Behind the Courtesan’s Mask

by Marguerite Kaye

  “I know,” Constance said sadly. “I do not condone it, but at the same time, Annalisa had a very hard life as a child. Our mother was unfortunate in her choice of men, and from the little Annalisa told me—” She broke off with a shudder. “When you are poor, as she was, and you look as she did, can you really blame her? I cannot. I can only thank God that I did not have to make such difficult choices.”

  “She profited very well from such choices.”

  “She is dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” Troy pulled out his own kerchief and dried her eyes for her. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to upset you. When all is said and done, she was your sister, and twins, I believe, are especially close.”

  “I never even knew I had a twin until six months ago, although I always thought there was part of me missing,” Constance said wistfully. “It was a relief when Annalisa turned up at my door.”

  “How came you to be separated?”

  “Our mother wished to spare us the orphanage when our father abandoned her, but she could not afford to keep us both. The couple who adopted me made it a condition that all contact be broken—they did not want me to know they were not my real parents. They never told me in order to protect me, I think. Unlike my poor mama and sister, I led a very respectable life.”

  It explained so much. Her innocent kisses. The surprise she seemed to take in her own pleasure. The lack of any art or artifice in her touch. And the something else he had been so unwilling to acknowledge. The rightness when their bodies joined, which he had never felt before. It explained so much, but not all. “But why? I don’t understand, why—when you realized that I—what the hell made you act as you did?”

  Constance folded the kerchief neatly into smaller and smaller squares. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

  Troy laughed. It was a very male sound. Low and throaty. The laugh of a man almost euphoric with relief. She was not La Perla. She was Constance Millburn, the relic of a country vicar and as confused by the whole thing as he was. The first woman in more than fifteen years to make him feel—he didn’t know what, but he knew it was something profound. She was no courtesan. Thank God for that!

  Though he felt a fleeting sorrow for Philip Montague, he had never actually met the lad. Time would heal his wounds. Perhaps time would also teach him that he’d had a lucky escape. “Try to explain,” he said, taking Constance’s hand. “Please, I’d really like to understand.”

  She dropped the kerchief onto the table. His hand was warm. So big, it covered hers completely. A shiver of recognition made the hairs on her forearm lift. “I don’t know if I can,” she said, coloring, lowering her eyes.

  Her hand was cold under his. Her fingers trembled. He saw with sudden clarity that it had meant something to her, as it had to him. It had nothing to do with money. Thank God. “Constance,” Troy said, savoring her name. “Please. Tell me.”

  He reached out to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. The graze of his thumb on her skin sent a spark of fire jolting through her. She felt edgy, as before, only more so. In the bare surroundings of the kitchen, clad in her own clothes, there could be no hiding behind the security of pretense, yet still she felt it. And he felt it too, she could see it in the way his pupils dilated, in the quick intake of his breath. Whatever existed between them may come to nothing, but it deserved the truth.

  “As I said, I never knew my sister,” Constance said. “I was raised in the country, and have led a very sheltered life. For nineteen years I was a dutiful daughter. For five I was a dutiful wife. For the last year I have been a chaste widow.”

  “You loved him, your husband?” Troy asked curtly.

  Constance bowed her head. “No, but I was—I tried to be fond. It was generally thought to be a good match for me. He was almost thirty years older than me, and hoped for an heir.” She bit her lip. “We were not blessed,” she whispered.

  She cleared her throat and continued, blushing painfully. “My husband was not a passionate man. I did not know that pleasure such as we—as I—I did not know. Annalisa had hinted, and I was wondering about her life, looking through her things, wearing her pearls, and I confess I found the idea alluring. And then you arrived and I felt as if I had dreamed you up. Don’t laugh.”

  “I don’t feel at all like laughing. I’m flattered.” More than flattered. It was preposterous, but he was immensely gratified. Delighted that he had been in every sense but one her first. Exalting that she had so charmingly confessed her pleasure. And no little aroused. Though that too was preposterous, because he had no intention of doing anything about it. None.

