Chapter 2
With the help of directions obtained from Tobias, Edward reached the Dalpole townhouse before morning calls — actually taking place in the afternoon — were done.
The butler showed him into a bright sitting room, and soon, the lady of the house swept in.
Charlotte Dalpole was a young woman, pretty enough, but rendered beautiful by her burgeoning belly. Her pregnancy had sent her bosom to the heavens, leaving Lord Edward hard as stone.
He took a seat next to her on the divan and placed a small pillow thoughtfully in his lap.
“I wondered when you might pay a call,” she said excitedly.
“Were you now?” asked Edward, surprised but pleased that she had no plans to feign ignorance of the gossip.
“Yes. You see, I’ve been hearing talk,” she said.
Excellent. They could exchange information efficiently and squash these rumors in no time.
“When it concerns me, talk is often true. Except in this case, as you know.”
Her face fell. “I did not realize the stories were not true.”
“You, better than anyone, should know—” Edward stopped when he realized the source of the confusion. Clearly, they were discussing two very different stories. “To which stories are you referring?”
“It is said that you engage in the marital act for money,” she said, leaning over to pour tea.
He attempted not to look down the front of her Grecian dress, he really did, but the necklines du jour were so favorably placed and her bosom so bounteous that Edward was riveted to where the dough overflowed the bowl, so to speak.
The nearly sheer fabric seemed to suggest a hard peach nipple.
London’s wives were going to get him shot. Again!
“I don’t mean to correct you, madam,” he said, pulling his eyes away regretfully. “But I do not engage in the marital act for money. I step in and provide breeding services for fine families in need of help.”
“Is there a difference?” she asked, her face betraying a good deal of confusion.
“Ahh, yes,” he said, setting down his saucer and teacup so he might use his hands for this lesson. Baroness Dalpole was proving considerably thick in places other than her midsection, and he’d need full use of his person to educate her.
He held up both hands, then made one into a hole shape and pointed a finger using the other. Edward moved them together, rather longer than he perhaps should have, but he found himself swept away by the demonstration.
“I do not get paid for this,” he said slowly so that this woman might grasp the nuance.
She nodded, nibbling on a biscuit.
Edward rearranged his hands and moved as if he were cradling a baby. “I am paid for a favorable result. A child. If I receive funds in advance, I work until there is the desired outcome.”
Charlotte took a thoughtful sip of tea. “Are you paid the same for babies that turn out to be girls?”
Edward leaned back on the divan, very comfortable discussing his entirely legitimate business. “My fee remains the same, though families often find that their generosity runs more freely when a male heir is the result.”
“So you never partake in the act for reasons of pleasure?” she asked skeptically.
“You mean outside of my business?” he asked, raising his brows. My, she was a forward lady.
“Inside, outside, it doesn’t matter,” she said, shifting closer.
Lord Edward’s cock jumped at how close he was to a fertile, forbidden goddess. “As a man devoted to my work, I limit my spending to efforts at procreation. I wouldn’t want to dilute the seed unnecessarily.”
“That’s clever,” she said, those luscious breasts moving as though she were just as heated by the discussion as he was. “I can’t help but think that you’re a brilliant man. Scientific in your approach.”
“Well, yes, but—”
And then he felt it. Below that decorative pillow, where his cock was painfully hard, Charlotte Dalpole had slipped her elegant hand, which was now feeling about.
“May I help you, madam?” he asked, his voice rather higher than usual.
“Oh, yes, I was merely looking for some needlework I misplaced last week. I thought I saw a sign of it and sought to secure the piece immediately.”
Those fingers moved over his clothed shaft, encased in breeches made by his tailoress. “I think you’ve done quite enough to secure the piece,” he said, gently removing her hand from the bulge in his trousers.
Charlotte turned, leaning close so her bosom pressed against his upper arm.
God in heaven, he’d put many women in a breeding state, but had virtually no experience with the result.
It was a mistake he’d like to remedy. As soon as possible.
How men resisted tupping their wives senseless when they became soft and round and apparently insatiable, he didn’t know.
It was then that Baroness Dalpole shocked him: despite the awkward heft of her belly, she slid to the rug of her sitting room.
“Madam, are you well?” he asked, standing immediately to fetch help. “Do you require a doctor?”
Charlotte placed her hands on Edward’s thighs. She pushed them up and up, towards his straining piece, and licked her lips as though she relished tasting him. Heavens and angels, if she kept this up, he’d be soiling his smalls and running from the house in mortification!
“I’m well, Dick Stone,” she said, a seductive look on her glowing face.
He wasn’t a religious man, not by any means, but standing above a woman while she kneeled like a supplicant made his overactive cock leak.
Light a candle for his soul; he was ready to fuck this woman on every surface of the sitting room, husband or not.
Before he ruined his life — once again — by sticking his shaft into some other man’s wife without a breeding contract in place, he needed to depart this house and never look back.
“I thank you for the tea, madam,” he said, shuffling away. “This has been a most instructive visit.”
