Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Madelynne Ellis
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Copyright
About the Book
1800 – Three years after escaping to London with her bisexual lovers, Bella Rushdale wakes one morning to find their delicate ménage a trois about to shatter. Vaughan, Marquis of Pennerley, has left without any explanation. Determined to reclaim him and preserve their relationship, Bella pursues him to his family seat on the Welsh Borders, where she finds herself embroiled in his preparations for a diabolical gothic celebration on All Hallows Eve – a phantasmagoria. Among the shadows and phantoms, Bella and her lovers will discover shocking truths about each other.
About the Author
Madelynne Ellis is an award-winning author of erotic fiction, renowned for her character-driven plots, authentic settings and bad-boy heroes. She is the author of Dark Designs, Passion of Isis and the linked titles A Gentleman’s Wager and Phantasmagoria.
Also by Madelynne Ellis:
A Gentleman’s Wager
Dark Designs
Passion of Isis
Possession
Phantasmagoria
Madelynne Ellis
To my family, for their love and support
Prologue
New Year’s Eve 1799
The haunting strain of a violin marked his escape onto the moonlit balcony. Vaughan Peredur Forvasham, Marquis of Pennerley, brought his palms down hard against the flat stone balustrade. ‘Hell’s pits!’ he barked. The impact stung but he didn’t flinch, just glowered at the black blot on the horizon – the city. He could just make out the dome of St Paul’s.
Vaughan pressed his fingers to his temples. His dark ringlets fell forward over his face, concealing his expression. Why was he here? What was he doing? It was New Year’s Eve. They were supposed to be enjoying themselves, celebrating. He had been enjoying himself. He’d smacked Lieutenant Wilkes of the 52nd Oxfordshires across the cheek with his glove for his insolent remarks towards Bella. Nobody got to call her a whore, except him. The poor fool hadn’t dared call him out. Reputations were wonderful things, although the influence of their host, the Right Honourable Herbert Gillray MP may have played a part too.
Oh, and he’d taught that pompous arse of a Frenchman, the Vicomte de Maresi, just how knowledgeable an Englishman could be about certain manly pursuits.
Vaughan ran his tongue over his teeth. The Vicomte was achingly beautiful and had cheeks as sweet as a cherry bun, but he smelled like a perfumery and he had none of Bella’s fire or Lucerne’s charm.
Hmm! He sniffed hard, suddenly reminded of his feckless lover. Pox on the man! Why did he have to be so bloody gig-happy?
The door behind him swung open, and a spear of light struck the ground beneath him with the radiance of two thousand candles. He didn’t turn, just stared resolutely into the darkness. He knew who’d come after him, the only person who truly dared. Well, perhaps there was one other person, but she was too busy dancing to bother about him. He dragged a hand through his hair and let it slide slowly through the tangles.
‘Vaughan.’ Lucerne curved his hand over Vaughan’s. ‘Are we fine?’
‘Yes. We’re fine.’ Vaughan sniffed again. Liar, he chided himself. Clearly, they were very far from fine.
Too close to be just friendly, Lucerne slyly traced the curve of Vaughan’s arse. It was a subtle movement, not without risk. The assembly room behind them was full of their peers. On another occasion, the affectionate gesture might have won him around. Vaughan liked to take risks, but tonight it elicited nothing but a shudder of irritation. ‘I’m just brooding, Lucerne. It’s New Year. It’s what I do.’ He painted on a smile, then turned so that he stood inside Lucerne’s embrace. ‘Go back to the party. I’ll follow in a moment when I’ve conquered my mood.’
‘If you’re sure.’ Lucerne brushed his thumb across Vaughan’s cheek.
‘I’m sure.’
‘Don’t get too maudlin out here, will you?’ He drew the caress to Vaughan’s lips and rubbed over them slowly. ‘The night’s barely begun. We have to see in the new century yet.’ He flashed Vaughan an impudent smile loaded with sweet promises.
