Chapter 18 #2
Tensing around him, she was close to her release. He filled her with two fingers and brought her to the very edge, reveling in her senseless cries of passion. Then she arched up, her body stiffening as she came in a torrent. He held her, kissing and licking her as she rode the wave of ecstasy.
“Bennet,” she groaned. “Come with me now.” She pulled on his head.
He straightened, his hands shaking as he fumbled with the buttons of his fall. He swore, and her fingers joined his. Then her hand was around his cock, guiding him to her sex.
Turning her onto the bed, he crawled over her as she slid him inside her. He drove deep, moaning her name over and over as lust swept him to a place he’d never been. This was a soul-touching desire, a desperate craving that he wasn’t sure could be sated.
Her legs curled around him, her heels digging into his backside as she met him thrust for thrust. They moved together in perfect rhythm, the sound of their bodies and their cries of urgency filling the air around them.
He kissed her, his tongue tangling with hers in crazed abandon. His orgasm built, and habit told him to pull away, to finish outside her.
But why? Not only was she his wife, she carried his child. There was no reason to maintain his sanity. Shouting her name, he let himself go as never before, flooding her with his seed.
There was indeed no turning back now.
They arrived late at Aberforth Place, so it wasn’t until the following morning that Prudence met anyone except for the butler, Eakes, the housekeeper, Mrs. Marian, and Laura, the housemaid who would be acting as Prudence’s maid.
Prudence had protested having a maid, but Bennet had persuaded her to try the situation and see what she thought. As a woman carrying a child, perhaps she would appreciate the help. Prudence had been too exhausted to continue arguing, so perhaps that was her answer.
Entering the breakfast room, Prudence was greeted with a scene of chaos.
Newspapers covered half the table, and nuts were scattered about the other half.
A loud squeaking filled the air, and it took Prudence a moment to realize it was coming from one of the women—the one in the chair on the newspaper side of the table.
“Just sit still, Flora!” A tall, slender woman of what seemed to be advanced age dashed about the room, bent at the waist. Her rapid movements contradicted how old she appeared to be. “You’re scaring him!”
“I’m scaring him? He’s a menace!” This came from the woman who’d been squeaking. Petite with bright white hair, her legs drawn up to her chest, she waved a knife and fork around madly. Presumably, she was Flora. “He tried to take my ham!”
“I’m still training him.” The taller woman disappeared behind the drapery, and the air in the room seemed to still as Prudence held her breath. Reappearing on the other side of the curtain, the tall woman held up a small bundle of fur. “Got him!”
“Thank goodness.” Flora lowered her feet to the floor, then turned her head, her gaze landing on Prudence. “It’s Glastonbury’s bride. Come in, my dear. Sit and eat with us. Oh, the food is over there.” She waved her hand toward a long table against the wall with covered dishes lined atop it.
Ignoring the food for now, despite the terrible hunger clawing at her stomach, Prudence moved toward the table. “Good morning, I’m Prudence.”
“You’re Lady Glastonbury,” the tall woman said.
“Yes, but my name is Prudence, so I hope you’ll call me that. You must be Bennet’s great-aunts.”
From the chair, Flora pointed at her chest. “I’m Flora, and this is Minerva.” She gestured toward the taller woman, who stood on the other side of the table. “And that is her latest creature.” Flora wrinkled her nose.
“Some call us Flora and Fauna,” Minerva said with a grin that revealed a missing tooth on the upper left side of her mouth.
Some of her gray hair had escaped her mobcap.
“Because Flora presses a ridiculous number of flowers all over the damn house, and I use my skills for a more helpful avocation. I rescue those in need.” She held up the animal in her hand and kissed its head.
“Is that a squirrel?” Prudence asked.
“A menace,” Flora muttered.
“This is George.” Minerva came around the table, which caused Flora to pull her legs back up onto the chair. Prudence wanted to soothe her and say it was all right, that the squirrel wasn’t on the floor any longer, but held her tongue.
“It’s nice to meet you, George,” Prudence said, unsure if she should try to pet the animal.
“He’s quite friendly, but I’m afraid Flora has frightened him with her irrational fear.”
“It’s not irrational! I was bitten by a squirrel when I was nine.”
“You were not. I was there, and it was a badger.”
Flora glared at her with dark blue eyes. “It was not a badger. I would remember a bloody badger.”
“Whatever it was, I’m sure it was traumatic,” Prudence said diplomatically. She looked to Minerva. “Does George have breakfast with you every morning?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about eating with wildlife.
