Tight Laced (4 page)

“What on earth is it?” called Lacilia to whomever was creating the ruckus on the other side of the door.

“Lala, let me in! I must tell you what just happened!”

It was Sarah Jane out there in the hall, thudding about. It certainly would not do to have her witness the tossed clothing and rumpled linens. “Go away.”

She bashed again. A fist rap, perhaps. And most likely some kicking as well, given the symphony of thumping. Lacy’s sister behaved like a child in many respects, even though the girl was nearly eighteen.

“Can’t it wait until the morning?”

“I’m much too excited, Lala. Let me in!”

Hadn’t their father recently died? Had they not weeks earlier buried the man who’d made them, loved them, and cared for their very livelihoods? What was the matter with the girl? Lacilia sighed, tossed her clothing under her bed, threw on a bathing coat, and cracked open the door. “What is it?” she said, refusing to open the door completely.

Sarah Jane was impervious to social graces and given to run-on chatter. Indeed, the younger Bloomsbury daughter was as dull as a crate of hammers when it came to reading the subtle messages of others. She was, however, not mean-spirited like her mother, and Lacilia had always felt somewhat protective of the girl. Protective and annoyed in one enormous and confusing package.

The slight crack in the door was no deterrent for the young lady, and she burst through the opening. She trip-trapped right up to the bed and leapt upon it. The very same place where minutes earlier Lacilia had been writhing in fantasy lovemaking with the impertinent duke, who, shockingly, Sarah Jane announced just now, was her fiancé.

“Duke Darlington Moore of Blantyre Highmeadow? Are you serious?”

“Momma said ‘proposal’ and she’d told me on the way back from Papa’s funeral that she was going to get me a husband straight off, and why are you still wearing your corset under your robe?”

Lacilia stood dumbfounded gazing at her sister’s bloated grin. The idiot girl married to that rogue? She couldn’t imagine it. Not only was she not fit for the Scottish drear and cold winters, but had she any idea what was expected of a wife? Just look at her, bouncing on the bed like a wee fool.

She daren’t burst the girl’s bubble of glee completely, but someone needed to nudge her toward reality. “Sarah Jane, your mother means well, but am I correct in my assumption that the duke has yet to actually propose?”

The bouncing ceased. Sarah Jane’s lower lip thrust forward. “He shall, Lala. He shall!”

That was when Lacilia noticed the duke’s soiled handkerchief still lay upon the bed a mouse-tail length from her sister’s fingers. The whole situation was most improper. Lacy glanced at her father’s hidden portrait – a square of plaid wool still shielded him from his daughters’ amorality. What would he think of this behavior? His eldest giving way to her growing urges that seemed more and more pressing these days, and the younger forgetting his recent demise entirely in the face of a would-be suitor.

Suitor
. Ha! Lacilia cleared her throat and licked her lips. “Sarah Jane. The duke, I am certain, finds himself flattered by the thought of betrothal to someone as, um, lovely as you—”

At mention of this possibility, Sarah Jane resumed her bouncing, her fingers clutching the bed linen, and, much to Lacilia’s horror, the handkerchief itself.

Lacilia continued hastily, “However, I suppose he might already have a bride in mind. Someone from the highlands, perhaps? Or a lass from Glasgow?”

The younger girl screwed up her mouth. Her eyes, already bulging, took on the state of an owl and she stared unblinking at her elder sister. One of the biggest problems with Lacy’s half-sister is that she’d been indulged, and when one is indulged to the forfeiture of grace, it becomes hard to envisage a reality that includes others.

At last Sarah Jane sputtered in a small voice, “Do you think so, Lala? Do you think he loves another?”

Lacy was spared the burden of dragging her sister into the light, thank God, for at that moment Sarah Jane’s maid, Tansom, came bustling in, calling out impatiently, “Shouldn’t we be getting on with it then, m’lady?”

Sarah Jane popped off the bed in her typical childlike manner, and Tansom, who served more as governess than maid to the young lady, pushed her toward the door, but just as they reached the threshold, Tansom pulled loose the duke’s sticky handkerchief from the girl’s grip. “What on earth…?”

Lacy felt her cheeks grow warm, and she snatched the cloth from the maid before it might be examined further. “I have a bit of a cold I’m afraid,” she said.

“Right. Well, perhaps you shouldn’t walk around in your undergarments,” the maid exclaimed, one eyebrow raised, pointing toward the ripple of clothing peeking out from under the bed.

“Perhaps not,” agreed Lacilia. “Could I trouble you to unlace me? After you attend to my sister?”

The maid bent in a half-curtsy-half-bow and blew out an audible sigh, and followed her charge out the door.

“He shall propose,” asserted Sarah Jane from halfway down the hall.

She said more, but Lacilia did not hear it, because she was once again involved with the woodsy (and now, slightly seashore) scent of the handkerchief.