And then she slid a hand up to cup his aching cock, over his trousers. Seeing her hand around him sent all logical thoughts from his brain.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, moving one hand up to work at the buttons on his falls.
Did he mind that he’d likely be fleeing this house in a scrap of fabric as her disgruntled husband chased him with a dueling pistol? Not at all! Not if she could just rub over his cockhead a little more.
“Do I mind?” he asked, gasping when she placed her cheek against the place his cock strained under several layers of fine tailoring. “Why, no, but I’m not the one who would, am I?”
He could barely string thoughts together. Charlotte opened that last button and took down his falls like they contained the finest treat at a buffet. Edward could see down the front of her dress from where he stood with a jerking cock and unquiet conscience.
“Oh, you leave that to me,” she said, bringing his breeches to his mid-thighs and tugging at his smallclothes. Lord Edward wasn’t sure if she meant his garments or the handling of an angry husband, but he was pleased to let her handle both, if she so wished.
Finally, he was free. The baroness had his cock out and leaking. If this lady wasn’t careful, he was about to divest himself of a good deal of that carefully saved seed all over her face.
“You requested an audience with my breeding organ, madam?”
She stared at his cock and then looked up uncertainly. “Yes, but I don’t know what to do next.”
Edward held in a groan. These society wives knew exactly what to say to get tupped senseless, their beguiling mix of innocence and hunger leading him down the wrong garden path every time.
“Well,” he said, letting his hand find its way to her hair while he took hold of his shaft with the other. “How about you start by giving this sad, sore cock a kiss? It’s been wanting to meet you since I walked in.”
He pressed his hips forward and let the leaking tip run over the baroness’s inexperienced mouth. She tried to chase it and kept her lips firmly closed at first, but Edward was persistent and randy. It wasn’t long until he’d slipped inside.
“That’s a good girl,” he said, pushing in and pulling back shallowly so she could become accustomed to the feel of a man taking her mouth. “Let’s get it nice and wet, and then I’ll give you something you’ll like very much indeed.”
Lord Edward surveyed the room and considered how he might safely plow a pregnant woman when he saw the minx currently learning how to suck his cock shrug off the top of her simple gown.
She had half stays on, but she was spilling forth in a way that made Edward’s balls feel heavy and full. Charlotte was moving most curiously.
At first, Edward wondered if she was touching herself under her dress. Such a turn of events would be most welcome, and he jolted at the thought of her getting wet and sloppy merely from licking his cock.
But then he realized she wasn’t touching herself at all, but angling herself while continuing to work her mouth on his cock. Charlotte turned slightly, in a way that made no sense, as if to present an erotic tableau for a viewer that wasn’t even present.
Light from the sitting-room window illuminated her breasts and danced over those cheeks and lips she was using so well to service his cock. Why, she’d look like a painting if someone had the good fortune to watch her ministrations.
And then he heard a scraping noise from across the room. Edward jolted, but the baroness had her hands on his bum, holding him in place as she sucked him deeper than she had before.
In terror, he stood stock still as he waited for the maker of the noise to show themselves. But he waited in vain; a minute passed, and they were still alone.
It was a curious thing though; after so many years in the field, Edward had developed the ability to know when he was being watched, and he was certainly being watched by someone other than the luscious Charlotte.
He looked towards the side of the room where he had heard the noise and let his eyes rove over the terrain, imagining it divided into a grid. It was when he was regarding a painting — a scene involving stags and hunters under the royal standard — that he saw something odd.
One deer had a dark eye that seemed to change colors. As Charlotte experimented with taking his shaft deeper, Edward squinted and saw that there was a hole in the painting. A hole that would allow someone in the room next door to observe the goings-on in this room, mostly without detection.
The lady had angled her body to best display it for that painting.
And Edward saw something curious just before he heard that scraping again and the deer’s eye returned to a solid dark color: there was a flash at the hole, something orb-like but not an eye; at least, not precisely.
Something far more resembling glass shaped like an eye.
The sort of prosthetic made for veteran soldiers. Men like Baron Dalpole.
Someone was watching him get his cock sucked by the pregnant lady of the house.
A nerve connecting his spine and taxed sack tingled, and the weight of the truth came down upon him as his cock grew harder and he poured seed forth: he’d bet Baron Dalpole had been observing the interlude with his wife the whole time.
And judging by the lady’s willingness to suck him and her attempts to show off her body, she was a willing participant in the whole affair, entirely knowledgeable of her husband’s observation.
But why would a husband and wife take such efforts to construct a scene of infidelity unless they wished to blackmail the lover? Everyone knew Edward had little blunt.
They couldn’t…enjoy such activities, could they? A husband couldn’t find cuckoldry — something all men feared — arousing in the least? And a wife blooming with her husband’s child couldn’t possibly enjoy the attentions of another man while knowing her husband observed her, could she?
Even as he attempted to dismiss the evidence before his eyes and working his cock, Lord Edward felt the telltale sign of his shaft becoming harder and blood pouring into his brain as the truth fueled a spectacular orgasm and equally catastrophic headache.