She sank a little deeper into the tub. In her younger years she’d desired kisses and sweet words of endearment. These days what she wouldn’t give for a jolly good shag, a sweaty, screaming, bed-shaking—
Her hand found its way to the troublesome place between her legs and stroked herself. She really shouldn’t be so lustful—she’d pleasured herself as recently as the night before. But lustful she was and her body begged for relief.
Oh, well, if she were to do it, she might as well do it properly. Without lifting the handkerchief from her face, she raised one foot out of the tub and felt for the hot water faucet. There, that would be the one that was still warm. She turned on the faucet with her toes. Wouldn’t want the water to grow cold and distract her, would she?
Stuart returned to a dark and empty house.
He needed some papers from his study. On a different day, a telephone call would have sufficed. But it was a half day and there was no one home to answer the telephone or deliver the papers.
He pulled off his gloves and warmed his hands over the radiator in the study. By habit, he poured himself a measure of whiskey. But a few sips later, he realized that it was not whiskey that he wanted, but a good, sturdy tea, which he’d declined at the office.
He hadn’t eaten much for luncheon. Nor would he have had much dinner at the Reform Club. Between breakfast and midnight, he ate only enough to not be distracted by hunger, saving himself—in a manner that he could only ironically describe as chaste—for when he could be alone with her food again.
The biscuits for tea were kept not in the kitchen, but on the sideboard in the servants’ hall. Mrs. Abercromby’s valiant but ultimately doomed rock biscuits—more rock than biscuits—had been replaced by a small quantity of shortbread. And little wonder the quantity was so limited. The foundations of Heaven must be built of this fresh, buttery sweetness that was a greater testament to the glory and mercy of the Almighty than any cold marble or vulgar gold.
He had the uncivilized urge to eat everything right there in the servants’ hall. But he controlled himself. He would enjoy it more if he were to have the shortbread with a cup of tea, in some comfortable lounging clothes. He set a kettle to boil in the kitchen, and went up the stairs to change.
As he reached his floor, he heard the unmistakable sound of water running in the bath at the far end of the corridor—the one shortcoming of the plumbing in the house was that when the water ran, it ran loud, the pipes groaning and squealing, a duet between a defective organ and a tone-deaf bassoon.
But why would the water turn on by itself? Was there a leak? He walked faster. The bath was only for his use and had no lock. The door opened at his touch.
Steam rushed at him, a foggy roomful of it. For a moment he couldn’t see anything. Then, the shock. There was someone in his tub, a woman. In the rising mist, she sat neck-deep in water, her head tilted back, her face covered by a wet handkerchief, her hair a damp, darkish knot. The tops of her knees barely emerged from the water; her left arm, long and prettily rounded, rested along the rim of the tub.
It could only be Madame Durant, in the flesh. He leaned back against the door, speechless at her transgression.
And her nakedness.
A foot lifted out of the tub, along with a good length of shapely calf. Her skin glistened in the honeyed light, faintly steaming with the heat of the water. His heart instantly beat twice as fast.
He’d never before been susceptible to the general male mania over the female foot, the pathetic longing for a peek of a trim ankle, or the breathlessness generated by a saucy boot with bits of leather cut away to reveal the stocking underneath. But now he, too, ran the risk of being enslaved by a beautiful high arch and clean pink toes.
She shut off the faucet with those clean, pink toes and lowered her foot. Given the respite, he tried to collect himself and think beyond his immediate reaction of marvel and lust. She was a servant who had intruded upon his privacy and used facilities reserved for him without so much as a by-your-leave—a grave infraction by any measure.
Had it been anyone else, he’d have a word with Mrs. Abercromby, who would in turn give the woman what-for, or perhaps even let her go if she had been unsatisfactory in other tasks. But the offender here was the mysterious, salacious, sublime Madame Durant, whose food he couldn’t stop eating, and whose unseen presence was a silent hunger that smoldered within him, a hunger made greater by every bite of her food—so much so that he’d postponed summoning her time and again, for fear that he might be blind to his own weakness, that though on the surface of his mind his reason was Bertie, underneath swam a beast of lust that awaited only the most meager of opportunities to snap him in its jaws.