Grace Burrowes - Once Upon a Tartan

His torso glistened with dampness, and his skin was red where he’d scrubbed himself clean. He was gentle but brisk with her, swabbing her belly with no more sexual innuendo than if he’d been grooming his horse. And then he sat on the bed, regarding her where she lay in her opened nightgown and wool socks.

“What a picture I must make.” She tried to bring the side of the nightgown closed over her naked body, but his hands stopped her. He leaned down, pressing his face to her midriff.

“You are beautiful, Hester Daniels. Never doubt it. Never.” He kissed her sternum and laid his cheek over her heart, an oddly submissive posture from a man Hester wouldn’t think capable of such a gesture. She settled her hands in his hair, reflecting that she’d learned a great deal from him in the past hour, not the least of which related to the man himself.

“Is there a name for that messy business?”

He stayed where he was, though he might have smiled against her skin. She liked the weight of him on her chest, liked the feel of his hair in her fingers, his breath on her skin.

“Onanism, casting one seed’s upon the ground, to use the scriptural reference.”

“I’ve wondered what the passage meant. It made sense to me as a girl that seed should be cast upon the ground.”

“There are other names for it, some of them vulgar.”

He seemed in no hurry to leave her embrace, which was perfectly acceptable to her. Maybe he even sensed she needed this time to steady her nerves and appease her curiosity. “Is it the same term when you do it to me?”

He raised his head. “You can do it to, or for, yourself, madam. The more genteel term is masturbate, from the Latin masturbari, of the same meaning.”

“We’ve sinned in Latin. I’m impressed. Maybe that’s why it felt so marvelous.” Though she suspected it had felt so marvelous because he’d been the one responsible for her pleasure. “And what, if I may ask, is the proper term for—” She frowned and kissed his hair. “That lovely business, inside my body.”

“The French call it la petite mort, which will serve.”

“But there are less genteel terms?” She wanted to know them. Wanted to hear the less genteel terms from a man who could spout Latin when naked and make it sound beautiful and imposing.

“Coming. When pleasure overwhelms you, you come, or I bring you off. Move over.” He extricated himself from her arms and climbed onto the bed. She moved over, finally casting the nightgown to the bottom of the bed. This earned her a smile as Spathfoy lay back beside her.

She treated herself to the sensation of his lean, warm, naked length all along her body, then tucked her leg across his torso, which put her sex in close proximity to his hip.

“Comfy, Miss Daniels?”

“Not quite. I like it when you hold my foot.”

“You will not avail yourself of my nipples, if you please. They are overly appreciative of your touch.”

“Yes, your lordship.” She rubbed her cheek over one of these overly appreciative parts and sighed with the wonder of him. “How can you sound so unassailably proper when you’re not wearing a stitch and I’m not either?”

“You are proud of yourself for this accomplishment.” He took her foot in a lovely, firm grasp about the arch. “Well you should be.”

“Good. If you’d scolded me, I might have started laughing.”

“I need to scold myself. I have no business allowing you into my bed, Hester.”

She wanted to bite him, to grab him by his now-curiously-unassuming male member and make him shut up. “And yet, here I am. You can’t undo this, Tiberius Flynn, you can’t take it back. I have that on the very best, most certain authority.”

He fell silent, which was better than if he’d started spouting off about propriety, and gentlemanly deportment, and God knew what else. As his hand kneading her foot conjured a lovely bouquet of sensations, Hester realized that for all they’d been intimate, for all they’d been naked and trusting with each other, they hadn’t joined their bodies in the sexual act itself.

And yet, he was preparing to flagellate himself.

“Tiberius Flynn, I forbid you to fret over this. I accosted you in your room, demanded attention from you, and left you no alternative but to accommodate me. The male of the species is weak and easily led astray. There is biblical authority for this.”

He let her foot go and brought up his hand to stroke over her hair. “Even the devil can cite scripture for her own purpose.”

Maybe his lordship intended that they have a nap, and then they’d become lovers in truth. Hester was beginning to doubt it. She had allowed him to catch not just his breath, but his damned gentlemanly scruples.

“Go to sleep, Tiberius.” She kissed his jaw, which was now scratchy with an inchoate beard. “Whatever moral hammers you are using to beat yourself, set them aside. You can pick them up in the morning and resume your punishment.”

She hoped he’d be reassured by the implication that she wouldn’t demand further attentions from him, and she hoped he wouldn’t toss her out of his bed just yet.

“Hester?”

“Hmm?” She resisted the urge to wrap her hand around his flaccid member.

“This has been a mistake. I know you don’t agree with me, but you aren’t in possession of a proper perspective on the situation. When you do have that perspective, I hope you will recall that I am apologizing for taking liberties, and that I did not take every liberty you would have granted me, including those that ought to be reserved solely for your husband or a man committed to becoming your husband.”

“Go to sleep.” She brushed her hand over his eyes, bringing his lids down before the damned man said anything further to ruin what had been breathtakingly lovely, sweet, and precious.

“I wish you had let me go with you.”

Fiona was frowning at Tye as if considering scolding him further. He hoped she would—he hoped the hand of God Himself would reach out of the clouds and scold the hell out of him for last night’s mischief with Hester Daniels, if not for the whole misguided undertaking that was this journey to Scotland.

“It’s pouring rain, child, and riding is a tricky proposition when the ground is wet. I went straight to the posting inn at Ballater and came straight back, risking my saddle and my horse in the process.”

