Sybille's Lord Page 12

  “Good…ah…” She let her own climax peak and crash, as with one last thrust, he shouted his own completion.

  It was several minutes before Sybille was able to think coherently once more. She realized that Thom was still slumped over her and although she reveled in how she could be responsible for the state he was in, she became ever more conscious of the state she was in. Pins and needles in one leg and a desperate need to use the chamber pot. Which luckily was in the bathing chamber.

  If only she could work out how to get to it.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Stop sighing in my ear,” Thom muttered. “I’ll move as soon as I have strength.” He nuzzled her neck. “You do smell so good, like a garden of spring flowers. I want to sit and enjoy you, be part of you.”

  Sybille melted, as much at the soft slumberous tone of his voice, as the words he spoke. It was beautiful and she kissed his ear… the only part she could easily reach.

  “Nice… Do it again.”

  She sighed even as she smiled. “Later. I need you to move.”

  “Later.”

  “Now. Seriously Thom, I have to get up.”

  “You don’t. I can’t move. I need to regroup.”

  “You’d best do it then.”

  “Why?”

  Lord how embarrassing, however it has to be said. She cleared her throat.

  “I need to go.”

  “Go?”

  “Yes, you know, my lord…go.”

  “Ah…” He rolled onto his back and held his hands high over his head. His smile was sinful, and his staff once more hard. “There you are, you’re free to go. As long as you come back.”

  She dragged her gaze away from him and scrambled to her feet. “Thank you.”

  It was oh so hard to make a dignified exit when you were naked as the day you were born and really, you wanted to dash.

  His low whistle made her quiver, and it took a great deal of determination not to turn around and either giggle or glare. Instead she escaped the room as fast as she could and still keep her decorum intact.

  By the time she used the facility, washed in the cool water in a pretty porcelain ewer and donned the dark rose colored lacy robe someone, Thom she suspected, had left over the back of the wickerwork chair next to the washstand, she was reasonably sure she was in command of her faculties. However that didn’t mean it would be any less embarrassing to return to the bedchamber. Not after it was open knowledge to Thom, just what she’d been doing.

  Even though it was something everyone did, after all, all creatures had to relieve themselves, to know someone knew was more than discomforting. Sybille pulled her shoulders back, took a deep breath and walked back into the bedroom. The robe was not precisely what a well brought up young lady—young single lady, virgo intacta or not—would wear. She swore one rosy nipple was visible through a lacy frame of gossamer thin threads.

  She needn’t have worried. The room was empty.

  The coverlets had been flung back to become a multi-hued heap of crimson and gold at the bottom of the bed. The sheets were rumpled and the pillows indented. It looked exactly what it was. A love nest.

  Sybille ran her fingers over the silken covers and lifted the sheet to stroke her cheek with the soft material.

  The gazebo might have been her introduction to sex, but here in this bed she and Thom had truly made love.

  However how maudlin and sentimental she got, it meant nothing if they couldn’t sort out the problem of Bankfoot and her maman’s pearls.

  Sybille looked around. Where was her chemise and gown? She saw neither but a large and unrecognizable valise sat on a padded bench at the bottom of the bed. On top was a note written in a large distinctive hand. She might have only seen Thom’s handwriting a few times, but it was definitely his.

  The message was short and to the point.

  I particularly like the rose sprigged green. I’ll be in the study. It was signed with a large slashing ‘T’.

  It took a matter of seconds to lift the lid; the fastenings had already been unlocked, and the straps left neatly on the bench. Sybille stared at the contents and let the lid drop back on its leather hinges with a thump.

  Wherever the contents had come from it certainly wasn’t her wardrobe. A ruby red silk gown, pale green cotton day dress, sprigged with tiny rosebuds in soft pastel shades, smart fine wool riding outfit in midnight blue, and the finest, thinnest chemises, were followed by stockings and ribbon garters. Plus a pretty pair of sandals, and one of kid half-boots and a reticule and bonnet that would be perfect with any of the contents.

  Why? She searched to see if there was another note, but nothing turned up. Sybille bit her lips and turned back to the dress Thom said he favored.

