Bound in Moonlight

by Louisa Burton

  “And I know you tried to have me banned from Slave Week,” shouted the enraged marquess, spittle flying. “But Sir Charles and Oliver Riddell knew what I could afford to pay for a slave, and they wanted their cut of it. Not you, though, eh, Rexton? You don't need my money, you've got enough of your own—enough to part with a hundred thousand guineas for that one”—he stabbed his walking stick in Caroline's direction—“just to keep me from having her. Why else would you have done it? It's not like she's anything special, just another greedy little jade like all the rest of them. . . .”

  He continued raving as Rexton led Caroline along a brick path lined with cast-iron benches, one of which was occupied by Beau Brummel and his slave, the gamine Jessamine, locked in carnal union. Jessamine, wearing nothing but a man's shirt, knelt on the bench facing the backrest, her hands and feet chained to the cast-iron scrollwork. She winced with every thrust of the dashingly attired Brummel, who stood behind her with one hand clutching her boyishly short hair and the other holding her shirt bunched up so that he could observe the juncture of their bodies.

  They were coupling in the Greek manner, Rexton observed. So, evidently, did Caroline, who blanched and looked away as they passed the couple.

  She started struggling against his grip as he ushered her down the path to the bathhouse.

  “My lord, I beg you,” she implored. “You're hurting me.”

  He stopped walking and released her arm, grimacing at the livid marks his hand had left. He pulled his flask from inside his coat and took a drink.

  “Is . . . is it true?” she asked as she rubbed her arm. “About you giving Dahlia the sixteen thousand—”

  “You are forbidden to speak except to answer a question or acknowledge an order, remember?” He capped the flask and tucked it away.

  “But . . .” She looked around them in every direction. “There's no one within earshot, and I thought you didn't care about . . . you know. The rules.”

  “Except for the one about you keeping your mouth shut. I'm rather partial to that one.”

  Caroline looked up at Rexton with those big, quiet eyes for a moment that felt interminable to him.

  “Yes, master,” she said—not in a mocking manner, nor subservient, of course, but with a sardonic nuance that he couldn't help but admire.

  “Impudent chit.”He grabbed her leash and continued down the path, tugging her along with him.

  He didn't want to admire her. He didn't want to have anything to do with her, but here he was, forced into lockstep with her for the entire goddamned week. Dunhurst was right. He was a dupe. First Dahlia, now this one. They were his Achilles' heel, these bloody damsels in distress. His compulsion to play the savior was the one vulnerable spot in the otherwise impenetrable armor he'd been piling onto himself these past two years. It made him weak; it made him foolish. It was a shortcoming he must endeavor to rectify for his own peace of mind.

  “Oh, my word!” she said when they rounded a curve in the path, and she saw the bathhouse for what was apparently the first time. “Oh, it's exquisite. Was it really built by the Romans?”

  On a sigh, he said, “You've no intention at all of shutting up, do you?”

  “Sorry—I forgot.”

  “Well, if you forget in front of the wrong person and end up being auctioned off to the likes of Dunhurst, it won't be on my head.”

  As they approached the bathhouse, Rexton noticed Gilles Bertrand and his naked slave, the tall, plumply pretty Jonquil, standing against a tree at the edge of the nearby woods, embracing—or so he thought until he got closer and saw that Jonquil was facing the tree with Bertrand behind her, grinding away slowly. Another alfresco buggering; must be something in the air.

  Caroline looked away sharply, much as she'd done when they passed Brummel and Jessamine on the garden bench. He would have thought she was just priggish in general, but for her ill-disguised fascination with the bawdy goings-on at the breakfast table.

  “Consumed with shock already?” he asked as he led her by her leash toward the entrance to the bathhouse.“The week has barely begun.”

  “I'm . . . I'm not shocked.” She looked genuinely offended.

  He gave a dubious snort.

  “I'm not. I may not be as . . . experienced as some, but I am a good deal more worldly-wise than you give me credit for.”

  “Sir Charles told me you nearly swooned when he started showing you his little portfolio of smutty pictures.”

