Tight Laced Page 6

  She lay on her side, her cheek over prayer-positioned hands. He longed to caress her face, but worried he might awaken – and thus scare – her.

  It did not surprise him that she failed to wake early, for they’d been up most of the night, their unquenchable rapture needing satisfaction again and again. His face heated at the memory of it all, and he chanced to peek below the blanket in order to confirm his member still existed and hadn’t been sucked off of his person.

  For a virgin, he could not believe how expertly she’d taken him. The carnal knowledge practiced only by the most accomplished courtesans.

  The thought of it stirred him yet again. His cock would now truly have a mind of its own. How was he to attend to the sober parts of his day? The disaster of the mine?

  And then he remembered his promise to Lady Bloomsbury, and his manhood retracted itself like a sword to its sheath.

  “Duke,” came a soft voice from the pillow benext to him.

  “My love?”

  “We must leave here in short order, yes?”

  “I wish it weren’t so.”

  She propped herself up on an elbow, her hair mussed, one of her breasts audaciously uncovered. “You mustn’t tarry over our exploration. Only know that you have left me fully satisfied. And, perhaps more importantly, intact.”

  Something about her easy dismissal annoyed him. How could their act be relegated to the scientific? “Exploration? Is that what we’re calling it?”

  She sat upright and took his face in her hands. “Delicious exploration. I will forever think of dragons differently.”

  He pushed her hands away, and vaulted out of the bed. “You are fortunate, Lacilia. You may go on and explore all you like, whilst I must return to my duties, and, in so-doing, marry a woman I will never love.”

  She sighed. “Ah, poor, pitiful Sarah Jane.”

  “I hardly would call her poor. Pitiful, perhaps.”

  “You will make a good husband, Darlington. And I shall be auntie to an assortment of little dukes and duchesses.”

  This inflamed him and he spun round. “I shudder at the thought of filling that half-wit with my heirs.”

  “Darlington! That is my sister you speak of!”

  He felt like a lout. Why had he uttered such a thing? His thoughts were all in a jumble. His heart, broken. He sat on the bed, his head in hand, and fretted, “If things were different, would you ever consider marriage? To me?”

  Her hand lighted upon his shoulder. “I do not see me marrying in the near future. When and if I do, it will indeed be for love. And it will be to a man who is honorable, and, I dare say, hungry. For, as you may have guessed, my appetite for carnal pleasure is quite profound.”

  Her touch and her words were too much. Darlington rose, yanked on his breeches, buttoned his shirt and strode quickly toward the bedroom door. Without looking back at her he managed, “Please be quick. My man is most likely having fits as I am so tardy.”

  They rode in silence. She, at rein again, and he, scowling beside her.

  Her heart did feel for the man. What lay ahead for him was nothing short of dreadful. But she could hardly preoccupy herself with unknotting his debacles when she herself faced quite a mess.

  There was no doubt that her stepmother would make life difficult for her upon her return. Perhaps she’d lambaste her, threaten to cut off her inheritance. Could she do that?

  She became so lost in thought that she failed to turn up the narrow road to Cockermouth, and the duke had to pull the reins from her hand and redirect the team.

  “If you insist on driving, at least do me the courtesy of coaching them properly.”

  “My apologies,” she countered. And she meant it. She deplored lack of competence in others, but she held herself to an even higher standard. “Shan’t happen again.”

  He hip-checked her and took over the middle, the reins now solidly in hand. “No, it shan’t.”

  She deserved as much. Her father had indulged her to a point, but he’d chastised her more than once about her willfulness. “No man will stand for it,” he’d told her.

  Up ahead, there stood a blockage of carts and officers, all done up as though off to war.

  “Goodness,” Lacy muttered. “What could that be about?”

  They came to a halt at the blockade, and a heavily whiskered man wearing a custodian helmet strode up, and lifted his truncheon.

  “What is the meaning of this?” asked the duke.

  “Duke Darlington Moore?” inquired the bobby.

  “Yes?”

  “We are here to escort this female to safety.”

