In the Flesh

“Yes, miss!” Hiding a smirk behind her hand, Polly darted from the room.

Now, as to her dressing gown? The old brown woolen one just wouldn’t do. Time to bring out the fine blue one, one of the last new things she’d purchased before their fortunes had turned to dust.

If a man was prepared to pay twenty thousand guineas for the use of her body for a month, the least a girl could do was wear her nicest dressing gown.

RITCHIE COULDN’T RELAX in the damask-upholstered wing chair. It was comfortable enough, and not the usual delicate ladies’ morning-room chair; but waiting, waiting, waiting, he couldn’t find ease in it.

What’s the matter with me? Why am I here like this, sneaking around and behaving like a youth in rut with his brains all addled by his first-ever sniff of a real, live woman?

What was it about Beatrice Weatherly that made him act this way? Despite the licentiousness of the photographs she’d posed for, his gut feeling was still that she was no jaded sophisticate. The women he kept company with were mainly society beauties with inattentive husbands, women eager to share his bed discreetly in return for pleasure and a release from the inherent boredom of the ever repeating Season.

But Beatrice Weatherly wasn’t jaded or bored or married, or even particularly sophisticated, and perhaps because of that, his yearning for her was out of all proportion. She had an elusive quality that spoke to his soul and tantalized his cock. Yet for the life of him he was hard-pressed to define it.

And as for pitching up here in mufti rather than gentlemanly finery? To show her he wasn’t really a toff at heart, he supposed. A self-made man who’d worked hard, like his father before him.

It was also easier to circumvent Beatrice’s ineffectual brother this way too. He’d nothing against the man, but his sister was worth twenty of him.

You’re a sly weasel, Ritchie my lad. Especially when it’s your cock that’s running the show.

Restless, he sprang to his feet, his body humming like an electrical dynamo. The room he’d been shown into by the shrewd-looking maid was pleasing enough, if a little faded and old-fashioned looking, due no doubt the Weatherly’s lack of funds to pay for elaborate furnishings and a sufficiency of servants. Prowling around, he sensed instinctively that this was Beatrice’s domestic domain, the room she spent most of her time in. He studied a number of bookshelves, which were less dusty than some of the furniture, and their eclectic contents surprised and inordinately pleased him. History, the classics, Mr. Darwin’s treatise and other scientific tomes—all these rubbed shoulders with a broad array of novels of high and low style, and notably, issues of the literary publication, Lippincott’s, all well thumbed. He had a feeling that Beatrice read across the entire spectrum of the arts and knowledge represented. He sensed a mind in her as curious as it was sharp.

The mantelpiece was crammed with photographs.

Experiencing a twist of guilt, he sought out the life of the quiet, sweet girl Beatrice must once have been before she’d taken to posing for pornographic images. Almost reluctantly, he scanned the frames, his heart athud.

Even in stiff formal poses, Beatrice exuded the same energetic sensuality that informed her nude studies. Perched on a chaise longue beside her brother, and in the company of an older couple, presumably the now deceased elder Weatherlys, she lit the composition with life and vitality. Even with a perfectly straight face, to Ritchie’s eyes, she seemed to smile.

He passed hungrily from image to image, devouring each glimpse of her. Here in a country house garden, in a white dress, hair down, breathtaking in her purity. Here, with enormous daring, in fancy dress and revealing her sleek thighs in what looked like her brother’s breeches.

And here … oh, here … with another man, in what looked like an engagement photograph. This time it was the lucky fellow who seemed barely able to hide his smiles, while Beatrice was a poem of fond affection.

Ritchie set the frame down with thump; his teeth were gritted and his chest tight. Why such irrational anger? Why so jealous of this lost fiancé? There had been men in her life since, surely, and yet he couldn’t seem to summon up much interest in them, or antipathy toward them. Even Eustace Lloyd, who was her most recent admirer, according to his sources, and a man with whom he was vaguely acquainted and for whom he didn’t much care.

Beatrice had been seen in public with Lloyd on one or two occasions before the photographs had surfaced, but not since. All very decorous, an exhibition or two, once at the theater. There was no sign of any lasting affection for him here though, no image amongst this collection, so whatever had passed between them was obviously over.

Frowning, Ritchie tapped his fingers on the shelf, thinking, thinking.

Gut instinct told him there’d been no intimacy with Lloyd. The man was personable enough, but there was something not quite pleasant about him, and he’d been suspected of theft at the Plenderley’s house party Ritchie had attended last year. Even though he barely knew her yet, Ritchie already credited Beatrice Weatherly with a discerning taste in the men to whom she gave herself.

And yet … who’d taken the nude photographs? He hadn’t asked Beatrice, and she’d offered no information of her own volition. Could it have been Lloyd? The man had certainly shown an unusually avid interest in cameras at the Plenderley shindig.

It was something Ritchie would have to look into, as a priority. He had agents and resources aplenty; it wouldn’t take long. There must be a good reason why a refined and spirited woman like Beatrice Weatherly had exposed her beautiful naked body to a nonentity like Eustace Lloyd.

