God, it was a beautiful display.
The solution to the mystery appeared logical to Dash, but he proposed it with respect. “Have you considered Hadrian as a suspect?”
“Immediately. But he has been watched.” Sir William shook his head. “I can’t imagine why Hadrian sought a mistress. The man’s a sodomite.”
“To deflect suspicion. And Hadrian is not discriminating about the gender of his partners.”
The plump, heavy-breasted wench on top held her mate to her tits, lushly smothering her, and gave a loud, happy sigh of pleasure. She watched Dash beneath coy lashes. He watched, amused, as the pretty blonde on the bottom struggled to free herself from her prison of plump tits.
“It’s possible,” Dash pointed out, “that Lady F discovered her lover also kept a stable of young boys. For a hopeful mistress, that would have come as a shock.”
Sir William gave a brief twist of a smile. “Lady F guesses his secret, and he has her removed? He could have paid her off—but then, she may have come back for more. It’s all possible. Except for our witnesses who saw you.”
“Paid, I assume.”
Sir William’s gaze settled on the two women, naked and slumped together in bliss, and a red flush coasted over his grizzled face. For all he passed judgement on the sins of fallen women, he apparently was shocked by the sight of them. Clearing his throat, he said, “Hadrian suspects the men took Lady Farthingale for money—that she will be ransomed.”
“So why use me for a simple scheme of blackmail?”
“I don’t understand it,” Sir William admitted. “But then, you could have employed the five men.”
“Indeed.” Dash watched, amused, as the pretty blonde surrendered and began to suckle a long, generous nipple. Sexual agony rippled through him as the girl’s cheeks hollowed, and her graceful hand clutched the enormous white mound.
He’d forgotten his train of thought.
“Did you?” Sir William prompted.
Did he what? Hire the five men. “Bloody hell, no. Give me the names, Sir William. I need to speak to these people.”
“I’ve already done so. I’ve had some of Bow Street’s runners follow them.”
Coos and sighs and desperate feminine gasps washed over Dash. Women were such a delight. They could die in an orgasm that would leave a man drained and limp and within seconds happily start bouncing toward their next explosion.
Sir William tapped his glass on the table. “Miss Eliza Charmody.”
“And who would she be?”
“An actress. A week ago, she partnered Lord Craven in this game.”
“I assume you mention her because she was also abducted? Lady F wasn’t the first?”
“No, Lady F was not the first.”
The woman on top now galloped, wild and merciless, on her partner, plunging furiously on the dildo filling her creamy quim. He had no doubt each thrust sent the harness rasping against the clit of the girl on the bottom, for she was squealing around the nipple filling her mouth. She gripped the fat bosom with desperate fingers and sank her teeth into the plump tit.
Dash’s blood drained from his brain. What in hell did he care if Sir William wanted to arrest him? He knew he’d die young.
Hell, Sir William would probably be satisfied with banishment. Send him to the Continent or the East where he could serve out his punishment surrounded by lush women.
But he was an innocent man.
“I reexamined that case,” Sir William explained, his face red, his breathing unsteady. “It took place at Covent Gardens, another clue in this mad scavenger hunt. Two courtesans came forward to say you had enticed the woman away from Lord Craven. And two gentlemen—Sir Percy Whitting and Lord Yale—saw you hand her up into your carriage.”
“And again, interestingly enough, I wasn’t there.” Dash scrubbed his jaw, gave a shake of his head as the voluptuous jades returned to earth, gulped hungrily for breath, and began to eye him. The promise of sliding his rod into a bubbling cunny began to pound through his brain. “Easy enough to pay courtesans to lie. As for Sir Percy and Lord Yale…” Christ Jesus, Dash loved the sight of two women’s breasts pressed together. He shifted in his seat, searching for a more comfortable position. “Both are young, can’t hold their drink, and are gullible. Whoever convinced them they saw me is clever.”
“Indeed.” The magistrate’s face remained impassive.
“And is likely involved in the white slave trade.”
Grimly, Sir William nodded. “It is possible this is related, given the disappearances of the women. Though the ladies were not country virgins.”
“It might be the reason my name has been used. Revenge.” The woman on top winked at him, but, groaning, Dash shook his head. Not now. Later he would spend the night losing himself in mindless sex. Spend the night escaping his nightmares with an orgy, or bondage, or candlewax dripped onto his vulnerable skin.
“Or it is Robert,” Sir William suggested.
Guilt rose, black and sickening. “My cousin is not like his father. He doesn’t covet the title. And he doesn’t know the truth.”
The magistrate said nothing.
Dash watched the cavorting women as they winked at him and wriggled together. “So it could be a member of my family—my uncle, my aunt, my cousin. What of my uncle’s mistress? Should I include her? Or Craven or his partner, Barrett, who I suspect are involved in white slavery.” Dash drained his port—the last of his bottle. “So I talk to your witness. And the other suspects. Then I join the scavenger hunt.”
Sir William drew a card from his jacket pocket. “Bloody surprised you weren’t in it already.” He laid the folded white square on the polished table.
“What is this?”
“Your next clue.”
Whereupon he ripped open his breeches, releasing his great purple-headed pecker. He pushed me forward, almost sending me toppling to the crowd below, and he threw me skirts over me head.
“My lord Wooderton,” gasped I, startled by the fury of his passion.
“Silence, wench,” he cried, and in one thrust, he drove his magnificent lance within me. My scream of submission shocked the theater into silence. Only my desperate cries of pleasure could be heard as Wooderton pounded his cock into my cunny. Then applause thundered from the crowd below us, and in front of all those snobbish ladies of the ton, I received the most wondrous fuck from the most desired gentleman in London.
Having added the last required comma in the chapter, Maryanne Hamilton laid down the manuscript. She ached. And burned. Her heart danced in her chest like a bird beating against glass. And there was sweat…unladylike sweat trickling down her bodice.
She leaned back against the ironwork back of the bench. The last of the roses tumbled all about her. Their sweet scent enraptured her, and she closed her eyes and turned her face up to the warm autumn sunshine. Here, in this secret garden behind her brother-in-law’s London mansion, she could imagine she was in the country and Almack’s and the marriage mart didn’t exist.
Her first Season had passed without an offer of marriage.
Thank heavens.
She glanced down at the pages, the corners fluttering in the September breeze.
Miss Tillie Plimpton’s