Running a hand through his hair, he thought back to his sister and her excitement over the impending change in their fortune. It would break her heart to learn that he would be unable to deliver on his promises, and it would ruin them all for Norton & Rivers to fail to recover.
“Desperately,” he admitted. “But that is not your problem. It’s mine.”
“It may not be, but I don’t relish sending you away and accepting defeat,” she argued. “Please, won’t you try one more time? Let me talk to her and smooth the way, then you may return tomorrow. I promise you will find her far more amenable.”
Edward wanted to press her for answers and discover just why this was so important to Helene. Most aunts would want their nieces seeking a husband, not a courtesan, and remain chaste in the process. But he’d understood that theirs was an irregular relationship from the start. And truly, it was none of his affair. If Clare could be convinced to give him a chance, it would solve all his problems for the time being. The amount he stood to gain in this arrangement would be enough to pay the debts of Norton & Rivers, update Caroline’s wardrobe, pay his staff for a few months, and ensure they had more to eat than chicken, bread, and eggs. With the debts paid for the business, he could then move forward with ship repairs and open the line for business once again. Within half a year they’d earn enough to turn a profit. Should his time with Clare end before he felt comfortable with the business’s state of affairs, he’d simply seek another keeper, and another, until he no longer felt the need to go on doing this.
But, of course, for all that to happen he needed Clare to accept him into her life and her bed. He couldn’t give Benedict cause to cut him loose, and he didn’t have another fortnight to wait for a new keeper to be found for him.
Devil take it. This had to work, for he truly could afford no other option now, not when the business was on the very edge of collapsing forever.
“Very well,” he relented, finishing off the knot in his cravat. “I will return tomorrow afternoon, but if Clare still doesn’t want this, I will not press the issue.”
Helene beamed at him. “Thank you for being so understanding. I know this situation isn’t typical, but I promise it will be worth your while.”
“It’s no trouble,” he said, allowing her to usher him from the room.
As he followed Helene downstairs, Edward realized there was one other reason he’d let her convince him to try again. Aside from needing the funds, he found himself unable to forget the sight of Clare—eyes round with shock, then twinkling with amusement before melting into vibrant blue pools of desire. The feel of her body against him, the taste of her, the little sounds she’d made when their tongues had met. He wanted her, badly. More than he ought to since he’d only known her for a few minutes. He’d likely go to bed tonight with a hard cock and a mind overwhelming him of thoughts of what might have happened had she not ended their kiss.
Yes, he would return, and he would employ every weapon in his seductive arsenal until she gave in.
Edward left Helene’s townhouse with a smirk curving his lips as he thought over the pleasures to come in Clare’s bed. If a man had to sell himself for coin, he might as well do it with a woman as desirable as her.
Chapter 3
Clare slammed the clay pot on the wooden surface of her worktable, rattling the various implements she used in her study of plants. Her movements were abrupt as she shoveled soil into the pot, her teeth gritted so hard it made her jaw ache.
Typically, she found peace and happiness inside the small greenhouse filling the back courtyard, but today her anger and annoyance had followed her in here. She glowered at her collection of plants—some fully bloomed and others in various states of growth. The accomplishments of her various crossbreeding experiments paled in comparison to her embarrassment over what had just occurred in her bedroom. What had been meant as a gift hadn’t made her very happy. Instead, it only reminded Clare of her one and only experience with intercourse, an altogether uninteresting affair lasting a single night. Upon telling Aunt Helene about the forgettable encounter, she’d sworn off romantic relationships with men altogether. Why subject herself to the sweating, groaning attentions of anyone else if she would simply lie there in puzzled disappointment afterward?
In the years since then, she’d found joy in her work in the greenhouse, managing her various collections, and deepening her friendships with other like-minded intellectuals of both genders. While more than a few men had made their interest known, Clare had always rebuffed them as kindly as possible, keeping all her relationships with the opposite sex on a fairly platonic level.
Despite having been told that love and desire were powerful, all-consuming forces, she had never experienced them for herself. Even while finding a few men of her acquaintance attractive, she’d never been seized with the urge to form an attachment to one—physical or otherwise. Because of this, dreams of a husband and children had been pushed aside in favor of her other pursuits. If there was no man to be found who could make her want it with all her heart, then Clare saw no reason to bind herself to anyone for the rest of her life. She wanted it all—the love, the happiness, the desire—or she wanted none of it. She was content with life as it was, being an heiress in pursuit of her hobbies and intellectual diversions.
Using her gloved fingers to create a well in the soil for her seeds, she scoffed in disbelief. Just what had her aunt thought to accomplish with this little stunt? Clare had assumed Helene had given up after her insistence that it wouldn’t always be like her first time had fallen on deaf ears. Aunt Helene had engaged in her own discreet affairs over the years, so she certainly had more experience to draw on than Clare. That didn’t make her eager to go diving into the beds of every man who paid her attention in hopes that one of them would prove better than the first. It hardly seemed worth the time, and she had better things to do; such as potting her hybrid seeds and cross-pollinating another set of parent plants to make a fresh batch.
