoebe’s brain would need something to ponder. No scientist he’d met at Athena’s Retreat would have been satisfied, either, without some sort of discovery.

Or explosion.

Please don’t let there be anything explosive in there .

Nothing burst into flames, as luck would have it—then again Sam had found little luck since coming to this place.

None, actually.

None whatsoever.

So, when the sound of a door opening and scratching the stone floor came from below the loft, he didn’t even bother to panic.

All he knew was that when he got back to London, he would never again have anything to do with noble families. Or scientists. Or women.

No more women. Ever.

“I thought I saw Mr. Fenley come in here.” That was Karolina.

“There is no reason to come into this chapel. Your father had it closed off when you were a baby. Unless…” That was the marchioness.

“I’d forgotten about the chapel altogether. You know, Moti, when I was little, I thought I heard…oh. Ummm, what strange carvings there are on this…Ohhhhh. Oh!”

Sam grabbed Phoebe’s skirt and yanked.

“Your mother and sister are out there,” he whispered.

“I am never, ever getting married.” That was Karolina.

“They aren’t that big in real life.” That was the marchioness.

This could not be happening.

Sam crawled to the railing that hid the occupants of the loft from those in the chapel proper and looked down.

Karolina and her mother stood in the nave, peering up at the carved rood screen, one with skepticism, one with great interest.

“What…” Karolina asked, “what exactly must one do to accommodate something of that size?”

“We may be viewing it from the wrong side. It might be if we…”

The women bent sideways at the waist.

“Oh, that makes it worse. Is he putting it—”

Behind him, Phoebe twitched.

Sam knelt next to Phoebe’s boots, the only part of her that remained outside the priest’s hole. “Phoebe. Your mother and Karolina are there. We must leave,” he breathed.

“I can’t.”

“What if they decide to look up here?”

“I’m stuck ,” Phoebe wailed softly.

“What?”

“I can’t get out. I tried, but I am stuck.”

Sam clamped both of his hands over his mouth. No. No, he would not laugh. This was a serious situation and he needed to find a way out of it.

“Sam,” Phoebe whispered, her legs scissoring, exposing a sliver of her calf and poorly mended stockings above the tops of her ankle-length boots.

Agh.

Sam let go of his mouth only to slap his hands over his eyes. Phoebe would murder him if she knew he was ogling her legs.

“You have to help,” she whispered. “There are splinters all over. They’ve tangled in my hair and when I tried to get loose, they caught on the skirts of my dress. Reach in and unhook me.”

“We need to clean from top to bottom in here. It smells like mouse droppings and it’s colder inside than outside.” Karolina’s voice was faint, but Sam heard her well enough.

“I agree. We will ask Jonas,” the marchioness said.

“Yes, better him than…Oh, Moti. Look at this. How does he walk with such an enormous—”

Sweet Jesu.

Sam stared into the priest’s hole where Phoebe was lying on her right side. He saw nothing past the rise of her hip. The hole was three feet wide, enough room for two if they snuggled close.

“Sam, simply reach in and…”

“I can’t reach my arm in,” Sam said, trying to stick his head in the hole without hitting the top of it. “I’ll have to lie beside you.”

“No. Don’t come so far in. You’re blocking the light, and you won’t be able to see what you are doing.” Her low whisper could not hide the slight nervousness beneath her words.

Sam ignored her. He’d have them out of there in ten seconds. Lying on his side, he scooched his body into the tight passageway until he was flush up against her like two spoons in a cutlery case.

“I can do it by feel if I get close enough,” he whispered.

“You are too close,” Phoebe complained. “I am pressed up against you and can barely move to take a breath.”

Sam’s leg twisted beneath him. If the squinty-eyed, prodigiously endowed little goblins cavorting on the rood screens below could see him, they would piss themselves with laughter as he tried to reach his arm up and over the angry woman who writhed next to him.

“Stop moving for one moment.” Sam was lucky his voice remained even. Each time Phoebe twisted her hips, her bottom rubbed against his cock.

