by Anna Bradley
“That’s splitting hairs, Lissie.” Lady Annabel took another draw on her cheroot to emphasize her point. “It’s the spirit of the thing that matters, and I never cheat on a wager.”
Lady Elizabeth gave her an arch look. “Honor among thieves, Annabel?”
“No. Honor among wicked widows.” Lady Annabel adopted a virtuous tone. “After all, my dears, if we don’t have our reputations, we don’t have anything at all.”
A moment of stunned silence greeted this statement, then all four ladies laughed appreciatively.
“A bit late for that as well, I’m afraid.” Lady Elizabeth downed the rest of her whiskey in one swallow, then indicated their surroundings with a wave of her empty glass. “Have you forgotten where we are?”
Lady Annabel shrugged. “We’re wearing masques. If no one recognizes us, it’s just as if we weren’t here at all.”
Aurelie giggled. “A convenient sort of morality, is it not?”
“My dear.” Lady Annabel smiled through a thin curl of smoke. “Is there any other kind?”
Charlotte studied her cheroot. It looked as long as it had when she’d first lit it, the blasted thing. “As far as the spirit of the wager is concerned, Annabel, I think our honor is safe, regardless of whether or not we smoke the cheroots. Lord Devon wagered we wouldn’t enter the whorehouse. The cheroots and whiskey are incidental.”
Aurelie downed her whiskey, and stubbed out her cheroot in the empty glass. “Certainment. We’ve won the wager already, and here’s the proof.” She held up the cheroot for their inspection, then threw the remains of it into her reticule. “Just as well, too, because that dreadful cheroot is staining my glove.”
Lady Annabel continued to smoke her cheroot with every appearance of enjoyment. “Lord Devon is terribly wicked, is he not? Imagine his challenging us to enter a whorehouse! We should cut his acquaintance, my dears.”
“He’s no wickeder than we are.” Charlotte had no intention of cutting Lord Devon. Wicked or not, he’d proved most diverting at a time when she badly needed the distraction. “In any case, I confess I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a brothel.”
Lady Elizabeth nodded. “Oh, I have, as well. I thought it would be different, though—more exciting, somehow.”
Charlotte glanced around the room. “More exciting than bare-bosomed ladies being pawed at by sotted gentlemen? Yes, there’s nothing so unusual in that, I’m afraid.” One could see the same thing in many aristocratic ballrooms in London, though the ton did their best to hide their sins under a thin veneer of respectability. Failing that, they hid in secluded alcoves and behind the shrubbery in dimly lit gardens.
“No. It looks rather like Lord Harrow’s ball last week.” Lady Elizabeth sounded disappointed. “Even the same people are here. Look, there’s Lord Dudley. Oh dear. I’m sorry for that poor woman he’s groping, for I suppose she has to have him, doesn’t she?”
Aurelie observed the couple for a moment. “Not to worry, ma petite. He doesn’t look as if he’s in any condition to, ah . . . perform.”
Lady Annabel snorted. “No, he doesn’t. With any luck he’ll lose consciousness. I hope she fleeces his pockets if he does.”
Charlotte said nothing, but reached up to make sure her masque was securely tied. She hadn’t noticed Lord Dudley before. She scanned the room again to see who else she’d overlooked. For pity’s sake, half the ton was here. The male half. She knew, of course, that aristocratic gentlemen spent more time with whores and their mistresses than they did their own wives, but good heavens—weren’t there other bordellos in London?
If any of these gentlemen were sober enough to focus, they’d recognize her easily, even with her masque on. Charlotte chewed on her lower lip. No, it wouldn’t do at all for Ellie and Cam to discover this latest escapade. She never should have promised her sister she’d give up her mad frolics, for she’d known even as the words left her mouth it was a promise she couldn’t keep.
Wretched things, promises.
She’d take care to avoid them in future. It was one thing to be a scandal, but quite another to be a scandal and a liar. She rose to her feet. “This was amusing enough for a time, but it grows dull. Shall we go find Devon?”
Annabel took a final draw on her cheroot. “Dear me, Charlotte. Bored in a bordello? How jaded you are.”