‘Away with you.’ Vaughan watched him rejoin a group of drunken bloods. It was no good. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t hurting, that he wasn’t revolted by the way Lucerne carried out his affairs.
He paced the length of the balcony to where the ivy hung like mermaids’ braids. Quietly, without a scene, without so much as a whisper.
Vaughan claimed a deserted glass from among the foliage and swallowed the rich, syrupy liquid without really tasting it. He held up the dregs to the moon in mock salute, then let the glass drop over the balustrade. It smashed on the paving below, where the shards glinted like angels’ tears. Several women shrieked. He didn’t look to see who. He didn’t care. Let them scream. Let all the bitches scream. Soon, everything was going to shatter.
1
October 1800
‘QUICK, LUCERNE! HURRY up.’
Ignoring the extended hand of the waiting footman, Bella Rushdale leaped from the landau and sprinted up the townhouse steps, the train of her slender empire-line evening dress looped over her arm to prevent her tripping. She reached the door and turned to face the carriage. ‘Do you think he’ll have noticed we’re gone?’
‘He notices everything.’
Viscount Lucerne Marlinscar slid his six-foot-two slender frame across the leather seat and stepped carefully from the interior, a silver-topped cane clasped tightly in one hand and a hip flask in the other. He was dressed in a dark-blue evening coat, cut short at the front to show off his black and silver waistcoat. His breeches, cream, cleaved to his thighs like a second skin and were, Bella suspected, at least partially responsible for his slow descent.
‘Yes, but will he be on his way yet?’
Lucerne pocketed the silver flask and peered at his fob watch. ‘That rather depends on how well Henry Tristan’s delaying him.’
‘That’s who you left him with?’
‘Why, yes.’
Bella skipped back down the top three steps and grasped Lucerne’s coat cuff. ‘Then he won’t be above five minutes. Come on.’ She dragged Lucerne through the front door and across the echoing hall. Her first instinct was to squeeze into the broom cupboard below the stairs and get frisky among the mops, but she knew Lucerne would object. Too dusty, and he didn’t like spiders. He’d be far too concerned about his clothes and not nearly enough about her pleasure, and that would be no good at all, since Vaughan was probably already turning his black phaeton into the street.
Vaughan. Marquis Pennerley. Of course, if she’d been with him rather than Lucerne, there’d have been no qualms about the cupboard. He might even have led her past the house and into an alleyway. Vaughan had no respect for anything – clothing, furniture. None of it mattered, nothing got in the way of his pleasure. It was how it had been for the last two, almost three years, ever since she’d recklessly climbed into his carriage and wav
ed Yorkshire goodbye.
‘This way.’
They ran up the stairs. Lucerne headed for the master bedroom with the enormous canopied bed the three of them shared, but its sumptuous cushioned comfort wasn’t what Bella was looking for. Before he dragged her down into its embrace, she swung left and bundled him through the door of the walk-in closet. The sharp smell of mothballs wafted over them, tempered a little by the scent of the lavender bags she’d made in a moment of boredom.
Not that there’d been many such moments. Her time in London had passed in a swirl of evening dresses and sexual excess. Only the fashions of the beau monde seemed to mark the seasons. When she’d first arrived, it had been all stays, bums and hoops. Now her waist had risen to somewhere beneath her breasts and diaphanous, Grecian simplicity was all the rage.
Bella liked the freedom of the new costume and the excitement of change, but not all the new fashions were so good. For starters, the men were all cropping their hair. She’d always liked Lucerne’s untidy fringe, but she admired Vaughan’s sable ringlets more. Thankfully, the marquis showed no signs of giving way to the dictates of fashion and the ‘dandies’, led by Mr Brummell. He’d sworn that he’d damn well please himself. No penniless army captain was going to tell him how to dress. Besides, she thought, where was the fun if all men dressed alike as blue and cream sheep, and they no longer had the likes of the macaronis or les incroyables like Henry Tristan?
