Saving Grace: Fair Cyprians of London

by Beverley Oakley

  Grace reached behind her and guided his hand to her lower back. Having been given permission, he gently skimmed his hands over the contours of her figure-hugging gown.

  Yet it was she who had to stifle her arousal, forcing out the words, “Would you like to feel more of me?” as she placed his hands on her breasts.

  He swallowed as he tentatively contoured the striped silk of her cuirass, making her weak-kneed with wanting as she rubbed herself against him.

  His voice was full of doubt. “What will you do? What must I expect? I’m blind. A virgin.”

  “An honest whore will give you all the pleasure of which her body is capable,” she murmured.

  “Anything?”

  She raised herself on tiptoe and ran her fingers through his fair hair, revelling in the springy softness she remembered so well. “Anything except a kiss.”

  He tilted his head enquiringly and Grace gave a soft, throaty laugh. “An honest whore does not tangle with a man’s heart unless she’s prepared to give him hers. A kiss is a dangerous conduit.” She touched her mouth to his jawline, as close as she dared, whispering, “Now, if you like the feel of my breasts, you can unbutton me.”

  How different from the honest relationship she and David had once enjoyed—but if she were to survive this encounter she needed to block her mind to the past and maintain the charade.

  He stiffened. “I’d rather start from the top,” he muttered, groping helplessly before she grasped his wrists and brought his hands to her face. The face he’d caressed so many years ago. The face he’d called an angel’s face.

  A whore’s mask. Smooth and ravishing on the outside, ravaged by experience on the inside. No longer the face he knew. She had no fear of being recognised. Only the desire to be close. To take what she could in the short allotted time and hope that her heart did not shatter.

  Reaching up, she removed the hatpin which secured her veiled confection and placed it on the ground beside his chair. Angling herself to give him comfortable access, she guided his fingers to the neat ringlets trained to fall over one shoulder. Very different from the wild mane which used to cascade down her back when he’d beg her to loosen her housemaid’s serviceable topknot.

  At first he touched it tentatively, then he fisted both hands in it, his expression suddenly animated.

  She drew back. “What is it?”

  “The texture,” he muttered. “It’s the same texture.” He shook his head, unwilling to say more until she pressed him, wanting to hear it. Wanting confirmation that the long hours of companionship they’d shared hadn’t been only in her imagination.

  “I loved a girl once—” His voice was barely above a whisper, “—who had hair like this.”

  “What happened to that girl?” Grace asked, willing him to recognise her and acknowledge that he had ruined her life. To say he was sorry for it so that …

  She could forgive him.

  “She betrayed me.”

  This was not what she’d expected. Gasping, she stepped back, causing him to drop his hand and say mockingly, “Yes, imagine it! I loved her yet all the while that she pretended to be my ally, urging me to stand up to my mother, promising to protect my most valuable possession, my most dangerous secrets … she was betraying me behind my back.”

  No, no, no … How could you think it? Grace’s voice shook from the effort of reining in her heated denials. “How did she betray you?”

  “I found a photograph—” He swallowed as he steadied himself with a hand on the back of the chair, his twisted mouth pushing out the words as if they were foul and bitter—“of her in circumstances no woman of any decency would allow.”

  Oh God. Grace stumbled backwards as she put her hands to her face. She knew which photograph. Laurence had forced her to sit for him. Blackmailed her. He’d spent the summer with his aunt and, to while away the dullness of country life, had indulged himself with the latest craze: photography. When he had her alone in the little room Mrs Willowbank allowed him to use as a studio he’d made her remove her clothes and drape herself over the plush chaise longue and then he’d …

  David’s voice was thick was emotion. He drew his hand across his eyes as if the image were still branded on his vision. “I saw what only I had ever hoped to see but here she was parading her body before … before the world.” His voice dropped to a thread of bitter accusation. “It was the last thing I saw.”

  The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer. “What do you mean … the last thing you saw?”