Charlotte shrugged. “Perhaps it’s more amusing for the prostitutes.”
“Perhaps,” said Lady Elizabeth. “But I draw the line at finding out. Besides, I believe the cheroot has made Aurelie ill.” She held out a hand to help the Comtesse rise from the divan.
Lady Annabel jumped to her feet. “Oh, dear. She looks quite green. We’d better hurry.”
Every eye in the room turned in their direction as they made their way to the door, but this time the men’s scrutiny felt more ominous. No one said a word to her, and no one approached, but Charlotte’s flesh prickled in warning. The sooner they rejoined Devon, the better—
Oh, hell and damnation. She still had the blasted cheroot clutched between her fingers. It had burned to the end at last, and now it threatened to singe her glove. She hurried back to the fireplace and tossed it into the flames. If some leering scoundrel got a peek under her masque because of that dratted cheroot, she was going to have Annabel’s head—
“Leaving so soon, sweet?” A strong, muscular arm snaked around the middle of her body and jerked her to an abrupt halt. “But we haven’t yet been introduced.”
For a moment Charlotte froze with shock—only a moment, but that was all it took for her friends to vanish into the crowd. “Unhand me, sir,” she ordered in the haughtiest, most marchioness-like tone she could muster.
“Unhand you? Oh, no. I don’t think so.” The voice was low, and so close she felt his breath tickle her ear. “What fun would that be?”
He spoke pleasantly enough, but underneath the amusement was a thread of ice that made Charlotte squirm in his grasp. “Release me this instant. How dare you?”
He jerked her back against a chest as hard and unyielding as a stone wall. “How dare I claim a whore in a whorehouse? I assure you, sweetheart, it takes no daring at all.”
Charlotte could tell by the width of his chest and the hard muscles bulging in his forearm it would do no good to struggle, so she went still and tried to collect her wits. No doubt her friends thought she was right behind them. They’d return for her when they realized she wasn’t, and—
“Not much of a challenge, I admit, to bed a whore,” he went on, “but sometimes a man wants his pleasures to come easy.” He ran a caressing hand over her hip and around the curve of her bottom, then pulled her tighter against him. “And you, sweetheart, are easy.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. Oh, no. His chest wasn’t the only hard thing pressed against her back. He was becoming . . . engorged. He’d soon lose all use of his mental faculties, and she’d never be able to reason him out of this madness. She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak calmly. “Sir, you can’t possibly think to—”
“Take you right here in the parlor, with every drunken scoundrel in London gaping at us? Tempting thought, but I’m a gentleman, sweetheart. I have a room upstairs.”
Upstairs? Oh, for pity’s sake. Where were her friends? Why hadn’t they come back for her yet? If they returned and couldn’t find her . . .
Charlotte gave an experimental kick and managed to land a blow to his shin. She heard a pained grunt behind her, but instead of loosening his grip he hitched her higher against his chest, so only the tips of her slippers touched the floor.
“Come now, sweet,” he crooned into her ear. “I promise I’ll take good care of you.”
Charlotte was rather alarmed by this point, but somehow his low rasp penetrated the fog of panic in her brain. His voice. For one wild moment she thought she recognized it, had heard it before, whispering in her ear, promising . . . something. She stilled, trying to place it, but the memory danced just outside her grasp.
“That�
��s better,” he murmured. “You don’t really want to give all these fine gentlemen a show, do you?”
Fine gentlemen. Of course. She was in a whorehouse, wasn’t she?
She was in a whorehouse, her friends had abandoned her, and this large, amorous gentleman—who thought, quite reasonably, that she was a whore—was about to drag her upstairs. The other fine gentlemen in question—all of whom also believed her to be a whore—ogled her with ill-concealed excitement. A number of them had staggered to their feet and edged closer to get a better look at the struggle, so she and her tormentor were now surrounded by a circle of drooling scoundrels.
Any of whom could decide at any moment to tear off her masque.
