CHAPTER 24
Tawny Maxwell
Lying on my stomach, I licked the vinegar of a pickled okra while Ivan looked sideways at me. He had already dismissed this Southern delicacy as inedible. I nibbled the tip.
‘Hey, you know when we first started to, you know, do it, you left me and went to your room because you had something important to do.’ I turned my face towards him. ‘What was so
important?’
He popped a cheese ball into his mouth. ‘I had to jerk off.’
‘What? You left me waiting on my hands and knees and went to jerk off?’ I spluttered in disbelief.
‘You obviously have no comprehension at all of the male body. I couldn’t have lasted a few seconds inside you the way I was. I wanted your first time to be a bit more memorable than a
premature ejaculation experience.’
I looked at him startled. ‘Well, in that case … thank you?’
‘You’re welcome. So you and Robert didn’t have sex, huh?’ he asked casually. Too casually. He made a point of not even looking at me.
I felt my body contract. We were travelling into dangerous territory here. I felt the relaxed lazy atmosphere change. A stillness fell over us. I bit my lip.
‘Uh, no, he … um … couldn’t,’ I said.
I didn’t think I had sounded convincing, but to my surprise he grinned suddenly and said, ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. It was fun being the first one inside you.’
I looked at him long and hard. His mouth was smiling but his eyes were deliberately expressionless. His reaction was not at all what I expected, but it was much better for me if we
dropped the subject.
‘By the way, my mother wants to meet you.’
I shot up. ‘What?’
‘Fraid so,’ he said.
I put the half eaten okra back on the plate. ‘When does she want to meet?’
‘Tomorrow. She’s invited you to tea at Foxgrove.’
‘But you said she wouldn’t be caught dead in England during winter.’
‘Ordinarily yes, but she wants to meet the woman her son’s chosen to be the next Lady Greystoke.’
‘But I don’t have anything suitable to wear,’ I wailed.
‘That’s why you’re going shopping tomorrow. Something for tea with my mother on Sunday and something for our wedding on Monday.’
I worried my lower lip with my teeth. ‘What time is she expecting us?’
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it’s only you who’s invited.’
‘Oh no! She’s not going to give me the third degree, is she?’
‘Nah. My mother’s cool. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly so she’ll be right up your street.’
‘How should I address her?’ I asked nervously.
He grinned. ‘Call her Bobo.’
I scowled. ‘What?’
‘Bobo,’ he said slowly, as if I had said what because I had not heard him properly, and not because it was the most ridiculous thing you could call someone’s mother.
‘I can’t call her that,’ I protested.
‘Why not? That’s what her inner-circle call her.’
‘To start with I’m not part of her inner circle and I’d feel really silly calling your mother Bobo.’
‘You can’t call her by her official title either,’ he said reasonably.
‘You’re really serious. You want me to call your mother Bobo.’
He shrugged. ‘It sounds funny to you because you’re not used to it, but we all have nicknames. It’s what we aristocrats do. We give each other silly names that no one outside our circle
would dare to use.’
I grinned. ‘So what’s yours?’
He looked at me playfully. ‘Should be BigDick, but in truth I don’t have one. From the time I was three years old I refused to answer to anything except Ivan.’
I screwed my face playfully. ‘Hmmm … so why do I remember Robert mentioning something about Ivan the Terrible.’
He frowned. ‘Robert mentioned that?
‘Mmm … so are you Ivan the Terrible or aren’t you?’ I asked.
He sighed. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’
‘So why did you say you didn’t have a nickname?’
‘That’s not a nickname, Tawny. That’s a title I earned while I was at Oxford.’
I lay back down and leaned my head on my temple. ‘You earned it?’
He looked embarrassed and I stared at him in surprise. ‘You’re not having a shy moment, are you?’
He looked down at his flat stomach, his eyelashes as extravagant as fans on his cheeks. ‘It’s hard for me to explain to you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re so real and down-to-earth and this story will only fly with the over-privileged, the shallow, and the utterly self-obsessed, narcissistic dip-shits that I, being one
myself, ran around with in my youth.’
I touched his shoulder. ‘Try me. I’m not afraid of getting a little mud on my boots.’
He looked me in the eye. ‘You think you want to know, but you don’t, Tawny.’
I lean closer and whisper in his ear, ‘Do you know, they say in my neck of the woods, that if the dirt ain’t flying, you ain’t trying.’
He jerked back and looked at me, an odd glint in his eye. ‘All right. Let’s see how much dirt you can stomach.’