by Elsa Holland
“We understand a carriage will be sent for you at ten.”
“No! I am not going. He . . . he is a reprobate. Perverted, arrogant and unfeeling. I have no desire to see him again. I don’t care for the dress or the attention.” Elspeth dropped the dress back into its box. “I want my own life, I want my job back.”
Once again they ignored her and the door to the library closed behind them.
“Wretched, idiotic beast of a man!”
She picked up the blasted box, with the sumptuous dress and hurled it towards the stand of bookcases behind her. It flew through the air and bounced off a wide, familiar chest. A chest she had pressed against in the dim landing just that morning.
Her eyes narrowed. “You!”
Chapter 8
Her face was flushed, the tightness around her eyes and mouth screamed out her frustration. Blackburn bent down and picked up the box, and unexpected annoyance made him steel his face at the sight of the dress on the floor.
“I thought the color quite complimentary,” he said as he rose. He placed the box on the sofa between them and resettled the dress back into the paper. “Not to mention I had to pay a great deal to have its original recipient disappointed in order to have it delivered to you today.”
She bared her teeth in reply. If she’d had a foil he had no doubt a good portion of it would be embedded in his chest.
“And,” He raised his eyebrows in a look he knew conveyed bored disinterest, “I take umbrage at idiotic. I’m actually rather well-read,” he said as he walked closer.
Her body stiffened.
He looked calmly around her. Outside of a few side table knickknacks, there were only a handful of innocuous cushions to hurl at him. He moved a few steps closer. His beauty turned her nose up at him and stalked over to the open French doors, shoulders rigid and head held high. She was damn hard work.
This was their fourth meeting in as many days and there was no doubt in his mind that she was the one he wanted. He already felt the ties between them, a connection, threads between them already starting to be visible that went past the list of benefits and positive attributes that the Hurleys had mentioned about her. There was something about her he found highly attractive. Whether with regards to women or making deals, he knew how to play the game, but the game was different with her; she changed all the rules.
Yes, naturally, he found her beautiful, many men would, yet it was something more than that, something that showed itself in the subtlest ways. For instance, he found the shape of her oddly fascinating. While Elspeth had been dictated to by the Hurleys, he had stood at the end of a bookcase and watched the way she’d sat; the poise and grace of her movements, the elegance in how she held her body. Even now as she started to turn away from him, his gaze moved to the flare of her ribcage and how it flowed up into the fullness of her breasts, at the elegant line of her clavicles.
And then there was the quality of her skin. Luminescent. Its texture looked like the softest nap of velvet, or a thick heavy satin. The sensation of it under his fingers as he’d pressed her against the wall just hours earlier was exquisite. He would explore that addictive smoothness with painstaking slowness when the time came.
“You have abominable manners to have stayed in the room without making your presence known.”
Blackburn walked over to where she stood and stopped next to her. His hand itched to touch her, to feel her against him again.
“I wanted to be sure they relayed the situation clearly. It is possible you didn’t quite understand.”
“I don’t understand!” Her eyes accused him.
And there was what really captured his regard—the way emotions ran unchecked across her face. She had not mastered the art of concealing her feelings behind a cool expression, as people like he and the Hurleys had, and the openness was refreshing.
“I warrant you simply don’t want to understand, Miss James.” Blackburn stepped forward and turned so she had to look at him. He pulled his shoulders back, raising to his full height and stood there, as she glowered at him, as he continued to make his point. As he continued to watch that intoxicating play of unfiltered feelings.
“This is the reality, those with money and power create the landscape for those that don’t. And you are the only one in the current set of circumstances devoid of money and power. That makes you vulnerable to not only the Hurleys machinations but also to my own.”
Her eyebrows drew down over narrowed eyes.
“The whole world cannot be reduced to the vulgar terms of commerce, Mr. Blackburn. There are many souls out there that focus on life as art, as an act of conscience, of higher purpose and ideals.”
“Like The Collectors?” he asked.
“Some of them.” Her hands came to rest on those shapely hips.
He folded his arms across his chest. He wanted to be back in whites, facing off against her with foils, with the wager of an afternoon on crisp white linen sheets. He held his tongue.
God what he could do to her with his tongue?
“How do you think they all got their money? How do you think I got mine? I can guarantee you it had nothing to do with art and high ideals,” he countered.
“You clearly don’t take the time to get to know people.” She moved her hands and folded them across her chest mirroring his stance. The effect was to press up full and distracting breasts.
He unfolded his and leaned forward.
“Oh, you are one of those people who think that everyone is fundamentally good.” He reached out, slid his fingers over the satin of her chin and lifted.
She tightened under his touch and tugged out of his hold. Irritation spiked and he moved closer. She backed up a step and his hand was around her upper arm before he thought the thought.
“Careful.”
“Stop touching me!” she snapped. She stepped back forcefully, knocking her head on the French door behind her.
He tugged her closer, away from the offending architecture, then let her go.