  Avoiding his gaze, her face bright pink, she said, “Yes, well, I've accustomed myself since then to the existence of different tastes and predilections in . . . such matters. But some things . . .” She gave a little nod in the direction of Bertrand and Jonquil while keeping her gaze safely averted. “They're just not natural.”

  “There is nothing unnatural about sexual pleasure,” he said. “Short of it involving livestock, I suppose.”

  “A man might take pleasure in such an act, but a lady? I think not.”

  “You think too much. Have you never just flung your misgivings aside and surrendered to a new experience just to . . . well, just to experience it?”

  “Not if it strikes me as wrong,” she said. “We are blessed with our powers of moral judgment for a reason.”

  “Spoken like a true rector's daughter,” he muttered as he led her toward the entrance to the bathhouse.

  Her nose twitched at the sweetly scorched aroma wafting toward them. “What is that I smell?”

  “They don't smoke opium in St. Giles?”

  “That's opium?” Her eyes widened, and grew wider still when she stepped into the smoke-hazed bathhouse and saw what was transpiring there. So much for her “worldly wisdom.”

  The marble floor surrounding the pool was mounded with silken pillows on which were strewn a dozen or more bodies, some in repose and some writhing in masses, all naked or in extreme dishabille—with the exception of the fully dressed Li Menshang, who sat with a lacquered tray near the cave entrance, twirling a spindle tipped with bubbling brown paste over the flame of a spirit lamp. Lifting a bamboo smoking pistol, he used the spindle to knead the dab of cooked opium on its knoblike bowl, letting the flame kiss it from time to time to prevent it from stiffening. It was a complicated operation, one that had taken Rexton himself quite some time to master.

  When he was satisfied with the opium's consistency, Li inserted it into the little hole on the bowl, withdrawing the spindle with a deft twist. Leaning over, he handed the pipe to Inigo, reclining on his side with Li's beloved mistress, Tulip, curled in his arms front to back. Inigo was naked from the waist up, with his trousers unbuttoned. He flexed his hips slightly, and that was when Rexton realized he had that gigantic cock of his buried inside her.

  Inigo took the pipe, astounding Rexton by thanking Li in the Chinaman's native tongue. “Fei chang gan xie.”

  “Bie ke qi.” Li sat back against the wall of rock and tugged gently on the leash of his own slave,Violet, who'd been lying at his feet lazily frigging herself with an ivory dildo. She wore the same expression of languid euphoria as did her master, Inigo, and Tulip. No doubt they had been passing that smoking pistol around for some time.

  “In the French manner, if you please,” Li told her in his heavily accented English as he unbuttoned his trousers.

  As he drew on the pipe, Inigo, who had formed a friendship with Rexton the year before, caught his eye and nodded in greeting. Rexton nodded back, grateful that Inigo's mouth was occupied, so as to preclude conversation. He didn't think he would ever get used to chatting with other men while they were doing a bit of business, although most of the men who attended Slave Week seemed to think nothing of it.

  “Can one become drunk on opium just from breathing air in which it's been smoked?” Caroline asked Rexton softly, so as not to be overheard by the others.

  “You feel it, too?” A sense of woozy unreality had overtaken him from the moment he'd entered the bathhouse. Then again, he'd felt much the same the day before, during his solitary
predawn bathe, and there'd been no opium being smoked then. The feeling had intensified when he'd ventured into the cave, so much so that he'd turned back before he'd gone a hundred yards.

  Taking in the salacious satyr-and-nymph statues, she said, “It's almost as if this were all a fantastic dream.”

  Rexton nodded as he watched the smoke from Inigo's pipe drift toward the pool and up through the open roof, glittering in the wash of sunlight.

  Several people were taking the waters at present, including Lili, Elle, and Rexton's old army acquaintance and the hero of Vitoria, Jack Compton, now Baron of Cutbridge. His lordship was standing waist-deep in the water facing away from Rexton, rousting Elle as she leaned back with her arms braced on the side of the pool, her spectacularly long legs wrapped around his waist. Lili stood behind Cutbridge manipulating something under the water, possibly one of those little arse-sized dildoes from the black leather box that had been delivered to each of their rooms. She stroked Elle's leg lingeringly, affectionately. Elle met her friend's gaze with an intimate smile, the kind of smile lovers shared. It had never occurred to Rexton that the two women might be sapphists.

