Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Lydia was out of breath when she ran into the Carter family library and closed the door as quietly as possible. She’d never make it to her bedchamber unnoticed and had to think for a moment about what to do.

Her hair was knotted by the wind. The sleeves and hem of her dress were torn from an unfortunate tussle with a bramble bush. And the balls of her feet were scratched and dirty from running across the wild terrain without any shoes.

“That horrible man! Why do men ruin everything?”

Fortunately, Lydia was able to ring for her maid, Jules, from the library. And there was plenty to occupy her mind while she waited.

This was the perfect time to peruse one of her father’s books on human anatomy, kept on the highest shelf for as long as Lydia could remember. She’d never looked at it before because to do so would have been against her father’s rules.

Ladies weren’t supposed to know such things as how the human body was made. Today, however, Lydia had had a lesson in human anatomy that she’d never wanted but now would never forget.

She rolled the library ladder all the way to the end of the longest wall of books and slowly climbed to the top. When she found the dusty manual she was looking for, she pressed the heavy book against her bodice and crept down the creaky wooden ladder to take a seat at a long table.

This room had always been Lydia’s favorite and one of the few places where she felt she fully belonged. As she skimmed through the illustrations of her father’s anatomy text, she remembered some of the other books she’d dared to read without permission over the years.

She’d spent many hours in this room reading political pamphlets and the poems of Lord Byron by candlelight. Lately, she’d been secretly browsing through her father’s farming books, like Systems of Husbandry of Scotland by Sir John Sinclair.

But the anatomy book was a whole new world. Lydia was so engrossed in the illustrations of the major organs that she didn’t hear Jules tiptoe into the library to ask her mistress if she needed assistance.

“My lady? Did you need me?”

Lydia leaped out of her chair and pressed a hand to her heart. “Jules! Oh goodness, I didn’t hear you come in!”

The maid apologized and looked with concern at her appearance. “Have you had an accident, Lady Lydia? Do you need a doctor?”

Waving her hand to dismiss the suggestion, Lydia sat back down to catch her breath from the fright. “No, I am quite well, thank you. I fell into some brambles during my walk, but I was unharmed. Would you please bring me a cloak and slippers so I might retreat to my room without attracting attention? No need to worry anyone else about my haggard appearance.”

“Of course, my lady. I’ll do so right away, as we need to prepare you for the ball this evening.” Jules curtsied and turned to leave the library.

“Ah, yes. The Winstone ball. One shouldn’t miss out on that event since there’s so little else of value in the world.”

“I beg your pardon, miss?” Jules turned back around with her eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

“My apologies, Jules, it was nothing. Thank you for bringing the cloak and slippers as soon as you can.”

With her maid out of the room again, Lydia flipped the thick science book’s pages more quickly to locate the most important details of her research—the male anatomy.

She gasped for the second time today when she discovered the detailed illustration she sought. It depicted the strange dangling appendage that hung from a man’s groin.

Strange and oddly enticing.

Lydia gazed with shock and quite a bit of awe at the secrets a man held in his trousers that she had never witnessed before.

But there was something different about the illustration compared to the body of that arrogant stranger in the spring.

Though hidden by his tunic, the intruder’s appendage could not have been more apparent in its shockingly rigid state. It had pointed directly at her, like the finger of a giant that poked against the surrounding fabric like it desperately wanted to escape.

Lydia swallowed hard as she stared at the flaccid version in the book’s illustration. Then she read every word about its physiology with rapt attention.

Perspiration beaded on her brow by the time she was done learning what all a man’s penis and its companion organs could do. How wonderous was its function! Lydia pulled her father’s magnifying glass out of the library desk drawer and pored over the information more closely, riveted by all the new knowledge.

Then she read the words that described the purpose of its engorgement. Lydia’s green eyes flew open with surprise and she slammed the book shut.

Her mind spun as she came to understand the cause of the stranger’s physical state when he’d revealed his nearly naked body to her at the spring.

Stimulation. Blood flow. Arousal!

“Was that horrid man thinking impure thoughts about me?”

Lydia’s dizziness increased as the image of his body slid back into her mind. He was so wet and muscular. So handsome and full of himself while standing proudly erect in front of a lady!

She held the closed anatomy book against her breasts and hurried to return it to the top of the shelf before Jules discovered her mistress blushing and sweating and panting from the heat rising beneath her dress. Lydia slid the library ladder far away from the location of such an eye-opening book and sat near a window so the breeze could cool her flushed face.

When Jules returned with her cloak and slippers, Lydia was never so relieved to leave the library behind and push thoughts of stimulated trespassers out of her mind.