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“It is just as well that my thoughts are immodest enough to convince me to stay.” Anne tossed aside the shawl.
Her bedchamber didn’t have a fireplace, but it had a potbellied stove in the corner. Letty fetched a shovel full of coals from the sitting room, careful not to spill any ash as she tipped them into the stove. “It will warm up in no time at all.” She grinned. “In the meantime, I shall warm you wherever you have need of it.”
“Have you no servants to help you?” Anne asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“We have two. But our housekeeper is sixty if she is a day, and she and the maid-of-all-work are bundled up already in their attic rooms for the night. I don’t wish to disturb anyone if I can do for myself.” She smiled. “Do you not like the privacy, and the sight of a woman working on your behalf to comfort you?”
Anne crooked her finger in reply, and Letty fell into bed beside her. She covered Anne’s body with her own and moved her lips down her throat as she cupped her breast through the thick winter dress.
“I believe I have demonstrated a few talents that I can offer as a prospective lady’s maid.” Letty tugged Anne to her feet and made good on her words, moving faster than she had last night, letting wool and linen pool at their feet. She kissed her way across the skin she exposed before toppling her back onto the bed.
Anne’s legs wrapped around her waist, and she arched up underneath her, urging her on. Letty caught Anne’s wrists in one hand and pressed them into the mattress above her head as she reached her other hand between them, moving against her slick center and pushing deep inside. “I’ve got you,” she murmured, her breathing ragged against Anne’s cheek as she quickened her pace. “I’m here for you.” She wanted to release her from any more decisions tonight, to accept what was being offered and to allow herself the pleasure and comfort of being taken care of. “You can let go. You can trust me.”
She worried she wanted this too much, this wild desire to have Anne any way she could have her, to bring her to release under her hands and to make her squirm and writhe and beg for her touch. But that was a worry for another day. Right now she wanted all of her attention on Anne.
Anne cried out as her body tensed beneath Letty, before she went limp. Letty eased off and pulled up the blankets. Her body was aflame, but she felt as satisfied by pleasuring Anne as if she had achieved her own release as well. She kissed her forehead and gathered her close, listening to her breathing grow slow and steady.
After a few minutes, Anne shivered. “All I brought was the clothes on my back. I have no nightwear.”
Letty drew out a pair of thick flannel nightgowns from the dresser and tossed one to Anne. “This will swallow you whole, but it will do the trick for tonight.”
Anne stood and pulled it on over her head, then gazed down at her bare feet. “I shall freeze with my extremities so ill taken care of.”
“And so you remain a duchess to the core, even outside of your natural habitat. Worry not.” Letty went to the fireplace and came back with a bulky towel in her arms. “Earlier, I put bricks in the fire to warm them up for this very moment.” She lifted the edge of the blanket and tucked the towel at the foot of the bed.
“You assumed we would end up in bed?”
“I had my hopes,” Letty admitted. She liked the thought of Anne in her bed. It felt different from last night at Hawthorne House. Easier. Safer. Here in Holborn, she didn’t have to pretend to be something she wasn’t.
“Well, your bed seems rather nice. I never thought to be so well-pleasured on only one thin mattress.”
Letty laughed. “How many do you deem to be satisfactory?”
“I think my bed has at least three. It’s quite high.”
“High in the instep, high off the ground, I suppose. Though you may not be royalty, I should be calling you Your Highness instead of Your Grace.”
Anne laughed. “Around you, I am decidedlynothigh in the instep.”
Letty rummaged in her drawer. “Speaking of your instep, I can think of no finer duty for my lumpy woollen socks to perform,” she said, drawing a thick sock up Anne’s leg. She pressed a firm kiss in the hollow of her knee.
“You are indeed a most gracious host.”
“I try my best.”
With Anne tucked up snug beside her, Letty felt her eyelids grow heavy. A sense of peace stole over her. Everything in the room was the same as usual, except for the presence of Anne, her hair spilling over the pillow, her hand tucked up beneath her cheek as she relaxed into sleep. But the room somehow felt fuller than usual. More settled than it ever had with just her in it every night.
If only it could last.
Chapter Sixteen
Letty’s apartment had been cold the previous night, but in the morning with the fires banked, it was nigh unbearable. Anne curled her toes in her socks and tried to warm herself by thoughts of last night’s unbridled passion, but it was difficult to lose herself in fantasy.
To start with, there was a moody young man staring at her across the tea tray.
Robert was well-dressed and censorious, with a big chin and a chiseled nose and hazel eyes, none of which resembled his mother in the least. It wasn’t often that Anne was at the receiving end of a judgmental look. But here in humble Holborn, things seemed to be a little different.
Robert looked like he hardly knew where to rest his eyes. It took all of Anne’s years of acting like the perfect unflappable duchess to remain seated across from him without fidgeting.
