Chapter 33
Petey
The next morning, after a long phone call with my gran, I sat at the large oak table in Buckford Hall’s kitchen, having breakfast with William.
It was blissful—the smell of toast, the steaming coffee pot, the sound of Bramley fighting with the orange juicer.
William was naked, obviously, except for his red satin boxer shorts.
As he ferried a toast soldier from his egg to his mouth, a large droplet of golden yolk dripped onto his chest and began making its way down his cleavage, narrowly missing the ring on the chain around his neck.
I watched as he wiped it up with his finger, then popped his finger in his mouth.
Bramley put a jug of fresh orange juice on the table. William was sucking on his neck chain—I guessed in search of stray yolk. Bramley stared at him in thinly disguised disappointment. William noticed.
“Is there something the matter, Bramley?”
“No, my lord. I was merely going to ask whether you planned to move back into your usual bedchambers today? I prepared the room for you yesterday, but I note this morning your bed is unmolested.”
It wasn’t the only thing unmolested. Although we’d slept in each other’s arms, the night was as chaste as every other night had been.
“Sorry, old thing,” William said. “I think we might stick it out in the folly a bit longer. It’s rather good fun, camping up in the belvedere.”
Bramley shook his head in obvious disapproval.
William turned to me. “If that’s all right? Unless you want to—”
“No, the folly is lovely. It feels like home. It is Buckford to me.”
William winked and champed down on some yolky toast.
“Bramley, that reminds me. Chap’s coming to install Wi-Fi in the folly on Friday. Can I leave you to look after him? I’ve got the art dealer from Wetherby’s Auction House coming to value the paintings.”
“Of course, my lord.”
I leant over to William. “I thought the folly was screen-free?”
“Only because there was no Wi-Fi,” he said. “But the study has to become a real working office. We’ve got a hundred and fifty-two days to save the estate. I need to start running things like a proper, modern business.”
A wave of pride flushed through me, and I reached under the table and squeezed William’s leg. He leant forward, lips puckered for a kiss.
I pointed to the corner of his mouth. “You have a bit of yolk.”
“Oh!” His tongue darted into the corner to dig it out and, satisfied, the puckered lips were back. I laughed. “Absolutely not.”
The telephone on the wall by the refrigerator rang. I’d never heard it do that before. Bramley answered the call. At that moment, Bunny drifted in, greying hair piled on top of her head, muslin scarf trailing behind her—smiling broadly. Her hands plunged straight into William’s hair.
“Morning, darling.” She massaged his head.
“Morning, Mother,” William said, tilting his head back and puckering his lips again.
Bunny winced. “Absolutely not.” I laughed. She kissed him on top of the head and said good morning to me. “Ooh, coffee.” She rested a hand warmly on my shoulder as she drifted past to pour herself a mug.
“My lord.” Bramley had the phone receiver buried in his apron. “It’s a gentleman from the Bulletin newspaper.”
“NO!” William, Bunny, and I all sang like a chorus.
Bramley put the receiver to his ear to deliver the bad news.
“We only plugged the bloody thing back in this morning,” William said. “I’m regretting it already.”
Bunny sat down and cut into a grapefruit.
“Not that it’s not lovely to see you, Mum, but what are you doing here?”
“I thought, seeing as Petey’s clearly staying—”
“And how might you know about that?” William said.
“The great goddess works in mysterious ways,” she said. “I thought we should talk about who’s doing what at the village fair. It’d be nice to split the workload three ways this year.”
After breakfast I went across to the Old Coach House, where all the production equipment was still set up. All the fixed cameras were still in place in the house too.
In the Old Coach House, I found my fellow producers, Thandiwe and Haruto, freshly arrived from the Travelodge and already beavering away at their computers, sorting the footage we’d collected.
We would spend the day working out narratives and sequences.
Once we had those, we would send the instructions to our team of editors, who were working remotely from their living rooms, basements, crack dens, and so on.
At the end of the day, I returned to the folly to find William sitting at his desk in a white business shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, face lit by the screen of a laptop. I almost did a double take.
“Is that new?”
This whole vision was new. Who was this guy?
“I’ve been making some investments,” he said. “I had a meeting with the new accountant today. And the old one. Seemed only right to sack him face to face. But the new one, well, she hit me with some real talk. So it’s down to business, I’m afraid.”
That made me smile. I walked around the desk and sat on the edge of it, winding my arm around William’s head and bringing my lips to his.
His body felt so good against mine. I wanted him to pull me down onto the desk and swing his leg up over me, to feel the weight of him pressing down into my body.
He looked so sexy in shirtsleeves. The cut was struggling to contain his chest. I ran a hand down the fabric and circled his nipple playfully.
“And how was your day?” he asked.
“I’ve had enough of looking at a screen for one day.”
“Me too.” William closed his laptop and stood. “Are you hungry?”
I was, but not for food.
I put on a shirt, at William’s insistence, and we ate dinner in the dining room, at Bramley’s insistence. There were candles and three courses and Bramley had lit a fire in the fireplace. I realised the pair of them were putting on a show to impress me. I was being wooed. My God, I felt special.
Over dinner, William told me what his new accountant had to say.
It was really none of my business, but I enjoyed that he trusted me enough to tell me.
I held his hand across the corner of the table.
William didn’t just need to find ￡4.3 million, he needed to find at least ￡12 million—and the target kept growing.
The debt was accruing daily interest. He still had to pay tax on any money he raised, still had to fund the estate’s ongoing operating costs, had to find capital to pay for any investments and improvements that would help ensure the estate was profitable long into the future, and had to find enough to cover the insurance costs of his new revenue streams. The mountain he had to climb had almost tripled in height, yet William seemed determined to reach the summit.
