by Sophia James
Lady Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen? England and the rarefied world of the ton seemed a long, long way from here.
Chapter Two
Cristo held the medallion in his fingers and hated the fear in her face.
‘Who are you?’ he repeated, his voice not quite steady. He wished he might have left her there, just walked out into the night and waited until she had gone, but life was no longer that simple for him. Beraud had brought her to him and if the woman should know anything of his past, what then? For years he had held the secrets safe. He shook his head, hard. With her maidenhead lost he felt he owed her at least something.
One moment ran into two and then five more. But still she did not speak and the heat of fury leaked out of his vengeance.
Sitting back, he weighed up the options.
She would not talk and he no longer felt the desire to make her. She was shivering, too, for the fire had long since died out, as the cold of an early Parisian November crept into the space of his chamber, raising the fine hairs on her arms.
He caught at an eiderdown of goose feathers folded on a chest at the foot of the bed and placed it across her and when one foot was still exposed he was careful to tuck it into warmness.
The first stirring of dawn was lighting the room and the bells of Sacre Coeur rang in those souls who still believed in the goodness of Our Lady. Striking a light, he breathed in the mellow taste of a cheroot, the smoke winding its way up through the lonely morning dark, another small reminder of all that he had become.
‘Mon Dieu, et quel bordel tout ceci.’
My God, and what a hell of a mess all this is.
He saw small toes wiggle free from the thick down covering as she tried to sit up.
‘Could I please have a drink?’
Six words that nearly undid him, for the quiet dignity in her request was undeniable. When he filled a glass and handed it to her she made a point of saying thank you, though the realisation that he still could not place her French accent kept him edgy.
‘How came you here?’
She remained quiet, but as the flints of blame in pale eyes continued to prick at his conscience he made an attempt at explanation.
‘I didn’t know that you had not lain with a man before. This is a place that never shelters innocents and by the time I found out that you were one, it was too late.’
An apology of sorts. It was all he could manage.
‘Then you will let me go now, monsieur?’
Turning his face towards the window, Cristo wished that he could have taken her from this room right then and there before the need his body shook with was too much to deny. But he could not, for the party below was far from over and men made careless from too much drink were always dangerous.
A temptress. A siren. The full line of her lips and the rise of her ample breasts against the softness of the cover. The sheer need of her made his voice sharper than he intended.
‘Where are your clothes?’
‘Downstairs. I took a drink…more than one.’
‘You came in with the other women, les prostituees?’
She nodded.
‘And the chain?’
‘My aunt was once given it by an English client she serviced. A bauble that was not to her taste! I liked the shape and she said that if I came with her tonight I might have it, should the evening prove a success…’
‘Your aunt is one of those below?’
When she nodded his hand closed around the engraved coat of arms and he felt the edge of the rondel dig into his palm. Was such a coincidence even possible? With a lifetime of deception behind him he knew that it was seldom the case. Could he make her talk now that she was more sober? His world reformed into only suspicion and his heart began to thump as he wondered how much Beraud might have gleaned about the meaning behind the crest.
Keep talking, Eleanor thought to herself, the fog of the drink she had been forced into taking receding into the sharper play for survival. Already the velvet darkness in his eyes looked harder, more removed. Just a whore plying her trade in a market driven by a commodity that could be given many times, the first of as little importance as the hundredth. She had to make him trust exactly that if she had any chance at all of escaping with her name intact.
‘I do not believe anything you have told me. Do you work for Beraud?’
‘Beraud?’
‘From the Parisian Police. The man who sent you to my room.’
‘I do not know the man. I came with my aunt and—’
He stopped her simply by raising a hand. ‘You lie, mademoiselle, and I intend to find out why.’
Her laugh was harsh as she bit back a reply, but he no longer seemed interested, the drag of his chair shrill against the parquet flooring as he stood and walked towards the windows.
‘Perhaps you would prefer to join the others downstairs and further your trade? You could no doubt turn a trick or two with the one who brought you in here. He certainly looked willing enough.’
True fear squeezed the very beat out of her heart. ‘Oh, I think I would rather stay with you, monsieur.’
His smile held no humour whatsoever. ‘Take care, ma cherie, of expressing any such yearning, for there are many in this game who would not give you the luxury of choice.’
Her hands fisted beneath the soft warmth of down. As you gave me no choice. She almost said it. Almost let the scalding shame escape, but didn’t, as sense embedded itself into silence.
Ruined.
The very word was written in her blood on the sheets, and the laughter from below seemed only to emphasise the silence between them, making everything more awkward again. She saw him pick up a tumbler and then place it down, undrunk, and the swell of the vessel was engraved with a crest.
Isobel had warned her of the intemperance of men such as this one when she had first arrived in Paris, but her friend’s timely cautions had been buried by need. Her grandfather had instructed her to make certain that she delivered a letter into exactly the right hands.
