Molly woke at dawn, startled to find a slender, pale arm draped across her chest. She wouldn’t have figured Miss Stapleton—Alice—for a cuddler.
She rolled to face her bedmate, enjoying the closeness. She didn’t get much of that these days. It was time to get out of bed, time to make sure Mrs. Wraxhall’s gowns bore no creases, that her tea had the correct amount of sugar, that the stableman was prepared to saddle her horse at the appointed hour. Through the chimneys, she could hear the faint clatter of the household getting down to the business of the day. If she didn’t get started herself, she’d pay the price the rest of the morning.
But still she stayed in bed, watching the rise and fall of Alice’s chest and the way her breath rustled a single lock of moonshine hair. Only when Alice stirred did Molly make a great show of yawning and stretching, acting like she had just awoken.
“Oh!” Alice said, snatching her arm away from Molly. “I’m sorry!”
“About what?” Molly said sleepily, as if she hadn’t noticed the arm, as if she couldn’t still feel the warmth from where Alice had touched her. She got out of bed and stretched again, and this time she saw Alice watching her out of the corner of her eye. From a man, it would be a leer. Maybe from Alice it was a leer, too. Molly rather suspected it was, for all Alice was a fine lady.
Molly took her time at the washstand, conscious of Alice’s gaze on her. Finally she threw a look over her shoulder, catching Alice in the act.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said, pink guilt splashed across her face. Damn it if Molly weren’t well and truly tired of all this sorriness. Bollocks on apologies. Bollocks on guilt.
“Nah,” Molly said, raising her arms over her head in a way she knew did something special to her bosom. Alice’s eyes widened in response. “Nothing to be sorry for. You can look all you like.”
“Oh heavens,” Alice squeaked, diving under the quilt.
“It’s only natural,” Molly argued, feeling wicked and righteous all at once.
“No,” Alice said, her voice muffled by the bedclothes, “it’s just that I haven’t any of my own, not really. Not like you do.”
Oh no. That would not do at all. Such a bad excuse was even worse than the pink, embarrassed apologies. Molly crawled across the bed towards the lump under the covers that was Alice. “That’s not why you look at them, though.”
“I don’t know what you could possibly mean.” Alice sounded as haughty as was possible from under a quilt.
“Just what I said.” Molly poked what she guessed was Alice’s backside. “You haven’t any bollocks, but John the footman has a pair of them. I don’t see you trying to get an eyeful of that, though.”
“An eyeful of bollocks, indeed.” Alice’s indignant face popped out from under the covers. “I have no interest in John the footman’s bollocks, nor anybody else’s.”
“That’s right, you don’t,” Molly said cheerfully. “You’re more interested in bosoms.”
“That’s not what I said!” The pink of embarrassment was replaced with a pink that meant something else entirely, unless Molly was very much mistaken.
“It’s all right, though,” Molly said, all reassurance. “I like to look at yours too.”
Alice gasped and tightened her fingers on the quilt, as if to pull it up to her chin. But she didn’t. “I don’t have anything to look at—”
“Sure you do.” Molly rested her hand on the edge of the quilt and raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t going to do this without the go-ahead. “I bet they’re sweet.” Alice obligingly dropped her hands away, and Molly drew the quilt down. Through the thin linen of Alice’s shift, Molly could see the outline of Alice’s breasts, her nipples tightening before Molly’s eyes. Molly licked her lips. She wanted to bend her head and take one in her mouth. Alice’s lips were slightly parted and her expression a bit dazed. She liked this, being looked at, being wanted and a bit exposed. God help her, Molly could think of a dozen different ways to use that bit of information, but there wasn’t time for anything now, not if she wanted to keep her job. And Molly needed this job. She shouldn’t even have done this much. She ought to already be downstairs, not lazing about in the bedroom, seducing vicars’ daughters.
Gently, Molly raised the edge of the coverlet to just beneath Alice’s chin. Then she threw her dress over her head, knotted her hair plainly in the back, stepped into her boots, and left the room before Alice could reappear.
Chapter Four
Much to Alice’s relief, there was plenty of work to be done at a house party. Despite Mrs. Wraxhall spending the morning out riding, Alice kept herself busy by managing the tricky bits of embroidery for a lady who was too busy catching up on gossip with her friends to be bothered with the fussier aspects of needlework. That suited Alice quite well, as it gave her an excuse to be silent without looking awkward. She felt that she blended in most unobjectionably, almost as if she were a standard-issue lady, rather than a shabby lady’s companion who was thinking of doing unspeakable acts with a servant.
She snipped a length of emerald-green thread and attended to the gossip.
“I heard he wasn’t coming this year. Something about having to dance attendance on a wealthy aunt,” said the lady whose cushion Alice was doctoring.
“Then why would the housemaids be readying a bedchamber for him this very morning?” asked her interlocutor with a smile that spelled victory.
“Well! That changes things.”
“I should say it does. It changes what I’ll be wearing at dinner, for one.”
They tittered. “He’s handsome, but he’s dangling after a rich wife.”
“What do I care what kind of wife he wants? Not a fig, that’s what. My plans for Horace Tenpenny have nothing to do with marriage.”