Filing that thought away, he moved to the small piano in order to distract himself from uneasy speculation. It seemed odd that the instrument was in here, rather than one of the more formal rooms, but there was Chopin on the music stand, and various selections from Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan tucked beneath it, along with the sentimental “The Lost Chord.” Did Beatrice play? Most well-bred young women of her class did; it was one of the traditional accomplishments of marriageable young fillies. He pictured her slender, delicate fingers flowing over the ivories and jerked with raw desire, imagining the same dexterity on his cock.

Soon.

He was confident that she’d accept his offer. Not because he believed himself irresistible, but because he’d sensed pragmatism in her, and desire, and the hot spark of something less definable, but still intense. For his part, he’d suffered a coup de foudre, one might say, although emanating mainly, he owned, from regions far more southerly than the heart.

His cock ached as he rubbed his thumb and fingertip together compulsively. She’d been so wet and silky last night. Exquisitely responsive. Right there with him. No grim, tight, resisting miss she. No bitter disappointment to him after the promise of her beauty.

A familiar cloud nudged its way into his consciousness, but he shook his head, dislodging it. He would not think of that now—or of her—just when Beatrice Weatherly was about to appear. The only woman of his recent acquaintance who could truly make him forget.

As if answering his prayers, the doorknob rattled as it turned, and he spun around.

“Good morning, Mr. Ritchie. I didn’t anticipate seeing you again quite so soon.”

She was a vision, everything he remembered from last night, and much, much more.

“Good morning, Miss Weatherly.” Moving swiftly amongst the furniture, he strode toward her and snatched up her hand. The touch of her skin, so smooth and warm, expunged all darkness. “And why wouldn’t you expect me? Didn’t I say I’d have an offer for you this morning?” Like a voracious schoolboy let loose in a sweet shop, he let his eyes rove over her, unable to hide his sudden, surging desire.

Beatrice Weatherly took his breath away just as easily as she stiffened his cock.

His mouth pressed to the fingertips of her raised hand, Ritchie stared at her over her knuckles. Her brilliant hair was unbound save for a few constraining strands caught in a white ribbon at the back of her head, and she looked a fair demoiselle or an enchanted queen in a painting from the hand of Mr. Rossetti. Her magical curls tumbled and drifted like flame, heating his blood.

“Gentlemen … and those not quite so gentle … say a lot of things, Mr. Ritchie. And regrettably or otherwise, they don’t often mean them.”

At another moment, he might have frowned over her words and demanded to know who’d misled her—whether it be Lloyd or some other fellow—in order to thrash the living daylights out of him. But right now, his mental processes were too derailed by the need to catalogue her beauty, from head to toe, every dreamlike inch.

Daringly, Beatrice was wearing her dressing gown rather than her day clothes, and she was clearly uncorseted. Fabric of a rich blue shade lay closely against her delicate curves, hinting at the glorious form enclosed and compelling Ritchie to speculate on what was underneath the robe.

Was she wearing undergarments? Or a nightgown? Maybe a chemise? Or perhaps stockings only, with lacy froufrou garters and a flower garland embroidered down the seam?

Or perhaps she was naked, warm and velvety, his for the taking.

“Mr. Ritchie, may I have my hand back, please?”

Ritchie straightened in surprise, then laughed as he released her. She’d bewitched him so completely he’d fallen into a lust-drenched stupor of speculation, just from kissing the tips of her fingers.

“Of course, Miss Weatherly … or may I call you Beatrice, now we’re to be close? I see that we’ve dispensed with the customary chaperone for an unmarried lady.”

She stood away from him, gripping her fingertips at the exact place he’d kissed her. For a moment, he saw an image of feminine hands, nervous and agitated, attempting to rub away his touch, but Beatrice didn’t do that. Instead, it was as if she was folding her fingers around the kiss to seal it in.

“After last night, I’d say that the issue of my chaperon-age where you’re concerned has become redundant, Mr. Ritchie.” Her eyes flashed, and he couldn’t tell whether it was from anger or from desire. Perhaps it was both. “But even so, that doesn’t automatically indicate our continued closeness. I haven’t agreed to your proposal yet.”

Beatrice was a woman of medium height, but she had a towering quality about her as she stared at him. Her sharp eyes surveyed him as if he were a petitioning worm wriggling on the carpet at her slipper-clad feet. Fresh desire gouged Ritchie’s belly so hard he felt the urge to double over.

“But my friends call me Bea, so I suppose you can too.”

The concession came out of the blue, rocking him harder than the lust did.

“Bea,” he murmured. “I like that. Does it mean we might be friends?”

“It’s hard to know that yet, Mr. Ritchie. Or should I call you Edmund?”

“My friends generally just call me Ritchie …” He paused, watching patterns of assessment cross her face, sharp and wary, but bizarrely stimulating too. “So I suppose you can too.”

Then she laughed—a free, rich sound—and the tension between them snapped like an India rubber band. It didn’t dissipate entirely. No, there was still an edge in the air. But the atmosphere in the room was distinctly lighter.