  Troy forced himself to let go of her hand, to sit back, to stop breathing in the intoxicating scent of her, to move his knee away from where it was almost touching hers. “How came your sister to track you down after all these years?”

  “Our mother had told her before her own death of my existence and subsequent marriage, but I think the contrasts between us were so great Annalisa did not want to embarrass me by making contact. But then after I was widowed, Annalisa found out she was dying—I am so glad she came to me, Troy. I wish she had come earlier. I nursed her. She told me about Mama, and the little she knew of our father. She told me much less of her life here in London. She was a little ashamed, I think. Or maybe she thought I would be. When you arrived, I was trying to imagine what it would have been like. I don’t know how it happened. I intended just to play along with you, to see how high a price you would put on me—on my sister—and then I found—I found—I found I could not stop.” Her voice had tailed off into a whisper, but she forced herself to go on, though she was unable to meet his eyes. “It was nothing to do with wanting to be Annalisa, though that is how it started. It was you. And me. Something between us. That is the part I cannot explain.”

  “You don’t have to. I felt it too. I can’t explain it any more than you can, but I could not stop myself either, even though I thought you—your sister—even though I thought you were just stringing me along in order to push me higher, I could not resist you.”

  “I wasn’t pretending. When we—when I—it wasn’t an act, Troy.”

  “I knew that, really, though I told myself it was. I wasn’t acting either. I was—compelled,” he confessed, surprising himself by doing so. Troy was never dishonest, but he was rarely frank. He smiled. “There is something about you that makes me do things—say things—I would not normally do or say.”

  It was the first time she had seen him smile. The first time she had seen his eyes lighten. Her own smile was both generous and innocently sensual. She realized, as it tugged at the corners of her mouth, that she had used it rarely of late. A lightness, breathlessness, such as she felt when galloping over the downs, enveloped her, fueled by the simple relief of having confessed, of having the truth between them. “You’re not angry?”

  Troy took her hand again, clasping her thin fingers around his own, distracted for a moment by the way two became one so very easily. “No. I don’t know what I am,” he said wryly, for yet again the diplomat in him had been subsumed by the man with this unaccountable need to be honest. “I cannot even pretend that I wish you had told me the truth, for then it would not have—we would not have—and I cannot wish that undone,” he admitted.

  “Nor I,” Constance whispered.

  Her admission thrilled him, making him wish all sorts of impossible things, but he had to leave for Italy in a few days, and he did not want complications, loose ends. This woman was different. Instinctively he knew that a brief affair would not satisfy either of them, though it was all he could offer. He pushed aside the voice that whispered to him that anything was better than nothing, that he would regret walking away. “What will you do now?” Troy asked, hoping and not hoping that she had plans that would decide the matter for him.

  “I don’t know,” Constance replied. “Sell the house. There are stocks, shares, jewelry, so much I can’t imagine what I will do with it all. I don’t need it. I don’t really want it.”
/>   “Give it to a magdalen then, if you wish to do something apt in your sister’s memory.”

  “No! Those places, they punish the women who seek refuge there. I cannot condone how Annalisa lived, but there are others, less fortunate, who are forced to make their living in such a way. It is not their fault. Not always.”

  “Then found your own more compassionate magdalen.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about the future.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips. “Don’t give it all away. Your sister would have wanted you to be comfortable.”

  “My twin. A part of me that I still don’t really know, will never know.” His lips were warm and soft. Her pulses quickened at his touch.

  “Do you look alike?” he asked.

  “There is a portrait of her upstairs,” Constance replied. “I can show you if you like.” She led the way up the narrow kitchen stairs. He tried not to look at the swaying movement of her hips under the simple muslin gown, tried not to gaze at the tiny waist, the curve of her back, tried not to remember the way those heavy tresses of rich auburn hair hung down to caress the slope of her bottom. Through the hallway, up the main staircase, images from before flashed through his mind. He tried not to remember, but he could not help it. Her innocence, her frank confession of desire, the knowledge that he and only he had aroused her, had given her pleasure, made it so much more difficult to resist than when he had thought her a professional.