The horror and hilarity of their situation was not nearly enough to distract him from his growing erection and the way her hips stilled at its presence. She was indeed captured where her topknot had caught on a crooked nail. The maid must have been good at her job. An army of hairpins kept Phoebe’s hair in place so that no matter how hard she tried to pull away, her hair stubbornly refused to unravel, and only a few curls at her temples were allowed to escape.

If he were to reach up, it would take but a moment to free her.

Except, with her hair caught up, her bared neck was less than an inch away from his mouth. Sam smelled herbs; sage, tansy, and…He put his nose a hairbreadth from her skin and inhaled. Purely for professional reasons. If he bottled this scent for the emporium, it would make him a fortune.

“Lemon and rosemary,” he said. “Is that what you use to rinse your hair?”

He couldn’t see her expression, but he’d wager a pound Phoebe had just rolled her eyes.

“First,” she said in the crisp manner of a schoolteacher, “a gentleman does not ask after something so personal as a lady’s intimate toilette. Secondly, you do not need to be so close to free me. Third, your hands are nowhere near where they need to be, oh, oh, Sam!”

His hands were indeed far south of where she remained firmly caught.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “You must be quiet, or your mother will find us for certain.”

“Are they still there?” she asked.

The two of them froze, straining to hear if the women were still below or had, heaven forfend, decided to look in the loft.

Sam heard nothing. Then again, given the way his luck had been going, the marchioness and her daughter could well be standing staring at their feet. This might have wilted his enthusiasm for being this close to one of the most magnetic women he’d ever encountered—might have—except Phoebe chose that moment to sigh.

Not in an annoyed I’d-like-you-to-leave-now-before-I-shoot-you manner. In a way that signaled exhaustion.

If Sam had hated every moment spent in this place, how must Phoebe feel? That she and the women in her family endured abuse was clear. That they still walked on tenterhooks, still jumped at every shadow. How must it feel to be so tied down by memory, you never even looked for an escape?

That sigh undid something tight within him. He knew this woman now. Knew she would never flat-out say she needed help. That she was overwhelmed and tired and so sad.

Phoebe Hunt would have to be safe to use those words.

Sam Fenley wanted to give her safety.

She sighed again and his high-minded sympathy drowned in a crashing wave of lust as the action pushed her bottom tight up against him.

Madness. Utter madness, but what a powerful madness this was. Like pressing up against a fire, anticipating the burn, hoping to be left in a pile of ashes afterward.

The knobs of the bones in her neck shone like pearls in the faint light. Closing his mouth over one, he sucked, and she squirmed in response.

“I knew you would taste delicious,” he whispered. “Some folks might think you were made of porcelain, but you are made of spun sugar.”

“I am made of vinegar,” she whispered back. “Something must be wrong with you.”

After a moment she spoke again. “Perhaps you should taste once more to be sure?”

This woman would be the death of him.

Still, if Phoebe offered, Sam was not the man to turn her down.

He smoothed a hand down the line of her waist and the rise of her hip, then cupped her bottom and she stilled.

“If you lean back a little more, I can make you feel good, Phoebe.”

He put his mouth to her skin again and let the taste of her flood his tongue. An addictive mix of salt and soap and woman.

“I’m certain I won’t…uhhh.” Phoebe’s words slurred into a moan, and Sam’s cock jumped at the sound.

“You deserve a tiny bit of pleasure, my lady,” he crooned softly. “I will be gentle and quiet and”—his mouth wandered from her neck to her shoulder—“attentive to whatever you might desire.”

“We shouldn’t but I…” Her voice was full of a delicious tension, and he rewarded her by pushing more insistently into her bottom as he swept his palm to the juncture between her legs, and her hiss of pleasure sent the last of the blood from his brain directly to his cock.

In the dark, her desire rose from her body like morning mist on the river. His nose was full of it, and it drugged him in the best way possible.

