Blooming: Veronica (11 page)

His purse was substantial.

Consequently, he was a bit of clit connoisseur. Now that she had spread herself, the pussy folds drawn back, he could tell that hers was breathtaking: plump, engorged with blood, and ready for the plucking.

If only she could locate it.

She looked down, fumbled about some more between her thighs until he was gnashing his teeth and eventually calling out directions: “Right. No, more to the left. Up more.”

“By Jove,” she exclaimed. “I think I have it now.”

How much more could he endure?

Desperate to climax, he suffered the agonies of hell and continued his instructions. “Touch it, fondle it, experiment. Treat it as your new pet. Only grow accustomed to its wants.”

“Just so,” she slurred, her consumption of alcohol catching up with her. “You know, from time to time, purely by accident, I did bump into a sensitive spot here in this region, but I thought it was just me, that I was somehow abnormal to find the sensation oddly gratifying.” She gasped. “Oh, my, but this is more than merely oddly gratifying. This is…”

She began to pant. “This is absolutely…uh…”
Ah ah ah
. “This is absolutely, positivel—”

The writer, always so proficient with words, never completed the sentence. On a dull moan, she came, a first time experience for which she could thank him, her new husband, not her erstwhile lover, Robert the Dock Rat.

Her mouth fell open. She said drunkenly, “None of my free-love associates mentioned this. Why ever do we need men if we women can do this entirely for ourselves?”

His heart sank. Having his new bride think him obsolete had not been his intent. “Men come in handy for romantic gestures.”

“Not in my experience,” she grumbled, though good-naturedly, now that she had gotten off.

“Your experience is limited.”

“The scandal sheets said differently.” As she began to laugh feverishly, an unhealthy pitch that would only wind her up tight all over again, he dug into his coat pocket, brought forth a disc, and placed it on the floor. Bending stiffly, he pulled the lever and then came just as stiffly back up again.

“What is that gadget?” she asked, distracted from her worrisome mirth.

“Wait and see,” he replied.

The mechanical device he had engineered just for her began to rumble. Then the springs inside the automaton sprang into action, and a whirring commenced.

“A clay pot,” she cried, her eyes bugged in amazement. “How ever did you make it do that?”

“If I tell you, it would take all the magic away.”

“First mind reading and now this. And you said parlor games were not for you.”

“Stop pursing your lips in disapproval at me, madam, and attend to the pot again.”

“Something green is growing from the soil. Are those flower stems? They are flower stems! Look at them popping up straight from the pot.”

“See anything else?”

Without any self-consciousness whatsoever, she squatted naked at his feet and looked up at him through the wild fall of her hair. “Buds. Blue buds.”

In her curiosity, she widened her knees until he could see her all. “Goodness! The tiny petals are opening.” A hand went to her peaked breast and rubbed. “How very beautiful.”

“Yes, very beautiful. Just like you, Mrs. Bowdoin. Please consider this your wedding bouquet. You refused to carry one today, so here are veronicas, your namesake flower.”

Her wide-eyed gaze narrowed up at his face, a priceless sign of her foul humor that he nearly missed as his own eyes were well occupied elsewhere.

“What an incredibly romantic gesture, sir.”

“Exactly,” he said smug as can be. “I believe you lose this round of our debate, madam.”

Chapter Thirteen

Inside the rich blue velvet hangings that enclosed an enormous Queen Anne bed, Veronica yawned and stretched, and generally speaking, felt wonderful, better than she had in weeks.

Relaxed and at ease, she picked up the satin quilt of the same intense shade of blue as the overhead drapery and looked downward, a languid glance to her chest.

Someone had installed her in a cream-toned silk nightgown.

Who, she wondered. Then she slowly pulled the covers back up to her chin again.

Last evening she had been tipsy—all right, completely fuddled—and so she had no notion of how she had arrived at this veronica blue bedchamber. Had she somehow managed to make the journey under her own locomotion?

Unlikely, given the quantity of spirits she must have consumed.

