Page 22 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“Oh, your lordship.” Patricia drew out an enormous silk fan and waved it, further decreasing the available space to breathe. “An honor, I’m sure.”
“A baron,” Clutterbuck marveled. “Jenny, sit up straight and make your curtsey. An unmarried baron, did you say? Unless you…” He attempted to survey Leda, crushing Jack further.
“Mrs. Wroth,” Jack muttered. “I don’t suppose it would be more comfortable if you—” He made a helpless gesture in the small bit of space before him. Her almond scent grew richer in the confined area, beneath it whatever herbs she stored in her wardrobe with her clothing, and under that, some deeper scent of her own, the arousing scent of woman.
“I suppose I might.” She squirmed in her seat, trying to free herself. Jack solved the problem by scooping her into his lap. Immediately, the pressure eased, and he could breathe again.
Warmth. Softness. A female in his arms again. He’d forgotten, before he came to Bath, how delightful that could be. Longing stirred, seated deeper than mere physical sensation.
Her cheeks reddened, and she held herself stiffly as she faced their companions.
“Mrs. Wroth, his governess,” she said crisply. “This is to say, I am nothisgoverness, but hired by him to be governess to his daughter.”
“Oh. Married, then.” Mrs. Clutterbuck’s face fell.
“Widowed,” Jack said, his words muffled against Leda’s shoulder.
Jenny regarded them both dubiously, clearly uncertain as to whether she should lay out her feminine charms for a baron who would travel in a stagecoach with his governess most improperly perched on his knee.
Jack faced a different problem, perceived in full when the horses moved, jolting the conveyance into motion. Leda shifted, her body jounced backward by the movement, her bottom resting directly atop his groin. The thick wool of her skirts shrouded the shape of her, but the mere contact was sufficient to make him stand to full attention.
It had been far, far too long since he’d taken his ease with a woman. He was woefully alert to every sensation caused by this one.
It was nearly fifteen miles to Chippenham, a journey likely to last up to three hours, and he was going to be in agony the entire time.
Patricia took out her knitting and enjoined her daughter to do the same. Clutterbuck and his factor engaged in a discussion of how they might increase production to furnish Bathwick with its bacon. They all, at different points, engaged Leda in conversation. They tried to engage Jack, but his remarks were barely coherent. Leda sat in his lap, her body slender and strong, her body all warm softness, her scent a cloud that fogged his brain.
He didn’t want to speak to the Clutterbucks of Holme Hall and the grand life he did not lead, one lacking social engagements, political clout, rounds of visits with important neighbors. He didn’t want to reveal to Leda, not yet, the virtual isolation in which he lived, fields on three sides of him and on the fourth a sharp, sheer cliff to a cold sea. She would learn soon enough that neighbors did not call, and the mad Baron Brancaster was not invited to harvest festivals or Yuletide feasts or planting celebrations.
There was no village for him to be the benevolent lord, only Hunstanton nearby, where shopkeepers did him an honest trade, their eyes wary as they conducted business. Around him lived his handful of tenants paying rents he couldn’t in good conscience raise when he’d done nothing to improve the land or its buildings, having no means to do so. And with him lived his quiet daughter, bowed into silence by too many losses of her young life, and ghosts.
The image was not enough to quell his body’s response to Leda. The consequence of a man deprived. In one respect, he was gratified at the reminder that his manhood still functioned, despite everything. He’d forgotten the sheer pleasure it could be, his shaft thick and hard, his thighs heavy, the back of his mind light with the loss of blood. Such arousal reordered his priorities, centered everything around the sensations of his body. The sway of Leda’s soft bottom against his lap, the way he was certain her bottom, even through the layers of padding, slid back and forth along his thighs. Her soft, fast breaths as he held an arm about her waist to keep her from tumbling to the filthy floor.
If he didn’t contain himself, the ride alone would work him to climax. And he must not, under any circumstances, imagine a way he could work her skirts around his waist, move aside the heavy layers of fabric, unbutton his fall and slide himself into the warm crevice of her body, burying himself inside her as the coach rocked them both to bliss. That thought would make him spill in his pantaloons, and the stain would show when they arrived in Chippenham. He gritted his teeth and leashed his body, unable to focus on anything but the exquisite torture of Leda rubbing against him, mile after mile, and being denied the ultimate release.
They rolled at long last into the yard of the Angel, the horn trumpeting their arrival. The Clutterbucks clambered out, the men still debating hocks versus back fat and where to sourcetheir salt, the women clearly disappointed that riding with a titled peer of the realm had not enriched their lives in any discernible fashion, not even to leave them juicy gossip to share with their friends, much less an offer of marriage for Jenny.
Leda slid off his lap with a sigh of relief, and Jack clenched his teeth at the final caress, and the cold that rushed in after. He might be blue balled for life, unable to service a woman ever again, broken from being over-sensitized for so long.
Well, it was no more than he deserved, wasn’t it?
“I beg your pardon.” Her cheeks still bore those flags of color, and her eyes were a brilliant, tormented indigo.
“I beg yours,” he said through an iron jaw. “I saw no other way to spare us both suffocation.”
They were alone in the coach, which rocked again as the horses were unharnessed, their luggage unloaded from the basket in the back. She looked vaguely tousled, wisps of hair fanning about her face, her cheeks pink as if she’d been pinching them. He could yank her to him, press those sweet lips beneath his own, have her skirts up and his torment over in a moment, a few brief, hard strokes. He shuddered at the exquisite agony the picture produced.
“You might bespeak a private parlor for us to collect ourselves.” His voice was a dry rasp. A terrible idea. In a private parlor he might press her against the wall or over a chair, toss all that wool out of his way, and finish what the journey had promised. He imagined Leda’s cheeks flushing with arousal, then satisfaction as he brought her to a fast, hard release.
Dolt.He needed to bring himself under control. Fast and hard would not satisfy what had built in him. He needed hours. They needed a room.
“We won’t have long at this stop, they said. Barely enough time for tea.”
“We are not continuing by coach. I am arranging a post chaise.”
He hobbled behind her as she proceeded through the double doors into the sturdy inn, lit by several bays of windows all showing an iron-gray, glowering sky. She paused inside the small wooden hall with the innkeep’s counter and the doors opening to the common room beyond. Her brows drew together.
“A chaise is an expense?—”