···

“What would you like, Phoebe? A small release? A tiny favor, between friends?” Sam’s voice was velvet and silk, sliding down her spine and pooling around the center of her pleasure.

A small release.

Between friends?

“Yes,” she said to herself. She must have said it aloud as well because his hand closed over her calf where the hem of her dress had twisted itself. Before he could slide her pantalettes up her legs, Phoebe took hold of his wrist and brought his hand beneath her skirts, pressing his fingers to the slit in her drawers.

Sam stilled in surprise.

Would he take a disgust of her that she knew where best to please her? Phoebe held her breath.

Before she changed her mind, Sam combed through the soft curls between her legs. His hot palm pushed against her quim, and she dampened under his touch.

“I want to touch you, as well,” she complained.

Devil that he was, Sam flicked the tiny bud at her center, and she muffled a cry. Lightning raced from her quim to her nipples. They hadn’t done much more than press against each other and already Phoebe hovered on the edge of completion.

At the sound she made, his hips strained against her, his thick shaft pushed at her bottom, and his other hand twisted in her hair.

Craning her head around, she relished the slight pain at her scalp where her hair was caught between the splinter and his fingers. The kiss was clumsy and off-center but Sam’s mouth was hot and wet, and he thrust his cock against her backside slowly at the same time he used the heel of his hand to make her writhe.

That they were both trapped made it even more exciting. Neither of them had the upper hand in this space. If they moved too much, one of them would get hurt. If they made noise, they would be discovered.

There would be no explaining this away.

“Please,” she hissed into his mouth. “Now,” she begged, then suckled his tongue.

Sam did not tease her. He gave her what she wanted and slipped his long, thick finger into the center of her while he pressed hard, tight circles with his palm. Her legs trembled from the tension and a deep growl issued from him, like the satisfied purr of a tiger, quiet enough that it was all vibration, leaving Phoebe shaking with desire.

All it took was another press of his hand and the clumsy knock of teeth against teeth for the winds to race across their bodies, thunder pound in their ears, fire burn and twist inside them until the storm broke and Phoebe cried out her relief into his mouth.

Sam let loose a curse and held her still against him as she rode the wave of pleasure.

“Oh Gods. Don’t move,” he begged her.

How could she? Her muscles were limp, melted from the heat between them.

They lay together in a tangled silence until their breathing returned to somewhere near normal. His hand slipped from between her legs and pulled at her skirts. She drew in a breath to speak, gasping instead when he gently set his teeth to the side of her neck.

Damn him. She would dream about that sensation.

Releasing her, he traced her ear with his lips and whispered.

“I don’t believe…” After only a moment’s discomfort he succeeded in untangling her hair from whatever was holding it.

He continued, “I don’t believe I have ever been this aroused. I may well leave this loft and dedicate myself to the little men on that rood screen below us.”

“There is no reason I cannot help you finish,” she whispered.

“Only the embarrassment of a stain on my breeches I could not explain away if we were caught,” he said, voice strumming with mirth.

Caught.

The warmth from her climax left Phoebe like blood draining from a wound, only to be replaced with guilt and shame.

The one time she engaged in an illicit tryst without an intention to hurt herself, Phoebe had created an opportunity to hurt someone else. Karolina should have the right to choose a husband, and if she’d become fond of Sam, Phoebe would be guilty of killing that fondness.

“Get out, then,” Phoebe said abruptly.

Sam, who had been sniffing at her hair again, froze. “I’ve said something—”

“We went too far.”

Did Phoebe have to explain this to him?

No.

Sam silently disentangled her with a brusque manner that left Phoebe cold and confused. If it were that easy to free her, why hadn’t he done it first thing? Had she signaled acquiescence to him so readily?

Her own fault, that.

“You stay here,” Sam said when he finished. “Count to one hundred, then come out, so we won’t be seen together.” His voice was flat and sounded far away.

“Sam—”

Before she finished saying his name, Sam was gone.