Her spouse would not have swung her up into his elegant arms, à la manly bridegroom, and carried her the distance. Nor would he have disrobed her and then dressed her for bed. Not because he was incapable of doing so, but because her husband seemed disinclined to touch her.

Except, of course, if she were hemorrhaging.

This morning, she would not blame herself. Not about the miscarriage, not about what was it about
her
that put men off. Perhaps the blame did not reside with her. Perhaps, she had miscarried just because. And perhaps, Mr. Bowdoin refused to touch her because he was…was…

Indifferent to her feminine sex.

That was it! He very well might prefer members of his own gender. She could hardly fault him there, as she preferred members of his gender too.

The outward markings were all there. Though he was not effeminate, he was terribly refined, fashionably clad, urbanely witty, worldly, and sophisticated—as were many males of a certain inclination. Plus, he had
volunteered
to take her to a dressmaker’s shop. What further indication did she need of his sexual orientation?

He could not fool her. Not in this area. After reading Oscar Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian Gray
in
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine
, she knew all about such things. In theory. On the pages of a novel or journal. All one need do was read between the lines!

She grinned in happiness. She had read between Talbot Bowdoin’s lines, and so she knew he would make her the perfect husband. He had taste in clothes and would stay out of her bed.

And, in giving him a wedding band to hide behind, she would keep him out of prison for his predilection, a quid pro quo arrangement if ever she heard one.

A slight rat-a-tat came at the door.

That must be Mr. Bowdoin now.

“Come in,” she called.

In he came, as any husband might, only unlike most husbands in the morning, Talbot Bowdoin looked fresh, while in a complete role reversal, she was a messy mess. “Pardon my regrettable dishabille this morn, sir.”

“Nonsense! You look delectable. A scrumptious morsel, entirely enchanting.” He bowed, and quite elaborately too, one arm behind his back.

Veronica twirled a strand of bed-mussed hair around her finger.

Oh, the groom was a gay blade to be sure. No ordinary husband, not even one in the first blush of a honeymoon, would spout such utter claptrap and with such a jaunty flair.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“After my excesses, I am. Though, owing to a certain fuzziness of thought, not nearly as amenable.”

“That having not been my experience, I shan’t even notice.” He presented her with a box, taken from behind him. “For you.”

“Another wedding gift?”

“A token of my esteem. You were wonderful last night.”

“Wonderful?” She tore at the pretty blue wrapping paper. “I was?”

“I have never had better.”

“Even with my somewhat shaky recollection, I am sure you did not have me at all, sir.” But he had given her a gift anyway. Extraordinary!

And far too considerate for a man of natural sexual inclination.

She held his token of esteem up in the air. “A gilded music box. How perfectly wonderful! I always wished to have one just like this.”

“I had the
Henriot
sent from Switzerland. Well, open the lid and see what the blasted thing plays.”

She beamed. “My favorite Mozart aria,
Don Giovanni
. You
can
read my mind.”

“A wild guess,” he said modestly. “Now, tell me—did you enjoy last night?”

“As I say, last night is a tad foggy.”

“But you do recall some of it.”

“I recall something
eruptive
. What was it?”

“An orgasm.”

She briskly shook her head. “You are quite mistaken, sir. That eruption was not an orgasm. Only men can orgasm because only men can ejaculate, a necessity to perpetuate the species. If not for the pleasure derived from orgasm, men would not bother, while women participate only to have children.” Which she could no longer do, so why bother with the rest?

“There is pleasure to be had for the woman too.”

His statement confirmed her suspicions. Her husband was definitely queer in his thinking. No wonder he was not disappointed at her inability to bear him a son. He most likely thought never to have a wife or children.

Rather than repulse her, his orientation made her feel ever so safe. He would never pull at her heartstrings, as he favored pulling a different organ.

Putting his arrogance and manipulation aside, she smiled at him fondly. “I must disagree. The eruption I felt last night was a release of internal tension, similar to a belch.”

“A belch? You view climax the same as a burp?”

“I think so, yes. The eruption felt good and necessary in the moment with no lasting result. I would do it again, mind you, but I shall belch again too, given the right circumstances, especially now that I know how to do it.”