“Not every morning, but he seemed lonely this morning. He’s just a baby, you see. He’s motherless, so I took him in a fortnight ago. I’d hoped Temperance could be his mother.”
“Temperance?”
“Her other squirrel,” Flora responded tersely. She’d lowered her feet to the floor again and was buttering a piece of bread. “She rescued her last year.”
“I see, and where is Temperance?”
Minerva crossed to the window and held George to the glass. “She wished to dine al fresco this morning. She’s just outside there. There’s your mama.”
Prudence joined her and saw the other squirrel outside.
She was busily working her way through a small pile of nuts.
“How…charming.” Smiling at Minerva, she capitulated to her hunger and went to the sideboard to dish up her breakfast. With a full plate, she went to the table and considered where to sit.
Newspaper or nuts? She chose the chair at the end and set her plate on the very edge of the newspaper.
Flora jumped up and snatched the newspaper from beneath Prudence’s plate. “You can’t put things on my papers.”
Reasons that Bennet might have preferred to avoid discussing his relatives became evident. Hadn’t he called them eccentric? “My apologies,” Prudence said to Flora, who sniffed in response as she set her paper at the other end of the table before retaking her chair.
“What will you do today?” Minerva asked, sitting down next to Prudence and slipping George into a chest pocket on her apron. Then she picked up a nut from the table and gave it to him as if this was the most natural activity in the world.
Having taken a bite of ham, Prudence swallowed before answering. “I imagine I’ll acquaint myself with the house.” She’d only seen the entry, staircase hall, and their suite of rooms last night.
This morning, she’d passed through a few rooms on her way here.
They were mostly empty, with darker spots on the walls where she suspected paintings had once hung.
The house looked like it was in the process of being vacated.
She knew Bennet had needed to sell furnishings, but she hadn’t realized just how much was gone.
The burden she felt at having forced him into this union weighed heavily, no matter what he said.
“Here’s another!” Flora’s head was bent over one of the newspapers. “The Viscount Glastonbury has wed Miss Prudence Lancaster, former companion to the Countess of Overton, the Countess of Wexford, and Miss Kathleen Shaughnessy.” She cast a sideways look at Prudence. “You were a companion?”
Prudence ignored the wave of discomfort that swept over her. “Yes.”
Flora’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I wager that was fascinating. I do hope you’ll tell us all the good gossip.” She snapped her attention back to the paper.
“Pardon Flora. She’s a tad obsessed with London gossip, despite the fact she hasn’t been there in over fifty years. You’ll see she receives nearly every newspaper that comes from there.”
“The papers serve a dual purpose,” Flora said with a hint of exasperation. She did not lift her gaze from the paper. “I use them to press my flowers.”
“All nine thousand of them.” Minerva rolled her eyes.
She picked up her fork and moved her food around her plate.
“Today you’ll see the house, then. Perhaps tomorrow, you’ll tour the estate.
Just stay away from Frances’s cottage if you can.
” She said the last while sending Prudence a rather intense stare. Then she shuddered.
“Frances is Bennet’s cousin?”
“Yes,” Flora replied, still not looking up. “Minerva and I are eccentric, but delightfully so.” She exchanged a nod and a smile with her sister, and Prudence realized their bickering was good-natured. This made her relax a bit. “Unfortunately, Frances is eccentric in all the wrong ways.”
“What ways are those?” Prudence didn’t wish to gossip, but her curiosity was getting the best of her. Was Frances what Bennet had been trying to hide?
“There’s a reason she lives in a cottage and not here with us,” Flora said as if she were imparting a very dear secret.
“She chooses to,” Minerva added. “But honestly, if she wanted to live here, we simply couldn’t allow it. Though, I suppose we might reconsider if she bathed more regularly.”
“It isn’t that she doesn’t bathe,” Flora explained as if to a child. “She simply insists on making her own soap, and it smells atrocious. I think she must make it from whatever she finds on one of her extensive walks.”
Prudence couldn’t think of a thing to say, so she focused on eating.
“It isn’t just that,” Flora said. “She has those horrible fits of pique.”
Minerva fed another nut to George. “So do you.”
Flora scowled at her newspaper. “Fine, the entire family does, but hers are worse.”
They all had fits of pique? Did that include Bennet?
“Not the entire family. Judith would be deeply offended to hear you say that.” The sarcasm in Minerva’s tone was unmistakable.
“I met Judith,” Prudence said. “And Esther. They came to the wedding.”