from her gown with shaking hands. Still, she could not turn back to him, afraid of what she would see. Afraid she would not want to leave.
She sucked a deep breath into her lungs. “Will you excuse me, Tom? I fear my beloved furred one is running rampant over the household yet again. You may see yourself out.”
Without waiting to hear if he would protest, without facing him, and without making certain he was fully clothed once more, Hyacinth fled from him for the second time in as many days.
Chapter Five
“What you need is quim.”
Tom had been in the midst of taking a sip of his cognac when the pronouncement was so blithely issued by the Duke of Brandon. The result was his swift inhalation, accompanied by violent choking. His lungs burned as he attempted to catch his breath.
“Jesus, Brandon,” he said when he could speak at last. “You might warn a man before you go spouting nonsense.”
Brandon raised his glass in mock salute. “Quim is not nonsense, old chap. Neither the procuring or the enjoyment of it.”
“I did not say either was.” One moment, they had been speaking of the new volume of poetry by M.E. Desmond in Tom’s library, and the next, his friend was spouting off unwanted advice.
Unwanted and unnecessary.
Tom had nearly procured said quim the day before. Good God, what a failure he was. Just thinking about those incendiary moments in Lady Allesford’s sewing room—strike that, Hyacinth’s salon—was enough to make him randy again. It also brought a rush of heat to his cheekbones, filling them, he had no doubt, with ruddy, humiliated color.
He had almost fucked a woman he scarcely knew on a chaise longue.
That was what he had done.
What manner of man had he become?
“Are you flushing, Sid?” Brandon cackled. “Ah, Christ, I had forgotten how easily you are put to the blush. What must it be like, such innocence, such virtue?”
“It is hardly virtuous to covet a married woman, is it?” he snapped. “Nor am I an innocent. Far from it.”
Yesterday had proven as much. As had the day before. On both occasions, he would have happily sunk his cock deep inside the drenched grip of Hyacinth’s cunny. Ah, if only he had not touched her so thoroughly. For now, he knew the silken heat of her skin, the wetness of her dew, the clench of her on his fingers when she found her pinnacle. He knew the sweet musk of her scent. It had lingered on his own skin after she had fled him as if he had deliberately set fire to the chamber with the intention they should both burn. He had not washed his hands for two solid hours afterward.
“Stuff.” Brandon took a sip of his own cognac. “Your affaire with Lady Needham was a disastrously tepid thing. You did not manage to slip into her bed, did you? The last I heard, she was waging a campaign of blue ballocks.”
No, he had not managed such a feat.
Nor had he exerted much effort in trying. For he had been content to wait. To give Nell all the space and time she required. He had been certain, so certain, that he would have what he wanted in the end, the woman he loved, a wife, their future together.
Instead, he had nothing.
“A gentleman does not carry tales about his lovers, Brandon,” he said, frowning. He had forgotten his old Eaton chum’s penchant for gossip. “You are worse than a dowager with your thirst for scandal and your endless questions.”
“More cognac, if you please,” Brandon said instead of responding to Tom’s jibes.
That was the way of their friendship.
Tom obliged him, the proverbial host. “Why have you come to call this afternoon, Brandon? Surely it cannot be to tell me I am in desperate need of bed sport.”
“Of course it can.” The duke offered him another salute with his refilled glass. “What is the old phrase? Bed sport is the nectar of the gods, or some such? It is deuced unhealthy for a man to remain chaste. I must look after you if you refuse the task. Your prick is likely to shrivel and fall off if you do not use it. Or, at the very least, your ballocks.”
Tom was relieved he had yet to take another sip of his own spirits. He would have seen a renewed fit of choking.
He cleared his throat. “Awfully worried about my prick and ballocks, Brandon.”
“Concern for my oldest friend is all,” Brandon said, draining half his glass