Page 9

Chapter Five

Georgie awoke with a start at the sound of a soft knock on her door. No one in the household knocked—everyone from Bertha on up tended to barge in without warning. “Come in,” she said sleepily.

It was Rafferty, carrying a steaming pan of water. “How are your feet doing, Miss Georgiana?”

She resisted making a face at the formal address and quickly sat up. “They’re fine,” she said, trying to tuck the boots up under her skirts.

He closed the door behind him and advanced into the room, and Georgie felt a flush of happiness, one she tried to hide. “You need to soak them,” he said.

He set the basin on the floor by the chair, and she looked at it dubiously. Maybe the hot water would loosen the boots’ stranglehold on her poor abused feet.

“I will,” she said, not moving.

He waited. She waited. Finally, he spoke. “Do you usually sleep with your shoes on?”

She made a sound of disgust, flipping back the hem of her skirt to reveal the boots. “I couldn’t get them off.”

Before she realized what he’d intended, he scooped her off the bed and settled her in the chair, kneeling down at her feet. “You should have called for me.”

“I could have gotten them off my...self.” She swallowed a groan of pain as he began to pull the boot. He was holding her foot in one hand, tugging gently, and after a moment, the boot came free. She had blood on her stockings.

He said nothing, merely applied himself to the other foot, and a moment later both were free. “Take off your stockings,” he said, as calmly as if he were asking her for a biscuit.

“I can’t!” she said, scandalized.

“Why not?”

She thought about it for a moment, then realized to her chagrin that he wouldn’t care if she stripped naked. There was a challenge in his voice, and Georgie was not a one who backed down from a challenge.

“All right.” She contemplated telling him to turn his back, then thought better of it. If he was daring her, she was going to call his bluff.

It was relatively easy to reach up under her skirts to her ribboned garter, easy to untie it and pull it out.

It was originally pink silk, but use and many washings had faded it to almost white, and she suddenly remembered that the other garter didn’t match.

Fancy undergarments were one of the first things to go when they could no longer afford to go to the modiste.

And she was not going to let it bother her. With a calm efficiency, she untied the other one, pulling out a blue garter and setting it beside the pink one. “They don’t match,” she said disconsolately.

“Luckily, no gentleman will know that,” he said, unmoved.

“You know it.”

“But I’m no gentleman. I’m the butler. Do you want to unroll your stockings or shall I?”

That really did shock her. “I will.” She hesitated. “Turn your back.”

To her chagrin he did so, and she rolled the silk down her legs, pulling them free from the bloody patches with a hiss of pain.

He turned back, and her skirts were to her knees, her feet completely bare, and she knew a proper young woman would blush and protest. She had never aspired to be a proper young woman.

“Put your feet in the water,” he ordered, and she did so, letting out a soft sigh of pleasure as the warmth enveloped them. The water smelled of lavender and chamomile and she leaned back against the chair with a blissful smile.

“Who does the physicking in this household?” he said as he scooped up the boots and tucked them under his arm, preparing to depart.

She didn’t want him to go. “No one. Well, me, I guess, when we’ve had servants and the like. Mother doesn’t like illness and injury—they make her queasy.”

“Your mother sounds useless,” he said, a trace of harshness in his voice.

“Oh, she’s quite beautiful. And very charming. Norah takes after her, but my mother is much nicer. She just doesn’t like unpleasant or demanding things taking her attention.”

“I see.” He dropped the fiendish boots by the door and came back to her. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Take care of what?”

Once more, he knelt down in front of her, and she had the temporary fantasy of a prince begging for her hand in marriage. He’d make a very handsome prince, she thought dizzily as she looked down at him.

“Give me your foot,” he said.

That was so far beyond the bounds of propriety that she hesitated, but he simply reached into the water and lifted her foot into his strong hands, drying it with one of the towels he’d brought.

It felt lovely, being cradled by him, and it was all she could do to keep her expression bland when she wanted to purr.

And then he brought out a tin of salve and rubbed it on her very bare foot, soothing it into the abraded skin, his fingers kneading the arch, the ball of her foot, the heel.

