Harry sighed against her hair. He let her legs fall to the floor as he steadied her. “I wish I could carry you to my bed, but I fear you’ve just drained me, my lady. That is”—he pulled away enough to look her in the eye—“if you mean to stay the night?”
“Yes.” George tested her legs. Wobbly but adequate. She made her way to the small bedroom. “I’ll stay the night.”
“And your brother?” he asked from behind her.
“My brother does not control my life,” George said loftily. “Besides, I snuck out the servants’ entrance.”
“Ah.” He had followed her into the bedroom, and she saw now that he carried a basin of water.
She raised her eyebrows.
“I should have done this last night.” Was he embarrassed?
Harry set down the basin beside the bed and helped her remove her gown and chemise, then knelt to take off her shoes and stockings. “Lie down, my lady.”
George lay back on the bed. For some reason she was shy now when she hadn’t been before during their wild lovemaking. He took a cloth and dipped it in the basin, wringing it out; then he stroked it down her neck. She closed her eyes. The wet cloth left coolness and goose bumps in its wake. She heard him dip and wring out the cloth again, the trickle of the water somehow erotic in the room’s stillness. He washed down her chest, over her breasts, and across her belly, leaving a trail of cold heat.
Her breath was coming faster now, anticipating what would come next.
But he started again at her feet, trailing the cloth up her calves. Gently, he spread her thighs and washed the inner curves. He wet the cloth, and she felt the coolness against her mons. He stroked the cloth deliberately between her folds and her breath caught. Then his weight left the bed.
George opened her eyes and watched Harry strip his breeches down. Nude, his eyes on hers, he took the cloth and rubbed it across his chest. Dip. Wring. He washed under his arms. Across his belly.
Her eyes dropped and she licked her lips.
His penis jumped. George looked up, and her gaze met his. Harry dipped the cloth in the water. He lifted his manhood to wash the heavy sac underneath. Another dip in the basin and he drew the wet cloth up his cock, pulling the cloth around, leaving the skin glistening. He scrubbed the rag in his pubic hair and then threw it to the floor. Harry advanced on the bed, his penis stiff. George couldn’t take her eyes off him.
He placed one knee beside her, making the bed dip. The ropes holding the mattress creaked. “Are you going to finish your fairy tale, my lady?”
She blinked. “Fairy tale?”
“The Leopard Prince, the young king.” He brushed his lips over her collarbone. “The beautiful princess, the Golden Swan.”
“Oh. Well.” She scrambled to think. Harry’s mouth was wandering to the underside of her left breast. “I think we’d got to when the father king told the young king to get—” She squeaked.
He’d reached the nipple. Her breast was already tender from their play before.
Harry lifted his head. “The Golden Swan held by the nasty witch.” He blew cool air on the wet nipple.
George gasped. “Yes. Of course, the young king sent the Leopard Prince after it.”
“Of course,” Harry murmured to the other nipple.
“And the Leopard Prince turned into… ahhh…”
He had sucked that nipple into his mouth.
He let it pop out. “A man,” he prompted, and blew.
“Mmm.” George went under for a few seconds. “Yes. And the Leopard Prince held his emerald crown in his hand…”
He was trailing kisses down her abdomen.
“… and wished for…”
“Yes?”
Was he licking her belly button? “A cloak to make him invisible.”
“Really?” Harry propped his chin on her lower belly, his arms resting across her pelvic bones.
George craned her neck to see him. He was lying between her spread legs, his face only inches from her… And he was looking gravely interested in her story.
“Yes, really.” She let her head drop back on the pillow. “And he put on the cloak and went and stole the Golden Swan without the nasty witch even knowing. And when he got back”—what was Harry doing down there?—“he gave the Golden Swan to… Oh, my Lord!”
Harry finished leisurely licking up through the flanges of her woman’s place, then kissed that spot. He raised his head. “Is that part of the fairy tale, my lady?” he inquired politely.
George tunneled her fingers in his silky hair. “No. I’m through telling the story for now.” She pulled his head back down. “Do. Not. Stop.”
She thought he may have laughed, as she seemed to feel a vibration, but then Harry lowered his mouth, placed it over her nubbin, and sucked on it.
And, frankly, after that she no longer cared.
“WHAT DO YOU DREAM ABOUT at night?” Lady Georgina asked him a long time later.
“Mmph?” Harry tried to focus his mind. His body was a dead loss. His limbs were leaden, almost liquid with fatigue, and he was struggling to stay awake.
“I’m sorry. Are you asleep?” His lady obviously wasn’t. He could feel her fingers stroking through the hair on his chest.
He made a heroic effort. “No.” He opened his eyes. Wide. “What did you say?”
“What do you dream about at night?”
Rats. He suppressed a shudder. “Nothing.” He winced. That wasn’t what a gently born lady wanted to hear. “Besides you,” he added hastily.
“No.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m not fishing for a compliment. I want to know what you think about. What you want. What you care for.”
