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СКАЧАТЬ any lewd and outrageous daydreams?” I demand of the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. “I can’t believe that Sofia and I are the only ones.”

      A ripple of smiles and titters circumnavigates the room. One or two very smug and secretive looks pass across certain faces, which seems to suggest that those ladies don’t actually need fantasies. Other circle members focus earnestly on their needlework, as if they have them too, but perhaps deemed them too outrageous to utter.

      “Well, I’ve always had a fancy to be thrown on my back and serviced by a couple of my grooms in the hayloft…perhaps even three or four of them,” announces Lady Arabella Southern, before pausing for effect and stabbing her needle into her own sampler. I can see from here that her stitches are even more haphazard than my poor efforts, although at least she hasn’t pricked her finger and splattered blood over the cloth, as I have. “Oh, no, wait, I think I really did do that, didn’t I?” Her patrician eyes sparkle as the room erupts with a fusillade of gasps and snorts and giggles.

      I fall silent though, not at all scandalized by Arabella’s claims. In fact, she’s set me thinking, thinking, thinking…

      Perhaps I should fabricate my own little story about grooms—multiple—and haylofts? Something especially piquant like that would amuse Mr. Enderby no end. He’s extremely fond of my outrageous little fictions, and frequently asks me to impart them to him late at night, when the candle burns low, and we’re in bed. The more outlandish and daring the exploits I manufacture, the better he likes it. And the better he likes it, the more ardent he becomes afterward.

      And I adore it when Mr. Enderby becomes ardent.

      Over tea and cakes after our sewing labors, Arabella regales us with more tales of her supposedly scandalous private life with her grooms, her footmen and certain enthusiastic friends of her husband. I’m not sure any of us believe everything she tells us, but I think most of us, apart from Mary Brigstock, enjoy the confabulation. Especially Sofia, who smiles at me slyly, again and again, as if she knows something that I do not. Something deliciously indecent.

      I smile back. I like Sofia. I like her very much. Even though I sense she’s a bottomless well of guile and secrets. And she’s definitely the lady amongst us who least needs to make up stories about her love life. Her husband, Monsieur Chamfleur, is tall and well set up, jolly but sophisticated. Exactly the sort of man who doesn’t need any lessons in the art of pleasing a woman. He looks as if he’s a veritable encyclopedia of sensuality and daring. Much like my own Mr. Enderby, who also knows his stuff.

      Eventually, our little sewing circle breaks up, and Mrs. Brigstock’s maid brings us our hats and cloaks and walking jackets. Several ladies have carriages to collect them, and one or two elect to share cabs. The Honorable Lucy Dawson even has her bicycle. But I decide to take a constitutional for my health. My home is but twenty minutes’ walk away, along pleasant, suburban streets, and I could do with the spring breeze upon my cheeks to cool the heat from my lewd, excited thoughts.

      “Will you be all right on your own, Prudence, my dear?” inquires Sofia Chamfleur as we’re about to part on the pavement. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to take you home in my carriage? It’s barely out of our way.”

      “No…no, thank you, Sofia. It’s very kind of you, but I really need the exercise. Mary’s cook doesn’t have the lightest hand with pastry, but I’m afraid that didn’t stop me overindulging.”

      “Very well, then, my dear. But take care, won’t you?” She kisses my cheek in a waft of perfume, then takes her leave.

      I begin my walk home. Deep in thought, I barely see the folk passing me by. Nursemaids with perambulators. Delivery boys. Other gentlewomen also out taking the air in the name of the modern fad for health.

      All is normal, yet I’m back in the lair of my handsome, ruthless rogue, thrilling to his kisses and the way he touches and strokes me intimately. As I walk, I feel my body rouse, fired by notions of being watched and pleasured and coaxed to the limits of sensation by his wicked, seductive men who dally with me in ones and twos and more. It’s as if every step takes me closer to my brigand and his caresses and his secret lair. Every yard makes my fantasies more real.

      Gasping, but not from shortness of breath, I take a shortcut down a quiet side street, barely more than an alley. The back of my neck prickles as I realize I’m the only person passing along this thoroughfare, and suddenly behind me I hear heavy, thudding footsteps. I quicken my pace, almost running to the busier road ahead, but it’s too late. I’m overtaken and I’m grabbed!

      It all happens so fast. One man holds me tight, easily quelling my struggles, and the other whips a blindfold across my eyes, knocking off my hat. I jerk and kick and, with the first shock fading, I open my mouth to yell blue murder and scream for help. But before I can utter so much as a peep, a big hand covers my mouth, and my cries are muffled. I huff and puff and wriggle and struggle, but it’s hopeless. One or another of my assailants ties my hands together with a cord, behind my back. Then, between them, they manhandle me a little way along the street, and I catch the sound of a carriage approaching. When it slows and stops beside us, they bundle me into it like a sack of stolen washing.

      I land on the seat, the air knocked out of me, and in the darkness, I hear the carriage door slam, the click of the lock and the flutter of blinds being drawn.

      My situation finally dawns on me.

      I wanted to be abducted, didn’t I? Well, now it’s happened. Be careful what you wish for rings in my head.

      I open my mouth again to scream and cry for help, but once again, I’m frustrated. A large, firm, very forbidding forefinger settles against my lips, effectively paralyzing them to silence, and I feel a powerful presence beside me, almost vibrating. I might as well be gagged, the finger so commands me, and where it touches me my lips tingle with a strange, electrical heat. Which makes me shudder from the crown of my head down to my toes.

      When the finger retreats, I still can’t speak. I can barely think.

      The rumbling, rocking carriage is filled with a luscious and spicy scent. It’s pungent and exotic, but still speaks explicitly of a man. The beauty of the fragrance only intensifies my trembling, and instead of cowering in a corner, I can’t help but gravitate toward the source of the scent. My unseen and also as yet unspeaking captor.

      A mouth settles on mine. A man’s mouth, with lips that are soft, almost velvety and yet muscular. Immediately he compels me to part my own lips and admit his tongue into the moist heat of my mouth. His tongue subdues mine, taking possession of me without effort and with no expectation of resistance. I’m rendered helpless but the sensation melts my belly.

      My kissing captor tastes as sweet as he smells, and if I were a weaker woman I’d swoon from the pleasure of it. But I’m strong. I don’t want to faint away and miss a second of this. Even though I’m in deadly danger, my senses are firing, my spirits lifting. So I enjoy him and his kiss becomes a laugh as my tongue seeks his.

      Am I too bold? Am I inciting my doom? Probably. But somehow I crave it. This is my fantasy, the one I described, brought to reality as if to order.

      The trundling motion of the speeding carriage is unbearably stimulating. Every nerve in my body is sensitized, and as we bump over cobbles, every knock and lurch excites the secret hidden parts of me that yearn for contact. Still kissing me, my abductor slides his hand under my short walking cloak and cups my breast quickly and roughly. Through my gown and my chemise, he flicks my nipple, coaxing it out from beneath the top edge of my corset. As he plays with it and rolls it between finger and thumb, my hips roll too.

      “So СКАЧАТЬ