Part 4 (2/2)
”Yes, m'lady,” he replied, and sent the other two for the lavender-scented sheets. ”Shall I do your back, m'lady?” he asked her.
”Ohhh, yer the bold one!” Polly cried, shocked. ”I'm perfectly capable of was.h.i.+ng my lady without yer help!” She knelt and, taking up the was.h.i.+ng cloth, began to soap it vigorously. Then she began to wash Lucinda, muttering all the while beneath her breath about the cheekiness of certain people.
With a mischievous wink at Lucinda the footman crept up behind Polly and, kneeling down, reached about to cup her two plump b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his big, rough hands.
Polly squealed, surprised, trying to slap him away.
Lucinda laughed, but then she said, ”Let her alone, John. If you are at a loss for something to do, please go and fetch me something to eat. I have not been fed since yesterday afternoon. I do not believe it is The Master's intention to starve me.”
John arose, but not before giving Polly's nipples a pinch which caused her to squeak again. ”At once, m'lady,” the footman said. He hurried out as d.i.c.k and Martin returned with the fresh bedding.
”Make the bed quickly, and then be gone,” Lucinda told them in a stern voice. Then she said to Polly, ”My hair needs was.h.i.+ng, too. All that dusty travel two days ago.”
”Yes, m'lady,” the maid replied, her equilibrium returning.
The two footmen were gone by the time Lucinda stepped from her bath. Polly dried her quickly after wrapping her mistress's hair in a towel first. Then she slipped a scented night garment over her lady, and Lucinda sat by the fire as her maid toweled her thick hair dry, first with the cloth, and then with Lucinda's silver and boar's bristle brush which she had taken from her lady's luggage.
”Am I to unpack everything, m'lady?” she asked as she tied Lucinda's hair back with a blue silk ribbon.
”Of course,” came the reply. ”It is as if we had gone to Ireland to visit my sister for the summer, Polly. I fear, however, that you shall be required to do the laundry as this house appears to have no servants other than the footmen.”
”There's an old lady in the kitchens who is the cook,” Polly informed her lady, ”and there must be someone to do the linens.”
”There well may be, but I doubt The Master wishes his business known to any of the locals. No woman has remained here for more than a week he tells me. You and I, however, will be here for several months. Ask him before you seek any help for yourself. If you must care for me alone, it is only for a short time, eh?”
The door to the chamber opened, and John came in followed by The Master. The footman was carrying a heavy silver tray. He set it carefully upon the table near the fireplace. Delicious aromas arose from the covered dishes.
”Good!” Lucinda said. ”I am ravenous!”
”Polly and John are dismissed,” The Master said. ”I shall serve you myself, Lucinda.”
Polly looked nervously to her mistress, but Lucinda said, ”While we are in this house, Polly, you will obey The Master. And, John, you may not seduce my servant unless she wants it. Is that understood, you randy billygoat of a mankin?”
”Yes, m'lady,” the footman said, but there was a devilish light in his eyes.
Polly curtsied, and the two servants departed the bedchamber.
”Feed me!” Lucinda commanded. ”I have not eaten since that delicate little meal I was served yesterday afternoon in your garden shed.”
He grinned at her and drew the table nearer, sitting next to her on the small settee by the fire. Lifting a lid from the first dish, he took up a raw oyster and tipped it into her open mouth. She swallowed it down and looked to him for more. He fed her a full dozen, serving himself an equal amount as she swallowed each time. Lifting another of the silver domes, he displayed a small chicken. He tore it in half and took a bite, then offered her one. They alternated bites of the fowl as they had the oysters until it was eaten. The next dish, a long, rectangular one, offered asparagus dripping with a vinegarette. Lucinda picked one up and slowly licked the sauce from the lengthy green stalk. Then her eyes never leaving his, she bit the flower-headed tip from the asparagus and swallowed it down. She sucked upon the stalk, taking the sweetness from it, and then cast it aside. Now she offered him one, but he shook his head.
”They are all yours,” he told her with a small smile.
She smiled back and proceeded to eat the vegetable slowly and sensuously as he watched. She could see the bulge in his breeches with each nibble she took. At one point she reached out, patting it. When the asparagus were all devoured, Lucinda gave him her fingers to lick. He sucked upon each digit with very explicit meaning. The last item left on the tray proved to be a dish of strawberries. They fed them to each other until their fingers and their lips were stained red with the juices of the sweet fruits. When the berries were gone and they had licked each other's fingers clean, he brought them each a crystal goblet of wine. Together they drank it down.