  David glared, seemingly oblivious to the hand she tentatively lay upon his shoulder. “I suppose it’s part of your job to pander to me. To sound interested. To sound as if you care.”

  It was difficult not to betray the extent to which Grace did care. She stepped forward and gently took both his hands in hers. “Whores have feelings, too.”

  This elicited a small laugh.

  “And curiosity,” she added.

  Perhaps he needed an opportunity to unburden himself to a supposed stranger. Perhaps something about Grace made him trust her, for he went on, “My cousin invited me to his new photography studio to show me the portraits he’d taken of my mother. Of course it was his intention that I see more. More than just the face of the girl I loved. Laurence told me how much she’d wanted to be admired through the camera’s lens … and more intimately. He told me how smooth and soft she was. How moist her lips were. Of the little mole on her breast.”

  Helplessly, Grace felt his pain as he twisted away from her, fisting his hands. “Her betrayal cut through me and I picked up the first thing that came to hand so I could hurl it at him and remove the gloating smirk from his face. A bottle. I had no idea it was acid. Something he used to develop his work. Laurence went for me. We fought and the bottle smashed, splashing liquid into my face.”

  Oh my God. Horror made her mute.

  David had been blinded in a fight over her.

  “But she’d already gone by then. The woman I loved. The woman I trusted.” His voice hitched as he sat heavily upon the bed, hunched over with his hands covering his face. “Without a word.”

  No, that’s not true, Grace wanted to say but she was helpless in the strange new emotional landscape she inhabited, caught between the urge to tell him everything while knowing the truth would only make things worse.

  She heaved in a breath. “Do you see … nothing?”

  He looked up, unseeing. “I’m aware of light and dark. Sometimes I wish I was dead … now that she’s gone.”

  Grace fought to keep her voice steady, tears stinging her lids as she whispered, “Why did she leave?”

  “Mother dismissed her when I went up to Cambridge for my first term.”

  Rage and hurt swept away her sympathy. Here was her chance to ask the question that had haunted her for three years—Why did you do nothing?—but his voice, harsh, bitter, cut in, giving her the brutal answer. “The girl who said she loved me had given herself to someone else. She was pregnant. Mother said her father told Mrs Medley, our housekeeper, that she’d run off to London with the blacksmith. I saw the way he looked at her in church but I never thought she returned his interest. But I was away at university and he was a handsome man, working now and perhaps persuading her I’d never marry her. I suppose that’s why she took off her clothes for Laurence. So she could get money to be with her blacksmith.”

  She gasped aloud. Lies! All of them! Well, except for her being pregnant.

  She reined in her emotions. Nothing she said or did would change a thing. It was some comfort David hadn’t stopped loving her, though she forced herself to subdue the ray of hope that breached her hardened heart. Hope always had a bitter lining. In this case it was that the truth of what she’d become was worse than the fiction his mother had created.

  If Grace told David his mother had lied, then what?

  She’d only have to tell him that she’d descended to vice far greater than he could ever imagine.

  No, Grace was not the g
irl he remembered. He loved the pure, idealistic Grace, full of hope for the future. Not the debased, ground-down whore before him who bartered herself, body and soul, to stop from starving. She might despise what she’d been reduced to but the fact was she was a whore.

  Oh God, a whore who did this with strangers for a living when all she’d ever wanted was to marry David and have his children.

  4

  “Forget the past.” Grace forced the suggestive, sympathetic tone into her voice as she moved forward, drawing him to his feet so she could inveigle herself back into his embrace. “And enjoy the present. I can take your mind off your sorrows.”

  She might not have David beyond this evening but for the next hour he would be the lover she might have had if things had been different. It would be a bright memory to mitigate the miserable future which stretched before her.

  Slipping her hands beneath his shirt she ran them up his smooth chest. No longer the chest of the sapling she remembered. Gently she rubbed his nipples, ridiculously gratified by his shivers of reaction. He was putty in her hands and his fascination for her and what she could do for him was growing. What would he think if she tried to entice him further down?

