Powder of Love (I) Read Online Free

telling you about the strange box earlier. I suppose I didn’t believe it, but now I think I must.” She sipped her glass of lemonade, still watching her beaming companion, who’d shed her shoes and loosened her bodice. “I’m sorry you touched the substance.”
    “Heavens, I’m not sorry, Rosalie. I shall never forget how I feel this evening. So entirely—alive.” Miss Renshaw drifted to the French doors that led to the back garden. “I hope you won’t mind if I go to the rear of the house? I shan’t go out in public. I promise. I want to see the stars.”
    Rosalie put down her glass on top of the letter from her mother she’d just been reading. “I’ll join you.”
    “No, please don’t worry. Now that I understand…I’ll be back to my old self soon, I suppose,” Miss Renshaw said, almost in her usual vague and apologetic manner. Perhaps the chemical or whatever it could be was already wearing off. “I would like to be alone, if you don’t mind.”

Chapter Two

    After Miss Renshaw slipped out to the walled back garden, Rosalie donned gloves and went into the library. She held her breath as she picked up the box and put it in the bottom desk drawer that locked.
    Would throwing away the gloves be excessive? She recalled the ecstatic look on Miss Renshaw’s face and at once wrapped the gloves in some newspaper before wedging them into the bottom of the trash container next to the desk.
    She wondered if she should start a fire and burn the box. But what if the smoke carried the potent substance into the air? Now that would be a sight. The entire city infected with the powder. Rosalie again felt the strange hysteria, a mix of fear and amusement.
    * * *
    After reflecting on various horrific scenarios the powder might create, she climbed the stairs to Miss Renshaw’s room to see if the lady required assistance. Her companion still hadn’t returned.
    A stab of guilt hit Rosalie. She should not have left poor Miss Renshaw alone for so long. What if the drugged lady forgot her promise not to leave the garden? She might wander out the back gate. Rosalie went to the bedroom window and looked out over the garden. It was too dark to see anything, but a light glowed in the window of the mews, which lay not far beyond the garden. Horses reading? No.
    The mews. The stables had living quarters for—
    Men.
    Rosalie almost tripped on her skirts as she hurried back down to the parlor. The French window stood open. Moonlight silvered the stones of the path and the tops of the trees, but threw much of the small garden into deeper shadow. She moved along the path toward the back wall, and the wall seemed to move. Oh no. That pale object that moved wasn’t the wall.
    The dark bulk of the man was mostly clothed as he covered the moaning female, and only part of his body showed—his buttocks.
    Rosalie knew who he was with even before she caught sight of a rose-colored sleeve—Miss Renshaw’s gown. The pink arm wrapped tight around the body of the man. For several moments, Rosalie watched, fascinated and horrified.
    That was the ultimate act—a man’s buttocks waggling around? No, more like flexing rhythmically.
    Her stomach flipped with anxiety. Should she scream or sneak away? First she had to discover if this was something Miss Renshaw wanted and not an attack.
    “Harder,” the lady moaned. “Yes, yes.”
    That question was answered.
    Yet here, in the open? Such an activity in her own garden? And poor Miss Renshaw would never do this in her right mind. Again Rosalie wondered if she should cry out. But it was obviously too late to save the woman’s virtue.
    If the two participants had joined body parts, what could she do? She tried to recall the process Johnny had described. When did the possible baby production occur? Too late, she imagined. Hard to think that seeds from the man hadn’t spilled by now.
    She backed away, not trying to hide her presence, but the rhythm of the writhing bodies didn’t change.
    When