But he had never taken a woman against her will. He’d never needed to. He was a Shaw, after all. He’d made a pledge to himself months ago that he would be more particular in the future after he got into a spot of trouble in Egypt, so it had been a long while since he’d shared a bed with anyone but the fleas aboard The Star of the East. No doubt he could find some congenial woman right here on Jane Street if he went around to a neighbor who had an idle moment. The Janes spent most of their time waiting for their gentlemen, and he might be able to take advantage of their boredom.
However, a practiced courtesan held no allure for him at present. It would be far more satisfactory to unleash Mrs. Prudence Thorne’s latent passion.
“What can I say to persuade you to stay another day?” There were still crates to unpack before the auction. It would be crowded enough in the downstairs reception room with half of London’s lascivious lords in it.
“Absolutely nothing. And tell Malcolm I will take dinner in my room.”
So, she would try to avoid him this evening. “I’m afraid he’ll never manage the stairs with his bad leg, Pru. But I would be delighted to deliver it.”
“Oh, bother!” she muttered. “Very well, I’ll dine below in the kitchen. At least I won’t have to look at those dreadful paintings.” She sprang out of the chair, her back ramrod straight. “I shall read until then.” She picked up one of his books, flipped it open, then dropped it back onto the table as if her hands were scorched.
“I believe Carmela has some conventional reading material in her sitting room.” Darius loped through the open double doors and went to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that stood between the windows that looked out onto Jane Street. His late uncle’s mistress was, as Cyrus had said, well read. He perused the shelves, searching for something suitable for Pru’s refined—dull—taste. “You’d better pick something yourself,” he called to her.
She joined him in the sitting room, keeping as much distance between them as she could. Her pretty blushes were a thing of the past—she was now as icy as she had been when she first verbally assaulted him when she thought he was Cyrus. His brother had better behave—even though Pru was disappointed in her cousin at the moment, Darius thought she would soon go back to trying to manage her.
Pru squinted at the shelves. “She wants you to send them.”
“Who wants me to send what?”
“Carmela. The books. She told me before she left. She’ll be sending you an address.” She pulled one book off the shelf, then put it back. “Pliny the Elder. In Latin. Who would have thought it.”
Leaving her to decide on her book selection and marvel at Carmela’s unsuspected intellectualism, he stepped to a window and gave a low whistle. “Well, look at that.”
Pru didn’t budge. “What is it?”
“An honest-to-goodness courtesan, Mrs. Thorne, out for an afternoon stroll. Someone to satisfy your curiosity. From the amount of boxes her maid is carrying, her protector must be a generous soul.” Darius saw her hesitate, but then she moved to the other window and stared down into the short street.
“She is not what I expected, either,” Pru said, her nose nearly pressed on the windowpane. They had discussed Carmela over dinner last night, and Pru had been shocked at Carmela’s true age. Darius hoped when he was in his sixties—nay, seventies—he would still be functioning between the sheets to some degree.
“Well, courtesans come in all shapes and sizes.”
“I wonder if her red hair is natural.”
“There’s only one way to find out, unless the lady has dyed that area, too. Or shaved it off.”
Pru immediately divined his meaning and scowled. “You are every bit as bad as I first thought! You, Mr. Shaw, are not quite a gentleman!”
“And you, Mrs. Thorne, are not quite a courtesan, more’s the pity. Unbend. Your expression is enough to wither the hardiest male.”
“I have no interest in males, hardy or otherwise.” She grabbed a book from the shelf and flounced out of the room.
Perhaps it was just as well she was leaving. Prudence Thorne seemed to require quite a lot of effort. He and Malcolm could manage the rest of the boxes downstairs. He’d wrap his face in handkerchiefs like a bandit and hold his breath. Within a few days, he would be plump in the pocket and on his way to owning a flock of sheep.
He returned to the bedroom and picked up the carved ivory box. Odd. It seemed too light. When he opened it, nothing greeted him but the blood-red velvet lining.
