“My lady must be pleasured first,” whispered the earl, pulling her legs back around his waist. He slid C.J.’s violet-colored hose over the firm globes of her buttocks and down past her thighs, feeling the heat of her bare sex pressed against him.
“Will you touch me . . . there?” she asked, widening her legs for him. “I want to see the colors again.”
Darlington slipped two fingers into her soft wetness. “Ohhh, Cassandra, my dearest Cassandra. Will you marry me?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your knees when you ask me that?” C.J. teased, her eyes glazing over with bliss.
“I can stop doing this and go down on bended knee if you would like me to,” the earl said, reaching the most sensitive core of C.J.’s sex.
“Later,” she gasped, tears of mingled joy and satiation coursing down her cheeks. “I want to give myself to you,” she whispered huskily, feeling herself open to him even farther as she spoke the words.
Darlington was ready for her and eased inside, burying himself to the hilt in her heat. Like one body the lovers moved with a slow, undulating rhythm. C.J. could feel every inch of Darlington’s flesh; each pause he took caused her to crave his reentry all the more. She trembled with the anticipation of each renewed stroke and the full union of their bodies that it would bring.
“I feel so alive,” C.J. murmured, flinching slightly from the electricity Darlington’s touch produced when he slipped his hands underneath her doublet and linen and caressed the bare skin along her back. She placed her hands on his shoulders, arching away from him as she came, allowing his strong hands to support her. “Pink. I saw pink,” she said breathlessly. “What does that mean?”
Darlington gently touched the base of her spine, causing C.J. to shiver with pleasure. “The first level of the chakra—red, and sometimes it can seem pink—is the grounding seat of Kundalini, the creative life force.”
“Only the first level?” C.J. joked, tugging her tights back into place. “The first time we made love, I saw green. I’ve regressed!”
“But now you carry the creative life force within your womb—our child. Red is where it all begins.”
“I want to make you see indigo,” C.J. whispered, darting her tongue in and out of Darlington’s ear. She found him again with her warm hand. “Indigo—and violet.”
There was a shout and a whistle, and the sound of crunching gravel announced the approach of intruders upon the lovers’ idyll.
“God in Heaven—my nephew has taken to drowning his sorrows with boys!” exclaimed a horrified Lady Oliver. “And at a time like this! To be caught in flagrante!” She nearly fainted from the shock. “Our family will be ruined forever! Percy! Rouse yourself immediately from this pastoral torpor!”
“If that’s a boy, I’m more of an ass than you already think, Augusta,” said the marquess, highly amused by the scene before him. Still, he would have found more to smile at had one of the amatory combatants not been his “daughter.” Hadn’t he troubles aplenty without the apple of his eye falling so near to the tree that ostensibly bore half the responsibility for bearing her? All his careful wooing and repeated assurances of his reformation had come to naught, for Lady Chatterton would surely refuse his suit now.
The hostess herself and an elderly man dressed as Prospero stopped short at the sight. “I have been wondering all evening when someone would take advantage of our Arden,” Lady Chatterton said with surprising gaiety. “Shall we allow them a moment or two to . . . compose themselves?”
Lady Dalrymple, huffing and puffing down the gravel path, with Mary in tow—desperately trying to keep pace with her mistress while simultaneously cooling her off with the ridiculously large feather fan—joined the rest of the search party, who by now had discreetly turned their backs while C.J. removed herself from the earl’s lap.
“Well, it appears that Darlington has found my niece,” the countess remarked with a wink at her brother. Manwaring moaned with paternal misery. At least his sister had been spared the brunt of their shocking discovery. It was not the activity itself that appalled him, rather that the indiscretion had turned it into a nearly public display. Who knows how much further his “daughter” might have taken things, swept away as she was by her passions? Evidently, Cassandra had a lot to learn about their society—and Darlington should have known better. For the first time in his life, he found his views aligned with those of Lady Oliver, who was busily overdosing herself with smelling salts.
“Cupid’s dart hath the surest of aim,” said Lady Chatterton, giving Bottom a friendly spank on his posterior with her wand. “And without any more ado, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Shakespeare’s most powerful magician.” She gestured grandly at the extravagantly attired “wizard” beside her.
Manwaring peered out from the eyeholes of his headdress. “Now it rings a bell. I believe that’s the shylock m’daughter was speaking of but yesternight!”
“Look closer, your lordship,” said Lady Chatterton dryly. She directed the tip of her wand toward the bearded man’s opulent robe covered with ancient signs and symbols. “This is no Shylock, but ’tis Prospero.”
Prospero, in the person of the pawnbroker Mathias Dingle, retrieved a small blue velvet pouch from the folds of his voluminous robe. “If you please, your ladyship,” he said addressing their hostess, “would you be so good as to shine your lantern on this pouch.”
Lady Chatterton obliged, and the pawnbroker removed an odd-shaped piece of silver from the pouch and handed it to C.J., who was now seated beside Darlington on the marble bench. She was still blushing an unflattering shade of carmine from their having been discovered as they were. “Can you read it?” Dingle asked her. C.J. peered at the metal object. “Please hand her the