  The portrait hung on the wall above the fireplace. La Perla gazed over her shoulder provocatively. Deliberately captivating. The almond eyes were the same. The hair the same. The mouth…

  “She is very beautiful, but not as beautiful as you. I mean it,” Troy added, noting her skepticism. “Your mouth is different, softer,” he said, running his thumb over Constance’s bottom lip. “And when you smile, you have a dimple just here,” he said, touching her cheek.

  She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but his touch was sending shivers up and down her spine, making her pulses race then slow, kindling the embers of the fire in her belly that had not quite died. “She had a fuller figure than I,” she said distractedly. “Her gowns are a little loose on me.”

  “Your figure is perfect,” Troy replied, his own breathing a trifle ragged. He allowed his hand to drift round to the soft skin at her nape, his thumb to stroke the pulse at her throat. “Such perfect breasts,” he said, trailing his fingers along the fluttering fichu at her neck. He could feel them rising and falling rapidly. “It is as if they were made for my touch,” he said, cupping their fullness. He should not be doing this, but he could not seem to stop.

  “You would not believe the amount of clothes my sister owned,” Constance said, breaking away, throwing the door of the dressing room wide. “I have no idea what to do with them all.”

  She pulled open a drawer, taking out the neatly folded tippets and gloves, scarves and stockings, casting them into the air. “I could never wear such fripperies.”

  The silk and lace and kid and gauze fluttered to her feet. She picked up another handful, throwing it up into the air. “Look at it, some of it is shocking. Red stockings. Black stockings.”

  “You wore black stockings the other day.” Troy picked one up from where it had landed on a claw-foot stool.

  “Yes. I did.” She couldn’t think straight, not when he looked at her like that, in a sort of smoldering way. She tugged at the fichu on her bosom, pulling it free from her gown in an effort to cool herself. “Today, though, I am wearing white,” she said, though why she said it she had no idea.

  “Black for Annalisa, white for Constance,” Troy said softly, letting the black silk stocking trail over the golden skin of her bosom. “I think I prefer white.”

  “Do you?”

  The stocking fluttered to the floor. Troy pulled open the bottom drawer of the chest. “What have we here?”

  Constance gasped in surprise. “Good grief, what on earth?” she exclaimed as a row of masks were revealed, some simple silk sashes with eye slits, some leather, some porcelain, a few taking the forms of various fantastic and devilish creatures. Behind them, lined up in a row, a series of whips. A birch. A rod. A cat-o’-nine tails. And another, with a gilt handle, the black thongs like fringes. “Good heavens.”

  Troy picked up a silk mask trimmed with jewels and feathers and fitted it over her face, turning her to the mirror. A wicked creature gazed back at Constance, eyes glinting mysteriously.

  “Like a black cat,” Troy said, his solid form hard against her back as he tugged the pins from her hair. It tumbled down in a heavy fall. He ran his fingers through it, curling it round her face. The curls made her look abandoned. He bent over to kiss her shoulder, pushing her gown aside. In the mirror she watched him, his dark skin making hers seem alabaster by comparison.

  He took a fringed whip from the drawer and trailed its ends over her skin, causing a delicious tickling sensation. “This is to chasten you, should you scratch me with your claws,” he whispered. “You have no idea how much I would like to feel them raking down my back as I take you.”

  Constance shivered.

  Troy unlaced her gown, and pulled it over her shoulders, trailing the fringes of the whip along the exposed flesh. “Constance.”

  Her name on his lips sounded dark as molasses, sweet and sinful. She closed her eyes and leaned back into his heat, relishing the way her bottom nestled into the hard length of him, relishing the knowledge that she had roused him.

  “Constance, I cannot deceive myself a second time,” Troy murmured, his tongue tracing the shell of her ear. “If you do not tell me to stop, I will not be able to.”

  In the mirror, her eyes glittered behind the mask. A rosy flush colored her breasts. Heat spilled from her belly down to her sex. “Troy.” His name, the shape of desire. “I don’t want you to stop,” she said, and turned around in his arms.

