Page 34 of My Deceitful Duchess
His fingers trembled as they touched the curve of her cheek, tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “Page forty-six?”
She snickered, her eyes momentarily drifting to the naughty book she’d most recently lent him, left atop the stack of anatomical texts upon his desk. “Mm. I thought page eighty-three.”
“Dear God,” he muttered, with a wealth of emotion. “I might very well die of it.” He shuddered at the waft of her breath as it feathered over him, and his fingers slipped into her hair as she bent to envelope the head of his cock in her mouth. Her tongue circled him as her hands stroked, and she relished the fierce pants of his breath, the trembling of his fingers as they cupped her head, helping her to find the rhythm he needed. There was a reverence in the few words of praise he managed to grit out between teeth clenched with an agonized pleasure, and in the softness of his fingertips as he grazed them over the nape of her neck—as if she were something precious to him.
It made her want to indulge him. Spoil him. Ruin him for any other woman. And so when his head dropped back, and he groaned, “Jenny, I’m going to come,” and lifted his hands away from her head so that she could draw away, instead she redoubled her efforts. She took him as deeply as she could, until he shuddered and his cock pulsed in the damp heat of her mouth.
As his chest heaved in the aftermath, his gaze slid over her with something close to amazement, as if committing her to memory. As if he could not believe his good fortune. She had never thought to see love upon someone's face, but she thought—she hoped—
And then she stopped thinking entirely, as he pulled her from the floor and took her back to bed.
∞∞∞
“Good evening, Louisa. Have you anyone for me?” Jenny fished in her pocket for a couple of coins as she approached the woman huddled in her corner.
“None tonight,” Louisa said, in her scratchy voice. “Sent one round to you last evening, though.”
“Yes, I know,” Jenny said, tucking the coins into the old woman’s palm. “She came after dinner. I saw her set up in a bedroom.”
Louisa screwed up her face. “An’ did she stay?”
Jenny shook her head. “Left by morning,” she said regretfully. In fact, they often did—sometimes, a woman needed only a safe place to go for an evening but lacked the coin to pay for it, or had talked herself into returning to an abusive spouse, minimizing the altercation that had led to them leaving in the first place. Sometimes she saw them more than once. Several had even gathered the courage to leave their situations entirely, and Jenny had found them employment within Ambrosia, or elsewhere. But most—mostdidleave Ambrosia, in one manner or another.
“Figured as much,” Louisa sighed.
“Thank you for sending her anyway,” Jenny said.
Louisa offered a gap-toothed smile. “Got me a coin for it, didn’t I?” Her eyes narrowed as she peered out into the night. “An’ a good evening to you, too, sir,” she said.
“Good evening, Louisa,” Sebastian responded from his position some distance away, the better to let Jenny carry on her conversations.
“Just a friend, is he?” Louisa asked, on a croaking laugh. “I got no friends what would walk wiv me of a cold evening like this. You could catch ‘im, if you had the mind.” Her voice rose to address Sebastian once more. “Couldn’t she, sir?”
“I suppose she could, if I were to hold very still,” came the droll reply.
But hedidhold very still, there in the shadows just beyond the pale corona of a street lamp. Still as a statue, right up until the moment she set her hand once more into the crook of his elbow.
∞∞∞
“They’re growing accustomed to you,” Jenny said as they walked. But that really wasn’t a surprise. He’d been out with her six consecutive Saturdays, now. There were some constants—Louisa was always present. A few were even familiar; he had recognized one or two who were among his own informants, those that passed along information of interest to him. But the rest were somewhat changeable, although he was learning where to look for them. Where they waited for her—always in the worst of places. It was a miracle that she had been out walking these streets these last months and had emerged unscathed.
He didn’t even want to think about where she had gone walking in the years before he had known her. How many times she had made a similar journey alone, in the dark, where anything might have happened to her.
It was rare to find a woman actively in distress. It had happened only once, midway through their walk two Saturdays ago. The poor girl had been tucked deep into an alley with a woman called Sarah, who had spoken to her in soothing murmurs.
It was clear the girl had been beaten, but Jenny had asked her no questions. She had simply introduced herself, speaking in a soft, low voice—like one that he supposed someone might have used with a frightened child. After a moment or two, she had helped the girl to her feet and sent her on her way back to Ambrosia, where she was instructed to knock upon the door to the servants’ entrance.
“They don’t often want to talk,” Jenny explained, as they had continued upon their walk. “Well—sometimes they do, but it’s rare. There’s quite a lot of shame tangled up in a beating. When it’s just happened, as it often has when I find them, talking about it is the last thing they want to do. And really—what they need most in the moment is safety. To rest, and to recover.”
And shewasthat, for them—safety. And so was he becoming, as an extension of her. Louisa cracked bawdy jokes to him, in her affable way, which was strangely pleasant. He was growing accustomed to this new ritual of walking and waiting and rescuing when necessary. It had simply become a part of his routine, as had their morning walks to the bakery and back.
A strange sound from the alley at their left had him on alert. A curious rustling, a high-pitched whine. Jenny started forward to investigate, her brows drawn in distress. But the alley was dark, well beyond the reach of the street lamp ahead of them, and he patted her arm. “No—let me.”
It wasn’t in her nature to skirt a potentially dangerous path, but she released his arm and let him go first at least. The shadows were deep, clinging things, collecting upon every surface.
A pair of eyes glowed in the darkness, and the high-pitched whine once again pierced the silence. A paw settled into the faint light shed upon the ground by a lamp in an upper window. And another—large ones, covered in grey fur, with protruding nails.
“Only a dog,” he called to Jenny, as the animal stuck its muzzle into the light. Bristly fur covered its chin, looking rather like a short beard. Odd, but almost distinguished. The animal crept forward again, canting its head to him. Intelligent dark eyes observed him, and one of the dog’s ears flopped forward dramatically, inquisitively.
