His Ginger Kitten

Sarah held very still.

'Yes,' she said, and her tone clarified her meaning: Yes, I am a woman!

'No, no!' He sat up, his waistcoat hanging open, and his shirt and his composure in a mess. It made him look younger, and even more handsome than his diplomatic reticence. Sarah remained were she was, carefully laying her still manacled hands on his knees. His face was inches from her own, and she managed a wobbly smile as she braved his glare.

'What is this? Hm? What is going on here?' His voice was still rough with emotion, but he was no longer angry. 'I won't be so pathetic a coward or ... hypocrite to say that you made me kiss you, but - why have you manoeuvred me into a situation in which only a saint could have resisted you? A saint - ha! I'd like to see that saint,' he added grimly.

Sarah drew her hands from his clasp and slid them inside his waistcoat again.

'Did you know that in the moonlight your eyes look like liquid pearls?' she asked conversationally, chafing his lean ribs with her nails. 'It makes you look terribly handsome.'

'Don't play the trollop with me, child! It won't wash! You've never been kissed like that before, and don't pretend you have!'

'Like what?' she asked in a small voice.

When their tongues had untangled and he had released her from his crushing embrace, Sarah took a deep breath. 'Oh, like that ... No, I haven't. Is it so reprehensible that I want to be?'

'Not at all - it is your birthright to be kissed like that! But - '

'I want to be with you...'

'- but - What? You what??'

'I want you to take me. I mean,' she soldiered on, her face glowing in the half-light, 'I want you to make a woman of me... I - I don't know how to say what I want!'

To her surprise, he drew her lightly against himself and chuckled.

'Learning how to say what you want is difficult and takes time, kitten - as does becoming a woman. An intact maidenhead makes no virtue, a pregnant belly makes no whore, and a man's cock does not turn a girl into a woman. Only she herself can do that. It's a question of experience and ... courage.'

She struggled out of his embrace.

'But you know what I mean! You are avoiding me, you - you diplomat!'

'Diplomat, indeed,' he said wryly, thinking of what would remain of his reputation if this evening's slip ever became known. 'But you are not thinking of diplomacy at all, but of warfare. You want me to be the vanguard, right?'

'Yes, that's it.' Sarah snuggled back into his embrace. Then she lifted her head: 'Cock?'

Their bodies rocked with his hilarity.

'Cock, yes! The prick, phallus, the root of all ... trouble, and bliss! I say, kitten -' Again he held her from himself to examine her face. 'How innocent are you, in fact? Because I strongly suspect that the vanguard has already engaged in action.'

'Certainly not!

'Then how did you know to do ... this ...?' His fingers brushed along her cheek and across her lips, and she quickly moved her head and bit into the ball of his palm. Philip swallowed once, twice, and realised that he had woefully overestimated the period of respite he would be granted after his so shameful ejaculation. He was already hard again, and raring to go. This time his little kitten had shown her teeth more fiercely, nor would she any longer hide her awareness of his aroused state. Apprehension flickering in her tender, expectant gaze as she pressed her stomach against him.

'Please, sir. Would it be so hard to do what I'm asking?'

His breathing quickened, but it was, after all, one of his job requirements to be able to distance himself from his feelings.

'Well, in order to do what I think you are asking, it would have to be hard, little one.' She thought, blushed, and laughed at her blunder. 'And don't call me 'sir', for God's sake!' he added severely.

But she smiled and continued to nestle against him, rubbing her forehead and closed eyes against the warm, raspy skin of his cheek.

'You talk and talk...'

'Yes, and so will you. Talk. Tell me what the hell you mean by this!'

To make her obey, he grabbed her wrists again and locked them at the small of her back. 'Tell me what -' The rest of the command died on his lips as she stared up at him with such evident arousal on her face that the realisation hit him like a sudden pain that ran through his whole body: it excited her to be manhandled by him. Her shoulders were pulled back by the force of the hands that had clamped hers, and she exposed her throat and bosom to him in mute and unconditional invitation.