He seemed upbeat, ready to meet the challenge.
That made me feel incredibly proud of him, and I told him so.
“Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a tarte au citron,” William said, as we dug into Bramley’s delicious dessert with our spoons.
“Sorry?”
“What’s the link?”
“Oh!” I shovelled more dessert into my mouth to give myself thinking time.
“William Winters reporting there, on the proposed new statue to the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. And from a tart who left a deeply bitter aftertaste to one that’s so good you’ll want to stick your nob in it. Bramley’s in the kitchen next, with his lemon tart recipe.”
William guffawed, nearly choking on his pie. “That is such a talent. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as clever as you.”
He may as well have called me a good boy and scratched my belly.
I don’t think I’d realised I had a praise kink until that moment, but there it was.
I couldn’t get enough. As I sat there, tummy way too full, staring at the thin white cotton shirt struggling to contain William’s body, I wanted to climb him like a mountain lion.
Back at the folly, I was so horny I was scratching at my skin.
When I came in from the bathroom in my briefs, William was still in his shirt and chinos, lying back on what was notionally my bed, propped up on his hands.
His shirt was stretched so tight over his chest, at any second the thread holding the buttons was going to lose its battle and they were going to fire across the room like bullets.
I was probably going to lose an eye. The cut of his new beige chinos made his package look huge, like it was the centre of the room, like everything else had been designed around it, like it was a sodding chandelier.
We were waiting for the kettle to boil on the gas ring, but I didn’t want tea. I wanted William.
I took a chance. He’d been wooing me all night, right?
The lights were green this time, I was sure of it.
I slid onto the bed, one knee either side of his thighs, feeling the heat of him between my legs.
I crept up the bed towards him, my eyes never leaving his.
I put my hand on his chest and pushed him down onto the bed.
He did not resist. I leant over him; I kissed him.
My hand found his buttons, and I undid his shirt.
“You look so sexy in this,” I said.
“Golly.”
I kissed his neck, his jaw, his collarbone. “Who knew dressed could be even sexier than undressed?”
“If that’s true,” he said, arching his back as I pulled his shirt tails free of his chinos, “why are you undressing me?”
“Because I want to feel close to you.” I kissed my way down his chest, my mouth teasing one nipple, then the other.
“I want to feel close to you too,” he said.
I let my crotch press into his, feeling his hardness against me.
He wanted me. His body wanted me. He was aching for me as much as I was aching for him.
I sat up, pressing my gusset into his cock, and undid my shirt and threw it across the room.
William’s hands caressed my chest. His fingers worked their way down my body.
His hands, his big, powerful hands, held my waist.
“It’s so tiny,” he said, marvelling as he pressed my hips down onto him.
I slid a hand inside my trousers and grabbed myself, undoing the button with my other hand. “Do you want to see the rest?” He’d seen it all before, but never like this. Never with this heat burning between us. Never when I was offering myself to him like this.
“Petey, I…”
“It’s OK.”
But his face had changed, and I felt the moment slip away. I pulled my hand out of my pants and held his hips like he was holding mine.
“Petey, you remember when you said you’d never had a boyfriend?”
Where was this going?
“Well, I’ve never had a boyfriend either.”
It took a full four seconds to register what he meant.
“You’re… a virgin?”
William nodded, sheepishly, like a nervous boy.
“But… you’re the Bisexual Baron Buckford?”
He shrugged. “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
“You told me—”
“I told you I got caught with a couple on a bench in Berkeley Square. I didn’t tell you what happened next.”
“What happened?”
“She vomited on the Tube at South Kensington, and I rather went off the idea.”
“Yeah, that’ll do it.” I slapped my hand to my forehead. “I can’t believe you look like this and you’re a virgin. Are you even bisexual?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never met anyone I wanted to have sex with before.”
I was speechless.
“Are you mad?” William said. He looked terrified. “You seem mad.”
Oh God, he was being vulnerable with me, and I was failing. He didn’t deserve that.
“No, absolutely not,” I said, trying to wipe from my face whatever William had seen in it.
He propped himself back up on his hands, bringing his face closer to mine, his grey eyes pleading for understanding.
“But you mind. It bothers you.”
“No. Surprises me, yes. But bothers me, no.”
I tried to think what I would want William to say if the situations were reversed. My mind was racing. What did this mean? Was he asexual? Demisexual? Was he simply shy about sex?
“Do you want to have sex some day?” I said.
“Oh yes,” he said, smiling, chest heaving. That was a good start.
“Would you like to have sex with me some day?”
William nodded, enthusiastically. “If you wouldn’t mind. I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”
I had ached to feel that close to William.
I still ached for it. But breaking in a virgin?
It wasn’t something that had ever been on my to-do list. I always preferred my men incredibly experienced.
This was William, though. A beautiful gentle giant of a man.
A huge-hearted, genuine, deep-feeling man.
He’d as good as told me he’d been saving himself for the right person. He’d just told me that person was me.
“I would be honoured,” I said, leaning in to kiss him.
He kissed me, hungrily, gratefully. “Thank you,” he said.
Behind us, the kettle began to whistle.
“Is it OK if it’s not tonight?”
I nodded. “Of course. You let me know when you’re ready.”
“Thank you. I’m… really full of lemon tart.”
The rest of the week went in much the same pattern.
Breakfast together, a day spent working on our various projects, dinner prepared by Bramley in the dining room, and then an evening alone together in the folly.
It was the closest thing I’d experienced to domesticity in my whole life.
The only thorn was the constant telephone calls from a very persistent journalist from The Bulletin, but we left Bramley to deal with those.