“Are you going to catch your death?” She sounded ghoulishly pleased with the possibility.

“I could not possibly be that lucky. What are you reading?”

After he’d changed out of his sodden riding clothes, Tye had come into the library to hide, of course, and to read the letter he’d retrieved from the inn at Ballater. One letter, in his father’s inimitable black scrawl. Tye supposed that at least meant his sisters were staying out of trouble.

Which was more than he could say for himself.

“Do you want to read with me? I’m reading old Aesop.” Fiona’s voice was heartrendingly hopeful. She patted the place beside her on the couch. “It’s nice and cozy here in the library, and there’s nobody to make you do lessons or tell you not to get in the way.”

He knew this trap. He’d laid it for his own mother at bedtime as a boy. He’d been ensnared in it by his younger sisters on many a stormy night.

“One story only, and I get to read.”

She bounced over a few inches on the couch and passed him the book when he sat beside her. “You get to read, but I get to pick.”

“We’ll negotiate, because you’ll just pick the longest one in the book.” He leafed through the pages and looked for one with a picture, because his sisters had always preferred the ones with the pictures. He paused at an illustration of a Greek boy holding the paw of a huge, fanged lion. The beast’s face was contorted into a grimace, and a horrific splinter, roughly half the size of a railroad tie, protruded from the animal’s paw.

“This was your father’s favorite.”

“Read that one.” She budged up so tightly to his side, she was all but sitting in his lap. “I don’t read it often because it’s toward the back and I can’t say the name.”

“Androcles.” Tye launched into the tale of a boy who’d come upon a fierce lion in the woods, the lion’s stated agenda being to make a snack of the boy. Androcles offered instead to remove the awful splinter from the animal’s paw in hopes of improving the lion’s disposition. The lion granted the boy a favor as a result, to be called in at the time and place of the boy’s choosing.

Tye turned a page slowly, while Fiona fidgeted beside him. “How did they make friends if the lion couldn’t talk?”

“This is a fable, child. Make believe. It has no bearing on reality but serves for entertainment only or perhaps to make some moral point. Now…” Predictably, the lion and the human met years later, when the mature Androcles was to be fed to the lions. The favor was called in—though the lion was hardly going to devour his old friend—and the emperor was so impressed that both man and lion were returned to their forest to live happily ever after.

“I wonder if he ever got another splinter.” Fiona seized the book from Tye’s hands. “You said there are lions in London.”

“There are, at the Royal Menagerie, and all manner of strange beasts.”

“I want to go there. I want to make friends with the lions.”

Tye gently pried the book from her grasp and set it aside, thinking about tangled webs and old men too stubborn to consider the happiness of their daughters over political gain and financial machinations. “They aren’t very happy lions, Fiona. They’re far from home, and they miss their families.”

Fiona retrieved her book. “I miss my mama and my papa.”

Oh, not this bloody nonsense…

He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I know, Fiona. They miss you too.” How could they not?

She turned her face into his arm for one moment then sprang off the couch. “I’m going to draw them a picture for Uncle Ian to send them. I’ll put the lion in it, but it will be a girl who saves him. A brave girl from Scotland.”

She whirled off to the desk, leaving Tye without any other way to put off reading his father’s damned letter.

* * *

“Our guest certainly has a penchant for riding about the countryside in the rain.”

Hester glanced up from her needlepoint to regard Aunt Ariadne. “He’s English. They hardly notice the rain.”

“Now that’s odd.” Aunt put down her letters and sent Hester a puzzled look. “I could have sworn you yourself hail from England.”

Hester had the sense Lady Ariadne saw a great deal more than she let on, some of which was going to come inconveniently into evidence. “I was born in England, true, but the only family members I can rely upon are married to Scots. I have Scottish grandparents, and it appears I’m now dwelling in Scotland.”

“While Spathfoy would have us believe he’s English to the bone.”

Hester gave up. “I took liberties with his person, Aunt. Substantial liberties.”

“I suppose we must have you arrested then. Men can’t abide it when we take liberties with their delicate, frail persons. And Spathfoy is such a pale, sensitive creature too.”

“He’s not delicate or frail in the least.” Hester was being baited shamelessly, but she couldn’t resist. “He is the loveliest, most considerate man.” And perceptive, possibly even sensitive too.

“We are discussing our guest, the Earl of Spathfoy?”

Hester put down her embroidery hoop. “Tiberius Flynn. His sisters call him Tye.”

“I call him a damned clever fellow if he’s put that look in your eye on such short acquaintance.”

“You were the one who told me to get back on the horse.”

“So I did.” Aunt shuffled her letters in her lap. “And so I do. Merriman took a worse toll on you than he should have.”

She would bring up that name. “I am not pleased with myself, Aunt.”

“A few twinges of conscience are all well and good, my dear. The point of the exercise is for you to be pleased with Spathfoy. I trust you are?” Such an innocent question, but Aunt speared Hester with a look that brooked no prevarication.

“He has been everything that is gentlemanly, and I am not in the least disappointed.” Though she was puzzled. He’d denied himself pleasures with her she’d freely offered, and she was at a loss to understand his reasons.

“Then that is an end to it. He’ll go on his way, you’ll wish him well, and everybody’s spirits will be the better for his holiday here. Shall I ring for tea?”