“I’ll be damned.” Prudence Thorne planned to unbend, possibly this very night. If he was very quiet, he might creep upstairs and catch her in the act of gratifying herself. He could hardly wait. It was too bad she preferred an inanimate object when Darius himself was so conveniently at hand.
Now she had stolen two items from him—the ring and the carefully carved ivory penis. Did she intend to replace it before she hied off to Bath? He relished asking her that question. Tonight. Around midnight.
Chapter Five
What had possessed her? The ivory thing in her apron pocket clunked against her thigh as she tore up the stairs to her room. Pru had taken advantage of Darius’s absence when he went to find her a book to peek inside the box to get an unobstructed look at the object. Before she knew it, she had palmed it and stuffed it into her apron pocket. She’d only meant to glance, not to take. The atmosphere on Jane Street was unhealthy indeed if it caused her, Prudence Jane Prescott Thorne, to throw her scruples out the window and become a thief.
The evil ring burned her finger, too. Pru had no idea what she looked like down there, but she did not think she was made of rubies and diamonds. She did have a small hand mirror in her valise. Perhaps she could—
What was she thinking? She mentally slapped herself and entered the stark, stuffy little chamber at the top of the stairs. The rooms on the top floor were meant for servants and storage. Malcolm slept in a room in the basement off the kitchen, so she had the entire space to herself. She divested herself of her capacious apron, folding it and what it held in a plain wooden trunk at the foot of the iron bed. She would try to return the thing before she left. If she could not, Darius might not miss it. It and its container were meant for the auction, and the box alone was wicked enough to satisfy the most discriminating lecher.
Pru was beginning to think she had been hypnotized by Darius Shaw yesterday. Somehow he’d gotten her to agree to help him—actually cohabitate with him, even if they slept on separate floors. She must have been so unsettled by Sophy that her judgment was impaired. Pru hoped it was not a permanent condition—she’d had no trouble distinguishing right from wrong for almost three decades. But now she was infected by her idiot cousin, her cousin’s lascivious husband, and his rule-breaking, tempting, wretchedly handsome brother. Even the swaying hips of the red-haired stranger on the street had been provocative.
Pru tossed herself on the bed and tried to read the book she’d snatched from the shelf. It was completely devoid of illustrations, nothing like the volume in Darius’s bedroom that depicted—well, she wasn’t even sure what she’d seen when she’d opened it. Surely there had been too many arms and legs for just two people. My word. If more than two people could couple, was it still called coupling? Tripling? Heaven forefend, quadrupling?
Pru closed the book, her mind too disordered to make sense of the prosaic prose within. Rising from the bed, she opened the narrow window that faced the little walled garden below. From this vantage point, she could see into most of the six gardens on her side of the street. But thank goodness the courtesans seemed to have more sense than Sophy and Cyrus—there was no cavorting on the grass as far as she could tell.
In the seven weeks she’d been married, Charles had come to her less than seven times. Of course, he had needed no regular manly release with her—Lady Merrifield had been providing succor and who knew what else before and after their marriage. The woman had written a tear-stained letter to Pru after Lord Merrifield fled the country, more upset that
she would forever live in disgrace than apologetic for stealing Pru’s husband away.
No, Charles had not been stolen—Pru had never had him to begin with. To him, she had simply been a naive, nineteen-year-old heiress with insufficient chaperonage. Once she was married, her mother and little cousin made the same demands on her as ever, and there had been very little time for Charles, who had moved into their Laura Place home. Pru knew nothing about being a wife, and Charles had not seemed inclined to teach her. Why should he, when he had a longtime mistress to see to that side of his life? Pru just supplied the meals and clothing and roof over his curly golden head.
Drat and damn. Pru had not thought of Charles in ages. Now he popped up in her head like a jack-in-the-box, breezy, blond and just beyond reach.
He had not loved her at all.
