Chapter 3 #2
“Naturally.” He looped one finger through the lattice, then rubbed the pad down the length of the wood.
“While some heat rushed upward and flooded your face, something else, something electric and…enigmatic spilled downward. I imagine right now, there is a pool of desire resting…between your legs.” His words were careful, calculated, and Phoebe felt seduced by just those alone.
She took notice of the sensation between her legs and inhaled sharply. “I… I feel it.”
“Tell me more?” he invited, and that curling heat only burned brighter. “I have led you far enough. Now I want to hear the words come from your own lips.”
She opened her mouth to comply at once but then stopped herself. “I do not know what to make of you, sir. Why do you speak thusly to a lady you do not know? Do you mean to seduce me?”
A low laugh returned. “I am interested in you, my lady. Need I have another motivation?”
“Even though you do not know me?”
“One does not need to know the other to value the pleasures of the flesh.”
“Oh,” Phoebe whispered, wondering if that was somehow true.
She had read enough of such things, certainly, but was that not only fiction? Surely real life could not grant her the same thing, that she might cross a bridge to such things without knowing the stranger with whom she spoke.
“Indeed.” Again, she heard the smile in his voice, and it made her smile in return, even if he could not see it. “So, will you tell me more?”
“I cannot begin to tell you how I feel, but if you will consent to lead me there once more, I will not conceal my feelings.”
Her words were astonishing. Phoebe could scarcely believe she had spoken them. But she also refused to take them back and amend her statement. The magic that was unfolding in this room beckoned Phoebe onward, and she felt like she could not turn away from it.
“All right,” the stranger murmured. “Do you feel it, then, between your legs? Or…” He hesitated, and Phoebe had the urge to respond.
“Or?”
“Or in your breasts?”
She blinked down at the floor of the privacy chamber she sat in, aghast but aroused by the proposition. Her breasts were indeed heavy, and her nipples were peaked and straining against her gown.
“Yes,” she exhaled. “B-both.”
“Both?”
“Both,” she reaffirmed.
Her curiosity was piqued, and despite her inexperience, her tongue somehow guided her through the whole interaction.
“And how does it feel? Not in terms of mentality, but physicality.”
“It feels…” She breathed in deeply. “It feels like my skin is burning from the inside out.”
“And does that feel good?”
“Somehow, yes.”
“Good. Very good.” His praise was a whisper, a mere breath that Phoebe wished to chase despite everything else. “It is perfectly normal for desire to arise when one hears, or reads, such things. The only question remains is, do you wish to do anything about it?”
“Do anything?” Phoebe echoed. “How do you mean?”
“As you said, you read such books for pleasure and in your own time. Even if they are so not open, they still contain intimate scenes, yes?”
“Yes,” Phoebe answered quietly.
“And do you do anything with how they make you feel?”
The question came low, sultry, but also inquisitive, as if the stranger truly wanted to know.
“No,” she whispered, scandalized to even think of such a thing; she had yearned for touch, but she had never dared to explore.
Yet this was a stranger, and she was masked, and the night felt bold and infinite, like the shadows would keep her confessions. Phoebe needed that. Darkness had held too much terror for her; now, it worked in her favor. It kept her secrets safe.
“A shame,” he noted lightly. “You are missing out. I know the ways of our society and how ladies are raised. Still, pleasure is a wonderful thing, and you ought to let yourself feel it.”
Her thoughts ran strangely wild. She had spent her life being shuttled from one righteous prison to another, except for the time she spent with her grandfather. Reflexively, her hand slid up to her pendant with his name on it.
Graeme.
“I—”
“It is all right if you do not want to continue speaking about your feelings,” the stranger assured her. “It was merely a curious question, not a push nor pressure.”
“And yet I liked it,” she whispered. “I only paused because…”
I am engaged. What we are doing, the way we are talking, feels inappropriate. If someone were to burst into this room right now, they might accuse me of infidelity.
A vision of Lord Birchwood’s face floated in Phoebe’s mind, and she gnashed her teeth at the thought of him.
He is an odious man. I despise him completely, yet I cannot allow this one indiscretion to ruin everything.
Her fingers grasped her pendant tighter, thinking of Genevieve’s words. Phoebe’s grandfather never would have approved of such an engagement, but would he have approved of this?
This ball, with its faux names and masks and sultry music and performers? A secluded meeting with a gentleman in a hidden corner of the house?
Certainly not.
But he would have approved of Phoebe claiming tonight for herself, no matter the scenario.
“It is just…?” The man’s voice came again, softly prompting without applying too much force.
Phoebe wanted to answer, for, aside from Genevieve, she felt listened to for the first time in years. Somehow, she did, separated from a stranger with a beautiful voice through a screen, draped in darkness.
