Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

“My stays,” she repeated, in a more temperate voice than she’d have thought she could manage. “Please, they’re awfully tight about my waist. The… supper I ate, you know.”

Forcing herself to take a step forward, she put an inch of space between their bodies to stop him, in any case, from continuing to press himself, in that disreputable, near-irresistible way, against her arse. Arms akimbo, she pushed her hands hard against the sides of her waist to relieve the tension of her flesh against the laces up her back.

“Ah,” he murmured. His fingers had crept upward from her breasts to the shoulder straps, held fast with ribbon. No, not held fast, not now. She wiggled her shoulder blades, but he wouldn’t be distracted from unknotting the strings at her waist.

“Ah yes, the supper you ate. I’d forgotten-no, in truth I’ve never forgotten-what a picture you make while you’re enjoying your food. Press a bit harder for a moment, will you, so I can get a little slack on this loop… Much better, thanks… do you know, Mary, that watching you eat, I found myself envying the capon?”

She smiled despite herself. “I expect there’s rather a smutty witticism to be made from that.”

“I should have thought you’d have made it by now.”

“But you see,” she told him, “what a staid, well-governed, and circumspect lady I’ve become.”

Or at least a less vulnerable one.

He snorted with laughter and then took a breath-“Ah, got it. No more need of your help, thank you, Lady Chris…”

But she could already tell that he’d gotten it, by the sudden easing of pressure about her torso, not to speak of the impatient breaths he was drawing while he waited for her-to? Well, that was rather the problem, wasn’t it? She’d hoped that this step of her hastily conceived strategy would have become clear to her when the need arose. Though in truth she remained unsure…

But she wasn’t really obliged to do anything, was she? Even with the laces undone, she could keep her hands at her waistline and hold the garment’s stiff canvas in front of her, as a sort of shield.

Hands firmly planted, she turned to face him. Her voice (she hoped) would issue light and abstracted, as if attentive to other concerns.

“Yes, well, my thanks for your assistance, Lord Christopher. Couldn’t have managed without it, but as I’m sure must be shockingly evident, I’ve had a most tiring day…”

His face darkening, jaw tensing, eyes slowly comprehending.

“… And so,” she continued, patiently now, as though to Mr. Frayne at his most irritatingly voluble, “as I won’t be needing you for anything else tonight…”

He snarled. “That was…”

You’ve got the advantage, she told herself. Have the courage to use it.

She dropped her hands and let the length of boned canvas tumble to her feet.

“… low!”

“No, they’re not,” she informed him (and rather coolly too, she thought). “They-and I as well-have weathered the years quite admirably, thank you.”

The hell of it, he thought, was that she was right. Her breasts bobbled high as ever on her torso. Admirably (yes, he rather thought so) and insolently too, the nipples still dark and erect, the firm roundness of her flesh entirely discernable through that utterly disreputable shift.

Less girlish, a bit fuller than when he’d seen them last ( hell, have I remembered her body so precisely, over the span of nine years, a large number of battles, and a larger number of women ? Distressingly, it seemed that he had). But a little additional fullness was certainly nothing he’d take exception to.

“That was mean, rotten, and unworthy of us both,” he said.

At least, he thought, she had the decency to look a bit shamefaced. Still, “You were entirely too self-confident,” she said. “Cocky, one might even say.”

“Yes,” he replied, “I expect I was. Whereas you weren’t quite so confident of yourself as you pretended to be.”

For if she had been, she wouldn’t have been so quick with those last comments. Nor would she have hesitated-even for an almost indiscernible instant-to show herself.

Elegantly proved, Kit. As well it might be, for he suspected (or hoped, at least) that he was still the British nation’s leading authority on Lady Christopher Stansell, née Mary Artemis Elizabeth Penley, at her willful, furious best.

“You shouldn’t have doubted yourself,” he added. Because it was true. And because it seemed rather to confuse her to hear him say it. Well, then, he’d take his pleasure from her discomfiture-and simply from gazing at her.

The years had added an inch or so of flesh to her waist. The corset had left some angry marks for him to kiss away… Or so he’d imagined himself doing, perhaps just about now, after reaching around her to get the petticoat off and lifting the shift above her head directly afterward. Finally able to bury his face in her belly, the additional inch of flesh entirely welcome under his mouth… unless, of course…

“What are you smiling at?” she asked.

“I wasn’t aware of smiling-a grimace, more like, produced by the ragin’ discomfort, don’t you know, that you’ve effected upon me. But I was wondering whether you wear those indecent, mannish new undergarments some ladies have taken up nowadays.”

“Drawers?”

“Please tell me you don’t.”

The idea of having to worry about an additional cumbersome item of intimate linen struck her as surprisingly funny, while his relative good humor over her bad behavior struck her as simply surprising. Perhaps not so flattering as she would have liked. But likeable for all that, and a reminder that beneath all the anger and pride he’d once been a rather genial, and quite amusing, young man. She’d forgotten those aspects of his temperament. By the end of their time together his geniality hadn’t been much in evidence, his jokes long gone. The good humor and silly, outré quizzing he’d loved to do ( drawers? for it seemed he could still catch her unawares)-all that, she’d believed, were gone forever.

Drawers ? She shook her head and gave him a level stare. “No, I don’t.”

She supposed (later, upon reflection) that she’d put out a hand then, as a gesture of conciliation or even apology. From which it reasonably followed that he’d taken it in his own, their fingers interlacing.

But as for how she had found herself so tightly and precipitously clasped against his front-in truth, she wouldn’t be able to render a complete account of it. Though she was pretty sure it wasn’t entirely his doing, now that his coat, waistcoat, shirt, and cravat were all pressed so importunately against her flesh, not to speak of his doeskin pantaloons, with all their buttons below.

Disagreeable, him being so covered up: she should do something about it.

In a moment. After she managed to gain control of the trembling that had started up somewhere between her belly and her knees, causing her to grasp and cling, not merely from the violence of her desire but from a commonsensical fear that her legs would give way. That she’d lose her balance if his mouth continued so warm, so eager and inquisitive, so apple-and-raisin sweet and so… well, so all over her lips and jaw and chin, leaving her no choice but to trust to the impressive new musculature in his limbs and shoulders.

So be it. Let him hold her upright, even while he continued to kiss her so roughly and juicily and altogether adorably. His lips had slid down her neck. Leaning back into his arms, she arched her spine, loosed her hands from around his shoulders, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and unknotted his cravat. The happy result being that only his linen shirt and her threadbare shift lay between them now.