She covered her seeds with soil using far more force than was necessary, but she had no other outlet for her frustration. Peeling off one of her work gloves, she scratched out a note in her journal. The lead of her pencil grated against the paper with swift strokes as she recorded the date she’d planted the seeds born of cross-pollination between the candidum and superbum species of Lilium.
The results of her other hybrid experiments sat strewn on every available space beneath the glass ceiling—blood red lilies with orange centers, others boasting purple petals bleeding toward white tips, and her personal favorite, a brilliant overgrowth of blossoms flaunting magenta petals melting into sunny yellow. The Lilium superbum seeds had been a gift from the wife of an American botanist she’d befriended years ago. The foreign plant had thrived in the moist, humid environment of her greenhouse, and now she could discover whether the brilliant colors of the Turk’s cap lily would burst through with the shape and hardiness of the Madonna lily.
She’d just set the first pot aside and reached for another when the door opened and Aunt Helene appeared before her, brows knit with concern. Giving her aunt a glare, she then went back to her work, filling this pot with as much aggression as she had the first.
“I can see you are still angry with me,” Helene declared, watching Clare shovel the soil as if burying a dead body instead of seeds. “You usually handle your plants with more care.”
“Seeds are hardy,” Clare argued without looking up. “They are in no danger of suffering at my hands.”
Helene leaned closer, filling the periphery of her vision. “And what of misguided, contrite aunts?”
Pausing with spade in hand, she flicked an irritated gaze at her aunt. “Contrite, you?”
Helene chuckled when Clare issued a rough snort, then pulled a stool closer to the table before sinking onto it. Hands braced on the table, she turned her head to admire the Turk’s cap.
“Perhaps not contrite about my motives,” she admitted. “But the way I went about springing it on y
ou…I suppose it wasn’t very well done.”
“It certainly was not,” Clare agreed, carefully extracting more seeds from the small ceramic pot she’d stored them in. “Though I question your motives as well as the execution of your little gift.”
“Is it so wrong of me to want more for you, Clare?”
Slamming her spade down and finally meeting her aunt’s gaze, she shook her head. “More than what? A life I chose and enjoy just the way it is? You’ve always allowed me my independence, and I am grateful for that. At what point did that independence end? When you decided it is time for me to take a lover?”
Helene squared her shoulders, displaying the same stubbornness Clare had learned directly from her. “I have also gone out of my way to open your eyes to the boundless experiences of the world: travel, cuisine, art, intellectual pursuits—”
“I see,” Clare spat. “Now that the others have been accomplished, intercourse must be next on your list of experiences.”
Raising an eyebrow, her aunt gave her a knowing look. “I didn’t have to introduce you to that particular experience, did I? You went out and discovered it on your own. Intercourse isn’t what I was referring to, CeCe. Pleasure…that is the experience I was speaking of.”
Despite not being an ignorant maiden, Clare’s face flushed hot and she broke Helene’s gaze. “That word and its connotation are purely subjective. I derive pleasure from my collections, from working in this greenhouse, from meeting and getting to know scholars and artists and the sorts of people who stimulate my mind.”
“My dear, your mind is merely one part of you. Do you want to die an old, shriveled up woman who’s never known what it’s like to want someone to the point of madness? Trust me, there are enough of those amongst the ranks of the ton, and you do not want to be one of them.”
Clare crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that how you see me—as some sort of hopeless case in need of charity?”
Helene sighed, clearly exasperated, and seemed to try to remain calm in the face of Clare’s anger. “Of course not. I just did not want your first experience to make you believe it isn’t worth trying again with someone else. Someone discreet, whose only aim is to please you. Who you can try it with as many times and in as many ways as you wish until you’ve decided what you like and what you don’t like. Why, in truth, it sounds rather a lot like your hybrid experiments!”
Furrowing her brow, she studied her aunt for signs of insanity. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Rising to her feet, Helene grinned. “Hear me out, CeCe. In this greenhouse, you take this white lily.”
“Lilium candidum,” Clare grumbled, unable to let go of her habit of reminding her aunt of the scientific terms for the plants.
“Right,” Helene relented. “You take this Lilium candidum, and mate it with this…this…”
“Lilium superbum.”
“Yes, such a pretty plant, by the way. You mate them several times and in different ways in order to discover the outcome of what they can create together. What these two plants produce will not come out the same as what you make if you were to cross this same Lilium candidum with this.”
Clare scowled as her aunt pointed toward an entirely different plant. “Lilium henyri,” she offered grudgingly.
Helene nodded her thanks, and pressed on. “At times, you might experiment with plants that produce an undesirable outcome. But, do you give up on the process entirely? Of course not! You simply move forward and find your Lilium candidum a new match…one that will produce the most vibrant flowers you’ve ever seen.”
As her aunt’s words sank in, Clare could not help but admit they had the ring of truth to them. Her one-night affair had been just as Helene described—an experiment to appease her curiosity. Displeased with the results, she had decided it was not worth pursuing again, with the same man or with anyone else.
