|
|
|
|
|
|
that what she was doing had wakened his passion again. She remembered how violently he had reacted when she had offered to remove his chausses the first time, how he had said she would not have seen a man in this condition before. It was true. She had never seen an aroused male member. She recalled, too, the hard bulge along Walter's thigh when they had kissed, Her hands trembled on the laces of his shoes. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Because now that nearly all the guests are gone," Sybelle gabbled, saying something, anything, to divert them from what she believed was first in both minds, "the only ladies are Lady Pembroke, Lady Marie, Rhiannon, and myself. We spent the day in company, and thus I know they have no conversation beyond dress, and . . . and who is in love with whom that should not be." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hardly aware of what she was saying in the beginning, Sybelle realized by the end of the sentence that to talk of illicit love affairs could scarcely calm Walter or herself. Her voice trembled over the final words, and she bent lower to peer more closely in the dim light at the laces, which seemed to have taken on a life of their own and were deliberately resisting her efforts to untangle them. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Walter felt frozen with horror. He had forgotten when he left Builth that the situation Sybelle had just described would occur. Once he had shed the worst burden of his guilt, he had put out of his mind the fact that Marie was not behaving like his past mistresses. Then the news that Simon's men had brought had simply wiped the problem of Marie from Walter's mind. The news was far more important to him than the doings of a woman who had thought she wished to play at love and had discovered the game could hurt her. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The mistake Walter made was never to associate Marie with Sybelle at all. Never before had he been fool enough to run triad between a pair of women. Not that he invariably had only one mistress at a time, but never in the same place where they would be forced into close proximity. Walter was a brave man, but he had always considered two women under one roof a form of lunatic bravado. Moreover, in the past the women he had played with had far more to lose than he. It was in their interests to be discreet. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What has that stupid bitch Marie said to you? Walter tried to ask, but his throat and tongue felt paralyzed. All that came out was a wordless croak. |
|
|
|
|
|