To be fair, she had not really loved him, either. Pru knew now she had been too young and foolish to truly love anyone. But he had excited her, made her feel something besides duty and responsibility. She might have come to love him eventually, given time. Just as well time had been cut short, for then she’d be suffering from a broken heart. She’d be one of those dreary widows who sighed and looked ethereally wounded at all social events.
Not that she’d had much of a social life this past decade. Lady Merrifield wasn’t the only one who’d been mortified. It had been easy to bury herself beside her mother’s bedside, plumping pillows and doling out laudanum to escape the whispers. Raising scapegrace Sophy had been a diversion as well. But now Pru’s carefully constructed barriers were breaking.
But not breaking hard enough to engage in an affair with Darius Shaw. She might be curious, but she was not cracked.
* * *
Several hours later, after an uncomfortable dinner in Malcolm’s domain, Pru was back in the attic. She had born his disapproval as he muttered over the soup pot, castigating her for refusing to join his master upstairs in the dining room. Pru had stood fast and eaten as quickly as she could.
Malcolm was a fair cook—he seemed to be a jack-of-all-trades who had served Darius Shaw in various capacities for many years. If she had been interested in discovering more of their adventures, she might have used the opportunity tonight to ask the man questions, but the only time she opened her lips was to spoon soup in and take a bite of bread. Pru refused the roast chicken on principle—if Malcolm thought his forbidding expression was conducive to digestion, he was sadly mistaken.
So she found herself upstairs before the sun had finished setting over the chimney pots, still hungry but too proud to indulge herself. The evening was balmy—the spring days were getting longer, and Bath had been in full bloom when she left. But she didn’t plan to spend the rest of her life in Laura Place. It was her hope to sell the town house and find a suitable small manor house in the country. There was no reason for her to stint on her comforts—she had plenty of money and a keen desire to live as she liked in the future. Darius Shaw might want sheep, but Pru wanted a garden to putter about in. Flowers. Fresh air. Grass that would not be flattened by writhing bodies.
Pru could not get her cousin’s misadventure out of her mind. Of course, she had seen nothing but sexual acts and body parts in real life and art since yesterday. It was no wonder she felt a peculiar ache in her nether region.
She had not really expected to feel anything there ever again. There was no denying that in the less than seven times Charles Thorne had come to her, she had felt something of an indescribable nature. Although it had been dark and she had been as still as any lady was meant to be,
there had been a tug. A tingle. A frisson of desire that had danced like a bright, quickly extinguished flame. Charles had not seemed to notice, but then his attention had never been truly focused on her person, just her fortune.
Pru stood over the trunk. Malcolm had told her Darius had plans to meet one of his clients tonight, so she had the house to herself. She had all the time in the world to examine the ivory object. The daylight was waning, but she had candles.
She opened the lid of the trunk and slipped her hand into the pocket of the folded apron. The dildo was cool to the touch, and not entirely smooth. Pru fished it out of its hiding place and brought it to her little window. The carver had given the dildo lifelike details—there were raised veins running the length of it, folds at its head, and tiny curling hairs on the sac at its base.
Pru measured it with an approximate inch between her thumb and forefinger. It seemed altogether too large for comfort. She could not recall Charles being this size, but then, she could not really recall Charles at all. Did size matter? She rather thought it might.
Between her bouts of tears, Sophy had intimated that Cyrus had brought her to heights of unparalleled ecstasy in their marriage bed. Pru had wanted to close her ears and hum, but now she wondered—was Cyrus’s brother as well endowed as he? Of course, Sophy was a silly, innocent girl with no basis for comparison—she’d been completely bamboozled by a handsome face and pretty words. And, Pru had to admit, her cousin was bored in Bath living with an ailing aunt and all of Pru’s rules. No wonder Sophy had been easily tempted by that snake—she was a fresh juicy apple ripe for the picking.
