Her Gilded Prison (Daughters of Sin 1)

Lady Partington was entertaining the vicar who’d come to tea and Stephen had found an excuse to avoid both Araminta’s and Hetty’s separate requests for his company.

Owing to the heat, he’d stripped off in a secluded leafy arbor, taken a plunge in the river and now lay on his back, eyes closed, enjoying the heat of the sun on his naked skin. Enjoying, too, recreating the sensation of Sybil’s ministrations as he grasped his own member and played it like a fine instrument—though not with the finesse she’d perfected.

“Yes, come, my beauty, come my dearest,” he murmured, reveling in the buildup of tension within him, remembering the damp mud beneath him and Sybil’s own dampness as he’d sheathed himself upon him when they’d made love here the day before.

“Oh yes, yes, I’m coming!” With a final jerk he came, opening his eyes to see the spray of ejaculate raining down upon his stomach. He groaned, closing his eyes. No point in thinking beyond the next few days when his life would be a barren wasteland once more. He didn’t mind about the money. He’d lived without that for as long as he could remember and he’d made do, having a jolly enough time along the way.

As the damp earth turned his warm skin chilly, mournfulness impregnated his soul. In two days’ time there would be no Sybil to tumble and make love to, to laugh with and make him feel like a naughty schoolboy and the world’s greatest lover in equal measure.

“Cousin Stephen?”

A rustle in the bushes and the familiar girlish accents sent shock and horror rocketing through him.

“Er, just a moment, if you please...” He leapt to his feet and grabbed his clothes, nearly overbalancing in his haste to don his shirt and breeches.

Araminta sidled into view before he was finished. “Did you enjoy your swim, Cousin Stephen?”

Her look was far too knowing to put him at ease and he blurted out, “Forgive me, Cousin Araminta! You caught me unawares. I was swimming—”

“Oh, you were doing more than swimming, Cousin Stephen.” She’d stepped up close. Too close.

He took a step back, swallowed and pretended ignorance. “Nearly time for tea,” he said, fumbling for his timepiece, which he remembered he’d left beside his bed.

“Cousin Stephen!”

Shocked by the insistency in her voice and the firmness of her hand upon his sleeve, he looked down. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

She sighed, toying with the loose material of his unbuttoned shirt as she prevaricated with artful coquetry. “You know I don’t love Edgar.” She raised limpid eyes to his, as if appealing for understanding. For something more from him than he could give her, but he could not step away. She was clinging to him.

“You must know my feelings for you,” she went on.

Her lips glistened, moist and inviting. Except that he didn’t find them inviting at all. Not even when she gripped his arm tighter and added as she raised herself on tiptoe and tilted up her chin, “I saw what you were doing. I’m not so innocent, though it’s not a thing a man wants to hear. That is, a man intending to take one as his bride, but you’re not intending that, Cousin Stephen.” She sighed again and said with commendable emotion, “I do so wish Cousin Edgar had died after all. You can’t imagine how much I wish that so I didn’t have to marry him but was free to marry you instead.”

Stephen shrugged. “No one’s forcing you to do anything.” He felt quite unaffected by her machinations. All he wanted to do was return to the Grange and see Sybil’s face light up as he entered the room. His mind took it to the next step. They’d find some excuse to leave—either separately or together—and then they’d throw themselves into and onto each other. That’s all that mattered. Sybil.

“It’s my duty toward Papa.” For once she looked deadly earnest. So much so that he actually believed she was sincere in considering it her duty to her father to marry her bottle-headed cousin.

“Papa once said to me, years ago, that I’d have made a fine master of the Grange. Even better than poor George. Now that Edgar is going to inherit, I will at least be able to keep Edgar’s foolishness in check and be the mother of the next viscount, even if I can’t actually be lord of the manor, so to speak, in my own right. Do you see?”

“Your loyalty to your father is commendable.” Stephen tried to disentangle her hand from his wrist but was unsuccessful. Her gaze grew more wistful, her grip more urgent.

“Cousin Stephen, I told you, I am not the innocent you think me.”

He wasn’t about to cut her off and say he didn’t think her an innocent at all.

“You may have heard rumors about the reason I had to cut short my season. Have you?”

“I believe a...young gentleman inflicted some damage to himself.”

“My suitor, Cousin Stephen. A worthy enough gentleman. Indeed, he was most insistent that I become his wife. That is, after...” She blushed and Stephen thought it was genuine. After all, regardless of what she’d done, she was an innocent by most standards.

“We went for a carriage ride. I was without a chaperone and he became quite amorous. Indeed, I myself got carried away and...” She shrugged. “Suffice to say I realized I may well be ruined and he was determined that I must become his bride. But time passed, I realized I wasn’t quite as ruined as I’d feared and the idea of spending the rest of my life leg-shackled to the gentleman was not my idea of happiness. Only, when I told him so in the nicest possible terms he took offense and blew his brains out.”

She brandished a tiny square of muslin and dabbed her eyes. “Oh, Cousin Stephen, I’ve studied you so often when you haven’t noticed, and my heart has cried out for you.”

Suddenly her arms were around him and she was pressing her small, fragrant body against his, her face upturned, her lips slightly parted in open invitation.

Coolly, he said, “I will not snatch clandestine kisses, Miss Araminta, when you are all but betrothed to another man.”