“I… I have mixed feelings,” she finally whispered. “I… I wear a pendant that signifies everything I have held myself to. It—it urges me to speak, but it silences me at the same time. The person who gave it to me… I worry about his disapproval.”
“That is fair,” the man answered. “Not many would approve of what we have done here tonight.”
“No, no, it is not that,” she was quick to say. “It is that he would approve of the freedom tonight has given me, but I do not know if he would approve of the specifics.”
At that, the stranger laughed under his breath. “All right, if you are not comfortable telling me of your pleasure—” Phoebe made a choked noise, but laughed, nonetheless. “Then will you tell me about this pendant of yours?”
Phoebe hesitated, for she wore the pendant everywhere. What if it was spied beneath a gown at a public event, and this man was there? What if he recognized her by it alone?
“You do not have to,” he told her, once again providing assurance, but Phoebe was already speaking.
“The pendant is silver and engraved with my grandfather’s name,” she said. “His Christian name, which was not widely spoken of. He—he guided me a great deal, so that is why I am conflicted.”
“Confliction is not something to be ashamed of, little fox.”
She stiffened at that, her head snapping toward the lattice wall. “You can see my mask clearly through the slats?”
“Yes.” She spotted a quirk of a smile, something teasing and wicked. “But only that. I only see the fox mask.”
“You are certain?”
“I would not jeopardize either of our identities,” he said. “I know the ways of these balls. Masks only, false names only.”
“Then, may I know your faux name?” she dared to ask.
Silence lingered for too long, and she feared she had asked the wrong thing.
But then his voice slid between the gaps of the wall between them. “Pyramus.”
“Pyramus?” Phoebe dredged the familiarity of the name from her books. “A Grecian king.”
“Indeed,” the stranger confirmed. “Always separated by one wall or another. I am he.”
In a quiet voice, Phoebe asked, “Then, does that make me your Thisbe? Always parted by a wall?”
More silence followed, and she swallowed her nerves down, right down into her stomach, where they festered in a rage of butterflies.
“If you wish.”
“One Thisbe of many,” Phoebe huffed softly.
“You could not be more wrong,” he told her. “For you have stayed longer than I expected and have shared more than I could have hoped for. My fox, my Thisbe.”
Phoebe’s breath caught, and she went to speak further, to be bolder, wanting to ask the stranger if they could step outside of the privacy booth to face one another; masks be damned. But the clock chimed throughout the room, and she stiffened.
Just meet me back here in an hour, yes?
Genevieve’s words rang through her mind, chasing away the arousal that this stranger had caused, and she stood abruptly.
The ballroom—she needed to go to the ballroom.
“I must go,” she whispered, jumping up from her seat.
“Thisbe—”
“I am sorry,” she said, “but I must.”
Whatever he said after that was left behind as she fled her side of the booth and scurried away in a flushed hurry.
When she found her way back to the ballroom, with its stunning performers and tantalizing music, she found Genevieve only just weaving her way through the crowd to meet at the top of the staircase.
“We must leave,” Phoebe said as soon as her cousin was at her side.
Genevieve frowned, glancing back at the crowd below them. “We must? Is everything all right? I realize an hour is not really long enough to explore—”
“It was plenty,” Phoebe rushed to say. “But we must leave. I—I cannot risk being caught here, so we must depart sooner rather than later. Please, Gen. Please.”
Genevieve gazed back at her through the eyeholes of her mask, and it made Phoebe wonder how much of the stranger she would remember after tonight, even though he had never removed his mask.
For a moment, she tried to paint a picture of what he might look like.
That long curtain of light, auburn hair, his mask, the smirk…
She shook her head as if that would rid her of the thoughts, and she tugged on her friend’s hand.
“Gen.”
“All right,” Genevieve finally conceded. “All right, we will leave.”
Guilt briefly pierced Phoebe. She knew it was discourteous to pull her cousin away from this magical gathering, but her worry was a tidal wave, growing due to her interaction with a stranger.
The sound of his voice filled her mind bringing with it heat. The urge to spin around and rush back to the room at the end of the hall occurred to her, but Phoebe pushed it violently out of her mind.
If I go back now, I will surely tell the man my real name. He will not be Pyramus and I will no longer pretend to be Thisbe.
I am Lady Phoebe, daughter of Lord Tripleton and he is…He is…
“Genevieve,” Phoebe pleaded as she tugged her cousin’s arm. “Please. We must go at once. Temptations abound and…”
“Yes,” Genevieve murmured as she cast a wistful glance back toward the dance floor. “I can see how being surrounded by so much temptation all at once would be overwhelming for someone who is only experiencing it all for the first time.”
Without saying anything further, Phoebe turned on her heel, hearing Genevieve following behind, and the two of them left the notorious Lord Spencer’s masquerade.