She handed over the book.
Harriet skipped over the poem marked “A Man’s Yard.” She couldn’t see Strange being intrigued by a bawdy poem about a man’s pole, no matter how cleverly it rhymed.
The following page was a song called “Walking in a Meadow Green.” It seemed there were lots of primroses in that meadow, but also a lass and a lad lying together.
Fine, except…
The lad performed once…the lass wanted more. Harriet could hardly believe what she was reading. “Yet still she lies, and to him cries, ‘Once More!’”
It was like reading about a different world than the one she had inhabited during her marriage. In fact, the contrast made her smile. What on earth would Benjamin have done if she lay under him and cried, “Once more!” She couldn’t even imagine it.
And…why would she say that? The way she’d always understood it, it was men who wanted to make love over and over.
It wasn’t that marital intimacies were unpleasant. She always enjoyed it. She loved being with Benjamin, and every time she could pry him away from the chess board felt like a personal victory.
She shook away that thought and turned the page again, to find another poem about a penis, and then a third. She was starting to think that men mostly wanted to hear songs about their own accoutrements, when she finally found a song for a woman’s voice. “His lips like the ruby, his cheeks like the rose, He tempts all fair maids wherever he goes.”
Strange certainly didn’t have cheeks like a rose, but he did seem to be tempting all the maidens. Not that Nell was a maiden, of course. And neither was Harriet. It was just…for some reason, she couldn’t stop looking at him if he was in the room.
Earlier, when he suddenly appeared in the door of her bedchamber, her heart had started beating so quickly that she thought it might be visible. Even his voice seemed deeper, huskier, than other men’s were. That wicked voice, combined with the stark intelligence in his eyes…
As far as Harriet went, put the voice and eyes together and it was far more tempting than a man with cheeks like a rose.
She kept reading. What the lass said she wanted to do to—and with—her lover made Harriet’s heart start beating fast again.
No wonder Villiers thought she was a tiresome old woman when he touched her—and she slapped him. According to these verses, women kissed men everywhere and they returned the favor. All he’d done was touch her.
Still, the song was unlikely to tempt Strange. All this bawdy, silly talk about women’s and men’s privates was fun, but she thought of the look on his face when he danced with Sophia Grafton and shook her head.
It would have to be a great deal more sophisticated than this. More enticing. More erotic.
If she were writing the letter for herself…
The very thought made her whole body prickle.
If she were writing a letter to entice Strange, she would pitch it toward his intelligence. Make it intriguing, rather than erotic. She could picture him opening her letter, puzzling over it.
She would make him wait. He was a man who’d had too many things—women—given to him too easily. She would lead him on a dance of temptation and desire. She would—
Harriet snapped out of her daydream. What on earth was she thinking? She was at Strange’s party dressed as a man! Not to mention the fact that she was a staid duchess, even though she didn’t feel like it at the moment. She had no business falling into salacious fantasies about her host, no matter how much she…
She went to sleep with rhyming words in her head: delight and night. Even, salaciously: little and prickle.
She went to sleep smiling.
Chapter Twelve
In Which Manhood is Achieved…Albeit With Some Discomfort