  It was unconscionably elegant. Luckily, her maman didn’t prescribe to the general diktats of the ton regarding what colors were suitable for an unwed lady. Mijo said firmly, her girls would wear what suited them, not what was deemed suitable.

  Thank you, Maman.

  Before she thought too long or hard, Sybille pulled on one of the thin to almost transparent chemises and laced it. Then she let the day dress side over her head and settle on her torso. It fitted perfectly, and Sybille wondered just who had given her measurements away.

  The only problem was the laces. They crisscrossed her spine and try as she might she couldn’t reach far enough to get the correct tension and then tie them so the gown sat neatly. It was no wonder she thought, as she admitted defeat, and left the ribbons loosely in a bow, that she preferred gowns with no fastenings, or ones with ribbons and ties at the front. Of course when Thom undid all those tiny buttons it had been arousing and …

  Stop that now. She needed to get her mind away from carnal thoughts, however good they were, and back to the matter in hand.

  What next?

  Head to the study. Sybille snagged a Flanders lace shawl and set it around her upper arms and shoulders, thus covering the gaping neckline across her back. She checked the rest of her was of a standard that would pass muster if any local dignitary happened to call in, and made her way downstairs.

  The window in the hallway wall at the top of the stairs was open and warm air, scented with flowers, flowed in. Outside someone was whistling, and the tuneful rendition of a popular piece of music floated up to her. Sybille found herself humming the refrain as she entered the study.

  Thom looked up from his desk where he was writing on a sheet of paper. He placed the quill back on the stand, and smiled at her.

  “You look like the epitome of an early summer’s morn. Fresh, dewy, and a feast for the eyes. That dress is a perfect frame for such a picture.”

  Sybille rolled her eyes. “Very poetic my lord, but doing it a bit brown. I know my worth. I’m no hatchet-face, but nor am I a nonpareille. And this dress will only be suitable if you lace me into it.”

  “Do not sell yourself short, my dear.” He stood up walked around the desk and with a gleam in his eye she mistrusted, bowed over her hand. “Turn around.” His fingers brushed her neck and her gown was laced in seconds. “That will do nicely.” He swept her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly.

  Sybille didn’t even think of stopping him. She returned the kiss, sinking into it until she thought of nothing, sensed nothing, except him. When Thom finally gentled the kiss and eased back his breath, Sybille was glad to notice, was as ragged as hers.

  “You.” He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Go to my head. I love it. But we must for a few hours think and behave conventionally. For although my godmother is considered to be liberal minded, she is still of a different generation. We will throw ourselves on her mercy somewhat and say we were detained by a problem here, but propriety was preserved by Mrs. Tate sleeping in your room.”

  “We are?”

  He nodded. “While I pick her brains, and you act the demure young lady who is to be my betrothed, all will come well.”

  “Thom, I haven’t agreed.”

  He smiled and prope
lled her out of the library and into the breakfast room.

  “You have, even if you won’t say so in so many words. You would never have agreed to stay here last night otherwise.”

  How well he knew her. Sybille sighed. “Yes, but not…”

  “No buts. Yes will do, now let’s eat and make haste to Godmother’s. Then, all being well, we can begin to put my plan in motion.” He held out a chair for her and once she was seated, served her a plate of ham and eggs. “Eat up. The ham is from a pig we slaughtered, and the eggs are of course from the chickens you tried to run down.”

  “I did not try to run them down,” Sybille said indignantly. “They threw themselves at the carriage wheels.

  “Which is where the expression hen-witted comes from,” Thom said as he piled his own plate high and sat down to one side of her. “Like Henrietta Hemplewhite. Now eat up.”

  Sybille giggled. She knew exactly what Thom meant. She applied herself to her meal without any more comments. She was hungry and the food looked incredibly appetizing.

  It was an hour later when Thom tooled the phaeton down the drive, and Sybille sighed with satisfaction. “I swear I won’t need to eat for a week after that meal. The ham was the best I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Silas was the best.”

  “Silas?”