  Lacilia was incensed. She climbed down from the carriage and wagged a finger at the peeler. “Safety? Why, that’s absurd. I am perfectly safe, if you please.”

  The bobby grasped her arm and affixed an iron shackle to it. “Lacilia Bloomsbury of Highcastle, I am hereby ordered to arrest you under suspicion of illicit activity.”

  Darlington squeezed himself between the peeler and Lacy. “This must be a mistake. The lady and I did nothing wrong. She was merely delivering me to my horses here in Cockermouth.”

  “Aye, a day later than expected. And where, pray tell, did you spend the night?”

  “Are you daft?” Lacy spat. “There was a storm through which neither man nor beast could travel.”

  “Beast, is it?” laughed the constable.

  Lacy’s wrists were already bearing the stress of the irons. The bobby handled her roughly. “You know what we do about tarts in this town. Don’t matter if you was princely born or not.”

  Lacy’s mind raced. How dare this policeman man-handle her. When her father …

  Darlington must have read her face – the abrupt remembering of her father – her champion – no longer able to intercede in her behalf. “Unshackle her this instant, or I’ll have your badge!”

  Suddenly, there was another voice in the mix. A gravelly woman’s voice. “You’ll do no such thing.”

  Lacilia followed the sound, until her gaze fell upon the two women clad in mourning dresses flanking a clergyman. Sarah Jane’s eager grin spread her face. In her tight fist she held a sodden nosegay of lilies of the valley, and her nose was red from sneezing. Small welts dotted her throat.

  The last thing Lacy heard as she was pushed into the back of a horse-drawn paddy wagon, was her stepmother commanding Duke Darlington to take her sister’s hand.

  Intractable women might become happy wives; young ladies who have gone astray will return calmly to the bosom of the family; and married women formerly averse to sexual duties might immediately find themselves with child.

  ~ Isaac Baker Brown – a summary of benefits from a clitoridectomy

  DARLINGTON FOUND HIMSELF on a stage, in Cockermouth’s only church. An assemblage of onlookers watched as he recited the vows the clergyman fed him.

  Beside him, his bride wheezed through her “I wills,” and when it came time for the wedding ring to be placed upon her finger, Lady Bloomsbury hastily peeled her own band off of her gnarled knuckle and slapped it in the duke’s palm. She nudged his elbow, and he crammed the ring onto the girl’s waiting finger.

  This was really happening. He was being forced to wed the young Bloomsbury girl, and there seemed no way out.

  The clergyman pronounced them married, and it was only then that he ventured to gander at his bride.

  She stood beside him, her splotched face, her huge grin, and now, she wore a wedding ring! There was clapping and whooping behind him (had the countess paid these unknowns to bear witness?), but before he could address any of it, he was led to the vestry where an enormous book lay on a table – a fountain pen waiting for his (and her) signature.

  The beady eyes of the countess seared into his when he looked up before committing his mark to the page.

  He scribbled hastily, vowing to demand that Lacy be freed at once under penalty of annulment.

  No sooner had they signed the book, when Sarah Jane grasped his arm and demanded a kiss. />
  He closed his eyes and offered a peck just shy of her lips before casting an evil eye at his new mother-in-law. “You will pay for this. Mark my words.”

  She did not hesitate to offer a cold, “It seems I already am, Your Grace. In so very many ways.”

  The couple was ushered to a waiting carriage outside the church. Four white horses were harnessed to the rig, and a coachman – the corpulent Roland himself – turned round. “To Blantyre, then?” he inquired.

  Just as the man was about to slap the reins on the horses’ backsides, Lady Bloomsbury thrust her hand into the cab. She held a scroll and she stabbed it toward the duke. “Paid in full,” she announced. “With a codicil, should you attempt to undo any of the arrangements.”

  Duke Darlington grit his teeth. “If any harm comes to Lady Lacilia, you will regret everything.”

  “Run along now, you two,” Lady Bloomsbury chirped, as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

  “Onward!” yelped the coachman, slapping the team with a loud crack.

  The carriage lurched forward, and soon rode out of the sightline of a dozen bewildered onlookers while the countess filled fists with ha'pennies.