‘Le Comte de Caviglione at the Chateau Giraudon. Give this letter only to him, Lainie,’ he had said time and time again as life had left him. ‘Only to him. On your oath, promise me that you will do this, for he is a good man, a man to be trusted and he needs to know the truth.’
How naive she had been to imagine she could just walk up to the door of the Chateau Giraudon and demand the ear of its master or expect the dignity and decorum that honourable men in the courts of England might have afforded her. Her dress had been a little gaudy, but the wig was an expensive one she had procured before leaving London. Perhaps it had been the presence of the women installed there already, their brightly coloured gowns and heaving bosoms giving an illusion of something that was normal here in Paris.
It had taken less than an hour for those downstairs to ply her with too much brandy as she had waited, trying not to appear as nervous as she felt.
Lord, if the Comte had come earlier she would have placed the missive in his hands and left as she intended: a dutiful granddaughter undertaking a final wish for a beloved grandfather. But now? She dared do nothing else to raise this man’s suspicions with all that lay between them, for if he ever guessed her name…
Against the breaking light Eleanor could see his profile. He was almost as young as she was and for that at least she was thankful.
‘Where are you from?’
His words held distrust and the caution of one used to betrayal. She noticed the small finger on his right hand was missing altogether as he laid his palm against his thigh.
‘Do you speak English?’ He had switched languages now and his accent was pure aristocracy. The change made her tense as layers of mystery clouded truth. Who was he? Why had he asked her that? She swallowed before she answered.
‘Pardon, monsieur, I do not understand what you are saying.’ She tried with all her might to make her words sound the same as one of the maids at Bornehaven, the soft Provencal French easy to mimic. The lines of his
shoulders relaxed.
‘The south is a long way from the streets of Paris, ma petite. If you need money to return there…?’ He switched easily to French.
She shook her head. Payment could only mean obligation and with nothing to trade save her body, she was careful. He took the words a different way completely.
‘Then if you are hell-bent on staying in the city, perhaps you and I could come to some agreement.’ The fire in his eyes was searing sharp.
Eleanor pressed back against the bed, watching as he came closer. ‘Agreement?’
‘Your line of work is somewhat…insecure. I could offer you a less uncertain future.’
‘Uncertain?’
He began to laugh, his teeth white against the dawn, and in that moment Eleanor knew the pull of beauty, fierce and undeniable, his eyes marked with arrogance and temperance and authority. Not a man to be trifled with. But it was the hint of something else that held her still. A sadness, she thought, written beneath a careful detachment.
He stopped as he reached her and ran his thumb along her cheek. Without force. A bolt of awareness sizzled between them, making her heart beat faster.
‘Though if you truly wish me to halt, mademoiselle, then I will.’
He meant it. Honour came in unexpected places, she thought as she caught the depth of his dark, dark eyes, and the silence between them lengthened.
She should pull back, should shake her head and put an end to it all, but she was held immobile, her nipples tightening and the want in her belly finding a home in the place between her legs.
Le Comte de Caviglione! Her grandfather had said he was a good man, a trustworthy man, a man with some tie to the Duke of Carisbrook…
One time or ten more, what did it matter when the urgency in her being called only for release and already the damage was done, was it not? The pressing insistence of some emotion that was uncontrollable made her turn to him!
She did not flinch when he rolled down the cover and exposed her breasts, cold tightening desire and adding to the allure of surrender.
The velvet counterpane was burgundy, and stitched in gaudy golden thread. She felt the ridges of it against her feet when his hand ran across her throat and made them stiffen. Above the bed a net of gauze was anchored by ribbon, the cane hoop that held it painted in an antique peeling silver, so that the colour bled into the fabric. Beyond that, a mirror was fastened to the ceiling, catching the movement of them both through a veil of muslin, the pale outline of her breasts surprisingly wanton.
The reflection of the man beside her with his night-black eyes and magnetism left her little chance of refusal. The length of his hair fell past his shoulders, pale spun silver as she reached up to touch the colour.
He smiled, his glance allowing no modesty, and the distant sounds of a waking Paris were a counterpoint against her growing need.
‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen.’
He turned her leg into the light. ‘What happened?’
The rings of blistering skin on her thigh stung as he touched it. ‘I tried to keep my gown on.’
‘Modesty in a whore is unusual.’
‘It was cold…’
He laughed this time and the sound was freeing, no longer caught up in control. Reaching for a drawer beside the bed, he removed a tin of salve, wiping the ointment on carefully, lessening the pain. When he had finished, he did not break contact, but spread her legs. The soft flesh throbbed in anticipation.
‘How much were you paid?’ The question was almost a caress.
She remained silent, the scale of payment for a lady of the night so far from her knowledge.
‘I’ll triple it.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘You won’t.’
A loud burst of shouting below made her start.
‘The party will not be over for a few hours yet,’ he added as his fingers left her skin. ‘And the minions of Beraud are restless. Make your choice, ma petite.’
She caught his hand and held it, slender and elegant, the nails trimmed and clean.
