Read Royal Harlot for Free Online Page B

making them bob and dance much as we’d done to the small hired boat. “Why, I would venture that Philip would have had to float and swim upon his back, while I rode upon him, until we reached the shore.”
    “Or until you spent, and sank, done in by the waves of your passion.” She giggled and clapped her hands together, imagining the scene, I suppose, and applauding our inventiveness. “Oh, Barbara, how you will oblige His Lordship’s every letch!”
    I leaned close, as if to confess a great secret, and lowered my voice. “It wasn’t his letch to have me in the boat, Anne,” I whispered with mock solemnity. “ ’Twas mine.”
    Anne bubbled over with laughter and flopped back against the piled bolsters, her bare freckled legs sprawled before her.
    “You are so fortunate,” she said with a sigh of longing, hugging her arms beneath her breasts. “To have a lover like His Lordship who is so willing to play at amusement.”
    I twisted around to gaze upon her. She was a lovely lady, there in the sunlight, and I couldn’t help but think of how Philip himself would have delighted in such an intimate view of my dearest friend.
    “He’s a most agreeable gentleman, you know,” I said, thinking.
    “To you, he is,” she said with a sigh that rippled through her rounded breasts, scarce covered by fine linen and the long locks of her golden hair.
    “He’d be so to you, too, if you weren’t so shy around him.” I sat up, cross-legged on the bed, and from my tumbler plucked a lemon slice, now dripping sweet. “He finds you charming, you know.”
    “He does?” She propped her head upon her arm. “He’s said that to you?”
    “Oh, often.” I took the lemon slice and trailed it lightly along my friend’s bare calf, leaving a sugary trail along her skin from her ankle to her plump, rosy knee. “Does that tickle?”
    “Not at all,” she said, going very still as she watched me. “Then why hasn’t he ever said so to me?”
    “Because he knows you’re my friend and would not wish to come between us.” On a whim, I bent and ran my tongue along the glistening trail, tasting the sugar and the lemon and Anne’s skin before I looked back up at her. “Of course, if you joined me one day, then that would be different.”
    “Joined you?” Anne asked, though I knew she understood. “You and His Lordship?”
    I nodded. “You could come with me when I visit him in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or we could arrange another place. That is, if you wished to.”
    Her eyes widened. “Have you ever done that with him before?” she asked. “Invited another lady, that is?”
    “Not another lady, no,” I said, and wrinkled my nose to show my distaste. “Philip did suggest an acquaintance of his, a lowborn, common woman, and I refused, fearing she’d be poxed. But with you to share, it would be . . . wondrous.”
    I saw the desire in her eyes, the green color shading darker. “You would share His Lordship with me?”
    “I would,” I said, and slipped the lemon slice into my mouth, tart and sweet upon my tongue. “Dear Anne! How much I’d like to watch him take you, too, and fetch you with the greatest joy imaginable.”
    “Then let us do it,” Anne said, giggling with anticipation. She rolled from the bed and scurried barefoot across the floor to her writing desk, and set a fresh sheet of paper beneath her pen. “We must invite him properly, Barbara. Tell me the words, and I’ll write them down.”
    “Oh, yes, that’s very true,” I said eagerly. “He says there’s nothing that heightens pleasure like honest anticipation.”
    “Then we must tempt him, Barbara, tempt him royally.” Inspired, Anne dipped her pen into the pot of ink. “How should we begin?”
    “Let me consider,” I said, thinking what would intrigue Philip the most. “Write this, Anne: ‘My friend and I are just now abed together a-contriving how to have your company tomorrow afternoon.’ ”
    “Perfection,” Anne said, her pen