He would only kiss the skin that was uncovered already, he vowed desperately as he took her wrists into one hand to have the other one free to roam at will, but there was not an inch of her throat that he was unable to reach because she moved her head to give him all the scope he wanted. He nuzzled deep into the fragrant cleft created by the corset that pushed her breasts up and apart; and he noticed that he had released her hands to be able to caress her naked shoulders only when he felt her fingers in his hair.

'Oh, Sarah... I would trade salvation for the touch of you...,' he whispered in agonised frustration. The corset underneath her gown covered her torso down to her navel, warding him off like a whale-bone dragon at the entrance to a cave of treasure.

'But you can have me,' she urged him. Her mouth was so close to his ear that her breath warmed his skin and fanned the fire of his craving. 'I'm telling you ... I'm asking you to have me!'

'I can't!'

'But sir - ' Something in her voice made him look up, into her face. Now she was whispering, too, and with humiliation. 'Have you not always wanted to do this?'

Do not answer the unexpected question; return it.

'What do you mean?'

'When you gave me the book of poems ... those poems, I thought that you meant me to understand that when or ... or if we ever met again, you would take me to bed.'

An icy gush of remorse was fast cooling Philip's ardour.

'Sarah - kitten - are you telling me that you have considered yourself - But no, you can't have, you're going to be married next week... You haven't considered yourself to be bound to me in any way, have you?'

'Bound?'

'Promised...'

'Oh! No! No, no, not that! No, of course not! I never thought that you would marry me!' she hurried to reassure him. 'But I don't think I have undressed above a score of nights in the past three years without imagining you watching me. Telling me. Off with that girdle ... Off with your hose and shoes... Cast all, yea, that white linen hence...' He had joined her for the last phrase, then laughed, to mask the utter chaos into which his soul had been pitched.

'To teach thee, I am naked first, why then, why needst thou have more covering than a man?'

'You imagined me naked?' He swallowed hard.

'Only recently,' she whispered. 'When my father said that you were expected back from Naples...'

'Oh, Lord...,' he sighed from the bottom of his heart. 'Come here. I must hold you; this would be unbearable else...' Without a moment's hesitation she leaned into his embrace and wrapped her arms around his body. 'Yes, I have been dreaming of you, of holding you in my arms, naked and ... willing. My tastes do not run to children, but I always knew that I would want you when you're grown. That's why I gave you those poems. I didn't think you'd read them until you were older, perhaps when you'd forgotten that they came from me. I just wanted to be able to imagine that you would ... take pleasure in the idea of being seduced.'

'I read them the very next day.'

'Oh, Sarah...' His arms tightened about her shoulders. Marry me! Sweet, lovely Sarah, be mine, let me love you! Marry me and be my wife!

'But I can't say I understood them the very next day... Donne's was the first I knew by heart. I did think...'

'What did you think?'

'Well, when Lord Probert sued Sir John Haybury for crim. con. - this was about two years ago - '

'I heard.'

'Well, my cousin Louisa said - she's been married these four years, so she hears what the married ladies talk about; in fact,' she was sidetracked, 'Louisa was married when she was seventeen, and Georgiana, the Duke of Sonningdale's daughter, with whom I am slightly acquainted, she was just sixteen when she married last season! So you needn't keep pretending that I'm still ... in the nursery!'

'Irresponsible, match-making madness, to marry girls off so young! And you are in the nursery,' Philip observed with a nod at their surroundings.

'No, but - anyway, Louisa said that Lady Probert had not done anything that one in three women did not also do: stray, I mean, out of wedlock. But only after they have given their husbands a son, or two, to be quite safe. None of the younger sons will inherit, so what does it matter if there are ... illegitimate children in the nursery. And most people, husbands and wives, I mean, are not bound by ties of affection anyway, only ... obligation and ... convention.'

'Are you telling me that you were planning to have an affair with me when you've provided that husband of yours with an heir?'