Pru ran a finger around the ridge of what was meant to be foreskin. She’d read an anatomy book or two to make sense of the prognostications of her mother’s ever-changing roster of doctors. She’d read a great deal on other subjects as well, but had never encountered such books as Darius Shaw dealt in. Imagine having such a collection on one’s library shelf. Of course, one wouldn’t have to read them, just look at the pictures.
Darius had said that this thing might be used when one’s husband was away. Well, Charles was most certainly away.
Pru struggled out of her black bombazine dress, grateful that her maid Barlow was not here to see the flush on her cheek. She didn’t light a candle—best just to go to bed early in the gray light. She had a long day ahead of her tomorrow. Her valise was already packed—she really had not unpacked it save to hang up her two black gowns—and she shook out the white night rail buried at the bottom of the bag.
Her evening routine was always the same, and tonight was no different. She washed her hands and face in the tepid water that she’d brought up herself, braided her hair, and lay on her back in the middle of the narrow bed. Pru tried to focus on her nighttime prayers, but found her mind wandering to the ivory object that had inexplicably wound up under the covers with her.
And then, with a quick plea for forgiveness, she pulled up her nightgown.
It was no use. She could not insert the object into her dry—no doubt shriveled—passage. She’d been a fool to think she could do any better than poor Charles. Swallowing back a sob, she shut her eyes and willed herself to sleep.
Malcolm had left strategically burning candles for him, a wicked waste as Darius could see quite well in the dark. His servant had not waited up, even though Darius had had an early, and profitable, night. He had met a gentleman in his private club and discreetly passed a rather lumpy fertility statue to the fellow, who was on his third wife—literally—in hopes of adding a son to the six daughters he already had. For his part, Darius was nearly glad he wasn’t a peer, for how absurd were the laws of primogeniture? There must be a great many older sisters throughout Britain who wanted to club their baby brothers with fertility statues or anything else they could get their hands on. Presuming that men were wiser than women to manage the family fortunes was a foolish presumption indeed.
Look at his brother Cyrus, certainly all male but distinctly lacking in wisdom. Copulating with his own wife in the back garden was simply not done.
Darius took an experimental breath in the downstairs parlor. The space seemed to be free of straw, although there were still a number of boxes left to unpack. He supposed to be on the safe side he’d better flee to his room. He had a mediocre bottle of brandy secreted away in a cupboard, and that bottle was calling his name.
Unwinding the preposterous length of his cravat, he moun
ted the stairs. He’d much rather be garbed in the loose clothing men of the East wore, but to move about London society one had to adapt. Trouble was, movement was practically impossible in the jacket Malcolm had procured for him this afternoon. It had not been tailored to fit, and Darius had felt restrained and uncomfortable all evening. But everyone else in the room looked similarly mummified, shirt points cutting into cheeks and throats strangled by yards of linen.
Darius was at the top of the stairs when he heard the chink of hard surface to hard surface. The door to his room was ajar, and someone was in it. Light spilled out into the hallway, which would be conveniently handy in revealing the trespasser. A thief come to steal his hard-won treasures? Or a curious widow trying to return one? He slipped a knife from his sleeve and flattened himself outside his door.
Her scent betrayed her, soap and roses. He tackled her anyway as she came out of his room. She stilled instantly at the knife at her throat.
Darius knew he was cruel to do this to her, but he’d ever had an aversion to people poking about his things. Cyrus had learned his lesson early on after trying to steal Darius’s original collection and still bore the scar on his forehead, the only thing marring his pretty-boy beauty. There had been valuable leather string, some pieces of rose quartz, a desiccated frog, three brass buttons, and a Neolithic arrow head in Darius’s bedside table when he was eight years old, and the arrowhead had still been viciously sharp even after centuries.
There had been quite a lot of blood, but seven-year-old Cyrus had deserved his punishment. Darius himself had taken a beating afterward from his father, which prevented him from sitting down for a week, but at least he didn’t have to wear a plaster on his bottom. Cyrus had looked silly with his bandage drooping over his eye until the stitches were removed.
Lords of Passion Page 21