  Dare she?

  The Grace he’d known would never have been so bold and brazen but she was a woman who played on men’s fantasies for a living. A whore who’d never experienced desire in the course of her work. Now, with the young, healthy body of the only man she’d loved showing increasing willingness, she was desperately conscious of her own lustful urges. They frightened her. How little time she had to revel in the intimacies she’d once hoped to enjoy for a lifetime.

  He was highly aroused by the time she slid her hand into the opening of his trousers, his sudden hardening echoing her own need as she felt the rush of warm liquid pooling in her lower belly.

  “Oh God, what are you doing?” he gasped, gripping her shoulders as she knelt in front of him and gently circled the end of his manhood with her tongue. Clearly he was caught between pushing her away and keeping her prisoner.

  “I shall disgrace myself!” he warned as she trailed her tongue the length of his shaft before taking him deeply into her mouth, but she ignored him, caught up by her own responses to his growing excitement. She could feel her desire roaring in her ears. His breathing was coming fast and even, his body was tense and his hands fisted in her hair as she moved him deeper into the cavern of her mouth, flicking her tongue over the ridges of his swollen shaft, squeezing gently, pushing him back and forth.

  “Oh God!” he cried, convulsing as he came. He could barely speak through his shame. “I’m sorry.”

  Exultant, Grace slithered upright and held him tightly, as if to comfort him, her heart pounding at the simple fact she’d elicited such powerful reactions. That she was responsible for giving her beloved David such pleasure. “A virgin does not have to apologise for the brevity of his first time,” she murmured, her mind whirling, every sense on high alert as she kissed his earlobe, revelling in the intimacy, though he seemed caught up in confusion, not knowing where to put his hands.

  She raised them to her breasts still contained by her low cut bodice. Again, so brazen. The Grace he’d known would never have done such a thing. The David she’d known would have been repulsed by such behaviour.

  “You can undo me, if you like.” She wriggled invitingly in his embrace and he seemed to gain confidence, his exploring hands fumbling with the row of tiny buttons down the front of her tight-fitting cuirass. Touching her lips to his right ear, she whispered, “There, I’ll help you.”

  When the fabric fell away she quickly divested herself of her upper bodice, pushing him down upon the bed again and settling herself on his lap so he could feel her bare arms and the swell of her breasts above her corset.

  At first tentative but with increasing surety he ran his hands over her skin, myriad responses reflected in his rapt expression. Grace closed her eyes and offered herself to him, her heart engaged like it had never been since she and David had been close.

  “Is this how it’s done?”

  “Seduction?” she murmured as she snuggled against him and toyed with his nipples.

  “Whoring.”

  Deflated, she froze. Whoring. Yes, that’s all it was to him. She was a stranger. A woman off the streets sent to service him for an afternoon.

  “Don’t leave. I’m sorry.” He pulled her back. “I didn’t mean to offend you. You’re very good and I need tutoring.” Unseeing, he groped for her breasts, at first ashamed, then obviously enjoying their size and feel as he trailed his fingertips over their exposed fullness as if committing them to memory.

  “Tutoring?” She heard the dullness in her voice. “You make it sound like a lesson when I thought I was here to indulge you. Would you like me to take off my corset so you can weigh them in your hands?” She did not add: That’s what many of the gentlemen like to do? It gives them satisfaction to weigh up the inventory.

  Without waiting for his response she stood up, guiding his hands to the strings at the back of the constraining garment. Twisting her head to study his concentration as he worked the laces, she was struck by memory. This was the way he’d once looked at her. Eyes bright with determination as his hands trailed over her—respectfully, lovingly—while vowing that the day he reached his majority and was free of his mother he would marry her.

  “Very good. And now for my skirt. Here are the buttons. That’s right. My, but you’re very deft with your fingers.” She took refuge in briskness, her tone falsely admiring. As her skirt slithered to the floor she kicked it aside. A shabby way to treat a garment which cost her what she’d have to earn through servicing more than two dozen clients.