Putting her new music box aside, she sprang from the bed and whipped off her nightgown, no modesty whatsoever. Her husband had no interest in her
that
way. He might have been her personal maid, so little did her nudity matter to him.

“We go to the dressmaker today, Mr. Bowdoin?” she inquired, bending over to retrieve her scattered hose from the floor where whoever had gotten her ready for bed had dropped them, along with her frilly white garters and gold-buckled shoes.

“Why…er…yes.”

He sounded strange. When she turned round to see why he should sound so strangulated, she saw that his gaze was riveted on her upturned bottom. “Is everything as it should be, sir?”

“Why, naturally, Mrs. Bowdoin. You know I like to look.”

“Look all you like,” she said breezily.

Assured in her knowledge that he had no designs on her, she made her toilette as if she were entirely alone in her bedchamber, scurrying to her traveling chest, tossing her clothing about hither and yon as she hunted down something appropriate to wear her first full day of married life. Something dull, something that spelled her new change in position and status. After all, she was a married lady now.

For all that she had spent her wedding night alone.

* * *

At Talbot’s order, Jim, the stable lad, had already brought the four-wheeled rockaway around to the front of the stone carriage house in readiness for that day’s excursion. All they need do was hop up onto the bench and take off.

Easy for Talbot to say. With inches to spare at the leg and wearing trousers, not skirts, climbing into the rig amounted to more than a hop and a jump—even for a cripple.

Not so for his lady bride. Tiny in stature, hindered by voluminous petticoats and weighed down by everything else, she required assistance.

Only a boor would stand by while a female struggled to board a conveyance.

A firm grasp under her elbow and a gentle upward push, his walking stick dug into the drive for leverage, he hoisted his bride up onto the high bench.

Afterward, and badly shaken from the contact, he climbed up himself, concentrating on handling the team while he regained his composure.

His love of all things leather helped.

When staying at his estate on the North Shore, he took his pair of reddish brown horses out for a drive whenever possible. His team needed the exercise, and he enjoyed the feel of the reins in his hands.

Straps too. Whips as well. Floggers that slashed trough the air before landing, not on horseflesh, but on a woman’s soft skin. In specific, his wife’s highly spankable backside. Leather would look good on her. Across her breasts, encircling her tiny waist, going over her mons and between her buttocks.

Back to her buttocks again. Her eminently spankable buttocks.

Lord, what he would give—perhaps even his publishing empire—to be able to lay his hand on her ass, to pinken the cheeks with his very own palm, to kiss the bruises he left behind, to lick the crevice and then dart his tongue inside to lick that pretty little hole he longed to enter.

But not until after spanking her delectable derriere.

If there was a God in heaven, please?
Please, let me be able to work up the courage to touch her that way
. Just one spank would do him…

A lie. If he were going to pray to a higher authority, the least he could do was own up to his weaknesses.

One spank would never do him.

Ugh. A whistle to his chestnuts truncated the direction of those thoughts, and off they went, galloping down the drive.

Veronica—he occasionally called her so now in his thoughts, not always bride or wife or madam, not even Mrs. Bowdoin, though he did like its sound on his lips—held on to her precariously perched hat. “It feels most peculiar not going to Hamilton Place for a new outfit.”

“Outfits, plural,” he corrected, pleased with her ease of conversation with him. Veronica seemed comfortable around him altogether now. A remarkable accomplishment, and not entirely believable, given her earlier hostility to their marriage, her unspoken antagonism of the night before, and considering they were still relative strangers to one another.

He would like to see all that change, especially the last. He would especially like to know what had altered her mindset about him. He would have named the orgasm, but she denied having ever experienced one, claiming a belch instead.

Laughter rumbled in his chest. What a bundle of contradictions she was, so intelligent and yet so deplorably naive, all at the same time. Her ignorance of men was astounding. She might as well have joined a sewing circle of cloistered nuns than attend any of those free-love sessions. At least there, she would have learned a thing or two about priests. How she could write a bestselling book of erotica and know nearly nothing about sex remained a mystery.