Catherine Gayle: Leg-Shackled

Audrey Veazey had always considered herself to be a very open-minded woman-at least she normally did when in comparison to her contemporaries. Yet sitting in Lady Quinton’s parlor of an afternoon during this house party and listening to the other young, married ladies titter and whisper behind their hands, giving each other knowing grins, left Audrey feeling like a prude for some reason. Not to mention completely in the dark about it all.

The curious part about it all was that she couldn’t quite determine why she felt prudish all of a sudden. Since she wasn’t privy to their conversations, they could be discussing fashions or ribbons or trinkets, for all she knew. Yet the fact was, she didn’t know. Not at all. They simply whispered all around her with knowing sparkles lighting their features, and Audrey sat there wondering all the while, yet unable to bring herself to involve herself in their conversations uninvited.

But something inside Audrey was desperate to discover just precisely what they were discussing.

When Lady Lipscombe leaned across Lady Tucker Flynn in order to whisper something quite heatedly to Lady Raynesford, who blushed prettily and nodded, Audrey set her embroidery down on the occasional table next to her with an exaggerated sigh.

“ What has caused this fit of the blue devils, my dear Lady Veazey?” came a voice beside her-male, rich, and entirely too sycophantic not to rattle her nerves to the point of breakage.

Audrey turned and met the cold, black gaze of the Earl of Holbrook, leering shamelessly down at her. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, my lord,” she said as haughtily as she could muster beneath his heated stare.

“ Come now,” he said, taking the open seat next to her on the sofa and stretching his long legs out before him. “I’ve been watching you. You want what they have, but you don’t know how to get it-you don’t even know what it is-and it is utterly driving you to distraction.”

Inching away from him to put a more reasonable distance between them, Audrey leveled him with a frown. “You should have a care, my lord. Somehow, I don’t believe discerning the thoughts of others is your area of expertise.” She scanned the room, searching for her husband, Lodge. Surely he could do something about the scoundrel at her side.

Before she found him, though, Lord Holbrook leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You’re quite right, of course. I haven’t a chance at all in terms of interpreting thoughts. Emotions, however-moods and reactions-those, I’m afraid, I’m quite adept at deciphering.”

Audrey did her best to ignore the rascal beside her and scoured the men playing whist, but Lodge wasn’t amongst them. Nor was he sitting on the far side of the room before the hearth with a few of the other men. Blast him, where was he?

“ Like right now, for example. You’re uncomfortable at my presence. You wish I’d go away, and you’re searching for anyone who might rescue you from my attentions.” Lord Holbrook slid closer to her, until the heat of his thigh warmed the side of hers in a most inappropriate manner. “I make you feel things you’ve only dreamed of feeling with your husband, and you’re scared-but you’re also intrigued.” With his closest hand, he reached over and trailed a knuckle over the back of her hand.

“ You forget yourself, sir,” Audrey snapped, pulling her hand away from him as though it were scorched from his touch. Somehow, she restrained herself from striking him across the face for his impudence. It wouldn’t do to draw attention. Not now.

He chuckled. “So intense when you chastise me. I like that.”

Audrey couldn’t decide whether to blush from his implications or storm away in a huff.

Lord Holbrook didn’t give her the chance to decide. “I could make you feel even more things that Veazey has never made you feel, as well. If you’ll let me.” His words were hardly more than a whisper, but that didn’t stop them from ringing in hear ears as loudly as the fireworks exploding overhead at Vauxhall.

Glancing up at the carnal gleam in his eyes, she stood, smoothing her hands over her skirts while her heart thudded a wild, incoherent beat in her chest. “If you’ll excuse me-”

His hand on her elbow stopped her before she could escape. Audrey’s breath stilled.

“ You want to know what they’re talking about?” he asked quietly.

When she looked at him, for once, he seemed sincere and not intent on leaving her unnerved. She nodded curtly.

Lord Holbrook smiled. “Sit. I’ll tell you.”

“ How do you know?” Audrey asked before she could think better of it.

With a single eyebrow lifted mockingly, he leaned forward, gently tugging on her elbow until she sat again, and said, “Emotions. Reactions. I notice them. I pay attention. After many years of this, I’ve come to be adept at making sense of them.”

She frowned. But what could it hurt to humor him? “Very well. Go on. What are they talking about?”

“ Sex,” he murmured.

For that matter, he might not have said it at all, but just breathed it. The word washed over Audrey’s skin and sent shivers of goose flesh coursing over her arms and all the way down to her toes. She shot her gaze up to look at him with a slight gasp, wide-eyed and scandalized, yet also entirely too fascinated for a proper lady.

“ Yes,” he continued, ignoring her half-hearted appeal to feminine sensibilities. “Sex. Coitus. Sport. Fornication. Mating-”

“ That’s quite enough, my lord,” Audrey bit off, interrupting him before her blush was hot enough to melt iron.

“ I apologize,” he drawled without an ounce of sincerity in his tone. “If you’re so ill at ease discussing such things, it is no wonder you’ve not been party to the other ladies’ conversations.” He lowered his voice and turned from her, muttering beneath his breath, “Heaven knows Veazey must be beyond frustrated with such a squeamish wife. I suppose I am misplacing my efforts, yet again.”

“ Squeamish? Do you really find me to be so?” Her voice sounded strangled and unnatural. When Audrey turned to him, Lord Holbrook opened his mouth, likely to confirm exactly what she had no desire to hear. She held up a hand. “Forget I asked. I really don’t want to know what you think on the matter.”

A wry grin covered his features, but ne inclined his head in concession.

Squeamish. A prude. Everything she had thought she wasn’t-but was she? In the early days of their marriage, Lodge had wanted to try a few things during their bed play which she’d shied away from. But they’d seemed so very improper, so wicked and shocking.

With a frown, Audrey stood and once again smoothed her hands over her skirts. “Thank you for your time, Lord Holbrook.” Somehow, she got the words out without choking on them. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Then without waiting for a response, she left the drawing room and made for the stairs.

On his way back into the abbey from a ride with Lord Quinton and Sir Jonas Buchannan, Lodge Veazey caught a glimpse of his wife scurrying from the drawing room and up the stairs as though the hounds of hell were at her heels.

Sir Jonas stopped in his tracks and faced him. “Is something amiss with your wife?”

Apart from the fact that she was a bit too puritanical for his base, lustful urges? But Lodge couldn’t very well voice such a thing before anyone else. It wouldn’t do. He loved her too much to cause her such discomfort, and if anything was bound to cause her instant mortification, that would certainly do it.

He frowned. “I suppose I’ll have to follow her up to see.”