She couldn’t stop herself; she moaned in pleasure, and he glanced up at her from beneath his lashes, absurdly long lashes for a man, and there was the trace of a grin at his beautiful mouth.

“This is completely unacceptable,” he said, “but I don’t think anyone else is going to take care of you.

I suggest you don’t tell your mother.” He set her foot down on the carpet and reached for the other one.

“Or my father or my sister,” she said, squirming in delight as his hands massaged her foot. She wasn’t used to people touching her, particularly so intimately, and she could see why it was considered indecent. Anything that felt that good must be shameful indeed.

He finished and rose, and she wanted to cry out in frustration. Her whole body felt taut, aroused in some way, and she wanted...she wasn’t sure what she wanted, but it definitely had to do with his hands on her body.

But he’d picked up the basin of water and was moving away before she could stop him. And indeed, what could she say? He’d performed an act of such intimacy on her that she didn’t feel she’d ever be the same again.

“Will you do that again?” she said forlornly as he headed for the door.

He stopped and grinned, very much not like a butler. “Not likely, Miss Georgie. I’d be horsewhipped if anyone found out.”

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” she said earnestly. “But what if I?—”

“I’m getting rid of your boots,” he forestalled her.

“You can’t throw them out!” she cried, envisioning a lifetime of imprisonment without street shoes.

“I won’t. There are plenty of people down on the docks with smaller feet than you have. Someone will need them.”

She looked down at her own feet, now pink and healthy looking. “Mine are awfully big,” she admitted with a sigh. “Norah tells me I have the feet of a peasant.”

“You aren’t going to tell me you believe what your sister says?” he said.

He was across the room, too far away from her, the basin held in front of him, and she swallowed her sigh of pure longing. He was just so beautiful. Her mother would think so too.

With that depressing thought, she shook her head. “No. She just always knows what’s going to upset me.” She looked at him again. “Thank you, Rafferty.”

His smile was a thing of beauty, without that trace of cynicism that usually accompanied it. “My pleasure, Miss Georgie.”

And she almost thought he meant it.

Who’d have thought he’d find someone’s feet that erotic, especially a proper young woman like Georgie?

He should think of her as Miss Georgiana, but right then, with a hard cock and a hunger he should be ashamed of, he could only think of her as Georgie.

And she wasn’t that proper, he reminded himself.

She needed to get married before her adventurous ways got her into trouble.

For some reason, the thought troubled him.

He was being a fool. Marriage was the best thing for her—away from her poisonous sister and her strumpet of mother.

Bertha had been surprisingly loquacious after a while, and it was clear the problems in the Manning household were legendary.

They were on the brink of ruin, Sir Elston on the brink of divorce.

Rafferty just needed them to hold together until he found Belding’s cache and then he could return to.

..return to what? He was no longer sure it was the life he wanted to lead.

He could always join Billy Stiles in his criminal enterprises, assuming he didn’t end up killing him, which was seeming more and more likely.

They were both in search of the money Judge Belding had hidden away, and despite Billy’s smiling assurances, there was no way the two of them were going to share it.

Billy had no qualms disposing of inconveniences, and Rafferty had it in mind to be very inconvenient indeed.

With Stiles gone, the rest of his men would fall in line, and he could have a rich, happy life.

After all, there was no such thing as having too much money, despite his own healthy assets.

The only problem was...he didn’t want to.

He’d been in the game too long—he wanted something else, and he hadn’t the faintest idea what.

Jane and Betsy were in the servants’ hall when he reached it, scrubbing away at the long table that should have fed at least a dozen servants, and they greeted him shyly.

They were whores and pickpockets, and he’d had some doubts about bringing them into the Manning household before he realized there wasn’t much left to steal.

Anything of value had already been sold, and besides, the two girls were in awe of him.

They’d think twice about displeasing him by pocketing their employers’ silver.

Though, in truth, he was their employer, not the Mannings.

He moved on to the kitchen, where Bertha was plucking one of the quails Jenkins had brought, and he realized the household needed at least one more servant for the kitchen, to help Bertha and to wash the dishes. Young Polly might do for that, he thought. He’d make arrangements in the morning.

Bertha was unaware of the treat in store for her, and she jerked her head in the direction of the girls. “Those two girls are terrible.”