She looked upset.
“Thank you.” The tone of her voice was anything but grateful.
He itched to draw her forward. He wanted to pull her up against him so close that she would have to admit they were flammable together. That this prideful resistance was wasting both their time. He fought to keep his hands in his pockets.
“You’re welcome. And rude. Perhaps you need a moment to have a cry?” he said.
She scowled.
“The trouble with you, Miss James, is that you haven’t seen enough of life, or the people within it to see what they do to survive. If you had, you would know that absolutely everything and everyone is salable.” He expected her to step away, but instead she poked him in the chest for the second time today. He drew himself up taller and she matched him. Ripples of heat flew up the front of him as she held her ground and pressed her point home. She was bloody magnificent.
“You have no idea of my life. I have seen more than this,” she waved a hand at their plush surroundings. “And do you know what? People are interested in far more than trade. Whatever made you the man you are, a man who thinks he can bully someone into selling herself, that is not all there is.”
There was a strange sensation in his chest as he looked at the conviction in her face. He did in fact know quite a bit about her past.
Stay quiet, stay quiet, her words whispered earlier in the day, a lifetime ago . . . yes, after her experiences she should know life for what it was, an act of survival. Yet, here she stood in front of him blazing with indignation. That foolish idealism would only protract this situation and ultimately lead to her unhappiness should the Hurleys follow through and fire her.
“Your situation is a clear example that I am right. Your position and the role you and the Painted Sisters play are another example of pure commerce for people who have more money than sense. The sooner you resolve yourself to this the sooner we can move forward.”
“Yet, you want to be one of them,” she accused.
“I am one of them.”
Her eyebrow lifted.
His jaw tightened.
“More money than sense?” she threw his words back at him.
“I’m starting to wonder . . .” he growled back at her.
Miss James swished past him, walking to the center of the room.
“I meant what I said to the Hurleys, I don’t want your dinner invites and I don’t want the dress, nor everything it promises.” She turned and held his gaze. “I am a governess. I am not a Painted Sister and I will not be yours.”
“And yet, here you are, your body, mind and skills the terms of trade.” He walked into the room. “One has to wonder why you chose to stay here for all those years if you didn’t have some sympathy for the idea.”
“A woman needs to work, Mr. Blackburn.”
“But there are less eccentric places and less eccentric roles to have, Miss James.”
They stood there, the crickets started up in the garden. A sound that swelled into the space, like hundreds of heralds announcing the night.
“I’m getting the sense that you have more you are worried about. Why don’t you simply ask me about what you saw in the shop?”
She huffed and walked restlessly around the sofas. The light was fading outside and the gas lamps in the room were making the light more golden as the natural light faded. Her hair reflected the glow as she passed by one of the wall mounts. She sat down, facing him.
“What were you doing in the bookshop today?” she said, her head tilted up as if bracing for a blow. Blackburn walked around the sofa and sat in the chair next to hers.
“I own the bookshop Miss James. And I own the business beneath.”
Her eyes opened wider as he gave her a few moments to process what he’d said.
“I was inspecting a shipment of goods that had arrived from a new supplier and I was relaying the pricing to my staff. My customers come to my shops because we source the best. I always check shipments of new suppliers; I want to look my customers in the face and know they got more than they expected.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I am a self-made man, Miss James, I have many dealings and businesses, some like The Velvet Basement,” he saw her lack of comprehension and clarified, “the shop under the bookshop.”
“That doesn’t make it any better. You must think me foolish to leave me sitting upstairs drinking cups of tea while you . . . look at ‘stock’ below.”
Ah, her pride. It was going to cause them more than a bit of trouble before this deal was complete.
“No, I thought the respite from my company would settle you, and it also offered me the opportunity to deal with some business.” He let his gaze wander over her face, stopping at her lips, then dropping down to her breasts staying focused on them a few seconds too long, then back up to her eyes. Eyes that now held the smallest flicker of uncertainty above pinkened cheeks.
“Now you are trying to make me feel uncomfortable,” she said.
He shook his head slowly. “No, no I just want to remind you of this morning,” his voice lowered, “of our kiss.”
She rose and he did the same.
“A gentleman would not bring that up—you know I was upset.”
He ignored her; the pulse at her clavicle was beating wildly, and he listened to that instead.
“Haven’t you ever wondered about the pleasures to be had in the world, Miss James? Haven’t you dreamed of the passions you have read, described by the poets? The kinds of sensations that remove rational thought?”
She swallowed, the movement of her throat so telling and so incredibly erotic. “This isn’t going to happen,” her voice held as much doubt as her gaze.
He was sure she had no idea how much her inner struggle was obvious to someone like him: the tell-tale flicker in the back of her eyes, the signs of her racing pulse at her collar bone, the flushed skin at the edges of her gown.
And then there was the fact that they stood very close to each other after they had both risen from their seats, yet she had not moved away. The space between them pulsed with their mutual attraction.