Bella grinned. Lucerne was taking advantage of her distraction and exploring the swell of her breasts, while his lips teased the back of her neck. ‘Uh-uh!’ She swung him around and pushed him into the silken rainbow of hanging coats.
‘Uh-uh, yourself.’ He slapped away her hands, but Bella pressed in closer. Lucerne peeped coyly at her from beneath his eyelashes. ‘Just what sort of tryst is this, Miss Rushdale? It seems a touch indecorous to assault a fellow in a closet.’
Indecorous? Assault? Her fingertips sought passage beneath his tight clothes. Yes, that was about it. She strained on tiptoes to reach his lips, narrowly avoiding the foot-high pile of cravats at her feet. ‘Why so many layers?’
‘I could ask the same.’ Lucerne tugged open the buttons on his waistcoat, then reached for her hem. He slipped his hand up her stocking to the bare flesh of her thigh. ‘Except–’ he cocked one elegantly arched eyebrow ‘–you appear to have mislaid a few.’
‘Ah … Um, yes. I forgot them.’
Her new dress looked better without numerous petticoats beneath it; she had only her knee-length shift on, and she’d dispensed with her stays weeks ago, even though she’d had one of the new types made with a front busk. One or two of her acquaintances had taken to the new red silk drawers that had come over from France, but Bella thought them both hot and inconvenient.
‘Strangely enough,’ said Lucerne, ‘so did I.’
Bella wriggled her hand inside the placket of his breeches. Her fingertips found and traced the slender line of golden hairs down to where they thickened around his loins.
‘All that extra fabric ruins the line.’
Bella grinned and traced the column of hot flesh. ‘You mean it wasn’t just so you’re always ready for action.’ She slipped the buttons that fastened the flap to his waistband and shimmied down his body so that she was eye level with his revealed glory.
‘No-o, I don’t think that was it.’
She ran her tongue up the length of his erection. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. No. All right, maybe a little bit.’ He cupped his hand behind her neck. ‘Come a little closer, minx. Don’t be shy.’ With his free hand, he teased his cock closer towards her lips.
Bella kissed the plum tip, then rose to her feet. ‘More of that later if you’re good, my lord.’
‘Aw!’ He dipped his head so that she could reach his lips. Bella pressed her hand between their bodies and covered the hot column with her palm. ‘Vaughan will be here any minute.’ She could almost sense him getting closer, driving the phaeton hell for leather, his sable curls stirring in the breeze, all black silk and fire. ‘Let’s not waste time.’
She tucked her skirts up around her chest, rudely displaying her naked rear, then clamped Lucerne’s wrists against the closet walls. He didn’t struggle, just sank back against the coats and watched her with a hungry, fearful sort of longing.
Keeping one wrist pinned, Bella freed the other and wetted her fingers between her thighs, which she then fed to Lucerne to dutifully suck clean. He did so with a kitten-like gentleness, trying to soothe her, but Bella didn’t want to be soothed. She didn’t want sweet and nice. She wanted rough, sticky and dirty, something Lucerne only seemed capable of with Vaughan. It was always a battle trying to rouse that same response. She smeared saliva across his chin, held his mouth open for her to ravage, while her fingers locked around his wrist and bit into the warm flesh.
Lucerne protested, shaking his arm, but she just squeezed harder and ground her hips against him.
‘Bella,’ he groaned. His breaths were coming as irregular little puffs of pleasure. ‘Can I?’
Helpfully she opened her legs wide, raised one, which he clasped against his thigh, as he slipped inside.
Lucerne’s blue eyes glazed. ‘You’re teasing,’ he growled. He clutched at her bare bottom, trying to lift her. She knew what he wanted – to carry her to the bed still impaled upon his cock and tup her across the bedspread, but this wasn’t just about him. It was about having him at her mercy.
‘Yes,’ she hissed into his mouth. ‘And there’s nothing you can do about it.’