Now that her initial anger had faded and she’d decided to forgive Helene for the artless presentation of her gift, Clare supposed she could see that her aunt meant well. Her motives had certainly been pure, even if a bit odd. But then, their relationship had never been like that of normal mothers and daughters, even though this woman had raised her. She’d never made Clare feel ashamed of her inquisitive mind, and had answered every question she’d ever posed with blunt honesty. Of course she would think it acceptable for her to introduce Clare to a male courtesan.
With a sigh, she peered at Helene over the rim of her spectacles. “You might have explained it that way before sending me into that room, you know.”
Helene threw her head back and laughed, the boisterous sound echoing through the small space. “As I said, my methods might have been ill-judged but I regret nothing. I simply cannot allow you to quit after only one go. Edward is receiving an exorbitant sum to be at your beck and call. Aside from that, he appeared quite…virile. More so than that Barnaby.”
Clare snickered. “His name was Baldwin.”
Wrinkling her brow, Helene shook her head slowly. “No…I am almost certain his name was Barnaby. Don’t try to make me feel old, my mind is a steel trap—I never forget a name or a face.”
“Are you certain about that?” Clare teased.
“Of course I am,” Helene insisted. “Perhaps you have forgotten—your mind’s way of removing such an unpleasant memory. So you’ve forgotten his name as well. It was Barnaby, by the way.”
“God, you might just be right,” Clare murmured. “Baldwin Barnaby was the most forgettable man I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing. He had a weak chin and even weaker hands.”
She cringed at the memory of those hands on her, and swiftly pushed it from her thoughts. If she dwelt on that for too long, she’d find herself retreating from this idea even swifter than before.
“Edward certainly didn’t look as if he had weak hands.”
He didn’t, and Clare could now attest to that. There was nothing weak or off-putting about him, something that became easier to accept now that her ire had cooled. The press of his body against hers had been hard, warm, and masculine, such a contrast to her own form in a way she’d never given thought to, even when lying with Baldwin Barnaby. Edward had kissed her with a commanding finesse, making her lose complete hold of her senses with nothing more than the touch of his mouth. Oh, but she couldn’t forget the hands now that her aunt had brought them up. His touch had sent electricity arcing over her skin, and an achy tightness to the tips of her breasts.
It had all happened so fast, she hadn’t been able to discern just what that heady, confusing feeling had been until now.
Desire. Edward had stoked passion in her with nothing but a kiss, something her first lover had failed to do while lying naked between her spread legs.
“CeCe?” Helene prodded when she failed to respond. “Are you all right? Thinking of Edward’s hands?”
She met her aunt’s wicked grin with a slow nod, though her mind took her far beyond that suggest.
Yes, I am thinking of his hands…and his mouth…and that ridiculously perfect body. And his cock.
She gave her head a swift shake before her thoughts took her any farther down that road. Entertaining the idea was all well and good, but she couldn’t lose her head over it. If she decided to go through with it, she would approach it just as her aunt had suggested: as an intellectual experiment. She would attempt intercourse with Edward as many times as it took for her to decide whether she was capable of the sort of fiery passion her aunt described, or whether a kiss would be the most she could ever enjoy. No other man had managed to bring such curiosity to the surface again, and now that Edward had, Clare was gripped with the need to explore further. It didn’t have to get in the way of her life if she did not let it. Nothing had to change beyond a new level of enlightenment and the thrill of learning something new.
“Do you know…I feared there might be something wrong with me,” she whispered. “For me not to enjoy it.”
Helene reached across
the table to brace a hand on Clare’s shoulder, giving her a look heavy with innuendo. “My dear CeCe, if a woman doesn’t enjoy it, there’s nothing wrong with her…the fault lies entirely with her lover.”
Clare grinned. “So you are saying this is entirely Barnaby’s fault?”
“Yes,” Helene agreed. “It was entirely Barnaby’s fault. Give Edward a chance. Give yourself a chance. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. As well, I’ve already written a sizable bank draft to cover his expenses for the next month. You might at least give him thirty days’ worth of chances before deciding to put a stop to it.”
She huffed with disbelief, still grappling with this notion of men acting as courtesans. It was certainly convenient, she supposed. And, she’d always been a firm believer in equality between the sexes, even in a world that clearly belonged to men. If someone had thought to cater to women in the same way men were privileged to enjoy, then Clare could find no fault with it.
“Well then,” she said, peeling off her gloves and setting them aside. “If he’s already been paid for, there seems to be nothing left for me to do but get your money’s worth.”
The two exchanged mischievous grins before Helene rounded the table and pulled Clare into an embrace.
“Happy birthday, CeCe.”
Chapter 4
Edward arrived at the Dunnaby residence the following afternoon to find Helene descending the front steps with a valise held in one hand. A carriage waited on the street for her, and a liveried footman stepped forward to accept her baggage as she came off the bottom step. She smiled at the sight of him, the expression reminding him far too much of her niece’s wide grin.
“Edward, so good to see you again,” she said pausing before the conveyance and turning to face him. “Thank you for returning after yesterday’s disastrous beginning. CeCe and I have had the chance to talk it over and she has come to accept my gift.”
Tempting the Bluestocking: A Gentleman Courtesans Novella Page 4