Headline and news from The Daily Scotsman:
Appalling Colliery Accident at High Blantyre – More Than 200 Lives Lost -
One of the most appalling colliery accidents that have ever happened in Great Britain, and certainly the most serious that has occurred in the history of mining in Scotland, took place yesterday morning at the High Blantyre Works of Messrs W. Dixon & Co., coal and iron masters. From the nature of the case, accurate details as to the number of persons killed cannot be ascertained, but it feared that no fewer than 200 miners have had their lives cut short either from the effects of the explosion or by the deadly after-damp.

~ 23 October, 1877

A
LL THROUGH THE
night Duke Darlington tossed and turned in the Highcastle bed. He managed to close his eyes and achieve a fugue state for minutes here and there, but deep sleep evaded him.

Had Her Ladyship really blackmailed him with financial ruin if he did not wed the atrocious daughter? Why, the girl was not fully grown – at least in the brain – and the various features upon her face dwelt there in such disharmony as to have been molded there by some jester.

When he did nod off, it was to a cavalcade of nightmarish images. The disembodied bug-eyes marching toward him in a queue – their red little veins, their pinprick pupils – and from the bulging orbs would pop fingers of accusation. Fingers that morphed into those of the widow herself, crooked and sharp. Jab, jab, they went, into his own eye.

He woke himself several times, hearing the sound of his voice gasp,
No! I won’t have it!

Indeed, he found himself stewed in his sweat. Fevered, almost. Panicked, certainly.

He withdrew the flask from his jacket, which he had flung over the bedpost – the silver vessel was filled with emergency spirits meant for his long ride home, but this fitful night was more urgent than a sore rump from so many kilometers in the saddle.

He took a hearty swig and then reached back into his pocket for his handkerchief, set on wiping the perspiration from his brow.

The cloth was not in his pocket. How odd …

In his half-mad state it took Darlington some time to follow his memory back to the earlier hour, and once he did, his mind’s eye settled upon the other daughter. The honey-haired one with the graceful figure.

He envisaged her leaving the parlor room bereft in her crepe dress. She’d held his handkerchief in her delicate fist. Did she still possess it?

Darlington took another swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The fireplace was down to embers, and a cold draft assaulted him. He shook his head to free his mind from the impure thoughts that now took root. As he lay back down on the stiff horsehair mattress, his gaze followed the tassels on the edges of the half-tester fabric above him.

Was Lady Lacilia sleeping under a similar canopy at this very moment? Might she still be clutching his personal linen? Yes, he thought. And perhaps the handkerchief, at this very moment, was nested between her pert breasts.

And then, the duke was sunk.

He’d not planned to stay in a private home, and therefore had not brought his flannel undergarments. The duke now lay abed in nothing but his woolens, and disturbingly, his manhood began to stress the closure.

He forced his line of sight to the washstand. To the fireplace. To the large paneled door. He willed the hardening that now threatened decorum to subside. He was a bit of a rogue, he had to admit, but he was no beast. He was gentleman!

Darlington rolled over onto his side and forced himself to think of pragmatic concerns. Matters such as riggings and harnesses. But the images of leather brought to mind smells that lingered too long and had too much in common with his visits to brothels. Again Lacilia’s fair skin, her scent, her touch, pressed upon him, and his hardness returned.

He stood and strode to the washstand where a small square of flannel and a cake of pressed lanolin soap sat on a tray next to a pitcher of water, the ache in his loins pulsing. Throbbing.

His cock projected from his underclothing, unbidden. His sac tightening beneath his manhood, begging for release. Never had he wanted with such fervor. The very girth of him engorged to such a state, he barely recognized that part of his body. With blood coursing through the ridges at a quickening pace, as though his very heart had moved to his cock, he wet the soap and rubbed it upon his palm.

Was it beastly of him to take himself in hand whilst fantasizing of the earl’s eldest daughter? What was the word for such an act? Ignominy. He was behaving
ignominiously
. Well, so be it. The widow was holding up the wretched daughter while the desirable one was stored away like a relic. He mightn’t be able to fix that problem quite yet, but the widow damn well did not own his thoughts.

He stroked himself. Standing before the fireplace, his manhood as straight and hard as a dagger, he let lust’s lightning tighten in his groin, thinking of her. Thinking of her mouth. Her taught, round hindquarters. The breasts – breasts – he envisaged beneath her bodice.

The memory of her voice was at his ear now.
Duke
, she whispered.
Take me. Take me away from the constraints of this wretched world. Fill me with the measure of your want.

His hand tightened the hold on his cock. He pulled as though he wanted death. Only death. The edge of the natural world and the leap off into the great abyss where the mother dragon waited to consume all. He would take her with him, the beautiful daughter. To a place where only light and sound and touch and nectar enwrapped them both in a velvet belly.

His cock grew more yet, thickening fully under his command. His stroking became urgent, and then, the final shudder.

He cried out as he came, his seed fountaining forth and spraying the floral papered walls of the Highcastle guest quarters. His mark. His wanton signature, there for all to see.

He dropped to his knees.

Duke Darlington, delusional from lack of sleep as dawn forced itself upon the day, his skin bristling with unquenchable desire, felt his cock soften slightly in his grip. But a moment later, he grew firm once more. Would his hunger ever abate? But more to the point, if he agreed to the outrageous bargain dangled before him, would he ever feel like a man again?