  His kisses were all she remembered and more. Sweeter. Softer. Gentler. His tongue caressed. His lips sought to know. And to rouse. He kissed her slowly, luxuriating in the taste of her. Her dress gave way with only a little struggle. Blushing, she stood before him in her simple white chemise, her unadorned corset and plain stockings.

  “Constance,” he said, “you are utterly beautiful and completely irresistible.” Then he kissed her again, tugging loose the strings of her mask, dropping the fringed whip, and it was there as before, the flaring, white-hot sheet of passion, and she was aching for him, wanting this time to see every bit of him, tugging at his trouser buttons and ripping at his shirt so frantically that he laughed, and quickly discarded them himself.

  Naked, muscled and hugely erect, he stood before her, laughing still, but nervous too, which was unlike him. But this was all so unlike him. It mattered. She ran her fingers over his shoulders. His arms. Her palms caressed the dip and swell of his chest, his abdomen, his flanks, fleetingly brushing the tip of his erection. Dear God, but he was ready. More than ready. “Wait,” he said harshly. “Wait. This time I want to show you—just wait.”

  He kissed her reverently. He unlaced her carefully, kissing the wings of her shoulder blades, each knot of her spine. He kissed the delightful cleft of her buttocks as he rolled her chemise down, and then rolled her pantaloons down too. White cotton. Who would have thought that white cotton could be so arousing? She stood before him now in just her stockings, tied with white ribbons. A goddess of a woman. Her nipples hard, dark pink. Her mouth dark pink. Her hair fiery. Her eyes slumberous. He ran his hands over her curves, letting his mouth follow the swell of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the dip into her navel. She moaned, and he kissed the inside of her thighs, satin soft. Gently, he pulled her down onto the floor, to lie in the mounds of discarded satin and lace. Gently, he spread her legs, wanting to give her what he was certain now no one else had, wanting to worship her as he was certain now he would never want to worship another.

  “Now it is time for the other kisses we talked about,” he said
hoarsely, before moving down, to plunge his tongue into that darker, sweeter, moister heat.

  Constance jerked in surprise, just as he had known she would. “Hush,” he said, stilling her, stroking her thighs, kissing her belly. “Hush,” he said as she relaxed back under his touch, and he licked again into her sex. “Let me savor you.”

  She could feel the caress of silk on her bottom. Silk too where his lips—and his tongue—touched her so intimately, so unbearably gently. Four days ago she thought she had hit the very heights of passion, today she was already on a higher plateau. He wanted her, he cared about her pleasure as much as his, but more important, she knew for certain that it was she he desired. Constance. Not anyone else. Her, and her alone.

  His caress was languorous. She felt weighted, heavy. And hot. And now restless, as his tongue flicked and circled and she grew hot then cold then hot, felt as if he was winding her tight. She moaned, clutched at his hair, arched under him, wanting, waiting. His touch gained focus. She thought she would break with the strain of clutching tight. He kissed her sex deeply, his fingers plunging inside her at the same time, reaching high inside her, and she came with a crashing, smashing, earth-shattering force that made her scream with pleasure, scream his name over and over, bucking under him, with an abandon that made the first time seem tame.

  Breathless, flying, soaring, yet she still wanted more. Not his mouth. Not his fingers. She wanted him. Inside her. Now. Pushing herself upright, breathing hard, she kissed him, planting wild kisses on his chest, biting kisses on his shoulder, dark sinful kisses on his lips. “Troy. Oh, God, Troy. Please.”

  He picked her up in his arms, strode over to the bed and threw her down on the fur blanket. A glorious moment of looking, just looking, before he claimed her, tilting her bottom up, wrapping her legs around his waist, before burying himself deep inside her, more slowly this time, relishing every inch, feeling her muscles stretch and pulse around his shaft, relishing the stark pleasure etched on her face, knowing it was reflected in his. She tilted, and he eased in more, higher, touching the unbearably sensitive spot that made her scream with pleasure again. Then he paused, breathing hard, kissing her passionately, before he withdrew equally slowly, then thrust hard again.