She let her body go limp against her captor’s hard chest. Her best alternative by far was to let him take her upstairs, and then try to reason with him in private. If that didn’t work, she could always bash him over the head with the washbasin. Whorehouses did have washbasins, didn’t they? One would think they’d need them—
“Wise choice, love.” The arm wrapped around the middle of her body eased a fraction when she made no move to flee. “You won’t regret it.”
You will. Best not to say so aloud, though. She’d need the element of surprise to escape unscathed this time. She permitted him to maneuver her across the room toward the stairwell, and up the stairs in front of him, his hand heavy against her lower back. Once they reached the second floor he hurried her down the hallway to the last door on the left, and thrust her through it.
The door thudded closed behind him, and she heard the unmistakable scrape of the key as it turned in the lock.
Charlotte scurried away from him before he could grab her, toss her onto the bed and . . . well, do whatever gentlemen did with whores, which was, she guessed, not the same thing they did with their wives. She wasn’t certain, having never been mistaken for a whore before, but she had a vague notion gentlemen tended to skip the preliminaries where prostitutes were concerned, and she’d rather not reason with him while flat on her back.
“I haven’t got all night, love.” His boots rang on the wooden floor, and she felt the heat of his body close behind her, though he didn’t touch her. “Take off your clothing and lay down on the bed.”
Charlotte took a quick survey of the room. Ah. There, on a table by the far side of the bed—a washbasin, old and chipped, to be sure, but if she couldn’t make him see reason, it would do the job. She took a stealthy step toward it, drew a steadying breath into her lungs and turned to face him. “I’m afraid, sir, you’ve made a rather unfortunate mistake—”
She got no further. The words lodged in her throat, and her sentence ended on a choked gasp. Every limb in her body went numb with shock, and for one horrible moment she was paralyzed, unable to think or do anything other than stare up at him.
Oh God, she’d dreaded this moment—dreaded it and longed for it since his regiment returned to England. Now the moment was here. He was here.
Julian.
“It’s you who’s made the mistake, sweetheart, not me.”
His voice. She had heard it before, soft in her ear, his whispered promises—he loved her, his heart was hers, always—and, oh, she’d believed him, she’d treasured his every word, and trusted him with the absolute trust of first love. It made her chest ache even now, more than a year later, to think of such a love.
Maybe he had loved her. Maybe he’d meant to keep his promises, but it hadn’t made any difference then, and it made even less difference now.
“Do you like what you see?”
She jerked her gaze from his face and shoved the memories back into their secret places in the darkest corners of her mind. Such a question needed no answer. It was like asking if she preferred a sky obscured by thick, black clouds where once there’d been nothing but stars.
His face, that handsome face, once so dear to her. He was handsome still—more so, even, now that life had filled in the hollows of youth and etched faint lines of experience into the corners of his eyes. He had the same dark waves falling in a silky drift across his forehead, and the same wide mouth with the full, sensuous bottom lip. She’d spent hours tracing his lips with the tips of her fingers.
But his eyes . . . they were wrong. They were still dark and liquid with a slight upward tilt at the corners, and a long, thick fringe of sooty lashes, but there was no joy in them. No kindness. They were suspicious. Watchful.
At one time she’d thought his eyes the very essence of him. Perhaps they still were.
Her silence didn’t seem to matter to him.
“I’m afraid it makes no difference whether you like it or not.” He eased his coat over his shoulders and tossed it onto a bench at the end of the bed. “It matters only that I like what I see, and I do, sweet. I like it very much, and I’ve paid to see all of it, so remove your clothing.”
His tone was bland now, nearly inflectionless. If she hadn’t known every nuance of his voice, hadn’t heard it echo in her dreams, she might have missed the subtle note of challenge. But she heard it, and as soon as she did, she knew.
Her masque hadn’t fooled him. He knew who she was. He’d known from the first moment he saw her. She was sure of it. How could he not? He’d brought her up here on purpose then, so he could . . .
What? Teach her a lesson. Put her in her place.
Her breath caught on a strange, grim little laugh. Did he really believe there was a lesson she hadn’t yet learned? Did he truly think she hadn’t been shoved into her place, again and again and with such brutal force it had taken every shred of strength she could muster to crawl out of it?
