Chapter 397: Lessons From Behind Closed Doors

Chapter 396: Lessons From Behind Closed Doors

Lyria’s POV

I went through the books.

One by one, I examined them, turning each over in my hands to study their covers. They gave no indication whatsoever of what lay within them. The covers were quite bland — unassuming, ordinary, the sort of volumes one might encounter on any shelf in the palace without a second glance.

The one Duke Thorncrest had read from had a blue cover, its title embossed in simple gold lettering.

Behind Closed Doors.

I set it aside.

The next was red, its title considerably bolder.

His Wicked Intentions.

Another was softer in colour — pale cream — with the title, Beneath Her Sheets.

I did not need to open any of them to understand what they contained. I had very little doubt that the others would be quite similar to what Duke Thorncrest had read aloud, or considerably worse.

Then I turned to the scrolls.

They were quite small — tightly rolled and bound with thin ribbon. I removed the binding from the first and unfolded it carefully.

I dropped it immediately.

The scroll fell from my hands and fluttered to the floor. I stumbled backward, nearly losing my footing entirely, and the cat meowed loudly as though issuing a direct reprimand.

I looked at it.

"S-sorry," I said, my voice unsteady.

Then I bent down and retrieved the scroll.

Surely my eyes had deceived me, surely...they had not.

This was considerably worse than the books.

There were illustrations — detailed, precise, and entirely explicit. A man and a woman rendered in various positions, each accompanied by notes beneath that explained exactly what the position was and precisely how it was achieved. The drawings were not crude. They were quite carefully executed, as though the artist had intended them to be genuinely instructive.

They were.

I had no conception that the act of lovemaking extended so far beyond what I had vaguely imagined.

Now I understood what those kitchen maids had been discussing years ago, when I had overheard them speaking of tongues and touches and had not understood them at all. I had assumed at the time that they were speaking of something entirely ordinary.

They were not.

There was even instruction regarding kissing — different locations upon the body, different degrees of pressure, different purposes entirely. I encountered an illustration of a kiss that left a bite mark upon the throat, another upon a shoulder, and several upon places I had not previously considered possible or, frankly, imaginable.

My hand moved without conscious thought to my own shoulder.

The mark.

The bite.

The one Earl Hawthorne had left upon me.

No wonder my maids had laughed and exchanged those looks when I had said so simply that it was merely a bite.

It was a love bite.

And this scroll mentioned something further still — ownership.

I groaned softly and pressed my palm to my forehead.

I stood with that information for a moment before reaching for the second scroll.

This one concerned anatomy — both female and male — in considerable and entirely clinical detail. Every appendage named. Every function explained. Every relevant piece of information set out with a precision that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

I set the novel Duke Thorncrest had read from beside me, placed the remaining books beneath the floorboard, and moved to my bed with both scrolls.

And there I sat.

I studied them with the same diligence I had given to the noble speech texts earlier in the week, because if I was going to understand the world I had apparently entered — the one where gentlemen bit shoulders and read passages about mahogany writing tables with complete composure — then I intended to understand it properly.

And so I read the novel from the beginning.

Even the opening pages contained a lovemaking scene, and I ought perhaps to have felt ashamed for continuing. Surely it was wholly unbecoming of a princess. But I found I could not stop. I wanted to know. I wanted to understand what I had been ignorant of.

I was tired of being uninformed.

The scrolls proved useful companions to the novel. When Kingsley and Cordelia did something I could not immediately visualise nor understand, I consulted the anatomy scroll for clarification and the illustrated scroll for reference. Between the three of them, I was able to construct a reasonably coherent understanding of what was occurring in each scene.

One position in particular arrested my attention entirely.

It was called the six-nine.

I consulted the second scroll carefully. The illustration showed a man lying upon a bed while a woman positioned herself above him, facing the opposite direction, as he attended to her with his mouth. The accompanying notes were thorough. I read them twice to fully understand though there was no need as exactly what was written in the scrolls was what Kingsley and Cordelia were partaking.

After reading that part, I set the scroll down for a moment and simply stared at the ceiling.

There was, I concluded, a very great deal about the world that I was yet to know about.

The cat, who had settled beside me at some point during my studies, regarded me with its eyes quietly. Then as if having seen enough it have me it’s back and settled into a nap.

I returned to the novel quite grateful for the lack of audience.

The hours passed without my noticing them.

I was so thoroughly absorbed that I did not register the light shifting through the curtains as the morning gave way to afternoon. I did not notice the cat leaving the bed neither did I notice my stomach had begun making increasingly pointed observations about the matter.

I found that there was so much about the novel, it was not just the lovemaking that intrigued me but the story itself for Kingsley was but an orphan with no noble title, a guard and Cordelia was a princess in love with him.

I needed to know how they would overcome that gap, I needed...

"Your highness," Elara called as she knocked on the door.