  Wanting to gauge the temperature of the water, for he'd been told it could vary dramatically from day to day, or even hour to hour, he crouched down and dipped in his hand. Arousal slammed through him like mortar fire. He gasped and bolted to his feet, instantly erect. Thank God he'd had the foresight to wear a coat that covered him in front. He would hate to be going about with an obvious cockstand all day, like some of these randy dogs in their snug breeches and cutaways—although none of them seemed to mind.

  Glancing at Caroline as he brushed off his trousers and coat, he saw her unblinking gaze shift from one tangle of bodies to the next, and the next . . .

  “A penny for your thoughts, Miss Kea—” He glanced around. “Rose. Or should I say a hundred thousand guineas.”

  Stiffening her back, she said, with studied nonchalance, “I was thinking,what a remarkable level of activity for so early in the day.”

  He chuckled and shook his head, prompting her to turn away with a self-conscious little smile that tickled him in the center of his chest. How the devil could he have failed to recognize, upon their first meeting a fortnight past, what an incredible beauty she was? Yes, she'd been panicky and bedraggled, with snarled hair and a sodden frock, but still he had not recalled the next day those big, disarming eyes, the delicate nose, the lush mouth. He must have been drunk as an owl. Would that she didn't feel the need to disguise her appearance with henna and face paint. He did remember that her hair in its natural state was very blond, more so even than Natalia's.

  Thinking about Natalia jolted him out of his reverie.

  Caroline's expression sobered. “Well, I suppose it couldn't have lasted forever.”

  “What?”

  “You were smiling. I'd never seen you smile. You looked . . .”

  “Like a grinning idiot?”

  “What? No. No, of course not.”

  He felt like an idiot, having gawked at her like a callow schoolboy. More the fool he, for dropping his guard, however briefly. Nothing had changed in the past two years; he hadn't changed.

  Don't let her get to you, he told himself. She's nobody, a river rat, just another St. Giles harlot offering to spread her legs for the highest bidder. He should remember what she was, and treat her accordingly, not let her worm her way under his skin.

  Yanking on her leash, he said, “Let's get out of here. And from now on, keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  That night, Rexton chose once again to sleep on the balcony, after sitting out there alone with his gin bottle for about an hour. And once again, Caroline lay awake half the night, her mind far too busy to settle into sleep.

  “From now on, keep your fucking mouth shut.” This, not ten seconds after he'd stood there smiling into her eyes in a way that had made her feel even more light-headed than she'd been.

  In the middle of the night, she heard a faint sound coming from outside, almost too faint to hear. She lay very still on her back, not even breathing, to concentrate on it. It sounded rather like fingers briskly rubbing a wool blanket.

  Slowly, so as not to make a sound, Caroline turned onto her side facing the balcony. The night was clear and her eyes had gotten used to the dark, so she had no trouble making out the chaise with Rexton lying upon it—or rather, reclining with his back propped up on pillows, because his body was too long to lie flat. She could see him down to his thighs, around which the blanket was bunched, leaving him otherwise naked. His eyes were closed, but his right arm was moving briskly, as if he were scratching his lower belly—except that his hand was fisted. It didn't take long for her to figure out what it was fisted around.

  She knew she should close her eyes and give him his privacy, but her attention was riveted, and all she could do was lie there and watch. He stroked faster and faster, the muscles of his arm hard and corded, hips flexing.

  His left hand appeared, clutching something white—a handkerchief, Caroline realized when he shook it out. This he pressed to the end of his sex as he squeezed and pumped. He arched his head and torso off the pillows, his entire body shuddering for several long seconds. There came a long exhalation from deep in his lungs, and then he sank back bone-lessly onto the pillows. He lay still for a moment, his chest heaving, gazing up at the sky. And then he turned and looked toward Caroline.

  She closed her eyes, consciously slowed her breathing.

  There was no sound for some time, and then she heard him sigh. She heard a slight rustling, and then the muted squeak of the cork popping out of the gin bottle.

