Longarm washed down some grub and replied with a shrug that he was in no position to say, adding, “I hardly ever get invited to Windsor Castle, and when I do stay over Her Majesty never invites me into her bedchamber. I figure it’s up to the lady and anyone she might invite to say what goes on behind closed doors.”
Ellen stared thoughtfully at him in the soft light of her secret nest as she mused, “I guess there’s no harm if no harm’s done. Do you think that’s what those sophisticated high-society folks have to say about the wild and wicked things they do?”
He said, “Ain’t sure it’s wicked if you’re smart enough to temper your wildness with sensible precautions. Dumb trashy folks wind up in all sorts of trouble, with no moral code, because it’s dumb to just do anything you want, with anybody, at any time. Ain’t no way a man can get drunk and trifle with his baby sister in a public place without somebody calling the law. On the other hand, as long as Queen Victoria and that brawny Scot wait until they’re all alone, and lock the door, there’s just no saying what they may or may not be getting away with.”
She sighed and said, “It seems unfair to the rest of us. Why are us middle-class girls denied all the fun of either discreet or foolish fun?”
Longarm told her cautiously, “It’s likely on account of the middle-class men you hang around with. There’s a heap to be said for middle-class morality. It keeps life simple and nobody looks foolish if they just behave all the time as if somebody was watching.”
She finished her drink, started to pour another, then reached for the lamp’s trimmer as she demurely asked if Longarm thought anyone was watching.
He replied just as innocently, “Why don’t we put out that lamp so nobody could see what we’re up to in any case?”
So then the cellar was plunged in ink-black darkness and Ellen was all over him in the dark, with nothing on under that thin summer dress she’d left the house in. So in less time than it took her to say she couldn’t understand what had gotten into her, he’d gotten into her and she seemed to want more, despite her small size, in every way, as he pounded her good on that firm army cot.
It sure seemed a caution how women could be so different without having to be ugly. The petite brunette’s smaller but plumper body was not only a swell contrast, but her approach to enjoying the mutual pleasure was nothing like the forceful screwing of Nurse Nancy Calder, bless them both.
Bubbly little Ellen was one of those rare women blessed with a healthy appetite and uncomplicated plumbing. For all her reading of illustrated instruction books, she just liked a fair-size man on top and in her deep, with no cares in the world about tricky angles or difficult chords on her old banjo.
They came close together, the way lovers in romantic tragedies were supposed to. Then they got her sweetly rounded rump on a pillow and he felt sure, as he posted in the old love saddle with her soft thighs around his waist, that he’d never in this world find another gal whose whole body seemed so tailor-made to pleasure his. So when she moaned and begged him to leave it in her forever and never take it out, he found it easy to promise her he wouldn’t.
A man had to watch himself around gals like Ellen Brent. For they were tempting as hell, but naturally, nobody who screwed so swell the first night could avoid giving in quickly to the temptation all of womankind suffered. For reasons only someone like Professor Darwin might savvy, they all felt honor-bound to change a man for the better as soon as they had him wrapped around their fingers, and Ellen Brent was about as wrapping a gal as he’d met up with lately.
Chapter 16
Since Ellen was easy to satisfy as well as warm-natured, Longarm wound up with a good night’s sleep for a change. The free-thinking librarian didn’t want anyone wondering where she was come breakfast time at the boardinghouse, so she got dressed to sneak back there just as Longarm was beginning to notice how crowded an army cot was unless you were both in the middle.
Once she’d locked the front door upstairs behind her, Longarm lay back with a satisfied sigh, and slept like a log until he heard her now-familiar heels overhead again. She’d opened the library just a tad early after breakfast at the boardinghouse to serve Longarm his own breakfast in bed. He’d have never known it was that long after sunrise if he hadn’t had hot buttered toast, black coffee, and some more of her to wake himself up in that windowless dark cellar. once she had him up, in every way, Ellen said she had to open the library officially. So he let her, taking his own time to put on his clothes and mosey upstairs after her. A couple of schoolgals who were jawing with Ellen at her desk looked surprised as all get-out to see a tall stranger wearing a gun appear out of nowhere. So Longarm nodded casually at Ellen, declared, “I put that travel book about India back where it belongs, ma’am,” and sauntered on out the front door as if he was leaving church on the Sabbath.
First things coming first, he went back to the boardinghouse to clean up and change to a fresh shirt and underdrawers, just as glad to meet nobody upstairs or down until he was fixing to leave.
He found his messed-up room about as he’d last seen it. But as he went back downstairs and out the back door, the Widow MacUlric and old Remington Ramsay drove up the side lane on that two-mule buckboard. Mavis MacUlric had on a summer-weight Sunday dress and sunbonnet. The hardware man was wearing bib overalls and a denim work shirt. The wagon bed behind them was lightly laden with nail kegs, bags and buckets of paint, and Lord only knows what-all.
Mavis MacUlric said, “Oh, there you are, Custis. We missed you at breakfast and I was so afraid you’d come home to find your quarters in disarray. Remington here just sold me on a whole new wallpaper pattern, and I may let him redecorate the whole house!”
Longarm locked eyes with the hardware mogul, who seemed to read minds, because he softly said, “On me. As I was just explaining to Miss Mavis, we in the interior-decorating trade often do demonstration jobs gratis to convince other customers we know what we are up to. Miss Mavis has agreed to let me conduct tours of just her parlor and hallways once we finish up here.”
“Once we finish up?” Longarm asked.
“My helpers will be here any minute with a portable steam boiler we use to peel wallpaper,” the big galoot replied without looking away.
The pretty young widow woman Ramsay was being so good to dimpled down from the buckboard seat and explained, “Remington says it’s best to peel down to the plaster and start all over.” The mighty thorough-sounding redecorator swung down to hold out a helping hand to the lady as he told Longarm, “Three layers of paper and wheat paste are begging for bugs to begin with. But as a matter of fact, as I just told Miss Mavis, those old railroad stocks and bonds her late husband pasted up as good for nothing might just be worth something.”
As he helped her down, the young widow woman said, “Oh, Remington, poor Martin may not have been as