‘Then I am at your service, monseigneur.’ She had heard the other women downstairs use this phrase in the salons of the Chateau Giraudon. In the playing of a part came safety and she ran her tongue around her lips in the same way those below had mastered, slowly, and looked straight at him.
His eyes were a thousand times older than his face, the chocolate melted into harder shards of amber. Danger and distance and steely control, the fickle carelessness of youth constrained by another menace. But she took a chance on those eyes and those hands and on the words of a man who had not excused the actions of one who had hurt her.
‘Instead of payment I would ask of you a promise.’
He was listening, the stillness in him haunting.
‘A promise that come daylight proper you will spirit me out of this place in your carriage and let me go wherever I should will it without question!’
She was relieved when he nodded.
‘Is it just Paris you would escape, mademoiselle, or might I hope that the perils of the night have started to sink in?’
She only smiled as he peeled away the cover, a few feathers of down escaping the velvet, and one fluttering into the air to land on her stomach, white softness caught in a greying morning. He leant across and blew it away, the warmth tickling her skin and making her breath just stop. Her head arched into the pillow as a quick stab of passion lanced through her, the blood beating in her temples like a band, the base of sound blotting out everything save the sensation of want wound tightly through every pore on her skin.
He laughed. ‘Perhaps, ma petite, I do you a disservice after all, by letting you leave Paris and a profession that seems your milieu.’ He held the hardness in her still with his hands and waited till the shafts of need had passed before discarding the bedcovering altogether.
He should never have called her bluff, Cristo thought, but her words allowing him everything were a powerful aphrodisiac.
I am at your service, monseigneur.
God, he was twenty-three and hardly a saint, and if the Devil were to smite him into Hell for such an act then he was willing to take his chances. One time more or many, her virginity was already lost. The tremor in her hand as she had held it up to demand his promise to let her go free only added to his intemperance, and the way she looked him straight in the eyes saw to the rest. He was primed and ready, rock-hard with desire, the outline of his manhood raising the fabric of his breeches in a way that was…unseemingly desperate.
He wished he might have hidden it, hidden this power she had over his body, but he could not and would not and as the clock struck seven he realised that the morning was being eaten away and that his promise of freedom was close.
‘What is your name?’
Suddenly he wanted some truth. Something more than falseness and business.
‘Jeanne.’
She whispered the sound so that he had to strain to hear it. Jeanne?
He wrote the letters on her stomach with his tongue and traced the word again with his fingers, lightly. All the hairs on her right arm rose, the colour nowhere near as pale as her tresses. Almost dark. Her nipples budded into knots as he skimmed his touch across them and the heartbeat in her throat beat blue against the last smattering of summer freckles.
So delicate and breakable and so very fragile; just a girl on the edge of womanhood. His hand wandered downwards to feel the wetness, slick, tight and heated.
He moved then to the softness of her thighs and to the rounded shape of her hips, skirting the outline, making her know in his exploration how truly beautiful she was. Not just a whore. Not just a night or a coin. No contract in any of it save desire.
Her lips parted and her breathing quickened as his touch moved back to her centre and then away at the very last moment so that he did not quite fulfil her hidden want. But he felt it. Felt it in the way her skin rose against his hand, swollen with need.
Sweat
beaded her upper lip and her forehead where her fringe had fallen. He knew that heat, too, in the place beneath his cheek as he bent to the juncture of her thighs.
This time she did shout out, shock resonating as his tongue reached in, tasting the fine wine of woman, and her hands threaded in his hair like an anchor, keeping him caught, as the flame does the moth.
The fire of youth and sex and passion. The lust of a hundred days of abstinence and many years of caution. The memory of what it was like once to only feel free. He drank like a man newly come from the desert until all that was left was her.
Her skin. Her smell. The feel of her fingers in his hair, holding him closer.
‘Jeanne.’ He moved back as he said her name and when no flicker of recognition passed into her summer-blue eyes he knew even that was a lie.
Still, he could not care. She was here and he was here and her blood on his sheets more real than any falsehood could ever be.
He moulded the swell of her breast into the palm of his hand and lifted the softness. Full fat abundance fell across the space between his first finger and his thumb. No little girl here. Her chest rose, fast and then faster.
Bringing her face to his, he opened her mouth to a kiss, surprising himself by the want, and when her resistance faltered all he knew was bliss. Her tongue, her cheeks, her face in his hands turning to him, the pull of knowledge, the sharp tang of certainty, the urge to own and keep and possess.
When he unlaced his breeches and lifted her onto his lap she did not fight him, and when she felt the tip of his sex pause for a second before pressing inwards, she welcomed the deep ache of it as her head lolled upon his shoulder. Submitting. Yielding. Nothing essential save the heavy rigidness of his manhood felt in the core of her body.
‘Ahh, sweetheart,’ he said, dampness on his fore head as her breasts fell heavy between them. Eleanor revelled in his expertise, in his finesse, in the way he built her hunger along with his own ‘til there was nowhere for either of them to go. Except up and away into the realms of fantasy and delight, and the sheer relief of orgasm.