  Lord Rexton must have his reasons for not bedding her, Caroline reflected, but clearly impotence was not one of them.

  Seven

  THE NEXT MORNING, Caroline emerged from a long, hot bath in the Pompeian salle de bain to find Rexton standing before the cheval mirror in his shirtsleeves, tying his long, voluminous white cravat. The nearly empty gin bottle stood open on the dressing table next to him.

  David Childe, Lord Rexton, was a singularly complicated man—erudite, yet dissipated, ruthless yet generous, and indecently beautiful. She wished he didn't fascinate her. She very much wished she hadn't lain in that steamy, rose-scented bath until her fingertips shriveled, revisiting in her mind the sight of him relieving his pent-up lust by his own hand. Never had she imagined that she might find such a thing arousing, yet the very memory of it had excited her passions to an almost excruciating degree. She might have resorted to slaking her lust as Rexton had slaked his, had she not forgotten to lock the bathroom door. The prospect of him walking in on her as she pleasured herself was too mortifying to risk.

  He eyed her reflection in the mirror, his gaze lighting on her damp hair, her fresh-scrubbed face, the gilded steel slave collar, and her breasts, their contours all too apparent beneath her thin silken wrapper. He met her gaze, and for a fleeting moment she saw a glimmer of heat in his eyes before they went cold and opaque, as if a shade had been pulled down over them. He'd been much the same yesterday, except for that brief moment of rapport in the bathhouse.

  “Shall I choose my own clothing, my lord?” she asked.

  “Is that not what I told you to—shit!” He yanked at the knot he'd just made, unwrapped the cravat, and flung it to the floor. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He'd sworn liberally in her presence since yesterday afternoon, as if she'd somehow been demoted in his mind from lady to trollop.

  Caroline picked up the cravat, which she folded just to have something to do while Rexton paced across the room and back again, the balls of his hands pressed against his forehead.

  “Do you have a headache, my lord?”

  “No. And I don't recall giving you leave to speak.”

  Since yesterday, he had demanded that she keep her counsel even in private.

  He sank into a red leather chair, leaned forward on his elbows, and scrubbed his hands over his face. Perhaps, she thought, it woul
d lighten his mood if she were to say what she'd wanted to say to him ever since she woke up that morning.

  “My lord, if I might just—”

  “Shut up!” He bounded up from the chair and stalked toward her until she felt one of the urn-shaped bedposts at her back. Hovering over her, flushed with fury, he yelled, “Can't you just fucking shut up?”

  Say it. Just say it. It will help. “I just wanted to thank you,” she said tremulously, twisting the cravat in her hands.

  He looked at her as if she were mad. “Whatever for?”

  “I know that you bought me as a kindness, to keep Lord Dunhurst from having me.”

  “Has it occurred to you that he may have been right when he accused me of buying you just to spite him?”

  She shook her head, which held strangely wobbly on her neck; her hands were trembling. “You did it for me. You want people to think you're cold and uncaring, but you can't hide your true nature. You have a good heart, a compassionate heart.”

  “This is all the heart I've got,” he said, holding up the Master's Pendant that hung around his neck. “It's all the heart I want. And if you think otherwise, you're a fool.”

  “Then, I'm a fool, because I know what's in here.” She pressed a hand to his chest, a wall of warm, solid flesh beneath cool linen.“I can feel it beating. It's the most real and vital part of you.”

  “Can you feel this?” Seizing her hand, he pulled it downward, molding it to his sex through his trousers. “This is a damn sight more real and vital than that lump of meat in my chest.”

  Caroline tried to pull away, but his grip was far too strong. He pressed it harder to his member, which swelled and stiffened as he rubbed her palm up and down its length. She turned her head and closed her eyes, trying not to think about what she was doing, what he was making her do—and how it was making her feel, God help her, to be touching him this way. The arousal she'd felt in the bath came rushing back with breathtaking force.

  Rexton seized her by the chin and jerked her head around to face him. She opened her eyes and saw his eyes, black and hungry and so close that she felt as if the sun had winked out, turning day into night.