What he cared for? At this time of night? After he’d loved her, not once, but twice? “Ah.” He felt his eyelids drifting shut and struggled to open them again. He was just too tired for this. “I’m afraid I’m a simple man, my lady. I think mostly about the harvest.”
“What do you think?” Her voice was intent.
What did she want from him? He stroked her hair as her head lay on his chest and tried to think, but it was too great an exertion. He let his eyes close and said whatever came to mind. “Well, I worry about the rain, as you know. That it won’t stop in time this year. That the crop will be ruined.” He sighed, but she was quiet beneath his hand. “I think about next year’s planting, whether we should try hops this far north.”
“Hops?”
“Mmm.” He yawned gigantically. “For ale. But then we’d have to find a market for the harvest. It would be a good cash crop, but would the farmers have enough of their own to keep them through the winter?” She traced a circle on his breastbone, her touch almost tickling. He was waking up now as he thought about the problem. “It’s hard to introduce a new crop to the farmers. They’re set in their ways, don’t like innovations.”
“How would you convince them, then?”
He was silent a minute, considering, but she didn’t interrupt. He had never told anyone of this idea. “Sometimes I think that a grammar school in West Dikey would be a good idea.”
“Really?”
“Mmm. If the farmers or their children could read, were educated even a little, innovation might be easier. And then each generation would be more learned, and they in turn would be more open to new thoughts and ways of doing things. It would be an improvement measured in decades, not years, and it would affect not only the landowner’s income, but also the lives of the farmers themselves.” Harry was wide awake now, but his lady was silent. Perhaps she thought educating farmers a foolish idea.
Then she spoke. “We’d have to find a teacher. A gentleman who was patient with children.”
Her we warmed him. “Yes. Someone who likes the country and understands the seasons.”
“The seasons?” The hand on his chest had stilled.
He covered it with his own and rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb as he talked. “Spring, cold and wet, when the farmers must get the seed into the ground, but not too soon or it’ll frost, and the ewes are all lambing at once, or so it seems. Summer, long and hot, tending the sheep under the wide, blue skies and watching the grain grow. Fall, hoping for the sun to shine so the harvest will be good. If the sun shines, the people celebrate and there are festivals; if it doesn’t, they go about with thin, fearful faces. And winter, long and dreary, the farmers and their families sitting by a little fire in the cottages, telling tales and waiting for spring.” He stopped and squeezed her shoulder self-consciously. “The seasons.”
“You know so much,” she whispered.
“Only what goes on in this part of Yorkshire. I’m sure you could find many who would think that little enough.”
She shook her head, her springy hair brushing against his shoulder. “But you’re aware. You know how the people around you think. What they’re feeling. I don’t.”
“What do you mean?” He tried to see her face, but her head was tilted down against his chest.
“I get caught up in silly things like the cut of a gown or a new pair of earrings, and I lose track of the people around me. I don’t think about whether Tiggle is being courted by the new footman or how Tony is doing all by himself in London. You wouldn’t know it to look at Tony, he seems so big and strong and in control, but he can get lonely. And Violet…” She sighed. “Violet was seduced this summer at our family home in Leicestershire and I didn’t know. I never even suspected.”
He frowned. “Then how did you find out?”
“She confessed just this morning.”
Her face was still hidden, and he tried to brush the hair away from her eyes. “If it was a secret, if she didn’t want to tell you before now, it would be hard to know. Children of that age are very mysterious sometimes.”
She bit her lip. “But I’m her sister. I’m the closest one to her. I should have known.” She sighed again, a small, sad sound that made him want to shield her from all the world’s worries. “He’s pressing her to marry.”
“Who?”
“Leonard Wentworth. He’s a penniless nobody. He seduced her simply to get her to wed him.”
He smoothed his mouth over her forehead, unsure of what to say. Did she see how similar her sister’s situation was to her own? Was she afraid that he, too, would demand marriage as a forfeit for their lovemaking?
“Our mother…” She hesitated, then began again. “Our mother is not always well. M’man has many illnesses and complaints, most imagined, I’m afraid. She spends so much of her time looking inward for the next disease that she doesn’t often notice those around her. I’ve tried to be a mother to Violet in her stead.”
“That’s quite a burden.”
“Not really. That’s not the point. Loving Violet isn’t the problem.”
He frowned. “Then what is?”
“I’ve always despised M’man.” She spoke so low, he stopped breathing so he could hear her. “For being so withdrawn, so uncaring, so very selfish. I never thought I was like her, but maybe I am.” She finally looked at him, and he saw crystal tears in her eyes. “Maybe I am.”
Something in his chest twisted. Harry bent his head and licked the salt from her cheeks. He kissed her gently, softly, feeling the tremble beneath his mouth, wishing he knew the words to comfort her.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I don’t mean to lay all my woes on your shoulders.”
“You love your sister,” he said. “And I would bear your woes, my lady, whatever they might be.”
He felt the brush of her lips against his collarbone. “Thank you.”