  Lacilia awoke in a cold room, her head pounding. She attempted to right herself, and discovered that her wrists were bound to the iron rails of a long, narrow bed. Images swam before her, and she blinked several times to get better focus.

  “Hello?” she called into the empty space.

  She heard her voice call back to her – the room was devoid of anything soft, and the sound of her call echoed off bare, stone walls. The smell of something dreadful lingered in her nose, and as she breathed in, she felt a dizziness so profound that she had to close her eyes once more.

  Her limbs were nearly frozen, and she kicked her legs. Something odd down there. She opened her eyes again and attempted to raise herself on her elbows as to afford a view of herself.

  She had been stripped of her clothing – and was now merely draped in a cotton shift even more thin than a bathing shirt.

  With her teeth, she managed to pull a stiff sheet off her body. She squirmed the lower half of herself free from the shift, and below her stomach, where her woman’s hair should have been coiled, there was nothing. She was as bald as a young girl.

  “Help me!” she wailed. “What have you done?”

  Lacy thrashed and kicked, and at last a nurse entered the room.

  “Now, Miss, don’t make it hard on yourself.”

  Lacy blinked again, hoping to awaken from some horrible nightmare. “Where am I?”

  “You, my dear, are at the Herkimer Sanatorium for Female Hysteria.”

  “What?”

  “On request of Her Ladyship of Highcastle. We’ll take right good care of you here. You’ll be rid of your nasty urges in short order.”

  “Unbind me at once! I am the eldest daughter of the Earl of Highcastle, and there will be consequences if you – or anyone – lays a hand on me.”

  “Shush up, now. Doctor will be in shortly.”

  “Doctor? For what?”

  “He’ll be cutting out your depravity, miss. You’ll thank him bye-and-bye.”

  Lacy yanked on her wrist ties, “Cutting—what?”

  “Insatiable self-pollution, miss. Bedding your brother-in-law. Among others, no doubt. Scandal. Disease. You can’t be sullying your late father’s name, now can you?”

  Lacy realized then what was about to happen. They were planning on removing all sensation from her. She had to think fast. And just then, the doctor strode in, a large man in a long, white coat. “The lady doth protest? I could hear her from the verandah.”

  “Doctor, she’s a wicked one.”

  Lacilia took a deep breath. Certainly if one was consigned to hospital for hysteria, one must prove otherwise. It took all the mettle she had not to scream at the top of her lungs. The doctor approached her, his hands sheathed in gloves. “We’ve prepared you for surgery, and now, we’ll give you a little chloroform, and you won’t feel a thing.”

  “Yes, so you’ve said. Or, so your nurse has said. But before you lacerate me in my most delicate area, I must inquire as to the validity of such an act.”

  “Validity? Well, your mother wants only the best for you. We can’t very well have you roaming around the countryside taking dukes to bed willy-nilly, can we?”

  “My stepmother was waylaid by grief, Sir. She’s made a grave mistake. You’ll note, if you examine me further, that I am indeed intact.”

  The doctor pulled a pair of half-spectacles from his inner pocket and placed them upon his nose. “You don’t say?”

  The nurse folded her arms. “Hmmph. She’s a tricky one, this trollop.”

  The doctor took his position at the foot of the cot and pulled Lacilia down toward him by her ankles.

  “Sir! Please. I am flesh and blood, not some cadaver!”

  “You’ll hold your tongue, lass,” the doctor grumbled.

  The nurse was all too eager. “Shall I mask her?”

  “Hold on, hold on,” groused the doctor. “Bring the oil lamp hither, would you? I must inspect this purported virginity. I have heard there are women who will stitch up a slit on a skilamalink maiden.”

  Lacy grew faint as the doctor pried her apart. Had she washed up adequately from the night before? Would he find evidence of the duke’s seed on her person? The nurse had no doubt been the one to shave and clean her. What had she found in her preparations?

  “Hm,” mumbled the doctor.

  “Well, then, you see? My incarceration was in error.”

  “Not very consistent with prostitution,” muttered the doctor. “But I do see an abnormally large organ. Certainly blood-filled. I would need some assistance for this particular clitoridectomy.”