  Thom chuckled as he steered over a narrow humpbacked bridge and missed by inches the two urchins who hung over the parapet fishing, with their legs well into the roadway.

  “The pig. Mrs. Tate named him Silas the silent, because he kept appearing around her, very suddenly, and without making a noise. Tate thought it hilarious, and said the hog had its eye on her. 'Eyeing you up,’ he’d say.” Thom did a very creditable local accent. “‘He’s thinking like, shalli’s take a chunk of 'er arse or 'er arm? Which’ll be tastiest arh?’” Thom chuckled. “She didn’t know whether to be offended or proud of her attraction. However it didn’t stop her saying when Silas was ready for the pot. Partly I think he’d put his snout on her arse and tipped her into the mud once too often.”

  Sybille giggled. The picture Thom painted was so ridiculous. “You’re making it up,” she said in between sniggers.

  “True story.” Thom contrived to look injured at her disbelief. He spoiled it by winking. “Most if it anyway. Tate’s actual words were a lot more robust.”

  That Sybille could believe. She’d caught sight of Tate, the whistler, just before they left. Well over six foot in height and nigh on as wide as he was tall, she couldn’t imagine him describing things except in earthy terms. His wife, Thom explained was a shorter, slightly thinner version of Tate.

  “Poor Mrs. Tate,” Sybille said when she could talk without biting her lips and chuckling. “Did you give her first choice of a cut of Silas?”

  “Of course, she took the balls.”

  Sybille spluttered. “Good for her.”

  “Indeed, Tate looked somewhat anxious while she told me in great detail how tasty roast bollocks were.” At the top of a long hill, he slowed the curricle to a halt. “And stared from my cock and balls to Tate’s and back again. How neither of us covered our pegos with our hands I have no idea.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “There, that’s Geddling straight ahead.” Thom couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice as he looked at his beloved godmother’s house. He accepted that one day it would be his, and as much as he knew it was somewhere he’d enjoy looking after, Thom hoped that day was a long way ahead. Apart from losing the one person who supported him through thick and thin, he’d have a lot of decisions to make. One of which was how to admit he would prefer to live here above all of his other properties.

  “Oh how beautiful.”

  He nodded. “It is my perfect house,” he said simply. “Even more than The Grange.”

  Sybille squeezed his arm. “I can understand why. And your godmother will be waiting for us?”

  He shook his head and pointed. “She’s too impatient for that. That’s Esme.” A big black stallion with a female rider, habit streaming out behind her, was rapidly approaching. “Not a conventional godmother.” He thought for a moment. “Not a conventional anything if the truth be known. I might have fudged her stickler for convention genes. They are little to nonexistent. You remind me of her.”

  “I do?”

  “Well.” Thom moved the phaeton to the verge. Esme would have no compunction of riding hell for leather right until the last second, and his beloved greys wouldn’t appreciate Endeavor—Esme’s horse—quite so close. “You did, then recently you didn’t and now you’re beginning to again.”

  “Ah, thank you, I think.”

  He laughed. “Hold onto your hat. Esme!” He raised his voice as Esme wheeled Endeavor around in a circle and came to an abrupt halt. “You’ll break your neck if you insist on riding like that.”

  “Rubbish.” Esme smiled as she patted her mount’s flanks. “Endeavor is a sweetie, and I, young man, am forty-five not eighty five.” She looked at Sybille. “And this is your betrothed.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Lady Sybille Birch, and as for betrothed?”

  “We are,” Sybille dipped her head. “As long as ...oh Thom will tell you.”

  “Oh believe me, he will. Now Thom, swap rides and let me drive Sybille—I may call you by your given name?”

  Sybille nodded. “Of course you can.”

  “Thank the lord, I hate this standing on ceremony lark with friends.” Esme slid off Endeavor and held the reins in Thom’s direction.

  He shook his head in amusement, and passed his own reins to Sybille. “She is an unstoppable force.”