Sarah blushed at his amusement.

'Yes! Well, I thought if you wanted me too ...'

'Which you knew I did, of course, after I gave you those poems...' Philip mused, lost in contemplation of the hell his life would be until she had discharged her marital duties. 'So, how long d'ye think I'll have to wait? Half a dozen years?'

He made it sound like a wry, feeble sort of joke, but Sarah did not miss the dejection in his voice, and the entirely serious note in it. And in silent elation at being able to express her feelings in this immediate, unambiguous way, she took his face between her hands and kissed him. Kissed him deeply, in supplication and promise.

'I can't wait that long,' she said quietly.

'And I can't - ,' he began a hot protest.

'Because - Philip, will you listen? Because, firstly: will I live? Three ladies of our acquaintance died in childbirth in the last twelve-month alone, no, more, counting Mrs Chamberlain, the milliner we used to go to, and Mrs Thompson, the schoolmaster's wife in the village at home. I'm not a sickly creature, thank God, but I'm ... not as wide-hipped as my mother, suited to child-bearing, and what if I die? Or, what if I die anyway?'

'What is this morbid fascination with death?' Philip teased her, trying to cover his own sudden dread. 'You're young and healthy, why should you die?'

'People die,' she insisted firmly. 'I'm not being morbid, just realistic. I pictured myself - the pain of labour, and the fear, and then the weakness, growing weaker, till I knew I was dying - '

'Morbid!'

'And all in giving birth to that nincompoop's son! He is so patronising! You should hear how he talks to me! As if I were a five-year-old! And I must allow him to touch me! Ugh!'

'You must allow him to do a great deal more than that,' Philip added, hating the idea with every fibre of his being.

'Precisely! But he won't be the first!' she ended triumphantly.

Philip stared at her in sudden comprehension.

'Oh, now I see,' he said softly.

He knew at once that he would do it. The moment he understood her train of thought he knew that he would agree to take her virginity, be her first lover, and hopefully afford her such pleasure that the memory of it would serve her as a protective mantle against the cold conjugal couplings that awaited her. He knew it was wrong, of course. But wrong only by the precepts of a society that regarded its daughters as so many goods to be bartered; he would not be doing wrong to the girl who was being forced into a marriage of convenience. A marriage against which she did not seem to have protested, by the way. It occurred to him that young Brennan's inadequate fumblings might merely be a minor inconvenience in comparison with the advantages offered by luxury and privilege. He wanted to confront her with this question, but she had nestled against him again and murmured against his ear:

'Is that so wicked of me? To want just one night with a man who will be gentle with me, and kind - a man I can hold in my arms with ... sincerity and ... love. I'll be a good wife afterwards, if I can, but I want my first time to be ... with you.'

Seductive little bitch! Philip thought callously. Make use of my cock - my poor, helpless, desperate cock - and his money, eh? Well, not with me, madam, not -

'I want you to teach me,' she whispered, and her warm breath made not just the hair on his neck stand on end. 'Teach me everything there is to know ... and do ... And when the time comes for me to do those things with him, I will squeeze my eyes shut and imagine it's you...'

Philip closed his eyes for a long moment and breathed. He tried to see himself as a theatre audience would see him in a farce - between his knees a girl young enough to be his daughter, between his legs a semi-erect cock with a mind of its own and no compunction at all, the front of his crumpled shirt wet and sticky with the semen from his emission.

A fool. A clown.

'D'ye know, during my last visit to Genoa in Spring I met a sailor who had been shipwrecked on a voyage from India. He and some dozen members of the crew were able to save themselves in a launch, but they had no provisions at all, neither food nor water. Six of his fellows died because the grew so frantic with thirst that they drank seawater and perished.'

He looked up from their intertwined hands that rested on his thighs to see whether she had understood his analogy.

'They drank salt water although they knew that it would kill them? Or didn't they know?'

'Of course they knew, they were sailors.'