That burning need between them confused her. It drew her and repelled her all at once. That inner struggle simply added to her desirability.
He inched closer.
She shook her head, as if trying to clear her thoughts, and moved away.
“No,” her voice was firm, “I am not interested. As I said, not the dress, not the seduction, and certainly not any kind of arrangement that has me permanently associated with you.” There it was again, that look of distaste. “Having my skin forever tattooed, let alone the requirement to show that tattoo at your beck and call,” she shook her head again, “that is not suited to my temperament and it is not my calling. The house has many eligible girls all prepared and wonderfully eager for those roles. I am not.” She went to move to the door.
His hand came out and clasped her arm, stopping her, then letting go as he moved up behind her.
“Come to dinner with me tonight. Wear the dress. It could be a whole new world, one that offers more freedoms, more pleasures.”
“No.” Her voice held resolve.
“What will you do when they throw you out?”
“I will do what I have done in the past—I will survive.” There was that determined tilt of her chin again.
She would survive.
The Hurleys would have a hell of a job getting her to him by the end of the week. There were all kinds of coercive ways he could get her, however having a hostile Painted Sister was counter-intuitive if he wanted her to help him advance in the world of the Collectors. She would have to come relatively willingly or not at all.
She turned to leave. The door opened and in walked Count Bernard Von Schneider. The Hurley’s nephew.
Chapter 9
“Miss James.”
“Good evening, Count.”
Blackburn immediately stepped forward, watched as her whole body stiffened at the Count’s entrance and her face closed down. She had excellent instincts. He angled himself so as to partially hide her from Von Schneider.
Naturally, she moved. Of course she would. His jaw tightened.
“If I can introduce you,” she said, smoothing down her skirts next to him.
“We are acquainted.” Blackburn kept his voice cool.
“Blackburn.” Count Bernard Von Schneider nodded towards him.
“Count.”
Neither man said anything more.
There were things you learned as you climbed the ranks as he had, you learned to read the way people held themselves, learned what even the subtlest nuance of movement said about what they were really thinking, what they had planned. That was why he did so well at fencing at the gentlemen’s sports clubs he attended; he knew where they would thrust next, where they would target the next jab, simply by reading their body; and those minute seconds were all the advantage he needed to choose to win or lose, whatever was the best strategy.
Or perhaps, in the case of the Count, nature had a way of ensuring that predators recognized each other.
“Well, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I must be checking on the girls.” Miss James stepped towards the door and Blackburn moved to open it for her. She was a wash of soft scent, of orange water and laundered clothing. He stood so she would have to brush past him. She gave him a scowl that did absolutely nothing to scare him off.
Von Schneider adjusted his stance and Blackburn instinctively stepped between him and Miss James.
“Miss James,” Von Schneider projected his voice, as if it needed to climb over Blackburn’s body to reach her. Miss James stopped her exit and Blackburn forced himself to move, shielding her from Von Schneider.
“Mr. Blackburn, if you don’t mind.” Her light hand rested on his arm and his teeth tightened against each other at her silent request that he move. It would be very odd if he didn’t. He stepped aside, but his eyes never left Von Schneider.
The Count puffed
his chest as his hand slid into his overly tight trouser pocket. “There looks to have been an incident. I understand one of the girls is crying. Some melodrama or other, as usual,” Von Schneider said with such a show of disinterest that it failed to convey the levity he hoped to achieve.
Blackburn’s hand tightened on the door knob. He owed the girls nothing but turmoil in Miss James’ world was fast becoming his concern. And then there was the matter of Von Schneider himself.
“Oh,” Miss James’s face displayed genuine concern, more than he expected. She turned towards him, the look of disapproval she’d had for him earlier forgotten in her current distress. “I wish you good luck in your endeavors, Mr. Blackburn.” She tilted her head, an acknowledgement she failed to give him as they fenced. That was a good sign.
Blackburn watched as the door closed behind her.
Despite the fact that he knew the bulk of her wages were sent to India each year, Miss James didn’t let the fear of hardship navigate her into positions she found unpalatable. Like being with him, an extremely rich and not unattractive man whom she didn’t like. Strangely, he admired her all the more for that. It wasn’t often a person held their ground against him.
The door clicked closed behind her.
Count Bernard Von Schneider sauntered over to the sideboard and raised the whiskey tumbler in his direction. Blackburn nodded. He wanted to ensure the Count knew—Miss James was now under his protection.
“Miss James! Well, that is a novel approach.” Von Schneider didn’t even try and hide his smirk.
It didn’t take a great deal of skill to know how to read Von Schneider. His father had died when he was still in swaddling, and he was coddled by the Hurleys with the promise that he would take the reins of their extremely lucrative business of training and supplying Painted Sisters. They were blind to the fact that he was ill-suited to handling and maintaining their quality goods, much less navigate the world of the Collectors to ensure they remained one of their most prized possessions.