  “And don’t you forget it.” Esme, not one bit perturbed, waited until he climbed down from the phaeton, and they effected the change in seats. “Don’t you go upsetting Endeavor. We’ll see you back at the house.” Sybille grabbed hold of the sides as Esme snapped the whip in the air and they moved away at a spanking pace. Even Thom’s greys reacted positively to Esme’s enthusiasm.

  Thom sat on Endeavor and watched them for several seconds before he patted the horse and teased his ears. Endeavor whinnied.

  “Oh, I agree, old chap. Lord, the two of them together. The whole county should quake at that thought.”

  Endeavor snorted as they followed at a much more sedate pace than horse and rider had approached.

  Thom caught up with the phaeton and its occupants as they entered the stable yard. He jumped off the horse, and handed the reins to a groom, before going to help his ladies—my ladies—he mused. I like that.

  “Did she tell you why the horse is named Endeavor?” he asked.

  Esme chortled. “He named him, the fiend.”

  “Fiend who? The horse, decidedly. Me? Not at all.” Thom did his best to look a poor, hard done to innocent. By Esme’s ‘pshaw, fustian’, he decided he hadn’t succeeded. “That horse was a hellion when younger.”

  Sybille grinned. “I don’t know about the horse, but you? If the cap fits, my lord.”

  Thom shook his head. “Maligned. As for the horse, he was so wild, I said one day he’d be the end of her, and she came back with his name was henceforth, end of her, now Endeavor.”

  Sybille burst out laughing. “Oh I love it.”

  Esme harrumphed. “Ingrates. Come on then, let’s go inside and you can explain your cryptic letter, Thom. As in why do I say you were here last night, when you weren’t? And then you say nothing untoward would happen. She winked at Sybille who went red. “That, my boy, is bad. You had the opportunity, and not the nous?”

  Thom spluttered. He knew his godmother. “Esme, you’re embarrassing Sybille.”

  She tuned to Sybille who, Thom could see, was shaking with silent laughter.

  “Did he not come up trumps?”

  Sybille evidently couldn’t hold in her giggles. “Something came up but not a trump. He er…”

  “Did he play his cards right? Good, come on then, I’m famished.” She swung in her heel, lifted the skirt of her riding habit up ju
st enough to clear the dusty stable yard and walked toward the house.

  “She’s incorrigible,” Thom said as they followed her indoors. “I love every unconventional inch of her.”

  “Just as well,” Esme called over her shoulder. “There’s plenty of me to love.” She patted her ample rear. “Come on. Bebb has laid a cold collation out for us on the terrace.”

  “I hope you’re hungry,” Esme said as they sat on the terrace a few minutes later. In her usual whirlwind way she ushered Sybille upstairs to wash, told Thom to accompany Edgar, her major domo, to a spare bedchamber to freshen up, and return downstairs as soon as possible. “Or I will have eaten all the clangers,” she said.

  “Clangers?” Sybille asked as Esme took her arm and began to usher her up the stairs.

  “A pasty, m’dear, “Esme said. “Only longer and two courses in one. Savory at one end, sweet at the other. Bebb is from Bedfordshire.”

  That explanation seemed to confuse Sybille more than ever, and the look she gave Thom was pleading. He came to her aid.

  “Bebb is from Bedfordshire where the clanger originated. They’re taken to the fields just like the Cornish tin miners take theirs down the mines. Mrs. Tate is a close rival in the clanger stakes and her clangers are on a par. Bebb favors plum jam and beef, Mrs. Tate lamb and gooseberry. Both delicious. I could eat them all.”

  As Bebb’s pastry was renowned throughout the county and Thom accepted Esme’s threat wasn’t an idle one, he hurried his ablutions and beat the ladies to the terrace by a good thirty seconds.

  “It’s beef and ‘gage today. Tuck in.” Esme passed a dish across the table and Thom needed no second bidding.

  Conversation was desultory and confined to such mundane but important comments such as, “Delicious” and “Yes please I will have another one.”

  Eventually Thom leaned back and looked at the two women who for several minutes, had sat and chatted while he finished eating. “Perfect. I am stuffed.”

  “I hope so, you’ve eaten enough for five.”

  Thom shrugged. “What can I say?”