Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade - 02 by Diana Gabaldon

Author:Diana Gabaldon [Diana Gabaldon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Mystery, Adult, Historical, Adventure
ISBN: 9780385337496
Google: PAofYjtmlcQC
Amazon: B000UZNRN2
Barnesnoble: B000UZNRN2
Goodreads: 7036057
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2007-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Pictures at an Exhibition

Grey had one precious day of leave, following the wedding. He was greatly tempted to spend it in bed with Percy. But it was his only chance to go and have a look at Gilbert Rigby, erstwhile soldier and suitor of widows, presently guardian to London’s foundlings. And there was the minor consideration that flesh had its limits.

He and Percy had reached them twice more, waking in the night in a musky tangle of limbs. The memory of warm, wet mouths in the darkness and the taste of wine and wood morels had been enough to make him slide out of bed at dawn when he saw Percy, naked, dousing his face with water at the basin, and seize him from behind.

He would have felt guilt at his own rough manners, had Percy not made it clear as day that such usage suited him.

“Don’t worry,” Percy had whispered, when he had tried to say something afterward—apologize, perhaps. Percy’s face was buried in his shoulder, but he felt the smile against his skin. “You’ll have your full share.”

He hadn’t realized what that meant, but it became clear soon enough; such slow and tender use as Percy put him to was nonetheless thorough—and lasted a very long time. It brought him to the edge again, held him trembling there, gasping and whimpering, and finally dropped him over the side of a sheer precipice he had never suspected was there. He came to himself bathed in sweat and so shattered that his eyes barely focused, only to find that Percy still held him, was still inside him. He had made some small sound, and Percy laughed.

Percy was laughing now, and the sound of it, deep and infectious, made him hard on the instant, blood rushing through him like a spring tide, rich with salt, surging through and stinging his abraded flesh.

“Look at that!”

He turned to see where Percy was pointing, and saw a small pug dog trotting through the crowd, its tail curled up tight as a spring and a grin on its face. Everyone who saw it was grinning, too; the animal was wearing a black velvet jacket with silver buttons and yellow silk butterflies embroidered round the edge, a small brimmed hat tied to its head with a string beneath its chin.

The dog was attracting a great deal more attention than the portraits on display. They were in the inner court of the Foundling Hospital, where an artists’ exhibition to raise funds for support of that institution was in progress. No better opportunity, Grey had thought, for laying eyes on Doctor Rigby, while still enjoying Percy’s company.

The women, in particular, were in ecstasies over the pug, and from their remarks, Grey gathered that the pug’s owner, a tall, lean man with a dignified air, was indeed the director himself. Rigby was evidently conducting a sort of royal progress, moving slowly through the crowd, greeting people and pausing to chat for a moment.

Rigby would reach them within a few minutes, Grey saw, and so turned to examine the pictures at hand.

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