“Remove your clothing.”
Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what, sweet? Getting what I paid for?”
If he felt any remorse—or any emotion at all—it didn’t show in his face. He was utterly composed, in perfect control of himself. Bored, even, like a lazy cat who held a mouse’s tail under his paw, and was biding his time until he slashed a claw through its belly.
Bored, yes, but not so bored he was ready to end his game. Very well. She’d end it for him.
Charlotte reached behind her head to untie the silken cords of her masque, but Julian grabbed her wrists to stop her. “No. I said remove your clothing, not your masque. I’m not interested in your face. Leave the masque on.”
Oh, yes. He knew who she was.
Charlotte stared up into his hard, dark eyes. He thought she wouldn’t do it—he didn’t even want her to do it. He wanted her to admit she’d been a fool to risk her reputation by entering a whorehouse, to crumple at his feet and beg his forgiveness so he could refuse to give it to her.
But she was done begging for forgiveness. His, or anyone else’s.
So instead she did the one thing she could think to do under the circumstances. She curled her lips in a slow, seductive smile, and turned around to present him with her back. “Aw right guv, if ye say so. It’s yer coin, right enough. Help wif my buttons, won’t ye, luv?”
Oh, how she wanted to see his face then, to read his expression as she gave him just what he asked for.
But not what he wanted.
He made a faint sound, an angry, strangled word, or a harshly exhaled breath. “Do you think I won’t?”
He would, or he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter which. Either way he’d lose, because this wasn’t what he wanted. “Aw, come on, luv. Why should I think that? Ye’ve got a right lusty look about ye, ye do, and ye did say you liked what ye seen. Or mayhap,” she added, her voice as smooth as silk, “Ye don’t like it as well as ye thought ye did, eh?”
She felt his hands against the back of her neck, his fingers twisting the top button of her gown. “Or maybe I like it even better.”
Cool air touched her skin through the flimsy material of her shift as he worked her buttons one by one until her gown was open all the way down to the small of her back. He settled his hands against her waist, his fingers stroking
over the soft flesh there before he eased her hips back against the front of his falls.
A tremor passed through her, but otherwise she didn’t move. He was calling her bluff? Surely he wouldn’t—
“What’s the matter, luv?” He grazed his teeth over the sensitive skin under her ear. “You haven’t changed your mind, I hope? It’s a bit late for that. Once a man’s desires are roused, there’s only one way to satisfy him. I would think you’d know that, being a prostitute.”
Anger stiffened her spine, and her resolve. “A woman don’t get ter change ’er mind no matter what, prostitute or not. I’d a thought ye’d know that, being a man.”
A low chuckle was his only answer, but he gripped her shoulders, his palms hot, heavy. She braced herself to resist him, to dive across the room for the washbasin, but his touch turned gentle as he slipped his fingers under the edge of her shift to stroke her bare shoulders. She sucked back a gasp as he moved closer, so close his warm breath drifted over her skin. Her eyes fell closed, but just when she thought he’d put his mouth on her, he grasped her shoulders and spun her around to face him.
Charlotte caught her breath.
His perfect impassivity was gone. His eyes were no longer cold, his face no longer composed. His cheekbones were flushed with color, and his breath came fast and hard. “Unbutton my waistcoat.”
“No need fer that, luv.” Her voice wasn’t quite steady. “If ye’ll just strip off yer breeches—”
He made a harsh sound in his throat, and caught her wrists to press her hands against his chest. She could feel the thud of his heart through the silk of his waistcoat. “Do it. Unbutton my waistcoat.”
He held her wrists until she worked the buttons loose, then he dragged her hands up his chest and pressed them tight against his neck. He stared down at her, his dark eyes burning. “Take off my cravat.”
The command was low and hoarse, almost inaudible, but his voice throbbed with an intensity that brooked no argument. His words echoed inside her, and this time Charlotte didn’t think to resist him, but untied the knot, unwound the long piece of linen and drew it away from his neck.