  The word clitoridectomy caused Lacy to feel faint once more. The last words she heard before giving way to dizziness were quiet and observation.

  Women, if physically and mentally normal, and properly educated, have but little sensual desire. If it were otherwise, marriage and family life would be empty words. As yet the man who avoids women, and the woman who seeks men, are sheer anomalies.

  ~ Richard von Krafft Ebing, sexologist

  DARLINGTON WAS STUNNED. Twelve hours earlier he’d been rapturous and insatiable in the arms of a woman he now coveted more than anything he’d ever dreamt of. And now. Now he sat beside his, his bride! A woman so homely and gruesome, it took everything he had not to cringe when his gaze skimmed her features.

  And it wasn’t merely her looks that unsettled him. It was in combination with her voice, her manner, and her bizarre lack of understanding. She clutched his arm as though he were her rag doll, and had not stopped chattering since the coach left Cockermouth. “Will I have my own rooms with fine brocade linens?” she queried.

  “This came about so suddenly, Sarah Jane, we are not prepared at Blantyre Highmeadow to receive a lady. I must ask for your patience.”

  “And a room adjoining where Lala can come visit and we two can braid each other’s hair?”

  “Your mother has banished your sister,” cried Roland from the coachman’s seat. “She’s in hospital now!”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, when she’s better.”

  Duke Darlington’s stomach sank to his groin. What had he done? Consigned the love of his life to an asylum for deviants? Even in the face of the mine tragedy, this situation loomed as the most terrible fate of all. He turned to Sarah Jane, and, trying to see past her puckered rashy skin, he commented, “I have many things to attend to once we’re home. You’ll excuse my absence, I trust?”

  “Yes, but first we must drink champagne from a slipper and then you’ll kiss me.”

  Champagne from a slipper? Whence did this girl’s references hail? He could no more imagine putting his lips to hers than to those of a sow.

  Lacy’s admonishment from the night before rang in his head: Darlington! That is my sister you speak of!

  The least he could do was respect her w
ishes. He forced composure onto himself and patted the girl’s hand. “All in due time, dear Sarah Jane.”

  She bounced in her seat like a child, “Faster, Roland, faster! Whip them!”

  At least they’d removed the wrist restraints, but Lacy found herself at the mercy of the horrid nurse (who really seemed to have it in for her for some reason Lacilia could not discern). She’d been forced to eat haggis and green potatoes, and now her stomach undulated in pain.

  The nurse shoved a vomit pan under her nose. “Maybe we should tight-lace you, Miss? Your sort seems to enjoy pain and agony.”

  Lacy gagged, but nothing came up. “Fresh air would do me right well. Any chance I could walk on the grounds?”

  “Nice try, Miss.”

  “Or perhaps you could crack the window?”

  The nurse groaned and grudgingly threw a sash. “I’ve got my eye on you, Miss. No funny business, now.”

  Lacy muttered to herself as the nurse left the room, and as soon as she heard the last of the clackity-clack down the hall, she leapt from the horrid cot and ran toward the cracked window. She bent over and stuck her nose in the tiny opening, breathing in the cold, autumn air. Bliss. Bliss! How long had she been interred? A day? A week? She’d lost track of time, utterly.

  They’d forced sedatives on her. In and out of a dream state she’d passed. And what of the charming, rakish duke? Was he actually now wed to Sarah Jane? The poor man. Had she unwittingly led him to his downfall? He must loathe her now.

  She breathed the outside air once more, taking it into her lungs deeply, and in so-doing, rekindled her tingle. Never had she had such a limbic response to a man. His smell, the dragon essence of him. The way he’d touched her and brought her to climax as if his mind and hers shared a body.

  She straightened, and listened for the nurse’s return. Hearing nothing, Lacy worked her fingers under the cotton asylum shift to the stubble of hair that was just re-sprouting. She stroked her mound with increasing urgency, and then slipped a finger just inside – her nubbin engorged quickly. She closed her eyes and pictured the duke’s erect cock, its firm girth, and the glorious taste of his nectar.