”Are you satisfied now?” he demanded of her when the tray had been decimated.
”No,” she said. ”There is one more thing I desire, Robbie.” He laughed. ”You are a true vixen, Lucinda,” he told her. ”Very well, as I am not yet satisfied either, you shall have a second dessert. Come,” he said, and pulled her up. Then spinning her about, he bent her over the settee, lifting her night garment.
”Ohh,” Lucinda exclaimed, ”how deliciously wicked!” The Master loosened his breeches, releasing his male member, and moving carefully behind her, clasped her hips in his hands while he nosed his love lance beneath her into her hot little sheath. ”Tis you, my pet, who are wicked,” he murmured in her ear as he bent over her. ”You are all wet, and ready for me.” He thrust deep.
”Ahhh,” she cried, ”I have never before done it this way!” ”There are several ways you have not done it, my pet, but I a.s.sure you that before you leave here in September, you shall know them all, Lucinda. Ahhh, that's it, my angel, come back onto my c.o.c.k!” He pumped her vigorously, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips.
”Ohh, Robert!” she sighed gustily. ”I want to learn everything you can teach me before I return to London. Ohhh, yes! Yes! Yes! Yesss!”
Chapter Four.
It was, Lucinda thought in later years, one of the loveliest summers of her life. It was, she realized, the first time in all of her life that she had really been free to do as she pleased, and not what someone else wanted her to do. She had a lover. He was intelligent, charming, and amusing. He was incredibly pa.s.sionate. She was in love with him, and she had known it almost from the first moment they had met. She knew that she must learn his ident.i.ty, for the man who called himself The Master, or Robert, was the only man she would marry.
His house was delightful, built, as she suspected, in the reign of the first Elizabeth when his family had made their fortune in the beginning of the Indies' trade. Their t.i.tle, he said, predated their short-lived wealth. It went back to the times before King William, he who had come from Normandy. It was, Lucinda felt, a home before it was a great house. The walls were paneled; the floors, wide boards. Both were black with age. There were fine, but worn, Turkey carpets in the public rooms, a wonderful library and a picture gallery filled with portraits of the ancestors.
”Do you look like any of your antecedents?” she asked him one day, and he had laughed.
”No,” he said. ”I look like my mother, and there is no portrait of her as there were no monies to pay an artist when she was alive.” He tipped her face up to his, and asked softly, ”Does it matter to you what I look like, Lucinda?”
”No,” she said, ”but you cannot expect me not to be curious, Robbie. For two months we have been lovers, and you have been masked the entire time when you are with me. Even when we ride out across your lands. I understand your reasons for keeping your face from me, but I shall never wed a man who inhabits high society. It is unlikely we would meet socially.”
”But if we do one day, and you have not seen my face, then you shall not be ashamed or embarra.s.sed,” he replied.
He never spent an entire night with her, disappearing after their lovemaking to his own bedchamber next door, which was firmly barred to her, and to Polly. ” I must know who he is!” she said to her maidservant. ”I must know!”
”Shouldn't think you'd care given the skillful way he wields that big c.o.c.k of his,” Polly answered saucily. ”I asked John what he looks like, and he says he ain't anything special.”
”You and John are rather thick,” Lucinda noted.
”He wants to marry me, m'lady,” Polly confessed.
”You'd marry a man who practices such a profession as he does?” Lucinda was surprised.
”John's pa wants him to come home to Hereford and take over his smithy, m'lady,” Polly said. ”He only went into service to better himself, but he says now he realizes he's better in the smithy.”
”Do you want to marry him, Polly?” Lucinda asked her maid.
”Oh, yes, m'lady, I do!” the girl said. ”I'd have me own house and everything. John's pa is a widower.”
”You two seem to have discussed this quite thoroughly,” Lucinda said thoughtfully. ”When do you plan to leave me?”
”John and me both agree, m'lady, that we won't go till this is over and done with. I explained everything to him, and he thinks you're ever so brave to do what you must do to have your revenge,” Polly told her mistress. ”He says The Master has been a good master, and he knows he's not going to do this any more after you are gone.”
”Do you mean to tell me Robert is retiring as The Master of the Devil's Disciples?” He had really meant it, Lucinda considered, excited.
”Yes, m'lady, he is. He says he is bored and tired of it.”
”I must learn his true ident.i.ty,” Lucinda said, ”but how?” She looked to Polly. ”Would John know?”
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