  Next, she attended to her princess petticoat, a simple, embroidered linen shift which she removed from over her head leaving her naked save for her stockings. A girl in her line of work had no need for the additional petticoat and combinations modesty required the respectable debutante or matron to wear.

  “Sit down,” she instructed. Once again she lowered herself onto his lap and brought his hands up to her breasts as she murmured in his ear, “Take your pleasure. It’s your birthday, David. Enjoy the experience.”

  He jerked at the sound of his name but complied, smiling as he held first her right and then her left breast before kissing each nipple with touching reverence. “You liked that?” he asked in obvious surprise at her small gasp.

  Grace nodded, her eyes closed as she surrendered to the unusual waves of pleasure elicited by his touch. He’d put his mouth to her breast and was stroking her nipple with his tongue. It sent a rush of feeling to her groin.

  “Is there only pleasure on the man’s side? I understand you must hate this work because it…degrades you, but is it true a woman does not enjoy sexual relations?”

  Grace realised that he’d not seen her smile of pleasure. He’d taken her silence in answer to his previous question to mean she did what she had to.

  Oh David, I’ve only felt like this in your arms, she wanted to say. But if he did not know who she was now, he never would. Grace wasn’t sure which would be worse: to face his revulsion or to accept that she would never know pleasure from the touch of a man, again. “A woman can enjoy sexual pleasure immeasurably if her heart is engaged.” Now she was again the professional he’d hired as she twined her arms about his neck and nuzzled his neck. But when she breathed in his familiar smell, the same sandalwood soap was a bittersweet reminder of happier times. Don’t cry, she exhorted herself. Instead, she steeled herself to say, “You are to be married, David. Do you wish to please your wife?”

  “Miss Lenders is a worthy young lady.” His tone was uncertain as he stroked her naked back. “I’m told she’s not unattractive. She’s agreed to the contract, though I daresay I have the better deal.” He gave a short laugh. “The least I can do is learn a thing or two to try to please her so she won’t take a lover in the first year.”

  “Perhaps she loves you very much. You do
n’t have much faith in a woman’s constancy?”

  “Experience has taught me to be mistrustful of what a woman says. I prefer to judge her actions.” He tried to speak carelessly. “I like you, though. You feel … nice. Show me how to bring pleasure to a woman. To my future wife. Where should I touch you?”

  Unconsciously, his hand was now gently trailing up and down the valley of her breasts creating whorls of sensation Grace had not experienced since David last caressed her.

  It was difficult to restrain herself. She shivered with pleasure and longing, and whispered, “A woman’s urges are just as strong as a man’s if she desires him. Here, I’ll guide you to her forbidden places. Those hidden, secret places she tells no one except those she trusts most in all the world.”

  Grace had used nearly those same words when she’d made her last promise to David. She’d not been referring to her body, of course, but to a hiding place for something they thought would guarantee their future; their joint happiness.

  He stilled, frowning, as if his words had tapped into a memory, and his mouth opened slightly as if he would really ask the question Grace both desired and dreaded: Who are you, really?

  But he did not and in the silence Grace guided his hand to her inner thighs. This was business and she’d do well to remember nothing more could come of it than the handsome fee David—or his mother, God forbid!—would hand her after she’d dressed herself and was preparing to leave this house.

  As he resumed stroking her, Grace studied him, his remembered promise filtering through her body’s growing sensitivity. “My annuity won’t be much,” he’d told her—it seemed a lifetime ago, now—“but it’ll be enough for the two of us and I’ll supplement it with my painting. I’ll be a real artist, then.” He’d patted the secret drawer of the escritoire where he’d hidden the letter upon which he’d pinned his future. Their shared future. The letter from Señor Borteli, a famous landscape painter in Florence who’d offered to make David his student for a year. The letter that would change both their lives in ways he would never know.