She hooked her raised leg behind his knee and gripped his wrists again, this time adding nail marks to the skin. His cock didn’t protest. If anything, the restraint goaded him to greater effort. His hips bucked as much as their precarious balance would allow, while his bottom clenched in time with the motion.
‘Bella, please, don’t make it a fight! Be soft for me. I get enough of this spitting and snarling from Vaughan.’
‘Yes, and I’ve seen what it does to you.’
‘What Vaughan does to me,’ he corrected, sagging a little. ‘And you do something equally precious.’
Reluctantly, she eased her grip. Lucerne slipped the loop of her fingers from his wrists and tangled his hands in the back of her hair. ‘Kiss me.’
It was slow and intimate. Understated, but with raging heat. Lucerne wanted her as a woman, not as Vaughan’s substitute. She wondered again how far their relationship would have come if Vaughan hadn’t been always waiting in the wings. Marriage almost certainly, but would either of them have been content?
She didn’t hear Vaughan enter the closet, but she felt his presence like a ripple through the fabric of the small, dark space. It warmed her long before he curved his hand over her bottom.
He didn’t speak, just allowed his palm to brand her with his intentions.
His eyes were probably closed, so that their long dark eyelashes dusted his cheeks. His cruel, sensual mouth probably curved into the ghost of a smile. Just the thought of his expression made her writhe harder against Lucerne. There was no denying they both belonged to Vaughan.
And how he enjoyed making them squirm.
It had been four weeks since he’d last touched her. Not the longest Vaughan had ever made her wait, but still a long time to be around him and bereft of his favours. It had been the evening of the Gillrays’ late summer ball. The bastard had caught her dampening her petticoats in an attempt to make her new dress cling. He’d blindfolded her, lashed her to the bedpost and then sponge-bathed her, making sure the petticoats were extra wet around her crotch.
Subsequently, she’d spent the whole evening with her fan strategically clamped over the wet patch so that nobody would see her thatch through the delicate muslin gown.
The time before that, he’d painted her nipples with beetroot juice and served her as a side salad to Lucerne and four of his close friends. Vaughan seemed to delight in teasing her. No one had touched her all night, but that had hardly be
en the point. By the end of the dinner, she’d been desperate to relieve the sensitive ache in her breasts and the fire of arousal in her belly.
Vaughan had ridden her hard that night once the guests had left. She grinned at the memory, even as Lucerne continued to tease her lips. He’d ridden them both hard to be precise. Having strapped Lucerne to a chair, he’d repeatedly brought him to the point of orgasm, only to stop him coming at the last moment, until finally, in the small hours, he’d impaled himself upon Lucerne’s weeping cock.
Lucerne’s breath whispered across the top of her head. ‘I need to move.’ He clutched her hips and rocked them forwards, desperate for the friction.
‘Tut, tut.’ Vaughan curled his fingers into Bella’s plump cheek in response: ‘Always so hasty, Lucerne.’ She squirmed back against him. The best times were always when the two men pressed into her front and back. And now he was here …
‘You should have waited for me,’ Vaughan said. Bella could feel his trapped erection pressing into her arse. ‘But I’ll forgive you.’
‘You can share,’ Lucerne blurted.
‘Oh, can I now?’ Vaughan drawled. He slid his hands around to her stomach, then up to her breasts. ‘And what say you, Miss Rushdale? Am I invited to this … assignation?’
Bella rubbed back against him. ‘You were supposed to stay behind. He’s mine tonight.’
‘Ah, but the distraction was fleeting. You really need to plan more carefully.’
Vaughan sank to his knees behind her, his palms following the line of her silhouette. His lips grazed the delicate crease where her bottom met her thigh. Bella shivered. She was sensitive there. Excruciatingly sensitive.
‘Why won’t you leave us alone, let us be together?’ she gasped.
His tongue trailed lightly over her cheeks, raising hairs and the level of sensitivity to make her squeal. She squirmed against Lucerne, shaking with pleasure.
‘Ah, Bella, you know why. You’ve always known why.’
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