“Oh no! Your Grace! My apologies!” Abigail began patting at the wet glove on the dowager's right hand.
“Oh, have no fear. I’ll just remove my gloves. I am after all a dowager—what can society say about me?”
The woman had a point.
She removed her glove very slowly and scandalously stuffed it inside her bodice. Phillip had momentary flashes of Lady Fenton doing the same thing. Why was he was always looking at his elder’s br**sts? Or forced to look is more like it.
“Well then, may I ask one thing?” The dowager questioned.
“Anything,” Phillip answered.
“Actually, my dear, this question is for your wife.”
Abby tilted her head, waiting.
“Are the rumors grossly exaggerated?”
“Rumors of…” Abigail prompted.
The dowager gave Phillip a very slow and uncomfortable look, starting at his toes and ending at his head. Winking, she turned back to Abigail. "His rakish reputation of course. Are the rumors true, my dear?”
Blushing, Abigail answered, “Every single one.”
“Delightful!” The dowager clapped and did a little curtsy to both of them. Phillip grabbed her hand and bestowed a kiss on her fingers. But noticed, as he leaned down, that they were covered in ink.
He snapped his head to attention, looking at the dowager through different eyes.
“Mrs. Peabody?” he whispered.
“Our little secret. Good evening.” She laughed and waved as she walked through the crowds, yelling “move,” each time someone didn’t go fast enough.
“Devil take it!” Phillip grabbed Abby. “She’s Mrs. Peabody? Who would have thought?”
But Abigail wasn’t focused. Instead she was staring, quite blatantly, at his mouth.
“What is it?” he whispered near her ear.
“There is one rumor that I sometimes wonder about. I feel the need to see things demonstrated in order to give a fair answer to questions like the dowager's.”
“Oh? And what is this rumor?”
She smiled wickedly. Tracing her finger along his jaw, she leaned in and whispered, “I once heard you danced nak*d in the moonlight, then made love until dawn…care to show me?”
Phillip didn’t have the heart to tell her it was another exaggeration. That he had in fact danced nak*d only because he had taken a stupid dare, and no women were involved. Instead he whispered scandalous and naughty things into his wife’s ear and took her down a darkened hallway.
Reformed rake, he was…but that didn’t mean he couldn’t seduce and scandalize his own wife.
“Where are we going?” She giggled.
“Oh just somewhere I can ruin you. Where you can say ‘yes, Phillip’ and ‘again, Phillip’ without being heard.”
She stopped abruptly in her tracks, then pushed him hard against the wall. “Yes, Phillip. Now, Phillip. Again, Phillip…”
He laughed, kissed her hard, and pulled her into the next room. Grateful that this siren had sought him out when he had nothing, vowing to give her everything, and overjoyed he was able to love her forever.