Page 9 of My Lord, Lady, and Gentleman

Oh God.

Susanna nodded, even as her stomach churned. He offered her his arm, and they silently strolled across the vast warehouse, nodding to the workers and the foreman as they left the building and climbed into their lavish town carriage. It was barely in motion before she looked across at him, and words began to tumble from her lips.

“I’m sorry, Fenton. I don’t know what came over me. In the moment…no, that is no excuse. I’m so sorry.”

“After this morning, just Joseph in private. And I take it you are apologizing for having Clayton touch your breast while I was between your thighs?” said Joseph, in a remarkably calm tone.

“Yes,” she whispered miserably. Bad wife.

“Did you like it?” he asked, in that same even voice.

Susanna blinked. “I…um…”

“Ah. You did. I must say, his hands look very strong, yet agile too. I bet those long artist fingers are proficient at more than just pinching nipples. Imagine two of them deep in your quim.”

She choked on a cough, and stared wide-eyed at Joseph. He’d never spoken to her in such a frank manner. Had he been equally affected by their time with Clayton? Somehow felt freer in expressing himself? It seemed far too much to hope that they might become closer because of a sensual interlude with a third person.

“His fingers are indeed strong,” Susanna said carefully, not wanting to anger him with effusive praise of another man.

Joseph ran a hand through his pitch-black hair, the hair she had tangled her fingers in and tugged hard as she’d orgasmed. “I know I’ve been a poor husband in the bedchamber—”

“This morning was wonderful,” she blurted. “I quite thought I would fly to the stars when your tongue was inside me, and you rubbed your chin and cheeks between my legs.”

He smiled ruefully. “I’m glad to hear it, but the sad truth is I don’t have much of a way with women. Unlike Clayton.”

“He’s, ah, very confident.”

“Masterful.”

Susanna nodded, but her cheeks must surely be scarlet. “He doesn’t stomp around, or raise his voice, and yet when he says something…makes a suggestion…you just feel compelled to obey. And yet he’s kind, too…”

An odd tension filled the carriage, and she’d never been more thankful for the distraction of loose cobblestones as the carriage rocked and jostled along the street.

“You’re attracted to him.”

An involuntary gasp tore from her throat. Yet even as the blunt statement brought an instinctive denial to the tip of her tongue, her mind mocked her with those earlier depraved thoughts.

“I would never go to another man’s bed,” Susanna said hotly, guilt sharpening her tone.

Joseph tilted his head. With the sun setting outside, the approaching murkiness of dusk made him appear especially dark and brooding. The opposite of Clayton in every way. “That isn’t a denial. And I think if I can be honest about my lack of experience, you can be honest about this. It’s not a trick or a trap, Susanna. I just want to know.”

“He is…he is very handsome,” she mumbled. “I like him.”

“So you might not be averse to me inquiring about another lesson? Perhaps have him touch you to demonstrate something?”

To her absolute mortification, she whimpered.

Shockingly, he chuckled. “I shall consider that endorsement of the idea.”

“Joseph, I—”

“Let me say this first,” he said, sitting forward and taking her hand. “I know this is most unusual. Thoroughly unconventional. But I want to make bedding good for you. Really good. I care about your happiness, Susanna, and Clayton is a noted expert. I think a decent chap, too. Trustworthy and obviously not prone to swoons. If he agrees, I could watch him pleasure and take you, learn the best ways to make you come…a man like him, I bet he makes his lovers beg for his mouth and fingers and cock and always satisfies.”

“It sounds like you admire him a great deal,” she joked weakly, even as her mind whirled at the jaw-dropping nature of the conversation.

Joseph flushed. “From a purely scientific perspective, of course.”

“Of course,” Susanna murmured, unable to sit still. How could a man allow another man to bed his wife? And yet there was such a sweet sincerity in Joseph’s eyes. Well, for now at least. Would he still feel the same afterward about her? About their marriage? What if he became jealous? She would hate to cause him pain. Yet if this idea worked, she would be the luckiest woman in London, for her husband would be a magnificent lover. She could indulge her wicked fantasy about Clayton. And if she and Joseph could build a much stronger and more intimate marriage…perhaps he might even reconsider trying for a baby.