Now she dropped her head. The gleaming curls were tickling his chin, and then he felt an even softer sensation on the backs of his hands. She was not sobbing, but her tears were falling onto his hands and rolling off them into his lap.

'Sarah -'

She nodded, silently, too choked to speak.

'Sarah, sweet -'

'Yes, I understand,' she managed to say. She tried to look at him to show him that she had herself in hand again. 'It was selfish of me to ... fling myself at you in this way. I'm ... I'm sorry for it. I wouldn't want you to do anything that would harm you, or ... or that you would regret. I would hate it - ' Here the tears started flowing again. 'I would hate it if you did anything now that you regretted later!'

This was not entirely the response Philip had expected - or hoped for. He wondered whether it was really remorse that had elicited those tears, or whether they were rather more tears of disappointment and wounded pride. However, she was beating her retreat, and there was nothing for him to do but join the march.

'Regret could never be the correct word, my dear. Come -' He wiped her face with his handkerchief. 'But I cannot deny that my mind boggles at the thought of what Gaythorne would say to me - or do to me, for that matter - if he found out that I had deflowered his daughter shortly before her wedding.'

'He couldn't hit you, if that's what you mean; he's fat and wheezy.'

'When is it to be? The wedding.'

'I have no idea. I doubt they'll call the bans. So it could be next week, for all I know.'

'And ... has that boy ever tried to kiss you?' Philip asked despite himself.

'Yes, once. But without a great deal of determination, or expertise. He doesn't talk to me. Only at me, sometimes, but he doesn't seek me out to do that, either.'

'Then he's either blind, or wary of you, or ... otherwise inclined.'

She frowned uncomprehendingly but did not pursue his remark.

'No, I think he's being bullied as much as I am. Sir Thomas wants me to marry into his family. He calls me 'a delectable asset'.'

'Oh, he does, does he? Does the wind sit in that corner? Blast his eyes!' Philip swore under his breath.

She had remained between his knees, but she did not gleam any more with desire and - Tenderness. She had looked at him, and touched him, with such tenderness. Lord, was he a fool to let her go?

'Well, then, sir, if you'll assure a foolish girl not to hold against her what she did in a moment's madness, perhaps we had better ... go our several ways.'

'Yes, of course. You need not worry your head about me. I don't ...'

'You don't brag about your conquests?' she said on a rather liquid grimace. 'I'm grateful for that. Come - I suggest you join the party again, and if questioned, you might say that I have retired to my room and will be down directly.'

'Yes. Sarah -'

She was trying to smooth the folds of her dress and looked up enquiringly.

'Can I - can I kiss you one last time?'

This almost breathless request made her smile.

'Of course...'

He was rough, and seemed angry, at first; but after a few seconds he softened, and there was nothing in either of their manners that was not pure longing to explore the other's mouth and responses. In an amazingly short time they had progressed from awkward excitement to the languor of lovers, giving and receiving pleasure. Sarah was a quick learner, naturally talented and generous, and Philip tortured himself with the very vivid impression of what it would be like to make love to her. God, but she was perfect -! She would allow him to do anything he wanted with her, and she would gaze at him with her dark, hot eyes, inviting him, daring him, trembling with anticipation as well as apprehension.

'Ah...,' she finally sighed. 'I see why these things have a tendency to get out of hand...'

His tension was cracked by a laugh.

'Now you know why girls are not supposed to kiss before they are married!'

She looked up at him, sad and thoughtful.

'I don't think I'd enjoy it as much with anyone else. Are you - very good at kissing? Presumably you've had a deal of practise...' She coloured.

'A deal - whether it's a great deal -', he shrugged, teasing her. 'But when it's like this ... it always feels like the first time. I don't consider myself an expert, whatever that would be, in this particular ... discipline. We are good at it together...'

She tilted her face up again in mute invitation. Their bodies moved slowly against each other; and he felt himself becoming desperate again to touch her naked breasts, and to feel her hand on his cock.

'Enough. One more, and this the last.'